Full Moon in Virgo

Saturday, March 19, 2:10 pm EDT

At each Full Moon, the Sun and Moon face each other across the wheel of the zodiac, illuminating the pair of signs they inhabit.

At this Full Moon in Virgo, they sit in the final degrees of mutable Earth and mutable Water, shining their light to the fullest extent possible on the transitional, flexible mode of the two yin elements.

And surely part of our response to the incomprehensible events of this week––a powerful earthquake so close to land there was little chance to escape, even in a very prepared nation––is the realization that sometimes all we can do, is bend, accepting what is. The events in Japan are only the latest, and perhaps most widely documented and reported, of cataclysms.

One question asked of us at this particular Full Moon is, how do we bend? The Sun is in dreamy Pisces, sign of cosmic connection but also of escapism. Will we embrace our oneness with all, allowing our compassion to encompass the world? Or will we drift in a lovely cloudscape where we commune with angels but never really look at humanity?

The Moon is in practical Virgo, who can roll up into a tight ball of anxiety when all control is lost and organization is impossible––or instead roll up her sleeves and start with whatever is in front of her, focusing on helping and healing wherever she happens to be standing.

It's easy to feel afraid at what we see in the world, and become either paralyzed or withdrawn. This Full Moon presents us with what J.R.R. Tolkien called "the doom of choice." Will we serve, as best we can, with the tools we have, in the knowledge that we are small and yet somehow vitally important to the whole?

Sometimes it's not clear where we are meant to serve. Checking the houses in which this Full Moon falls in your birth chart, and which of your planets are touched, offers clues to where this question is focused for you now. These are the areas in life in which we may want to be prepared, for something may be asked of us.

And that "something," already blowing through our lives like a strong wind, comes into focus in a new way. This Full Moon is squaring the Nodes of the Moon, the karmic axis that points from where we've been to where we're going. That axis is now aligned with the Galactic Center, likewise asking us where we're headed, and why.

Uranus the Awakener, new in Aries, joins the Sun at the Full Moon. This yin Moon in the transitional signs is lit with the fire of courage, the zeal of the pioneer and the warrior, the blazing certainty of the radical revolutionary. Uranus is also a trickster, master of the unexpected, challenging the Virgo Moon to even greater acceptance of whatever comes.

In the guided journey I've recorded for this Full Moon (note the link to the recording in the upper right), the energy of Pisces and Virgo come together in the figure of the weaver, the wise woman who knows that weaving cloth is a spiritual as well as a practical craft, and that the threads that bind us together must be beautiful as well as strong.

If Uranus in Aries is the unexpected flash of color that delights the eye, then Pisces and Virgo are the warp and weft that hold the cloth together. Perhaps our task at this Full Moon is to pick up the threads of our lives, and weave them into the design that is uniquely our own.