Galactic Center New Moon at the Solstice 2025

Two days before the solstice, on December 19, 2025, we had a New Moon at just a degree shy of what’s considered the Galactic Center at 27 degrees of Sagittarius. The Galactic Center is pretty much as it sounds—the center point of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Astrologer Melanie Reinhart has an insightful article about the GC here. However, I’m struck more by this quote by Reinhart: “When the last five degrees of Sagittarius are stimulated by transiting planets, a process of awakening is initiated. The arrow of the centaur points ‘beyond what we know’, and at the same time refer us symbolically to ‘what we have always known’ in our inner depths. These intimations have a strong ‘felt sense’ but are not easily verbalised or quantified. A time of accelerated spiritual development occurs, with its attendant life challenges which may include rapid change, separations, crisis, illness and stress as outmoded ideas are released.”

This seems poignant from where I sit for this New Moon, because of its square to Neptune. We, astrologers, tend to be highly laudatory to every new moon without qualification as it pertains to setting new intentions, charging crystals, or whatever novel adventure for which folks want to sally forth. Often, it doesn’t seem to matter if the new moon is a solar eclipse, when it’s historically not advisable to set new intentions or do much, or besieged between challenging planets, like Neptune or Saturn. So, I felt uneasy with this new moon, and it didn’t disappoint. Not only did I have some fit hit my shan, so to speak, but I saw it with a few friends too. Honestly, that really isn’t enough for me to side-eye this new moon. You shouldn’t make significant conclusions from small sample sizes. Still, it’s been enough to prompt me to reflect on how this lunation jives with all that was happening with it—coming close to the solstice, at the Galactic Center, and squaring a few planets that have been known to, well, complicate things, i.e., Neptune and Saturn.

This takes me back to Reinhart. First, I practically roll my eyes almost any time any astrologer talks about things “awakening” or surges in consciousness. It’s not because it can’t ever be true, but it’s often not true on a critical mass level. We always seem to be the same folks we have been for thousands of years, even as our technology appears to advance. I know this sounds cynical. Yet, I don’t think it is, because, if science teaches us anything, evolution is slow. Our consciousness HAS shifted. I agree with Steven Pinker’s general analysis in The Better Angels of Our Nature, where he writes that we have become less violent than our forebears, even as there are massive disruptions in Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine, and other sundry places. But that took thousands of years. So, no, I don’t think one major astrological aspect here and there is the evolutionary accelerant we often make it to be.

I’m also not so sure it’s only about spiritual development as much as about personal growth, and "accelerated" might also be too strong a word. But I can get behind a kind of quickening. Quickening taps into a change in speed, but it also relates to the liveliness and stimulation that accompany it. For me, that’s returning to writing about the astrology of the current sky with the public, but not necessarily for the public. As I explained in a recent newsletter, I’m wrapping my head around the shibboleth of star scribbling for myself rather than anything that must make sense to anyone else. But it’s a reasonable gamble that it could. But how might that look?

Well, so far it looks confusing as hell (Hi, Neptune!) with some difficulty and strategy (Hello, Saturn!) matched with the hope that this will all make sense in the “by and by” as my elders and ancestors used to say. Honestly, that hope seems to be the residual effect of this new moon in Sagittarius, along with Neptune and Saturn in Pisces, in Jupiter’s signs.  Jupiter loves optimism, opportunity, and hope. The loftier, the better. But when we have all those things together at the Galactic Center, it’s pretty hard to know where the arrow is going. For instance, with my own difficult situation (see the “fit hit shan” allusion above), I really have no idea how it will all work out. But dammit if Reinhart isn’t on to something when she says there’s some not easily verbalized “felt sense” that something will be released enough to be, well, better.

I am not one of those people who believe that everything happens for a (good) reason.  I’m more aligned with the faux Buddhist sentiment that “Shit happens,” and we must cope with it. Sometimes it’s good shit, and other times it just isn’t. Regardless, at this sacred time of solstice, this new moon at the GC seems to be more about getting taken for a wild ride on the back of a Centaur with only the hope I won’t get thrown off or stomped on. No assurances. Beginnings rarely give those. And beginnings like a new moon on a solstice at the end of the year, probably is its own flavorful sort of clusterfizzle.

But maybe that’s a reminder to keep sampling new savors of life. Here I am doing my part. I have no idea what yours might look like.  This GC Centaur New Moon is shooting arrows as I’m riding on its saddle along Saturnine dirt roads and fog rolling in from Neptune. I think I hear things yelping from the arrow shots, but I have no idea who or what’s getting hit. Maybe some of those things that needed the shot or even deserved it. But one thing, from almost nothing else, is certain: I’m quickened awake, if only because I don’t want to fall off.

Happy Solstice and New Year!