Every now and then, the cosmos delivers a rare alignment called a Black Moon—an event that stirs both astronomers and astrologers alike. To scientists, it’s a quirky calendrical rhythm. To us mystics, it’s an extra-special (a bonus, if you will) portal into shadow, stillness, new beginnings, and renewal.
At Black Moon Wolfdog Sanctuary, we carry this name because it mirrors the path of the wolves we rescue and their symbiotic relationship with the humans who care for them—lives reborn from darkness into a unique opportunity for safety, healing, and liberation.
🌿 Pin this article to your Moon Magick board so you can return to it every Black Moon cycle.
🌌 What Is a Black Moon?
🔭 Astronomical Definition
While “Black Moon” isn’t a NASA term, it has become a name passed down through stargazers and storytellers for 3 different moments when the lunar rhythm falls out of its usual pattern:
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The second New Moon in a single calendar month – like a “Blue Moon,” but in darkness.
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The third New Moon in a season of four – when nature gifts us one extra moon in a season, the third becomes the Black Moon.
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Or, more rarely, the absence of a new moon in a month – something only possible in February.
So-every Black Moon is a New Moon, but not every New Moon is a Black Moon. These definitions reveal how even the most predictable bodies—the Sun and Moon—still find ways to move with mystery.
Why it matters:
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Black Moons occur only once every 29–33 months, reminding us that cosmic order is never rigid, but supple, bending like willow branches.
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The Black Moon is "invisible" to the naked eye, yet its alignment of Sun, Moon, and Earth stirs the seas, alters the magnetism of the planet, and echoes in the tides of our own blood.
Like seeds resting in soil, the Black Moon revels in shadow and exudes the liminal, but pulses with potential. Its darkness is not emptiness but gestation, mystery, and creation. I liken the Black Moon to that of the darkest scrying mirror or bowl you can gaze into. Enabling you to tap into portals, potentials, and the paranormal, while becoming a conduit for mystery.
🔮 Astrological Meaning
In astrology, the Moon speaks the language of:
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Emotion, intuition, and instinct
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Cycles of birth, death, and renewal
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The unconscious and shadow self
- The mood, mother, and feminine aspects
A New Moon always signals beginnings, but a Black Moon is a doubled threshold—a reset upon a reset, a deeper invitation into the mystery. It’s a cosmic hush, where the veils of habit thin and we are asked to:
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Confront the fears we keep tucked away.
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Plant seeds of intention in shadow-rich soil.
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Enter sacred silence, listening for what usually whispers beneath noise.
For witches and mystics, the Black Moon is a potent vessel for shadow work—banishing what binds, cleansing what has grown stale, and seeding what needs the fertile cover of night to take root. She's an activation for the rites of alchemy.
♍ The Black Moon at 0° Virgo: Degree Theory Insight
This Black Moon rises at 0° Virgo—the first degree of a sign, often called a critical degree. Zero is liminal, the purest essence of the sign’s archetype, unshaped and brimming with potential.
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Zero is the womb—the point before form, charged with promise.
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In Virgo, this degree embodies the archetype of the healer, ritual keeper, and steward of sacred order.
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A Black Moon here calls us to purify, refine, and simplify—not as punishment, but as devotion.
This moment is an invitation to remember that beginnings are tender and not yet fully-formed, but rich with possibility. At 0° Virgo, the Black Moon carries the medicine of becoming: the first breath of order in the fertile dark. If you have long been awaiting clear next steps or your path ahead to be free of obstacles or illusions, she may bring you just that.
🐺 Folklore & Cultural Wisdoms of the Black Moon
Across the world, cultures have honored the dark phase of the moon as sacred, mysterious, and fertile. While the specific modern term “Black Moon” didn’t exist in ancient times, many traditions recognized the rarity and power of unusual or prolonged dark moons as thresholds of change.
🌿 Celtic & Wiccan Traditions
The dark moon is a liminal space—a veil between endings and beginnings. Witches often use this time for banishing spells, ancestor work, and shadow rituals. A Black Moon amplifies this energy, making it ideal for initiations and radical new paths.
🌌 Babylonian & Mesopotamian
Priests tied new moons to cosmic resets of kingship and sacred order. The dark moon was read as a time when gods weighed the fate of rulers and empires. Rituals of renewal were often conducted to realign cosmic and earthly balance.
🐉 Chinese Traditions
The new moon marked a pause for rest and reset before planting or sacred ceremonies. It was considered a fertile void—a yin-heavy moment where stillness nourished the next cycle of yang activity.
🌾 Indigenous North America
Many tribal traditions honored both full and dark moons as seasonal guides for planting, hunting, or ceremony. The dark moon was never feared, but seen as a necessary silence before renewal. Some nations timed ceremonies to this phase, understanding it as the moon’s dreaming time.
✨ African Diaspora / Hoodoo
In Hoodoo and other African Diaspora practices, the dark moon is a time for energy clearing, protection, and banishing harmful forces. Its “blank slate” energy is used to break hexes, bury the old, and call in protection before the waxing crescent builds again.
🌙 Aztec (Mexica)
The Aztecs honored Coyolxauhqui, the Moon Goddess, whose dismemberment represented the breaking apart of cycles. The dark moon was a time of uncertainty—a gap where order dissolved before renewal. Their priests (tonalpouhqui) read rare lunar alignments as omens, often signaling cosmic upheaval or opportunity for creation out of chaos.
🌕 Maya
The Maya tracked lunar cycles with incredible precision. Their moon goddess Ix Chel represented fertility, medicine, and cycles of life and death. Her disappearance at the dark moon was seen as her descent into the underworld before renewal. A rare Black Moon would likely have been read as an intensification of her underworld journey—a longer, deeper gestation before her return.
