Monday 27 November – Full Moon in Gemini 9:16 GMT

Monday 27 November – Mercury square Neptune 12:27 GMT

Friday 1 December – Mercury into Capricorn 13:31 GMT

Saturday 2 December – Mercury sextile Saturn 14:27 GMT

Sunday 3 December – Venus square Pluto 12:29 GMT

Monday 4 December – Venus into Scorpio 17:51 GMT

Tuesday 5 December – Venus trine Saturn 21:51 GMT

Wednesday 6 December – Neptune Direct 12:22 GMT

Friday 8 December – Mercury trine Jupiter 3:08 GMT

Sunday 10 December  – Venus opposite Jupiter 2:35 GMT

Monday 11 December – Mercury sextile Venus 18:18 GMT

Tuesday 12 December – New Moon in Sagittarius 22:32 GMT 

The Sun-Moon conjunction forms a square to Neptune and quincunx to Uranus. Neptune has recently stationed direct having spent a couple of months retrograde. Extra Neptune challenges between now and Christmas promise more confusion, emptiness and chaos than usual.

For this reason it’s better to stay focused on the smaller elements of life, and the subtleties in our experience, and details/steps that keep us grounded, as opposed to getting overwhelmed by the road ahead. Stay close to the situations or aspects you want to change or need to know more about, and work more on yourself slowly and methodically, since deep patterns can be emerging now and need space rather than stuffing back down through over indulgences and addictive behaviours.

There is a clear theme at this New Moon of getting to the heart of matters, matter itself, or perhaps just getting to the heart. At points, it might be good to ask what is the core pattern, most likely emanating from childhood into the present, that I’m not seeing, or needing to transform? Is there a feeling of being unimportant, undeserving or being rejected? Knowing the nodal pattern in your own chart can help to know what is trying to emerge since the New Moon also makes a positive trine to the nodes. The suggestion here is that a new direction wants to open up and advances can be made but not without some wading through treacle or getting stuck in mud.

While the focus of Sagittarius tends to be categorised as an outward expansion, this Moon points to an equally relevant inner expansion. The question is what might that look like for you? What are you knowing you need more access or connection to? What is the default that you need to shift?

This might come arise from spiritual work since Neptune and the galactic core are involved in the aspect pattern, bringing the potential for strong so-called outside intervention to bring us what we need.

With the Sun-Moon conjunction in square to nebulous Neptune, it might take a little more going around the roundabout, staying with things, to get to the actual thing that feels ‘the thing’. It’s also a time when we might lose connection with our centre, who we feel ourselves to be, disconnect or question who am I? Be mindful to not get blindly pulled into other’s explanations but instead really check things out for yourself, being more closely aligned within and discerning. Small steps, details and subtle intuition again helps.

There is a theme of the Divine Feminine around this New Moon. This is partly because we have a Venus-Jupiter opposition – Jupiter the New Moon ruler lends it more importance and in addition Venus is the sweetness of the feminine, that we all yearn. The two benevolents in combination is expansion of the feminine, or our relationship to it. This can come in many forms be it Lilith, the Divine Mother or the Inner Goddess (and many other besides), with some shifting and transformation of these energies or our connection into them.

It is essentially about bringing the balance back, since we predominantly function from a masculine template through the thinking process and bypass the path of the body and all the subtle senses that move through us. Hence actively giving space to pausing, stillness, silence and inwardness, as the Mercury retrograde soon to be upon us would ask.

Some of the deeper questions that really get things up and out involve our exisential existence – what is giving our life meaning? Are our lives a life worth living? Or have we submitted ourselves to fate, giving in to an inner victimhood, which result in us running with the motions, feeling stuck, fragmented or split in our minds. Old unconscious patterns are often the root, heart core issue, and more often than not there is a disconnection from the inner feminine.

Beyond that, we can begin to look at ourselves as a relationship of aspects masculine and feminine. We’re a rippling field of contradictory and interdependent forces and we need more balance between the poles of our existence. But the relationship with these individual aspects often comes first. Are we relegating aspects? Are we being ruled by inner children? Are we all over the place and with no overarching Divine aspect online?

