Virgo New Moon: August 27, 2022
Virgo New Moon,
August 27, 2022
peaking at 4:17 A.M. EST
happening at 4°04’ Virgo
click links above for timezone converter & to check the placement in your chart
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Publication Note: An addendum was added to this story on September 7, 2022.
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TAKING OFF
a harvest begins
Harvest Season comes in waves.
Every year, it peaks during the moon cycle (new moon to full) in which the Harvest Moon rises, but then, it also continues, nourishing us for the next six months and culminating in another peak “harvest” moment in March.
This Virgo new moon kicks off Harvest Season and is leading us to the Pisces full moon on September 10th, aka the Harvest Moon.
Around now is when the golden fields of corn are harvested in America, and it’s been this way long before “America” existed.
In other words, now is the time when you collect the bounty of everything that was planted earlier in the year.
The notion of Harvest Season is a physical reality of agriculture in the northern hemisphere, but it’s also - in my experience - a reliably magical time of personal, material growth.
I’ve tracked Harvest Season “harvests” in my life - year after year - and have been awed by how every year, something major and unexpected seems to arrive during Harvest Season. I could create a long list of possible reasons why this happens - things like the interconnection of all things and how maybe our lives our echoing the fields - but I think, the reason doesn’t really matter. And maybe…all that matters is opening yourself to the possibility that now is a time when you are going to receive something BIG and wonderful.
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Take a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and welcome the start of your Harvest Season.
Allow yourself to feel that this truly is a time for miracles, for magical manifestations and material gifts.
Because it is.
That’s what this is.
And before we go any deeper into this year’s harvest, take a moment and reflect back:
What did you “harvest” in September 2021? (You can look specifically between the dates of September 6th and October 5th.)
Now, how did this harvest continue in March 2022 (especially from the 18th - 31st)?
Perhaps you want to write down the object of your 2021 Harvest on a sheet of paper. Perhaps it was a literal object (it typically does have a material component), or perhaps it was more akin to an opportunity, a moment of personal growth, a theme. I recommend turning to your calendar, camera roll, journal, IG feed, and/or whatever other personal record you may keep.
What came to fruition for you then?
I ask because ultimately, every harvest season connects.
Building upon one year after the next.
Whatever came last year was giving you what you need in order to receive what comes now.
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The 2022 harvest begins during this Virgo new moon time from August 27 - September 8th, and it’s crowning during the Harvest Moon time from September 9 - 24th.
The Harvest Moon coincides with Mercury turning retrograde, so this Harvest Season is intimately woven with this Mercury Retrograde Cycle (named: From Blue to Gold).
And - last but not least - whatever is harvested will continue to expand and evolve for you through March 2023, peaking again during the Virgo full moon time.
As I type, I suddenly see a visitor - just outside my window, perched on the edge of my roof.
It’s a dove. It leans forward and drinks the water that has pooled on the roof’s flat surface. It silently calls over a friend, and now there are two. Two doves on my roof, just outside the window, and I can’t help but smile and think - I’ve never seen a bird on the roof like this before!
It’s flat and often collects water after it rains - the perfect bird bath - yet I’ve never seen a bird on the roof like this. Not until this moment now, sitting here, writing about Harvest Season, and the bird that appears? It’s not the typical robin or crow or finch that I’ve often seen in the tree just outside. It’s a dove. Two doves.
And I think of the Christmas song: Two turtle doves.
And I think of love, and I think of peace.
And I wonder: Is there a goddess associated with doves? Some other symbol out there in the collective mythos that I am unaware of?
And I learn that in the story of Noah’s Ark, Noah released a dove from the ark first. He released a dove to find land, and when the dove returned - an olive branch in its mouth - Noah knew it was safe to leave the ark.
And I learn that in Christianity, God appeared as a dove as Jesus was baptized.
And I learn that doves were associated with Aphrodite in Ancient Greece, and then, they became associated with the goddesses Venus and Fortuna in Ancient Rome.
