For those who aren’t in a romantic relationship, or are in one that isn’t going well, eclipses might well mark times of finding or ending a romance. But what if you’re in a romantic relationship or partnership and it’s going just fine? Your union may come through these eclipses intact and strong, with only a few long-delayed adjustments. If the rest of your birth chart bears this out, however – and especially if this year’s eclipses are impacting those sensitive relationship areas I mentioned above – you may well find that your happy relationship isn’t as secure as it seemed.

On the other hand, romantic partnerships are not the only relationships in our lives (just the ones we’re most likely to be obsessed about). What about the 99.999% of the relationships in our lives that don’t involve yearning looks across a crowded room or intimate physical contact? What might the upcoming lunar eclipse have to say about the ordinary human connections among family members, friends, colleagues, and casual acquaintances? Here are some thoughts:

If you are born with the Sun or Ascendant (especially within 0-8 degrees of the sign) in:

• Aries or Libra – The May 25 Lunar Eclipse in Sagittarius (Sun in Gemini) suggests the relationships most likely to be impacted for you are those with friends and associates, including: creative and political allies, your children and pets, those with whom you share love (or at least attraction) at first sight, fans of your work, and fellow members of community, fraternal, or trade organizations.

• Taurus/Scorpio - Here’s where things are likely to get a little sexy, because the relationships most likely to be impacted by these eclipses are those involving money, security, shared resources, and physical and/or psychological intimacy – including your therapist, your financial manager, and, yes, the person/persons who share your bed.

• Gemini/Sagittarius -Yours are the signs most likely to experience critical transitions in your romantic partnerships, closest friendships, and business collaborators. You may begin a new relationship, leave one that isn’t working, or make important changes in an ongoing relationship. There’s also the matter of the relationship you have with yourself….

• Cancer/Capricorn – Look for charged relationships with co-workers, those in charge of your health care, service animals (back off, Fido!), and those with whom you have an unequal relationship (for instance, those whom you admire, but who don’t return your affection – or your phone calls).

• Leo/Aquarius -  The relationships most likely to be impacted by these eclipses are those involving neighbors, siblings, teachers, and spiritual leaders.

• Virgo/Pisces - This eclipse suggests changes in your home and heart, and in your career direction. Where are you coming from – and where are you headed? Relationships especially subject to crisis and review are those between parents and children, between bosses and employees, and any relationship in which one person has more status than the other.

For more thoughts about eclipses in your chart, visit my eclipse astrology page for articles and information about my exclusive eclipse report, Followed by a Moonshadow!

The post The May 25 Lunar Eclipse and Relationships appeared first on April Elliott Kent's Big Sky Astrology.

This New Moon/Solar Eclipse is in Taurus, “the money sign.”

But to focus only on money is to miss the larger point of Taurus, and perhaps of whatever crisis in which you find yourself. And the larger point is the need for self-sufficiency.

Aries represents the challenge of withstanding immediate threat, but Taurus is where we meet the challenges of day-to-day survival. It represents how we put shelter over our heads, food on the stove, clothes on our back. If we don’t have these basic necessities or can’t provide them for ourselves, we’re in a serious crisis of security. Nowhere is this crisis more evident and immediate than in the way we feed ourselves.

Eclipses usually bring about forced change. In Taurus, these changes might have come in the form of reduced income or other resources, including your physical health. If that’s the case for you, you might be in the process of rethinking your relationship to the food you eat, either to save money or to feel better. And learning to do a little bit of cooking or gardening is a great first step.

Losing Self-Sufficiency

In my lifetime, I’ve seen enormous changes in the way people handle the basic requirement of feeding themselves. When I was a kid, every family in the neighborhood sat down together to at least two home-cooked meals every day. These days, many overworked and over-scheduled families grab prefab meals on the run.

In a recent interview, author Michael Pollan (“Cooked,” “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”) explored a couple of reasons for this change. Partly, it’s because we work pretty long hours here in the U.S. (Pollan points out that labor movements in Europe have fought for leisure time rather than money, resulting in fewer working hours, more vacation time, and a lot more home cooking.) Consequently, fewer and fewer families cook and eat together.

Also, food has become increasingly industrialized, and  nothing about this development has been accidental. It has become far more lucrative to process food than to grow and produce it. Gradually, processed food insinuated itself into the American kitchen and eventually took over – leaving us less competent in the basic survival skill of nourishing ourselves. A disturbing number of people no longer know how to cook a simple meal from real ingredients. (Every time I make pancakes, I’m puzzled anew as to why anyone would use pancake mix; it’s six ingredients, max!)

Not that our household is by any means completely self-sufficient. Food-wise, we’re maybe 1960s-era self-sufficient. We do a bit of vegetable and herb gardening. I make my own sourdough bread with no commercial yeast. My husband roasts coffee and brews beer. We cook most of our meals at home. We never set out to be virtuous, or even self-sufficient; these are all just activities we happen to enjoy.

