Why aren’t we seeing more harmony, with this shifting but persisting Grand Water Trine that has been lingering and reforming for what seems like months? Currently it’s made up of Venus conjoined the Black Moon Lilith point in Scorpio, Saturn and anaretic degree Neptune in Pisces, and Jupiter in Cancer; in many ways, that could be a formula for Love applied to what is painful or buried, shaming or denied, healing it, releasing the pain, allowing dreams to become real-world solid and expanding what we care about. Certainly, the possibilities are there at a personal level. At least part of the issue might be that we start every thought with its darkest potentials, with fear, with trepidation at potential change or destruction, signified by the way Pluto is currently body of earliest degree. Casting such a grim shadow on our own thoughts, first thing as we look around, may prompt us to search for what’s wrong (and gods know, there’s plenty of that to be seen!) It doesn’t help that Taurean Uranus is also in an anaretic degree, opposing Venus and Black Moon Lilith, priming us to anticipate the nasty surprise, the shock, the unwelcome revolution, the riot, the group imposing its Will on our own. And the fact that the Trine itself is in Water (along with Merc still retro in liquidy Scorpio) encourages us to use emotion to feel our way forward–and an emotional lens is a notoriously distorting one–for every accurate intuition we perceive we also get a dozen feeling-interpretations that are doubtlessly, even if only moderately, skewed by our own prejudices. Awareness that this is our current perceptual state will go a long way toward calming those crashing inner waves. Today we joked about opening a store that would be filled with nothing but white boxes with something soft in them, no prices or writing on them, and the store would be called ‘Calm Down’. Had a good laugh, but right now I’m thinking a great many of us could use a little something soft–we might have to pull back from the world a little, and offer that relief to ourselves.
‘By the Waters of Babylon’ By Arthur Hacker 1888 {{PD}}
The New Moon of 19 November perfects at 10:46 PM PST at 28 Scorpio 11, poised to perfect the Inferior Conjunction with Mercury in hours, and clustered with the Black Moon Lilith point that both Sun and Moon have just passed over. A New Moon is a point of discovery, of revelation, and in Scorpio the energy is one of uncovering the Truth–but as always, we must be careful to parse objective truths (agreed-upon facts or points of shared reality) from what resonates as true to us (which may be both subjective and entirely valid, or may only apply to us). The Inferior Conjunction is a starting point within a minor cycle where the Sun and Mercury ‘converse’–their Inferior meeting birthing and allowing the remaining retrograde to incubate something, typically an idea or way of thinking related to the sign where they meet, with the finished initiative delivered at the Superior Conjunction, when the Sun and Mercury direct meet. Under the Scorpion those ideas may consist of what’s hidden, even from ourselves, things mysterious or primal–but the finished idea, delivered around 19 January, will be Capricornian: crisp, controlled, definitive, consisting of the rules or framework we think necessary as we move forward. That carries the potential for a lot of judgment of the Scorpionic, perhaps rejected out of the belief that it’s in boundaries and institutions, in listening to authorities, our best future lies–which sounds to me like an aberration, desperate, and temporary, at best, arising from fear of what we don’t know, or what we don’t understand, the kinds of things we think linger in the shadows.
Consider how passage over and, at the moment of New Moon, still conjoined, Black Moon Lilith affects our emotional experience. We’ve just been exposed to/ reminded of/ or faced with things we’d rather ignore or deny, or that enrage us–and now we are being given a glimpse of what those things might make us feel. And in Scorpio, those are dark feelings, even if they serve as revelation or purge. Magnified, by the Water trine to Jupiter in Cancer, in the form of imaginings made real, in the Water trine (and so forming a Grand Trine) with Saturn conjoined Neptune in Pisces, the latter at 29 stressed degrees=the dream is at a breaking point, the imagination taxed to its limit, the creative faculties at their peak.
Uranus at 29 Taurus sits in opposition to the New Moon complex=stress like a high-tension wire exposed throws electricity into the air, precipitating upset that forces innovation or a Higher Mind approach in the face of new, unusual, or more advanced intel. It presents as a crisis in identity, but whether that’s individual or in relation to the group is unique to each of us–in any case, our sense is that our stability, safety, prosperity, or well-being is endangered–and naturally, that may prompt any number of radical attempts to re-gain our footing–instability is the last thing the sure-footed bull can take for long.
The New Moon Sabian is, ‘An Indian Squaw Pleading To The Chief For The Lives Of Her Children’. The Moon in Scorpio is pleading with the Sun, bargaining for the emotional life and the things it makes possible, makes live; it reminds me of the way Mercury meets the Sun in Scorpio, then completes the cycle in Capricorn, as if the secrets, hidden matters, emotional truths we discover will be so overwrought, so deep, even taboo, that we may retreat to the clamped down and restrictive just to get a moment to collect ourselves, to get our bearings, so thoroughly will we be knocked out of our familiar emotional orbit. Oh, I hope that’s not the case.
