Blogpost (June 9-16): the Sagittarius Full Moon

The May 2012 Super Moon rising above a bridge in Japan

(photo credit: Halfrain, May 2012)

Remember how in my last post I said that about the time Mercury would be moving on station to go retrograde how we’d get a Venusian ‘reprisal’ in the form of results indicated by April’s 8 Taurus solar eclipse...and to some degree, events dating back to Venus’ turn to retrograde back in the latter part of last December?

Well, other than the bushel-and-a-half of worldly and societal doings which have been going on (plus those I’m sure have been strewn through your days), for those who have followed my (mis)adventures, an update: after all which came before, last week’s surprise was ending up in an emergency room. Not to panic, though (I was doing enough of that, trust me)...upon failing the MD’s definition of ‘emergency’ I came home.

And at that point (aided by a super-doc type who took time to call and explain what I needed to do in detail) it became apparent that I can’t spend a ton of time typing posts for this next little-long while...which given my astrological history will somehow tie into Mercury retrograde. (But right now let’s not be fussy.)

All of this I freely confess. And that I do it as our symbol of ego denial - Neptune - goes retrograde seems apt.

 image based on photograph of Planet Neptune by NASA

The bottom line here is this: let’s make our time count. So...in quickest and simplest terms, here’s the outline: the only issues of serious astrological note (that I know of, anyway) between now and June 21st go line this...

With Mercury proceeding through its retrograde, just as/after Mercury moves back into Gemini (airing out thoughts while temporarily freeze-drying emotional considerations except in the abstract), TNO Typhon goes direct. This is June 18th we’re talking about with Typhon but with asteroid Psyche going retrograde on June 20th in Aquarius it would be the general astro-suggestion that various forms of basic (“primary”) or baseline (“bottom line”)  considerations will come into focus at this time, asking that we work to master our ability to bridge the thought-into-feeling gap/process - a challenge which tends to typify Gemini’s last decanate (degrees 20-29).

Then the Sun moves on into Cancer on June 21st, giving us our Earthly mid-year equinox. Metaphysically this is a moment which is more or less literally about balance - the known against unknown and our ability to build based on what we’ve learned from our past into (or towards) our future. Any time any planet shifts into Cancer we are asked to move from learning on an egocentric level into one which is more responsive...and yes, feeling. And as we make that transition - as we do every year as the Sun activates the 0 Cancer solstice degree, we either actively or responsively reflect about how our past brings us to be in or out of balance with our Self - and thus with our world and with (or through) everything we do in that world. Just feeling ourselves making this personal shift is often enough to help us recognize where and how we are out of balance with ourselves, and where or how that’s causing difficulties in our life personal or professional because we are having a bumpy time with all those curlicued emotional principles so important to our race and existence as humans on this earth living amidst a sea of humanity.

Plus let’s remember...all this is happening under Mercury in retrograde, making this a time for self-reflection and pursuit of internal understanding, whatever that may mean. Mercury’s having gone retrograde in very early Cancer on the 7th with the ensuing retrograde not edging back into Gemini until June 17th suggests levels of rhetoric (or our need/willingness to listen to or pay attention to same) subsiding... fading... or at least changing their tone or tenor as we all make more connections to our own sense of need. Of decency. Of survival, comfort, security and emotional need.

...Into which comes the Full Moon at 22 Sagittarius - an event which occurs on June 13th at 4:13 a.m. (UT/+0).

As a degree, 22 Sagittarius is about that which we do not fully control - which isn’t the same thing as what we might want to control, to be sure. Part of that comes from the idea that as a sign, Sagittarius is all about ‘putting things out there’ and seeing how things work (or whether they work) which is that most simple polarity to Gemini, the ideas we choose to follow.

We choose under the Gemini principle...we apply under the Sagittarian ‘run it up the flag pole and see if it waves’ polarity. And if or where things don’t work, we go back into our Gemini mode and make a new choice (or tinker with the old one) under the time-honored concept of ‘try, try again.’

This ‘connection’ or ‘connecting’ of idea to how things have played out (or are playing out) are likely to be ‘highlighted’ or ‘triggered’ (emotionally) by this Sagittarius Full Moon, and as with all things Sagittarius the real question is whether we are willing to learn more (or at least recognize we don’t know everything) or whether we’re stuck in some need to be right, replete with all the common emotional defense mechanisms people so often fall prey to even while protesting someone else doing exactly the same.

(This would be why no one is shocked that Sagittarius is the sign of debates, legal, scholastic, religious and otherwise.)

As a degree, 22 Sagittarius has a reputation for taking the ‘road less traveled,’ for whatever our personal reasons may be. There’s also a fervent sort of emphasis which goes with this degree where pointing out errors (perceived or real) is concerned. Those who think things through (or who have thought things through in coming to this Full Moon) will discover more positive/productive answers than those who simply go around exploding the ideas of others and acting demanding, insistent or otherwise disruptive, but this would be a Full Moon when there will be evidence of both.

And let’s remember...this is Mercury retrograde. So no matter how much we would like to think that it’s about ‘them’...it isn’t. It’s about us - specifically, how we think, how we handle or deal with our own thoughts or mentality, how and why we make decisions as we do and whether we are true to Self (not the image, the real Self) and others.

Which yes, to more than a few people is going to be one giant bother.


The Sabian Symbol here being ‘A GROUP OF IMMIGRANTS AS THEY FULFILL THE REQUIREMENTS OF ENTRANCE INTO THE NEW COUNTRY’ can be literal, yes - but considering how metaphysics speaks to things we encounter within our concept of Self (as typically happens under Mercury retrograde) this image is far more likely to represent Sun-in-Gemini ideas or situations which require discussion of ideas and possible choices or ways of meeting whatever emotional/emotionally sensitive [Full Moon] ‘requirements’ are now at hand.