But it surprises me (and honestly, worries me a bit) to think how many of our friends don’t cook at all, or even brew their own morning coffee. Many of them say they’re too tired or overworked to cook, and some just never learned how. They do realize they’re spending an awful lot of money on eating this way, and that they seem to get sick a lot.

I sympathize. I can certainly remember the days of working full time at an office job, fighting an awful commute, and feeling exhausted when I got home. These days I work from home, and I know just what a boon that is. Instead of spending my coffee breaks in a lunchroom or at Starbucks, I can go into the kitchen, stir sourdough starter, put a pot of beans on to soak or get a soup cooking, or go outside and do a little weeding in the garden. My evening commute takes about 15 seconds, so I get dinner on the stove while my husband is driving home from work. And we have no children, which I realize simplifies the logistics of our household exponentially.

The right trade-offs

The tradeoff for this relatively leisurely existence? To be honest, we don’t earn a lot of money. I could easily earn several times more than I do if I worked for someone else. But whenever I’ve offered to give up astrology and throw myself on the more pyre of more lucrative office work, my husband has always objected (to my enormous relief), “But… I like the way we live!”

So do I. A loaf of hot sourdough bread with breakfast, a fresh-brewed cup of home-roasted coffee, home-cooked meals that don’t leave us both completely stressed out – these are simple pleasures that make us feel incredibly wealthy, even though we drive ancient cars and live in a funky old house.

I don’t mean to preach any kind of gospel here. I’m no purist. We don’t all have to raise our own chickens or bake our own bread, or even do all our own cooking. All of us make trade-offs of time, money, and energy every day, in different areas of life. The point of this Taurus New Moon/Solar Eclipse is, I think, to figure out whether you’re making the right trade-offs – the ones that make you and your loved ones stronger, healthier, and happier.

The post New Moon/Solar Eclipse in Taurus: Living Well appeared first on April Elliott Kent's Big Sky Astrology.

Don’t know how to find where an eclipse will fall in your birthchart? This post will help.

I find that most clients come to me for the first time because they’re at a critical turning point, a “crisis” in their life. It’s usually very easy to pinpoint the source of the crisis with eclipses. I just map out the solar and lunar eclipses for the year, figure out where those points fall in the client’s chart by house placement and hard aspect to natal planets. Then I backtrack 19 years, at 4-5 year intervals. These will show me years where the client was receiving conjunctions, squares, and oppositions from eclipses to roughly these same areas of their chart.

At that point, I have easy reference points for exploring these issues in more depth during the reading. Then I calculate secondary and solar arc progressions, transits, and the solar return chart for the year; almost invariably, the configurations in the chart receiving the most emphasis from eclipses will also show a lot of important activity in all these charts. Fairly quickly, the main themes for the year emerge and provide a solid framework for a reading.

This is a fairly conventional way of working with any kind of cycle, whether it’s cycles of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, progressed lunar phases, anything. For me, what makes eclipses especially appealing as a cyclical tool is:

• They’re really easy to use. If a client comes to me and says, “When will I find a relationship?” It’s a fairly simple matter to say, “Well, when were you last in an important relationship?” – find where the eclipses were, and work with 4.5 year periods from there. The 9 1/2 year opposition part of the cycle seems especially strong.
• Secondly, of all the tools we use in prediction, eclipses are the least subtle! People notice their effects. They have a kind of bare bones, brass knuckles sort of immediacy about them.
• Finally, eclipses show where crisis is occurring and how it’s related to past events, in a way that can reveal to your client just how far they’ve come in dealing with a particular issue in their life. That can be extremely helpful and validating when your client is in “Why do I keep making these boneheaded mistakes?” mode.

Eclipses move clockwise through the chart, unlike progressions and transits, which move counter-clockwise. And because solar eclipses usually occur in opposite signs in a given year, they will very often fall in houses of the chart that directly oppose one another. So in interpreting eclipses in the houses, I’m working not with twelve individual houses so much as six teams of houses, or house axes, directly opposite one another.

The size of the houses in your chart vary, of course, depending on where you were born. If you were born extremely north or south of the equator, generally one or two of these house axes will be quite large while the rest are quite small. So naturally, progressions, transits, and—yes—eclipses spend more time transiting the large houses than the small ones. On average, though, you can count on eclipses falling in a particular axis of your chart for about 1 ½ years at a time.

Next post in the series: Eclipses in the 1st/7th houses »

© 1999 April Elliott Kent

Want to know more about how the eclipses of 2012-2014 will impact your birth chart? Order my Followed by a Moonshadow eclipse report – 3 years of eclipses for only $35. Click here for a sample and ordering information.

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Consider Adam and Eve.

They are naked and happy in the Garden of Eden. All is beautiful and serene. Laissez les bon temps roulez!

Enter a serpent – a nasty snake in the grass – that tempts them with forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve succumb to temptation, leading to their expulsion from the Garden, awareness of their nakedness, and introducing humanity to the concepts of sin and death (and inevitably, “Project Runway”).

Relatively speaking, the rest of their lives were probably something of a let-down.

