Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. — Carl Jung (attributed)
Everyone has a dark side. Everyone has parts and pieces of themselves in the shadow. Everyone.
The shadow is the term that Carl Jung gave to the parts of ourselves that drive our actions from our subconscious.
This in itself is not a problem. In fact, it’s by design. As Jung said,
How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.
The problem arises when we’re not aware of our shadow. Wholeness only comes when we can recognize and embrace all of our parts.
Often, what keeps us stuck in life are these dark parts we haven’t acknowledged. We don’t realize how much our deepest emotions, drives, desires, and unhealed wounds are driving our daily choices and behaviors.
New Moon in Scorpio: Explore Your Driving Forces
The new moon in Scorpio (November 1, 8:47 AM ET at 9°35’) invites us to unravel the threads of our motivation and drives.
At a new moon, the moon is dark. This phase of the lunar cycle invites us inward to reflect and introspect about what is truly aligned with our deepest truth. And Scorpio – passionate, resourceful, focused, probing, deep, and perceptive—helps us explore what lies beneath the surface.
The Scorpio new moon invites us to uncover the link between our emotions, unhealed wounds, and deeper subconscious desires, and our choices and behaviors.
It can be uncomfortable to state our desires. Maybe we feel undeserving, or shame about what we desire. Maybe we can’t even see what it is, because it’s so deeply buried.
When we get radically honest with ourselves about what we feel and what we desire, we can heal those wounds and break through the stagnation.
What’s Stealing Your Power?
The biggest influence on the energy of this new moon is Mars, the ruler of Scorpio, at the last degree of Cancer standing in opposition to Pluto at the last degree of Capricorn.
An opposition is an aspect of tension: two planets in a push-pull, or a tug-of-war. And war is often the appropriate metaphor when Mars and Pluto form a tense aspect.
Mars is the Warrior: the planet of action, drive, and willpower. It speaks to how we take action and get things done; how we pursue our goals. In Cancer, its actions are driven by emotion, often prompted by unmet childhood needs.
Pluto is the Lord of the Underworld: the planet of transformation and power. It’s been traveling through Capricorn since 2008, asking us to uncover our tendencies toward workaholism, or our obsession with status, achievements, and material security.
This opposition highlights the tension between what our ego wants and what our soul wants; what we are pursuing versus what our heart truly desires.
Mars-Pluto oppositions always involve a power struggle where there’s a non-obvious dynamic — a source of power that’s beneath the surface of things — that is exerting some control or influence on the situation.
The Scorpio new moon invites us to unearth that hidden force that might be sabotaging our efforts and bring it into the light. Once we see it, we don’t have to allow it to run our show.
Endings and Beginnings
This opposition between Mars and Pluto is particularly significant because it speaks to the theme of transformation that is at the heart of Scorpio’s signification.
Mars and Pluto are at the final degrees of Cancer and Capricorn, and it’s their last opposition from these signs that we will witness in our lifetime.
It’s the closing chapter of a story that has been unfolding since Pluto entered Capricorn 2008. This new moon is a perfect time to process any grief from this significant ending.
At the same time, this opposition is the first of three between the two planets that is tied to the upcoming Mars retrograde. Mars will oppose Pluto twice more, but by then Mars will be in Leo and Pluto will be in Aquarius.
So like the new moon itself, this initial opposition is planting a seed for a story that will unfold over time. Like the new moon, it’s an ending and a beginning — and it speaks to a transformation in how these archetypal energies will play out in our personal lives and in the collective.
What’s Driving Your Choices?
The invitation of the new moon in Scorpio is to go deep within to surface what’s driving our actions and behavior, and what’s blocking us from taking aligned action.
This is where we will find our power.
- What hidden influences might be driving your choices?
- Where are you taking action motivated by old wounds and unprocessed emotions?
- Where are you giving your power away without realizing it?
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