The New Moon in Leo: Try a Little Tenderness
+ a guided coherent-breath meditation for your awesome heart
Hello friends,
Today the moon meets up with the sun in the part of the sky known as Leo, the sign of self expression and personal radiance (and providing beautiful dark viewing conditions for the end of the Perseid Meteor shower, which peaked on Sunday.)
Happy Lion’s New Moon.
Some questions to ponder in the dark sky of this moment:
How is your heart?
Where is your center?
The core of the New Moon in Leo is courage
This new moon emphasizes the center, the core, the heart. The ruler of Leo, the radiant sun, is the center of our solar system, a celestial body that shines in all directions, continuously emitting light and heat. The body part ruled by Leo in ancient astrology is the heart, the center of our bodies, the organ responsible for circulating our blood in a similar way as planets and asteroids circle around the sun.
This Leo new moon is about courage. Follow the word to the Latin root cor, the same root as the word core, meaning heart. In its original form the word meant to “speak one’s mind while telling all one’s heart.” In the Wizard of Oz, the cowardly lion asked the Wiz for courage and received a medal of honor, but he could have asked for the same thing as the tin man and received much more: a heart. Courage is all about being centered within yourself, feeling into your authentic feelings, and making choices from that tender place.
The word encouragement also originates from the heart-root. Today, I encourage you to have the courage to lean into your heart’s messages. The joyful, the sad, the bursting out, the tender. They all carry essences of personal truth, distilled and refined by the journey of your life story.
A guided coherent-breath meditation for the New Moon in Leo
Get comfy wherever you’re sitting, push play on the audio below, close your eyes, and enjoy a 7 minute guided breath meditation for the heart. <3
Or, read the transcript for the meditation below, and take the words and feelings with you to your own meditation or breath practice:
Putting your hand on your heart, take a moment and close your eyes. Feel the steady beat. Breathe into this space, in through your nose and out through your nose. Visualize glowing rays of sunlight lighting up your heart, illuminating its messages, its feelings. Think about the consistency of the pulse, the beauty of this tender organ carrying blood in and out, circulating life through your body. Keep breathing along with each heartbeat. With each beat, imagine the radiant golden glow of the sun’s light entering your heart, and that warm golden light being released through the rest of your body. Let the warmth circulate through your veins and arteries, filling you with light and with life. Take a moment to be amazed, in awe, of the simple and profound beauty of your heart, the center of your body that works consistently to keep us alive. Take a moment to be amazed, in awe, of the simple and profound beauty of our sun, the radiant star that connects all the planets in our solar system, that gives us warmth and gravity and life.
A soft, powerful, tender organ. Connected to the hundreds of billions of other animal hearts that surround us on this planet.
A small, powerful, dwarf star. Connected to the hundreds of billions of other stars in our universe.
This New Moon’s Aspects: Phoenix (Unpredictably) Rising from the Ashes
The moon and sun meeting up in the sky always indicate a time of new beginnings, seeds being planted, times of aligning our inner emotions with our outer ambitions and expressions. Today the lunar/solar conjunction is also conjoined by Venus, adding extra emphasis to the tender, feminine energy of the lunation.
New Moon Conjunct Venus in Leo
With Venus in conjunction with the moon and sun, our emotions (moon) and ambitions (sun) are aligned with the planet of our desires and values.
These elements of our life have been under review, reconsideration, and renewal since July, when Venus began her retrograde period. We are now over halfway through the period of Venus appearing to go backwards in the part of the sky known as Leo. This past Sunday marked the halfway point of the retrograde, when Venus aligned exactly between the Sun and the Earth for a Cazimi, a moment of clarity amidst all the re-workings and re-viewings of retrograde time. A Cazimi, from the Arabic Kasmimi, means “in the heart of the sun”, and is known traditionally as a time of insights, downloads, and epiphanies regarding Venusian themes of beauty, desire, values, and personal truths. Time to get to the heart of the matter.
Venus will turn direct on September 3rd, so we have another couple of weeks of integrating these themes and how they relate to the heart-centered and Sun-ruled sign of Leo. (Look at what house Leo is in in your chart for a clue as to where these themes will affect you).