And I think how funny it is that these are the stories featured in the Wikipedia page on doves because in the last astro note - the note for the Aquarius full moon - I ended up writing all about Noah’s Ark, and as I was writing, I heard mention of “a christening, a baptism,” so I included those words (even though they felt redundant), and then, in the Mercury retrograde reading that connects to this Harvest Season…the asteroid Fortuna plays a major role. This whole period of time - this fall - is leading to a major meeting in the sky between the sun and Fortuna…and also, the planet Venus.
Venus and Fortuna - two planetary bodies named after two goddesses who were each symbolized by a dove.
Two doves appeared, and now, it is safe to venture forth.
It is time to emerge from whatever cocoon you’ve been transforming within.
It is time to TAKE ACTION.
This is a new beginning.
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On this new moon - finally, FINALLY - we are ready to launch.
It kept seeming like it was going to happen earlier.
It feels like we’ve been waiting all year for this.
And now, finally: it’s time.
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In December 2021, I closed my eyes and channeled messages for the year ahead, and the message for March 2022 happened to mention a rocket in flight and the goddess Artemis. I knew nothing then - in December - about the NASA program named ARTEMIS, and I knew nothing about where the asteroid named Artemis would be in March, but then…March came.
And on the Virgo full moon on March 18th, the asteroid Artemis was in the exact same spot in the sky as the sun, and the day before, NASA rolled a rocket named Artemis I onto the launch pad.
They weren’t ready to launch yet. They thought they would be, but the launch kept getting delayed. They had more tests to run. Things to tweak.
But still, with the Virgo full moon, they prepared for the launch that would someday come. Soon, they hoped. May, they suspected.
May came, and it still wasn’t ready, but now, it’s launching now.
Artemis I is scheduled to launch on August 29, 2022. Two days after the new moon, during Harvest Season.
The rocket is headed to the moon, and if you signed up for your own boarding pass in March, your name is headed there with it.
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Artemis I is a test flight. The first in a series. It isn’t the end goal, but rather, an important step in accomplishing the ultimate goal.
For the folks at NASA, this ultimate goal is returning people to the moon.
But I can’t help but feel that this is a metaphor for all of us.
What are you starting or launching with this new moon? In what way is it a test of something greater - some big goal you have for yourself - down the road?
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I finish typing the question above,
and three days pass before I begin again.
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This note didn’t want to be finished. It didn’t feel ready, so I did other things, and I told myself: There’s time. It’ll come together. It’s fine.
But then, I started to worry. I woke in the night and my legs felt like they were on fire. They felt like they were being pierced by a hundred tiny hot needles.
I threw the blankets off my body and fell back asleep.
The next day, my legs were fine, but my arm - my left forearm - began to feel hot. I started feeling the sensation of hot needles there, and when my arm grazed my shirt, I told my husband it felt like a sunburn, but it wasn’t red. It looked completely normal.
And I thought of the image that launched the Mercury retrograde story: a woman on fire.
And I’d thought of that same story a few days earlier too. I thought of it on August 20th - the very day Mercury entered its retrograde cycle - when suddenly, the vision blurred in my right eye, and my head began to ache. An aura, I eventually realized, from a migraine. I hadn’t had a migraine in over ten years, and when I used to get them all the time (in my early twenties), they were never like this. Never with an aura, and I thought of the message for this Mercury time: It’s like you are walking through a dream as everything shifts around you - totally surreal, Dali-esque.
The aura soon passed - as did the headache - but now, this hot prickly sensation was appearing, and I started to worry: Oh no, what if I get another migraine? What if I can’t finish the note in time?
I started to beat myself up: I should have finished the note earlier this week. Why did I wait?
I’m mostly always in a state of deep trust around these notes. Knowing that the information comes when it comes, and after nearly four years of writing The Magic Guide, I’ve learned that it always comes. But this time felt like it was maybe different. I was feeling unfamiliar things in my body, and like with many new things, it was scary.