Waves at sunrise in Corniche (Sète, France) {{PD}}
The Full Moon perfects at 5:19 PST of the 5th at 13 Taurus 22, and some things stand out: the number of ‘clusters’, different energies gathered in small groupings, and the oppositions, the most fleeting being the Full Moon, and the way that Water Grand Trine persists and in doing so ratchets up the need to address emotions to a big fat 11 with it now part of a Kite. A Trine and a Kite–those should be positive, right? Well sometimes the good or easy thing creates less-than-positive circumstances, just like hardship can create, if not blessings, then fortuitous situations of one kind or another. So much depends on how we meet things, and with a Full Moon in Taurus, we expect to be able to draw conclusions around our genuine values, commitments, material situation, and in areas where we dedicate our energies and talents–but with Moon ruler Venus square the Sun ruler Pluto (yet still sharing the same modality, a Fixed status, and element, Air, at this point) what we may find is that opposing forces that we would expect to clash and then hash out their differences are instead like mirrors of each other. Instead of two distinct and unalike matters we get a choice between two versions of, on closer inspection, what proves to be the same thing–and yet there’s still conflict, still a sense that resolution isn’t possible, only choice. Both our emotional conclusions about Lunar events and their origins will be remarkably similar, and if we don’t accept that fact fairly quickly, we could be in for a time where we feel caught, between the proverbial rock and hard place, with no desirable option available.
It doesn’t help that the Moon makes no significant contacts aside from the opposition to the Sun, though it does touch its own Nodal axis by trine to the South end and sextile to the North, suggesting old emotional patterns may be on display–but then awareness of that may be key to, with a modest effort, making headway on our Path.
All the dynamism in play at present lies in the clustered energies and the contacts they make; the Lunar event is just a waypoint, a maximum that ushers in an opportunity to dissipate some of the tension, and perhaps resolve some of the upset. First we see a chain-reaction connection from Black Moon Lilith at 24 Scorpio to Mars at 00 Sagittarius and Mercury at 5 Sag. This grouping suggests there’s impetus to bury a lot of anger, to keep our communications centered on ‘the facts’, and to bury what we find unacceptable. These are all loosely trined Jupiter in Cancer and Saturn-Neptune, with Neptune still lingering in that final, anaretic degree of Pisces (though let’s be honest, was our taste of Neptune in Aries pre-retrograde all that appealing? It had a fish-out-of-water quality that evoked a marine creature gasping to return to its element, rather than a freeing of imagination to take new individual shape). Add the ‘spine’ of the Kite that pulls in Pluto and we have to ask, are we suppressing our creative urge and/ or avoiding confronting unpleasant matters precisely because we derive power and control from not blossoming into our most actualized Self? I think it might; we care too much about what already exists to want to personally thrive and so perhaps lose what we have. Is it a given that what we cherish will disappear if we allow our growth? No, but it would definitely be challenging, and draining, could require us to give up a particular status in the larger scheme, and for many of us now may not be the time to tap our already overtaxed inner resources, much less shake up our social standing.
We also have Uranus at 00 Gemini opposing Mars and company and trining Pluto. This pulls in the possibility of learning something new, the kind of knowing that may easily and with little fanfare dismantle, transform, or resurrect some Higher Mind state or revelatory information. We surprise ourselves, by what we’re willing to do, and what we are (seemingly) willing to sacrifice–and this in the face of all that hesitation over loss. Too, there’s a loose Grand Cross with Jupiter, Venus, Pluto, and Chiron that inserts our primal wound at the very heart of the Lunar tension; what results may see our own fears and hurts asserting themselves and coloring reactions in ways we didn’t anticipate and likely don’t want.
The Sabian for the Full Moon is, ‘On The Beach, Children Play While Shellfish Grope At The Edge Of The Water’. The revelations centered on our feelings, on our emotional stance, that are so vital to understanding our Moon experience, may be found not through the stressful situations that may preoccupy us but through those that allow us to relax and learn without knowing we’re learning. The shellfish represent another kind of learning, the liminal spot between two worlds or states of consciousness or Being that can teach us a great deal about both. The key to accessing what we need may be to play and allow the unconscious to absorb what we need–a less aggressive approach than the problem-filled atmosphere that may confront us, but one that ultimately may be quite effective.
For the Sun the Sabian is, ‘Telephone Lineman At Work Installing New Connections’. And here’s what we’ll get, the benefit of relaxing the conscious mind and Will: ‘New Connections’ that will help answer so much of what we’re facing.
The mirror quality of what occurs in this period alerts us to the need to stop struggling, and allow the unconscious to reach out and do its work. Enjoy for once not having to come up with the answer.
The Word Image is the biggest tree uprooted you’ve ever seen, its bulk hanging precariously over the only road in and out of an isolated place. What major factor have you tried to keep separate from the rest of your life, only to find that it’s not only not staying in place but threatening to cut off your free movement, or your access to the rest of the world?
Julie Demboski's ASTROLOGY 
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