Sacred PHX
Lunar Almanac
LEO NEW MOON ECLIPSE
August 12, 2026
A monthly editorial exploring the rhythms of the sky through astronomy, astrology, herbalism, ritual, and seasonal living.
From the Apothecary
There are seasons for tending quietly to what is growing beneath the surface.
And there are seasons for allowing ourselves to be seen.
August arrives beneath a sky filled with movement. Planets change signs. Chiron begins its retrograde journey. Venus returns home to Libra. Mercury joins the Sun and Jupiter in Leo. Mars slips into the protective waters of Cancer.
And on August 12, the Sun and Moon meet at 20°02′ Leo beneath a total solar eclipse—temporarily allowing daylight itself to disappear.
There is something beautifully symbolic about beginning a new lunar cycle in darkness within a sign so intimately connected to light.
Leo is ruled by the Sun.
It speaks to vitality, creativity, courage, pleasure, self-expression, and the part of us that longs to create simply because something within us feels alive.
Yet this New Moon does not necessarily ask us to shine brighter.
Perhaps it asks us to consider what our light is for.
The Aquarius Full Moon invited us to look toward the future and examine whether the lives we were building could support the people we were becoming.
Now, the Leo New Moon turns the question inward.
What brings you alive?
What wants to be created through you?
What have you kept hidden because being fully seen felt more vulnerable than remaining small?
And what might happen if you allowed yourself to begin before knowing exactly where the beginning will lead?
New Moons traditionally mark beginnings. But eclipses have their own rhythm. Sometimes they open doors we didn’t know we were approaching. Sometimes they redirect us. Sometimes their meaning only becomes visible in retrospect.
So perhaps this isn’t a Moon for forcing certainty.
Perhaps it is a Moon for listening.
For noticing what excites you.
For returning to pleasure.
For creating without immediately asking whether the creation will be useful, profitable, impressive, or understood.
For remembering that joy can be information, too.
Under this Leo New Moon, we plant seeds—but we do not need to know exactly what they will become.
We only need enough courage to place them into the soil.
Astronomy
When Daylight Becomes Dark
On August 12, 2026, the Sun, Moon, and Earth align closely enough for the Moon to pass directly between Earth and the Sun, creating a total solar eclipse.
Astronomically, every solar eclipse is a New Moon—but not every New Moon produces a solar eclipse.
During an ordinary New Moon, the Moon passes near the Sun from Earth’s perspective. Because the Moon’s orbit is tilted by roughly five degrees relative to Earth’s orbit around the Sun, its shadow usually passes above or below Earth.
During a solar eclipse, however, the alignment occurs close enough to one of the Moon’s orbital nodes that the Moon’s shadow reaches Earth’s surface.
For observers within the path of totality, the Moon completely covers the visible disk of the Sun for a brief period, turning daylight into an extraordinary twilight.
Astrologically, the eclipse occurs at 20°02′ Leo.
This astronomical relationship is also part of why the lunar nodes matter so much in eclipse astrology. The nodes are not physical planets. They are the mathematical points where the Moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic—the apparent path of the Sun through our sky.
And that makes the broader nodal story surrounding this lunation especially important.
Sky at a Glance
August 3 — Chiron stations retrograde in Taurus
Worth • security • embodiment • healing
August 5 — Last Quarter Moon in Taurus • 13°40′
Release • reassessment • clearing
August 6 — Venus enters Libra
Relationship • beauty • reciprocity • harmony
August 9 — Mercury enters Leo
Expression • storytelling • creative voice
August 11 — Mars enters Cancer
Protection • emotional action • belonging
August 11 — Juno Rx re-enters Capricorn
Commitment • responsibility • long-term structures
August 12 — Ceres enters Cancer
Nourishment • caregiving • emotional sustenance
August 12 — Leo New Moon Total Solar Eclipse • 20°02′
Creation • identity • beginnings • visibility
The Longer Sky
The planetary cycles shaping this lunation
Not every influence surrounding a New Moon begins in the days immediately before it.
Some planetary movements unfold across months—or even years—creating the larger astrological landscape through which each lunation moves.
As we approach the August 12 Leo New Moon and Total Solar Eclipse, several longer cycles are already underway. Together, they deepen the story of this eclipse: one concerned not simply with being seen, but with identity, courage, creativity, collective belonging, and what we choose to do with our individual light.
Jupiter in Leo
June 30, 2026 – July 26, 2027
Jupiter represents expansion, wisdom, faith, opportunity, and our desire to experience more of life. In Leo—a Fixed Fire sign ruled by the Sun—those themes move through creativity, vitality, pleasure, leadership, courage, and self-expression.
Jupiter’s journey through Leo can magnify creative confidence and our willingness to take up space, while also amplifying pride, excess, performance, or the desire for recognition.
Its presence is especially significant around this eclipse, with the Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Jupiter gathering in Leo and concentrating attention on Leo territory.