So I worried. I worried it’d get worse. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish this note in time. I worried about what I was feeling, so I did what every doctor recommends you don’t do: I looked it up online.
I started reading about the prickly sensation, the skin sensitivity, the feeling like a sunburn on my totally normal looking skin. I learned that it’s called allodynia, that 70% of migraine sufferers experience it (particularly women), and I read about an endocannabinoid that’s been used to treat it. I learned that the name of this endocannabinoid (Anandamide) was derived from the Sanskrit word for bliss - Ānanda.
आनन्द
I recognized the word. I’d stumbled upon it before in the asteroid Anand (also derived from the Sanskrit word), and just like that, my worry turned into curiosity.
I entered the asteroid (#23323) into my software, and I burst out laughing.
On the day when all of this was happening, the asteroid Anand was in the EXACT PLACE as the sun.
And I realized…this means Anand will be on the new moon.
Then, I went to sleep.
When I woke in the morning, my arm was still feeling funky, so I turned on the TV to continue resting. I watched an episode of something I’d started a day or two earlier but hadn’t finished. For whatever reason, I didn’t finish it earlier, but I was finishing it now, and when I hit play at the point where I’d left off, a scene began with one of the characters unexpectedly quoting Jesus (unexpected because after five seasons of episodes, I’d never seen anything like this in the show before).
It struck me as meaningful and made me pause, and when I did, the time on the TV was all repeating 3s, and in that moment, I thought of the character’s name - the one who was speaking. Her name’s Calliope, like one of the Greek muses, and I knew the asteroid Kalliope existed. I just had no idea where it was at this particular moment in time, so...I looked it up.
And this is what I saw:
While I was lying there all hot and prickly and worried - but still, curious - the asteroid Kalliope was in the exact same place as the sun and the asteroid Anand.
And this is how I learned that this Virgo new moon is conjunct the asteroids Kalliope and Anand.
I stayed curious, and curiosity will always help you find the crack in the fear and the worry, and it’s there, that the light comes in.
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Because I listened to something inside me that didn’t feel ready to finish writing this note yet.
Because I started feeling a troubling hot prickly sensation in my left arm.
Because I feel and I worry and I get curious.
Because I decided to finish watching an episode of TV.
For all these reasons, I learned about Kalliope and Anand.
Somehow, all things seem to weave together in ways that we can’t really fully see or fully comprehend, but if we can just relax and trust each piece - however unpleasant and painful - if we can trust that what it inspires in us is ultimately important, if we can surrender to that inspiration, then, we just might catch glimpses of the threads being woven, we just might be able to take a moment to stand back and watch in awe as they come together, and we might be able to look at our whole lives and realize the incredible BLISS available to us.
Bliss is always available - even when we’re suffering, even when our earthly bodies are shifting and changing, even when the rest of the world seems hell bent on making us believe this isn’t true.
It’s available.
It’s available like waves of grain in a Midwestern field, and your open heart and open mind and unyielding curiosity is the plow that helps you reap it.
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I saw the asteroids because of silly, common, every day things - a Wikipedia search and an old episode of Grey’s Anatomy. We’re all living through silly, common, every day things all the time. And most of the time, that’s all we’re experiencing in them, that’s all we’re seeing, but through that - and everything - there is BLISS.
There is some great force, some woven ancient information. There’s something that came together this week - in the waiting - that led to my brother-in-law accidentally texting me a Wikipedia link to a flower. It was called the Rose of Sharon, and because of this, I learned that this new moon falls where the asteroid Sharon was on the day I was born. And then, I just happened to notice a screenshot on my desktop of a gift I sent to a friend. I noticed the time: 4:04:47. And it reminded me of this new moon, happening at 4°04’ Virgo. And that’s how I learned that asteroid #47 is right next to Sharon in my chart. And it’s playing a role for all of us on the Harvest Moon (more to come on that in the next note). And I mention all of this to simply say that somehow all of these silly, common, earthly things are full of more meaning than they appear.
