New Moon in Leo
Thursday, July 28th, 2022, 10:55 PDT/ 1:55 PM EDT
Last month during the New Moon I was attending a Yoga and Writing retreat in Costa Rica. Near the end of one of our Yoga classes Julian, our teacher, spoke about the principle of non violence in Yoga and specifically tied it into how we treated ourselves within our yoga practice. His words profoundly resonated throughout my being. Like the lightning bold of Uranian awakening I spoke about in my last email, I could suddenly vividly see all of the many ways I essentially perpetuated violence against myself that until that moment had remained shrouded in the darkness of my unconscious mind. Frankly, until that moment I honestly don’t know that I would have seen them as an act of violence. It was both illuminating and jarring, such it cracked open a doorway of self compassionate hadn’t existed moments before. It was a beautiful awakening that began to bloom and has continued to unfold since that moment.
Like the Moon our experience of life is constantly changing. We are in a perpetual state of becoming. Yet we often have several very knowing opinions/beliefs about ourselves that we in essence marinate in daily while they remain invisible to our conscious awareness. We have frozen some aspect of ourselves in time and constructed an identity from it. We actually begin to trust this identity, that we have usually been rewarded for, more profoundly than our instinctive voice. It becomes out truth. We, our true selves, are no longer present in the moment.
We don’t think about it but this is an act of violence against ourselves. It is essentially implying that we are not worthy of being seen. Of being here in this moment.
This month’s Leo Moon can very easily be viewed through the lens of deeply seeing oneself, of being warm towards oneself. Leo at its heart yearns to be truly seen and appreciated.
We, our lives, are truly a marvel. Each of us is living a once in a lifetime experience moment by moment. And yet for the most part we are oblivious to it so caught up in the details of daily life we somehow forget that each moment is a miracle and implicitly tell ourselves that it is ordinary. And perhaps that is the truth; miracles are ordinary. But that doesn’t make them any less breathtaking.
One of the many things I love about my work, about astrology or working in theatre/the arts, is that each of these disciplines brings me in contact with the numinous several times a day. And I admit I am so stuck by the experience, the breathtaking moment I swear I have each time I sit with someone as we encounter their chart together that I overflow with it and am trying to give a bit of it to you in each email/blog. Because we all profoundly deserve this.
This Moon holds the warmth of the Sun which rules the sign Leo. Take a moment and hold an image of it in your imagination, the Sun quite literally glows from within. It radiates. It generates its own light. The Sun’s surface isn’t solid - it is constantly recreating itself. And its beauty through this process is blinding.
Like the Sun, we, our lives, are always in a process of unfolding. I like to think of it as blooming over the course of a lifetime.
Our inner selves respond to and speak a symbolic language. The language of art, the language of dreams. Symbolic language invites us to dwell in the realm of our imagination.
With a New Moon in Leo we are in essence being asked to turn our attention to our inner symbolic Sun. Again, the Sun glows from within and is so powerful all of the other bodies orbit within its gravity. It literally draws us in. There is no avoiding its light and its light gives us life.
I was fortunate enough to study improvisation theatre at Chicago’s famed Second City with my friend the legendary Martin De Maat in the 1980’s. He would always end each series of workshops with the Hokey Pokey. Can you remember the Hokey Pokey? The last verse is:
“You put your whole self in, you put your whole self out, you put your whole self fin and you shakeout all about. You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around, that’s what it’s all about!”
The spirit of the Holy Pokey captures the essence of this Moon: Put your whole self in.
Let me reiterate: Much of Leo is about love and coming from the heart, about being seen and appreciated. Wherever Leo falls within our chart that part of our psyche longs to be seen, to be acknowledged. To create and recreate ourselves moment by moment in the joy of the moment. To be at play. To unabashedly put your whole self in.
Life is the ultimate creative act. But most of the time on some level, unconsciously, we are so overcome by the possibility of its power, this mysterious magical power of creation, that we try to contain it. We cage it lest we be overwhelmed by it. So, during this particular New Moon I invite you to let yourself to do the Hokey Pokey.
Take the time to consciously clear the space, your space, your embodiment, before setting any intentions: Put on some music and dance. Allow yourself to be simply caught up in the joy of the moment. And if life doesn’t feel particularly joyful right now put on some music and dance anyway. Dance away your fear, your worry, your sadness, your anger until it dissipates and transforms into just you and the music at one with creation. Then create intentions that set your soul on fire for the month ahead.
P.S. One powerful practice you can create to remind yourself to be in the moment is to set a small daily ritual, a selah, sacred pause, that brings you back to the miraculous nature of life. Feel free to steal mine or create one of your own:
Currently, I am taking a photo of the sunrise (I have also done the sunset but you could do any time you just want to be consistent) each morning to visually chronicle the journey of this year a moment at a time. This small act, beyond bringing me joy, transports me to the ever changing present point of time in my life where it feels as though I am standing at a crossroads. It only takes a moment but serves to to both ground and elevate my experience of life each day. The image at the top of this was taken on the morning of may last email Saturday July 23, 2022.
