Left Alone

Photo: Matthew Henry

Late Wednesday night, December 30^th, or early Thursday morning, December 31^st, depending on where you are in the world, the Moon will go void-of-course. This means that for about 48 hours, depending on which definition of Void Moon you use, it will not make any Ptolemaic aspects (i.e., conjunction, sextile, square, trine, or opposition) with a classical planet (Sun-Saturn). However, considering opinions in astrology are as varied as cereals in the cereal aisle at the biggest supermarket you can find, some don’t agree with that definition. And that’s okay. Those astrologers might only define a Void Moon as one that makes no Ptolemaic aspect with any planet before it goes into another sign. That’s a much shorter period of time, 49 minutes on New Year’s Eve morning (again, depending on where you are in the world).

But for this post, it doesn’t matter. A Void Moon signifies how something, whether that’s an activity or initiative, is or will be left alone as it is. I call it the Cosmos making a .pdf of a moment, like you might do when you convert your resume with all its fancy fonts and formatting into a .pdf to protect it from misalignments and other distortions on someone else's computer. Basically, it’s to ensure that something is left alone.

I’m in DC again, visiting my girlfriend. I can’t help but wonder something as I wander these streets, the streets of a very familiar big US city: do people want to be left alone? For 53 years, I have only lived in major US cities. For almost five years, Santa Fe has been the smallest city I’ve lived in. So, I remember well residing in these cities. I suppose I never wanted people to bother me much when I lived in these cities. But did I want to be left alone?

For me, being left alone means being able to do as I wish without being engaged in ways that would impede me. But I never minded a friendly smile or a pleasant short conversation with a stranger. But I’ve observed something different over the years. I am not saying that it’s not ALWAYS been this way. Maybe I’m only observing it now and not the keen observer of people that I think I am. Or perhaps something has changed, both with people in person and online, and the pandemic lockdowns may have changed us more than we recognize. It seems people want to be left alone, and they even expect it more than ever. Again, I’m not saying this as some universal or global truth. This may not be true everywhere or for everyone. But I still can’t shake the realization.

I know: what the hell does this have to do with the Void-of-course Moon? Well, we’re about to go into the new year with it. My girlfriend, Jessica Irene (she’s an astrologer, too: dendraletheia.com), sagely advises folks to rethink their planned marriage proposals during this time, foiling my dream that she was going to propose to me while we party the night away. (Just kidding about the dream proposal, not the partying. Don’t judge me!) After all, proposing on a void moon is a good way to have one of those engagements that hardly seem to go anywhere. (You know the type.) Regardless of whether a proposal is on tap or not, what might it mean to begin the new year with it? That brings me to my earlier question: do we want to be left alone? Autocorrect tried to get me to write “left behind,” and that surfaced its own set of graveyard thoughts of the mythological Christian rapture from my evangelical days. Well, those days and concerns are far behind me, but maybe autocorrect was on to something there.

Long ago, a diviner made an important distinction for me between isolation and insulation. According to him, to isolate yourself, to be alone or left behind, means that you separate yourself from the world without explanation or justification. It is to push the world away. To insulate yourself, he said, is to pull yourself into something, understanding that you are altering your state of mind (and access) for a purpose. It’s the difference between telling someone to leave you alone and going to your bed and telling someone you’re going to bed to sleep and asking them to let you sleep. They may seem to be the same, but they are not, in my estimation. One pushes someone away, while the other asks them to let you sleep. One is isolation, the other is insulation.

This brings me to what I’ve been wondering all along: are we isolating ourselves, almost in a sleepwalking state, expecting others not to disturb our slumber even as we walk among others? Or are we giving ourselves space to insulate with mutual understanding from and with others? And I’m not just asking this of you. I’m asking myself this, too.

I see this online, too. People will sometimes say the most outrageous things, then get upset when you challenge them, or will block you. Sounds like they wanted to isolate themselves in public rather than insulate themselves in a conversation or dialogue. It’s as if we want everything and everyone to be “as it is,” with headsets on for our own personal soundtracks to our own movies, without recognizing that everyone around us could be viewing each other the same way. We all want “Main Player Energy” without realizing that we’re all players in the same game called Life. Maybe this Void Moon is a way for us to “check ourselves before we wreck ourselves,” as my fellow Gen X’ers used to say.

Either way, Happy New Year, and may you be more as your heart desires!