For me, they are often connected to the movement of rocks (not even particularly big rocks) out in space, and somehow, all of these little messages found in common, everyday things come together just in time to reveal whatever information is needed about the upcoming new or full moon.
And maybe that’s just a product of me and my mind and my interaction with the world. Maybe I’m some strange vortex calling silly, common things towards me that just happen to correlate with the placement of asteroids. Or maybe, we all are. Maybe we are all calling towards us and creating a web of information and a vision of the world that only we can see. Maybe while we’re calling it towards us, it’s also being sent to us from somewhere else or some thing that’s bigger than any single one of us.
Maybe all of this earthly stuff is a tapestry of divinity, a blissful menagerie of God disguised as silly, common things that we often just take for granted.
Things like our legs.
And our eyes.
And just how normal and healthy we mostly feel.
I think…the bliss that comes with this new moon - the beginning of our great harvest - lies in immense gratitude, in letting yourself feel the power of the invisible.
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Look around you. Do you know how little you can see? How your brain is wired to see just some things but not most things?
You can’t see the quanta, the microscopic, the electromagnetic waves, or whatever it is that makes up dark matter and dark energy and continues to elude even our most sophisticated seeing tools.
Your brain is a highly curated museum of reality. Billions of years of things had to come together to create you so you could see what you’re seeing right now, so you could be where you are, so you could feel whatever the heck you’re feeling.
So you can perceive your experience.
So you can perceive the world like only you can.
And there is such tremendous bliss to be found in that.
Find it.
Go for a walk. Slow down.
Do what you have to do to find it.
Feel it.
Remember how precious all of this is.
How magical.
The asteroid Kalliope? Her name means “beautiful-voiced” and oddly, as I’m writing this, I’m also speaking it. I’m speaking the words as I type them, which is something I never, ever do, but right now, I am speaking. I am using my voice.
Use your voice.
Sing, dance, laugh.
Enjoy your body.
Enjoy this being human.
It’s not a trial, not a test, not a punishment. It’s not a thing you have to get through. It is a gift.
Every second, every minute - it’s a gift.
This new moon is returning our awareness to this great gift.
To the gift of being.
To the gift of having a body.
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The world is changing.
It’s always changing.
There are growing pains.
There is deep fucking heartache.
There is a strange hot prickly sensation on my legs right now.
AND there is magic.
There is love.
There is beauty.
There is a great remembrance returning.
Returning as Mars crosses the Golden Gate of the Ecliptic (and fingers crossed no great electric, solar, or natural disasters come with this, for this transit has often correlated with events like this in the past).
Mars through the Golden Gate is connected to big, material changes. It’s connected to everything happening with this Mercury cycle.
Old health stuff from the past might arise right now (the south node and Hygeia - aka good health - are conjunct), but know that whatever comes is also a gift.
For weeks, I’ve been guided again and again to the asteroid Lutetiea, which is the old name for the land that is now Paris. I couldn’t figure out why this kept coming up, but I saw that Lutetiea is currently right next to the south node/Hygeia conjunction. I felt that somehow it’s related to all this health stuff, and then I saw that Lutetiea comes from the Latin for “mud.” And the phrase popped into my mind: “no mud, no lotus.”
So whatever you’ve been going through - and we’re all always going through something - please know that however big or however small, we all have our mud.
And even with this, there is bliss.
There is a bigger picture.
There is a rocket being launched into space. A rocket that was postponed and postponed, but now is taking off, and it just so happens that as this Artemis I mission is taking off, the asteroid named Artemis is conjunct both the destiny point and the planet Uranus (meaning “the sky”).
Artemis I is being sent to the sky. It is destined.
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It’s September 7, 2022, and Artemis I has yet to make it to space. The postponements continue, and I don’t know why but for some reason, this launch has felt important. Like - we have to get her in the sky!
Like there must be a reason that our attention was drawn to Artemis with the Virgo full moon in March, and there must be a reason that Artemis showed up again with the Virgo new moon…and I just…think something happens when she finally makes her way towards the starry stuff in space.
