Full Moon Gemini. Mercury Retrograde 12/3/17 Bend and the World Bends with You.

I wish everyone luck this December, including myself. I’m already getting the business end of this lunation. I’m almost afraid to post this. But we can’t hide under the bed at every Mercury retrograde or Saturn transit. We have to take our lumps and LEARN: how to balance realistic thinking with lofty ideals, distinguishing unresolved feelings from logical thoughts, and mindful communication. The next two weeks are about restructuring the mind and telling fact from fiction. Give yourself and others extra helpings of time to think and formulate. Slow the internal tempo down so you can take in new information (that might actually be reformulated old information) and make needed adjustments.

But wait, isn’t Gemini supposed to be the fleet footed jack-of-all-trades? The master multitasker and messenger of the divine? Shouldn’t a full moon in Gemini be a gabfest, a piñata full of gadgets, smooth, fast, multilingual conversation? Well, sure. That’s one way it could go down on any other Gemini moon, but not this one.

Here’s what makes this one truly special:

a)     It’s ruled by Mercury retrograde (stationing ON the day of the full moon)

b)    Mercury is in Sagittarius (in its UNhappy place aka its detriment)

c)     Mercury is conjunct Saturn (ruler of the finite, form, and 3D reality)

d)    Full moon is square Neptune (ruler of the infinite, the formless, and fantasy)

This is so complex I’m going speak imagistically about the ways you might experience this:

#1

You’re in the middle of a long corridor. At one end of the corridor is a perfectly idealized version of love. At the other end of the corridor is a grossly exaggerated representation of your darkest fears. If you move toward your fears and get a closer look at them you’re guaranteed a new level of knowledge and self-mastery. There are no guarantees if you move toward the idealizations (might be everything you hoped for, you might be sorely dissapointed). The ends of each corridor are equally tempting and horrifying, urging you to move quickly. Oh, and the entire floor is marble and it’s been doused with soapy water.

#2

Your friends are waiting for you at the beach. It’s a perfect day. The only route you know has been closed and you’re skeptical about the detour, but you don’t have any maps with you, your smart phone is dead, and you’re the only one out on the road. You really want to get to the beach and you don’t want to worry your friends. You either take a leap of faith and drive the sketchy looking detour or go back home and get all the navigation tools that you’re used to using. Do you stick with the original goal and go about it the way you’re used to, even though it might cost you the day? Or, are you flexible enough to see where the road you’re on leads, and maybe even decide you want to spend the day differently?

#3

Someone is saying all the right things to you. They make total sense. You agree with them. But, you don’t believe them. You don’t trust them.

#4

A situation doesn’t quite make logical sense to you. You’re not quite sure it's worth doing. But, you know you need to be in it. It feels right. You trust it.

This full moon trust your bones over your brain. Brain not work so well right now.

When Mercury gets sleepy (read: goes retrograde, gets stuck with Saturn in Sagittarius) it happens so that other avenues wake up. Emotions, intuition, and senses get woken up and we may be forced to experiment, improvise, create innovative workarounds. Sometimes we get stuck in patterns of thought, and use habitual thought forms as a crutch. We may tell ourselves it’s for efficiency, legitimacy, or practicality, but most of the time it’s out of fear. Fear of the unknown, failure, getting hurt, or disapproval from others. This full moon may point out some of those habits by denying you access to them. It wants to show you that you are much more than habit, mindless routine, unquestioned preferences, and unexamined traditions.

Where communication is concerned take nothing for granted. This is another place we get lazy. If two people are lazy enough with their speaking and listening, they might not even be in the same conversation. Slow down. Pay attention. Rushing to judgement on anything right now would be a big mistake. Huge. We are all having useful info about the way we’ve been thinking and communicating handed to us. Unfortunately it might come in the form of breakdowns…but it doesn’t have to. If you do find yourself with a breakdown, try living with it. Ditch your old computer, phone, television habits, communication style, or thought pattern for a while and find another route. Feel other parts of yourself.

Flexibility and care will get you through the next month. Bend and the world bends with you.

Bonus points: watch or re-watch The Matrix. Meditate.

New Moon Scorpio 11/18/17 Passion with Precision

Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption

Well, this is a Scorpio season for the books and it ain't over yet. Scorpio doesn’t stop until it gets to the bottom’s bottom and sometimes it's just bottomless—and dark.

But that’s okay because Scorpio can see in the dark and sees all that is dark, clearly.  The longer we can tolerate the fear of darkness and resist the urge to turn lights on too soon, the more we can find out. The longer we can bear states of emptiness the clearer the knowledge becomes of what will satisfy. Emptiness is a natural part of living to be embraced. Our fear of it is what sometimes dulls the senses by keeping us reacting to imagined threats of loss and creates a cynicism that gets in the way of healthy desire.

 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. Philippians 4:12

This is Scorpio’s gift to us.

Perhaps more importantly Scorpio has enthusiasm (especially with Jupiter there) for the hidden, the taboo, the dirt, and other unmentionables. Scorpio was designed to dive into the raw sewage and come out with gold (you all remember that scene from The Shawshank Redemption where Andy crawls through the sewer to escape prison and that amazing money shot at the end when he emerges reborn, and baptized by Hollywood rain). There are no half-measures with Scorpio. It will undo itself until it's nothing only to be reborn as everything. 

