Tonight’s New Moon In Leo Brings A New Sense Of Urgency

You know what a new moon is good for: Calling your friends over and slowly lighting colored candles. On pieces of paper haphazardly ripped out of the backs of old notebooks, write your new intentions for a cycle that is clean—a cycle that is just beginning.

A new moon is dark like the ground is dark and, while the season for sowing seeds into the fertile ground is long gone, the chance to sow seeds of personal intention returns to us again and again with the moon’s orbit. Because the new moon is in Leo, our wants and desires swell in the new moon’s dark with an all-consuming passion. But, this isn’t any regular new moon, it’s a partial solar eclipse. And, this cycle is not singular, not entirely clean, because it’s linked to an eclipse cycle that has been putting us through the ringer all summer long. What we want, what we intend, what we hope to seed for ourselves is bigger than we’ve dared to imagine before because we are filled with new courage and, also, with a new sense of urgency. 

This world as we know it, terra firma, territories, bodies of water, the crumbling kingdom of nations, and the noble kingdom of animals, is transforming. A part of that transformation is incredible blooming, and invention and a part of that transformation is discord and destruction. Our world’s burning up and we’re burning up with it. What was once a groundswell has become sea change, and if you’re not feeling it, you’re not paying attention. 

Good news, reader, this universe has ways of making you pay attention. Eclipses are known for their tendency to bring what’s unconscious and submerged up to the surface. In the sky, the fervent energy between our Earth and the Sun is intercepted by our moon with her body full of secrets; what’s hidden is revealed. This pulling back, this release of information, is part of the eclipse cycle and no longer feels new to us. We have been learning to hold what we know in a different way, a wiser way. We’ve been learning how to be active rather than passive, how to have agency in our grief and in our pleasure. A solar eclipse in Leo is here to teach the master class. So, in addition to all your blazing intentions and passionate vying, get ready for unbelievable coincidences, strokes of synchronicity, and omens raining down like summer deluge on your hot hot life.

Energy is high, reader, and sparks are flying. Old flames and broken contracts are bound to come up out of the woodwork and make you own each decision you’ve made in the past year since the last eclipse cycle transpired. Were you sure then? Are you sure now? Were you a fool then? Were you a holy fool or just a woman with a broken compass? Whether you know it or not, this year has taught you how to find the north star when your needle wouldn’t turn, how to look for moss on a tree according to this hemisphere, how to find your way back to yourself when all you had was yourself. Regard what comes up now with great attentiveness. Recognize that Mercury is but one of the many planets retrograde this summer and the urge to act is not a sign to act. Rather, the urge to act, to respond, to cut a final cord or rip the contract up completely, is a manifestation of your energetic empowerment—your endeavor into passionate engagement with the world around you. 

This month, you are a student in the Leo master class, so study. Listen for the slips inevitable in miscommunication, trouble the slips—confirm the difference between a joke and an admission of vulnerability. Sit still when your hearts pounds and touch your heart. If the news you’re told is difficult to swallow, even though it’s been in your mouth for months and you’ve been chewing on it all along, don’t get angry at yourself. Touch your mouth, marvel at what a mouth can do. Take a walk in the break of morning when the moon's light is still lingering and look at the trees. All living things have rich inner lives, all living things touch other—rubbing atoms—in a network of relations. 

If you’re reading this, then you are living thing, no less complex than a tree, no less connected to everything you feel you’ve lost, no less deserving of everything that has yet to bloom around you in the dark and fertile air.