Gibbous Moon: Imagination Becomes Reality

Janet Echelman's 1.26

Gibbous Moon in Gemini
January 22, 2013

This morning (Sunday, January 21), the Sun has shifted into Aquarius, inviting us to be ourselves, grab onto our craziest visions, dream large, and make things happen. Mercury is also in Aquarius, conjunct the Sun. We've left the heavy pragmatism of Capricorn behind and sail aloft, amazing and magical horizons unfurling everywhere we look.

Overnight, I arrived home after a week at Blue Spirit Resort on Costa Rica's lovely Nosara peninsula, listening to inspiring speakers, moving my body to the ancient rhythms of qigong, walking on Pacific beaches and waking to the roars of howler monkeys. Now I'm ready to change my life!

We live in exciting times, and the Aquarius Sun is ready to celebrate that. Some of us, though, rather like comfort and safety. Change is needed, we can see that, but does it need to be today? And that large ... can't we have small change? So we can get used to it?

The Gibbous Moon arrives tomorrow night to say, no, not really.

This is the square-and-a-half on the way to the glorious Full Moon, the edgy time when we face what our visions are really asking of us. Yes, we want to be, have, and do all we envision. Being human, we'd prefer it neatly packaged, delivered on time, and easy to install.

The Gibbous Moon says, not so much.

We've got the Sun and Mercury together in Aquarius––the vision is so clear, so big, so compelling. The Moon is in detail-oriented, excitable Gemini.

Wait ... since Aquarius and Gemini are both Air signs, shouldn't this be an easy flowing trine? Well, we'll have the trine today, making Sunday afternoon a wonderful time for brainstorming, planning, vision boards, anything like that.

The Gibbous Moon arrives when the Moon is past the fun part and joins Ceres, the Earth Goddess, in late Aquarius. Here we get to "but how is this going to work?" and possibly "oh, no, this is not what I meant to happen..."

There is a trine back to the Sun and Mercury, from expansive, generous, and sometimes overblown Jupiter, which makes our visions seem really big, really important, and really wonderful. And they are all that and more. Still, the Moon and Ceres are working overtime to keep balls in the air and all those plates spinning.

Do we stop? Fall back and regroup? Give up? NO! With Aquarius and Gemini strong, and Aquarian Mars squaring the Nodes of the Moon, this edgy and challenging Gibbous Moon is about embracing challenge and triumphing over it. The challenges are real, and so is the dream. Both are essential.

Synchronicity delivered a wonderful example of this energy to my desktop this morning, courtesy of a friend who linked Janet Echelman's Huffpost blog and TEDtalk to Facebook.

Janet Echelman

Janet makes sculptures that float and change, are permanent, and massive. Turned down by seven art schools, she was inspired by (and worked with) fishermen in India weaving their nets.

She's worked with engineers, software developers, and scientists to bring her visions of transformed urban spaces to fruition.

Maybe we won't all work in this scale, with this success. Still, at this Gibbous Moon, we're likely to face the uncomfortable distance between what we dream and what it will take to actually get there.

Although we're looking at a single lunar cycle (which is about a month), Aquarius reminds us to take the long view. Some of Janet's works took many years to complete, as she faced each hurdle of materials, design and construction.

The title of her TED talk is "Imagination Becomes Reality" and I can't think of a better expression of the challenge and the promise of this particular Gibbous Moon.