February 17, 2026
4:11 AM PT / 7:11 AM ET / 12:11 PM GMT
28 Leo 49 / 28 Aquarius 49

The collective and future-oriented energy that has been intensifying for weeks is crystallizing into new form under the Aquarius New Moon.

What you’ve been feeling, and what you’ve been seeing, isn’t going to dissipate. It’s the way of the future.

This New Moon is one of the biggest astrological events of the month, not to mention the year.

It’s supersized for many reasons. It’s the last hurrah of a parade that has been moving in a cluster through Aquarius since mid-January. Each inner planet, the Sun and the Moon have all been refocused and transformed by the clarifying scythe of Pluto, which each of them met soon after entering Aquarius. Because of that contact, the sign’s energy is expressing itself differently – more distilled, more potent — in your life and in the world at large.

The Moon’s location also adds to the larger than life impact. Nearly at the end of its sign, it is the fifth of six 28 degree new moons, infusing seeds and new growth with enormous potency.

And this New Moon is a solar eclipse, the first on the Leo/Aquarius axis that will continue into 2028. This axis has us revisiting and resetting the challenge of shining as individuals while coexisting within a group. A defining question is: Who is your tribe? Also: Where is your stage? And what exactly of yourself are you displaying on it?

The last few weeks have heightened awareness of this challenge and these questions. The social group question got clarified and refined as the Aquarian traveling party met up with Pluto. The last two questions lit up under the Leo Full Moon that launched the month.

Watch for themes, situations and even people to come back from February 2008 to late summer 2009, the last time we underwent this eclipse cycle. Only this time, your alliances and validations are vastly, vastly different from the last go round.

This event ushers us across an unmistakable threshold, with a dramatic changing of the guard. “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” is in for a shake-up, maybe in location as well as the cast.

It’s common to associate departures and endings with a lunar eclipse, because it amplifies the culminating and releasing properties of a full moon. Yet departures and endings happen, too, with a solar eclipse.

The reason is that a solar eclipse temporarily blots out the light, then brings it back up. Symbolically it’s akin to a computer system rebooting to install updates (deliberately on your part, or without your asking for or knowing about it). Programs close, the computer shuts down and restarts, and when it comes back up, some files are gone, some programs are new, and some are in different form. As a solar eclipse resets areas of your life, priorities, situations and people depart – and new ones arrive.

And this cycle is coming in gangbusters. The inaugural event has a catalyzing assist from the sign’s ruler, Uranus, a square signaling “And we really mean it” from the cosmos. The energy coming off the square is shocking the Moon into action like a Jacob’s Ladder animating Frankenstein’s monster in the 1931 Universal film.

It may not be a particularly emotional event; Aquarius fosters a detached, intellectual observer mode, watching events play out as if at a distance. This event may, however, take your breath away. And send heads spinning.

And the surprising nature of some of the action may be that it happens at all. You may have been suspecting it; you may have been not wanting to face (or daring to believe) it. Although the impact (or its source) may be unexpected, the existence of the disruption has been rumbling for weeks. Uranus has been at its current degree, 27 Taurus, since New Year’s Eve, sending shockwaves that began noticeably shaking situations when the great awakener stationed direct February 3.

The disruptions won’t move on quickly. He’ll continue emitting shocks from this location for another month, and won’t leave his current degree until mid-March. As a result of his seeming lack of movement, some of the eclipse’s effects may play out like blasting caps (or stronger) detonating over the ensuing weeks.

Sound scary? That’s not likely to be your reaction in the midst of the reboot. Life force and courage are rising in each and every one of us, just days of locking in as new way of being. Saturn and Neptune are within minutes of their conjunction February 20 at the first degree of Aries, and the zodiac. This is the point of raw creation, where Neptune makes anything and everything possible and Saturn manifests physical form.

You may well be roaring, “Bring. It. On.” as you face the future – or, more likely, find yourself hurtling toward it.

And you will probably have company. Lots of it. Aquarius is, after all, the friend zone of the zodiac, and this eclipse is aligning you with updated companions and community. They’re heading with you into a shared future.

And the connections aren’t just intellectual. Some embody a love and kindness that borders on sacred and fated. They’re the living vehicles of Venus at the north node in Pisces. The goddess of love and ruler of all we value is in her highest, most divinely loving mode here. She’s standing at the doorway to the future, for each individual, for us collectively, for the entire planet. Their meeting is a magnet for every idiom about the power of love. It keeps us together. It is winning. And it is the dominant force in all our interactions as this eclipse catapults us forward.

Fun fact: I finished typing this at 11:11.

If you’d like to learn about the correlations between this eclipse and the Chinese Year of the Fire Horse, (1) listen to my interview with The Intuitive Interior Beverly Biehl (no relation that we know of);

(2) join Annette Dion and me to explore the year’s energies to fuel your goals, 7 PM Feb. 17.

Re-blogged on crystalwind.ca with written permission from Kathy Biehl.

Header Image by CrystalWind.ca

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