New Moon/ Solar Eclipse in Leo on August 12th, 2026

There is a new moon in Leo on August 12th, which is also a solar eclipse. There will be a lunar eclipse in Pisces in two weeks , but this eclipse actually harkens back to February’s eclipse in Aquarius. The Leo-Aquarius axis is about different perceptions and understandings of the self in context. The questions around whether the world should adjust to us, or us to the world. These questions are particularly apt in our current age of internet identity saturation and the proliferation of AI. Since we experience a lot of life as digital avatars and not embodied beings — even this essay, and the many everyday emails we all write are disembodied versions of us, we need to think even more about how we present ourselves as we move through our lives and through the world. Leo says: the world adjusts to me, since I am a body and a will and a heart. Aquarius is much more amenable to moving through the world as an abstraction. It also can see the benefit of allowing the world to make adjustments to it, because it is so much less attached to its ego identity. We are in the midst of adjustments throughout this year, new questions about how we interact and whether our default interaction style is working for us or if we need to embody a new style.

In the time between February and now, I have transformed from a student to a trainee therapist, all of a sudden providing therapy to clients and embodying a new relationship mode that I’ve never embodied before. Stepping into a different type of authority than before. In your life, in the time since February, perhaps ways of relating in your life have changed, pushing you into a new role or a new version of empowerment. Perhaps you noticed spaces in your life where you’re being asked to exert a new type of authority or assert a new mastery about something. This change will be about embodying and enacting a new empowered version of yourself. Aquarius lets us step into the background for the greater good. But we are now in an Aries age of the self and what the unique self of each of us can do. Saturn and Neptune shifting into Aries is a huge reality check on what we have been neglecting when they were previously in Pisces, who allowed us to dream our power away. So we can no longer do the easy Aquarius detachment and avoidance and fade away into the background. Instead, this Leo eclipse can show us what is most urgent to re-engage with, for each of us. Things can most certainly come to a head at this time, but it won’t be new stuff, it’ll be the old stuff that you’ve been neglecting to face. The stuff that you’ve been complaining about but not doing the work to repair or reshape. When things get hard, our skills come into play. Our talents, our abilities.

There may be conflict that arises that feels hard, but if you sit with it, you’ll find that you actually do know how to address it, you’ve just been addressing it in the abstract thought space and not in real life. Can you trust in yourself enough to come up with solutions for yourself?