The Darkest Hour

New moon at 20° of Scorpio

Artwork by Tomáš Orbán

In the first hours of Monday, at 1:27am PST, while many of us will be asleep and dreaming, the moon goes dark and renews herself, finally, at 20° of Scorpio. We’ve been waiting for this one. Due to the eclipses, we haven’t had a new moon since the new moon in Virgo on September 13th, meaning this is our first new moon of fall. Scorpio was also hosting the south node until this summer, so we have not had a new moon in Scorpio since November 4th, 2021. New moons are times of deep contraction, a time for recharging and resetting. The moon and the sun are in conjunction, so there is no opposition or tension between them. It’s like the soul and the body get to unite in the endlessly listening, receiving dark; resting in the kind of knowing that just being is. This particular new moon marks the official close of the energies of the eclipse season, a turning point in the season and the year. It also heralds a renewal of the part of our lives and psyches that Scorpio leads. We might sense that we are completing our descent into the underworld, a process of undoing. It might be possible to slow down, take stock, tend a little more tenderly; to feel around for a light.

Having said all that, Scorpio is not necessarily a restful or easy place for the moon or the sun to be. Scorpio rules our most intense feelings—our deepest water—the emotions that make us the most vulnerable. Ruled by Mars, Scorpio is known for fierce, stealth defensiveness, for stinging first. But in its mature form, Scorpio is a shamanic archetype, guiding us through the initiation of trauma and healing, through our dark nights of the soul. Scorpio helps us learn how to soften our armor and dismantle those same defenses; how to create and enter sacred space; how to strip down, and allow our raw selves to be exposed, and our feelings to flow. Our most frightening feelings, our overpowering grief and sorrow, in the right dose, in the right empathetic conditions, are the agent of healing. As we grow in understanding of our own darkness and depth, as we address our own woundedness, we become real adults, capable of meeting the pain of the world.

In the collective, this new moon arrives in the midst of war and death and profound anguish, and also expanding calls for ceasefire and peace. Ari Daniel published a piece last Saturday on NPR - "The Israel-Hamas War has not quashed their compassion, their empathy, their hope.” It was long, and rich, and full of living descriptions of what the work of peace has looked like and could look like, and also some real honesty about the seeds of violence, and what hardens the heart. He interviews many people, but he begins and ends with the story of Maoz Inon, who lost his parents in Hamas’ October 7th attack, and is swimming in the sea every morning to keep from drowning in grief. Maoz insists he feels no urge for revenge, that he is crying not just for his parents, but for all the innocent victims of this cycle of death. He believes fiercely in the possibility of a peaceful shared society.

“I have partners and friends in the Palestine territories, in Jordan, in Egypt,” he says, “And I know that they are also sharing with me the thoughts that peace is achievable.”

It’s a peace, he says, that must start with an immediate cease-fire.

And unlike conflict, which political psychologist Leshem says is bloody but familiar to Israelis and Palestinians, hope is different. It’s unfamiliar and unpredictable. “If we kind of accept this unpredictability, “ he says, “take the chance on this uncertain thing - which is called peace between the [Jordan] River and the [Mediterranean] Sea - then this is closely related to hope.”

Inon says he had something of a vision after this war began. It was in the middle of the night, and he awoke in tears.

“And I saw an image of everyone crying,” he recalls. “Just we all cry— you cry, your daughter cry, everyone. And our tears are healing the wounds from Israelis and Palestinians. And our tears wash the blood.”

He says we shouldn't have more weapons, build higher walls and create better security systems. “That’s the old world, OK? You want to start a new world? We need to cry.”

“And then,” he says, “we’ll see the path for peace.”

I was so moved by Maoz’s dream of everyone crying, of our tears washing the blood. It’s been with me this whole last week. If Scorpio had a medicine, this is certainly it. I reread these last few paragraphs, over and over, until I could really feel what he was saying, and then I started crying. Somehow there were tears of hope, and tears of gratitude for being reminded of hope, mixed in with the tears of sorrow and despair I have been crying off and on for weeks. Love has so many dimensions like this.

The Sabian symbol for 20° of Scorpio is “a woman drawing two dark curtains aside.” This could represent an opening to a new view, to seeing the light of a sacred path; it might signal a birth or rebirth of faith. Maybe she is pulling side the veils of ignorance and fear, willing us to see beyond ourselves and this moment, to connect with the greater thing that will guide us through. So just know that if you have been experiencing something beyond sorrow, something more like hopelessness and despair; if all your activism and effort to disrupt systems of oppression and save the world has left you angry and heartbroken, your ideals and certainties shattered; if all of your personal healing has led to having the space in you to feel the trauma of the whole world, and you feel overwhelmed by the task at hand; that makes sense. We’ve all been dosed with darkness, and it’s been a hard time to be a human being, but you got here by giving a shit, so you can trust this challenge. I don’t know what will happen next, but I know these are the conditions that drive spiritual awakening. In our darkest hour, when all of our egoic striving, and performative goodness, and attempts to control the chaos of world, when all of that fails, something else can happen. We are cracked open, finally vulnerable, and something holy speaks to us.

In the coming weeks, we are all being called to wield our power, to act responsibly and hopefully with the limited power we do have. Conditions are shifting, such that our chosen actions and focused energies will have a greater effect than they’ve been able to have for awhile. Conditions are never perfect of course, but we can make the most of better conditions when they arise. Right action combined with right timing is everything. Please rest if you need to rest, re-source yourself if you are depleted. Connect with your ancestors and guides if you do that, and ask for their help. Spend all you have in the economy of prayer. Cry if you’ve been needing to cry. Burn if you’ve been needing to burn. Then still yourself until your inner vision becomes clear, and your inner voice becomes clear. Only then can you discover or return to living within a state of your deepest convictions. Only then can you make of your life an offering, a ripple effect. Whatever activism is your activism, whatever your gifts are and your way of loving on this world, trying to make it more beautiful, we need you. Protesting, praying, teaching, changing bedpans, stocking groceries, feeding people, raising children, keeping elders safe, making songs and poems and gatherings that protect people’s spirits—we need you. In your way, be the living cause of what you want to see in the world.

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Ritual & Creative Prompts

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