Fire in Water: Heading toward the Full Moon in Aquarius

Fire in Water

Crescent Moon in Virgo
July 12, 2013 4:14 am EDT

First Quarter Moon in Libra
July 15, 2013
11:18 pm EDT

Gibbous Moon in Sagittarius
July 19, 2013
9:45 am EDT

Mercury turns direct
July 20, 2013
2:22 pm EDT

Full Moon in Aquarius
July 22, 2013
2:16 pm EDT

In these last days, I've been drawn back into dreamwork. Dreams have been coming thick and fast, and I needed to do something! I found a new way to record them: Dictating slowly into my new iPhone5, allowing for translation into text that works surprisingly well, all before my feet hit the floor.

The deep energies we're experiencing bring us to things like dreamwork, as well as other soul arenas like exploring emotions and reconnecting with our bodies. This depth continues through the waxing, growing cycle we're now in, with a new addition: Fire!

Heading toward the Full Moon in Aquarius, when the Sun will be in fiery Leo, our own passions will grow. Are we exploring creativity? Relationships? Are new goals emerging? Are old goals demanding fresh commitment and energy? It could be all of the above.

I'm listening to a series of talks by Marion Woodman, the Jungian analyst who explores the soul of the feminine (which all men and women have) so brilliantly. In this series called Sitting by the Well (how's that for a Cancer New Moon title?), she speaks about where creativity comes from, and how we find our true path.

Marion's image of wholeness is alchemical. She speaks of bringing masculine and feminine together in a marriage of Water and Fire. This marriage, these two elements interweaving in new ways, is the heart of this lunar cycle.

The Crescent Moon finds the Moon in early Virgo, opposite Neptune, sextiling Saturn, sextiling Jupiter and trining Pluto. What a spot for a humble Virgo Moon to find herself! She's right in the midst of the ongoing Grand Water Trine, and catching transformative alchemical powers as well. Can she keep her head above water?

The Sun remains in Cancer, conjunct Lilith and Mercury, widely trine Chiron and widely square Uranus. This Sun has his own fish to fry, deep in territory that speaks of emotional healing, and can't offer much help.

This Virgo Moon could feel overwhelmed, lost in storms of feeling, possibly victimized. This is the time to find Virgo's true depth and power: Not just the sign of analysis, criticism, and obsession with detail, Virgo represents the healing power of everyday life.

This Crescent Moon can show us the power of disciplined practice. Committing to regular mediation, journaling, exercise––whatever we most need––we feel in our bodies the strength that comes through simplicity and repetition. We chop wood and carry water. In the midst of tumult, whatever comes, we chop wood, carry water.

At the First Quarter Moon, we may already see some results from our practice. The Moon moves into harmonious Libra. She squares the Cancerian Sun, who is still conjunct Lilith, challenging us to notice the rainbow emerging from thick grey clouds.

Spending too much time with our feelings, we can get waterlogged, stuck in eddies and pools that won't let go. The Libra Moon offers perspective and balance. Take another point of view, she says. Lighten up!

The Grand Water Trine is still in place, continuing to support soul work in all its forms. At the same time, Fire energy is showing up. The Libra Moon is opposite edgy Eris in fiery Aries, and sextile Venus who's now in passionate Leo. Eris and Venus flow energy together in trine, lighting fires that won't go out.

This First Quarter Moon asks us to find balance. We are aware of Fire, the masculine energy of action and expression, even as we feel the strong, ongoing presence of Water, the feminine energy of creative visions and heart-felt goals. How can these two vital forces each have a voice?

At the Gibbous Moon, Fire becomes stronger. The Moon in Sagittarius trines Uranus in Aries and Ceres in Leo, creating a Grand Fire Trine to match Water. Venus and Eris continue to connect. The Sun reaches the end of Cancer, holding our attention to soul issues. Something is growing here.

This Gibbous Moon seeks a new vision. We're invited into an embrace, invited to see ourselves and our lives in a renewed way that combines spirit and soul, action and dreams, mind and heart. We begin to see what all this emotional stuff is for, what we can bring forth from the depths.

The next day, July 20, Mercury turns direct. The Moon, in the powerful last degree of Sagittarius, trine Venus close to the end of Leo. An idea, a thought, something comes forward with new clarity. It's on the tip of our tongue. We can taste it.

The Full Moon arrives on July 22 at the opening of Aquarius and Leo, with the Moon at 0 Aquarius and the Sun at 0 Leo. The Moon also sits at the apex of a yod, the Finger of Fate, balancing Venus at 0 Virgo and Pallas Athena at 0 Cancer.

The Full Moon illuminates our new creative vision. The discipline of our practice and the depth of our soul exploration burst forth in a fresh view from the heights. In some way, the world is made new. Our response will be fiery, passionate, creative and personal.

Where is all this energy focusing in your life? In that place, find a practice you can commit to regularly––daily––to explore where the energy is going and what it wants. In a few weeks, something brilliantly amazing can arrive, with the Full Moon. Dive in!
    

