By: Janette Dalgliesh – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
If you’ve been feeling like the New Year didn’t completely land on time, you’re right.
Yes, we’ve had all that lovely lead-up energy, support for dreaming and planning and getting clear and releasing the old.
But as you know, the stars don’t care a bean for human calendars, so it’s not surprising that sometimes, a new (Western, human) year starts when we’re mid-something-else astrologically.
This time around, the calendrical new year happened in the lead-up to a potent New Moon, just before the pre-new-moon energy of the Dark Moon – the day or two beforehand which is a time for resting, preparing, pausing.
Astro-jargon aside, what does all this mean?
Any New Moon is a time for initiating something new.
But the New Moon due on 5 January 2019 at 9.29pm EST is not just your usual run of the mill New Moon.
This is a partial Solar Eclipse, where the Sun is partially obscured by the Moon, and that’s a whole ‘nother ball game.
Any eclipse brings with it an unsettled energy, a capacity to shake things up.
That’s partly biological. Before our more recent ancestors of a few thousand years ago learned to chart the heavens or build monuments to mark astronomical events, our earlier ancestors from the distant past lived under terrifying skies. Our brains are designed for the kind of life those ancestors used to live. Eclipses – the inexplicable dark during the day, or the red of a blood moon – can still send a shiver down the spine, the same way a predator can make us shiver even though we no longer consider ourselves prey.
Of course, we modern humans intellectually understand how a solar eclipse works. It’s simple – the Moon gets between Earth and Sun and blocks out the light for a little while. But when you think about it, even from that modern perspective, there is still a vast mystery. Think about the fact that the Moon’s size and distance from Earth just happens to make it (more or less) the exact right size in the sky to only just block the Sun. It’s a remarkable coincidence … if you believe in such things as coincidence.
No wonder there is a huge and collective sense of awe when we contemplate any eclipse.
Add in the concept that the planetary spirits themselves engage in this extraordinary dance in the sky, and it all makes for a highly charged and potent mix, which our biology and our spirit cannot ignore.
Take this potent, shake-things-up energy, and we’re talking not just something that applies for 28 days until the next New Moon, but something that can apply for months or even years.
It’s all happening in Capricorn, Saturn’s sign, so it’s hyper-real and will not tolerate any wishy-washy clinging to the past – whether that’s old beliefs, old systems, old hesitations. Mystic Medusa describes it on her blog as being like a “cold-shower, birch scented rejuvenation”. Wildly useful, not necessarily comfortable while it happens.
This New Moon Eclipse is conjunct Saturn, which – along with Capricorn – invites us to step fully into our own agency and authority; and also Pluto, which invites us to tap into our deepest personal power. Other points are at play, too – the Lunar Nodes, key to understanding our life purpose, along with Mercury and Uranus, the trickster gods who also like to shake things up.
It’s time to activate the agency to make determinations about your own life, to decide what you want and how you’d like to achieve it; and to activate the authority to make it so.
In other words – don’t be wasting this energy on small, trivial, easy-to-achieve things.
Go big, deep, powerful, consequential.
Face the stuff that matters and decide what you want.
If you’re not sure what you want yet, and this feels overwhelming (OMG how can I leverage this Moon when I don’t even know who I am and what I want!!!) – then intend and plan for clarity, work with what you know now, and embrace the concept of unapologetic desire.
A little is better than none at all.
With the New Moon we initiate. And then in a couple of weeks, with the Full Moon in Leo, this time a Lunar Eclipse, we release and let it go.
How can you turn all of this into practical things to do? Here are some starting points:
- Decide right now, to drop for good whatever still holds you back. If you’re up for a laugh on this one, check out Bob Newhart’s classic video clip – I watch this any time I’m feeling stuck and need to take myself a bit less seriously.
- Ask ‘what is my vision for 2019?’ – and start building it in small, doable pieces. My friend is looking to create luxurious travel in 2019, so she begins with planning her packing list.
- Understand the deeper why. If you’re looking for more action in your business, what’s the deeper why that sustains and inspires you? For my business plans this year, it’s the desire to create more joy in the world that sustains and inspires me.
- Trust in your own authority and agency. You do know what you’re doing, probably better than you think you do. Trust it.
- Commit to success, and decide that the voices of self-doubt and fear will not shape your actions, no matter how loud they shout. You’ll hear those voices. Decide now that they will not stop you.
- Whatever it is you’ve been waiting for – approval from others, feeling like you know enough, more clarity – decide to move forward anyway, one step at a time. Just do the bit you can see for now. Momentum builds from movement, not from stillness.
- Whatever you know about your goal for 2019, no matter how incomplete that knowledge feels right now, commit to that and make a way for the delight of it to sustain you.
- Settle on whatever you’ve been planning, even if it’s imperfect. Stick with it for a good six months, without vacillating or swerving off course to do the next shiny thing.
- If your physical, emotional or spiritual capacity feels limited, or seems to be a barrier to what you want, work out what you CAN do, and firmly decide that’s more than enough for now.
- And above all – enjoy this sink-your-teeth-in moment, from whatever place you’re in right now, to the best of your ability.
The New Moon Eclipse, just like the New Year, is never EVER about ‘fixing’ yourself or becoming a ‘better’ person.
Rather, it’s an invitation to move forward with whatever it is you’d like more of, and leaving behind what’s no longer required.
New Moon, engage!
Janette Dalgliesh has a simple mission in life – to help every person unlock their capacity for resonant joy, and live it. A keen student of astrology, brain science, chaos magic, law of attraction and positive psychology, she serves her people through astrology consults, coaching, teaching and writing. Her international clientele raves about her wildly accurate, individualized readings, but she doesn’t do general weekly predictions – for those, Janette recommends Kim Falconer (www.goodvibeastrology.com) and Mystic Medusa (www.mysticmedusa.com). Find Janette on Facebookor via her website – or you might like to pick up her free brain-rewiring resource, Identity Shift 101 here.
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