The upcoming New Moon is marked by celestial death, grief and rebirth. In a few hours, it will occur at 28 degrees of Scorpio, where the lunar waters descend into their most dense and mortal state. The previous Venusian lunation is near its setting and the of the Queen of Night fades within the dark iron of Mars. In Scorpio, the sign of death, putrefaction and regeneration, the Moon is in her her zodiacal fall. Her aquatic and emotional current becomes here a stagnant lake, and the maternal tone acquire take the weight of blood and metal.
At this penultimate degree, the silver reflection of the Moon is constrained by two malefic forces: the cutting power of Mars and the melancholy of Saturn, ruler of the bound. This New Moon is an act of interior alchemy, as the celestial womb closes itself in a submerged tomb to perform the hidden miracle of regeneration. The poisoned waters of Scorpio hold within them the secret of healing, since only poison recognises its own antidote.
This New Moon is also the stage of a triple conjunction, as Mercury retrograde is already under the burning cazimi force of the sun in the very same degree of the novilunium.
I. The Bound and Decan of the New Moon
The Saturnian bound gives this lunation its tone of condensation and closure. Saturn, in the final tens days of his retrograde motion in Pisces, stands in a twilight condition, almost stationary, its form dissolving into the oceanic realm. As ruler of the bound, it impresses upon the New Moon a mood of introspection and emotional distillation. The trine in Water between Saturn and the solar-lunar conjunction shows a coherent, hidden process, a subterranean work of psychic crystallisation. Saturn is filter and echo, compelling Scorpio to mature its own poison until it becomes wisdom.
The final decan of Scorpio is ruled by Mercury and introduces a shift of consciousness. The winged god is retrograde and peregrine precisely in the same bound, returning from Sagittarius, and soon to conjoin the Sun and Moon. This comeback to the martial womb purifies the intellect. The upcoming cazimi is the instant when thought is burned down to its intelligible essence. It is a cognitive catharsis, a death of the mind so that it may think with truth. The apparent darkness becomes the alchemical furnace where reason is redeemed, learning to see with the eyes of Spirit too.
In the Tarot, the Seven of Cups is tied to this final decan of Scorpio. It marks the moment when desire, multiplied into seven reflections, no longer discerns the source of its own light. It is the cup of Venus clouded by Scorpionic shadow, with the images of pleasure and escape blurring into one another. As the decan is ruled by Mercury, the retrograde motion of Hermes now calls for purification of sight and speech. The intellect must separate truth from illusion, distilling the waters heavy with emotion. It is a hermetic act of discernment.
The New Moon, coinciding with this decan, illuminates that very work of discrimination. The Sun in Scorpio burns away the hollow forms of desire and restores to Eros its sacred power of interior union. Mercury, now entering cazimi, transforms deception into lucidity: the Logos passes through fire, and the waters of Netzach become transparent once more. The Seven of Cups is the shattered mirror through which the initiate learns to see beyond the ego and false idols.
II. The Blind Condition of Mars – Ruler of this New Moon
Mars, ruler of this New Moon and host to Mercury’s retrogradation, stands utterly peregrine in Sagittarius: the warrior is out of his dominion, sword raised skyward, but with no ground beneath his feet. The mutable fire he inhabits is restless and visionary, forever reaching beyond, but now subjected to Jupiter. And that Jupiter, the diurnal benefic, is retrograde and exalted in Cancer, the most uterine of the signs, at the nadir of the chart. Mars’ impulse toward ascent and combat is filtered through maternal water, producing tension between expansion and containment. The quincunx linking Cancer and Sagittarius, a non-Pythagorean relation, perfectly mirrors this dissonance: an impossible dialogue between unstable fire and primordial uterus.
Moreover, Mars now rules Scorpio blindly, since between Scorpio and Sagittarius lie only thirty degrees. He governs without sight and is ruled without being seen. This double veil between ruler and ruled intensifies the lunation’s subterranean tone: the martial force works in secrecy, without direct illumination, guided solely by its deep instinct. Mars is the hidden craftsman of the process, forging rebirth within the dark matter while his eyes remain fixed upward, awaiting the light that the Sun will reveal.
III. The Second Stellium in Scorpio in Just One Month
This New Moon also comes with a stellium in Scorpio, the second one in just one month. The first, only weeks ago, gathered the Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Mars. It was a concentration of forces under the full command of domiciled Mars, cohesive, incisive, and surgical. Scorpio acted then as the physician of the soul, cutting and releasing with precision. Now, however, the landscape has shifted entirely. Mars has departed his throne and wanders peregrine through Sagittarius, leaving his dark realm to four planets stripped of dignity: the Sun and Moon in transmutation, Mercury retrograde, and a wounded Venus. The tone is even more heavy and psychic. This is Scorpio the fermenter, working in darkness to reshape the substance of the soul.
Here enters Venus, absent from the former stellium. The goddess, midway through her Scorpionic passage, exposes her erotic wound under the rule of her opposite Ares. Love, which once reconciled, is now tested by iron; Venus in Scorpio learns to love through loss. Her poison becomes medicine only through purification. Her conjunction with retrograde Mercury on November 25, immediately followed by her Morning Setting, enacts this ritual of silence: word and desire descend together to die and be reborn refined. That all this occurs within a Jupiterian bound and a watery trine to retrograde Jupiter exalted in Cancer seals the promise of a balm, at least.
IV. The Scorpio-Gemini Axis of the Full Moon
This lunation does not complete itself along the traditional Scorpio–Taurus axis, which seals the passage from death to material redemption, but through a rarer polarity: Scorpio–Gemini. After two consecutive New Moons in Virgo, the Moon’s contrapuntal motion brings the Full Moon to 13 degrees of Gemini on December 4, an airy mutable realm where she holds no dignity whatsoever. Rather than resting in the fertile body of Fixed Earth following her somber rebirth in Scorpio, she reaches her peak in the domain of dispersion and thought, becoming a pure messenger. The zenith will be intellectual and unstable, a brightness that thinks rather than nourishes.
Mercury, ruler of Gemini and co-significator of the lunation, heightens this hermetic character of the Full Moon. By then, it will be direct, still in Scorpio and within the same decan that hosted the New Moon. The cycle closes upon its own reflection: the Word returns to the point of its conception, now conscious but still damp with shadow. The apex of this Moon will be a state of lucid restlessness.
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