Full Moon Watch: Virgo SuperMoon A Go-Go

You’ve no doubt heard about tomorrow’s Full Moon SuperMoon. What’s that about exactly?

Occasionally the Moon misses the Earth a little too much and decides to move a bit closer to us during her new or full phase. That’s what will happen tomorrow. Astronomers call this a lunar perigee. But a guy named Richard Nolle coined the term SuperMoon to describe the proximity. You can read his explanation here — a nice clarification because it dispels a lot of misinformation about the SuperMoon too.

Because of the curve of the Earth (and the crazy curve of your mind during a Full Moon), the SuperMoon appears gigantic once she’s slid above the magnifying effect of the horizon. She’s so humongous that you start to worry that your roof will be damaged as Luna glides across the night sky. That’s a metaphor, actually, to let you know that this Full Moon might take the top of your head off.

So, best be prepared, especially as she’s huge and super radiant in Virgo. And you know how obsessive and antsy the mind can become when emotions are pushed through the Virgin’s Mercurial filters (Ouch!) Read: slightly manic in the drive for perfection. But work it! Tomorrow’s a fantastic night to go through your home and pull out all of the shit you want to get rid of. That pile of Wayne Deyer books, the Milli Vanilli CDs, cooking utensils made in the shape of animals, that depressing peasant dress you purchased from Forever 21 — you get the drift. Think of creating a virginal space for yourself. If nothing else, our environment can mirror the clarity that we’re craving right now. And this creation of a temenos will go a long way towards soothing and supporting you through the wild ride ahead.

Virginal also implies freshness. First-ness. As in “touched for the very first time.” And we’re thirsty for firsts right now. The itch for the new, the revolutionary, the unique, the untried keeps goading us. And yet the bulk of our psychic weight feels missing. Oy. The current planetary clusterfuck in Aries means we’re twitching, twirling and rubbernecking to get a sense of just what exactly the next new thing is going to be. But more, we want to know when movement will commence. Where is our gumption to move forward? In other words, where in the fuck is Mars; the impulse engine? That’s the catch. (Oh, he’s their honey, lolling in a bathtub — playing with The Fishes. Making the most of all that hot water.)

Mars in dreamy, scheme-diddling, mystical-minded Pisces wants another cocktail and a new Netflix subscription. This is the sort of Mars that likes to get a buzz going and then read trashy romance novels or watch lots of porn on the internet. At least that’s a Mars in Pisces when he isn’t tracking the finer frequencies of his destiny. My natal Mars is in Pisces and I can tell you that it’s a 24/7 challenge to align with such a (powerful) steam pit. The key to working with Mars in the Fishes is to allow the unconscious to do the galvanizing. This is tricky though because if you don’t have a working relationship with the unconscious (through therapy or 12-step or meditation or contemplation or the arts) you’ll have to move through a lot of fog before Mars forges a coalition with the Boss — and that would be Neptune. Sounds like a Catch 22 doesn’t it?

But keep swimming. Neptune will give Mars the goods when Mars’ passion is in service of Neptunian vision, otherwise it’s: “Ne’er-do-well, table for one!” And here’s Neptune’s wish list: glamour, beauty, dim lighting, world peace, Hollywood romance, science fiction utopia, peacock feathers, medical marijuana, and lots and lots of astrology. Like, astrology taught in the public schools and stuff. People put astrology under Uranus’ rulership, but that’s ridiculous. Uranus is a flinty, divisive planet. Uranus shatters rocks with his teeth because he’s curious about what’s in the middle. Neptune is mystical and pulls the etheric fluids of the heart towards a melting merge with the ideal of Oneness. Towards the Beloved.

Astrology is a mystic’s art (camouflaged as a soft science), as Dennis Ellwell once said — and how I wish I were there to hear him say it to my face: “If mysticism and astrology agree on one thing, it is the seamless wholeness of the universe…whenever a correlation between terrestrial and celestial happenings is discussed it has … to be borne in mind that it arises as an expression of this wholeness.” See what I mean? Wholeness is not Uranian territory.

