The New Moon in Gemini Calls Us to Cultivate a New Perspective

Have you heard that a new moon is on its way up into our night sky? A new cycle begins, and it seems impossible how many months some of us have stayed inside, how time floods past our cloistered days, apart from each other. For those of us whose work hours are untethered from their usual routines, it might feel as if the moon's shape is the truest marker of our duration and endurance. Her light remains constant in an unstable world, a changing world. It's in this world that we begin a new cycle. And, in her company, we're called to cultivate a new perspective and approach to the way we pass our time.

Gemini, the sign of the new moon, is a creative force — constantly re-imagining themselves and the space they take up. Correlated with the hands of the human body, or the tools we use to transform intent into action, Gemini energy is generative and resistant to stagnation. Of course, when it comes to hands, the overriding association tends to be one of contagion these days. To touch, to leave an imprint, is a safety risk. Paired with Gemini's communicative nature, and the experience of wearing masks — of obscuring words — a tension surfaces between expression and harm. To understand each other, to connect, we must navigate an unfamiliar level of restraint.

Gemini people have spent most of their lives navigating the tension between self-expression and harm because Geminis almost always know more than anyone needs to know. Their lips have, for better or worse, sunk numerous ships. What happens when the waters of information are flooded with a constant stream of propaganda and deceit? When Neptune squares Mercury, when the death tolls rise and the states reopen regardless, whose ships sink? Under the new moon in a world strained by a pandemic, this tension is posed as a challenge for us all. Expression, in this case, is not limited to communication or protest.

It is the act of sharing one's interior with a surrounding world. It can be collaborative, creative, and ambitious. Or, it can be self-serving in its quest for supremacy. The question, then, becomes, how can we gather the small substance of our individual universe, as resilient and heartbroken as it might be, and spend time learning to pour it into a shape worth casting? A shape that holds water and serves life. And, for those whose truth is powerful enough to cast a shadow on institutions that prioritize capital over human life, self-expression is dangerous. Self-expression is a negotiation between the power of faith and the validity of fear.

Venus retrograde and Mercury in Gemini squaring Neptune doesn't help matters here, since Neptune is prone to amplifying what haunts us and draping our fears in a cloak that looks like intuition. Illusions and escapism can be difficult to resist and addictive habits hard to break. Compulsion, it seems, is shame's most trusted container. To reckon with this influence, to know and acknowledge the largeness of the shadow it might cast on our lives, is not the same as welcoming it with open palms. When we name the fear and pain we work to transform inside ourselves, we acknowledge the value of our energy. We acknowledge our desire to live and feel beautiful.

Saturn, the planet of discipline and good planning, makes a trine to our new moon, an aspect like a line of support and guidance. Hopeful and in good counsel, the new moon offers us Earthlings the chance to take in some of Saturn's resolve and tenacity. A resolve that does not negate or ignore the overwhelming effect of personal and collective grief but, rather, uses it as fuel. To begin each day as if it is sacred and full of possibilities, even and especially if you feel impossibly alone in the effort to do so. To begin each day acknowledging that whether you can feel it in your body or not, you are part of a cycle. Like the world, like the moon, like collective sorrow, you are changing shape and your hands are never empty because they are full of energy for good works.