The women were like beings made of moon milk, and their skin shimmered with little silver dots like those of the salmon in springtime, and the women’s feet and hands were long and graceful.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes Phd,  WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES

The Full Moon for September occurs at 2:17 AM PDT on the 23rd at 00 Aries 15–the Aries Point! In the most straightforward terms, the Aries Point is the slice of space/ time where spirit enters matter, the collision point of  all that is real and unseen with discernible material form. So, a big deal, as for the individual, this point in the flat chart of the natal horoscope designates the point at which the individual meshed the spirit and the physical as we know it; it’s the place where the Soul entered active engagement with the present lifetime. What does this mean for us when the transiting Full Moon coincides with what we might see as a doorway between spirit and material?

The occurrence of the Full Moon at the Aries Point may open a doorway to our origins, to the most fundamental expression of who we are, at that moment when we both took material form (birth) and still retained full consciousness of the Soul essence. The Sabian symbol for 0-1 Aries is: ‘A Woman Just Risen From the Sea; a Seal is Embracing Her’ This image brings to mind the Archetypal story of the Seal Woman who mates with a human male, has a child, and slowly loses her health–all because as she celebrated herself, a hunter saw, and took the sealskin she wore as her ‘true’ identity. The story is given form in ‘Sealskin, Soulskin,’ in Estes’ marvelous ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves.’ She divides the story (which is told in many cultures in many forms) into parts that I know  I can’t improve on, so we’ll look at each part and how it might relate to the Full Moon experience.

Since this is a Full Moon, we know we’re speaking of culmination, the rounding out of some part of our own story. First, there is a kind of initiation that comes through a loss, in one form or another, of the Soul. I think this can be equated to birth, represented by the Aries Point as the doorway; we can’t help but become disoriented, losing a bit of ourselves in the process. Then one ‘loses one’s pelt’ in earnest–we are trying to enjoy our new human form, but in celebrating this we set aside the Soul connectors we still retain, in order to fit in to the earthly realm. We substitute the values of the culture and our tribe, and though these are not completely alien, they do represent the values of consensus, and that means we lose our awareness of those things that make us unique; this loss is represented by ‘poor’ choice (and by that I mean the kind of choices we inevitably make in an attempt to regain that part of ourselves we sense we’ve forgotten) and the way we are lured by the things we think will provide our lack. So we are, like the Seal Woman, left naked and shivering as we search for our eternal Beingness.

Next there is communion with the hunter, the individual who has ‘taken’ our skin–of course, we don’t know that we are facing the thief. This is represented by any animus oriented energy to which we succumb: our own interior animus, our ego, or an external animus: a man, ambition, society’s definition of ‘making it.’ Note that though this story is told as a woman’s loss, this tragedy happens to men, as well; they lose their unique ‘Soul skin’ in an attempt to be the kind of man society (and perhaps the partner) demands, rather than the kind of man they are naturally. The ego and its particular form of vanity promises to fulfill us, to return to us that missing Soul piece, if we will only do its bidding–but this is just not true–it cannot return what it does not possess.

The woman, the entire time she has spent on dry land, has been hearing the call of the sea (her true environment) and has been conscious of her vibrational connection with her child, her spiritual ‘home,’ in a sense. This spirit child in the story is the child of the Seal Woman and the hunter who captured her by stealing her skin. This is representative of the pure, inner connection we retain to the Soul (it can be ‘the inner child,’ though I think it’s something much purer, the experience of the Soul rather than just the seed-manifestation of it), and it’s this element in the story that, agitated by its mother’s distress, stumbles out into the night and trips on the mother’s wrapped up Seal skin, finding and delivering back to the woman her true identity.

So, in all this we are seeing an Archetypal journey in miniature; the Full Moon presents us with the ability to re-acquaint ourselves with that moment when as Soul we slipped into flesh–and this is a vital point, as it is the one time in the incarnation experience (other than the moment of death) in which we can be fully aware of the enormity of who we are, and can re-connect so directly with it.

Using our strict orb, we see that the Sun/ Moon/ Earth makes only one aspect, a T-square with Pluto in Capricorn. Ah ha! Besides being able to glimpse in its purest form the Soul and its intentions on incarnating (in the Sabian, this is the seal embracing the woman, a return to the natural sensibilities), this Full Moon also offers the power (Pluto) to transform (Pluto) our own manifestation in the material (Capricorn). Since the inner is the outer, and the outer the inner, this means we can change anything on any level, with corresponding changes visible (or felt or realized) in the opposite venue.

In ECLIPSE I called this Full Moon “the true birth point of fated Cardinal action,” and outline the other influences in effect at the moment of Full Moon fulfillment that will act on our transformational choices. If you’re planning on getting this issue and you just haven’t yet, now’s the time http://dogandsunflower.wordpress.com/new-summer-2010-eclipse/  The life long journey to empowerment is closely related to  the mini-empowerment we will be instituting with this Full Moon; see more on that here http://dogandsunflower.wordpress.com  in my new book on Juno. Thank you!

And have a wonderful Full Moon transformational experience!