New Moon | Solar Eclipse | August 11, 2018 | 18 Leo 42’
I will love my life and everyone in it. I will appreciate that the primary purpose of life is to soak up its magnificence and experience its generosity. “I will” are Leo’s key words. “The word translated as ‘will’ primarily means delight, pleasure, intent, purpose and determination.” –Paul Foster Case
We are accustomed to thinking about will in terms of force, strength and self-determination. Let us consider will as delight and see what this brings to the table to renew us for this New Moon. Delight means enjoyment, pleasure, happiness, joy and satisfaction. We are indeed in the Leo realm because we expect Leo to enjoy and to play and to do so with enthusiasm. This New Moon finds not only the Sun and Moon, but Mercury (Mind) and Pallas-Athene (Wisdom) in Leo. You are invited to experience joy and satisfaction and to make some effort to please yourself—meaning to satisfy your own desires.
This New Moon asks “Are you doing what you love or loving what you do? It might be that you are not because you are trying to please someone else—likely a family member, especially a sibling. Or it could be that you are conflicted in your own thinking, because having to please someone else who is more important than you, is a story that you are telling yourself.
Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, teaches “We learn to love others and ourselves with conditions. I love myself if… If I am not able to do it, I don’t deserve my own love. I reject myself. I am not good enough, strong enough, beautiful enough, intelligent enough.” This is indicated by the Leo planets square Jupiter. We can take self abnegation all out of whack with exaggerating our sense of failure. Once you reject yourself, you kill off a little of your life and energy and take to the couch or other self-undermining behaviors.
The remedy is to love yourself anyway and to make sure that you say this to yourself. “You didn’t get it. I love you anyway. You did it wrong. I love you anyway. He called you a name. I love you anyway and I stand by you. I delight in you. I believe in you.” Take a break. Don’t push it or force it. You have nothing to prove. It is all right for you to play or just relax. It is necessary that you play or just relax.
Venus, the planet of love is in Libra in the second house, square Chiron in the 8th house, and both square Saturn in the 5th house of self-expression. With Venus in Libra in the second, you can easily let what you think someone thinks demoralize you and stymy your artful self-expression.
Practicum
Venus is Libra opposes Chiron in Aries. Be a maverick. Go against conformity. Disagree with anything that brings you out of alignment with your true and delighted self. You do not agree with mortality or decline. Your agreement is to get younger every day. You accomplish this by taking delight and pleasure in life and intending to have the world that you want to have.