Eliminating Excess

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Each New Moon conjoining of the Sun and Moon gives birth to a new awakening in self-awareness that sheds light on an aspect of our unconscious motives. On November 16 the Sun and Moon conjoined in Scorpio directing our attention to those hidden forces in nature, and in the human psyche, that eliminate excess and waste. Scorpio is the celestial billboard of middle autumn, the annual season of decay in nature, when excess vegetation breaks down into a blackening detritus that becomes essential for the nourishing of the earth and the planting of new seeds.  The process of blackening in alchemy is  a process of purification called the nigredo and is understood to represent the state of chaos out of which creative form is made manifest. In astrology human consciousness traverses a parallel path with nature’s own, and during middle autumn, under the influence of Scorpio, we find ourself wrestling with the season for eliminating our emotional excesses and waste.

Eliminating the emotional excess and waste of our past is a blackening process for most of us which is one reason why so few of us ever attempt to do so. Chaos, undifferentiated form, can feel threatening but Scorpio is relentless in its pursuit of self-honesty. Scorpio is that aspect in each of us penetrating the superficial layering of experiences prepared to reveal the hidden truths of a situation in order to understand the depth of its meaning. When the Moon and Sun conjoin in Scorpio we on Earth are given the gift of eliminating emotional patterns that we inherited from our family, our ancestors, even our species which have become destructive to our evolutionary growth. Scorpio is co-ruled by Mars and Pluto hinting that a Scorpio New Moon is helping us uproot the source of our past actions if we choose to look honestly within our psyche and embrace the destructive side of our motives.

Mars, god of war, is in Leo underscoring our need to look at what our actions have created for ourself and for others. Fortunately, Mars is preparing to station retrograde on December 20 giving us additional time for an introspective exploring of our emotional defenses that manifest in aggression either toward ourself or others. Leo suggests that we may be struggling with a fundamental insecurity about asserting ourself by refusing to accept personal responsibility for our actions and projecting our aggressive self-defense onto others. Pluto in Capricorn square Saturn in Libra is articulating the tension inherent in a chthonic cleansing, or purging, of established  values that all to often creates a totalitarian hand of repression brutally regulating and punishing the behavior of others.

Scorpio is a powerful, energetic healing force in our psyche that can uncover the hidden motives for  our actions and help us eliminate our negative thoughts and feelings.  Scorpio is that aspect in each of us energetically transforming the past into the present, which is why it is extremely important that we understand the consequences of our every action, thought, and feeling. Out of the blackness of chaos comes the creative forms of our psyche and it is up to each of us to harmonize that which lives within our heart and mind before we make it manifest in the world.  This New Moon was void-of-course punctuating non-action. It  was also in close square to Neptune in Aquarius suggesting a possible conflict in letting go of our emotional attachment to our knowledge; and a trine to the South Node in Cancer highlighting our talent to nurture others, while at the same time, offering us a warning not to be emotionally manipulative. This is a month when we can uncover the purity of our emotions given freely without conditions.