This is the second full Moon in Sagittarius this year. When the full Moon visits the same sign twice, it gives us a moment to pause and look more deeply at the energies of the signs involved. Sun in Gemini and Moon in Sagittarius are about two very different ways we perceive the world. Gemini wants to explore with rational Mercury. Sagittarius has the certainly of Jupiter behind his beliefs. Words, like swords can cut cleanly and find clarity, but they can turn and become double edged. Gemini can be delightfully curious, and articulate or descend into gibberish. Sagittarius can be philosophical, optimistic, tolerant or rabidly dogmatic and inflexible.
We seem to be in a place where the Moon and Sun offer us the opportunity to look at our mental processes, and, to observe how we listen to each other and to the mental dialogue, which occupies our head.
When we are in the season of the full Moon we experience contradiction and the desire to
integrate opposing impulses and desires. This can lead to a sense of lunacy, a feeling that we can’t understand some part of our self which is wordless, and which can be ecstatic or destructive or both.
We associate the power of the full Moon to pull us apart mentally. But the integration of new material in our life can only come through the process of accepting contradiction. Society has to accept what seems chaotic in order to evolve.
Here is the entry to a discarded mental hospital, a place for those who had ‘abandoned hope’ and for those who were abandoned because they could not be integrated into sanity. Even the growth of trees and plants around the grand entrance, a temple to madness, seem to be in chaos. The laws of nature which usually follow a path towards harmony and balance, are overcome by chaos. The huge Moon is the illumination of this place, a place the Sun abandoned.
An important player in this full Moon moment is Chiron, the wounded healer, the centaur who could mend all wounds but his own. Chiron makes an important square to the Sun/Moon opposition. He holds the reigns of this chart. And I believe his Sabian Symbol is the one which holds the key to this moment: ‘Watching the very thin moon crescent appearing at sunset, different people realize that the time has come to go ahead with their different projects.’ ‘keynote: A keen appreciation of the value of individualized responses to any challenge of life.’
The potential for new understanding after disorder is available to us, if we don’t panic and pull away from the depths, but rather look more closely as what is really happening.
To increase the mental and physical tension of this full Moon, the planetary rulers of Sagittarius and Gemini (Jupiter and Mercury) are involved in a square formation along with Neptune and Saturn, two very contradictory forces. Jupiter is traveling through earth sign Virgo, a practical, critical deity. Neptune, located in his home base of watery Pisces drowns Jupiter’s desire to preserve some semblance of order. The potential for a war between religions and spiritual outlooks is reflected in the astrology of the moment. Jupiter and Neptune are exactly opposite one another and are in tight connection to the Lunar Nodes, which mark evolutionary paths across the sky. Mercury’s card in the Tarot deck is the Magician. He knows the tools and
the secrets of communication between the worlds. Jupiter, located in Mercury’s realm of Virgo also would use the tools of the Magician, but he offers us something beyond our ability to comprehend in this card, the movement behind the scene. The Magician represents Mercury, The Wheel of Fortune, Jupiter.
Squares have trouble seeing each other’s point of view. There is a blind spot between Mercury and Jupiter and between Neptune and Saturn. Only by accepting all four sides of the square can understanding be reached, and stable new formations arise from the dust. In this Tarot card people have left the confines of the walled city to celebrate a new wholeness they are building.
This full Moon takes place just hours before the Summer Solstice. The Solstice is a threshold moment, which marks the shift between growing and lessening light. This gives an extra significance to this very powerful full Moon. We live on a planet tilted to just the right degree so that every place on earth receives the same number of dark and light hours over a year’s time, but distributed in several very different ways. At the equator there is very little change of season, the day is half light and half dark. As we move South and North, the light varies by season with a dark and a light half. This may be why polarity is built into our thinking. We want to see things as dark or light, right or wrong.
If you are feeling torn in several contradictory directions at this time, it might be an opportunity to take a moment of non judgmental self observation. It definitely feels as if our nation could use this. Silence and meditation are beautifully illustrated in this stone head found in the Castle Rock conservation land of Carlisle, Massachusetts. The challenge of the moment seems to beg for tender contemplation without words or mental constructs.
Sarah Fuhro Keeping our Ancient Wisdom Alive
The Wisdom Tradition evolved over the centuries to address our deepest human needs. Sarah Fuhro is a practitioner of its many forms; including Astrology, Tarot, Flower Essences and Druidry. In addition to personal consultations, Sarah teaches workshops and private classes, offering both clients and students knowledge powerfully rooted in the past, presented in the language of the present. To learn more, please visit www.sarahfuhro.com.
Photo credits:
Sarah Fuhro, root person
Bruce Lhuillier, Asylum (MacLean Hospital in Waltham Massachusetts)
Bruce Lhuillier, Stone Head, Carlisle Massachusetts.
Tarot cards from the Rider Waite deck