An Aries Full Moon: Striking a Working Balance

 A full moon framed in a window of Castelo Belmonte

(photo credit: Ken and Nyetta, April 2011) 

The tale of Pluto’s conjuncting of fixed star Facies…(a nebula which to us Earthlings looks a single point)…that year long work-over of our lives, our feelings, our sense of right wronged…

It’s been something like a bad fairy tale. And yet…it’s reality.

This Pluto/Facies trial by complicated conflicts will continue on until mid-December of this year. Even after that, it will return to give us a little back-paddling stickiness come next September.

Or so. With Pluto, it’s always ‘or so.’ And oh, how we wish it wasn’t! The good can’t come fast enough and the nasty is truly nasty.

We so feel caught between.

Anyway…at the moment the issue is the Pluto/Facies involvement in September’s Aries Full Moon. That Full Moon occurs on September 30th at 3:20 in the morning UT/+0 at the degree of 7 Aries – the degree of the Moon’s position.

 Full Moon of September 30, 2012 (3:20 a.m. UT/+0)

Aries Wheel - Location Not Specific

The Full Moon is always an emotional time. With the Moon sitting at 7 Aries, the Aries part makes this moment not just emotional, but very personal. And with this Full Moon happening at a degree between 0 and 9, we know it has to do with how we feel. Or our personal physical body. Or something we’re doing. Or are thinking of doing. Or need to do.

So this is likely to be a very intense and personally focused time. Plus or minus, we’re each all about ourselves.

With Mars – ruler of Aries – at 25 Scorpio and conjunct the more challenging if profitable North Node (as opposed to the more comfortable, easy yet long-term-dissipation effects of the South Node)…and ALSO conjunct the ‘I’m afraid that was going to happen’ (or ‘afraid you were going to say/think/do that’) Medusa, situations of the moment evoke Scorpio emotions.
And though we are all always tempted to love or hate such Scorpio moments based on what ‘they’ do, the reality of the issue is that Scorpio is always about testing our values and our choices.

Besides, this is not ‘just’ a Mars-Medusa-North Node thing (though that in itself is a loaded statement!). Why not? That would be because Mars-Medusa-North Node is part of a Grand Square formulation:

The Mars-square-Venus quality is likely to lend quite a bit of hurt feelings (read: ego) to the mix here. That Venus is conjunct Achilles and Agamemnon suggests emotional protests – which yes, may well surface in arguments and anger. But please take note: Venus is also conjunct Regulus – the famous fixed star which is all about success which is ONLY garnered where we avoid the pitfall of revenge.

With Achilles and Agamemnon behind Venus (if barely) and Regulus, Sabine and Eos just ahead, some of us are going to be pulling ourselves together to get out of a funk and over our big bad selves in issuing a Mars-Medusa-North Node apology.

At best, no matter who you are or what’s going on, if you can harness the moment in the service of (Eos) recognizing how you have (Sabine) limited yourself and deal with what the truth is and where you may have been shooting yourself in the foot (as it were), that would be a positive. As a figure of emotional responsiveness of the ‘I want it MY way,’ Algol’s opposition to Mars/North Node with Algol obviously in conjunction to the South Node lends a whole air and aura of reluctance to face that which is emotionally challenging to us. And this goes double where a situation is rooted in deeply held values or convictions (on our part) about how we think things “ought to be.”

Wherever you’re reacting from a ‘this is how I’ve ALWAYS done it’ or ‘I CHOOSE to do things my way and everybody else should just get over it!’ sort of perspective, life is going to be particularly challenging, too. Black Moon Lilith at 1 Gemini here is emblematic of choices which are sufficiently narrow to work only sometimes (if that) and in opposition to Mars-North Node this gives us a flavor of rejection or denial or simply not getting what you want out of a situation.

