We have a New Moon on Thursday morning (Sydney time), this time in Scorpio.

That means that the next couple of days we are in the dark, or balsamic phase of the Moon. The time of the month we finish off, pack away, banish the banishables. Seriously, is there any better time of the year to do some serious elimination work than at the Scorpio New Moon? Scorpio is, after all, the sign that rules getting rid of waste, shall we say- elimination of the crap that doesn’t do you any good.

Scorpio is that shadowy place where we pack away all of our deepest fears and our deepest desires. It is everything we repress, keep a lid on, hide away, yearn for. Scorpio is pleasure and it is pain, with a very fine line between the two. Scorpio is where we go below the surface to find meaning, solutions, complete healing and transformation.

Scorpio is also about power and facing those fears in order to get to your talents and achieve those desires. And there is nothing that has more power over you than fear.  Eric Francis wrote in Planet Waves last week: “most people who are scared are actually horny but don’t know what to do about it.” I would also add that fear gets in the way of you doing anything about it.

Fear also provides you with the completely mistaken idea that you are in control. So, you stay safe, you say no, you build boundaries around yourself- to stop people getting in and to stop yourself from getting out. And all the while you fool yourself that in doing so you have control. Until you don’t.

This New Moon falls at 3 Scorpio 3’.  This is a super-charged Martian Scorpio New Moon. Why? For reasons I am about to get a little traditional and technical over. Mars, as we know, is the traditional ruler of Scorpio, and 3 Scorpio falls in terms, face and triplicity ruled by Mars. In other words, this New Moon is super diginified by Mars- has a real Mars feel to it. (If you want to know more about traditional rulerships and other dignities, drop me a line. A good reference for this stuff is John Frawley’s books.)

Now for the Moon herself, in Scorpio, she is in the sign of her fall- in a place where she doesn’t operate in a way she feels comfortable. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. Rather than being nutritive and emotionally comfortable, in Scorpio she is penetrative, paranoid and divinely focused.

She is also ravenously hungry. Hungry for desire, hungry for passion, hungry for power, hungry for control, hungry for revenge- hungry. Sometimes it might feel like more than you can handle, that the temptation is just too…tempting.

The hunger keeps you awake at night. You dream it, you replay missed opportunities in your head- things you should have said and done, things you wish you hadn’t said and done. The implications, the complications of diving in too deep.

We can do two things with this appetite:

• Bury the feelings deep down. Dig a big hole in the middle of your soul, throw in the stuff that scares the crap out of you, but that you want so much, heap in 6 tonne of soil and secure it with a big, heavy wrought iron lid…and a key. Then sit back and try not to think about what you have missed out on. Let the discontent fester as you feed it from the fridge or the wine cellar- feeding all the gaps that are left when you locked your desires away. Create a few excuses- a few logical reasons why you haven’t fulfilled your potential, grabbed those opportunities, told that one person how you really feel about them.
• Strip Fear of the power you have given her and use it to fuel your courage to do the things that fear has stopped you from doing in the past. Reclaim that power for yourself. Eliminate those beliefs, behaviours and people that are doing you no good. Let them go- sure you may miss them, but not for long. Look deep into yourself and see the truth- you can handle it.  Then get out there and do it- all of it. Seriously, how hard can it be?

Wow, that’s all a little philosophical and astro-guffy, but do you get my meaning? Essentially this New Moon is asking you to either do the stuff that scares the shit out of you, or bury it. It’s that simple. Just remember- the shit you do bury has a habit of getting dug back up- and then it’s all decayed and manky and even more scary and unpleasant than when it went in the ground. Your call.

For me? This New Moon is smack bang on my 8^th house Mars- which sits happy and darkly proud at 3 Scorpio 7’. Yep- it’s that close. It also completes the cycle of the last Full Moon for me.

Let’s just say there is some examination of the relative toxicity of “stuff” going on in my head. I know there are moves that need to be made. But then, there are lots of “what ifs” hanging about as well.

What about you? Any close hits? Any planets or major chart points at or around 1-5 Scorpio, Taurus, Leo or Aquarius? What about 2-4 Pisces, Cancer, Virgo or Capricorn? Naturally a direct hit is un-mistakeable, but the closer the orb, the more likely you will feel it.

New Moon is exact at around 6.56am Thursday 27/10 in Sydney, 8.56am Thursday 27/10 in NZ, 3.56am Thursday 27/10 on the West Coast of Australia and into Malaysia, Hong Kong. By my calculations (and remember details have never been my strong suit) that makes it around 12.56pm on the West Coast of the US and 3.56pm in New York and 8.56pm in London.