by Silvianne K. Delmars | Oct 14, 2024 |
On Thursday, October 17, the Full Moon will be at 24 Aries 35, opposite the Sun in Libra, exact at 4:26 am PDT. This Full Moon just barely qualifies as a penumbral eclipse, making it the third eclipse of this set. See Daniel’s recent article for a more comprehensive look at this extended eclipse season, which began with last month’s Pisces Full Moon.
This Aries Full Moon carries a very strong signature, as it illuminates and extends the powerful T-square involving the Sun, Chiron, and Mars that was exact this past Sunday/Monday. Again, for Daniel’s take on these alignments and their global implications check out his Wizard Weekly post here.
Grand Cross
If we include Pluto, just recently moving forward again in the very last degree of Capricorn, and still within a 10 degree orb of the other players, the Moon and Sun are anchoring a grand cross in the four householder/culture-bearer signs, with Mars in Cancer opposing Pluto.
As if that weren’t excitement enough, Venus in Scorpio was also opposing Uranus, exact on Monday. Although replete with the potential to initiate deep, positive change, this week’s confluence of oppositional energy most definitely promises to feel challenging. Let’s see if we can take apart this present-moment sacred astrological geometry, as we look for navigational clues in these stormy times.
First and foremost, we have an Aries Moon accompanied closely by teacher Chiron, encouraging the independent warrior archetype to finally admit to its fatal flaw – the inability to accept help. Can we allow our own mission-driven defender of how things should be to slow down and receive much needed balm for its own soul?
The Sun illuminates this Aries Moon shadow from Libra’s airy perch. The trick is to benefit from its innate diplomacy, gaining much needed perspective, without falling into co-dependency. This Aries-Libra push-pull between independence and inter-dependence is the name of the game we are all currently engaged in, with relationship issues of all sorts, inner and outer, surfacing at every turn.
A for a deeper look at the Libra New Moon that seeded this current lunation, and that is now reaching its fullest point, see Susan DeRyder’s reflective article highlighting communication.
Mars in The Mix
When we add actional Mars to the mix, squaring Sun, Moon, and Chiron from watery Cancer, there can be an uncomfortable sense of unresolved urgency. We want to put our energies to use, to nurture that which needs care, those we feel closest to, and yet may feel stymied in the attempt, blocked by unresolved emotions from within or without. What does authentic masculine nurturing really look like anyway?
This question will continue to haunt us collectively as Mars moves into its Cancer overstory synodic cycle next January. This Aries Full Moon foreshadows the archetypal Mars journey taking center stage over the next couple of years, as we struggle to birth new, lived definitions of authentic masculine ways of being, for both men and women.
Dane Rudhyar characterized a square as “crisis in action.” A grand cross can be seen as the coming together of two different oppositions to create four entangled squares, upping the ante as we attempt to resolve the seeming unresolvable.
Pluto as Key
Perhaps the key lies in the role of the final player, the one that completes this culture-bearer cross, as deep-diving Pluto continues to drill into the last degree of earthy Capricorn.
The Aries Moon wants to follow its spontaneous crusades unhindered, while Mars longs to show up with deep, responsible caring and the Libra Sun urges us all to just breathe, consider, and find balance. To make it all work together, we need a grounded set of plans, a well-thought out blueprint that everyone can buy into – and for that we need Capricorn.
However, with Pluto getting ready to finally complete its relentless passage through the sign of form and structure, at the fulcrum point of a Great Turning of The Ages, useful blueprints aren’t easy to come by. We can no longer rely on the old operating manuals. The world they applied to is gone, the rules now obsolete. How can we find stability when the very ground is giving way beneath us?
The Path Is Narrow, Gower Peninsula, Wales
Pluto tells us that we have to be willing to go deep. As deep as it takes to penetrate through the quaking ground of a world gone mad, until we can finally feel the touch of something solid. To get there, we have to be brave enough to let go of everything still remaining on the surface, all the cherished notions, the tattered scraps that remind us of a vanished security, the false ideas of who we thought we were. We will be asked to face our deepest fears. This is not a task that can be completed in a month, or a year, or maybe even in a lifetime. We signed up for the long haul.
And, there is no doubt that this Full Moon is illuminating a particularly intense nexus of change energies. Remember to keep breathing, to feel into the highest and deepest purpose of each moment, especially when conflicting emotions or events are feeling the most ungovernable.
Surrender to this descent we must, for we will continue to flail wildly amongst seemingly conflicting impulses until we finally touch upon our core truth, that which remains when all else is gone – the truth felt in our body and confirmed in our soul.
This, and only this, will provide the needed alembic, the magical container that will allow us to distill our purest vision from the disparate elements to create gold – the gold of renewed purpose, of a sense of knowing the part we came to play, as we sow future seeds in the composted ruins of the past.
Image: Naraya Naserian