Exploring Limits: The Dark before the New Moon

deep waters

Today's energies are introspective, emotional, and transformational.

The New Moon arrives overnight, 3:14 am in my Eastern US time zone; we're in the Dark Moon now.

I don't typically write essays on days like this, but I'm home when I planned to be traveling: Unexpected car trouble has me waiting for body shops to open in the morning.

Not what I hoped to be doing, but fitting the edgy energy of the day.

The Moon and Sun are widely conjunct at 7 and 15 Cancer, and they're activating the Pluto–Uranus square, creating a T-square of ... of what, exactly? The Sun and Moon are our lights, the bodies closest to who we are. The Pluto–Uranus square is the signature of our time, the emblem of the polarizing challenges we face around the world in political upheaval, economic breakdown, and environmental degradation.

Cancer is the sign of home, family, tribe and the body. This T-square brings the political right home to the personal. Its energy might be reflected in the videos and stories circulating the web now showing how ordinary people have been threatened, and in some cases killed, by police acting far outside their mandates: Where we think ourselves to be safe, we are not safe.

Or the terrible story about the train filled with crude oil that derailed and exploded in the middle of the night, engulfing a small town in flames. Where we most think to be secure, at home in our beds, we are not.

AND (an important 'and'), this T-square appears where people cross boundaries and think outside the box to do good. Michelle Obama and Laura Bush met with first ladies of Africa to discuss and support the empowerment of women, as President Obama thanked former President Bush for his efforts in AIDs relief, credited with saving millions of lives.

Another story circulating now tells of a brother giving a surprise $500 tip to a waitress to honor his late brother ... which went viral, leading to an outpouring of donations that has the brother traveling to all 50 states to surprise waitstaff with generosity, in remembrance of a loved family member.

the beauty of chaos

The connection between personal and political shows up in myriad ways.

The myriad today is likely to be creatively passionate as well as transformative. Venus in Leo is trining revolutionary Uranus, and both are in Fire.

Venus also sits as the apex of a yod, a Finger of Fate, with Pluto and Chiron the wounded healer at its base. We are more likely to find creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems when we bring our hearts courageously into the arena.

We're not meant to find solutions alone. Venus sits opposite Juno, each representing partnerships that are balanced, fair, and bring out the creative best in all involved. These two champions of relationship square the Nodes of the Moon, the karmic pathway. Squares to the Nodes represent a missed step on the path: Maybe it's time to let go of the idea we can do it all alone.

So where does the limits thing come into it? We look to Saturn for limits, and he's very powerful right now. He's slowed down to turn direct, which he'll do just two hours before the New Moon.

Saturn is, as he has been, sitting in Scorpio, sign of the Shadow. He's trining Neptune in dream- and vision-filled Pisces, and also trining a Jupiter–Lilith conjunction. This Grand Water Trine is strong enough to pull us into some deep water, where it's essential to read currents well.

I think we can all agree that our lives and chaos theory are a pretty good fit. We live within systems that change dynamically over time, in which the inputs (and outputs) are many, complicated, and not well understood.

As Nate Silver describes, we have a hard enough time predicting the weather, let alone understanding human behavior. At the same time, chaos theory offers key ideas that can help. One is the 'butterfly effect,' more officially known as 'sensitivity to initial states.'

This sensitivity means where we started affects where we can go. By extension, where we are now, right now, has a huge effect on where we can go next. Which means understanding very clearly where it is we actually are, becomes really important.

This might sound like a 'duh' moment, except there are many voices out there today telling us we can be, do and have whatever we can envision, if we can visualize it clearly enough, believe in it, and let go of any stories from our past that limit us. This is a wonderfully seductive idea that fits modern (especially American) beliefs about self-determination, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, and having it all. The thing is, it's not that simple, and today's energies help us see why.

Saturn anchors the Grand Water Trine to say, look where you are. Look at your patterns, beliefs, emotions, past, fears, and subconscious. Look at your Shadow. Do these things control our destiny? They need not. They do, however, create initial states with tremendous influence.

small things, big effects

This leads into tricky territory. Old-style predictions set hard and fast limits: "You will be this and not that," "This event will befall you in this year," and so on. That kind of determinism is not welcome, and does not work, in modern lives. We do have options, we can remake our lives, sometimes dramatically.

And yet promises of limitless change with no regard for current and past conditions are empty. Such promises lead to disenchantment, and sometimes despair.

Rick Jarow, author of the The Ultimate Anti Career Guide and Creating the Work You Love, argues strongly that our best futures are built on a thorough grounding in our past––our family history and the history of the land we live on, as well as personal history. A strong advocate for personal transformation, he sees an understanding of history as essential, and ignoring our history as a barrier to moving ahead.

Today's energies invite us to dive deeply into exploration and understanding. Where have we come from? What is our history? How has our past, in all its forms, influenced where we are today?

