New Moon in Gemini, 30 May 2022, 12h30 BST
Like April 2022, May ends with a Gemini New Moon, once again highlighting the idea of duality, twinning and mirroring.
However, rather than the sibling relationship between Venus and Mercury, or the romantic counterparts of Venus and Mars, the focus of this pairing is on the youth and the sage, Mercury and Saturn, who will be forming a fated T-square to each other, together with the nodes.
With the luminaries making relatively few transits to any other planets, the focus is likely to shift to Mercury, ruler of Gemini, which will remain in retrograde motion until June the 3rd. This places the focus firmly on re-visiting, re-imagining and re-viewing situations or issues from the past.
Indeed, fresh perspectives is a major theme during this two week waxing moon phase, care of the lunar face, which you can hear about on my videocast.
Part of what is likely to bring about these new viewpoints is a process common to many initiation rituals known as inversion. This involves a reversal or dissolving of the way we normally approach or see things, or a letting go of assumptions – what Tom Cheetham calls ‘tunring the world inside out’. In this sense, it continues the themes we encountered back at the Scorpio Lunar Eclipse in mid-May, which was all about initiation.
The two planets most associated with the mental body and philosophy in astrology are Mercury and Saturn, and in my videocast, we look at the ancient relationship between these two planets and how both work together to help us mature and ascend in consciousness.
Helping with this process will be a minor grand trine between Mercury, Neptune and Pluto – a combination that never quite perfects but nonetheless asks us to try and navigate our way clearly through the dual illusions of escape/fantasy, on one hand, and drama/paranoia, on the other.
Given the debilitated nature of Mercury, the trick will be to avoid both projection and the tendency to demonise others or ourselves – a distinct possibility, given the position of Mercury with the fixed star, Algol. We first encountered this star back in November 2021 at the Taurus Lunar Eclipse when the moon’s proximity to Algol brought up all sorts of issues around monsters and the tendency to vilify or debase female passions like anger and sexuality.
In fact, monsters and their relationship to the sacred, as well as the myth of Frankenstein, are all big themes at this new moon phase – something so skilfully addressed by the Jungian analyst, Robert Romanyshyn, whose work I have chosen to include in my videocast. To get a taste of the wisdom this Saturnian sage brings to the table, you can listen to this short clip from a recent talk he gave entitled ‘Musing with Monsters‘.
As we move deeper into June, we will also be crossing the threshold into retrograde season, so although this lunar phase may start out feeling quite busy and eventful, things are likely to start slowing down and becoming more internalised and introspective as the month progresses.
CHEATSHEET
On an individual level, this is a great time to press the reset button in the life area indicated in the chart below. This indicates the best place to invite fresh perspectives and/or new ways of being or seeing that encourage growth, renewal and forward movement .
SABIAN SYMBOL
Continuing the themes around boundaries, borders and thresholds from the Scorpio lunar eclipse, this moon phase’s Sabian symbol emphasizes the need to wake up and become conscious of what is really happening in a situation so that you can avoid self-destructing or take steps to reverse out of what may be a a dangerous or disastrous situation. However, seen in a more positive light, this symbol also embodies the idea of inversion – a topic I examine in some detail in my video forecast.
FIXED STARS
Once again focusing on the constellation of Perseus, we have a conjunction between Mercury and Algol, which asks us to look at the ways we may project our wounding or unconscious shadows onto others or demonise others for having ideas we may not agree with. Rather than the issues surrounding female passion highlighted at the November 2021 lunar eclipse, however, this lunar phase focuses more on the mental body and on topics such as communication, technology, commerce, news, politics and travel.
