Last Quarter Moon in Gemini: Polarities and Paradoxes

Druidcraft Tarot

Last Quarter Moon in Gemini
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
5:35 am EDT / 10:35 am GMD

Today is the Last Quarter Moon. I saw her myself in the blue skies over Kinsale yesterday afternoon, serenely pale, the color of summer clouds.

But this Last Quarter Moon is in Gemini, not a serene energy. This Gemini Moon is squaring the Sun–Neptune opposition, creating a T-square that asks, What next? What now? Are we there yet?

The Sun and Neptune were exactly opposite yesterday, illuminating the polarity between cosmic oneness and the myriad details of individual incarnation.

I began a poem then, celebrating the actual and the ordinary, partly in response to teachings about seeking the ultimate and the ideal. I find I can't separate the two: Seeing perfection always in the imperfectly real, which could be one way to resolve today's Moon–Sun–Neptune T-square.

Neptune is close to the Earth right now, as planets are when they're opposite the Sun. Maybe it's easier for us to sense oneness in all its manifestations with Neptune close by, to feel connected while noticing the ways we're eccentrically individual as well.

Healing the apparent rift between a feeling of ultimate connectedness and the palpability of the ordinary is another theme for today. Mercury in Virgo moves closer to his opposition to Chiron in Pisces, echoing the Sun--Neptune opposition, as the quick-stepping Gemini Moon will activate a T-square there later today.

This opportunity to find balance between stars and stones (poetically speaking) is transformational. The Moon also sits at the apex of a yod with two powerful energies at its base: Pluto and Saturn.

These two, Pluto and Saturn, continue their journey of mutual reception, an astro term that means they're each in the other's sign. Pluto's making a long, long trek through Capricorn, and Saturn is transiting Scorpio.

This pattern is one of the reasons we're feeling constant, deep pressure to change, change again, and then change some more.

So, the Moon is point person as we turn the corner into the releasing days before the New Moon.

It seems we're being invited to let go of polarities that divide us--from each other, and within ourselves. And we're offered a Gemini path to resolving those divisions, not by choosing one pole over the other, but by learning to hold the paradox.

Today's Moon invites us to hold infinity in the palm of our hand, and eternity in an hour. The nifty thing is, tapping into the energy of the Gemini Moon will show us how to do it. Experiment with letting go of certainty, entertaining possibility, and imagine six impossible things before breakfast.
    

From the Full Moon to the New: After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

the extraordinary of the ordinary

Disseminating Moon in Aries
August 24, 2013
8:25 am EDT / 1:25 pm GMD

Last Quarter Moon in Gemini
August 28, 2013
5:35 EDT / 10:35 am GMD

Balsamic Moon in Cancer
September 1, 2013
8:29 am EDT / 1:29 pm GMD

New Moon in Virgo
September 6, 2013
7:29 am EDT / 12:29 pm GMD

My title is from Jack Kornf1eld's 2001 book on a heart-centered approach to spirituality. It's the 'chop wood, carry water' idea that, enlightenment or no, life goes on and does not begin tending to itself.

This is a good thing to remember in the next weeks. The Sun, which moves into Virgo tomorrow, will thankfully help us remember how (as well as why) to continue placing one foot in front of the other. Elaine Kalantarian offers an excellent essay on the special strengths of the Sun in Virgo, for anyone stuck in the nerdy and obsessive stereotype of this lovely energy.

Because some extraordinary things will be happening over the next weeks that, if we're not attuned to the possibilities, might just knock our socks off.

We're alerted to the socks-knocking quality of these next weeks by the Disseminating Moon in Aries conjunct revolutionary Uranus.

We're absorbing (or reverberating with) the intensity of the Full Moon. As we shift into the waning cycle, we begin radiating the energy back out into the world.

With an extraordinary Full Moon, extraordinary things happen. In Georgia, a school shooting is averted by one woman who kept talking, gently and persistently, and convinced a troubled young man to put down the guns.

What qualities are we called to shine out now into the world?

The Grand Water Trine continues, drawing our focus again and again to connections among our destiny (North Node of the Moon), our wounding as a source of healing (Chiron), and the expansive optimism to keep moving on a hard road (Jupiter).

The Pluto–Uranus square continues to be activated too, not only by the presence of the Aries Moon around August 24, but by Venus in Libra.