Who are we if we choose this....? Who are we if we choose that...? How to square what we [Gemini] think with what we [Cancer] feel? Though astrologer Marc Edmund Jones’ original comment on this image (‘consciously accepting the ways of a new stage of experience, in readiness for the opportunities it will present’) holds validity in the abstract, how to retain clarity with regards to our [Sagittarian] beliefs while retaining our [Mercury in Cancer] awareness that real life and the realities of past, present and future history are matters we simply cannot deny.

Or rather...matters we can deny, but most often deny at a price of expanded costs which are directly attributable to past avoidance.

Life is not lived in theory. Life is a flesh and blood and soil of the planet sort of thing. During this Full Moon time the balance between that which is flesh, blood and soil and our ever-increasing Aquarian Age human tendency to theorize and prefer to basing (couching, phrasing) everything in and as theory about who things should work is going to get a workout.

But then, it is only a Full Moon - an emotional ‘phase’ which under Mercury retrograde is one very good  metaphysical way of saying we will be presented with that which we need to respond to (Sagittarius being natively a right hemisphere or ‘responding’ sign) in terms of the Moon’s opposition by the Sun - which if the Moon is at 22 Sagittarius is obviously at 22 Gemini.

 Full Moon of June 13, 2014 at 22 Sagittarius (glyph chart with Ptolemy term rulers)

4:13 a.m. UT/+0 - Aries Wheel (location not specific)

 Full Moon of June 13, 2014 at 22 Sagittarius (text chart)

4:13 a.m. UT/+0 - Aries Wheel (location not specific)

Before we discuss that there are two other smallish (??) matters to discuss, the first being that this Full Moon comes to us complete with a metaphysical commentary known as a t-square, with this particular t-square coming to us in the form of Chiron in Pisces, a fairly direct 'announcement' (astrologically speaking) that we are uncomfortable with what we need to do even if we need to go through feeling our discomfort, sense of loss, fear or whatever else in doing it. If we don't, we'll simply be left standing in the same place - by our fears and insecurities, no less...a quotient no one likes even if it is an unavoidable part of life.

The solution here is twofold with the first message being that of Chiron - namely that we can only learn how to be the person we really want to be by becoming that person in spite of our trepidations or the allure (comfort) of being 'part of the group' or that ever-so-human tendency to (as they say) 'go along to get along.'

Here we are being told that we gain nothing by doing nothing and that clinging to the known only embeds us in our (Pisces) emotional quandary. Answers are out there, but we will only learn them in the process of doing that which seems most daunting.

It's a very human moment. Not necessarily one which feels humane...no.

But human? Yes, entirely.

Full Moon of June 13, 2014 at 22 Sagittarius (glyph chart with Ptolemy term rulers)

4:13 a.m. UT/+0 - Aries Wheel (location not specific)

Full Moon of June 13, 2014 at 22 Sagittarius (text chart)
4:13 a.m. UT/+0 - Aries Wheel (location not specific)

After that comes another important fact - namely how as the Sun and Moon are reaching 22 degrees of their respective signs (Gemini and Sagittarius), Jupiter will be at 22 Cancer and Sedna will be at 24 Taurus, creating that singular formation astrologers refer to as a Yod. 

Full Moon of June 13, 2014 at 22 Sagittarius (glyph chart with Ptolemy term rulers)
4:13 a.m. UT/+0 - Aries Wheel (location not specific)

Full Moon of June 13, 2014 at 22 Sagittarius (text chart)
4:13 a.m. UT/+0 - Aries Wheel (location not specific) 

The idea of a Yod is that there are dual (or dueling) issues which are forcing us to adjust our positions - or in the case of a Full Moon, our feelings ...or our feelings about some position we are in or have taken on some matter. While a Yod is in formation (which in the case of our swift-moving Moon will really only involve some six hours before and six hours after the Full Moon’s moment of exactness) we tend to feel ‘fated’ in some way - fated to do something, to have been brought up in one place, time or culture...something will now come to the [Full Moon] fore.

Typically we want to focus on ‘our point’ in the situation - which with a Yod is symbolized by the planet at the ‘point’ of the Yod itself (in this case, the Moon). That’s instinct - and when we speak to anything lunar (such as a Full Moon) those lunar instincts or feelings of allegiance can be strong.

However strong they may be however, lore tells us that the solution to such a situation is not found by ‘standing on our preferred point,’ as one might say, but rather through looking for middle ground - which in the case of the Yod is that point which lies midpoint between the two planets forming the mouth of the “Y”...which given the Full Moon at hand would be the midpoint or coming together or marrying of the Jupiter/Cancer precept of knowing where we ‘come from’ physically and emotionally (family, culture, national identity, home town, etc.) and that idealized [Sedna] ‘you should be/do such-and-such’ which we each will have long ago internalized early in life.

That midpoint - for all intents and purposes - is the image of the Sun (our intelligence, our consciousness of life, our willingness to be who we are as opposed to that we might have been told to be or imprinted with as ‘correct’ as expressed through 22 Gemini - a degree known for alternating qualities of light and dark or kind against mean which only serve to point out (or elicit) the need for creative thought, choice or action with attention being paid to any physical process involved, especially those which might affect/utilize limbs and the ability to see (literally or proverbially).

All of this suggests that we are now set on some sort of individual [Mercury retrograde] path which involves walking ourselves through our own thoughts and feelings on many a variable subject. Through what we do (say, choose) or don’t do (say, choose) we will be settling at least for this moment on some opinion, thought or stance.

Yet it may not be our last one on any subject, as Full Moons seldom mark a finality but rather some end of a phase, effort or situation.

From here we will move on - hopefully more informed about what’s truly important so we can choose to be or not be most invested in that. But how it all will yet work, none of us yet truly know.
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