Hi folks,
In case you missed it, be sure to check out my interview with the brilliant R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries and co-editor of the anthology Kink. We talk about making art in hard times, the power of writing into fear, the influence of religion on our work, and more.
Also also also. On June 3rd, I’ll be hosting an office hours, total Q&A style hour-long session (that’s free!) on publishing exclusively for LGBTQIA+ writers. No presentation; just bring your questions about how you get an agent, how you market a book, and more. Sign up here. (For privacy reasons, no recording will be sent out; this is a free, come if you can event.)
And calling all nonfiction writers: my next course, How to Write a Book Proposal, begins next week! Registration closes June 4th.
With that, let’s dive into this upcoming New Moon. It didn’t feel appropriate to do a personal essay style missive after the weeks we’ve had, so this letter is much more focused on the astrology — and on the US Pluto return, on astrological cycles, on taking the whole context. This is a particularly America-centric newsletter.
Xx,
Jeanna
Here in the United States, this has been a particularly difficult eclipse season, wracked with pain and grief. Monday’s New Moon, arriving at 9* of Gemini at 7:30a Eastern, heralds the end of that season and marks the official beginning of a new lunar cycle — but to what end?
Most every article about this new moon on the internet will mention that a new moon is for planting. True enough. And this new moon is also one of the chiller new moons of the year in that it’s not making any major aspects to any other planets — such aspects often inform the flavor of the new moon’s energy. On the surface, taken in isolation, this appears to be a gift. In some ways, it is: a moment of calm after a tragedy. However, as writers, we must always look at the broader picture, at the context in which it’s occurring — our nation has been nothing but a series of tragedies (for some) purposefully wrought and enabled by white supremacy since its founding.
The United States is, after all, undergoing a Pluto return — a moment where Pluto, the planet whose nature is that of the Lord of the Underworld, is “returning,” in its orbit, to the position in its celestial orbit it occupied at the 1776 founding of this nation. What has been ignored is being dredged up; what has been suppressed is rising. And the powers that are designed to and that desire to shove down are rising, too.
People have solar returns, also known as birthdays, once a year. People, famously, have Saturn returns once every 29 years. But people do not have Pluto returns, which occurs only every 248 years or so. Nations have Pluto returns. Companies, too. There is something great, and almost mythical, to a Pluto return, in how its tendrils reach out and impact the collective experience of everyone involved. A Saturn return demands that an individual come into better relationship with their boundaries and responsibility; a Pluto return shakes the very earth of an entity from the ground up, and if the foundations are not stable — well.
Pluto “returned” to 27’33* of Capricorn, the exact degree it exists in the United States’ [Sibley] chart, on February 22, 2022, and the intensity has only risen. I am not ever interested in fear mongering, as you all know, but to expect any single new moon to be a total reset of the collective temperature is simply not taking the whole into account. Things are hot, and I expect they will only get hotter.
When we’re living in history like this (much as we may not wish to), it can feel overwhelming. It can also feel tempting to look at astrology for exact answers (X will happen on Y day in Z manner), but (unless you are an experienced practitioner in horary astrology, and perhaps even then), trying to use astrology to predict the future so exactly is, in my opinion, a fool’s errand. In my own practice, astrology reveals patterns of the past and, consequently, what those patterns may offer for the future — but no more.
To expand further: astrologers the world over looked at the Saturn-Pluto conjunction that we were hurtling toward in 2020 and said something really terrible and world-changing is probably, more than likely, going to happen (they were more eloquent, of course) and there were a few options thrown out as to the nature of what it could be, because some Saturn-Pluto aspects are almost always, without fail, terrible and world-changing (e.g. 9/11 happened under a Saturn-Pluto opposition). But did any astrologer who I’m in relationship with specifically predict a novel coronavirus that would sweep and decimate the globe? No. (And then it happened, and then astrologers went and researched and found that HIV/AIDS also happened under a Saturn-Pluto conjunction and that, centuries earlier, The Black Plague occurred under a Saturn-Pluto opposition. Such signatures emerge over time.)