In fact, with Jupiter in mid Cancer and Venus moving into mid Libra, the Pluto–Uranus square becomes a Grand Cross, a high-energy, possibly intense meeting among four positions who each bring something vital to the table.

There are different ways to read this Grand Cross, and how it affects each of us will depend on our birth charts, and on where we are now in our lives. Check your chart! (Yes, I'm saying this again.) Noting the houses where these patterns fall, and which of your own planet positions are affected, offer big clues about how this might show up for you.

Jupiter in Cancer holds a corner in both the underlying emotional flow of the Grand Trine and the much pushier, take-a-stand energy of the Grand Cross. Jupiter is always BIG, larger than life, expansive ... sometimes generosity and greatness of heart, sometimes inflation and absolute certainty.

In Cancer, Jupiter can insist we honor the past, tradition, the tribe, and the feminine, goddess energy, the mother. This can be protective and regressive, or something more like the creation of an ark to carry what is precious through the storm to a new shore.

Venus in Libra stands clear for balance, harmony, beauty and justice. She will do this while meditating among the tetchy insistences of Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto that they must come first (this Grand Cross being in the cardinal signs).

Some suggest Libra is a wishy-washy, even codependent energy, but I do not find this to be true. Taking time to understand opposing viewpoints is not weakness, nor is brokering compromise within such an uncompromising group. Maybe the best Venus can do is create a space for holding paradox, in itself no mean feat.

And then we have Pluto and Uranus, whose square-off we've been living with for some time and will live with for some time to come. These two signify the changes we're living through, both the lightning-swift and the tectonically-slow.

Since these two are the constants of our time (constant in change, that is), we look at the activating energies of Jupiter and Venus to see what this part of the lunar cycle might bring.

Here, it's interesting to see we've got the two good luck planets, the Greater and Lesser Benefics, in play. With a bit of luck, we could see major breakthroughs between now and the New Moon. In times like these, good news is always welcome.

In my life, I'll be looking for a sudden shift, the shaft of sunlight breaking through the fog, the "ah-ha" moment that turns everything around and makes the world look new. By definition, I can't tell where or when my shift will emerge. I can hardly prepare for it, except by being open to chance meetings and happy events.

I invite each of us to do the same––watch for the accidental gift, the synchronistic spark, that might help us arrive in a new, more vibrant, more effective place. This could be something large and inescapable. It could also be on the small side.

The coming New Moon is in Virgo, after all, that place of steady effort and caring. The laundry needs to be done, and the meals cooked, the dishes washed, the children cared for. Watching for the light of grace in the ordinary is no small thing.

May it be so.
    

Full Moon in Aquarius: Clear Sight, Strong Heart

Full Moon over Belfast

Full Moon in Aquarius
August 20, 2013 9:45 pm EDT
August 21, 2013 2:45 am GMD

I am in Ireland, in the early days of a journey that will, in ways I can feel but not see, shape what happens next in my life.

Looking at the chart of the upcoming Full Aquarius Moon, that same shaping is there for all of us––One way or another, this Moon will illuminate what happens next with startling clarity.

For one (smallish) thing, the Full Moon happens on different dates in the US and Ireland, the two places my consciousness bridges these days: 9:45 pm August 20 EDT and 2:45 am 21 August GMD. Look... the dates aren't even written in the same format.

We'll find the Full Moon at 28 Aquarius, the Sun at 28 Leo. This late-degree placement intensifies the polarity, Aquarius as the clear-sighted, incisive, big-picture thinker and Leo as the passionately creative heart.

These two powerhouses face off to highlight their positions. Are we thinking clearly? Are we heart centered? Are those two really opposed? What does this even mean?

Well, this Full-Moon-to-come offers examples:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's recent comments in support of Rand and Ron Paul shocked those who assumed Assange stood for the underdog, which he doesn't, except in the sense that he opposes government structures of almost any kind. Assange sees the Paul's libertarian hands-off policies as 'the only useful political voice in Congress.'

Overnight, Time's Michael Grunwald tweeted, then apologized and withdrew, that he would celebrate a drone strike that took Assange out. Government intervention to the max, in the form of extrajudicial execution.

These are extreme Aquarian positions: committed worldviews representing abstract, idealized positions uninformed by compassion. Not, let me hasten to say, Aquarius at its best. Rather, a vision of what can happen to Aquarius in the absence of Leo.

