New Moon in 9 degrees Aquarius
January 29, 2025–7:35 am EST Toronto
an essay by Mike Zizis
This is the first new moon of the year, and the Chinese year of the Snake. Snake years are good for philosophers and often bad for gamblers. The Chinese call the snake the beautiful one.
My new moons essays follow the KISS principle.
Symbols are ubiquitous and universal in every portion of our waking and dreaming life. Every new Moon is a symbolic call, an opportunity to renew our contract with living, and with ourselves and others. There are 12 new moons every year, and occasionally during a year there are 13.
In astrology we call the moon a planet. Planets don’t ‘do’ anything, with the exception of the gravitational effects of the moon tugging at the earth. We can play all that we like in the linguistic and somatic playground of calling things quantum effects. For this astrologer the immensely overlooked importance of the agrarian roots of astrology is fundament.
Briefly — we learned 10 to 12 thousand years ago that seeds planted at new moons are better, stronger, healthier, and more beneficial than seeds planted at other times. This is the best time to plant crops, feed the family, the tribe, and the nation.
The middle signs of the seasons are the fixed signs; Taurus in Spring, Leo in Summer, Scorpio in Autumn, and Aquarius in Winter. ‘Fixed’ can be associated with enduring, powerful, and stable. So our complex new moon in Aquarius both claims individuality and group identification. Aquarius is humane, rational, and detached.
For the purpose of this essay we are going to put aside the more negative aspects of this sign. This work is neither character glorification nor character assassination. Indeed, every new moon opens the opportunity to begin again. Stand out without fitting in. Leave the painful, morbid, and judgmental parts of your journey behind. My revelation is that the memory of past pain exists in one place in the universe — my mind.
‘I can’t help ‘it.’ ‘It’. If that — contrary to the new moon is your chain — your shackles — then it is to best learn to love your shackles. But a change of heart is a change of mind.
I am incidentally wearing a white sweater with a white wolf on it. I heard on the radio just prior to that a tale about a white wolf and a black wolf residing inside a man and he had to decide which one to feed. I love this synchronous moment that we can call an accident.
And so it is with all of us. Aquarius is not group think. This sign’s key phrase is ‘I know’. I know that I don’t live in a cave. I know I am connected to others. I know that the humane response is always better, including mercy for your own journey. Right now and for the next 28 days we all could meditate on whether the world and others are a cash machine or do we live on a miracle planet.
Addendum: the first 14 days of any new moon, she is growing in light or as we say, waxing. From that point on the reflected light of the moon is diminishing — waning. This is -in spirit- a presentation of the wheel of karma. Whatever we broadcast when the moon is waxing is reflected back to us in it’s waning phase. Broadcast passive aggression, anger, or being cruel now and it returns when we least expect it. Yes, we are innocent and he / she said / did this bad thing TO ME! The unexamined life is simply not worth living.