Who is your serpent?

We’re born Adam or Eve, naked and usually pretty happy, I imagine, though my memory of the event is sketchy. There is that unpleasant business of getting through the birth canal, but quickly enough you’re snuggled up to some soft, friendly person and given something to drink. You’re in Eden.

And, being Eden, life will introduce you at some point to a snake in the grass. Something that tempts you with a luscious and forbidden treasure. Something that leads you to realize you’re naked, possibly sinful, and that the garden of beauty and love and innocence that you’ve called home is lost to you forever.

For young women, this serpent often takes the form of a young man who is charming, crafty, and clever. He knows just how to lead you into temptation and engineer your downfall.

For instance, according to evolutionary biologist and Harvard professor Steven Pinker,

“The most desirable man of all, in many woman’s eyes, is ‘tough-tender’ – nice to her, aggressive with everyone else.”

It’s a pretty irresistible apple when a good-looking, venomous serpent shows you his sweet side. You feel incredibly special. You will do anything to ensure a steady supply of these apples!

Before you know what hit you, your family is threatening to disinherit you, your friends won’t return your calls, and there are fang marks all over your body.

That’s a nasty serpent. Some of us are still pretty young when he arrives on the scene and leaves with our innocence.

There are nastier serpents, though, and sometimes they arrive when we’re even younger. Serpents who tempt us, boys and girls alike, with toys or candy or games, and then handle us in a way that makes us feel dirty. Serpents who rustle through the grass, hardly detectable until they suddenly leap from a bush and bite you.

And the next thing you know, you’ve been expelled from the Garden. The world isn’t so pretty or benign anymore, not so safe or secure. Your eyes have been opened to your nakedness and vulnerability. You’ve been tricked and made to feel foolish. You’ve been told your natural state is an abomination, and told it in such a convincing way that you kind of believe it.

Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio: A serpent in your garden

This Full Moon is a lunar eclipse in Scorpio. And while there is nothing intrinsically evil or unreliable about the Scorpion, it is the sign of secrets, temptations, and mysteries – and those are the things that our serpents like to use to ensnare us.

So this is an eclipse that tends to present you with either a choice to eat forbidden fruit, or the consequences of having already eaten it. Sleeping with the married lover, or realizing the lover you’ve slept with is married. Lying to a friend about something that really matters, or perhaps discovering such a lie.

There is an opportunity in this eclipse, though, that’s characteristic of eclipses in general and Scorpio eclipses in particular. It’s the opportunity to transform yourself into something even more formidable than a crafty serpent: a fire-breathing dragon. Dragons are wise, magical, and supernaturally adept. And here’s the good part:  legend has it that they taught humans how to speak.

Scorpio’s greatest gifts are the ability to perceive what others can’t see, and the bravery to speak out about it. Scorpio energy in its lowest expression is a cunning snake in the grass, but Scorpio energy in its highest expression is a dragon.

Lunar eclipses fell near this degree in April 1986 and April 2005. You met the serpent then; possibly, it helped engineer a fall from grace, your expulsion from the Garden. (Where are you likely to stumble across your serpent? The house of your chart where 5.46 degrees Scorpio falls. If you’re not sure how to find it, this blog post  should help.)

Did you show that serpent how a dragon behaves when threatened? Did you shout and hiss and drive it out? Did you breathe fire and call the National Enquirer to blow the whistle on that serpent’s ass? (Note to self for further research: Do serpents have asses?)

Well, here’s your chance. Because there is a snake rustling through the grasses of your garden. Something that wishes you ill, that wants you to fail, or just some free-floating spirit of malevolence that takes an impersonal delight in seeing a good person brought low.

The work of this lunar eclipse is to stare that serpent down. To summon every unshakable, sensible, life-affirming impulse you possess. To call on that dragon you carry around, just behind your breastbone – the one that breathes fire, straight from your heart.

© 2013 by April Elliott Kent

Want to know more about how the eclipses of 2012-2014 will impact your birth chart? Order my Followed by a Moonshadow eclipse report – 3 years of eclipses for only $35. Click here for a sample and ordering information.

The post Scorpio Lunar Eclipse: Snake in the Grass, Dragon in the Heart appeared first on April Elliott Kent's Big Sky Astrology.

Similarly, at a lunar eclipse our ability to transmit and receive light – to channel and midwife divine inspiration – is trumped by the impulses of pure worldliness. Sometimes, it’s the worldliness of physical disease or limitation that casts a long shadow; other times, the pain of Earthly need and loss.

Usually, it’s a pain you recognize. Eclipses have 19 year cycles, so an eclipse falls in the same sign and the same part of your chart every 19 years, and in the opposite spot every nine and a half years. What happens on the outside, in your outer life, is a little different each time – but the thing that’s touched inside of you is exactly the same. At the lunar eclipse, an antidote to these earthly difficulties seems to lie in the celebration of Earth’s healing, stabilizing powers.