Or looked at the other way 'round, both Assange and Grunwald are privileged. While we might not consider their lives enviable in all respects, they are celebrities of a kind, able to put their views before a world audience.

Listened to with less privileged ears, each could be heard as saying, "I've got mine, which is the right and only view, so screw you," which is Leo run amok, uninformed by the wider community vision for which Aquarius stands.

This rather startling example of Full Moon polarity, which arrives with Neptune conjunct the Moon, includes options for illusion, delusion, and confusion, as well as creative vision.

Back to my Irish odyssey. This evening, I will enter into five days of silent retreat, led by a poet who loves deserts. Meditation, listening, going within––no speaking, reading, googling.

I will experience this Full Moon on the inside, watching her brilliance rise over mountains and shine down on the bay, hoping for a new inner peace.

With all that's happening on the world stage, this Full Moon will feel very, very personal. Venus entered Libra yesterday, a place she loves, seeking balance and beauty. Her relationship to this Full Moon is awkward––an inconjunct to Neptune, longing for a harmony that may elude us, at least for now.

Mars in Cancer, still in the place of emotion and tradition which is not his most comfortable abode, will make the same awkward inconjunct aspect to the Moon. In this, the good soldier Mars tries to temper the cold steel of Aquarius with the Moon's own compassion. Will it work?

Meanwhile, Mercury is conjunct the Sun in Leo, opposite the Moon, ready to speak out with passion. Here are some of the questions this Full Moon might illuminate:

• How am I holding space for both compassion and idealistic vision? Loving what is, while moving toward what could be?

• How am I honoring the past, preserving important legacies, while releasing what no longer serves me? How am I moving into the future without turning my back on where I'm from?

• Where am I deluding myself? Where have I become inflated, rigid, or too sure? Where am I in a comfortable spiritual bypass rather than facing an edgier inner truth?

• How am I balancing the personal and the political? How can I create and hold space for balance, harmony and peace?

The Leo New Moon invited us to connect with our creative passion, to plant the seeds closest to our own hearts. At this Full Moon, we'll see how we've done––not in a final, this-is-over way, but in a hmmm, how's that working? way.

The lighting could feel a bit stark; Aquarius has a merciless quality Leo doesn't always bother to temper. The most cathartic theater comes not in light comedy, but in experiencing something deeper and closer to the bone.

So take a deep breath and buckle up. This Full Moon promises to be quite a show.
    

The Moon's Light is Personal: Today's First Quarter in Scorpio

Moon illuminations

First Quarter Moon in Scorpio
August 14, 2013 6:56 am EDT
(and 11:56 am GMD)

The Moon is always close. When not blotted out by manufactured light, we track her changes naturally. She's personal, human in a way, the focus of the earliest calendars we now know go back to the Neolithic––or earlier.

Since the Moon moves fastest, being closest to us, she's often described as a "trigger" astrologically, a word I don't like in this context. Triggers set off devices, often destructive or at least explosive devices, and are themselves incidental. The Moon, the light of our night, is anything but incidental.

The Moon is more like a spotlight, drawing our attention. She's an emotional genius, focusing our feelings, and therefore our attention, before consciousness and rationality know where they are.

Today (just before noon where I am in Ireland now), we reach the First Quarter Moon in Scorpio.

Yesterday, as my jet-lagged self rode in a comfy bus through green countryside to Cork City, the Scorpio Moon shone her light on the Grand Trine in Water we've been swimming with this summer. As I rode, I wrote about my hopes for this adventure.

Part of what the Moon's spotlight shows us now is how everything focuses in on the flow of feeling these days. Look at the First Quarter chart, how so many planets around the circle are in and around 12 degrees of their signs. Everyone is at the table; everyone has something to say.

So do we leave it at "It's All One" and get on with our day?

It's an option, certainly, and there are times when the details of our lives seem so hopelessly tangled (or, if we're lucky, seamlessly integrated) that nothing more needs be said.

But then the Moon ... spotlights focus our attention, drawing the eye inexorably to a particular place. On this Scorpio Moon day, notice where your attention goes. Without trying to control it, just see what you see, feel what you feel.

In meditation, journalling, drawing, dreaming, living, allow a part of yourself to have a bit of Scorpionically detached incisiveness, the ability to see around corners and through fog. What does the deeper self want us to see today?