 Expulsao do Paraiso (Expelled from Paradise)

by Obra de Aldo Locatelli (c. 1950-1969)

If you’re not familiar with both forms of Lilith (there are two) I suggest you read a blog post from a while ago called The Two Liliths

Link to 'The Two Liliths' blog post

The last part of this Grand Square is Neptune. Ah yes…now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t Neptune. Neptune opposition Venus tends to have one of two modes: either it’s dreamy, hopeful and expectant…or its motivational in the sense that you can see what can be, you’re able to dream the dream and that keeps you moving and trying.

Remembering that Neptune in its home sign of Pisces is that thing which dissolves the illusion and ultimately reveals the truth…that tends to say that either we’re disillusioned with something (or someone) or we’re putting aside our self-pleasantries and just devoting ourselves to getting the job done, dealing with whoever and whatever (Scorpio) thing must be dealt with, adapting (Leo) as we go, calling on (Taurus) everything we know we can rely on in our own makeup as well as that conviction as to what can be accomplished…we’re doing all that and (Medusa) braving the Great Unknown, whether that’s our unknown or that of others…in creating something better, in advancing a cause, in building something which in (Neptune) reality can hold (Pisces) water…(which in this case would be the needs of our emotional self respect).

Since this is a grand square, the trick is keeping everything in focus, in balance and in motion. With three out of four corners of this square in fixed signs, those who come into this period already in motion, on the road and in gear will have the benefit of momentum to carry them through current difficulties.

Which yes, leaves the rest of us – those of us who have been thinking, longing, wanting, trying…but not really being honest with ourselves. Those people are likely to hit a high-in-lows at this moment – which fortunately IS only a Full Moon moment.

In other words, it’s part of a greater (life) cycle.

Yes, it is pretty easy to get shortsighted at the moment. Particularly on the emotional level..and particularly when that emotionality comes from a feeling of loss or sheer discomfort with changes necessitated by life’s greater scope.

It’s time to get a plan…or to put your current plan into motion. As we discussed in the last post (on Ceres entering Cancer) those who can undertake a journey knowing that it’s going to take a lot of work, that it won’t all be predictable and that they’re going to have to deal with people who may come from completely different walks of life…those people can  take what could be negative feelings which arise to bite them now and turn that into dynamic energy.

We just can’t be too proud, want things to be too easy or think that we can get away without having to invest our heart, noggin and abilities.

So getting back to the Moon proper – since this is a post about the Full Moon, yes!

All of the above was sort of background…the backdrop against which this Full Moon is taking place. But the Full Moon itself…?

That’s the object of a t-square.

 
And this is where Pluto/Facies comes into the mix. The way a t-square works, we “start” at the sign which is zodiacally before the sign of the ‘t’ – which in this case is Capricorn.

So this t-square starts with the Sun in Libra, faces the ‘t’ which is Pluto-Facies-Icarus…and the object of a t-square is to ‘achieve’ the Uranus-Moon-Child quotient, which one would suspect is rather like ‘the innocence of a child.’ Or to put that in a slightly more ‘adult’ way…to have things easy again.

It’s just…well, Pluto-Faces is a complication which surfaces out of a lot of gnarly factors which come together. It seems like you can’t fix one thing because another thing isn’t fixed yet.

Add in Icarus and we have the picture of haste having made everything a whole lot worse.

The Lament for Icarus by Herbert James Draper (1898)

Then we consider that all three of these points (like everything else about this Full Moon t-square) is in the first decanate: between the degrees of zero and 9. That means this is all very person. It’s about us, it’s about something we need to do or have done (Pluto-Facies tends to suggest here that this is something already done). And it’s affecting us physically. That may mean ‘physically’ in the simple sense – in terms of our health or physical body. Then again, it may be a question of our social standing or marriage. Or maybe (given all the Taurus-Scorpio in the background) how finances are affecting our ability to do anything about anything.

Sun-conjunct-asteroid House at 7 Libra is a reference to how comfortable we are with ourselves. With the Sun in its sign of fall, the answer is likely to be ‘not as comfortable as we’d like to be with ourselves.’ Where 7 Libra falls in your personal chart, along with where the Sun and asteroid House are natally (and how they’re aspected) will lend additional color to this factor for good and ill.