Within the crucible of that understanding, what can we let go of? Are there fresh understandings, new points of view, that frame the past in a more inclusive, more compassionate, more insightful way? Embracing new insights today offers smoother sailing through the coming New Moon.

Take time to reflect, looking back, perhaps, to something that still troubles you. Writing, meditating, drawing, moving ... any approach that works for you ... can help shift that something in a new direction. In this powerfully fluid place, we can shift our current state in a direction that opens new possibilities for us.

May it be so!
      

Our Place: The New Moon in Cancer

group hug!

New Moon in Cancer
July 8, 2013 3:14 am EDT

We're swimming in deep waters these days, wondering whether our water wings will keep us afloat.

As the New Moon draws near, it's time to take a breather, float a moment, and check in.

Mercury retrograde's weird challenges are showing up with a murky, where-did-that-come-from? quality. In the midst of strong emotions and mixed messages, remember that Mercury retro's main message is to sloooooow down.

When odd things come up, asking "Where did that come from?" is actually a good idea, especially when we focus less on the event and more on our reaction. Something unexpected happened ... where did my anger/ fear/ sadness/ irritation come from? (Probably not primarily from the unexpected something.)

As we roll into the Balsamic Moon, the waning Crescent, we have the chance to let go, let go, let go.

The Balsamic Moon sits close to the end of patient, careful, and sometimes stubborn Taurus. We can hold on to the past for dear life, or we can relinquish what's over and done, secure in the bone-deep knowing that change is inevitable and right.

Vesta, goddess of renewal, is poised at the very end of nurturing and tribal Cancer. A fierce protector of home and hearth, she also knows that cycles of time and chance keep spiraling. We can all be made new, again and again.

As we are about to be––made new, that is––with the New Moon in the Moon's home sign of Cancer.

The sign of Cancer is all about family love, in all its forms: the tender love of a mother nursing her baby, overprotective love that keeps the toddler away from mess and dirt, controlling love that wants to create safety where none can be guaranteed, sacrificial love that works two jobs and goes without so others can have, heart-burstingly-proud love that lets someone grow into new roles and ways of being even when it means they also grow farther away.

This is the place of nurturing, where families form and break, where tribes create unbreakable bonds.

We cannot be human and wholly alone. Even hermits in their caves relate to the world left behind. We grow up in tribes, big and small, groups that shape us, protect us, define us, and sometimes send us into exile. Who we perceive ourselves to be is created in the the context of the groups we inhabit.

Am I saying we are nothing more than our group memberships? Not at all. We have our own personalities, predispositions, histories, and experiences. But how we interpret who we are on the inside is shaped by how we are seen by others on the outside.

This is tough for us to see clearly. Like fish, we can't see the water we're swimming in. At this New Moon, we'll have the chance to see the water.

The New Moon in Cancer arrives with not one, but two Grand Trines in Water. The first is the Saturn–Neptune trine that's been around for a few weeks now, activated into "Grand" as different planets moved into early Cancer. At the New Moon, this first trine will be Saturn–Jupiter–Neptune.

finding family

Saturn and Jupiter are the "social planets," bridging from the inner personality to the outer world. Neptune is the dreamer, the mystic, the poet, and (of course) the ocean.

This first Grand Water Trine lets us know we're in waters that connect the social and the cosmic, the ability to dream and to make it real.

The second Grand Water Trine includes the New Moon itself plus Mercury, trining the North Node of the Moon in shadowy Scorpio, and also Chiron the wounded healer in visionary Pisces. This Grand Trine makes the social into something very, very personal. Here we have the two lights in the sky, plus the planet of mind and communication, flowing energy with a powerful healer and mentor, and the arrow pointing to our karmic path.

At this New Moon, we get a new view of our emotional, familial and tribal waters. At the same time, we're offered a path of healing that also creates meaning.

This is a New Moon for making wishes and setting intentions in the arenas of family, tribe, relationships, and how we experience and manage the complex emotional landscapes that accompany them.

Just in case we're missing the importance of relationship, Venus in passionate Leo holds a key position at the New Moon.

Venus sits at the apex of a yod (also known as a Finger of Fate) ready to balance pushy energies from transformative Pluto and Chiron the wounded healer. She's also receiving a flow of fiery trine energy from revolutionary Uranus. Last but not least, she's squaring the Nodes of the Moon.

So making the most of this New Moon is not all about endless sacrifice (a Cancerian specialty often accompanied by extra helpings of guilt). This New Moon is also and importantly about our own passionate and creative hearts.

friends forever

At this New Moon we might wish (for example) to find our tribe, the people who will support our creative gifts and the place where we can be who we truly, uniquely are.

We might set the intention to begin shining within the family we already have, to bring our creativity and passion into play in ways that strengthen and enliven the ones we love.

We might set intentions for healing old family and tribal wounds, and releasing old emotional patterns that get in the way.

We are social animals. All of our complexity––body, mind, soul, spirit––exists in relation to others. At this New Moon, we have a window in time through which we can see how we are held in relationships, and then act on what we learn. May our actions support all of us in loving ways.