This new moon in Scorpio is asking you to go all the way with your desires by engaging in the compost process. It wants you to commit to rebirth by laying old desires to rest so they may be restored and felt to the nth degree. By engaging in periods of abstinence, cleansing, and fast the palate of our desire nature is primed to experience passion with clarity and precision—instead of becoming inured and dulled by habit.

And because I seem to have Shawshank on the brain, how can we forget Red’s pivotal piece of advice to Andy: "Get busy living or get busy dying."  Or for these purposes, we could substitute that with "get busy dying TO get busy living."  Andy had to experience depletion so thoroughly to feel the acuteness of his desire. That gave him the strength to execute a precise act of will for his transformation. 

On the world stage we can see that we are in the midst of  a purge to say the very least. Death to the old, a cleaning of wounds, and thorough examinations of the intricate workings of our pain. This is the fuel for change.

This new moon post is short and to the point, there’s not a lot of nuance to explore. Your new moon intention: use your night vision to suss out what’s putrid, stale, or just in the way, and surrender it. Allow yourself a moment of "empty" to feel your passion with exactitude. Be precise about where you aim your passion and develop an articulate and discriminating appetite.

FULL MOON TAURUS 11/4/17 Cost-Benefit Analysis or The Pleasure Principle

A Bacchanal by Sebastiano Ricci

I have two titles because, honestly, who’s going to read an astrology article with a title that reads like the heading of a financial statement. Bo-ring! However, this full moon is anything but dull. In fact it’s quite yummy. If you have the chance to enjoy good food, drink, music, art, sex, dancing, or shopping for luxury goods this weekend could not be better. AND it’s a good time to do a CBA…

But because we’re talking about a full moon in Taurus opposite the sun in Scorpio we are talking about assets and investments of the financial, energetic, and sexual kind primarily. We are talking about the circulation of resources. We are talking about giving up to gain. And because Taurus is the star of the show we’re also talking about the pleasure principle.

Luxe. Luxury. Luxuriate. Luxurious. Luxuriant. What do these words mean to you? Expensive? Of the highest quality? Waste? Excess? Abundance? Obscenity? Extravagance? Comfort?

The thing about Taurus and luxury is that it can go all of these ways at different times for different people. This full moon is one to bask in. It supports slowing down so you can feel every inch of your body, and just BE in it. Right now. In a “right now” that stretches out across the bed, the floor, the tub, the couch. A “right now” that stretches time. Free from any goal, expectation or story about what it means or should mean…

Wait wait wait! Who has time for this?! Must be nice to have no job, family, social obligations, personal goals, professional obligations, deadlines, and an endless supply of resources to do all of this unbound feeling with no productivity!

Which brings us back to the questions that Taurus asks: “what is it to be luxurious?” and “why do we need it?”  Because we DO need it.

Ironically, when we float into luxurious places of pleasure we sometimes chastise ourselves for wasting time and for squandering finite resources. But it takes these moments of sensuality to tune into to what is essential to our being. It takes these moments of being to tune into exactly what we need to be fed. No more. No less. Just what's needed. And when we take this time we often realize how little we need because we give ourselves the chance to actually experience what we have with appreciation; explore it in its totality. Every corner, every facet. This is how we come to know what we value. When we’re clear on our values—feel them in our bones—it’s easy to let go and open ourselves up to loss, which paradoxically is the only way to open ourselves up to gain.

Which brings us to this moon’s relationship with the current Scorpio sun. We can’t talk about the moon or Taurus without talking about feeding; which is what occurs at every full moon. The sun feeds the moon light.  Put another way, the conscious/ego/personality (sun) shines a light on the unconscious emotional body (moon). The Scorpio sun is shining an unsparing light on what you have. Now is the time to feel, taste, and place value on what you have, linger there, and own it. Even when we are at are most depleted we always possess SOMETHING. Even if it’s just the fact that we’re still alive. If you’re down to your last bit of something, now is the time to take full ownership of that something and move through the world as someone who is resource-full.

When we feel pleasure with our senses and are in full possession of what we have we are able to withstand the stories about having-not, and the illusions that there is not enough. These fear stories, and scarcity illusions keep us moving through the world in a state of hunger and lack when the luxurious truth is we have everything we need. The question is do we value it? Careful with that question. Sometimes Taurus mistakes hoarding for valuing. On its worst days Taurus can hold on so tight to what makes it comfortable and what’s pleasing that it stagnates. Comfort turns into inertia and it can’t get off the couch. That's not valuing, it's clinging and laziness. I always characterize laziness as fear's favorite costume. 

Venus, the ruler of this full moon exactly opposes Uranus at this time. Uranus also opposed the last Libra new moon. Expect a continuation of themes involving new ways to do relationship and new insights into what we value. Some of these may be extremely novel or unexpected. Uranus aims to shock us out of outmoded ways of dealing with each other and ourselves.

What’s right beneath your nose, in plain sight? What can you feel with your skin? That’s real. Taurus is not a sign of ideas, intuition, or emotion. If you can touch it, count it as yours, and don’t take it for granted…another reason we sometimes feel hungry when we’re not is that we don’t RECOGNIZE something as valuable and care for it appropriately.

If Taurus is what we have and hold, the sun across the way in Scorpio is what we need from others and the price of that. Letting go of some of what we have in an exchange is needed if we are to change and and grow. When we perpetually live with our eyes on some prize that's not yet in our grasp we can enter a state of perpetual need where we never feel like we have enough and therefore are overly afraid of loss.

Use this full moon to revel in and care for all you have so you can happily give yourself away in the name movement, change, growth and gain.