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Every full moon is a time during which seeds planted under a new moon can begin to sprout if they’ve been nurtured and cultivated. Under this lunation, Mercury and Vesta are conjunct close to the New Moon at the beginning of this cycle, so this moon is likely to bring messages that correspond with what was happening for you on/around the New Moon. Vesta represents the eternal flame within you, the place within you that can’t be destroyed, where you belong only to yourself and the divine, where you’re always whole—so these messages may also relate to that place within you that’s untouchable and how to cultivate that space more.
Vesta is an important energy right now, given the mental and emotional health impacts of the ongoing lockdown. I’ve been saying it all year and I’ll keep saying it – each month is calling us to find greater clarity around who and what really matters. The situation in the external world will only get easier when each of us puts in the time and effort to bring ease to the situations in our internal worlds. This is the message of a Solar Eclipse in Cancer followed by a second New Moon in Cancer—the sign of home, comfort, and one’s interior world, one’s emotions.
What is home to you? Who is home to you?
This is not the time to dream about far-off journeys, but to focus on the beautiful and infinite journeys you’re capable of taking in your immediate environment. At first, it might seem like a 6-month stay-cation. But, ultimately, we are transitioning to new lifestyles that are more attuned to our individual and collective needs. We’re not going back to before, so you might as well consider what works best for you given your situation in this moment.
American society, especially, is feeling these transits—and it’s not accidental. Everyone wants to have all the freedom and independence, but few want to work together, live in community, and/or cooperate. It’s an exhausting and unnatural lifestyle, counter to the ways in which we’ve evolved as a species, and things will keep getting more and more uncomfortable until we can actually reach across the aisle and work with one another, regardless of our beliefs. Call-out cut-off cultures are killing us more than Coronavirus. Our separation from one another is the pandemic—and the people who are suffering most are elders and a generation of young people who we’re preparing for a lifetime of paranoia and trauma-recovery if we don’t get our acts together.
No sign wants freedom more than Aquarius—but FREEDOM AIN’ FREE!
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External peace requires internal peace. If you can’t find peace in your immediate environment and your internal life, you’ll never be able to find peace anywhere else. The collective journey is important. After all, this full moon is in Aquarius, the sign of the collective. But it’s impossible for peace, equity, and diversity to be facilitated at mass levels in containers that hold the uniqueness of every individual, culture, and ecosystem until they’re facilitated at small local scales. Every person has a universe within them. Each person is as diverse as the entire world.
Cultural, community, national, and global oppressions are perpetuated when individuals impose them upon themselves through their internal narratives. What you resist outside of you is what you resist within you and until you come to peace with yourself, you will not know how to come to peace with anyone else—individually or collectively. This next phase of our collective existence is about finding peace within ourselves, our families, and our communities.
Of course, the term “coming to peace” sounds serene. But in my experience and study (I have a graduate degree in Peace Studies, after all), true peace almost always arrives in the package of conflict. Your ability to move through conflict in a way that’s healthy for you and aligned with your particular energetic composition will bring you peace. Full Moons are culminations, completions of a particular energy and area of your chart and life. A few days later, as the moon begins to wane, the energy of that lunation releases. As the energy of the moon releases, it is said that the form of energy that moon embodied is released from us in a particular area of our lives.
Aquarius is the sign of equity and the energy with the greatest capacity for emotional detachment. It knows how to detach itself from emotions for the sake of fairness and utility. A full moon always occurs in the sign opposing that being transited by the Sun. The Sun is currently in its home sign of Leo, which is often considered the sign of leadership and royalty. Leo is a sign that has a deep sense of self-attachment, sometimes a fragile ego, but always a huge heart and a capacity for immense generosity. Leo knows how to connect with others’ hearts. This is the person you want at the front of your movement. But the one leading isn’t always the best person to make the rational decisions.
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Aquarius doesn’t care much about getting attention (unlike Leo does), as long as it can stay weird, be free, and engage its highly developed intellect. Leo values self-expression above all else, so this is one of the commonalities between Leo and Aquarius. Aquarius (as the most intellectual sign of the Zodiac) could be argued to have the highest ideals, and Leo is the sign that can promote those ideals in ways that other people are capable of actually understanding.
