Aspen Astrologer Links Scorpio New Moon to Self-Sabotage

Aspen —The Scorpio new moon hits this week. It’s the launch of your monthly lunar cycle, and according to local astrologer Sarah Mitchell, it’s also the moment you stop pretending your excuses are real.

If you’ve been stuck in a loop of self-sabotage, this is the week to look at why.

Mitchell writes for the Aspen Times under her "Moon Mondays" column. She argues that we often get exactly what we want, but not the version we say we want. Instead, a hidden part of us determines to make us miserable. We plant seeds in the fertile lunar soil, hoping they grow into our desires. Then we water them with doubt and pull them up by the roots before they sprout.

The short version: You are the obstacle.

This week brings a specific celestial event that makes this hard to ignore. Venus and Mercury both stop retrograding on Friday, the 13th. Mitchell notes that Friday is Venus’s day and a date associated with feminine power. Mercury reveals the thoughts keeping you stuck. Venus illuminates how you sabotage the very things you claim to want.

Read that again. Your thoughts and your actions are working against each other, and the moon is turning to shine a light on it.

Mitchell offers a concrete example from her own life. She is writing a book right now. Consciously, she wants to finish it. Unconsciously, she holds a belief that she isn’t good enough. Every time she sits down to write, that belief triggers. She makes excuses. She isn’t inspired today. There are better writers out there. Who is she to write a book? The book stays unwritten, and the belief remains safely intact. She is committed to the goal, but her unconscious mind is committed to the excuse.

She isn’t making that up. She’s in the middle of it. The book is coming along, but only because she practiced what she preaches until the excuses lost their power.

There’s a second, more exhausting pattern she’s uncovered recently: "I have to be productive to be worthy."

That one hit hard. If your worth depends on what you accomplish, you push harder to prove it. But no amount of productivity ever quite does the trick. There is always more to do, another project to finish, another reason you haven’t earned the right to stop. Eventually, you crash and burn. You’re so depleted you can barely get out of bed. Then what? You judge yourself for not being productive. You justify your unworthiness all over again.

Mitchell calls it a haunted hamster wheel she can’t escape. She was exhausted just writing about it.

The key is recognizing how both sides of the cycle reinforce the same belief. You overwork to prove your worth, then crash because you’re exhausted, then judge yourself for the crash. It’s a loop that feeds on itself.

For folks around here, this isn’t just abstract astrology. It’s the reason you’re working late into the night on a side project, then sleeping through your alarm and feeling guilty about it. It’s the reason you say you want to start a business, but you keep "researching" for months while the idea gathers dust.

The moon doesn’t care about your excuses. It just marks time and reveals patterns. If you’re stuck, look at what you’re doing to stay there.

Venus and Mercury stop their backward motion on Friday. The 13th. A day for feminine power, according to Mitchell. It’s a hard date to ignore if you’ve been ignoring your own signals all month.

The question isn’t what the moon is doing to you. The question is what you’re doing to yourself while waiting for it to change something.