Aries New Moon

The Aries New Moon has a decidedly fidgety feel — initiating projects and inspiring growth. After all, it is the vernal equinox, and new life vigorously emerges after winter dormancy. Besides, this lunation isn’t just the Sun and Moon in Aries. Mercury and Jupiter are also here, a stellium concentrating impatient, potent Aries energy across a range of themes and focuses.

The momentum behind this cluster has potential to inspire innovation and advancement, surely stronger than we’ve experienced in a while! Yet, we can’t ignore the Aries Moon and Ceres in Libra opposition, pointing to how others are fed and nourished. We might see this opposition as pitting needs based on emotion and instinct (represented by the Moon) against those of physical and dietary requirements necessary for overall bodily functioning.

Our gut instincts often flag us to something important, and the “animal,” survival impulse within us may react differently in response to information received from outside sources, such as that addressing specific health and nutritional needs prescribed by a medical professional. And given the Libra focus, this might mean we also consider others’ needs! Here, we try to balance the pendulum so we’re neither swinging between extremes nor ignoring a vital component or person in the process.

While the Aries stellium is hard to miss, we must also account for an out-of-sign conjunction between the Aries Moon and Neptune in Pisces. This adds intuition and the drive to sift through a web of information to get to the essence of what is needed. How is intuition different from instinct? Views may differ, but one angle is that intuition is like a flash of inspiration from nowhere in particular — it could be linked with the past or future, but is experienced in the present and may or may not be related to anything repeating.

It’s possible it’s not especially personal but simply linking into something universal — psychologists Freud and C.G. Jung termed it the universal unconscious. Whereas instinct, a shared faculty among humans and animals, tends to have a more personal focus to it — and often relates to very basic drives, such as hunger and a fear of being attacked, or even killed. Hence, we may receive insight that will matter more personally to some and more generally to others, and we must rely upon our intelligence and judgment to discern its usefulness in our decision-making process!

Planets in out-of-sign aspects are a little like dealing with someone or something sidling up to you while you’re busy doing something else. It’s not exactly like being an athlete in a competitive race, because you would expect there to be other competitors trying to overtake you at some point. This is more like embarking on a mission or journey alone, without interruption, only to find that your attention ends up a bit divided by other needs and priorities — whether your own or other people’s. It may also relate to something missed or left behind that you meant to deal with and now need to take into account.

Anomalies in this lunation include a dissociate square of Moon to Mars in Gemini — which at first looks more like a sextile, until we consider the extreme difference of degrees involved (Moon, 0° Aries; Mars, 28° Gemini). And similarly, Moon sextile Pluto in Capricorn, which we might have expected to be a square had Pluto been earlier than 29° Capricorn. These aspects suggest that something we thought was going to go one way, or have a particular flavor is going to turn out rather differently. We needn’t worry about it, but also shouldn’t fall into complacency. It’s very much a time for careful judgment, while accepting that a lot might not go to plan!

This article is from the Mountain Astrologer by Diana McMahon Collis