What are we creating because it genuinely brings us alive—and what are we creating because we want to be witnessed creating it?
Saturn Retrograde in Aries
Retrograde July 26 – December 10, 2026
Saturn represents discipline, boundaries, responsibility, maturity, time, and the structures we build slowly. In Aries—a Cardinal Fire sign ruled by Mars—those lessons meet themes of initiation, independence, courage, and action.
In traditional astrology, Saturn is considered to be in its fall in Aries. Saturn prefers patience and deliberation, while Aries moves instinctively and wants to begin.
Its retrograde provides an important counterweight to the abundance of Leo fire surrounding this eclipse. We may feel called to create, lead, or begin something new, while Saturn asks whether what we’re beginning has enough structure to last.
What does it mean to trust yourself enough to begin—and respect what you’re building enough to move slowly?
Neptune Retrograde in Aries
July 7 – December 12, 2026
Neptune represents dreams, imagination, spirituality, intuition, ideals, dissolution, and illusion. In Aries, those themes encounter questions of identity, courage, action, and who we believe ourselves capable of becoming.
During Neptune’s retrograde, some of that exploration turns inward. We may be asked to distinguish between inspiration and projection—or between the person we genuinely are becoming and an identity we’ve imagined for ourselves.
That discernment feels particularly relevant beneath a Leo eclipse centered on authentic self-expression.
The invitation isn’t to abandon the dream. It’s to become more conscious of which dreams genuinely belong to us.
What dream are you following—and does it still feel like yours?
Uranus in Gemini
April 25, 2026 – August 3, 2032
Uranus represents disruption, liberation, innovation, awakening, and sudden change. In Gemini—the Mutable Air sign associated with language, ideas, communication, learning, and information—it begins a much longer collective chapter around how we communicate and understand one another.
We received an early jolt of this energy when Mars conjoined Uranus in Gemini on July 3–4, one of the opening transits of our previous Almanac.
Now, Uranus remains in the background.
The lightning bolt has become part of the weather.
Beneath a Leo lunation concerned with creative expression, Uranus asks:
What new language do we need for the person we’re becoming?
Pluto Retrograde in Aquarius
Retrograde May 6 – October 15, 2026
Pluto represents transformation, power, death and rebirth, the unconscious, and what must fundamentally change rather than simply be improved. In Aquarius, those processes move through community, systems, technology, collective power, and our visions for the future.
Pluto’s journey through Aquarius is generational, so its larger story will unfold over many years. During its retrograde, however, we’re given an opportunity to look more closely at our relationship with the collective structures already changing around us.
Its presence in Aquarius is particularly significant now that the North Node has entered the same sign while the Leo eclipse activates the opposite side of the zodiac.
The question of individual expression therefore becomes inseparable from the question of collective participation.
How might personal transformation change the way we participate in the world we’re building together?
North Node in Aquarius / South Node in Leo
July 26, 2026 – March 26, 2028
True Node
Only weeks before this eclipse, the lunar nodes changed signs.
The North Node entered Aquarius, while the South Node entered Leo, beginning a new approximately 20-month nodal chapter.
The lunar nodes aren’t planets. Astronomically, they are the two points where the Moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic—the apparent path of the Sun through our sky.
And eclipses occur when New or Full Moons happen near these nodal points.
That makes this shift particularly important.
We’re not simply experiencing a New Moon in Leo.
We’re entering an emerging Leo–Aquarius eclipse story that will continue unfolding through 2028.
The North Node points toward Aquarius:
community, collaboration, innovation, objectivity, collective vision and the future.
The South Node moves through Leo:
creativity, individuality, recognition, personal expression, pride and the desire to be seen.
But I don’t want to frame the South Node as:
Leo bad. Aquarius good.
That’s far too simplistic.
The South Node can describe something familiar—qualities we’ve developed, patterns we instinctively know how to inhabit, and sometimes places where attachment has formed.
So perhaps the invitation isn’t to abandon Leo.
Perhaps it is to refine Leo.
To create without needing constant applause.
To lead without needing to dominate.
To be seen without making visibility the measure of our worth.
To cultivate individual gifts and then ask:
How might what is uniquely mine become useful to something larger than myself?
And suddenly, the Aquarius Full Moon we just moved through feels less like an isolated event.
It feels like a threshold.
The Sky We’re Entering
This is where the Leo New Moon begins to reveal its larger story.
Jupiter and the South Node emphasize Leo, while the North Node and Pluto occupy Aquarius. Saturn and Neptune retrograde through Aries, Uranus continues its long journey through Gemini, Venus returns home to Libra, and Mars enters Cancer.
So this isn’t simply:
Be confident. Be creative. Shine.
The sky asks something more interesting:
What deserves your life force?
What are you willing to create even if no one applauds?
What happens when creativity becomes contribution rather than performance?