The feminine approach is very different to receiving instantaneous clarity, for example. It doesn’t cling or latch on to people or anything external, including a need for clarity. It relaxes and opens to life when working with us well. We are generally not very good at giving our life over to the feminine way, the inner Goddess or Divine Mother to take care of situations or indeed ourselves.

We generally prefer to hold onto things that we feel are important, even when they are not or force ourselves into making decisions even when it’s not time, and with it bring in a level of stress and pressure which just wouldn’t be there if we had a stronger connection and embodiment of our essence or inner goddess. For with the feminine more fully embodied and then lived, we relax and do not take life quite as seriously or place the same level of urgency or importance on the same things.

A shift takes place and we orientate differently. Yet to get to that place of embodiment can require some processing, acknowledging and facing ourselves honestly. Knowing what’s running the show, where we give our energy and what needs our attention can make a big difference to our levels of energy and our exuberance for life.

If we refuse to entertain the feminine, which is a huge part of our essence, or repeatly resist the gentle knocks, eventually we get a clear symptom, or a call from the underworld, that cannot be so easily ignored. And more than anything else, we will end up in despair.

It’s not a time to bypass layers though to get to this core. I keep getting reminded that we must see and feel as we unfold into and meet the gentler, softer place within. This winter time, it’s about being even more within ourselves and feeling what needs to transpire.

Deeper feeling and giving space to trust the intuition helps us know our correct direction, or rather orientation. Direction is action and movement while orientation is about position, it is more a state of being. Direction emerges from orientation and alignment.

As with everything, a big part of getting it more right, is stopping and asking the honest question, finding out what is really going on, as opposed to what you think is going on. As what we think is rarely the same from the coherent inner felt reality. The frenetic thinking processes are like the radio static interfering with the coherent felt sense.

So when Mercury turns retrograde on 13th December in practical, consolidating Capricorn, we can expect more past to be brought up, just so we can make deeper sense of our lives. When Mercury meets Mars on 27th, just after the Full Moon and in square to Neptune, a lot might be up in the air, taking a few days to process and make sense of. But even before then, there’s a lot of uncertainty.

Finally the presence of the galactic centre and the great attractor in the Sagittarius sky always brings us back to this sense of knowing and belonging, to being reminded of home, and our home is that we come from love and go back to it, and hopefully get to live some of it also while here in body.

The inner truth that Sagittarius reconnects us to, love as a universal principle, that transcends the lower thinking mind, also connects us to planes of reality beyond our everyday reality. Generally, our individual reality and the greater world around is created by the lower mind, not the heart. It is in remembering our true essence, which is of the heart, that brings us back into a return home. Something we are increasingly in need of experiencing.

‘Returning’ to the roots or the heart of the matter allow us to change the unhelpful patterns in our life. Our spiritual connection can appear, especially at this time, in the form of inspiration and creativity, inviting us into a new experience. It’s not something we can figure out through thinking, it’s something that arises from pausing, silence and listening deeply to the subtle messages.

It also arises from sitting in confusion and chaos, which might for some of us be somewhat unavoidable this Christmas. Mars and Mercury retrograde conjoin in square Neptune. It won’t be easy to get clarity on anything. It could also be a little passionate or fiery.

It could also manifest as an empty, void-like state where we feel like we know nothing about who we are. Over buying and over giving often results in a rise of emptiness. Children can get angry when they feel their lack of satisfaction from getting stuff. I’ve seen it myself.

Our whole existence might feel or be up for question, especially if we are pulled into present-buying or over indulgence patterns. It can be scary, and it can feel like we want to get order back. Sometimes it’s just about sitting with the various creations in front and seeing what they are telling you.

To some degree, thinking through problems is more redundant this Christmas. Mercury retrograde in Capricorn urges us to make sense of the past, but more through deep reflection and letting things drop in. So just ponder and reflect. Let your intuition guide you. The gentler you can be with all that’s about, the easier it will be to get our messages across under the Mercury retrograde spell of misunderstandings. So go slow and deep.

More on Sagittarius New Moon 2023 see Card Guidance