Years ago, after my mother died, I was desperate to reclaim a sense of rootedness and security. So three days after a lunar eclipse fell in my fourth house, my husband and I closed escrow on the first house we’d owned together. Lord knows I had no solar light of inspiration to send out into the world, and not much light was able to each my barren, lunar surface; I was emotionally fragile and scarred. All I could reach out for and rely upon was the real, the tangible… the worldly. My own little ball of dirt; a stake in the planet. Nine years later, it’s career success that represents this security for me. I’m working harder than ever to carve out a place in the world outside my little fourth-house environment – but for exactly the same reason that motivated me to buy a house: security.

At the solar eclipse, early next month month, it’s the Sun, the splendid, extravagant ego, that will be obscured by the wild, intuitive energy of the Moon, creating a fun-house mirror effect of exaggerated images and freakish sensations. But at this lunar eclipse, your vision is clear – or at least, you are guided by keen instinct; not the wild, emotional intuition of the Moon, but rather the quiet instincts of the Earth. They are the same instincts that guide the hand of the craftsman as it chooses just the right piece of wood for his project; as it hovers for a moment over one chisel, before selecting another that’s just right for the task.

At this lunar eclipse, there is something in you that longs to connect more deeply with the Earth, to drink from her cool waters and lay your head upon her sweet grass. Some long-ago pain has reared up and sent you packing, returning home to mother Earth for solace. As you gaze up at the half-bitten Moon, know that the Earth is offering you something, some smooth block of marble, a piece of wood, a section of clay. Open your instinctive mind, and ask yourself: What is it that wants to be brought into being? And what is the right tool with which to carve it out?

© 2006 April Elliott Kent. All rights reserved.

The post Eclipse Astrology: Lunar Eclipses, Earthly Instincts appeared first on April Elliott Kent's Big Sky Astrology.

The Moon symbolizes the rhythm and minutiae of daily life, so the Progressed Moon tells us which matters are likely to consume your day-to-day existence (the Progressed Moon’s house) and the style in which you’ll approach them (the Progressed Moon’s sign). When the Progressed Moon makes an aspect to a planet in your birth chart, the matters ruled by that planet are drawn into your daily life for a two-month period (one month approaching the exact aspect, one month separating from it) so that you can immerse yourself in its particular concerns.

Here’s a quick video that walks you through finding your Progressed Moon using the free chart service at AstroDienst!

For more on your current progressions and transits, order a Sky Log report for the coming year, with text by the wonderful astrologer and writer Steven Forrest! Includes a “Sky Within” birth chart report, too.

© 2013 by April Elliott Kent

The post “Where’s my Progressed Moon?” appeared first on April Elliott Kent's Big Sky Astrology.

© Morpheusm | Dreamstime.com

A note, all too necessary in this litigious age: This article uses my personal experience to illustrate astrological ideas. I’m not a doctor (and I don’t play one on TV). I’m not even a medical astrologer. Nothing that follows should be construed as an endorsement or prescription of any kind. (There… that should satisfy the AMA.)

A few years ago, I got excited about the idea of doing a research project about the astrology of women and Mars. I sent out questionnaires. I began collecting books and papers on the topics of women and work, women and anger, women and conflict.

Then my progressed Sun entered Venus-ruled Libra. And suddenly, it was hard to remember what I’d found so fascinating about Mars.

I thought I might revisit the project while my progressed Moon was in (Mars-ruled) Aries. But while I certainly lived Aries energy in the last frantic couple of years, promoting my book, putting together a speaking tour, and giving lots of radio interviews, I never found the time or patience to listen to Mars.

The truth is, during my progressed Moon in Aries years, I overdid it. I worked like a fiend. In my personal life, too, I rarely slowed down. I was finally brought to my knees last November, when the progressed Moon squared my natal Saturn, and transiting Saturn entered my 12th house. I finished my last out-of-town speaking engagement of the year and segued immediately into cat sitting for three different friends – including one cat that became critically ill while I was watching him – all while frantically catching up on work.

That’s when the asthma started. At first I thought it was my usual mild, seasonal flareup. I saw an acupuncturist and figured I’d soon be on the mend, as that had always worked for me in the past. But my breathing just kept getting worse.

For months I struggled along, laboring for breath, doing as much work as I could. As my progressed Moon went void-of-course in Aries, limping toward the finish line of that Mars-dominated sign, I finally gave in. I had arranged a sabbatical to work on a new project I had in mind, but instead, I’ve spent a lot of that time trying to regain my health.

In early February, I broke down and went to a doctor. I didn’t expect him to help me, and he certainly didn’t; I just wanted to rule out any underlying problems. Then, on the advice of a friend, I went to a homeopath.

If you don’t know anything about it, homeopathy takes a sort of  “hair of the dog that bit you” approach. The idea is that a substance that causes symptoms when taken in large doses can be used in small amounts to treat those same symptoms. My homeopath recommended a remedy that helped immediately, almost miraculously. It was Ferrum Metallicum.

Otherwise known as iron.

Ruled by Mars.

