LIGHTNING New Moon

New Moon 28* 43’ Capricorn

January 18th 2026, 2:50pm Eastern

24th Shape: LIGHTNING

25° 42' 51'' Capricorn – 8° 34' 17'' Aquarius

The transition from TORCH to LIGHTNING this year is particular, with six planets trailing along all now holding court in the latter shape if you include the Moon for this lunation. Emphasized is the division of some of LIGHTNING Shape being in Capricorn and even more being in Aquarius. This Shape is getting to about the near halfway point of the final seven Shapes in the initiatory process within the Prayer to Mene sequence as listed in the Greek Magical Papyri. This final quadrant of Shapes, which cover the winter season, suggest the entering of the purified space of the temple, going below in search of direct encounter with the divine mysteries and making one’s way back to the land of the living as an initiated member of society, prepared for one’s own inevitable demise now being able to navigate through transmigration. LIGHTNING in this sequence represents the sudden shock of the ordeal, essentially the rapid escalation in an initiatory setting when you realize shit has just got serious. It would not be an initiation, or total change of status, if something didn’t happen to break you from who you were before and who you were after the ceremony. Lightning is the epiphanic flash, the extreme illumination which displays to you that which cannot be unseen, a plasmic instant of revelational intensity, aligned metaphorically or literally, with the separating of the soul from the body.

The three inner planets are amidst their synodic resets, where they disappear into the light of the Sun and change costumes for the next round of their journey around their orbit, new and yet to be seen or realized tactics, values, maneuvers, desires, aesthetics, logistics, and lingo entering the game out of cracks into the burst of light. They will all meet Pluto as they shift from legacy oriented Capricorn to pioneering leaning Aquarius. There is a precipice leap in store as we orient to unmapped designs, adrift in the ominousness of the unknown, sensing raw power from the sheer uncertainty. Meanwhile, the outermost planets all are on the verge of shifting into their 3, 8, and 14 year upcoming positions, giving a copious amount of last era’s slurry shifting beneath our feet and morphing the playing field in real time. The lunation trines Uranus tectonically quaking our baselines until there’s a permanent plate slip, which is sextile to Saturn determinately loosening bonds to everything with “Before” stamped on it, washing through unfathomable amounts of trance enduing formlessness via Neptune crossing over Pisces into impulse hypnosis modality as it enters Aries.

This is just one pivotal collection of aspects in the big transition which is 2025 into 2026. This duo of years comes packaged together like a double LP which is a sprawling concept album centering around a world which loses momentum and dissolves so that another more dynamic reality can erupt from its melting. Every song contains a facet of this theme despite the tempo and feel of the composition being unique enough to itself. In this way last lunation’s synopsis sounds a lot like this lunation’s synopsis, and similarly the 2025 year ahead view sounds a lot like the 2026 year ahead view; we’ve been in a rather long transition state which in a wider context is actually quite abrupt. Pre and post 2025/2026 are different animals entirely. Todays New Moon speaks directly to all this with heavy, infrastructural weight to initiate. Genealogies, 2nd pressings, land management projects, personal histories, long term associations, established orders are all reaching to outsource in ways which will transform how things are structured for the long haul. Today an explosive seed is sown into the skeleton upon which the saga is draped. After the flash we get a different frame and a new way to stretch skin over it. Here’s a breakdown of how things will be different:

-Saturn for the past two and a half years was obligating us to loosen our grips on control for so we could learn to surrender to conditions more powerful than us and establish ways of sailing and surfing with their motions. Although, soon, for the next two and a half years this going with the flow will only flush us down the drain and instead we’ll have to keep calm, alert, not waste any energy unnecessarily and strike when the iron is hot with accuracy and swiftness of reflex.

-Uranus for the past eight years was attempting to radically re arrange our baselines, habits, grooves and regular rhythms— it may not have completed this mission and intends to between now and May so that it can move on to much more varied and accelerated change across all the ways in which we exchange ideas and cross pollinate information.

-Neptune for the past fourteen years has been widening our perceptions concerning holism, empathy, relaxation, drama, mysticism, spirituality, and permeability and in the process we immersed ourselves in a vast pool of escapisms, but in a few days will be more concerned with hypnotizing us to act on impulses, imagine activities, lose ourselves in what we are doing, and source from archetypal or mythological energies to summon power that is sheer, and results driven. With this combat, conflict and competition of all kind may become alluring, and of course intoxicants tend towards up rather than down, i.e. dreams of performance enhancement.

