Twelve years ago, I made a change to my morning routine to break my habit of hitting the snooze button. I resolved to get up, get dressed, and get out the door to put my workout first. I called my new routine “Fitness First.” Since then, I haven’t missed a daily workout.
At the time, it was a radical departure from my old habits. As a service professional, it felt like a huge risk to my business and my sense of identity to ignore emails, text messages, and social media in the morning and “indulge” in my morning workout.
Over the past decade, as I’ve coached others on creating radical changes through my program The Ritual Revolution, one of the big pieces of resistance that comes up for them is the belief that “that’s not possible for me.” Everyone has reasons why they “must” check email first thing in the morning or why they can’t put themselves fist even for 30 minutes.
New Moon in Virgo: A Restart
The New Moon in Virgo (August 23, 2:06 AM ET, 0º23’ Virgo) occurs in the first degree of Virgo, just hours after the Sun’s entrance into the sign. This is a double beginning — with both the Sun and the moon starting fresh.
This is the first of two new moons we’ll have in Virgo season in 2025. The second new moon (September 21, will occur in the last degree of the sign, and will be a partial solar eclipse, which marks potent beginnings and endings.
This first new moon in Virgo invites you to consider how you can create a fresh start for yourself, and what radical change to your systems, routines, and rituals can support that restart.
New Moon in Virgo: Upgrade to Systems, Routines, and Rituals
Any situation has good parts and parts that “could be better” — to use a diplomatic phrase.
Some people naturally see the good first. They see the positive side of everything; they focus on big picture stuff.
That’s not the situation in Virgo.
Virgo is a sign where both benefic planets struggle: Jupiter, the planet of optimism, in its detriment; Venus, the planet of sweetness and harmony, is in its fall.
In addition, Mercury — the planet of details — is both the ruler and in its exaltation in Virgo, which makes Virgo a very mercurial place.
Virgo is a place where our tendency is to first overlook what’s good and instead focus on the flaws in something.It often focuses on the small details that are wrong instead of the big things that are great. In Virgo, we see what needs to be fixed.
Virgo will find the typo that everyone else missed. It will spot the flaw in your plan, the leak in your systems, the place where your routine is falling apart.
Perfectionism is its driving force, criticism and judgment its most common tools.
How Can You Make It Better?
But here’s the thing about Virgo: it doesn’t point out the flaws just to point them out. Virgo points out the flaws to be of service.
Virgo is a sign of healing. It wants to heal our illness, our broken places, our fractured world.
It highlights what’s wrong because it wants to make things better.
And, because it’s an earth sign, it’s willing to get its hands dirty with the work of healing. Virgo loves to tinker, to patchke, to improve, to fix what’s broken.
Virgo is not just shouting orders and directions from the sidelines. It’s on the ground, in the trenches, putting its hands to work to patch what’s broken.
Virgo loves systems, routines, and rituals that can make life and work easier.
Consistent with this approach, the new moon in Virgo invites us to consider what is not working in our systems, routines, and rituals, and how to fix them.
This isn’t the time to sugarcoat your frustration with “well it all works out in the end, so it’s fine.”
In order to change what’s not working you need to get frustrated and angry and to that point where you have no choice but to admit that the system is broken and that it needs to be fixed, and to empower yourself with the belief that you can fix it.
A Revolutionary Change
The new moon in Virgo is always a good time to change your routines, upgrade your systems, and break habits that have been holding you back.
Sometimes, what’s needed is a small refinement, a tweak to the system.
But this particular New Moon in Virgo may surprise you with a breakthrough about a more radical or revolutionary change you need to make to your systems, routines, and rituals around your work.
That’s because this new moon is in a square with Uranus, which is newly in Gemini. A square is an aspect of friction — it represents an obstacle we must navigate to move forward.
Uranus is the planet of surprises, breakthroughs, revolutions, and rebellions. In Gemini, it seeks to liberate us from the structures that inhibit our authentic expression.
Uranus brings restlessness, boredom with the familiar, a sense of feeling restricted by routine, and a desire to break free from the constraints that are limiting us.
Uranus in Gemini is part of the new landscape that we are living through right now. The world is undergoing radical changes: politically, economically, technologically. In this new era, the systems, solutions, and structures that have worked for us before will not continue to work the same way.
What got you here won’t get you to the next place.
Sometimes what’s needed is a revolutionary change in approach.
A Radical Mindset Shift
Mercury is the ruler of both Virgo, where the New Moon occurs, and Gemini, where Uranus is. That means Mercury — the planet of thinking, communication, and ideas — has a strong influence over this lunation.
That means that this radical, revolutionary, breakthrough or change may show up first in your thinking, mindset, and beliefs about what is even possible for you in the first place. With the Sun and Moon square to Uranus, we might have a breakthrough in our perspective.
The square represents an obstacle. The way around an obstacle is to change your angle on it. When you change your angle, you change your perspective. You have new revelations that can lead to revolutions.
This new moon can help you see options that you hadn’t previously seen, let alone considered.
Mercury is still in Leo, where it’s focused on authentic expression. This influence can help us cultivate the courage to take the risk of authentic expression and action. Mercury in Leo does not shy away from boldness.
Create a Revolution in Your Rituals and Routines
My “new” Fitness First ritual twelve years ago was the first seed in an approach that I eventually named The Ritual Revolution — a framework that I teach others for creating revolutionary change in your routines and rituals, and the mindset underlying them, in service of your authentic expression.
This New Moon in Virgo square Uranus in Gemini invites you to create your own Ritual Revolution — a radical change to your mindset, routines, rituals, and systems in service of your authenticity.
This might mean a radical departure from your previous habits and rituals, or making decisions that might surprise others.
They might even surprise you.
[…] the heels of the Virgo new moon, the Sun moves forward to form an exact square with Uranus in […]