That's all––and that's enough. Allowing the Moon to set the focus, draw us into seeing something we might have missed. It might seem small. It may well prove larger than we realize at first.

What did I write in my journal on the bus? Stuff about handling the practicalities of life on the road, about listening to ancestral voices, about working and traveling, about the ways landscapes speak to and affect us.

I wasn't thinking about the Scorpio Moon then, just writing. But in my birth chart, Saturn, Venus, Juno and the doorway into my Fourth House are in Scorpio. What I wrote was personal, meaningful, and gently illuminated by the transiting Moon, even though I couldn't see her at the time.
    

Who's Driving? New Moon to the Full Moon

Who's in the driver's seat?

Crescent Moon in Libra
August 10, 2013 3:20 pm EDT

First Quarter Moon in Scorpio
August 14, 2013 6:56 am EDT

Gibbous Moon in Capricorn
August 17, 2013 3:52 pm EDT

Full Moon in Aquarius
August 20, 2013 9:45 pm EDT

First item of note this morning: Mercury just moved into Leo! I'm celebrating because Cancer is not the happiest or easiest sector of the zodiac for me.

Mercury into Leo shifts thought and communication into the playful, creative, passionate and dramatic. If you already tend toward drama, maybe it's time to chill a bit. If you feel you've been caught in a mental swamp (as I have), this will let you pull one boot out of the muck.

There's still time to make those New Moon wishes. If you haven't yet, take time today to set intentions around shining your light into the world, expressing your heart courageously, and having some fun. Enjoy, embrace, celebrate: these are good things!

Celebrate your truest self. Center in your integrity. Empower your biggest goals.

Do these things not just to plant the juiciest New Moon seeds (although that's reason enough) but also to orient in the most powerful way possible for our journey to the Full Moon in Aquarius, coming in two weeks.

During these weeks, we'll likely feel strong contrasts between the personal and the impersonal––and since "impersonal" tends to be seen as negative, let me throw out some other contrasts: personal and social, personal and cultural, personal and transpersonal.

You see the pattern, right? We're very much IN the personal these days, coming from the intensity of home-and-family, where's-my-peops? Cancer into I've-gotta-be-me Leo. In these sectors of the zodiac, we focus on the question, who am I in relation to the world?

With all the personal planets clustered in that sector in recent months (Venus only just shifted into Virgo), the emphasis has been strong.

And yet the outer planets, strong messengers from the cosmos, have been forcing our attention to wider matters: politics, the environment, conflict, craziness, and the amazing beauty of all that is. With the outers almost all retrograde right now, we're pushed into trying to sort out our place, our role, our responsibilities when sometimes we'd like a little peace, please, for five minutes, ok?

We're not living in peaceful times. Just sayin'.

So what do we do? We commit to living from the heart, courageously, creatively, and passionately. This is Leo's call. Now's the time to plant those seeds.

At the Crescent Moon, we get a taste of what we're up against. The Moon in cool, diplomatic Libra gets edgy with the Leo Sun but also gets support from Mercury in Leo: Can we speak our truth and stay true to heart? It's an important question because the Moon is moving into square Pluto and oppose Uranus, stimulating (once again) the Pluto–Uranus square.

At the First Quarter Moon, we touch the depths. Sun in Leo and Moon in Scorpio means this is no light comedy we're in––there's substance here, real issues to be grappled with. Jupiter is opposite Pluto now and squaring Uranus, amping up a square that needs no amping. Facing the Shadow, looking in the mirror, having tea with our demons.

At the Gibbous Moon, the Capricorn Moon joins Pluto to activate that Pluto–Uranus square yet again. Jupiter is still opposite Pluto, so this is a really bright spotlight on an already intense pattern. It's hot under those big lights, so hold on to your dreams and stand strong.

The Full Moon in Aquarius on August 20 will be the cliff-hanger ending. The Leo Sun is joined by Mercury, Ceres, and Vesta, ready to stand their ground for heart-centered creative passion. The Aquarius Moon is joined by Neptune, bringer of insight and also confusion. The Lady or the Tiger.

This Full Moon has the power to illuminate delusion, grandiosity, inflation, and fanaticism on personal, world and cosmic stages. Or we could see, clearly, how our creative gifts fit beautifully and meaningfully into the wider world we inhabit.

