Full Moon in Cancer: There's No Place Like Home

home as refuge ...

Full Moon in Cancer
December 28, 2012

Before dawn on Friday, December 28 (EST), the Full Moon in Cancer arrives... which means we're heading into some nights of deep, meaningful dreaming.

Cancer is the Moon's home sign, filled with emotional connection, protectiveness, nurturing, and all traditional values of home and hearth. And since we're living in these amazing times, this Full Moon is also surrounded by transformative energy illuminating questions like: What is home? Where is home? Where do I feel at home?

I'm writing this in the middle of a blizzard that's brought this town and the surrounding counties to a halt. The university and city are closed, only emergency drivers are allowed on the road, and snow is still falling. I am at home, likely to be here through tomorrow at least, and thankful for electricity and internet.  Makes it interesting to be looking at this Full Moon chart.

Let's look at what this Full Moon brings ... At each Full Moon, the Moon and Sun are opposite, looking each other full in the face and paying close attention. This Full Moon happens at 7 Cancer for the Moon and 7 Capricorn for the Sun. Cardinal Water and cardinal Earth, these are two of the most traditional signs of the zodiac.

The Sun is conjunct Pluto, also in Capricorn, and sextile Saturn in Scorpio. Pluto and Saturn remain in mutual reception, residing for now in each other's houses, resonating more deeply than usual. These guys are on the same wavelength, which is one of deep, deep commitment to structure, physical manifestation, and the space-time matrix we inhabit––and also to complete and utter change.

Pluto and Saturn each form inconjuncts to Jupiter who remains retrograde in Gemini––I've written about this yod, this finger of fate, in earlier posts. The fundamental shifts we're experiencing now also call for shifts in our worldview, our philosophy of life.

The Full Moon is aligned with this yod of tectonic, evolutionary change. One of the paradoxes of our manifest world is highlighted for us at this Moon: That change itself is part of life. Our most cherished traditions must change to remain alive. Anything we try to fix in place, forever and ever, becomes dead.

The holders of tradition are strong at this Full Moon––the Moon and Saturn, Cancer and Capricorn––and the wisdom keepers themselves are saying, look, nothing stays the same.

This is not a comfortable place to be.

In some areas of life, we all look for the best kinds of changes. We want to be safer, more secure, more prosperous, happier. We want our children and families to have those things too. We long for a better world, a more peaceful and compassionate one. And yet ... we don't want to give up anything to get there, not really, and we all have something––an idea, a belief, a commitment, something––we do. not. want. to change.

This Full Moon might show us where change is happening anyway.

This edgy relationship we have to "home" is reflected in David Whyte's FB post from this morning. (I love synchronicity.):

Ground
is what lies beneath our feet. It is the place where we already stand; a state of recognition, the place or the circumstances to which we belong whether we wish to or not. It is what holds and supports us, but also what we do not want to be true; it is what challenges us, physically or psychologically, irrespective of our abstract needs. It is the living, underlying foundation that tells us where we are, what season it is and what is about to happen, To come to ground is to find a home in circumstances and to face the truth, no matter how difficult that truth may be; to come to ground is to begin to step into difficulty and through all difficulty…

From the Forthcoming Essay “Ground”
© David Whyte 

So, check where this Full Moon falls in your chart, which houses the Sun and Moon are in, and which planets in your chart are aspected. This will likely point to places in your life where basic assumptions, things assumed to be always true, and what you count on to stay the same, might be shifting.

The intent of this Full Moon is not to leave us homeless or ungrounded. Instead, it's meant to show us that this life is more ark than fortress, more journey than staying put. We carry "home" with us wherever we go. Change is growth is life.