New Moon in Libra

The Sun and Moon meet in Libra today, making the New Moon, and they meet in a sign where the Sun is weak. Ptolemy places the Sun's fall in Libra because, on entering it, the Sun crosses into the lower, southern half of its course: the days shorten and its heat declines. This lunation does not run on the Sun's strengths, which are pride, open authority and a firm hand on one's own affairs. The Moon's qualities lead instead: adaptability, softness of manner, and a readiness to change course. The same day holds an exact square between Venus and Mars. Under the dark Moon, that square sets what we want from others against how hard we push to get it.

The New Moon also stands across the wheel from Saturn, retrograde in Aries. The Moon is still within range of an opposition to Saturn and moving away from it, and the Sun's own opposition to Saturn has just dropped out of orb. Ptolemy pairs these two bodies. Saturn's fall is in Aries for the same reason the Sun's is in Libra: one is the planet of cold and the other of heat, and each weakens where the other gains.

So both lights begin this cycle facing a Saturn that is itself weakened. The sober, patient, methodical side of life is present but not in command. Plans started under this New Moon tend to need more structure than the sky provides, and that structure has to be built by hand. This lunation falls well away from the lunar nodes, so it is an ordinary New Moon, not an eclipse.

The sharper fact is Venus and Mars. Venus, retrograde in Scorpio, squares Mars in Leo. The square is all but exact and still closing.

Venus signifies affection, pleasure, taste and the bonds of home. Mars signifies ambition, frankness, drive and strife. The square is a discordant angle, joining signs of different natures. Between these two planets it tends to set desire against force. Closeness gets reached for too bluntly, or one person's wish for ease gets run over by another person's push.

That square is one side of a T-square. Mars stands opposite Pluto in Aquarius, and Venus squares both of them, which makes Venus the apex. The opposition is the older quarrel: Mars as direct assertion, against Pluto as what assertion becomes when it goes deep, becomes sustained and stops being personal. That opposition is now separating and loosening.

Venus, though, is moving into the figure, tightening on both Mars and Pluto, so the strain is shifting onto her. Scorpio is a sign Pluto co-rules, which gives the Pluto leg extra purchase on where Venus stands. Pluto's long passage through Aquarius is a generational condition. Mars and Venus are what make it specific for these days.

At full strength, this shows up in the realm of affection and pleasure. Questions of power come up inside relationships. Whatever has been held by force comes under pressure to loosen. Attachments get tested by who gives way. With Venus retrograde, much of this tends to turn back over older ground rather than break new ground. It sits harder for anyone with planets in the early degrees of the fixed signs.

The figure leaves Venus carrying a quarrel she did not start. Nothing in the sky resolves it on its own, so whatever eases it has to be supplied on purpose. The usual counsel under Pluto applies directly here. Do not let frustration accumulate. Do not give in to emotional coercion. Do not let someone else's authority quietly replace your own judgment.

Mars has a constructive outlet. Its trine to Saturn is tightening, and it offers force given method: effort that holds because it is patient rather than loud. Mars's sextile to Uranus, which carried a quicker, freeing push toward breaking what no longer fits, is easing off. The square between Mercury and Mars has ended.

Further out, Neptune in Aries and Black Moon Lilith in Capricorn are in an exact square that has just passed its closest point and is now loosening. Lilith is read as what refuses to be accommodated: the part that will not be made palatable or traded away for acceptance. Neptune loosens edges and makes them uncertain, and that same loosening is what allows evasion and self-deception. Together they make it hard to tell whether one is choosing not to belong or being quietly edged out. A statement of where one stands can come out vaguer than intended.

Mercury's quincunx to Saturn has also passed its closest. Modern practice reads the angle as a need to keep correcting course between two things with nothing in common. Ptolemy did not count it as a configuration at all, and the tradition remains divided on it. Read either way, it is fading.

While the Venus–Mars square holds, it helps to say a want plainly once, and then notice whether you are asking or pressing. Where something in a relationship has been held in place by force, it may be worth asking what it would cost to let it loosen. Give any effort the slow Saturn treatment: one task, done steadily, rather than a push against whoever happens to be in the way.