After two and a half frantic, progressed Moon in Aries years, I was literally burned out. And since Mars is the God who has been oppressing me, it seems reasonable that he’s the God who’s trying to heal me.

The New Moon in Aries Call to Action

I wasn’t thinking along these lines when I proposed a lecture for my local astrology group this spring. But they’d already heard all the other topics I’d developed, so it occurred to me to suggest my old Mars and women topic, figuring this would force me to finally sit with the red planet and listen to what he has to say.

The timing, as it turns out, is perfect. Because at this New Moon, practically the entire transiting sky – the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, and Uranus - is in Aries, the sign ruled by Mars.

The sky is calling us to action.

I’m still on sabbatical, and my progressed Sun and Moon are now both in Venus-ruled signs. In my heart of hearts, I feel like working in the garden, not sitting at my desk.

But Mars has summoned me. So I’m spending my days wading through questionnaires submitted by nearly 200 vibrant, interesting, lively women, and I’m loving every last one of them. I love reading about what makes them angry and passionate, about the men they adore, how they feel about sex and work and conflict. They make me laugh as they describe, at my urging, women celebrities that drive them crazy, and ones they look up to.  They wring my heart with their stories of abuse. I hear Mars speaking through them.

I suppose I think of the planets and the gods they represent as something like the ancestors who live in our DNA. We think we’re completely unique, a product of our own creation – and then an elderly relative starts at the sight of us holding our fork, because it’s exactly the way her grandmother did it. We make our own decisions and choices, or so we think; but could it be genetics, years of television viewing, or our third-grade teacher making those choices?

Or even … planets? My colleague Dharmaruci thinks so. I don’t share his conviction about fate and causality – that the planets make things happen to us – but then I don’t particularly believe in homeopathy either, and that seems to be working for me. In any event, I have no problem conceiving of the Gods as co-creators of our destiny:

In a sense [the Gods] ARE separate, they need to be honoured, considered, listened to. But they are also intimately bound up with who we are and our destiny….. We are living according to nature, which as Jung said is the best way to live, if we let the gods lead us there and let ourselves be dragged through whatever we need to be dragged through in order to learn a few things. But it’s also our choice to go there. And there are consequences if we choose not to go there. If, in other words, we ignore the gods. – Dharmaruci, Fate, Free Will, and The Planetary Powers

At this New Moon in Aries, Mars leads each of us to the battlefield of a cold, indifferent world, daring us to leave a mark on it. (You’ll find your own battleground in the house of your chart where 21 degrees of Aries falls. Need help finding it? This post should help.) He leads us to the hard, wintry soil and demands that we break it open, to receive the new year’s plantings. And I believe that whether you are victorious or you go down in flames, Mars will be there, too, ready to lift you up from the field of battle – possibly waving a bottle of Ferrum metallicum under your nose.

© 2013 April Elliott Kent

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Astrologers are fond of observing that a Libra is nothing more than an Aries who’s been to charm school. Libra is every bit as determined as his fellow cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, and Capricorn) to get what he wants. But unlike those signs, Libra has the ability to make it look as though serving his own needs is the furthest thing from his mind.

That isn’t meant as a criticism, by the way. I admire the strategy. My mother was born with Libra rising, and she had the iron fist in the velvet glove routine down pat. For years, I watched her put this skill to use securing contributions for fundraising events on behalf of her favorite charity. She overcame any resistance with sunny charm, pretending not to notice reluctance or impatience coming from the other end of the telephone, and refusing to be intimidated. By pretending that others wanted to be helpful, she persuaded them to be so. In the end, she always got what she was after – and nearly always, earned another fan in the process.

With this Libra Full Moon facing off against a Mongol horde of planets (the Sun, Venus, Mars, and Uranus) in ferocious Aries – and all of them square unyielding Pluto in Capricorn -  conflict resolution is the order of the day. I’ve been thinking about the best way to deal with people who make me angry, as well as those whose interests are diametrically opposed to my own. One hesitates to call them “enemies;” it sounds so dramatic. But let’s face it, that’s what an enemy is: one whose interests conflict with yours.

As mom was fond of saying, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” And as every Libran knows, there’s more than one way to defeat an opponent. The 15th century Roman Emperor Sigismund was admonished by his Prime Minister when instead of destroying his captured enemies, he brought them into his court. It’s said that he replied, “Do I not most effectually destroy my enemies, in making them my friends?” It’s a quotation often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, and though I couldn’t find a source for it, it does sound like the kind of thing he would have said, famous as he was for forging unlikely political alliances.

But when I think about befriending people whose opinions, lifestyles, or politics are abhorrent to me, some flinty part of me digs in its heels and refuses to give in, loathe to give the impression of surrender. Why do most of us find it so difficult to befriend our enemies – and why is that those with Libra prominent in their birth charts often succeed where we fail?

In traditional astrology, Libra is said to be the sign of the Sun’s “fall” – meaning, it’s one of the signs in which the Sun’s innate qualities of pride and ego are least able to express themselves. Unlike prideful Leo (the sign of the Sun’s rulership) and headstrong, impulsive Aries (sign of the Sun’s exaltation), Libra has the ability to strategically suppress his ego in order to get what he wants.

