This one requires a visual aid. I run most charts through astro-charts.com because I like the style. I use my town as the location. I’m in Chapel Hill, NC. If you’re far away, your local chart will be rotated and the Houses will be different, but it will have the same aspects. Except for a personal anecdote at the beginning of the post, I will only be talking about the aspects, so that’s okay.
The first thing I notice about this chart is that this Samhain season’s Full Moon is oriented to my location, almost exactly overhead at midnight. In my time zone the singular moment of Full Moon passed at 12:12 am.
Does this mean anything? I’m not sure, but Ceres (as she has asked me to call her) came over for the first time tonight after I pulled her card from my Flamingo Estate oracle deck. The guidebook says the Full Moon is one of her holy days, and since I’m under contract with her beloved daughter now, I guess she gets holy days from me because she’s family.
Saturn shared his offering candle with her – I had given him a special sculptural sumac candle for the first day of the new Rave quarter. Since Saturn is the profection coach of my Capricorn 10th House year, the plan was to use his time under the candle to set up my notebook system for the new quarter. Since Ceres was looped into the candle, she also offered help with the notebook stuff. Later she came back to observe when I began to prepare dinner. I offered her a plate, I’m not a heathen. I can’t be sure – the Old Gods are hard to read at the best of times – but I think it went well?
What was most memorable about this first impression? She said she’s glad I’m a bit fat because it’s evidence that I can provide for her daughter and “feed her properly.” All the Gods be telling me they trust me because I’m round shaped. It really makes me think. Anyway, she seems to approve of my ingredients and the way I prepare food, but she told me I overcooked the chicken and she was right. I told her I’ll try to do better.
Anyway, back to the astrology:
I’ve removed all the “irrelevant” heavenly bodies from the chart. Other planets are in aspect with each other right now, but I’ve excluded everyone who isn’t directly involved with the main characters: Sun, Moon, and Pluto, the ruler of our Scorpio season, who can be seen holding a lot of attention in T-square with both Luminaries.
Sun and Moon are always in opposition during the Full Moon, and this creates the typical pressure to polarize between our primal, reactive emotions (Moon) and our desire to make a positive impact on the world (Sun). We can also look at this as a polarity between immature behavior and mature behavior. The thing about the Sun placement is that its expression is not static – it is always unfolding. On the contrary the Moon tends to push us toward regressive behavior.
To make the most of an opposition, we need to find harmony between the two apparent opposites. When the Moon is involved, a large part of the work is sure to be emotional self-management. We need to process and digest the way we are feeling before we decide what action to take. When emotional energy is high, it’s best to put off decisions altogether until a true moment of calm can be achieved.
In a T-square with both Sun and Moon, Pluto does not necessarily hold any decision making power in this transit. But he does hold the position and influence to apply pressure, which is more meaningful and typically more stressful for us as a Collective. We are likely to end up in a Seven of Cups position, in which there is no clear “right choice” but there is decision-making urgency. People who understand the big picture will see this as the brightly lit exit doorway it is. Shown on the chart, the two other outer planets continue to hold their collaborative formation with Pluto; they participate in this transit in an advisor position to him directly, without working all the way through to Sun and Moon.
In close proximity to Sun and Moon we have the secondary characters of the transit: Venus opposes Chiron a sign’s border away, activating a dissonant yet resonant energy. The two oppositions are three and a half degrees apart, but between them they activate all four elements, and that means there is magic in the air for those who know how to capture it.
When Chiron is involved, it’s important to remember that the core wound’s true purpose is to transmute into our place of deepest healing, where our wisdom is so powerful that we can also use it to heal others around us. We can’t achieve that positive potential if we are focusing on feeling like a victim and struggling with how hard things are. We can only get there if we shoulder the weight and leave the past behind. Yes, this is hard and requires persistent effort without much reward. We have to do it not out of faith in the promise of reward, but out of faith in the process.
In opposition with Venus who has just retrograded back into her ruling sign of Libra, Chiron’s position in the final degrees of Aries challenges the integrity of our relationship between Self and Other. When we overidentify with the Libran Other, we fall out of alignment with the Arian Self that is designed to guide our decision making. We need to have both Arian and Libran parts of our nature to thrive; we need these parts of our charts to balance each other. If we are placing too much weight on one side or the other, that will be brought into the light of conscious awareness by this Full Moon. Revelations are nigh.
Right now Venus is in the backwards-moving “revealing past mistakes” phase of her retrograde. During the post-retrograde shadow, those mistakes will be corrected. The time between now and then will require us to sit with the truth and digest it. Weaker personalities will want to avoid and repress instead of sitting in the discomfort of knowing we’ve made mistakes while still having to await future resolution. This too requires faith in the process.
What’s on the other side of this Full Moon? That depends on you and the choices you’ve been making in the recent chapters of your life. It’s possible that a lot of ghosts will come knocking at your door this Samhain season. The Otherworld portal is well open. Visitors are to be expected.
