Thursday, September 14th
New Moon
in Virgo 21°58'
6:39 pm PT

Lead and Follow
by Robin Rose Bennett

This New Moon in Virgo is a time for culling and composting what we no longer need. This is also a time for dreaming of and preparing for our impending harvests. This lunation is powerful because of the potent territory this cycle traverses. It not only leads us into the autumn equinox on September 22nd, but it also concludes with the New Moon in October (and the beginning of Eclipse season), just two weeks before Samhain.

The seeming dualities of life—birth and death, youth and age, health and illness—exist within the wholeness of the wheel of life. In the same way, the lunar cycles are held within the solar cycle of transformations that are contained within the wholeness of the Wheel of the Year. We can think of the Dark Moon and the Full Moon as opposite sides of the same coin.

Despite the appearance of duality, the deeper magic of reality is that of interconnectedness. One thing is always becoming another, just as spring turns to summer and summer turns to fall.

This New Moon occurs as the year turns from late summer to fall, after the first harvest of Lammas and before the abundance of the autumn equinox harvest, Witches’ Thanksgiving. I conceive of Lammas as the holiday/holy day when we are dancing between hope and fear—a time when we are balancing, perhaps precariously, on the edge of hopeful expectations that our hard inner and outer work of planting and tending to our growth will bear fruit and set seeds. We’re not yet assured that we’ll reap an abundant harvest. However, by this New Moon, we are close enough to the equinox that we can see what gifts our efforts have yielded.

This Moon invites us to direct our life force to nourish what is essential for us to thrive and live in joy. Perennial wild plants, such as dandelions, exemplify this. They let their nonessential leaves and flower stalks die, giving them back to the earth. Their seeds of rebirth have already flown here and there, carried by the winds of change, and now these wise plants pull all their nutrients back into themselves, take the starches and sugars deep inside, into their roots under the ground, holding onto what is essential in order to rise again in the spring.

I love setting one clear intention to practice at the New Moon: I invite the Universe to support me in bringing it to life. This has been my consistent practice for over three decades, and it has shaped my inner journey and what I’ve moonifested in the world. It cultivates steadiness through the repetitive nature of the rhythms of waxing and waning and expands one’s sense of time from linear to spiral!

This is the time to set clear intentions that will influence the harvest that is right around the corner.

— Excerpt from the 2023 Many Moons Lunar Planner. To read the rest of Robin's exclusive essay and New Moon prompts, get your copy of Many Moons. The benefit edition is here. The digital edition is here. 

Robin Rose Bennett is a storyteller, writer, and herbalist. She has been offering classes in Wisewoman Healing Ways: Herbal Medicine and EarthSpirit Teachings since 1986: at herb conferences, festivals, clinics, medical and nursing schools, and most joyously, outside with the plants. She is on the faculty of the New York Open Center and the ArborVitae School of Traditional Herbalism, and is the author of two meditation mp3s and the books Healing Magic: A Green Witch Guidebook to Conscious Living and The Gift of Healing Herbs: Plant Medicines and Home Remedies for a Vibrantly Healthy Life.

FB: @wisewomanhealingways | IG: @robinrosebennett | YT: @robinrosebennett

For more information, visit: www.RobinRoseBennett.com.