Every sign has challenges, limitations, and shadows. Aquarius’ deep commitment to equity, humanitarianism, and the collective is noble, but Aquarius also focuses heavily on systems and structures, rather than on individuals. The ability to de-personalize phenomena in a way that can facilitate understanding and mitigate defensive responses can be a great gift. In its extreme, however, Aquarian energy can become emotionless, unfeeling, and detached. Aquarian energy will always blame the system and the construction of the system. Every single person who is part of and living in oppressive systems (regardless of their “place” in them) facilitates oppression and violence of some kind because that’s how the system is designed. Every person who chooses to remove themselves from systems seeking to eliminate personal blame is avoiding/ignoring/by-passing their sense of responsibility to the collective. This is an Aquarian intellectual value. Aquarius is pro-humanity, anti-humans. Aquarius likes the idea of humanitarianism and will fight for it to the death intellectually. But once humans and feelings are involved … eeeeeh …
We are in the Age of Aquarius … but the age of any energy is also a transformation and purification of that energy. We got a preview of what this could look and feel like over the Spring and early Summer with Saturn’s brief entry into Aquarius. He will re-enter this sign (one of his own in traditional astrology) at the very end of the year, and we will be forced into a period of mastering collective commitments and understanding. Until then, however, the release of this moon is likely to bring the release of a depersonalized approach. Even though the construction of oppressive systems is always to blame, it is dangerous to apply systemic values in a time when systems are breaking down and individuals and individual companies are taking over and abusing power. Collective values can only be applied amidst collective agreement and agreement about who/what “the collective” even is! This is a time to explore individual forms of self-expression, to acknowledge all of oneself so that all parts can be expressed, to find a sense of authenticity, and to authentically connect with others--even those with opposing views.
Everyone needs to care for themselves, their families, their communities, and their people right now. This includes the possibility that who you consider to be yourself, your family, your community, and your people might be changing—and if it is, this full moon will make that apparent. It’s equally possible that you’ll find yourself returning to people, communities, and parts of yourself from the past, but showing up, connecting, and expressing them in very different ways than ever before.
If you focus on creating what you seek and desire in yourself, your family, and your community, you’re more likely to attract those with whom you want to connect than if you try to promote yourself and/or your cause to those who aren’t in agreement/alignment. You attract people with your energy and expression, not your taglines. Under this lunation, the North Node of the Moon and Venus are moving into a conjunction. The North Node is a point of destiny. It’s the indicator for eclipses and the reason why eclipse seasons (such as the one that concluded a couple of weeks ago) tend to bring about events that seem fated, that lead us to our destinies. Venus’ conjunction with the NN is likely to strengthen your propensity to attract that which leads you to your destiny.
All of the primary energies in a chart except for the Sun are on the Eastern half of the wheel. This gives a sense of energy rising, of initiations. These initiations aren’t good or bad inherently, and though many could be challenging, these are the times when the capacity for transformation is greatest.
Mars—the god of war--is slowing in his home sign of Aries, preparing for his Autumn retrograde, and squaring Jupiter in Saturn. Squares are challenges, face-offs, conflicts. Over the remaining months of this year, Mars—direct and in retrograde—will be sending warring and threatening vibes to Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto. Quite honestly, these are not energies one wants to be at war with one another, because Mars is immature and unpredictable and the other three are the most powerful planets of the Zodiac from an external/militaristic perspective. This doesn’t mean that wars will ensue, but that there will be conflicts and conflicts of interest—which is one of the reasons getting clear about your own energy and energetic expression is so important right now. You can’t negotiate with another (which will be a primary theme for the last quarter of the year) if you’re unclear about where you stand. Once Mars turns retrograde, those conflicts are likely to be internal as much as they are external. How the conflict is addressed is up to you personally and to all of us, collectively. Astrology reflects terrain and potential. Your response is always your choice. But that doesn’t mean the choice is easy.