And perhaps most importantly:
What are you ready to bring into the light—not because you need the world to see it, but because you’re finally ready to let it exist?
The Astrology Behind It
A chronological look at August’s transits and the larger planetary cycles shaping the Leo New Moon Total Solar Eclipse.
The August 12 eclipse does not arrive alone.
Each planetary movement leading into this New Moon adds another layer to its story. Some influences are brief. Others belong to planetary cycles that will remain with us for months or years.
Understanding the difference allows us to see astrology not as a collection of isolated events, but as an interconnected sky.
August 3
Chiron Stations Retrograde in Taurus
Planetary Body:
Chiron is a minor planet often described in astrology as the wounded healer. It represents wounds that can become sources of wisdom, particularly when healing becomes less about erasing what happened and more about changing our relationship to it.
The Sign:
Taurus is a Fixed Earth sign ruled by Venus. It relates to stability, resources, values, pleasure, the body, material security, and our understanding of worth.
Motion:
Retrograde.
When a planetary body stations retrograde, its apparent motion from Earth’s perspective begins moving backward through the zodiac. Astrologically, retrogrades are associated with review, reconsideration, and internalization.
Why It Matters
Chiron’s retrograde begins this lunar story not with creation, but with worth.
Before asking what we want to bring into the world, Taurus asks whether we believe ourselves worthy of tending to it.
Creative expression can expose surprisingly tender places.
Is this good enough?
Am I good enough?
What happens if nobody values what I make?
What happens if they do?
As Chiron turns inward in Taurus, healing may involve separating inherent worth from productivity, possessions, recognition, or external validation.
And that becomes important preparation for a Leo eclipse concerned with visibility and expression.
Before asking the world to witness us, perhaps we’re being asked to witness ourselves.
August 5
Last Quarter Moon in Taurus • 13°40′
Lunar Phase:
Last Quarter.
The Last Quarter Moon occurs when the Sun and Moon form a square, approximately 90° apart.
Aspect:
Square.
Squares create friction between two energies. Astrologically, that tension can create pressure for movement, adjustment, or decision.
Why It Matters
Before the New Moon asks us to plant, the Last Quarter Moon asks us to clear.
And once again, Taurus brings attention to what we’ve accumulated—not only materially, but emotionally and energetically.
What are we carrying because it genuinely sustains us?
What are we keeping because it feels familiar?
The days preceding the eclipse offer a natural point of release.
Not every seed needs to travel with us into the next season.
August 6
Venus Enters Libra
Planet:
Venus governs love, beauty, pleasure, relationships, creativity, attraction, and values.
The Sign:
Libra is a Cardinal Air sign associated with relationship, harmony, justice, aesthetics, reciprocity, and balance.
Traditional Astrology:
Venus is in her domicile in Libra.
A planet in domicile occupies a sign it traditionally rules, allowing its qualities to operate from familiar territory.
Why It Matters
Venus in Libra shifts our attention toward the spaces between us.
How do we relate?
How do we collaborate?
How do we create beauty together?
And where do we compromise so much in pursuit of harmony that we lose contact with ourselves?
This becomes a beautiful counterpoint to Leo.
Leo asks us to recognize our individual creative voice.
Libra reminds us that expression doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
We create in relationship—with people, culture, nature, lineage, and community.
The invitation isn’t to disappear into relationship or stand entirely alone.
It’s to learn how to remain ourselves while meeting another.
August 9
Mercury Enters Leo
Planet:
Mercury governs communication, thought, learning, language, information, and perception.
The Sign:
Leo is Fixed Fire, ruled by the Sun. It brings creativity, warmth, courage, vitality, and self-expression.
Why It Matters
When Mercury enters Leo, thought wants expression.
Ideas want stories.
Words want heart.
Communication can become warmer, more creative, confident, dramatic, or declarative.
Around this eclipse, Mercury’s presence in Leo reinforces one of the central questions of the lunation:
What needs to be said because it is genuinely yours to say?
Leo can give Mercury courage.
But fixed fire can also become attached to its own perspective.
So this transit asks us to distinguish between speaking with conviction and believing that conviction makes us unquestionably correct.
The invitation is not simply to speak louder.
It is to speak more authentically.
August 11
Mars Enters Cancer
Planet:
Mars governs action, desire, assertion, motivation, courage, anger, conflict, and how we pursue what we want.
The Sign:
Cancer is Cardinal Water, ruled by the Moon. It relates to home, family, memory, emotional security, protection, ancestry, and belonging.
Traditional Astrology:
Mars is considered to be in its fall in Cancer.
Mars prefers direct movement.
Cancer moves according to feeling, instinct, and protection.
Why It Matters
Mars in Cancer asks a different question about action:
What are you willing to protect?
Not every act of courage is loud.
Sometimes courage looks like creating safety.
Setting a boundary.
Protecting something tender.
Choosing rest.
