The Full Moon takes place at the very end of today in the Pacific time zone; at 11:32pm at 20-degrees of Leo. In the Leo/Aquarius polarity, we are seeking to integrate what is good for ourselves with what is needed by the community. Leo invented self-love, which is different than self-care, a Cancer invention. In the Aquarius mansion, it is all about what is best for the world around you. Leo is where we learn sovereignty for our sense of Self, and where we organically fall into leadership, but this Full Moon asks us to integrate these two perspectives. Personal leadership on the one hand; communal cooperation on the other.
Full Moons are always about gratitude and release, and Leo, through his love of the joyful elements of being embodied, is the archetype that invented gratitude in the first place. On the release side of this mechanism, this is a great lunation in which to consider what you need to drop by the side of the road in order to more fully serve the community in which you dwell. Right now, things on the planet are heating up, and the world-gone-mad isn’t backing down. It has never been more important to be in the world, but not of it. A truly herculean challenge made even more difficult in this Full Moon because of an interesting and powerful thread that is emerging over in the Aries mansion. There is a gathering in the early degrees of that sign that will be a big part of what we are looking to integrate as we pull the Leo/Aquarius archetypes together from the opposite ends of their continuum.
Venus just left the sign of her exaltation (Pisces), and has entered the sign of her detriment (Aries). The loving perspective of Venus is completely out of sorts in the fiery, masculine mansion of Aries, and so love is harder to hold on to under this influence. Also newly ingressed into this impulsive territory is Black Moon Lilith, a shadow point where the extraordinary power of the creative and destructive feminine principle is held for us. In Aries, she is very angry, and feeling righteous about all of the polarization in the world today, and is ready to fight the good fight to create some change. Chiron, the Great Healer is also in Aries and all three are within 2-degrees of each other.
This is ultimately a healing moment thanks to Chiron, but the heat that Aries can generate brings a tremendous amount of aggressive energy that could explode all over the place. Turn on the news if you want to understand what I am talking about. How each of us as individuals align with this uprising of rageful energy is crucial to the planet right now. We want to tap into the rage of Lilith as a productive agent of change on the planet, without getting swallowed up by the sheer combustibility of the social and political landscape. Consider the pure archetype of Leo, the benevolent leader, king of the zodiac who helps us step into that sense of sovereignty that is strong, but also fair and compassionate. We all must find this balance within us if we are to move through these years with any sort of sanity.
The geometry of how this Full Moon connects with this Aries uprising energy is almost 150-degrees, the Great Eliminator. Another way of understanding this complex geometry of the fork on the road is what I call the “either/or.” When two bodies interact in this very wide angle, only one of them can grab supremacy at a time. So, as we move through this Full Moon, consider how this “either/or” lives in you. Can you look out at world events right now, feel a certain fury-driven demand that things change, but not get so caught up in the personal projections of your own trauma such that you get shut down by your anger? True activation for change takes place when we are motivated by outrage, but driven by responsible leadership. Both are in the mix during this Full Moon, but they are presented to us in a manner that will demand a bona fide ability to hold contradictory impulses within us, and find a sort of grace with the either/or experience we all must navigate as human beings.
The last thing to say about this Full Moon – and perhaps this is the most important – is how Mercury is connecting to this lunation. The planet of the Mind spends this Full Moon in a Trine to the North Node, indicating a moment when what we are thinking and speaking into (Mercury) is easily and directly layered into (Trine) our future plans, and movement toward our destiny (North Node). This is a lovely thread to have connected to a powerful and potentially confusing Full Moon. But more importantly, because of his upcoming retrograde, this transit will be repeated three times. This has the impact of bringing the wave that this Full Moon generates directly into the Mercury retrograde, effectively continuing the reverberation of this lunation for another two months. The mind is where all healing must take place, and so all of the material that is being prepared to be released in this Full Moon, will have Mercury’s upcoming backward journey to truly sever the chords in the unconscious of all the material we are seeking to free ourselves from right now.
Leo is a fire sign, and the archetypal that invented all creative expression. When considering how to ritualize this Full Moon, remember this, and just have at it. Consider the personal sovereignty of your private impulses to express yourself, and all the while consider that the energy you whip up within your personal sphere really and truly does impact the collective. Remember we are the way showers, who came to do this first and help others to do the same. And as you are dancing around your living room in honor of this Full Moon, we are all doing just that.