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The square-off between Mars and Jupiter is certainly the least problematic of the challenges to Capricorn involving Mars, given that Jupiter is generally supportive, but he also expands whatever he touches. Jupiter and Mars are both fiery masculine energies with strong egos. Mars in his home sign of Aries certainly has the upper hand here compared with Jupiter, who remains a bit stifled in Capricorn. Mars in Aries represents self-motivation, but also being motivated by self-centered and selfish prerogatives. To a certain extent, this supports focusing on oneself and one’s immediate community. But—especially with a simultaneous opposition between Mercury/Vesta in Cancer and Saturn in Capricorn--it also creates a challenge between who/how one is and who/how one believes they’re supposed to be in the world. This environment can create tension between personal expression and individual and collective notions of professionalism and propriety. The former is likely to take precedence, since most associated cultural norms (especially in the U.S.) are arbitrary, rather than based on personal relationships and negotiations of how individuals prefer to interact and be treated.
As I stated above, real peace is only possible through conflict--which doesn’t even have to be a disagreement or an argument. It just has to be difference illuminated. When those involved understand balance and complementarity, it can be quite beautiful. In fact, few things are more beautiful than a balanced expression of complementary energy – but all involved have to agree that harmony in duality is the common intention and that reciprocity is more a quality of energetic balance, that transactional. Every tension enhances an opportunity for harmony, but there have to be rules, and everyone has to be party to and in agreement upon the rules of engagement.
The most significant aspect to/under the influence of this lunation, however, is the perfect square (again, a challenge) that Uranus (Aquarius’ ruling planet) will make to the Sun and the Moon from his temporary home in Taurus. The Moon is exalted in Taurus and Aquarius is Uranus’ home, so they’d both rather be in the other’s current location. They’re not especially aligned energies to begin with, considering that the Moon just wants to be comfortable and Uranus is the Great Disruptor/Awakener. Uranus is named after the primary element in the nuclear bomb—something that I don’t think anyone would associate with comfort. Uranian energy moves in, shakes everything up, and moves out. It’s not vengeful. It’s not really emotional. That’s just its divine purpose—to have fun wrecking shit. The conversation between these two can be a real communication disaster if they fall into, “Well, at least you have x, y, and z in your home,” when they don’t care about the things the other values.
Uranus is the higher octave of Mercury, so he does have a piece to play in communication—especially higher levels/forms of communication. This moon brings with it many opportunities for communication struggles, but these conflicts can transform your relationships and your life dramatically if you can find that Leo courage to discuss your own needs and desires, while stepping back a bit with some Aquarian non-attachment to truly listen to those of another. This will be especially important if you do connect or reconnect with a divine counterpart and are seeking to shift your connection with them.
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Uranus’ square to the Sun in Leo feels less challenging – perhaps because these are two energies that generate energy and heat (if in opposite ways). The challenge here is mostly in that the Sun bonds/fuses while Uranus disrupts/divides to propel people to higher understandings and vibrations. Taurus seeks comfort, while Leo seeks excitement. Taurus wants to sit still, while Leo wants to dance. Taurus wants traditional institutions, while Leo wants creative individuals. Nonetheless, Taurus represents self-worth and Leo represents self-expression. You can find cooperation between these energies over the course of this week by finding value in your personal self-expression and by using your unique self-expression to attract value to you—including in the forms of relationships.
With the conjunction between the North Node and Venus in Gemini, you could find that, amidst the chaos, you are connected to or confronted by the principle of duality through others over the next week or two. You could find or reconnect with your equal and opposite match, your twin. Regardless, this aspect is about being open to trying new things, to doing things differently, and to attracting new opportunities. It also calls people to be open to the possibility that they might not know everything or have all the answers—especially if their beliefs are based in either pure feelings (esp. trauma) or detached theories, rather than the dynamic intersection between the heart and the higher mind.
This is a critical time for relationships because for the remainder of this year and, likely, well into next year, comfort in the home sphere and one’s personal life will determine whether people make it or not—on many levels. It’s the difference between surviving and thriving. For some, it’s the difference between surviving … or not. The options for where one wants to be stuck—especially in the U.S.—are diminishing, so it’s imperative to discern with whom by mid-September. When you’re with the wrong people, the most beautiful, amazing, functional place can feel like Hell. When you’re with the right people, the most challenging, ridiculous, dysfunctional place is an adventure at worst and Heaven at best. Stay close to those who treat all of life as an adventure, who are resourceful in ways that align with you, and who are willing to commit to a reciprocal and dynamic sense of duality.
Full Moon in Aquarius Blessings
<3, Hilary