Defending the home, body, family, community, or emotional foundation that allows something new to grow.
This becomes especially important beneath Leo’s fire.
If Leo represents the flame, Cancer asks us to consider the hearth that holds it.
August 11
Juno Retrograde Re-enters Capricorn
Asteroid:
Juno is associated in modern astrology with commitment, partnership, loyalty, agreements, and the ways we bind ourselves to others.
The Sign:
Capricorn is Cardinal Earth, traditionally ruled by Saturn. It concerns structure, responsibility, longevity, ambition, and accountability.
Motion:
Retrograde.
Why It Matters
Juno’s return to Capricorn invites reconsideration of commitment.
Not simply:
Who am I committed to?
But:
What am I willing to build over time?
Some commitments may need stronger foundations.
Others may reveal themselves as obligations we’ve outgrown.
Against the creative potential of the Leo eclipse, Juno asks whether our commitments create enough structure for our creativity to survive beyond inspiration.
Because beginning something is one kind of courage.
Remaining devoted to it is another.
August 12
Ceres Enters Cancer
Dwarf Planet:
Ceres is associated astrologically with nourishment, caregiving, cycles of attachment and separation, grief, sustenance, and our relationship with giving and receiving care.
The Sign:
Cancer is ruled by the Moon and naturally emphasizes nurturing, home, belonging, emotional security, and ancestry.
Why It Matters
Hours before the eclipse, Ceres enters Cancer.
That timing brings nourishment directly into the story of beginning.
What sustains the thing you’re trying to create?
What does your body require?
What does your home require?
What kind of care allows creativity to flourish rather than become another source of depletion?
Leo may describe the creative flame.
But Ceres in Cancer reminds us:
Even fire must be tended.
August 12
New Moon Total Solar Eclipse in Leo • 20°02′
Lunation:
The Sun and Moon meet in Leo.
Astronomical Event:
Total Solar Eclipse.
The Sign:
Leo is Fixed Fire ruled by the Sun.
Planetary Ruler:
The Sun.
This is especially significant because the eclipse occurs in the very sign ruled by the celestial body temporarily being obscured.
For a brief moment, the source of Leo’s light disappears behind the Moon.
And symbolically, that gives this lunation an extraordinary tension between visibility and darkness.
The Nodal Axis
This eclipse occurs as the lunar nodes begin their journey through the Aquarius–Leo axis.
The South Node in Leo brings familiar patterns around identity, recognition, pride, creativity, leadership, and being seen into the eclipse story.
Across the zodiac, the North Node in Aquarius points toward collaboration, community, innovation, collective participation, and future-oriented thinking.
Again, the invitation isn’t to reject Leo.
It’s to evolve our relationship with it.
Jupiter in Leo
Jupiter’s presence in Leo expands the territory this eclipse is activating.
Jupiter magnifies.
So creativity may feel larger.
Desire may feel larger.
Confidence may grow.
Possibility may suddenly appear wider than it did before.
But Jupiter can also magnify ego, excess, expectation, and the hunger for recognition.
This is why the question of expression versus performance becomes so important.
The Larger Fire Story
Saturn and Neptune are both retrograde in Aries while the eclipse occurs in Leo.
Aries and Leo are both Fire signs.
Aries begins.
Leo creates.
Saturn asks whether the beginning has structure.
Neptune asks whether the vision is real—or merely imagined.
Leo asks whether we have enough courage to give that vision form.
The fire is present.
But this isn’t fire without responsibility.
It’s fire asking for direction.
Why It Matters
A New Moon traditionally begins a lunar cycle.
A New Moon in Leo might ordinarily invite us to plant intentions around creativity, confidence, pleasure, leadership, visibility, and self-expression.
But an eclipse complicates the idea of intentional creation.
We may not fully understand what is beginning.
We may discover that what we thought we wanted is changing.
Something may enter our lives that wasn’t part of the plan.
Or something we’ve been quietly becoming may finally demand expression.
So rather than approaching this eclipse with a rigid list of manifestations, perhaps we approach it with curiosity.
Not:
How can I make this happen?
But:
What is trying to happen through me?
And that, I think, is where the heart of this entire issue lives.
The Aquarius Full Moon asked us to examine the future we were creating.
The Leo New Moon asks us to become active participants in creating it.
Not through performance.
Not through proving.
But through the courageous act of allowing something genuine within us to take form.
How This New Moon May Show Up for You
The Leo New Moon Through the Rising Signs
While the collective experiences the same sky, astrology becomes personal through the houses of the birth chart.
Your Rising Sign, or Ascendant, determines which house Leo occupies in a whole-sign house system—and therefore which area of life this New Moon and Total Solar Eclipse may illuminate.
Because this is an eclipse, these themes may not reveal themselves all at once. Think of them less as predictions for a single day and more as areas of life entering a new chapter—one that may continue developing over the months ahead.
