New Moon in Scorpio November 4 2021 3:14 pm MT
Welcome to the Scorpio New Moon—not the lightest and fluffiest of all moons, but an important one to acknowledge (but probably not manifest with…)! As a natal Scorpio moon myself, I have deep empathy and understanding for the oft misunderstood nature of Scorpio—and some thoughts and feelings on how to honor its messages.
New Moon 12º Scorpio T-square Uranus and Saturn
Scorpio season runs October 23 to November 22 each year (typically), and its no accident that many holidays to honor our ancestors and the dead—Samhain, Halloween, All Soul’s, Día de los Muertos—fall during this time. Scorpio is deeply interested in all things transformative, and taboo, including death, sex, the occult and the other side of the veil. Scorpio is also interested in deep transformation, transmutation, release and healing (even if that healing comes at a cost).
Scorpio marks the middle of autumn—as a fixed sign, it captures the energy of a season in its stride, where the last wisps of summer have evaporated but before the first scent of winter frosts the air. And as fixed water, Scorpio embodies the saying, “still waters run deep.” I hope I’ve said “deep” often enough to make my point here—Scorpio is subterranean.
This time of year always asks us to ready ourselves for release.
It asks us take full inventory of ourselves, our lives, our thought patterns and feelings, and to come to terms with what it is time to let go of, and what it is that it is worth our lifeforce to keep, to hold, to go after and to create. It is time for brutal honesty (with ourselves if no one else yet) about our actual desires.
And this new moon in particular brings even more intensity to the yard as the sun and the moon (sitting together in a conjunction, as they always are at a new moon) are in a t-square with Uranus, planet of upheaval and shocks, and Saturn, daddy of limits, restrictions and hard nos.
If you’ve been following along, you probably know that the Saturn-Uranus square has been the major cosmic architecture of 2021—marking the battle between tradition vs. innovation, old vs. new, and a time when change becomes unavoidable. This is of course taking place on a collective level, the world stage, but also in our personal lives (especially in the houses that contain Taurus and Aquarius [and also Capricorn] in your natal chart).
The addition of the sun and moon into this signature (they are exactly opposite Uranus on the day of the new moon) highlights the more personal aspects of this tension. This energy may feel like having a foot on the gas and the brake, and fuel an uncomfortable hurry up and stop vibe.
How to Use this New Moon for Your Creativity + Creative Projects
Rather than trying to push through this energy, I recommend taking a little of the Scorpionic medicine (poison) and spending some time deeply feeling into (feel, rather than analyze) what it is we deeply desire right now, and what we don’t—what we’ve perhaps been pursuing because we felt like we were supposed to, or because its what someone else wants for or expects of us.
Use these feels to guide you in what it’s time to let go of and release with the powerful autumnal energy, and to focus in on what does deserve our energy and time as those resources become more limited for the season.
Use any jealousy, envy or vengeful feelings that come up during this time period as information, as guidance into what you may really want and desire. Look not just at the surface desire, but at what’s below, what’s driving it. If you’re feeling jealous (maybe a little petty?) about your friend’s new job,
Now is a season of conserving, reserving and storing, a time of sending the energy to our roots to coil and preserve for the spring—a time of pinpointed focus and release of everything extraneous. So that when we come to the time of growing, producing and extroverting, we have that energy repleted and ready to send out into the world, and into our creative goals and projects.
New Moon Ritual Writing Prompts
Because of the volatile energy of this moon (in Scorpio, plus in aspect with Uranus as well as Saturn), I wouldn’t recommend manifesting or trying to create or draw in with it (unlike many new moons). I am going to focus on exploring and sitting with the questions and energy I posited above, and here are some alternatives. Work with whatever resonates for you.
- What I Desire
Use this exercise on the five layers of desire to get at a deeper sense of what you desire and what may actually be driving that desire:
1. Ask yourself, what do I want? Write your answer.
2. Now ask, why do I want that? Write a response.
3. Now consider, why do I want that?
4. And why do I want that?
5. One more time now, why do I want that?
6. Freewrite on anything that was illuminated for you in the final answer and in the process itself.
- For My Childhood
1. Read “A Modified Villanelle for My Childhood” by Suzi F. Garcia.
2. Write a poem about your own childhood; you can include generational patterns and larger social issues, like racism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, immigration, abuse, violence, recovery, strength, resilience, religion, spirituality—and also include mundane details grounded in the specific.
3. See what you may uncover about both desire and blocks you may want to release, rooted in these familial or social patterns.
A Modified Villanelle for My Childhood
by Suzi F. Garcia
with some help from Ahmad
I wanna write lyrical, but all I got is magical.
My book needs a poem talkin bout I remember when
Something more autobiographical
Mi familia wanted to assimilate, nothing radical,
Each month was a struggle to pay our rent
With food stamps, so dust collects on the magical.
Each month it got a little less civil
Isolation is a learned defense
When all you wanna do is write lyrical.
None of us escaped being a criminal
Of the state, institutionalized when
They found out all we had was magical.
White room is white room, it’s all statistical—
Our calendars were divided by Sundays spent
In visiting hours. Cold metal chairs deny the lyrical.
I keep my genes in the sharp light of the celestial.
My history writes itself in sheets across my veins.
My parents believed in prayer, I believed in magical
Well, at least I believed in curses, biblical
Or not, I believed in sharp fists,
Beat myself into lyrical.
But we were each born into this, anger so cosmical
Or so I thought, I wore ten chokers and a chain
Couldn’t see any significance, anger is magical.
Fists to scissors to drugs to pills to fists again
Did you know a poem can be both mythical and archeological?
I ignore the cataphysical, and I anoint my own clavicle.
- The Cry
1. Read the haiku [The cry of the cicada] by Matsuo Basho.
2. Write a haiku in response.
3. Remember life is short. Bask in your dark Scopionic depths.
[The cry of the cicada]
by Matsuo Basho
The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die.