During the month following the New Moon in Cancer, late July and much of August, we would likely have been focussing into our emotional needs, perhaps our families, perhaps what we don’t have but feel would make us more secure. During the last month of the Leo New Moon, we were likely focusing on expectations of personal enjoyment, what makes us feel fulfilled as individuals whether we can achieve that state or not, and how we can express our creative self in our world.

The accountability of Virgo

The New Moon for the following month is in Virgo, so the focus is on organising all the parts of our lives into a wholeness that actually works. During this effort, we will be discovering the areas of life that we have allowed to fall behind the way we like to see ourselves. This is the month to realise what we need to do so that those areas make a workable and supportive contribution to the rest. It can feel as though what needs to be done is not really important in the bigger picture as we see it; it could feel too detailed and finicky but, if we don’t sort out the places where we are wearing thin, the more important bits collapse through the holes when they appear.

The sort of area that often gets left out of our accounting is health – as long as you have it, you tend to forget to consider it at all. Any form-filling in areas where we are accountable to others tend to get left for a once-a-year effort. Not everyone finds this a painful labour, but many of us dislike having to demonstrate clearly what’s going on for us. So, whether you are a Virgo sun-sign or not, all this could be relevant this coming month, so this is a good time to deal with it.

Deep down, we know what to do

This year, the Virgo accountability is even more pronounced than usual (New Moon exactly on Saturn). It’s not that we didn’t know before what needed to be done; it’s just that now we have to get on with it instead of putting it off. Life will be showing us what we need to do – each of us having our own spot-lit issues – and the Saturn flavour indicates that our efforts will pay off for us personally. Even global issues dealt with now are likely to have constructively workable results (New Moon/Saturn in harmony with the Capricorn North Node). But there are problems in getting ourselves to face up to this work.

Loss of security accompanies freedom

The problems we are facing inwardly are two-fold. Firstly, the changes that need to be implemented give us a sense of insecurity (New Moon/Saturn opposite Uranus in Pisces) which the more adventurous – or desperate – will override. Many people are going forward with a kind of crazy end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it feeling that is liable to surface in dreams or in wild reactions to media-news. Feeling the ground slipping away from under your feet can have you grasping at anything for support. It will pay us to consider carefully what we are grasping onto, and maybe adjust our response to one less fear induced. Being rigidly anchored to familiar ground can be stifling.

Letting go of ‘control’ accompanies creative joy

The second problem relates to the first (New Moon/Saturn and Uranus are squaring Pluto-trine-Venus-in-Leo). This is the fear that it’s all destruction and mayhem from here onwards, that we are about to lose all pleasure and enjoyment so why bother! One reaction to that fear is recklessness: spend! spend! spend! in useless ways, or party until sick and then complain. Our strength to resist this course will be determined inwardly by whether we can give up the mistaken sense of being in control. We may be partly in control of ourselves, much less in control of our lives, and not meant to be in control of anyone else. We need to trust that ‘spirit (or the Universe) knows best’.

This month, the lessons should be clear enough for us to understand. Mercury, close to the New Moon and Saturn, suggests that problematic circumstances will be dominating our communication, and as it will be retrograde till the end of September, we are encouraged to connect with our inner, intuitive knowing rather than trying to be too clever. Jupiter is slowing down his retrograde movement, and will begin again to promote creative growth from 12 October.

Once again, it’s pulling together that works best (New Moon/Saturn quincunx Chiron/Neptune). So it may feel as though we’re going through an obstacle course to get there, but the humanitarian-sustainability goal is still correct for our time.

The vision of Virgo

Virgo has the ability to recognise the pattern, or blueprint, behind the details that make up our everyday life, like reading the diagram of parts in an engine manual. When those details are lined up correctly, our whole life operates more smoothly and changes in growthful ways. When we deny, or get angry with, the pattern of reality, we tend to push the details into the shape we would prefer, but of course life operates differently then. When we accept the pattern, and put in our little requests as extras, life has a way of granting them, not necessarily how we envisaged, but the gifts are there.

The real choice

I suspect that our personalities haven’t got much choice at the moment. With Mars sailing through Cancer, we are still likely to be emotionally motivated by desire for personal nurture, and survival for ourselves, our family and friends. With the ruler of Cancer, the Moon, being on Saturn in this New Moon chart, perhaps the best course is simply to accept what needs to be done moment by moment, and choose to get on with it. Life can be so much simpler that way. There is so much to enjoy when we stop trying to push life around: loving kindness is reflected back to us when it radiates from inside, and we find rewarding bursts of fun scattered abundantly if we accept them as we go along.