But plainly we’re considering (or reconsidering) how things are going, the nature of the people we’re interacting with (or not interacting with) – and whether all that is getting us where we want to go. You know…to that feeling of all being simple as it ‘should be’ in our most innocent of childlike dreams?

That thought brings up a good point: Aries can be childlike…or childish. How we have set ourselves up prior to now is like as not delivering results on this choice. If you want ‘permission’ from life to be childish and you’re hanging out with a bunch of responsible, thoughtful people that may not work. If you want to achieve personal freedom (Moon-Uranus in Aries) and you’re hanging out with a bunch of irresponsible folks, then that may not work so well for you.

(Yes, karma is apparently contagious)

There are as many ways these you-me-he-she-it things can manifest as there are leaves on trees. But at some level, whether or what you are/aren’t being to others (Sun in Libra) is setting the stage for successes and headaches of the moment.

Then we come to TNO Typhon. The Greek Typhon is a totally primal figure which references that essential level of life where biological drives manifest as the need to breathe…hunger…exhaustion and the need to sleep…the urge to reproduce…all such things.

To understand a bit more about the nature of Typhon, here’s the diagram yours truly drummed up for the Pholus blog (may it long be remembered) modified so as to include Typhon…and make a blogger’s best attempt to put things a little more to scale.

The point here is that Typhon originates in the Kuiper Belt – it’s a Trans Neptunian Object, hence the ‘TNO’ designation. And anything which comes from way out there (beyond Neptune) on the esoteric level can be thought of as ‘coming through the Neptune reality/non-reality’ gate.

In other words, objects which orbit beyond Neptune (our solar system’s last true planet) are ‘beyond’ that point where the known, where our conceptual ability to predict reality ends. Put all this together and we’re likely to have been drawn into Scorpio (joint/joined) situations (through assertive Mars choice) which at this time are confronting us with complicated, multi-faceted (Facies) situations which evoke emotionally transformative (Plutonic) upheavals at a very basic (Typhon) level.

Whew! That’s a thought-ful, right?

The bottom line here is that t-squares have a time-honored, if-you-can-do-it-you-will-end-up-happy formula. That formula says that we have to get over a “hurdle” (the ‘t’ in the t-square) which is really all about your focus on you. Call it ego, call it selfish, call it personal priority…the astrological rule where t-squares are concerned is plain.

So! If all is good now, probably things are really great. (At least for the moment. After all, this is just a Full Moon we’re talking about!)

And if things are tough, the challenge is to shift your focus to the ‘greater picture’…the what needs to be changed and how you can move to lead the charge, the moment, the effort there.

Oh yes…Diadem. Diadem is a fixed star which represents the ‘crowning glory’ – our most cherished thought, hope, possession, activity (etc.). Positioned at 9 Libra, Diadem is positioned in a degree which is quick to criticize and mentally aggressive, a degree known for its preference to talk (study, examine, think) rather than do. This degree does not favor making decisions…which gives us a hint not just about the present, but about these years we’re all muddling through.

Having entered 9 Libra on December 19, 2003, Diadem won’t be moving on into 10 Libra until December 25, 2075 (merry Christmas a half-century early!). And not only does this echo some of the data we got when discussing Pholus (and the ongoing game of zodiacal tag Pholus is playing with Ixion)…namely, that we live in changing times when it’s easy to complain and long for calmer waters, but when that’s truly not likely to happen.

Link to the blog on Pholus

By the year 2075 (interestingly) Pluto will be where Uranus is right now, a fact which poses suggests that what gets done today (or not done today) has some long-term ramifications.

Fortunately…(if that’s what you want to call it)…upheaval and difficult, challenging times seem to be the hallmark of every shift of astrological age.

So as they say…unbeknownst to us, the universe is unfolding as it should.

We just have to decide to live in this world instead of trying (expecting?) it to work as we want it to.

Is it worth your try?



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