NEW MOON IN VIRGO
A threshold moon offering clarity, organization, and devotion to what truly matters
We are in a season of rooting, grounding, and organizing—a beautiful opportunity to sort through what needs our attention and return to the basics. After an expansive summer filled with rapid change, adventure, and electric energy, we find ourselves landing on the other side with what I can only describe as a hangover of sorts.
When we've been moving quickly through major change portals, processing experiences and emotions almost faster than we can consciously understand them, there comes a natural moment of needing to slow down. As children return to school and we enter the harvest season, we're preparing for the beginning of eclipse season while our souls crave integration and clarity.
This week brings us a precious gift: a New Moon in Virgo that serves as a grounding, orienting reset—a pocket of opportunity to get clear, distill, and recalibrate. This is the first of two New Moons in Virgo this season, creating bookends that will frame our entire journey through Virgo season and into eclipse territory.
SIMPLIFICATION
After the dynamic, expansive energy of Leo season, with its deep heart work and confronting conversations about visibility and expression, we're entering a time of sobering, landing, and reorienting. We're tending to the practical pieces we need to sort through before crossing the threshold into eclipse season and the autumn equinox.
This New Moon in Virgo occurs on August 22nd at 11:06 PM Pacific (August 23rd at 2:06 AM Eastern) at 0° of Virgo—making it a true threshold moon. Zero-degree placements carry initiatory energy, marking fresh beginnings and unformed potential filled with possibility.
Virgo, as a mutable earth sign, is malleable and changeable—the in-between space where things are fluid and movement is inevitable. But unlike the ethereal fluidity of other mutable signs, Virgo grounds us firmly in the physical realm, dealing with detail, discernment, and organization.
VIRGO
Virgo is the sacred weaver, the one who tends to the threads of the body, daily rituals, and the systems that keep life in harmony. It teaches us devotion through the details—how we care for our bodies, our work, the land, and one another. This sign embodies healing in its most practical form, providing the necessary container for all other healing to unfold.
While Pisces offers transcendent, spiritual healing where we can escape and explore beyond the physical, Virgo provides the essential foundation—the body, the routines, the earthly practices that make transcendence sustainable. We are in human form on this planet, which means we must tend to the physical realm with the same reverence we give to mental, emotional, and spiritual care.
The truth is, when we're feeling overwhelmed by expansion or growth, the medicine lies in returning to basics: routines, practices, rituals, self-care, cleaning, and organizing. Our biology is built for a different time—when humans knew exactly what was happening within a 50-mile radius, what was growing in their garden, and what their daily tasks required.
We're receiving more data, information, and stimuli than ever before, knowing things about the other side of the world that we don't have the capacity to process. Our bodies are designed for times when we woke each morning knowing exactly what needed tending that day—clear purpose, vision, and direction rooted in immediate, tangible tasks.
Now we live in a culture where everything seems possible, where we can order anything from a device in our hands, yet many struggle to find purpose, happiness, or joy. This is where Virgo's confronting truth emerges: we are always choosing and creating our reality, even from unconscious spaces.
Virgo asks the essential questions: What are you serving? Who are you serving? What are you in devotion to? The answers lie in what you're choosing every day—from the moment you wake up to how you spend your attention and energy.
NEW MOON IN VIRGO
This 0° New Moon squares Uranus in Gemini, bringing revolutionary energy to our daily practices, routines, health, and nourishment. This aspect demands significant change—a complete revolutionizing of something in your life related to work, devotion, or physical well-being.
Both Virgo and Gemini are mutable signs, reminding us that quantum leaps are possible and that we can wake up one day and choose to operate entirely differently. This initiatory energy begins just hours after Virgo season starts, meeting immediately with the Moon to create a fresh, unformed, potent beginning.
The square to Uranus ensures that we can't control everything, nor are we meant to. The shadow of Virgo lies in controlling through fear to feel safe. In its highest expression, Virgo embraces our ability to choose and discern, creating healthy systems of care that can bend and breathe with us—loving and supportive rather than rigid.
