Eclipses can feel intoxicating. Their effects creep up on us like a prophetic fog, veiling and revealing topics that have reached an intersection between our past and present consciousness. This new moon is a solar eclipse occurring on Saturday, October 14th at 21° Libra at 1:55 pm EST. It initiates approximately a year and a half of eclipses on the Aries and Libra axis within the zodiac. In the sky, eclipses make the visible invisible, miraculously demonstrated by the temporary dimming of either the Sun or Moon’s light. It is a dramatic phenomenon, near perfect in its alignment and a symbolic reminder that not even our most essential, life-giving celestial bodies shine freely at all times.
This new moon in Libra is specifically called an annular solar eclipse because the Moon will pass between us and the Sun from its farthest point from Earth while close to the ecliptic, making it appear just a bit smaller than the Sun. As a result, the flaming outer edge of the Sun forms a golden ring around the Moon’s darkened body.
Collectively, throughout this Aries and Libra eclipse cycle, lasting until spring of 2025, we’ll consider how we define the edges of our relationships. Or, how can we apply “relationship” to any given topic one could imagine. Venus, as the planetary guide of this eclipse near the lunar south node, is in Virgo. Here Venus views all configurations of connection through critically high definition. High-def in any relationship has its advantages. It spells things out clearly for everyone. It over emphasizes our needs, wants, and emotions, ensuring all feel explicitly seen and heard. But high definition in relationships also comes with drawbacks. Zoomed in with sharp focus, we begin to see only the irritating and unsatisfying qualities among each other. Or we feel exposed when we would prefer some healthy distance. High definition can leave less room for the imagination. I am reminded of television and films made prior to digital when the absence of precise visual detail added depth and atmosphere to the narrative. In our efforts to experience many aspects of reality as hyperreal and squeaky clean, they have become much less believable.
See what’s in the stars for you this October by checking out your 2023 New Moon in Libra horoscope below.
Aries
As it is written, sharing is caring. The new moon solar eclipse in Libra occurs in your seventh house of contracts and relationships while your planetary ruler Mars has just entered its preferred, more introverted sign, Scorpio. Where normally you communicate quite freely, in Scorpio, hot Mars is tempered by deep, still chthonic waters where a few bubbles at the obsidian-like surface are the only sign of life beneath. Things left unsaid become impossibly obscure. As the eclipse in your chart portends an extended time period where negotiations will require yours and others complete transparency, be aware of where uncomfortable issues pool and become stagnant in interpersonal relationships. No topic is too little or taboo during eclipse time.
Taurus
Aspirations are often best cared for and shared among friends and acquaintances. Venus, your amiable planetary guide, has recently separated from a tense relationship with corruptible Saturn in Pisces, still retrograde in your eleventh house of collective ambitions. For the moment and coming year and a half of eclipses in your sixth house of service and stress consider where you can thrive best unhinged from the crowd. Where once you were committed to developing the trust of slack associations of no fault of your own, consider now the few people close to you as your prime ambassadors. And if romance is on your mind it would be wise to consider putting equal or more effort into your personal relationships as you have poured into professional ones.
Gemini
Within your fifth house of pleasurable gatherings, nothing symbolizes coming together like a new moon solar eclipse in Libra. Specifically, you may be invited or feel called to spend time with siblings, youth or extended members of family as you are their figure of patience and reason. You have infinite reasons to avoid social engagements at the moment but sometimes you’ve got to show up. For yourself and for others. Especially as your guiding planet Mercury is quickly headed towards the Sun where it must temporarily surrender all rational thinking and download some complicated family truths. While keeping your boundaries firm, the Sun and Moon conjoined in relational sign Libra remind us that our light at times must be dispersed in more equal, not singular portions.
Cancer
The new moon solar eclipse in Libra occurs in your fourth house of homeland, buried treasure, and origin. The Moon joining the Sun here creates a restless brew, stirring questions regarding your relationship to the past. As the eroding lunar south node is nearby as well, the coming year and a half of eclipses in your fourth house will dilute the confines of your mental real estate. The earthen quality and eternally fluctuating Moon in the cardinal air sign Libra further emphasize a feeling of wanting to detach from a dependency on numbing stability as well as the revolving thoughts and needs of others. Differing from your obliging nature, the times ahead will have you determining practices of care from more self-supporting places.
