Each year at the end of Summer, a New Moon will occur that first becomes visible to us below the Celestial Equator. To be clear, the Moon moves below the Celestial Equator every month, but once each year, it will happen for the first time that its first visibility is below the Celestial Equator, and when this happens, then we’re in the season of the Lavender Moon. That happens this week.
The Lavender Moon is the last New Moon of the summer, and this year it happens on Monday. When we first see this Moon, it will be a thin crescent in the West, among the stars of Virgo.
For the following two weeks, then, the Moon will grow toward Full Phase, when it reaches the stars of Pisces.
Here’s what’s so interesting about this: During the two weeks from New Phase to Full Phase this Moon travels through the “descending” or “night” signs of the zodiac, through the constellations that are below the Celestial Equator. This is where the Sun travels from Autumn Equinox to Spring Equinox, when in the Northern Hemisphere we experience fewer daylight hours and greater darkness.
But before the Sun gets to its Autumn Equinox, the Lavender Moon gets there, and completes in two weeks what it will take six months for the Sun to do. And that’s not all. As a mighty celestial mirror reflecting the sunlight toward us, the Moon is doing something unique right now, preparing the seasonal transition from outer light to inner radiance. It does this by reflecting the sunlight into the descending regions of the zodiac while the Sun is still above the Celestial Equator.
This is why it’s the Lavender Moon, it has the mood of gentle transition, of softly making ready by preparing a place for the Sun to rest its head once it moves onward to the hemisphere below.