Read for your Rising Sign first.
Aries Rising
Leo rules your 5th House — Creativity, Pleasure, Romance & Self-Expression
This eclipse lands in one of Leo’s most natural territories: the part of your chart associated with creation.
Something wants to be expressed.
That could involve art, romance, pleasure, sexuality, children, creative projects, entrepreneurship, or simply remembering what you enjoy when enjoyment doesn’t need to accomplish anything.
But with the South Node moving through this house, the invitation may not simply be to seek more attention for what you create. You may be reconsidering your relationship with recognition itself.
Consider: What would you create if joy—not validation—were enough reason to begin?
Taurus Rising
Leo rules your 4th House — Home, Family, Roots & Inner Foundation
The eclipse turns inward.
Your home, family relationships, ancestry, living environment, emotional foundations, or understanding of belonging may be entering a new chapter.
For some, this could coincide with tangible changes around home or family. For others, the shift may be internal: redefining what safety means or recognizing that an old version of “home” no longer supports who you’re becoming.
Before building outward, Leo asks you to tend the hearth.
Consider: What kind of foundation would allow more of you to flourish?
Gemini Rising
Leo rules your 3rd House — Communication, Learning & Your Immediate World
Your voice becomes part of the eclipse story.
Writing, speaking, teaching, studying, storytelling, siblings, local community, and the ways you exchange ideas may enter a new cycle.
With Mercury also moving through Leo, there can be a particularly strong emphasis on expression. But this isn’t necessarily about speaking louder.
It’s about recognizing which words actually belong to you.
You may be releasing an old way of communicating—or becoming willing to say something you’ve previously kept inside.
Consider: What becomes possible when you stop editing your voice before anyone has even heard it?
Cancer Rising
Leo rules your 2nd House — Money, Resources, Values & Self-Worth
This eclipse brings attention to what you value—and whether the life you’ve built reflects those values.
Money, income, possessions, pricing, resources, talents, and self-worth may all become part of a longer conversation.
With Jupiter expanding this area while the South Node begins moving through it, “more” isn’t necessarily the answer.
You may instead be learning what enough means.
What deserves your resources?
What deserves your time?
And what gifts have you undervalued because they come naturally to you?
Consider: What changes when you treat your gifts as something worthy of investment?
Leo Rising
Leo rules your 1st House — Self, Identity, Body & Personal Direction
This one is personal.
The eclipse occurs in your 1st House, placing identity, embodiment, appearance, autonomy, and the way you move through the world at the center of a new cycle.
You may feel yourself outgrowing an identity that once fit.
But you don’t necessarily need to know who replaces that version of you immediately.
With the South Node moving through your sign, part of this chapter may actually involve shedding rather than adding: releasing identities built around being impressive, recognizable, desirable, successful, or understood.
Consider: Who are you when you stop performing the person you’ve already been?
Virgo Rising
Leo rules your 12th House — Rest, Solitude, Spirituality & the Unconscious
Not every Leo beginning needs to happen where everyone can see it.
For you, this eclipse occurs behind the scenes.
Rest, dreams, spirituality, solitude, mental and emotional patterns, closure, and your relationship with surrender may become increasingly important.
Something may be gestating privately.
Give it permission to remain there.
This isn’t necessarily the moment to announce every plan or force yourself into outward momentum. Your new beginning may require an ending first.
Consider: What needs to become quiet enough for you to finally hear yourself?
Libra Rising
Leo rules your 11th House — Community, Friendship, Networks & Future Vision
Who are you becoming alongside?
The eclipse activates friendships, community, collaborations, audiences, networks, causes, and the dreams you hold for your future.
Some relationships may deepen. Others may naturally fall away as your vision changes.
And because the North Node is moving through your opposite 5th House of individual creativity, an interesting conversation begins between what belongs uniquely to you and what you build with others.
You don’t have to choose between individuality and community.
You may be learning how to bring one into the other.
Consider: Who helps your future feel more possible?
Scorpio Rising
Leo rules your 10th House — Career, Visibility, Purpose & Public Life
You’re experiencing this eclipse near the top of your chart.
Career, leadership, reputation, vocation, visibility, and your relationship with achievement may enter a significant new chapter.
You may feel called toward greater visibility—but the South Node asks you to examine why you want it.
Is the path you’re pursuing genuinely meaningful?
Or has success become something you’re performing because you’ve learned how to be good at it?
This eclipse doesn’t necessarily promise a new career overnight. It can begin a deeper reorientation around what you want your public life to represent.
Consider: What do you want to be known for—and does it still belong to the person you’re becoming?
Sagittarius Rising
Leo rules your 9th House — Belief, Travel, Higher Learning & Expansion
The world may be asking you to become larger than your current understanding of it.
Travel, education, spirituality, philosophy, publishing, teaching, cultural exploration, or a changing worldview may become part of this eclipse chapter.