With lots of impatient Aries planets on a collision course with Pluto, the potential for animosity and frustration over the next couple of weeks is enormous. It’s the kind of celestial atmosphere that suggests full-scale emotional meltdown. Picture four planets in Aries, like frustrated toddlers, falling down on their fannies, kicking their feet in the air, and screaming until they turn purple.

How to soothe four irate toddlers at once – or even one screaming customer, road-rageous fellow motorist, or internet flamethrower? By first making a friend of the enemy inside you – the stubborn, prideful, impulsive, and ego-driven part of you that stands in opposition to your best interests. Befriend that part of yourself, and you’ll have transformed your worst enemy into a strong, passionate ally. Once you’re fully at peace with yourself, you can respond to the rage, frustration, and stubbornness of others with kindness, even charm—fully expecting them to behave better, to be better. Not everyone will rise to meet your expectations —but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did.

© 2011, 2013 April Elliott Kent
All rights reserved

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I was about seven years old when I made my initial foray into the world of business. Intrigued by an advertisement in my Archie comic book, I sent off for packets of seeds that the ad strongly suggested could be parlayed into significant wealth. In due time, the seeds arrived, in packets decorated with beautiful sketches of the lush flowers and vegetables that these seeds would someday become. Enthused, I immediately began trying to sell them to friends and family; who could resist, I figured?

But in my youthful enthusiasm, I had overlooked one important point: I lived in a farm community, and seeds were not exactly in short supply. So, my career in horticultural commerce was short-lived. The seed of the idea – sell an appealing, inexpensive product to lots of people – was a fine one. But the soil and growing conditions were not hospitable, and so the “seed” of my youthful entrepreneurialism withered without bearing fruit.

Any gardening book will tell you how to produce the best results with a given seed – what kind of soil to plant it in, how much light and water it needs. But there is no guarantee that what is planted and nourished in a particular way will flower as expected. Even nature cannot make solid predictions that a plant will end up looking like the picture on the seed packet. As scholar Edith Hamilton once put it, “The seed never explains the flower.” Two gardeners plant seeds from the same zucchini, and tend them with care; one ends up with a garden full of green, the other with a shriveled vine. What made the difference? Neither can say.

And then there are those mysterious plants that flourish despite harsh conditions. My husband tells the story of a rose bush that once flourished on his property. He didn’t want a rose bush; he understood them to be “high maintenance,” needing lots of water, food, and attention that he didn’t have time to give. So he systematically deprived the shrub of all water and ran over it repeatedly with a lawn mower. It responded by growing stronger and healthier, producing beautiful, fragrant flowers. Some ideas, like hardy plants, have the strength of the zeitgeist on their side. In the words of Victor Hugo, “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”

As in gardening, making predictions based on beginnings is what astrology is all about. The whole system, from charts of people to charts of countries, marriages, business ventures, buying a car – is based on moments of beginning. Astrology works, we reason, because moments in time, like seeds, contain the prescription for what they will become. But even gardeners and farmers, with a wisdom borne of years negotiating with nature, acknowledge that at some point, all the planning and care and preparation in the world won’t ensure the outcome of their crops. Nature and life have a way of surprising us; but the lore of both gardening and astrology can serve as guides to supervise our humble efforts to undertake new beginnings.

The New Moon Seed

Each month, the New Moon’s longitudinal point falls in one of twelve houses of your chart. Think of this point as a seed that wants to be planted, an idea for a new venture, the picture on your seed packet. The house of your chart where the New Moon falls describes the “soil” you have available for planting. Is it sandy, rocky, heavy or light? How can you make the soil ready to receive the seed of a new beginning and give it the best chance to grow? And is this the right moment to plant this particular seed – or might your yield be increased if you planted during a different month?

At each New Moon, a new seed is given to you with instructions to plant it in a particular area of your chart. Two weeks later, in the light of the Full Moon, the decision to plant this seed is reevaluated. How is it faring in the place where it’s planted – does it need more light, more air, more water? This quick, Full-Moon glance over your shoulder will help you evaluate whether you’re on the right track, and whether you need to adjust or change your direction. But you won’t know for sure whether your planting has been successful until six months from now, when the New Moon falls in the opposite house of your chart. Then, from the other side of the garden, you can get a good view of the first buds of new growth.

New Moon Astrology through the Houses of the Birth Chart

Not sure how to find which house of your chart the New Moon falls in? This blog post should help.

New Moon in the First House

When the New Moon energizes the first house of your chart, you will not lack enthusiasm for new undertakings. But like my seed packet adventure, begun with a child’s naïve enthusiasm, your latest scheme may prove less than fully developed when viewed in the light of the full moon. You have much work to do this month simply plowing your soil, which is still a bit hard from winter’s frost. New seeds planted this month won’t take root easily unless they are especially hardy. But like my husband’s scrappy rosebush, you are ready for the bite of the plow’s blade; and whether it is a change of job, appearance, or address, this is probably the best month all year to undertake a radical new beginning in your life.