The Venus Cazimi midpoint was akin to her reaching the depths of the underworld after her descent from an evening star, passing over the sun and being reborn as a morning star. The current Venusian energy is akin to the Phoenix rising out of the ashes, fueled by the tended hearth-flame of Leo season.
Having today’s new moon so close to the Venus Cazimi could highlight feelings of freshness and new potentials with how you express yourself, how you radiate authentic you-ness from the inside out, and how you’re ready to be re-born in the light of a new era.
“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames”
~ Rumi
New Moon and Venus Square Uranus in Taurus
As Venus conjoins the the moon and sun, they are all making a square to the lightning bolt’s muse, erratic Uranus, who has been transiting through the part of the sky known as Taurus for the past few years. Uranus, the modern day ruler of Aquarius, has domain over electricity, innovation, sudden change, surprises, and the future, and a square aspect indicates an energetic standoff, a doorway to pass through to a new reality.
This square aspect in the skies may make this fresh authenticity you may be experiencing feel quite uncomfortable, or at least unfamiliar, like being stuck in between two rooms. Ch-ch-ch-changes are happening, likely in both your material world (Taurus) and in the way you express yourself in the world (Leo). The square between the two will bring growth in new and unexpected ways, and you may find yourself wrestling with the adjustments that need to be made to shine your inner truth into your social sphere, job, and home. Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose… so set yourself free this full moon and follow your true feelings and desires along paths less traveled.
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. So if you’re feeling uncomfortable right now, know that the change taking place in your life is a beginning, not an ending.
~ Neale Donald Walsch
To shine with your deepest authenticity… try a little tenderness
In personal new-moon news, I just got back from a weeklong trip to New York City that felt like it lasted a month. It was a perfect journey for the astrology of the moment: filled with both heart-swells and tenderness.
My partner and I traveled to the big apple with my daughter, so she could spend a week with her dad in the city he calls home. The first time we made this journey, it was the summer of 2021, and during that time my emotions oscillated between denial-shock-regret-envy-disappointment-anger-rage-relief-tension-excitement-exhaustion-and, probably most of all, disassociation. My kid’s dad and I were recently divorced, and visiting him there was visceral, living proof that we had chosen dramatically different paths. To make matters more intense, the Delta surge of the Covid pandemic made it so we didn’t ride the subway or go to shows and masking was still required almost everywhere. So much was up that summer, so deep was I in the ever-crashing waves of transformative life change, that it was impossible to truly process these feelings.
This time around, after 2 years of ups-and-downs and an untangling of lives that could only be gradual, I again found myself feeling all of the above emotions, but in much smaller doses. The overarching feelings of the trip were heart-swelling, overflowing. I was deeply inspired by the New York I remembered from pre-pandemic times - the unlimited diversity of food, the convenience of the subway, the abundant street art, the heat of basketball games in corner lots, the impromptu rooftop concerts, the immersive late-night burlesque shows, the pleasure of waking up slow next to my love as the busy world buzzed by outside the window.
I noticed feeling a new degree of comfort within the new normal, my particular life-shape’s new normal. I felt the joy my daughter felt getting to ride the carousel, eat pretzels, and roller-skate on the Brooklyn piers with her dad. I felt joy in trusting that feeling could be real for her, that her life path is hers to follow, that I can be there to support her in that.
We flew back home on Sunday, which was the day of the Venus Cazimi, a transit that had been proclaimed to me by many astrologers as a time for deep epiphanies and moments of clarity. I was in transit for most of the day, so didn’t expect much to happen or come through. But when I touched down in Albuquerque, I felt embraced by the jet-black nothingness of the night, in stark contrast to the hyper-stimulation of Flatbush Ave in Brooklyn, the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop in Prospect Park, and infinite choices of food, drink, and entertainment in the city. In that potent New Mexico darkness, driving past the Sandia Mountains, a feeling of deep sadness came over my heart. And it felt so… good. So real. So… tender.
Feeling, deep in my heart the real tenderness of my daughter’s voice saying she missed her papa, tears rolling down her cheeks. I was scrolling through a news app and feeling the horrific reality of the devastation caused by fire in Lahaina, Maui, a town and an island that my family has been lucky enough to have spent a good amount of time visiting. (Please consider donating Here to help the people of Lahaina, especially if you’ve ever spent any time visiting Maui <3).