Something you once believed may no longer contain the person you’re becoming.
Leo encourages you not simply to inherit a worldview, but to develop one through lived experience.
Consider: What are you ready to experience for yourself rather than simply believe?
Capricorn Rising
Leo rules your 8th House — Intimacy, Shared Resources & Transformation
This eclipse moves beneath the surface.
Shared finances, debt, investments, inheritance, intimacy, grief, trust, vulnerability, power, and emotional entanglements may begin shifting.
The 8th House often asks us to confront what cannot be controlled entirely on our own.
For Capricorn Rising, accustomed to building through self-reliance, there may be an invitation to reconsider what it means to receive, merge, trust, or allow another person to support you.
Consider: What becomes possible when vulnerability is no longer treated as the opposite of strength?
Aquarius Rising
Leo rules your 7th House — Partnership, Relationships & Collaboration
The eclipse lands directly across from you.
Romantic relationships, business partnerships, close friendships, contracts, and the ways you meet another person as an equal may enter a new chapter.
With the North Node moving through your 1st House while the South Node moves through your 7th, the larger lesson isn’t necessarily about finding or leaving a relationship.
It’s about maintaining selfhood within relationship.
Some partnerships may need to evolve because you’re evolving.
Consider: Which relationships allow you to become more fully yourself rather than requiring you to become smaller?
Pisces Rising
Leo rules your 6th House — Daily Life, Work, Health & Ritual
For you, the eclipse asks a wonderfully practical Leo question:
Does your everyday life contain enough life?
Work, routines, responsibilities, wellness practices, schedules, service, and the small rituals that structure your days may begin changing.
You may be reconsidering routines that are technically productive but leave little room for joy, creativity, or vitality.
Because ultimately, a life isn’t built only through its extraordinary moments.
It’s built through Tuesday mornings.
Consider: What small change could make your everyday life feel more like somewhere you actually want to live?
Lunar Cycles
Planting in Darkness, Growing Toward the Light
A New Moon begins a cycle, but what begins beneath it rarely reaches its fullest expression overnight.
The August 12 Leo New Moon and Total Solar Eclipse marks the beginning of a lunar story that will continue unfolding over the months ahead. Like a seed planted beneath the soil, its earliest movement may happen somewhere we cannot yet see.
This feels particularly important beneath an eclipse.
There can be a temptation to approach every New Moon with a list of intentions—to decide exactly what we want, how it should arrive, and when it should happen. But eclipses introduce an element of uncertainty. They remind us that beginnings sometimes carry us somewhere we could not have planned from where we currently stand.
So instead of asking only:
What do I want to manifest?
This New Moon might invite a different question:
What am I willing to begin tending without knowing exactly what it will become?
The Six-Month Lunar Story
Every New Moon begins a shorter monthly lunar cycle, but it also participates in a larger approximately six-month cycle with the Full Moon that later occurs in the same sign.
What begins beneath this Leo New Moon may gradually develop as the Moon waxes and wanes through the coming months.
Think back to what is stirring now.
A creative project.
A desire.
A relationship with visibility.
A new understanding of yourself.
A longing for greater pleasure or play.
A calling toward leadership.
A part of yourself asking for expression.
You don’t need to know what it means yet.
Notice it.
Tend it.
Allow it to develop.
When the Leo Full Moon arrives in early 2027, we can return to these themes and observe what has grown, what has changed, and what is ready to be illuminated.
But This Cycle Is Larger Than Six Months
Because this New Moon is also a solar eclipse, it belongs to a larger eclipse story unfolding across the Leo–Aquarius axis.
The recent movement of the lunar nodes into Aquarius and Leo begins a longer period of eclipses emphasizing the relationship between individual expression and collective participation.
So the seeds emerging now may belong to more than this lunar month.
Some may continue developing through subsequent eclipses.
Some may ask us to reconsider how we relate to recognition, creativity, leadership, community, collaboration, and belonging.
And some may only make sense when we look backward from a future version of ourselves.
That is one of the gifts of working consciously with lunar cycles:
We stop demanding that every moment explain itself immediately.
Instead, we learn to observe.
From New Moon to Full Moon
In the days immediately following the New Moon, the Moon begins waxing again.
The darkness slowly gives way to light.
This is a beautiful time to begin taking small actions toward whatever has surfaced—not because everything needs to happen immediately, but because intentions become meaningful when they enter our lived experience.
As the Moon grows, ask yourself:
What needs nourishment?
What deserves my energy?
What am I willing to practice consistently?
Where am I being asked to trust the process rather than rush toward proof?
By the Full Moon, something may become clearer.
By the Leo Full Moon months from now, we may see the larger shape.
And by the time this Leo–Aquarius eclipse cycle begins to close, we may recognize that what appeared to be a single beginning was actually part of a much longer becoming.
For now, we plant.
We tend.
We listen.