New Moon in the Second House

If you spent all your energy last month in one furious sprint, you may have to overcome considerable inertia now. But if you can, whatever you begin this month will have real staying power – so as much as possible, avoid filling your days with joyless obligations. Plant seeds of enjoyment, filling your days with people and activities that give you pleasure. In the light of the Full Moon, consider whether you are planting enough to cushion you against life’s inevitable lean times. You may have fewer options for growth when the New Moon falls in your eighth house, six months from now. So plant a few extra seeds – more friends, a job with more money – as a cosmic insurance policy.

New Moon in the Third House

So many ideas interest you now; how to commit to just one? Don’t: rather, scatter your seeds like wildflowers, and leave pollination to the birds and bees. Your job this month is to explore as many new ideas you can. Talk to people, read books, get in your car and drive; you need a crazy quilt of ideas, opinions, and scenery this month. At the Full Moon, others may urge you to commit to a single idea, but your garden is not really ready for careful planting. Later you will need to do some weeding, but don’t worry about that now. There will be plenty of time, when the New Moon falls in your ninth house, to choose a favorite from among the many ideas and seedlings that you germinated this month.

New Moon in the Fourth House

It is time to irrigate your garden, and you must dig deep in search of water. Perhaps the hidden wellspring that nourishes you is conviction, or creativity, or kindness; almost certainly it includes sensitivity to your environment. What are the things you notice that nobody else seems to? Your particular sensitivity to the world is what you will carry into the fifth house next month and turn into art. So this month, tap into those inner reserves and drink at the well. Meditate. Sleep. Chant. Get centered. The emotional authenticity you cultivate this month will carry forward, six months from now, into the tenth house world at large.

New Moon in the Fifth House

This month, you begin to parlay your fourth house nourishment into a creative act. But the fifth house act of creation requires some element of courage and risk. Fifth house soil is the sand on the beach, damp from the waves of the fourth house and perfect for forming into sandcastles. At the full moon, a crowd gathers to look at your handiwork. Some are dazzled, and spur you on to even greater heights. Others are indifferent; why, they wonder, would you spend so much time and effort building something that a wave will wash away tomorrow? But their opinions, which will prove valuable when the New Moon falls in your eleventh house, are not as important just now as the joy you invested in building that sandcastle.

New Moon in the Sixth House

Building sandcastles may be creatively fulfilling, but of what practical use are they? Even as a creative act, the medium is too temporal to be of long-term inspiration. With the New Moon in your sixth house, your creative efforts are pressed into the service of some higher good, urging you toward a practical use for your creativity. No seed can flourish in sixth house soil unless it serves humanity or the planet. Perhaps the skills you used to build sandcastles can be used to help build houses for people with low incomes. Or, you could take underprivileged kids to the beach to build sandcastles of their own. If you find a way to make your art useful, if you can combine work and love, then in six months, with the New Moon in your twelfth house, you will have found nirvana.

New Moon in the Seventh House

Standing in a gown, in front of an altar and a group of loved ones, the bride fulfills the promise of the New Moon in the seventh house: she begins a new life with another person. Life, death, parenthood, marriage – these are common transitions that mark you as significantly changed, initiates in a sorority or fraternity previously closed to you. As the New Moon falls in your seventh house, you join one of these groups, sowing the seed of a new way of relating with the world. What you learned about yourself with the New Moon in your first house is parlayed now into a better understanding of who you are in relation to others. Through careful companion planting – making room in your life for others – you become stronger.

New Moon in the Eighth House

Eighth house soil has been heaped with compost, and when the New Moon falls in this house you must turn that compost into the soil. It’s unpleasant work, because the smell of the fertilizer is not enjoyable. But it is necessary work, to turn what has died and decayed into food for something yet to come. With the New Moon in your eighth house, you are planting seeds of investment in the future. It takes faith to spend time turning your compost heap when others around you are scattering seeds or enjoying the fruits of their harvest. Your faith is in the invisible, the vision waiting to be fulfilled. Your faith is that the uncomfortable work of this month will contribute to a bountiful return, when the New Moon next falls in your second house.

New Moon in the Ninth House

Weed through what you have sown in the past nine months, and choose just one kind of plant you can commit to. It may not be the tallest flower, or the juiciest tomato – but whatever you choose will have the best chance to succeed, because it has the full measure of your enthusiasm behind it. This is the month to begin actively believing in something. Six months ago, when the New Moon fell in your third house, you had a lot of interesting ideas; which of them still sounds interesting to you today? It’s time to take a leap of faith toward the path with heart. sow the seeds of hope this New Moon, and at the full moon you will find even more ideas to fuel your enthusiasm.

