The dark moon descends like a blanket thrown over us just in time. Drawing the shutters - if you will - on a rampaging last month that arrived with full notice of revolution and then knocked it into the stratosphere. The constant step ball change of retrograde mania. That full on full moon eclipse that tipped us all over its falls. Lifequake after truth bomb after rabid revelation. Tides and tempers peaked and rinsed on repeat. And all as own ready renovations and reckonings - or is that whole life edit - echo and churn.

As we wait with bated breath for next Tuesday's significant shifters, it is all too easy to get ahead of ourselves. Haul fraught minds and willing bodies across borders prematurely in an effort to project ourselves into the future and bypass any clear and present discomfort. As usual, Saturn's not having a bar of it.

Dark moon, thy name is respite and relief. Time to tend arrives now as the barely there crescent turns her face away and tucks back into herself. If you will let yourself linger long, this dark moon offers a wonderful scrying pool to craft uncommon sense from the fray.

A word to the wise mermaids, as we navigate the fathoms of Pisces season and Mercury's emo retrograde. Though this sign cultivates the shamanic depths and our emotional currents, it also has a spectacular penchant for drama, delusion and evasive bypass. Pisces is just as great at opting out or cultivating unconsciousness. Everything has its shadow.

Our cosmic players are taking their places for tomorrow's firestarter new moon, each adding their gravitas to the deep dark of the balsamic phase. Built as it is - every single month in a row - on letting go, crafting sense of the madness and plucking wisdom from its eyes. Lady Luna has just entered Aries cloaked in darkness. Here she waits for her impending rebirth just a day away.

With a crowded cosmic chorus of alarms ringing in heads and hearts all week / month / year, we are universally musing. We want to know what in tarnation is going on. Or when it is going to end or start or shift. We demand satisfactory responses to impossible questions when we already know the answer.

Welcome to the Academy of Chiron, a learning institution founded on principles that at first, second and fortieth glance seem fuqing ridiculous. You want me to sign up to deeply revisit all the very worst shit that ever happened to me or that *gasp* I did? Righto. How bout no.