Personally, I love this energy. Eclipse season was a Time, and I’m ready for the glorious reset that is a Virgo New Moon. I’m especially excited to remember why I love Virgo lunations, actually! (When they’re not with the south node!!!)

The coming week will be a great time to check in with our priorities and plans, especially as we are officially (and emotionally) transitioning out of summer. I live near an elementary school, and the kids sure are back. (Their feral screams as they are released to recess echo up and down the streets of New York City.)

Whatever got shunted to the side with summer’s wildly long Mercury Rx in Cancer, or bogged down in the morass of August’s eclipses, is now re-emerging for your consideration and attention. Good news: we’ve got the energy to deal with whatever we’ve been putting off. This moon makes a sextile to Mars in Cancer, equipping us to address recent emotions that packed a wallop. (At the very least, we have the energy and focus to compartmentalize!) Mercury, the ruler of this moon, has also just moved into Libra, which brings a diplomatic edge to our communications and catch-ups — always helpful when coming out of eclipse disaster zone.

There is a productivity to this moon, which is nice when you’re trying to get projects back on track, but this energy is not productive for productivity’s sake. There is also a particularity, a goal, a finesse. This moon is in the second decan of Virgo, after all, the one that astro-mage Austin Coppock calls “The Hammer and the Anvil.” Coppock writes,

Which is to say, this moon highlights the tension between the process and the product, the years of preparation versus the public reveal. It’s notable to me that this second decan of Virgo is ruled by Venus, which alludes to the contrast between the beauty of the finished thing versus the wreckage of an art studio that it takes to get there.

A particularly potent lived example of someone with a placement in this decan is the late Dolly Parton, whose ascendant was at 14* Virgo (her moon itself was in Virgo’s first decan). I think of how expertly she discussed the process of being and making and performing Dolly Parton — “it takes a lot of money to look this cheap!” — but never actually showed us that process.

Parton pointed out, explicitly and often, the artifice of the “town tramp” look she had fashioned for herself. In this way, she brought us in on the open secret of show business — that this is constructed, this is a performance, all this only comes after — while never letting us see her in the before. Her image was tightly controlled. I have never once have seen a photo or video of her out of makeup or hair or glam, and unless you were in her inner circle, you haven’t, either.

The second decan of Virgo is characterized by a meticulous self-presentation that is very honest, very frank about the process, but that doesn’t put everything on display. It is judicious about what to reveal, what to make public, what to alchemize as part of Brand and Image. It knows that its own vulnerabilities and insecurities are part of the process, but that those perhaps don’t have a place on the [book/album] tour.

For more than six decades, Dolly Parton pulled off the nearly impossible magic trick of being profoundly authentic, relatable, warm, and kind hearted while performing. That’s the power of a Virgo II placement — and it’s one that’s accessible to us with this lunation.

Sometimes, it is a gift to bring your audience behind-the-scenes, to de-mystify, to be open about industry usually gatekept. This is why I do free Q&As with my agent Dana Murphy for aspiring writers interested in traditional publishing. It’s why Book Deal Breakthrough exists.

But sometimes, things are just for us in our private lives. Sometimes, an experience doesn’t have to be content. Sometimes, it shouldn’t be.

Notably, this moon arrives in a time when frustration with generative AI is at an all-time high, and folks are embracing lo-fi, typos, and the unfiltered as a way of centering the humanness of their art. The tension between the process and the product! We are in a moment, culturally, where too much polish (ironically) can work against you when it comes to building trust with folks around you.

After a volatile, emotional eclipse season, this New Moon arrives as a minty-clean refresh and reset.

Thank you for subscribing to Astrology for Writers! This has been a 100% reader-funded, human-written publication for seven years, and I appreciate y’all more than you know. If you’d like to support the newsletter with a paid subscription (and join the Discord!), you can click here.