NEW MOON IN BHARANI: (Held by Yama)

A Temple of Restraint and the last thing you let die!

“No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time—it is just that others are behind the time.”-Martha Graham

Some days arrive not to illuminate, but to dismantle. Today is that kind of day. It’s dark, and the Moon is in the crossfire with Mars and Pluto finishing up their third and final opposition and putting the final word on the long haul retrograde of Mars in Cancer going back to last December.

As my Beloved Satguru Amma says, as tension is something we can easily load up on for free, we can’t seem to get enough of it! There’s a lot of tension building both personally and collectively now. This New Moon is an interesting mix of cranky whiney tragi-comedy Mars in Cancer (think Larry David) in exchange with the Moon in me want or will throw a little tantrum, Aries.

“The dancer’s life is one of extreme discipline. When you are not practicing, someone else is. The body becomes an altar. There is no space for lies.”

Under the veiled quiet of this Amavasya (15th day of the waning lunar cycle), the Moon disappears from view in the Bharani Nakshatra—a lunar mansion ruled by Yama, the god of death, restraint, and cosmic justice. Bharani is an intense, mysterious, witchy death-womb container. It holds what must not yet be born, what cannot be rushed, what demands patience even when it trembles on the edge of eruption.

This New Moon, in the second nakshatra of the zodiac, does not concern itself with how things appear, but with how they last. Think beauty that is built to last. Many of my favorite people and artists have prominent planets in this Nakshatra. My Shani (Saturn) falls here. Martha Graham had her Mercury there and boy does she communicate Bharani style. She also had her Venus and Rahu in Pisces Uttarabhadrapada, where Venus still is now and where Rahu just was during that last eclipse!)

“The body is a sacred garment.”-Martha Graham

To create from Bharani is to be entrusted with creative tension, with the sacred labor of carrying what has not yet taken form. It is a moon for those who have learned the art of waiting—not from passivity, but from discipline. From dharma. From the choice to hold and tend to one’s fire until it becomes something truthful enough to offer.

The Discipline of Yama

Yama is often misunderstood in the West as a grim reaper figure. But in the Vedic imagination, Yama is the first mortal, the first to die, and therefore the guardian of the path all souls must walk. He is not cruel. He is fair. He is not violent. He is vigilant. He is the keeper of truth, of what is earned and what is due. He is the cosmic restraint that says: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Or as my father loves to say, “you want it, but do you really need it?”

Yama governs timing. Consequence. Sobriety. Restraint.

He reminds us that initiation without integration is merely performance. That power without ethics is desecration. That art without inner authority collapses under its own aesthetics.

This is the heart of Bharani’s teaching: Restraint is not repression. It is reverence. It is knowing that some things—grief, transformation, real art—require an interiority that cannot be staged.

The Final Opposition: Mars and Pluto

As the moon disappears, the sky is still lit with another confrontation: the final, searing Mars–Pluto opposition, exact yesterday and echoing across this day. It marks the close of a journey that began quietly, when Mars entered his retrograde shadow in late November 2024, and turned sharply inward when he stationed retrograde in December.

For months, we’ve been asked to sit with unspeakable frustration. With action thwarted. With willpower turned back on itself. Now, with Mars direct and making his final aspect to Pluto, the shadow of action is revealed. The consequences of ambition are tallied. The warrior stands before the underworld god and must answer not just for what he’s done, but also why! This is the last word in a long internal battle.

If something has felt like it’s been building since winter—a private rage, a stuckness, a question of power or direction—this lunation may not offer clarity, but it may offer release. A recognition. An opening where there was only resistance previously.

Bharani’s Dharma

Bharani, ruled by Venus, does not reject beauty, but it insists that beauty be earned through the discomfort of destroying all that is shallow, false and temporary. It is a nakshatra of gestation more than gratification. This is a lunar mansion carrying many of life’s literal and figurative miscarriages, abortions, failed or stalled or complicated starts in giving birth to the new.

This is a lunation for the artist who waits. The mother of the idea that hasn’t yet taken root. The one who carries, not for the likes and follows or applause, but for the promise of what might emerge if it’s looked after with patience and proper care.

“Only in silence, only in darkness, does the soul begin to hear itself.”

— Marion Woodman

This New Moon asks:

What am I rushing that must be allowed to ripen?

What do I fear will die in me if I wait?

What kind of art—or truth—am I capable of creating when I no longer perform my pain?

Journal Prompts for Bharani’s Womb