And we allow what is growing beneath the surface to reach toward the light in its own time.
Herbal Allies
Plants for Courage, Heart & Creative Life Force
If this Leo New Moon asks us to tend what wants to come alive, our herbal allies can support us in creating the conditions for that tending.
Leo is traditionally associated with the Sun, warmth, vitality, courage, creativity, and the heart. But this eclipse carries more than fire. Mars and Ceres have moved into Cancer, Chiron is turning inward through Taurus, Venus is at home in Libra, and the Leo–Aquarius nodal axis reminds us that individual expression exists within relationship and community.
So rather than choosing herbs simply because they are traditionally considered “solar,” we can work with plants that reflect the fuller story of this lunation: courage without force, expression without performance, nourishment alongside creation, and enough grounding to let something new develop slowly.
Calendula
For warmth, tending & gentle solar energy
With its golden-orange petals opening toward the Sun, calendula carries a visual language that feels naturally at home within Leo season.
Herbalists have traditionally worked with calendula as a soothing botanical for the skin and tissues, but within ritual it can also become a symbol of warmth, tending, and the everyday devotion required to keep something alive.
Calendula reminds us that tending doesn’t have to be dramatic.
Sometimes devotion looks like returning.
Watering.
Listening.
Showing up again tomorrow.
Work with calendula when: you want to bring warmth and intention into a practice you’re beginning.
Ritual reflection:
What am I willing to tend even before I know what it will become?
Rose
For the heart, softness & courageous openness
Leo rules the heart astrologically, making rose a beautiful companion for this lunation.
But rose carries an important lesson: softness and protection can coexist.
The flower opens.
The stem carries thorns.
With Venus entering her domicile in Libra while Mars and Ceres move into Cancer, rose beautifully bridges the themes of love, relationship, beauty, protection, and emotional nourishment moving through this sky.
Under a lunation concerned with being seen, rose can invite us to consider whether we can remain open without abandoning our boundaries.
Work with rose when: expression feels vulnerable or when you’re exploring the relationship between openness and self-protection.
Ritual reflection:
What would it feel like to let myself be seen without abandoning the parts of me that need protection?
Tulsi
For clarity, devotion & returning to center
Tulsi, or holy basil, has a long history of traditional use within Ayurveda and carries deep cultural and spiritual significance.
Rather than treating it simply as another “Leo herb,” its place in this Almanac comes through the theme of devotion.
The Leo eclipse may ignite inspiration, but inspiration alone cannot sustain what we’re creating.
Tulsi invites us back to practice.
To presence.
To the rituals we return to even after the initial excitement has passed.
With Saturn retrograde reminding us to reconsider our relationship with discipline, tulsi becomes a beautiful plant companion for asking whether consistency can come from devotion rather than punishment.
Work with tulsi when: you want to create a quiet ritual around something you’re committed to nurturing.
Ritual reflection:
What changes when consistency becomes an act of love rather than an obligation?
Rosemary
For remembrance, clarity & creative presence
Rosemary carries centuries of traditional associations with remembrance and has long been woven into culinary, medicinal, and ceremonial practices.
For this New Moon, remembrance feels particularly meaningful.
Because perhaps becoming isn’t always about inventing a completely new self.
Sometimes it’s about remembering what made us feel alive before we learned to question whether it was useful, impressive, profitable, or worthy of attention.
What did you love making as a child?
What fascinated you?
What did you do simply because you wanted to?
Rosemary can accompany a ritual of returning to those memories—not necessarily so we can recreate the past, but so we can recover pieces of ourselves that may still have something to teach us.
Work with rosemary when: you’re reconnecting with an abandoned passion, creative practice, or part of yourself.
Ritual reflection:
What part of myself am I ready to remember?
Working With the Herbal Allies
You don’t need to work with every plant.
Choose the one that speaks most clearly to where you are.
You might brew an herb traditionally prepared as tea, place a botanical on your altar, incorporate an appropriate plant into a bath or body ritual, cook with a culinary herb, or simply spend time learning about the plant itself.
The ritual isn’t created by using more.
It comes from the relationship you build with what you choose.
For this Leo New Moon, perhaps that is the deeper herbal invitation:
Choose something living.
Tend it with attention.
And allow the practice of tending to teach you something about tending to yourself.
Ritual Attunement
Tending What Is Not Yet Ready to Be Seen
A Total Solar Eclipse is a New Moon, but it does not need to be treated like an ordinary New Moon.
There can be pressure around New Moons to know exactly what we want—to write the intention, make the plan, visualize the outcome, and begin manifesting.
This eclipse offers another possibility.
What if you don’t need to know yet?
During a total solar eclipse, the Moon temporarily obscures the Sun. Beneath a Leo lunation—a sign ruled by the Sun and associated with visibility, creativity, and expression—there is something powerful about allowing the light to disappear.
Not as punishment.
