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.