CRAB New Moon

May 26th 2025, 11:02 pm Eastern

New Moon Gemini 6*05’: Crab Shape

CRAB: 6th Shape: 4° 17' 09'' Gemini – 17° 8' 34'' Gemini

CRAB is a Shape which, across the traditions, suggests enormous elemental power of the world and how we must approach it carefully and with reverence. In the churning, turbulent waters of primordial spawning is potential for greatness, but to harnessing such immense currents requires dexterity, articulation and sophistication of the protocols you apply. As CRAB falls in the mutable sign of Gemini, this isn’t about following a rote procedure without variation, but instead knowing the order of approach and being able to execute it, along with a series of back up plans if worst case scenarios emerge. In seamanship the sailor’s cognitive process is to have already thought about what action one would take if X, Y, Z were to fail or conditions deteriorate and pre-schemed out a variety of alternate routes for each blockade and detour. The Grimorium Verum spirit which falls here is second superior Belzebuth, who has a reputation for being fierce and unforgiving in lapses of ritual steps. I suspect, of the three superior spirits, Belzebuth’s branch relate to the Earth dimensionality (rather than Heaven or Man, in the Chinese way of organizing threefold cosmology). Nature on earth lends us everything of which we survive on, but it does not actively or specifically care and never protects us directly. We can not live without nature, but we have to act accordingly in its realms, or else we perish without remorse from our host.

Indeed, the Chinese Xiu speaks of the potential to become great, as well as the earthly power of the tiger. There is talk of dams, bridges and boats, as in wood holding back water, or, once more the infrastructures to harness what the ocean offers us humans while simultaneously avoiding perilous overwhelm. Similarly, it talks about the new plants flourishing in spring, and with wisdom applied, the opportunity to cultivate oneself and mature without loss, enjoying a flourishing existence; this includes the caveat that we are careful to not bungle things and fuck everything up. The tiger is fierce, and when texts speak about the smooth succession of kings and the profound inheritance which may follow, we might contemplate that the most epic of humanity’s dramas surround this kind of crown passing going uproariously poor in apocalyptic proportions. We are then forewarned to treat regular reality like you would the sea, be prepared, ready and not sloppy; if you are truly ship-shape then off you may sail towards whichever bounty.

Mercury’s ingress before the lunation then cazimi a few days after is a good sign, as is the co-presence of the greater benefic, Jupiter, who has been trying to assist our growth of ideas, options and exchange opportunities, although he is prone to rabbit-holing hopelessly in Gemini. Mercury’s presence in his home sign may remediate that. The two planets will hold hands into Jupiter’s exaltation on June 9th, so we know now they are going to be in cahoots beginning around this lunation, and whatever it seeds. This may be the at-last delivery of coherence around the relative genius-nonsense Jupiter has been expanding on since about a year ago, so microscopic and telescopic scopes are lining up here which facilitates orderliness of ideas and imaginations projecting into possible becoming palpable futures. What we have to guard against though is distractedness, as there’ll be an abundance of voices yapping on the radio while our minds attempt to concentrate on the skillful and critical navigation.

The Mediterranean reference may be of Karkinos, the crab which bites Heracles’ foot while he is battling the hydra. We all know that the hydra would grow two heads for each one Heracles pounded off. Again, we might pay additional heed here to not becoming distracted by that which gets us lost from our initial objective. The South Node in Virgo, Mercury’s other sign, is continually calling for logistical or procedural de-complexification. Unlike the wily hydra, the crab on the other hand he simply crushed with a smash from his club, in the spirit of eliminating factors detracting from our critical focus. Herakles is obviously a figure of great power, strength and ferocity and in fact wears the leopard / tiger skin which he was awarded in underworld pursuits with Dionysus. Prowess and effective use of force is appropriate for a time when Saturn is very newly in Aries and Mars is still making his way across bold, brave Leo. Mercury sextiles Saturn within orb and Mars by sign, so the Geminiic activity surrounding this lunation is in alignment with the more serious long term challenges afoot. There may be a clever way to escape the hydral oppositions to our agendas of self sovereignty and autonomy. Tricksiness to jury rig masts and keep our boats afloat will be par for the course, and probably perform impressively in the end.