ECLIPSE CORRIDOR
This New Moon serves as preparation for eclipse season, creating a bookend effect with the second New Moon in Virgo at 29° on September 21st (which is also an eclipse). The first eclipse occurs on September 7th with a Full Moon in Pisces, opening a profound portal of change.
This week's New Moon initiates themes that will be tested, refined, and transformed under the eclipses over the next month. It's not about attachment to outcomes but about presence—allowing ourselves to attune to what we need right now to feel supported as we enter this great portal of change.
The intentions you set now, what you seed at this New Moon, will undergo significant transformation. We can't predict what will happen during eclipse season, so the question becomes: What needs our attention to feel more safe, grounded, secure, and cared for as we enter this corridor of change?
Since Mercury rules Virgo, this New Moon will reveal mental patterns, thought loops, and belief systems that no longer serve. With Uranus disrupting patterns in Gemini (also ruled by Mercury), we're experiencing disruption through the mind, narratives, communication, and media consumption.
This is an opportunity to examine what addictive patterns and default programs we're running. What are we choosing daily to interact with? What receives our time and attention? What mental clutter needs clearing?
We're collectively rewiring our consciousness—overwhelming work that requires some sense of structure and grounding. This New Moon invites us to create new rituals and practices, clear mental and emotional noise, declutter, organize, spend time in nature, and pay careful attention to what we're consuming physically, emotionally, and mentally.
PLUTO OUT OF BOUNDS
Pluto is preparing for an out-of-bounds transit over the next decade, meaning it will behave erratically until 2035, bringing profound upheaval and change. When people ask when things will slow down or chill out, the answer is: right now. In this exact moment, you can choose to integrate peace.
This world isn't slowing down anytime soon. We need to choose ways and build systems to support our nervous systems, bodies, minds, and psyches as we navigate constant change. We must build resilience and internal safety so we can choose those pockets of peace when we need them.
We're pushing the boundaries of individual and collective consciousness, just as Pluto pushes beyond its normal boundaries. This Virgo New Moon offers an opportunity to attune to what we truly need—what practices, rituals, and devotions can support our process of integrating and digesting everything coming at us.
JUPITER IN CANCER
Supporting this grounding energy, Jupiter in Cancer invites us into a deepening exploration of belonging. This is a powerful time to connect with your roots, your ancestry, your sense of home—not necessarily through family connections, but through discovering what belonging truly means to you.
How can you tend to your roots, nourishment, and the process of reparenting yourself? How can you create or receive the care you need during this transformative time?
MEDICINE FOR THIS WEEK
The invitation this week is to explore what you need to feel nourished, supported, and stabilized. Consider what you might incorporate throughout this month to support your physical and mental bodies in processing what's coming.
This might mean:
Returning to a ritual or practice you let go of but know works for grounding you
Trying something new that feels right for this moment (without heavy attachment)
Adopting a journaling practice to sort through mental noise
Spending intentional time in nature
Limiting phone time or social media consumption
Paying careful attention to what you're consuming in all forms
Creating simple daily routines that anchor and ground you
The goal isn't elaborate or overwhelming practices. It's about choosing simple, practical, digestible pieces—routines that balance the overwhelm of bigger life questions with tangible, immediate actions.
This 0° Virgo New Moon represents a threshold before walking into the eclipse corridor—a chance to consciously choose what rituals, practices, and mental patterns you want to carry forward. Virgo's gift of discernment helps us separate what heals from what harms, what serves from what depletes.
The refinement of your life isn't a one-time declaration but an ongoing process of iteration and experimentation. This New Moon offers a gentle but powerful reset, inviting you to return to what's simple, clear, and nourishing as you prepare for the profound changes ahead.
In a world that won't slow down, we can choose moments of stillness. In a time of collective upheaval, we can create personal sanctuaries of peace. In the midst of overwhelming possibilities, we can return to the sacred simplicity of tending to what's right in front of us.
Soul Archaeology
— ALI OFSTEDAL
THIS BLOG IS A REVISED TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE 114 OF MY PODCAST “SOUL ARCHAEOLOGY”.
Tune into the latest episode of soul archaeology for a full energetic download. available on all platforms.