-Pluto has already situated itself in Aquarius since 2023/2024, but the three outer planets mentioned above will aspect the outermost object and express in parallel to his pressure to update, upgrade, restructure, redesign, progress off the map and through the absolute abyss towards new concepts for a reframing of how the world and our own personal realities can be organized. We may be driven by fear, by powerful forces, some mystery, obsession or an inexplicable unknown, but we’re likely all in one way or another headed to places, arrangements, and ideas that are unfamiliar or that we never previously even conceptualized.

The Picatrix calls the 24th Shape the “Luckiest Of The Lucky” and sees as its image a woman breastfeeding, with a talisman for increasing herds and elections for profit. It may be that the suddenness, shock and ability to rapidly re-arrange and mark the line between before and after has the potential to bring about good fortune as much as it does break apart someone from what they have been, up until now, matrixed within. The word translated as ‘Lightning’ from the PGM is ‘Astrapí’, meaning “to flash”, referring to lightning but etymologically derives from ἀστήρ (astḗr, “star”) -and- ὀπή (opḗ, “sight, hole”), which is in a sense very Aquarian, as in expression and energy from outside the world, alien transmissions influencing and changing the order of things. The firmament was seen as the honored dead collected into the night sky and viewed by the absent Sun while traveling throughout the underworld until morning, so this need not be ET’s, but people and things long distant, out of sight, out of mind and entering the seen suddenly, like a tear in the fabric of reality where novelty can influx and modulate the goings on. The rest of the astrology is rife with a future-past superimposition looping here at the spiraling end of our era, and from this skipping CD moment sparks a nuanced flip of the script, but possibly from the deep space of the archaic past, or, where you originally came from that you didn’t even know about. LIGHTNING follows TORCH in the sequence. This is the smoking by the gas pumps accidentally igniting the powder keg which is the mythical big bang that might have started it all but in the way that the future summons the past to do its bidding for it and the catalyzing is just a little wake up call that the plot is twisting and its time to act accordingly. No good gambler would sleep through such a step change. But Jupiter is still reminding us to take care to eat nutritiously and rest, both metaphorically and literally. Sleep well when you need sleep so you can be awake when you need to be awake.

The 24th Nakshatra is called Shatabhisha, "Comprising a hundred physicians”, and this Shape does seem to resound with a medical, and especially diagnostic, dynamic. I find those with heavy placements here must become their own health detectives or get taken advantage of by the corrupt medical industry; something very applicable in this moment in the historical plot, especially with a parade of planets marching over Pluto in early Aquarius. Indeed, the Rigvedic deity is Varuna, the guardian of rta or universal law, the law and order of the gods. The image seen is of an empty circle as well as 1000 flowers or stars and indeed Varuna is considered the Lord of Milky Way waters. The emphasis on flashing light and stars possibly being a breech between this world and another holds over.  Rahu, or the North Node is also associated as a kind of karmic enforcer here, which can arrive as invisible obstacles such as diseases resulting from past-life karma. This latter concept would embody well the predicament of having the best cure for alarming symptoms being a soul searching induced behavioral change rather than prescriptions of pharmaceuticals which only kill you in a different way than your illness. The spirit, Guland, from the Grimorium Verum falling into the 24th position can cause or cure sicknesses and also is known to expedite diagnosis. His Quimbanda syncretized counterpart is a Bat spirit with a penchant for alchemy who sometimes blows up his own works and can bring disruptions reverberating into practitioners lives, much like PGM’s TORCH spelunking inevitably sparks off the LIGHTNING powder-keg. This is intellectual eureka, inducing synapse storms with life changing ideas following unexpected discoveries.

The Chinese tradition for the 24th Xiu also discusses inner alchemy, revelation of non-dual states and immortality as well as I Ching divination and necromancy, talismanic power, Feng Shui adjustments and soothing the dead. All this tracks with themes of re arranging the furniture in profound or power rousing ways, the arrival of explosive “this just ins” diagnostic or otherwise, feedback loops with those who should rest in peace, and integration of reality’s most perplexing features adjusting your life track itinerary. The Fangshi is a high official with his back to the living holding a book up as a divine offering. Very Aquarian indeed. Although, there’s a spectrum of Leo-Aquarius also at play here. To find who you ultimately are you sometimes have to detach from everybody else. If we are going to operate with autonomy and self sovereignty in 2026 and wield our power effectively, we have to do so with some divine inspiration and an intelligence that is so unique it is untranslatable to the populace. We may find that its no longer time for announcing our actions, as we’re about to leave the inter-permeable pool and strike out on our own. Today’s New Moon is an important step up a rung on the ladder towards this end. Get up to your perch of advantage and address the incoming unknown with a mind to grasp the flash, as within its instantaneousness you might see where to host your future’s incubation.