Leo
You’re opening up to cutting-edge channels of learning and communication. Especially when looping the movement of the body with the plasticity of the mind. The Moon will conjoin the Sun in Libra in your third house of language, common ideas, and tactile information. Also, the use of your hands. Cursive handwriting, so old it is new again, has seen a perilous decline in use, but research suggests that the oscillating practice of writing script by hand is important for memory and stimulating neural pathways. As Mercury, who also signifies the hands, is in Libra as well at the inception of this eclipse cycle, focus on the way communication and mark making is a visceral as well as intellectual expression.
Your 2023 Fall Horoscope
Virgo
At times we are granted opportunities we can not fathom. They appear as mildly risky windows of chance where up-in-the-air outcomes will rearrange your time, stability, and finances, for better or worse. Venus in Virgo, as the guide of the new moon in Libra in your second house of resources, is located in your first house, indicating you will be directly influenced by said opportunity. But it comes with doubts. Soon Venus will make a cooperative aspect with gracious Jupiter in your ninth house, indicating change could be beneficial for your visibility. Feel resourced to take a leap as we head into this new eclipse cycle. It is evident you have safety nets located where it counts.
Libra
Like a receding tide, elements of your personality will be revealed on the shores of your mind as the Moon and Sun meet near the lunar south node in your first house of embodiment. This eclipse cycle in Aries and Libra will have you discovering modes of relating to the world with naked authenticity. Eye-opening events within career and social circles will bring to light aspects of a persona you’ve developed that have carried you away from yourself. As a wild card, trickster Mercury is also in Libra and prominently placed in your first house. Imagine yourself floating through a doorway into an eternal void. Listen there closely to primal voices who guided your will before lavish responsibilities and irrelevant social expectations took root.
Scorpio
Your barriers are down with Mars, your planetary ruler strongly empowered in its preferred sign of Scorpio in your first house of self. Meanwhile, as the grip of fall tightens, the Moon and Sun will conjoin in your twelfth house of disintegration and invisibility. Scorpios have the secret ability to fly under the radar, or to be felt without being seen. Like a late blooming autumn rose you sense the world around you slipping into oblivion. But the quality of this time for you astrologically is marked with hidden strength and a protectively thorny disposition. The ability to glow in the dark as well. It is a creatively generative month to begin reconsidering the odd beauty and, in turn service you bring to the world.
Sagittarius
You are reaching full tilt with well-intended memberships and subscriptions to worlds within worlds of information, community, and entertainment. It is understandably difficult to resist the cornucopia of content available. But as the solar eclipse new moon in Libra will occur in your eleventh house of spaces we join to feel whole with others, you may begin cutting ties with dormant engagements to communities that no longer nurture your evolving interests. They’ve served their purpose, but for the following year and a half, seek “noise canceling” interests that center your imaginative spirit and place you adjacent to the majority for a while. Attempt to run not against or within, but beside the pack.
Capricorn
When it comes to matters of ambition, with Libra in your tenth house, your ability to make things right can create a fear of letting yourself and others down. If you are the breadwinner at this time, it has become an added responsibility. The new moon solar eclipse will occur in your said tenth house, where for the following year and a half, you’ll be balancing sacrifices made while redefining your goals in exchange for more independence. You’re curious to collaborate with friends and colleagues who share similar passions as well and you should feel empowered to do so. Venus in Virgo, who guides this eclipse, asks to be resourceful with the skill sets you have mastered and what materials are free at hand to be optimized.
Aquarius
As someone guided by Saturn, who is the spiritual and celestial gatekeeper of our solar system, you are unable to bear feeling fenced in by your beliefs. Like our planet, your divine compass spins from a central axis encapsulating everything there is to know while wobbling towards an inevitable future you so embrace. As the Moon and Sun conjoin near the lunar south node in your ninth house of wisdom and conviction you are spread thin philosophically over many polarities. Through countless information highways you’ve taken the cosmic pilgrimage and feel prepared to walk your talk. Straddling the rational and liminal, cut meandering paths, not a freeway, that pulls into focus a worldview right before your eyes.
Pisces
The eclipse cycle beginning on the Libra and Aries axis christens a prolonged time of deeply acknowledging the difference between circumstances that metaphorically feed you well and those that don’t. The new moon in Libra initiates this process in your eighth house of monetary debt and feeling beholden to others. Debts unchecked keep us swimming upstream but with this eclipse on the lunar south node, the tiring currents of debt in your life should begin to recede. It won’t happen on its own. Learning to admit and discuss the taxing effects of soul-sapping obligations is a life skill to be honored and developed during this eclipse cycle. You know more than anyone that true love lives debt-free.
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Story and Imagery by Shane Powers, Enon Valley Astrology
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