As astrologers, we are rather like meteorologists: we see the weather coming, but not always the precise shape it will take. You can decide if this is useful. And that doesn’t mean there aren’t practitioners who use astrology to offer more specific predictions. There are. Personal ethics and all that.
But I digress. What we can do, as ever, is use the astrology of the moment to consider perspective. When we pan out to the whole, our country’s Pluto return is the backdrop, the necessity of total transformation — and the potential consequences of resisting such transformation — informing everything. When we pan up closer to this New Moon in Gemini, we consider that this moon arrives as the master of war, conflict, and courage, Mars, is separating from a potent conversation with expansive healer-teacher Jupiter, just beginning to cool down after an incredibly heated and, it is not an overstatement to say, violent week. We also see that the curious, chatty Gemini moon, which in a country’s chart represents the people, or the collective, conjoins the sun after is clipping (by sextile) both Mars and Jupiter, bringing some let’s talk about it (or loudly fight about it) energy into this new beginning.
I don’t often talk about the specific chart for the new moon, but I can’t help but notice that this moon (which is, again, the people, the body, the collective) is buried in the 12th house of the subconscious: a new beginning that is, to an extent, subliminal; one we are collectively feeling, one whose meaning is not initially obvious. Mars’ anger is up there prominently in the 10th, fueled by Jupiter, with the Christian nationalist minority’s religiously zealous beliefs (Jupiter) and our guns (ruled, obviously, by Mars) readily visible to the rest of the world.
As someone with a 12th house moon natally (and a 12th house New Moon at that), I feel the urgency, potency, and simultaneous but what the fuck do we do now of this particular chart in my bones. But then, I am heartened that the ruler of this Gemini moon, messenger-trickster Mercury, is itself both answering to and living with lover-artist Venus in the 11th house of community. Of hopes and dreams. Of the internet, an association I personally have for the 11th, where information and ideas can be freely disseminated across widespread infrastructure. Inasmuch as we are our own best hope, as we the people are actually our lifeline and our support, as we are our source of value and connection — I take heart in this.
The final perspective to drop into when feeling overwhelmed is, of course, what this New Moon means for you and yours on an individual level. It might not mean much! You might be too fucking tired to think about it. And that’s okay. You don’t have to do something for every single lunar cycle, and this month, with the Black elders in Buffalo and the Taiwanese congregation in California and the babies and teachers in Uvalde (and Roe, and the formula shortage, and COVID, and monkeypox, and and and), has been especially hard.
But in the case that you are wanting to sit with yourself or a journal or some such tool and think about what in your life you’re looking to begin, or are beginning, or are simply wanting to plant a seed that you’ll pick up and think about later. This is a moment to do that. To remember that, as much as we are living in history, folks have always been living in history. It has only ever been a different kind of hard. You are alive, and you are worthy, and your words have value.
After all, they wouldn’t be trying so damn hard to ban books if stories didn’t save people.
Writing Prompts for the New Moon in Gemini
The beautiful thing about a New Moon in Gemini is that it’s all about our curiosity. Gemini simply wants to know more! About everything! It’s the magpie of the zodiac, the collector, the true jack of all trades. On an archetypal level, Gemini is very much a medicinal antidote, if you will, to the “single story” of fascism. While you can certainly look to the Gemini house of your chart to see where you might be exploring a new beginning, you can also simply ask yourself:
What do I want to know more about right now?
What curiosity have I been shutting down because it’s not “productive”?
List out all of your ideas. Your TBR. What you want to do that has nothing to do with your work or making money. Over these next two weeks, follow a few of those threads. See which seem to pique your interest most. See where they, perhaps, even intersect.
P.S. If you enjoy this newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber! This is how I pay my rent, among other things! Thank you for reading.
hi y'all, the original email went out with the wrong zoom link for the June 3 Q&A! link has been updated in the website version of the newsletter. apologies! (also, here it is for folks who are interested: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMlf-qqrDMpE9L3AOKb0rtXvbr8kc_FLThM)
I don’t have enough words right now, brain soup, but this was such a helpful piece. It locked in something I had been missing. Thank you! 🖤