Four signs, three ingresses, and a new Moon. The week opens with the Moon in Cancer, the only sign in the whole of it where she holds any essential dignity at all, and it does not last. Cancer is her domicile, the one sign she rules outright, and she is gone from it by Monday afternoon.
At 13:39 UTC Monday she makes her last aspect from Cancer and runs void for a little over three hours, entering Leo at 16:49. Void of course is the term: a Moon that will complete no further major aspect before she changes sign. It was treated as a gap in which matters fail to take hold, not as a danger.
Wednesday brings the opposite extreme. She goes void in Leo at 18:57 UTC and crosses into Virgo at 19:35, thirty-eight minutes later, which is about as brief as these windows get.
Then Friday. The new Moon falls at 03:27 UTC in Virgo, the Sun and Moon in the same degree of the same sign, which is all a new Moon has ever been: not something that happens to the Moon but a conjunction of the two lights. Just over two hours later, at 05:52, she goes void again, and this one runs until she enters Libra at 00:09 UTC on Saturday. Close to eighteen hours, the longest stretch of the week, opening within hours of the dark of the Moon.
The old calendars made a great deal of that combination. A dark Moon closed the cycle, the phase for finishing rather than founding, and the writers are consistent that the days around a conjunction of the lights were the worst of the month to begin anything meant to last. Ptolemy, in second century Alexandria, singles out the conjunction and the quarters as the moments to watch most closely.
The week’s ingresses
Monday void in Cancer, 13:39 UTC
Monday into Leo, 16:49 UTC
Wednesday void in Leo, 18:57 UTC
Wednesday into Virgo, 19:35 UTC
Friday void in Virgo, 05:52 UTC
Saturday into Libra, 00:09 UTC
Aries
Mars rules Aries, and Mars spends this week in Cancer, the sign the Moon occupies Sunday and Monday morning. Cancer is where Mars falls, the weakest of the essential conditions, so the ruler of your sign sits in a house that does not suit him while the Moon is briefly at home in the same one. She does not reach Aries herself until the twenty-sixth.
Taurus
Exaltation is the term Taurus holds for the Moon, and she left it on Thursday the third. She will not stand there again until the twenty-eighth, so the best thing your sign has to offer her is behind you for the whole of this week. Exaltation means a planet received well in a house it does not own. Taurus belongs to Venus. The Moon is only ever a guest.
Gemini
Your ruler is standing where the week’s one real event lands. Mercury is in Virgo, the single sign that serves as both its domicile and its exaltation, and Virgo is where the new Moon falls Friday at 03:27 UTC. The Moon crosses that ground from Wednesday evening onward. She left Gemini on the fifth and does not return to it until the thirtieth.
Cancer
The week opens in your sign and in hers, which are the same sign. Cancer is the Moon’s domicile, the only one she rules, and she holds it from Sunday until Monday at 16:49 UTC. From 13:39 she is void, completing nothing further before she goes. Mars is also here this week, and Cancer is the sign of his fall, so the house shelters one planet and undoes another.
Leo
Leo belongs to the Sun, and from Monday at 16:49 UTC until Wednesday at 19:35 the Moon is a visitor in it, holding nothing of her own. That is the ordinary condition of a planet in the other light’s house. The void that closes her stay is unusually short, thirty-eight minutes on Wednesday evening, which is the tightest window of the week by a wide margin.
Virgo
Everything of consequence this week happens on your ground. The Moon enters Virgo Wednesday at 19:35 UTC, and Friday at 03:27 the new Moon falls there, the two lights in the same degree of the same sign. Two and a half hours after that she goes void and stays void into Saturday. Virgo is Mercury’s house and the Moon owns nothing in it, which does not stop it being the center of the week.
Libra
00:09 UTC on Saturday is when she arrives, closing the week almost as it turns over. Venus rules Libra and Venus is currently in it, in her own domicile, which is the strongest condition an essential dignity confers on any planet. The Moon comes in with no dignity of her own and straight out of eighteen hours of silence, which is a particular way to enter a house.
Scorpio
Nothing in these seven days touches your sign. She reaches Scorpio on the fourteenth, two days after the week closes, and what waits there is her fall. Fall is nothing more than the sign opposite a planet’s exaltation: exalted in Taurus, therefore fallen in Scorpio, by arithmetic rather than by judgment. Nothing about the sign itself was held to be bad.
Sagittarius
Jupiter, your ruler, spends the week in Leo, which is exactly where the Moon travels from Monday afternoon to Wednesday evening. She does not enter Sagittarius until the sixteenth. The sign she does occupy longest, Virgo, shares your mode: both are mutable, the signs the tradition read as the ones that hand a season over rather than begin or hold it.
Capricorn
Cancer’s opposite is Capricorn, and that is the whole of why yours is the Moon’s detriment: the sign facing her own. So the week begins at her strongest, in Cancer, which is the same as saying it begins at the point farthest from you on the wheel. She does not stand in Capricorn until the nineteenth. Your sign is defined here by what it faces.
Aquarius
Leo and Aquarius face one another, and the Moon crosses Leo from Monday to Wednesday. That axis is the hinge of the entire domicile scheme, since the two lights were given Cancer and Leo and every other planet was assigned outward from that pair in order. Aquarius sits at the far end of the count. She arrives in your sign on the twenty-first.
Pisces
The lunation now ending began in your sign. The full Moon of 28 August fell at nearly five degrees of Pisces, and the new Moon that closes the cycle arrives Friday in Virgo, the sign directly across from it. That is the shape of every month, one pole to the other. She does not enter Pisces again until the twenty-fourth.

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