So last night’s full moon in Virgo should, finally, have indicated for each of us specifically (does Virgo work any other way?) what our ‘task at hand’ is all about. The particulars, the players involved, the level of energy that we have to work with (and there should be quite a lot for each of us).

I’ve been advising clients to pay close attention during the three days following this lunation: a central puzzle piece is clarifying. And simply registering this, having a glimpse should go a long way to establish a sense of order, will provide a level of clarity, trust and an opportunity to settle amidst the chaotic dénouement we’re moving through, collectively speaking.

This is the first full moon to touch off the epic Uranus Saturn opposition. Sure, we know all the keywords and concepts for those two titans’ unfriendly nexus, but when the sun and moon land on a planetary aspect we get a visceral sense of what, exactly, is perturbating. It’s like a huge spotlight is illuminating every nook and cranny for us right now.

The full moon should have focused and brought forth at least one specific event for each of us last night. Be it a relationship issue, a prophetic dream, a financial resolution, a revelation related to one’s health. Also, and most importantly, there is a chance to see what, exactly, our frustration and sense of restriction is trying to birth. Read more

Tonight’s full moon in Cancer is perigee again (as it was last month). This makes the moon appear gigantic at the horizon and also connotes big emotions, big turmoils and big revelations and resolutions.

In a bit of cosmic irony, Saturn turned retrograde exactly on New Year’s day, dampening the sense of enthusiasm we usually associate with the start of a new year. This reinforces the unavoidable fact that we’re still entrenched in a cathartic re-arrangment of our culture, politics and economy. We need a mystic’s perspective to navigate our current predicament — meaning a deep faith that despite the collapse of existing structures, the loss and turmoil, a Phoenix will rise from the ashes. And, wow — ask and you shall receive:

The arrangement of planets during tonight’s full moon create what is termed a ‘mystic rectangle’, involving the Sun in Capricorn with Saturn in Virgo, Uranus in Pisces, and the Moon in Cancer — all water and earth signs. A mystic rectangle features two oppositions, two trines and two sextiles. That combination of aspects is enough to unravel our best efforts to control or become too literal-minded, and perhaps this is why Dane Rudhyar interpreted this pattern as being one of “practical mysticism.” We’re forced into a non-secular orientation that takes us out of our box, our modus operandi. Surprisingly, we discover that we can function just fine from this new place. We underestimated our capacities. We need this particular type of soul training, this kind of reminder right now, to take on the task of the year ahead. Read more

Today’s full moon — the largest lunation in fifteen years — sets off a Grand Cross within the mutable quadrant of the zodiac: Gemini, Sagittarius, Virgo and Pisces. These are the high-strung and flighty signs of the zodiac. A gathering of squares and oppositions between a group like this is likely to find us short-fused and antsy. We want this and that at the same time. We feel like retreating but don’t want to miss any social engagements. We want the excitement of change but aren’t willing to persevere through the dull spots. Each of the mutable signs highlight a particular aspect of duality and each live with and must reconcile a double natured approach to reality. This can make things complicated, should the right hand not know what the left hand is doing. Read more

The ongoing Saturn Uranus opposition is a cosmic reminder that the biosphere still remains wickedly dichotomized, despite Barack Obama‘s triumph on election night.

I’ve been calling this recent post-election phase Civil War Reconstruction v2.0. Meaning, once again the South has ‘fallen’ — has lost favor as a participating unit within our democracy. The New York Times recently reported: “What may have ended on Election Day … is the centrality of the South to national politics. By voting so emphatically for Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama — supporting him in some areas in even greater numbers than they did President Bush — voters from Texas to South Carolina and Kentucky may have marginalized their region for some time to come…”

So, how will we meet the fallout? Follow Gandhi‘s advice: “We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.”

On a personal note, tonight’s full moon deserves careful consideration, given the exact square from Neptune that is setting off a fixed sign arabesque. By signs, the full moon activates the Taurus and Scorpio polarity and foments roiling emotional intensity. No two signs of the zodiac are more aligned with the deeper passions of the body and the heart. With Neptune involved we might be putting too much emphasis on fantasy and not enough on the pragmatic. We’re calling the airline to book a trip to Bali but can barely make the mortgage next month. Reality checks are in order.

Not that fantasy is to be shunned. With Neptune, if the rational mind attempts to deny his otherworldly spells and callings, he’ll come through a back door upsetting your sleep with epic dreams or, worse, set you off on a drinking binge. Rituals are in order to honor this burgeoning autumnal passion-fest. Bring it all down a level without dishonoring the impulse. Write a wildly erotic love poem. Take a sick day from work and daydream throughout the afternoon, watching the full moon later in the evening from your back porch. Give Neptune his due. Here’s a wonderful poem by the Norwegian writer Olav H. Hauge to help ease our mind into the different possibilities Neptune communicates:

During this lunation we want the sensual security that Taurus’ garden of delights connotes, that feeling that we’ve found a safe, earthy haven for ourselves — but we are tempted to also engage with the serpent, and enter a more visceral, less “domestic” world of consummation with the mysterious Other. We want the comfort of romance, but also long to experience that which is forbidden, to take a romp in the wild world of taboo. Loyalty vs. licentiousness. How will it all play out?

