Gibbous Moon: What's in the Glass?

I heard a peal of delight and turned around
-- that's the picture at the top of this post.

Hilary Matfess, a young policy analyst, was jumping
up and down, yelling out details.

"The mandate is constitutional! It was upheld!
Roberts went for the swing vote! Yes! Oh my God!
The individual mandate survives as a tax!"

Did you work on passing the bill? I asked.

"No!" said Matfess. "I just have lupus!"

Gibbous Moon in Scorpio: June 30, 2012

Tomorrow morning the big-bellied Gibbous Moon arrives, pushing toward Full as she makes an edgy square-and-a-half connection with the Sun in her home sign of Cancer.

Something is pending, something is due, and the Scorpio Moon wants to peek behind the curtain and make sure it's ok.

The Sun highlights the ongoing challenges of the Pluto–Uranus square by opposing Pluto and squaring Uranus: a T-square with revolution at the apex.

How are we seeing this energy?

In the US, the Sun highlights transformation with the Supreme Court decision to uphold the individual mandate in the new health care laws, which feels like a blazing, wonderful revolution to some and a terrible tipping point to others.

Some on the right say the US has gone communist and they're leaving for Canada (which already has universal health care and gay marriage to boot) while one GOP leader calls for armed rebellion––not peaceful Occupy-style action, mind you, but armed and dangerous. Scorpio Moon stuff, here.

The Sun connection highlights where the personal and the global meet, illuminating stories of relief as those of us with preexisting conditions, and those summarily dropped from plans, and those who've seen costs rise and coverage shrink feel some hope for the future.

Yes, my sympathies are clear––I support going beyond the current health care changes to universal care. And the astrological point is, the aspects show seismic change and extreme reaction from all sides, with emotional valences based in individual viewpoints.

Meanwhile, the Scorpio Moon forms an out-of-sign opposition to the big, happy group hanging out in Gemini, clustered around the South Node. She's also in an out-of-sign, still-wide conjunction with the North Node.

What does the Moon see behind the curtain here? Are we looking back to the past and missing the present? Are we distracted by the shiny thing of the day and avoiding our life path altogether? The Full Moon arrives soon, and this Scorpio Moon wants to know what's going on.

So, we might be left with that odd feeling we're missing something important. We might take a second look, or third or fourth look, to check what's going on. We might even look over our shoulder, to see what's back there. Not a bad idea, with this Moon.
   

The Intuitive Moon

ice floes along the Kamchatka coastline

Grand Trine in Water: June 29, 2012

The Moon is traveling through some amazing territory these days. As I write, she's void of course in Libra, so we're all holding our breath (not literally, please exhale now).

As soon as she enters Scorpio, she'll form a flowing trine with mystical Neptune, setting the scene for magical messages to arrive.

Some astrologers see intuition as belonging to Uranus and Neptune, outer planets who connect us to the cosmos. In that framework, the Moon would be a trigger only, her connection to Neptune opening the door to our inner, emotional ear.

The Moon has her own intuitive flows and connections, though, offering us information through the body, through our feelings, and through her deep connections with the ancestral past. So when the Moon and Neptune commune, more is happening than an open door. These two connect, exchange, compare notes, and learn from each other.

Soon after the Moon–Neptune trine, the Moon forms a Grand Trine in Water with the Sun and Chiron. This waxing trine between the Sun and Moon buoys us up. Moving toward the realization of the Full Moon to come, we feel a current swell beneath us, carrying us forward. Add in Chiron, the wounded healer, and this current is powerful indeed.

And then we add Pluto.

Sextile both Chiron and the Moon, he turns the Grand Trine into a kite, crowning the flow of intuition, memory, and connection with his alchemically deep transformation.


But wait, there's more.

At the moment of the Grand Water Trine, the Moon is also at the apex of a yod, or Finger of Fate pattern in which revolutionary Uranus and creative Venus, sextile each other, both are inconjunct the Moon. They point to the Moon as the key to balancing revolution and creation.

Anything in our charts at 7, 8 or 9 degrees is powerfully aspected by everyone in the sky grouped in those numbers. Beyond that, we're all invited to tune in to the frequencies of the Water element and listen to the music.
The Scorpio Moon can be wary, paranoid, even. She is also deeply insightful, psychically alive, and prepared to walk in Shadow. The Sun in Cancer knows how to value the deep psyche and ancestral ties. Chiron in Pisces can access the wisdom of the cosmos.

We'll feel these patterns forming overnight, so be open to amazing dreams. Tomorrow (Friday), keep your inner ears open to the many messages carried in the complex currents surrounding us.
    

First Quarter Moon: The Personal is Political

First Quarter Moon: June 26, 2012

In about twelve hours, the Moon will reach her waxing square with the Sun, the First Quarter Moon. This is the monthly challenge between the two luminaries, the core energies of our individual selves.

We started something with the New Moon––are we ready to see it clearly, accept it, work for it? This is a personal decision, based on our own feelings, understandings, commitment.

This First Quarter Moon bumps the personal up against the global, the universal, and the cosmic. This Moon–Sun square joins the Uranus–Pluto square to create a Grand Cross in which the game-changing pattern of our time intersects with individual motivation and action.

In 1969, Carol Hanisch wrote the essay, The Personal is Political, to challenge the idea that women's consciousness raising groups were "just therapy" and "just personal." The "just" label came from people wanting to dismiss the emerging feminist movement as nothing more than gals with not enough to do, sitting around––and from politically active feminists who saw the groups as a sideline and waste of time.

Hanisch says "One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems." In other words, the things we experience in our lives as obstacles, as threats, as issues all have systemic causes. In today's terms, foreclosures are not caused solely, or even primarily, by individual spending habits.

Her very next sentences are "There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution." Full stop. Really? Wow.

Today's First Quarter Moon brings us face to face with this issue, in the form of a Grand Cross. In our lives right now, where are we looking to personal solutions when collective ones are needed? Where collective action is called for, are we participating or waiting for some group somewhere else to fix it?

Today we're placed squarely in front of ideas from an earlier time: No man is an island, everybody look what's goin' down, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Where is the line we won't cross, the place we take a stand? Where are we ready to say, we shall not be moved? Think about it.