But I’m meandering. Just get rid of the notion that Uranus rules astrology. But do it quick as Neptune is inches away from slipping back into Pisces (next month) — releasing astrological love vibes throughout the atmosphere. Just like in the 60s and 70s, astrology will dominate the Zeitgeist. It’s our time, baby! (What sign are you?)

Anyway, Mars in Pisces again: For those who do do the Work — you’re in luck! All you need to concentrate on (oh the irony) is pulling your inner critic off of your back so you can lay back and observe. Keenly. (That’s the Mars part of the Mars in Pisces equation). Focused contemplation. Let the dream realm, the hints, the eerie synchronicity, the strange blank walls of Zazen infuse your head. Go deeper (Mars again) and you’ll get to the heart of that wholeness that Ellwell was talking about. Rumi did poems about the Mars in Pisces vibes too, and one of them went like this:

If you want what visible reality
can give, you’re an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you’re not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish,
but you’ll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love’s confusing joy.

Mars in Pisces wants love’s confusing joy. So it’s OK right now if you’re confused — that’s part of the joy, it’s how the love is guiding you. Me. All of us. We are the world.

Stay with the love cloud and you’ll find that you’re instinctively aligning with the direction you’ll be moving when Mars comes up for air in April — and busts into his own sign. Until then we’ve got Jupiter and Mercury there — now — envisioning the visions, stoking our courage. If you’re still, you can sense a buzzing at the top of your head and maybe behind your eyes. That’s Ram juju beginning to gurgle and coalesce (i.e., a direction). Just sense it. Let it do its thing. It’ll serve you once your hoofs hit the ground. An Aries Sun will soon conjunct Uranus, on the Spring equinox no less, and then kiddo, well, all bets are off. The genie’s out of the bottle. What exactly does that portend? Well, if you have a Tarot deck handy pull out the Fool card. He’s ruled by Uranus. What’s over the edge of that precipice? Any idea? See what I mean?

If Uranus is part of any astrological equation we are always working with zero plus this or that, but always that emptiness of a zero that’s — BOOM! — suddenly filled up with something. So this implies getting comfortable with the unknown. That’s really what Uranus, as a transpersonal planet, relates regarding humankind’s evolution. That we have reached a point in our journey where we surrender the notion of personal doing and align with the dynamism of being. Being just is. Right now. And then something ‘happens’ and then that’s being. Being is always appearing from nothing into something. And then back to nothing and then there’s something. God, I’ve got a headache.

We must work at nurturing this truth, otherwise Uranus will always waylay us. He’s a wild card. The earth moves and then everything is different. Rocks are cracked open (including your hard head). See what’s inside. How many licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Journey to the Center of the Earth (rent that with your new Netflix subscription). You need to track this shit for yourself. Don’t rely on astrologers or psychics or Jesus. All that mish-mash of information will do is compound the Mars in Pisces confusion. Learn to stay with the questions yourself. As Rilke said:

“Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer…”

With Uranus in Aries, for the next seven years, every day is about: “God, I didn’t know that could happen.” Or, “Did you see what that seven-year-old kid created in his science project — that just might save the planet?!” The Uranian Ram isn’t interested in anything that’s come before. Nothing. Which is to say, you haven’t thought of it yet. We haven’t discovered it yet. It hasn’t finished cooking yet. But still you want clues!

OK — so: we’re back to Aries’s ruler Mars and following the Red Planet down the whirlpool to Neptune’s liquid radiance — where everything that is nascent within the realm of non-being begins to take shape. This is the most mysterious dimension in life you can visit or contemplate or align with. In quantum physics this ‘realm’ is the blank nothingness of space from which — after a tickle shimmers within the emptiness — out pops a particle. Voilà. The unmanifest made manifest. Aries is in the house, y’all.

Share what you’ve discovered below. But be specific, Aries has no patience for not naming the cat once she’s out of the bag.

Oh, and another thing: HURRY UP!