August 23: Virgo New Moon
Life is full of surprises, which Virgos find inconvenient. Virgo season is back to school organization at its best. But this year there's a wildcard in the house of tidy that's making even our best laid plans go awry–Uranus in Gemini. The Sun moves into Virgo at 4:34PM ET on August 23, and immediately squares Uranus in Gemini, creating friction and destabilization in the places we'd most like certainly. This eccentric energy is seeded into the Virgo New Moon and will be present for all future lunations for the next eight years.
Uranus is squaring the New Moon at 00°23 Virgo at 2:06AM ET on August 23, causing friction and unpredictable conversations. Normally, lunations in this mutable earth sign are a time to declutter your house and clarify the mind. Virgo values an economy of effort and loves to work intelligently. Its goal is to get the greatest success from the minimum amount of supplies, work, and expenditures.
The planet of awakening, upheaval, and unexpected enlightenment, Uranus, moved into Gemini on July 7, and will be hanging out around the first degree until November causing static for all mutable signs: Pisces, Sagittarius, Virgo, and Gemini. We haven't yet seen what this unpredictable outer planet intends to do, but Virgo season, from August 22-September 22, is giving Uranus an opportunity to shake us up, down, and all around.
Virgo is the thorough person who likes to consider every detail and create an exacting plan before acting. There's a love of control and the satisfaction of a job well done based on forethought and preparation. Unfortunately, for those of us who crave a sense of security, Uranus in Gemini is issuing an invitation towards freedom that could make the most responsible Virgos act a bit out of pocket.
We get busy during Virgo season and doing can give us the illusion of control, but Uranus in Gemini would like to disabuse us of that falsehood by adding in a healthy dose of unpredictability. What's more, there are actually two New Moons this Virgo season: one at the beginning and first degree, and an eclipse at the last degree, 29° Virgo, on September 21st. So we are now officially in eclipse season. Wahoo.
The lunar nodes moved into Pisces-Virgo in January, but we haven't had eclipses in both signs, until now. The first Virgo Full Moon eclipse was on March 14, but it was in the middle of the Aries retrograde mess so it may have felt harder to parse out its effects. Although the eclipse cycle will last until 2027, this is the first and last time we have a full set of eclipses between the Pisces-Virgo polarity:
September 7, 2025: New Moon eclipse 15°23 Pisces
September 21, 2025: New Moon partial eclipse 29°05 Virgo
If you know your natal chart, pay attention to the houses with Pisces and Virgo on the cusp because they are both getting activated in ways that bring about new beginnings and sudden endings. The North Node will cause growth and advancement in Pisces, as the South Node encourages us to release and let go with Virgo. See my handy eclipse guide to the full Pisces-Virgo cycle of 2024-2027 exclusively on Patreon.
This first Virgo New Moon on August 23, free from the tail of the dragon, asks us to create back up plans in case our normal systems fail. We're invited to touch earth and consider what grounds us when life feels ungrounded? How do we keep functioning and maintaining the practical routines of living in the midst of so much uncertainty? Use this lunation to journal about the strategies you've devised to meet life as it is and see if inspiration doesn't find you about ways to innovate your practices.
Earth signs have an affinity for nature–herbs, plants, gardens–and the hard work required to maintain something beautiful. The harvest maiden symbol contains a sickle because it is a time of reaping and evaluating. After the planting of Spring and proliferation of Summer, Virgo comes in at the end to take stock of what has come to fruition at the reaping. You can't prepare for what eclipse season will bring but you can ground into the daily habits and routines that support your mental health, like watering the flowers each morning.
Earth signs crave stability so Uranus transit through Taurus, since March 2019, has caused a level of destabilization with the food supply chain, climate crises, and banking (especially with crypto currency). Uranus will return to Taurus from November 7, 2025-April 26, 2026. This brief four month blip in Gemini is an activating moment for communication, technology, and social networks.
Pay attention to what pops off around the Virgo New Moon as an indication of where your systems need upgrading over the next several years. Uranus in Gemini is going to bring big tech advancements, but it might look like the robots going haywire before all the bugs are sorted out. Don't be a guinea pig if you don't need to; pass on the beta models and get your cyber security in order so you aren't caught in a data leak next Spring.
Virgo is the economist that is concerned with what is optimum. Its polarity, Pisces, is the realm of dreams where all things are possible and nothing is real. The subconscious where we process difficult experiences and glimpse spiritual truths from a state of total Oneness. Virgo seeks to order chaos. There is a fear of what is unreliable and an unsparing anger can be invoked when Virgo is not able to execute in the way it sees fit. But eclipse season shows us that we can't fight chaos. Pisces knows that the best we can do is find calm in the midst of storms. Maybe where we get blown was actually where we were meant to end up all along?