I was feeling the depths of what it means to miss someone so dearly, to miss a place so dearly, and to miss a moment time that will never occur again, ever. To miss the idea of what I thought something would be, the tender sadness of knowing that life has its own mysterious ways of co-creating our path with us, and that it’s really not up to only us alone.
Like the brilliant Pixar movie Inside-Out points out, sadness is an oft-confused and shunned away emotion. What is it for? Joy continues to try to push Sadness to the sidelines, until it’s too much to bear. Until she has her epiphany moment of seeing Sadness as a necessary way to focus attention on what truly matters. On the emotions that are deeper than Joy herself.
While all emotions have their place, sadness and joy as two sides of a coin, stand out this new moon. The dichotomy between exuberant, NYC-in-the summertime-joy and the deep well of sadness that sprung up immediately after felt so pure. Anger feels too-fast. Envy feels muddled. But the essences of pure joy and pure sadness feel identical in their magnitude of heartful-ness.
“Grief and Praise”, as my dear friend Firefly Walter wrote in a song, “are one-and-the-same”. Grief is a natural way that love honors what it misses.
I drink from the well of grief The tears allows me to see The fear of losing all that I love Can I now face my own mortality? I drink from the well of grief The pain allows me to name The love that I’ve had, but always held back It is now safe to fill all the space Grief and praise are one and the same Grief and praise share a common ache Deep down this far, there’s only this left Sit with what is, let go of the rest Deep down this far There’s only one aim Breathe and give thanks Breathe and Give thanks I stand on the shore of the praise The waves remind me to face The rage that’s inside, can only subside When I surrender to the salty tide I stand in a field of praise Devotion can reach all the way Up to the stars, back to this broken heart All I have is the ground beneath my feet
Sadness, a barometer for gratitude, a barometer for moments of life well-lived
On the 2 legs of my plane rides home, I randomly chose a couple movies to watch from Delta’s huge selection. First was The Whale, a dark 2022 Aronofsky film about an obese man trying to connect with his estranged daughter, and Call Me By Your Name, a gorgeous film about a teen boy who has a love affair with his father’s research assistant in 1980s Italy.
I didn’t expect both of these films to emanate such poignant commentary on the beautiful nature of sadness, let alone that both of them would show that through the lens of a parent. Both films ended with tears streaming down cheeks, both on-screen and off. The kind of tears that are not tainted with anger or disappointment or resentment or envy, but true tears of sadness. The kind of tears that somehow include memories of the joy of what has been lost within their salty liquid.
The Whale is uncomfortable and disturbing to watch, and at moments makes you wonder if there is any redeeming quality to any of the characters (much like many of Aranofsky’s movies- think Pi, Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan). But more than almost any of these other films, the depth of sadness within it highlighted the potential for redemption, for hope, for joy, in life, or at the very least within one man’s mind. Brendan Frasier won best actor Oscar for his stunning and emotional performance, and no wonder- it tenderized my still-beating heart.
Call Me By Your Name, on the other hand, is stunningly beautiful to watch- summertime on the Italian Riviera, filled with beautiful statues and fountains and people, through the eyes of a 17 year old who is falling deeply in love for the first time. This film starts out with hope- and happiness, and exalted joy and sensuality-, and ((spoiler alert)) ends with that radiant, pure, life-affirming sadness that comes from having loved and and lost.
“When you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot,” Samuel the father tells his heartbroken son Elio. “Just remember: I am here. Right now, you may not want to feel anything — maybe you never wished to feel anything and maybe it’s not to me that you’ll want to speak about these things. But feel something, you obviously did.”
It continues:
(Watch the scene below, or better yet, catch the whole movie here on Netflix.)
Ahhhh, good cinema, watched at a time when it can really sink in. Both films showcased a radical acceptance of parents for their children’s feelings, life paths, desires, differences, and potentials…. which hit me like a ton of (really lovely) bricks.
I’ll end with these 2 musings on this new moon in self-expressive, creative Leo:
First, art is everything.
Graffiti, cinema, food, dance, installation art, painting, singing, architecture… where would we be in the journey for understanding what it means to be human without art?
Second, a quote that feels truly apt in this moment:
All my love, dear readers.
Keep living. Keep grieving. Keep loving.
‘Til the full moon in Pisces,
Alison