Balsamic Moon: Honoring the Past

Balsamic Moon: May 16-20, 2012

We enter today the time of the balsamic Moon, that nostalgic, final lunar phase before the dark Moon. We look ahead to the New Moon time––how could we not, with a solar eclipse on the horizon?––yet the more important directions are back, down, and in.

The feeling of being part of very large patterns could be strong now. Venus just turned retrograde, leading us inward in many ways, heading for her historic visible crossing of the Sun in June. Eclipses also occur within the epochal Saros cycles and the shorter, 19-year metonic cycles.

Each balsamic Moon offers a chance to reflect and release; this one calls us to look back over long years of our lives, allow awareness to focus on recurring, haunting patterns, and consciously let them go.

Contemporary culture pretends to look forward––to the next new gadget, new show, new style, new budget cycle––but since this forward motion often seems to resolutely ignore the past, we wind up carrying it with us. Without the chance to explore, understand, and integrate, we can't let go. We wind up with pockets full of left-over stuff that weighs us down.

Balsamic Moon

As we enter the balsamic phase, the Sun and Jupiter are conjunct in Taurus, as are Mercury and Ceres. Taurus is calm and sensuous but also likes to hold on tight.

Taurus is wonderful at saving, not so great at letting go. It will take the Aries Moon conjunct Uranus to pry open Taurean fingers.

The driving Fire of Aries, fueling the revolutionary energy of Uranus might feel like a confrontation, if not a conflagration: Remember that Uranus is also a consummate trickster, and look for the surprise move, the quick sleight of hand that startles us into letting go.

Uranus and the Moon are squaring Pluto, who adds his inexorable force to our release work. The Sun and Jupiter form an awkward inconjunct with Saturn, who firmly points out the consequences of hoarding what needs to move on.

A Grand Trine in Earth continues to support and ground us, and Mars, who steadily anchors the Grand Trine, opposes Chiron. Do we stubbornly hold on to old wounds? Or are we ready to accept healing?

The choices we make over the next few days will echo for many years to come. They are our choices, no one else's, to make. Where, with honesty and clarity, are we ready to release the past? If we cannot, what can we learn about why, and move gently toward resolution? This is a time of endings, which are not often easy but are needed, to open space for beginnings.