New Moon in the Tenth House

When the New Moon is in the tenth house, it is time to take authority over your life. Last month you took a risk and hitched your star to some person, idea, belief, or course of action; this month, you are called to stand up for that idea. Your level of success will depend on your ability to draw from the well that you dug when the New Moon was in your fourth house, and present yourself as a voice of credibility and integrity. It is one of the hardest months for sowing seeds, because the tenth house craves what is already fully-grown. But if this month you are not yet in a position to be the boss, sow the seed of ambition to someday hold that honor.

New Moon in the Eleventh House

A few years ago I was reunited with a friend from high school. She is an artist now, and the first time I visited her home, I was overwhelmed by the ravishing color and whimsy of her décor. Over the years I have borrowed shamelessly from her treasure trove of ideas, painting my living room in bold colors and hanging my windows with valances of fairy lights. Of course, I’ve brought my own ideas and preferences, but my friend provided the inspiration. The eleventh is a house of friends, of politics and groups, of joining together with like-minded people. When the New Moon is here, borrow seeds of inspiration from these friendly souls. They will round out your garden of ideas – especially the seeds of creativity sown when the New Moon fell in your fifth house – in unexpected and delightful ways.

New Moon in the Twelfth House

A couple of years ago, a friend gave us a shy little plant in a small, blue, enamel pot: a moonflower, which only blooms at night. When the New Moon is in your twelfth house, plant seeds that bloom in private, in the dark. They can be seeds of spiritual awakening, whose flowers only bloom when you meditate. They might be seeds that you plant and tend for others as a loving gift, behind the scenes, without seeking honor for doing so. This month, you are a quiet farmer in a secret garden, behind high walls covered in morning glories and hibiscus. This is no time for practical planting of roots and vegetables; instead, sow moonflower seeds of beauty and inspiration.

At each New Moon, we feel the urge to begin something new. But just as in gardening, New Moon beginnings have an element of brave guesswork and trust about them. It is worth remembering that the New Moon is a dark time; wander around outdoors on the night of a New Moon, and you’d better bring a flashlight with you. Otherwise, the light of the Full Moon might reveal that you’ve traveled quite far afield of your original destination. Fortunately, astrology can be just the flashlight you need, shedding light on the symbolism of the New Moon as it germinates seeds of change in your chart, and in your life.

© 2005 April Elliott Kent.

Originally published in Llewellyn’s 2006 Moon Sign Book.

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Sometimes, we’re so focused on details that we miss the big picture altogether. In an episode of the TV series Seinfeld, Elaine’s boss, Mr. Pitt, has become fascinating – and frustrated – by a 3D art poster, struggling to find the “hidden” image he has been told lies within its seemingly random pattern of squares. Finally, he hits on a winning strategy: “You said keep your eyes out of focus, which is misleading,” he tells Elaine, his eyes staring wide and unblinking at the poster. “You want deep focus!”

Mr. Pitt had it exactly right. What sometimes looks to the rest of the world like a lack of focus is actually Pisces looking deeply, unblinkingly, at something the rest of us just can’t see.

At this über-Piscean New Moon, with every single personal planet (Sun through Mars, plus a bonus outer planet, Neptune) in the sign of the fishes, this is a good strategy for seeking happiness, as well. Don’t look too hard in a particular direction. Even the matters “ruled” by the Pisces houses in your chart (not sure which ones they are? Here’s a video to help you figure it out) will benefit from an indirect approach.

Sometimes we need to back away to get more perspective. Recently I decided to change my habit of marathon work sessions after reading an article by author Tony Schwartz in the New York Times. Schwartz describes writing a book in just a few months, and relatively painlessly, by breaking his workday into 90-minute segments for a total of about four and a half hours out of each workday. He came up with the approach after learning about research that found that humans move progressively from alertness to physiological fatigue about every 90 minutes. At Florida State University, researchers observed that top performers in music, athletics, acting, and chess practiced their craft in sessions of no more than 90 minutes, and no more than four and a half hours in a given day.

While I’d noticed that that working at my desk for hours at a time seemed to result in less productivity and extra weight, I had a work ethic that was based on years of working in office jobs for 40 hours a week. Other than two grudging, 15- minute breaks and an hour for lunch, one was expected to sit in a chair and work nonstop. Naturally, my coworkers and I spent at least a couple of extra hours each day expanding our coffee breaks, taking a longer lunch, or getting “lost” coming back from a trip to the restroom.

So for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been experimenting with Tony Schwartz’s model. During my 90-minute work stretches, I close my email program and switch the internet offline. During my breaks, I spend at least 30 minutes moving – running errands, washing dishes, taking a walk – and the rest of the time checking email or returning phone calls. And it really does seem to be the case that when I sit down again to work, the writing flows a lot easier than before.

With so many planets in Pisces, some vision is trying to make itself apparent to us… but to see it, we have to focus deeply, like Mr. Pitt looking for a spaceship in a 3D poster. We have to break up tasks into manageable segments and rest as much as we work. We need to look at the big picture instead of obsessing over the fine print. With the whole sky singing a song of Pisces, it’s time to learn to swim with the fishes. We’ll get farther faster – and enjoy the journey much more!

© 2013 April Elliott Kent

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