Or both. Most likely, both.

Looking back to the last Full Moon in Aquarius, through the New Moon cradle we're stepping out of, to the coming Full Moon, we see a grand sweep, a fully-lit stage crammed with everything you can think of. There are no bit parts in this play. Connect, create, and speak out.

The choice is to sign up to support someone else's program,  or drive our own bus. Or, for some of us, the choice will be whether to let our fears set the agenda, or let courage and love rule.

We are all the heroes of our own stories. Your heart knows this. Let the heart drive this month.
    

In the Cradle of the New Moon

Infinite Dreams Tarot © Mary Pat Lynch 2013

New Moon in Leo
August 6, 2013 5:51 pm EDT

Lughnasadh (Sun at 15 Leo)
August 7, 2013 4:20 am EDT

It's time to prepare for the coming New Moon in Leo, and a passionate Moon this will be!

New Moons are always times of beginning, of planting seeds in the dark earth, of turning a corner away from the old and into the new.  

At this New Moon, we'll be in a special kind of cradle, a fiery crucible offering unique opportunities to get in touch with our creative depths.

Because the last Full Moon happened at 0 degrees of Aquarius (Sun at 0 Leo), the August Full Moon will also illuminate the Aquarius–Leo polarity, this time from the final degrees.

We were initiated into something at July's Full Moon. In August, what we've done with that initiation will be highlighted.

This New Moon, arriving on August 6, falls in the middle of Leo, the sign of the heart, passions, playfulness, creative expression, leadership, and shining our heart light into the world.

We have a chance to connect with our deepest longings and rededicate ourselves to our dearest goals––or joyfully commit to new goals.

This middle of Leo is also the time of Lughnasadh, one of the four ancient Celtic fire festivals celebrated in England as Lammas. This is a festival of first fruits, when the early results of the harvest could be gathered. Early grains were harvested, ground, and made into bread. Berries ripened. The hungry time of late summer ended.

In Ireland, Lugh held a great feast to honor his foster mother, Tailtiu, who sacrificed herself to create fertile fields. People gathered to celebrate, trade goods, race horses, and contract marriages. Although late storms were a risk, a good part of the growing season was now over, and people knew whether the harvest was liking to be good or bad. Plans were made accordingly.

By the calendar, Lughnasadh is celebrated on August 1 or 2. Astrologically, Lughnasad falls when the Sun reaches 15 Leo, which this year, is the day after the New Moon.

So this is a New Moon of our own "first fruits." Looking back through all that has happened in recent months, taking note of what was illuminated for us at the last Full Moon, where are we now?

To answer this question, we ask first:

How are we feeling? (We've still got two Grand Water Trines in the sky through today's Balsamic Moon. One will remain through the New Moon.)

What are we passionate about? What are we prepared to stand up for? (These Full and New Moons in Aquarius and Leo bring us to those issues. Aquarius is the larger vision, what will benefit the community. Leo is our heart's passion, what we bring to the table.)

Are we in the flow? Are we receiving and following our intuitive guidance? (Grand Water Trines carry intuitive insight as well as emotional energy. The New Moon is also trained by Uranus the revolutionary trickster.)

Where are we on our life path? Are we moving steadily toward goals we value and believe in? (The New Moon will square the Nodes of the Moon, all in the stubborn fixed signs. With focused insight, we could realize we are holding on to something that is blocking us; we could find we're standing in our own way. Conversely, we could work with the New Moon to create passionate commitments that can carry us over any obstacles, opening the way to joy.)

Are we willing to embrace transformation as needed? (Pluto and Jupiter are opposing each other, and will continue through the New Moon. Jupiter can take the stance "Everything's just perfect, thank you very much." Pluto will insist we acknowledge where change is needed. If Jupiter can get with the program, his expansive optimism can create an easier surrender.)

New Moon seeds are planted after the New Moon, 5:51 pm EDT, and in the days thereafter. This Balsamic time we're in right now is the preparation. What can we become aware of? What can we let go of? Where does the ground need to be made ready?

When the New Moon arrives––and Lughnasadh the next day––we make wishes and set intentions with creativity, passion and joy. In a few weeks, we'll leave the crucible and look around us to see where we've got to. It's bound to be someplace amazing,