Not as something to fear.
But as a reminder that creation often begins somewhere unseen.
A seed does not begin its life above the soil.
Neither do we.
Create Your Space
Find somewhere you can be undisturbed for a little while.
Rather than filling the space with many objects, keep this ritual simple.
You may bring:
- A candle
- A cup of tea
- One of this lunation’s herbal allies
- A small bowl of soil
- A seed, dried bean, stone, or other small object to represent what is beginning
- Paper and something to write with
If it feels right, begin with the lights low.
Allow darkness to become part of the ritual rather than something immediately filled.
1. Begin in Darkness
Sit quietly before lighting your candle.
Place both feet on the ground or allow your body to settle comfortably.
Notice your breath.
Notice your body.
Notice what comes forward when there is nothing you are required to produce.
You do not need to search for a message.
Simply listen.
Ask:
What has been asking for my attention?
Wait.
The answer may arrive as a thought, sensation, memory, image, desire—or nothing at all.
Nothing is also an answer.
2. Remember What Brings You Alive
Take your rosemary, rose, calendula, tulsi, or whichever plant you’ve chosen to work with.
Hold it.
Smell it.
Taste it if you’re working with an herb appropriately prepared for tea.
Then allow yourself to remember.
Not what you’re supposed to want.
Not what would look impressive.
Not what would make the most sense on paper.
Instead, remember something that has made you feel genuinely alive.
A place.
A person.
A sound.
A creative practice.
A childhood fascination.
A moment when you became so immersed in something that you forgot to wonder how you appeared while doing it.
Ask:
What part of myself comes alive here?
3. Name the Seed
Take your seed, stone, or symbolic object.
Rather than writing a detailed manifestation, choose one word for what you would like to cultivate during this cycle.
Perhaps:
Courage.
Play.
Expression.
Trust.
Joy.
Devotion.
Belonging.
Creativity.
Visibility.
Freedom.
Or something entirely your own.
Write the word on your paper.
Then ask yourself:
If I tended this quality rather than chased an outcome, how might my life begin to change?
You don’t need to answer immediately.
4. Plant Without Knowing
If you’re using a seed, place it into your bowl of soil.
If you’re using a stone or another object, rest it on top.
As you do, say quietly:
I give this permission to become what it is meant to become.
This is not a promise that everything you desire will happen.
It is an act of participation.
You are choosing to tend something without demanding certainty from it.
5. Bring Back the Light
Now light your candle
Watch the flame for a moment.
Leo reminds us that light doesn’t need to justify its existence.
It illuminates.
It warms.
It makes life possible.
Consider the central question of this Almanac:
What are you ready to bring into the light—not because you need the world to see it, but because you’re finally ready to let it exist?
You don’t need to announce your answer.
You don’t need to post it.
You don’t even need to completely understand it.
Let some beginnings remain sacred before they become visible.
6. Close With Devotion
Drink the remainder of your tea slowly.
Before closing your ritual, choose one small act of tending you can return to during the waxing Moon.
Not ten things.
One.
Write for ten minutes.
Water the plant.
Practice the song.
Sketch.
Rest.
Send the email.
Research the idea.
Take the class.
Make the first piece.
Whatever your action is, allow it to be small enough that you can actually return to it.
Because the seed doesn’t need you to pull it from the soil to check whether it’s growing.
It needs you to keep tending the conditions that allow growth to happen.
A Note on Eclipse Ritual
You may encounter astrology traditions that advise against manifestation or ritual during eclipses, while others actively work with eclipse periods.
There is no single universal practice.
For the Sacred PHX Lunar Almanac, we approach eclipse ritual less as an attempt to control an outcome and more as an opportunity for presence, observation, and relationship with the season.
You are always invited to adapt—or simply witness.
Sometimes ritual is action.
Sometimes ritual is listening.
And sometimes the most meaningful way to honor a beginning is to give it enough darkness to begin on its own.
Living With This Moon
Let the Beginning Become a Practice
The eclipse may occur on August 12, but its story does not end there.
As the Moon begins to wax, pay attention to what continues returning to you—the idea you keep thinking about, the creative practice you miss, the desire that feels quietly persistent, or the part of yourself asking for more room.
Leo reminds us to follow what brings us alive. But with Jupiter expanding Leo while Saturn retrograde asks for greater intention, this cycle isn’t only about creating more. It’s about creating what we can sustain.
Before asking, How can I make this bigger? ask:
What would help me tend this well?
Maybe the answer is consistency. Rest. A boundary. A protected hour to create. A collaborator. Or simply permission to remain a beginner.
And because this is an eclipse, allow what begins now to change shape. You do not need to know what the seed will become in order to care for it.
As this Moon grows, carry one question with you:
What are you ready to bring into the light—not because you need the world to see it, but because you’re finally ready to let it exist?
Live with the question.
Tend what answers.
And allow the light to return slowly.