This is a full moon that opens the floodgates. Passions feel almost irrepressible, off the scale actually, so any mood, be it light or dark, will be amplified and inch towards melodrama. The Taurus Scorpio polarity moves us back and forth between feelings of possession and attachment, to envy, jealousy and sometimes paranoia. The issue is emotional control. Holding the power, or surrendering to it. Try to find a middle path and set the pace slow but sure.

Venus’ out-of-sign conjunction to Pluto telegraphs relationship difficulties. Or at least a challenge to our notions about what makes for a successful relationship. If we have a conventional idea about romance, say from the latest issue of Bride’s magazine, this Venus Pluto co-mingling will show us the darker face of love. For the uninitiated, what appears to be simple on the surface is actually seething and twirling with intrigues and possible betrayals. Planets passing through Pluto’s realm are always taken down, like Persephone’s abduction into Hades, and put through the endurance tests. Trials by fire.

Remind yourself of the following axiom: That which is hidden is often more powerful than that which is visible. We have ideas about how things should be, operate, unfold in our intimate relationships. But Venus married to Pluto says we must learn the following: Beauty is much more than an idyl, pleasing lines, shapes and contours. And love involves a kind of vulnerability that can be devastating should it be double-crossed. And yet that is always the challenge of fully opening to love, that we’ll be taken down, forced to encounter our more regressed emotions: jealousy and rage. Venus with Pluto says: Love and beauty are beguiling and fierce. Not for sissies or the faint-of-heart.

Pisces offers two modes of expression: victim or redeemer.

As the last sign of the zodiac Pisces has all the residue, all the trials and tribulations of the other eleven signs pressing down upon it. This can make natives of this sign feel beleaguered, spent and used. A victim.

Those aligned with the redemptive qualities of the sign, Pisces’ role as saviour, have found a way to skip the drama and catch glints of the new that are inherent within the sign. Pisces is the threshold for an entirely new cycle about to unfurl around the zodiac, being the sign that proceeds Aries — the sign initiating spring.

So there’s a seeming choice, although with the fish — with their tails forever tied together — there’s always a little bit of the victimizing victim about the archetype — a kind of spiritual S&M, the way Pisceans learn to appreciate power and how to wield it, that’s hard to escape. Healthy Pisceans learn to live with this dichotomy and shift the victim role into a victorious countervailing beam of light. Pointing the way for the befuddled masses who seem to think that life is anything but the poetic mixture that it is; neither all good or all bad, but always a mixture. Pisces is about learning to live and be complete with the mixture. They do this with art, music, poetry, beauty and their biggest gift: compassion. Or by completely rearranging our view of the universe, ala Albert Einstein, a famous Piscean.

Today’s full moon in Pisces is almost Shakespearean on the drama meter. The lunation is conjunct Uranus and square Pluto. I read it like this: the shock of the new illuminates everything that is stagnant, stuck or resistant within our psychic field — light the pyre. It’s the sort of amalgam of forces that wrought Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein. There’s no way towards the light but in through the dark. One must fully animate and see all the aspects, the entire mixture of qualities that compose what is dead and spent; acknowledge it, honor it — and then…well we’ll see. That’s the Pluto angle. There is the opportunity, via the Uranian conjunction, to explode out the entire life form — allowing it to die completely. Pisces is about end days. We need to get with that program during this full moon.

So, best advice: Scan. Tune in. Where’s the self-deception (a big Piscean theme), the avoidance, the defense that plays out via helplessness. Where’s the jam-up? Where are we cheating? In other words, how are we lying to ourselves and what are those lies attempting to shore up? That’s what Uranus will zero in on during this lunation and what Pluto will kill off. We can flip this, too, and say: where is the hidden talent, the missed opportunity that needs a second chance, the unfulfilled promise? Gifts waiting to be galvanized.

Self-deluded victim or self-illuminated redeemer?

The emotional intensity of the full moon (high Piscean pathos — be that epiphanies or betrayals) aligned with Uranian acceleration and agitation means we’ve got to clean the channels and prepare to open up to the finer, higher, spiritualized Piscean frequencies. What are those? Namely acknowledging that we are not only of this world but of higher worlds as well. This world is a stage; and what animates the players, that hidden spirit is what Pisces can reveal. Ask yourself if you feel like your life is evolving or devolving. Remember one fish is moving upward toward the Apollonian heights, the other downward, to the Dionysian depths. But be honest. No wishy-washy maybes will do with Uranus and Pluto pressing in on the lunation. Their tails are tied: the rational mind must meet the chaotic, unredeemed ghosts of the past and undertake an active process of discharging. This will allow for a new creature/vision to be born. A new thought-form to take shape. A new, springtime fresh impetus to be revealed.

Hinderances might be: being two-faced, martyrdom, unrealistic hopes and futile machinations — any deluded psychic spinning that is acting as a form of resistance to truth will be challenged, checked and chucked. Opposition to this cosmic clean-out can manifest in defensive grandiosity, agitated paranoia or psychosomatic maladies. The body never lies and if the gods can’t find a way in through our consciousness they wreck havoc with the body.

It’s fascinating to consider the Sabian symbol for this degree of Pisces, it reads: A materializing medium giving a séance, with the keyword being substantiation. One must verify, prove their alegance to truth, making them worthy of channeling this high octane quality of inspiration — a kind of inspiration that will act as a support and ally for the new cycle ahead. A medium is someone who makes herself available to currents, impressions, powers that are not of this ‘ordinary’ world. But the channel must be cleared of impediments. This full moon will do that.

Tune in — blow out.