And technically, this could still happen during this Harvest Season. NASA is now aiming for a launch window that opens on September 19th, so we will see…all we can do is live this life and see how it all actually comes together…and as far as Artemis I goes, there’s a good chance she won’t actually take off until October or maybe even later.
We plan and plan and schedule our days away, but ultimately, we are not in control.
And I remind myself again - about this rocket and all things: There’s time. It’ll come together. It’s fine.
In fact, it’s already together.
Perfectly formed in ways we can’t even comprehend - as much as we try.
In August, when I saw that NASA had scheduled the launch with the new moon and that the asteroid Artemis would be conjunct Uranus and the destiny point, I thought: Synchronicity! So cool!
And it was. Even though the Artemis mission failed to launch with the moon, it was still all over the news and questions surrounding the mission, its goals, and its destiny were on the front page.
This too feels like a metaphor. About us, about the world.
And I don’t know why exactly, but when NASA cancelled the launch, I WAS SO SAD.
And I got curious, and I wondered: why am I so personally invested in this launch? I could just as easily make an argument that it’s not the best use of resources, so why does it feel so important?
And I noticed the time NASA tweeted that the second launch attempt wasn’t happening. It was 11:18 AM. The o’clock equivalent of my birthday: November 18th.
And I looked at the astrology again, and I saw that while Artemis was technically conjunct (aka within 8 degrees of) Uranus and the destiny point on this new moon, she won’t be perfectly conjunct (aka zero degrees from) Uranus and the destiny point until…November.
On November 1, 2022, Artemis will perfectly conjunct Uranus.
And then, on November 15th, she will perfectly conjunct the destiny point.
And maybe, by the time my birthday comes around, she’ll be out with the stars.
And maybe, when she launches, we’ll finally learn why it was so important.
For now, all of this is true:
The world is changing.
It’s always changing.
There are growing pains.
There is deep fucking heartache.
There is a broken washing machine in my basement that spontaneously, out-of-nowhere stopped working the morning of August 29th. I walked downstairs - hamper in hand - and saw on the news: ARTEMIS LAUNCH SCRUBBED.
And I thought ugh.
Then I walked down the second flight of stairs, down to the basement, tossed my clothes in the wash, and…nothing. The ten-month-old machine my husband had used without issue the day before was suddenly broken.
So I gave up on laundry, made myself some breakfast, pressed play on the next episode of Grey’s, and saw that it was called SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM.
It was about a series of lightning strikes, and the moment it started, I thought about all the lightning that had struck the Artemis capsule on the new moon, and I thought again about the Mercury retrograde story.
In the story, I wrote about all the electric shocks that were coming with this cycle - hitting me and us like shocks to the system - and so, they come, and still, it’s true - it’s always true - that a light shines through with little messages reminding us that despite our grand plans, there is a grander plan.
There is a bigger picture.
There is a rocket being launched into space. A rocket that was postponed and postponed - twice, postponed twice - but soon, in the most perfect timing, it will take off, and when it does - perhaps at the exact moment in November when the asteroid Artemis finds herself between Uranus and the destiny point - we will feel the awe of something worth waiting for.
For Artemis I is being sent to the sky.
She is.
She is.
It is destined.
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Long story short:
This new moon kickstarts our 2022 Harvest Season, leading to the Harvest Moon in September and more in March. This is a time of collecting a great bounty, of harvesting bliss. Everything that happens now is tied into a Mercury retrograde cycle that takes us through the fall and towards some great FORTUNE. The more you can let yourself feel the bliss in everything - even in the hard stuff - the more you will open yourself to the miracles freely flowing. Feeling bliss in everything is not about not feeling the hard, painful stuff. It’s about feeling it - feeling all of it - and still feeling the bliss. It’s about a great spaciousness that lives inside you and allows for all things, all at once. With this - through this great open space - you take off, you soar.