🐍 Ancient Egypt
The Egyptians associated the moon with Khonsu (time, healing) and with the cycles of Osiris (death and resurrection). A dark moon symbolized invisibility and the journey through the Duat (underworld). Extra or rare dark moons would have been read as a prolonged testing phase—an amplification of renewal energy waiting to be reborn as the crescent.
🔱 Greece
The Greeks tied new moons to Hekate, goddess of liminal spaces and witchcraft. The dark moon was sacred to her and her followers, used for rituals of purification and guidance at the crossroads. A Black Moon would have been seen as a rare doubling of her dominion, an especially potent time to call on her power.
🐺 Norse
The Norse viewed the moon as hunted by the wolves Sköll and Hati, whose pursuit caused eclipses. A prolonged dark moon might have been understood as a sign of cosmic struggle, amplifying the myth of Ragnarök—where darkness eventually births renewal.
🔱 Hindu / Vedic
In Vedic astrology, the new moon is called Amavasya—a sacred time for ancestor rituals, fasting, and purification. A rare Black Moon would be considered an even more powerful Amavasya, magnifying the importance of honoring one’s lineage and clearing karmic debts.
Shared Thread:
Across cultures—from the pyramids of Egypt to the temples of the Maya, from Celtic groves to Vedic shrines—the dark moon is never just absence. It is the fertile void, the womb of possibility, the pause that makes the next note sacred. A Black Moon amplifies this wisdom, reminding us that what is unseen is not empty—it is becoming.
🌙 Coyolxauhqui vs. Metztli: Two Faces of the Moon in Mexica Myth
In Aztec (Mexica) cosmology, the Moon was not a single story but carried many faces:
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Coyolxauhqui (“She with bells on her cheeks”) was a Moon goddess whose story tells of her being dismembered by her brother, the Sun God Huitzilopochtli. Her broken body represents the waning and waxing phases of the moon, always conquered at dawn, always reborn in cycles of sacrifice.
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Metztli (Meztli) was the more general lunar deity, sometimes imagined as male, female, or androgynous. Metztli embodied the moon itself as celestial body—keeper of time, agriculture, and the sacred calendar. In some creation stories, Metztli hesitated when asked to become the Sun and was instead destined to shine more gently as the Moon.
Together, these figures remind us that the Moon can be both cosmic drama and steady presence—the cycle of struggle (Coyolxauhqui) and the rhythm of time (Metztli).
♍ The August 23, 2025 Black Moon in Virgo
This Black Moon lands at 0°23′ Virgo—a powerful threshold degree.
Key Aspects & Cosmic Weather:
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Sun & Moon Conjunct (0° Virgo) → New beginnings in healing, ritual, work, and service.
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Square Uranus in Gemini → Shocks, pivots, awakenings. Expect sudden insights that disrupt old patterns.
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Mars–Jupiter tension → Energy surges. If unfocused, it can feel restless or reckless. If directed, it’s fuel for major breakthroughs.
The Virgo Themes:
Virgo governs:
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Daily ritual & health
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Sacred service
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Purification & refinement
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Earth-based healing & harvest
This Black Moon whispers: “Reclaim your rituals. Purify your path. Align your work with your wild wisdom.”
🧹 Ritual for the Black Moon
Here’s a simple ritual you can adapt:
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Set the Scene – Light a black candle for fertile soil, and a white candle for rebirth.
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Release – Write down habits, fears, or stories you’re ready to end. Burn or trash them.
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Seed Intention – Write new commitments or desires. Fold and place under your candle or in your altar journal, or bury in the soil of a potted plant.
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Ground & Offer – Leave an offering outdoors—cornmeal, water, or flowers—as thanks to the cycles of death and rebirth.
🐾 Why Our Sanctuary Is Named “Black Moon”
When I chose the name Black Moon for our wolfdog sanctuary, it was not a branding decision, but a prayer. The Black Moon is not a spectacle in the sky—it is a sacred void, a fertile hush, a portal which reminds us that what we often cannot see still shapes us.
In the same way, the wolfdogs who come to us have lived through long nights of invisibility: discarded, red-tagged, unseen by the world that deemed them unworthy. Like the darkened moon, they were there all along, waiting for someone to remember them.
The Black Moon is a teacher. It tells us that silence is not absence, but gestation. That endings or liminal spaces are only compost and portals for beginnings. That every creature, no matter how misunderstood, carries a wild light within that is waiting for its season to return.
Our wolves and wolfdogs teach us this daily. In their eyes, we see that resilience itself is ceremony. In their howls, we hear that even grief can be sung back into belonging. The name Black Moon holds this kinship—between sky and soil, human and more-than-human, shadow and renewal.
To stand in service to them is to remember: just as the moon cycles from darkness to light, every being deserves the chance to rise again. And we are each critical elements in a greater ritual of balance and dance of harmony.
📌 Save for Later
Black Moons appear only every few years. Don’t lose this guide—pin it now so you’ll have it next time the sky goes dark.
✍️ About the Author 🔮
Mētztli Wolf is a trauma-informed psychic medium, evolutionary astrologer, and Hoodoo witch. They are the founder of Revolutionary Mystic, an eco-friendly spellcraft shop, and the director of Black Moon Wolfdog Sanctuary, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the Pacific Northwest.
Their work braids together decolonial spirituality, wolfdog rescue, and sacred activism, reminding us that intuition and wild wisdom are tools of survival and liberation.
When they’re not tending to the wolfdogs, you can find them teaching spell candle magick, creating art, or writing about the intersections of ecology, spirit, and resilience.
🌿 Support the Work
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🐺 Donate or sponsor a wolfdog → [Black Moon Wolfdog Sanctuary]
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Together, we can honor the cycles of shadow and light—and protect the wild kin who howl under them. 🌑🐾