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.