The Rig Vedic deity of the Nakshatra is Rudra, praised in the Vedas as being “the mightiest of the mighty”, the storm god which tracks with the great churningness being discussed. Rudra also wears a tiger / leopard skin and is a god of terrifying fierceness and associated with Dionysus’ Indian cognate, Shiva. He is referred to as the wailer, as he was a crying baby calling out for a name when Brahma was in prayer requesting a son similar to himself. Every time he cried for a name another Rudra was formed. This sounds similar to the Hydra’s heads, and as this falls in Gemini it is not surprising there is an issue of multiplicity. Also, the it-doesn't-work-until-X-many-repititions sequence is reminiscent of the greater ritual efforts to quell disruptive force when working with Belzebuth, who’s syncretized Exu in Quimbanda is Exu Mor, ‘The Great’ or Exu 9 Luzes, ‘Nine Lights’, echoing both the immensity and the multiplicity.

The Picatrix brings in an interesting spin on the idea of multiple, or more than one beings, when it sees here an image of ‘two people embracing’ and includes a talisman for ‘love between two people’. Not what you might expect in the Rudra, Belzebuth and Herculean strewn archetypal territory, but the Chinese Xiu does mention the ‘young male within the female’s palace’, and the Rudra origin story is about the Creator deity summoning a son in his own likeness, the Xiu also discussing the succession of kings and inheritance. The multiplicitous spawning and procreative themes might represent exactly what is of great potential in the Picatrix’s loving embrace. Only certain romantic pairings pulsate with that seed and egg magnetic chemistry, and in spring while plants are growing with the yang increase leading eventually to Summer Solstice and the 0 degrees of very generative Cancer, this energy may be on the rise in the latent field— once more, we must be careful how we engage with it and harness it, as fertility increases may lead to unintended consequences, i.e. accidental pregnancies, both literal and metaphorical.

Gemini is the sign, anatomically of bifurcations, as in two eyes, ears, nostrils, arms and ten digits. It is with these anatomical branchings that we sense the world around us and apply our articulated agency. This applies to how we interact with other incarnated entities, and how much we let them in to ourselves and what array of posturings we have in place to be able to mingle appropriately, and like the Xiu’s bridges and damns, protect ourselves from overwhelm, avoiding Heracles’ crab strolling right into our orb unnoticed and harming us while we are over our heads in a hydra scenario. The Picatrix suggests contact, talking of love, embrace and friendship, and the Xiu suggests smooth transitions from one arrangement to the next, the former prescribing that the operation include white wax, white cloth and sweet aromatics such as amber and lingam aloes; we want to maintain operational purity here.

Saturn is keeping an eye on not wasting our energy while also effectively initiating new endeavors which are drenched in the imaginal or saturated in the cinematic. There are new things wanting to happen, but they are not going to happen on their own. We might have to put the right word in, make the right wish, do the right magic and fake the right make to get our foot in the door and get the ball rolling. This New Moon is part of the foreshadowing of Uranus’ ingress into Gemini later in July which collaborates with what Saturn is attempting to set up in Aries. The new digital world might have to allow the analog to be more primary than the virtual, and for this a more dynamic internet has the possibility of arising, one in which we get to keep our individuality and agency, even when we have to constantly side step hydras while avoiding snapping pincers in the process. The intersection between our physical reality and our now corrupted virtual commons is extensively booby trapped, such is the nuanced territory. We’re only another Gutenberg Press type precedent away from finding out how to print books in a post-industrial fashion now that ‘going paperless’ is clearly not an option in an internet collapsed by enshitifying usurpers' algorithmic deathgrips and all the self spawning phishers generative-hallucinating new snares.

New Moons are often quiet and take place as seed forms emerging in our contemplation. Mercury’s presence here extends the significance of this renewal to perhaps be a significant preamble to Uranus’ upcoming eight year story, especially as it corrals Jupiter’s sprawling word web into convenient cliff notes bringing the past twelve months into coherence. 2025 is about pivots, and this dark moment betwixt is no exception. The Devil, as they say, is in the details, and this Devil might be one which is willing to be negotiated with. When he produces the decoder ring from his inner pocket and hands it to you in his crab claw have your mind clear enough to break the encryption in an open sesame formula as effortless as blowing down the house of cards, but remember to take hold of the ace and send it up your sleeve for later use, without anyone the wiser, as an act of anti-surveillance which is paradoxically more connective throughout the collective than any mass kumbaya.