The next few days is the Dark Moon phase, when less is more....and we are rewarded bigtime, when we go within. If you were born at the Dark Moon, or Balsamic Moon phase, you have a contemplative nature, at home in the chaotic cauldron where endings overlap with beginnings.

The next New Moon is the 8th, in the mutable earth sign of Virgo. At the New Moon in Virgo, less is more. Less talk, less noise, less of everything artificial. It's a great time to go natural, and get closer to your own natural self.

• Chart for the New Moon in Virgo
• New Moon Rituals

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"The hour is ours. It is time for each and every one of us to ask the important questions, to search our souls for our own answers, and to take action." These are the words of John Perkins, author of the bestseller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He's the ultimate insider who spent decades in what his corporate groomer warned him would be a dirty business. After helping corporations plunger entire countries and enslave them to debt, he's a man seeking redemption and a better world for his grandson.

Now, he's an inspired speaker on the topic of bringing values back to business, as well as a workshop presenter on shapeshifting! If you want to know why entire economies are being played like pawns in a bigger game, listen to his recent interview on Veritas. He's the ultimate Pluto Capricorn bridge, bringing the skeletons out of the closet of big business. He's knows who really holds power in the world today. Capricorn is about legacies -- what's passed down to the next generations -- and in Pluto, we strip away what's diseased and corrupt, to get to the vital core.

He's also digging deep into earth-compatible ideas sturdy enough to build on -- his site has great links to people doing amazing things to turn things around.

His message is actually a hopeful one -- that we hold the power in our hands, if we realize it. And it has to do with putting our money where our values are. It's a time of reviewing small decisions that add up, with Mercury retrograde in Virgo. And how these pieces make up the whole. We can start by buying from companies that do good, and aren't evil. These small everyday decisions are in our control, and a way to slowly but surely change the world.

• A Time of Purification: with Native Wisdom

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Writing of the crisper air in Vermont, Mark Borax' September report makes me wistful for one of nature's most artful displays -- New England autumn colors. His Cosmic Weather Report, is a rich read, especially for Libras and those with Libra challenges. That means everyone, since we're all under Saturn's master tutelage, in the school of relating.

In a poetic analogy to the changing leaves, Mark writes, "Libra's difficulties are compounded out of the discord that results when life and love languish in trapped, withheld stages, rather than blossoming into their full colors." Mark writes as a Libra Sun himself, so you won't want to miss these wise words -- about the energy of Libra -- from a master astrologer.

The Moon is waning, creating the sense of lunar descent. From now until the New Moon in Virgo (on the 8th), the energy is on the wane, and we release what's non-essential, to be ready to plant seeds of the new.

It's the Third Quarter or waning Half-Moon today. That means the Moon is in mutable Gemini, in a square (tension) to the Sun, in mutable earth. The Full Moon in Pisces (mutable) opened the floodgates of emotion, and now some of it is lingering as standing water to be transformed. This Half Moon is a time for a second hard look at the mind-emotional body connection. How do we get stuck in patterns of crazy? What habits of thought pile on the stress, and affect our health?

The mutable signs are about the magic of shifting shape, from the many pieces that make of the whole of who we are. We're at the point in the cycle, to adjust the course, to loosen the grip on what's not working, and let it fall apart. It's being flexible with the pieces, so something wholly new can be created.

• Making changes to your schedule.
• Look at foods and supplements that have a calming effect.
• Making time to come down from the day.
• Giving your brain a rest (away from the computer).
• Healing negative thought loops.
• Finding strategies for de-stressing.
• Cutting distractions that work you up into a frenzy.

• More on Moon Phases

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