Evolving In The Sign Of...
This full moon comes opposite the Sun busy flirting with Venus in Libra.
Our consciousness will be focused on our grand visions of love. This may manifest through, at best, a beautiful love affair, and if not a perfect friends reunion, a temporary cash inflow, a great team effort or a very successful creative endeavour. For all our romantic ideas of perfect union, this lunation will however start revealing some cracks in the building.
This full moon will bring some important questions and conflicts to light over the next two weeks. What is quite surprising is how deceiving the period will be. Bringing us on a high, giving us the impression that all is perfect, and everything moves in the right direction, that is until Oct 17/18. After that, we will have no other choice but to either delight in the transformative power of a Solar Eclipse in Scorpio, or deal with the necessary little death that this sign implies.
Mars in Gemini points to our words, their lightness, their limited nature, their real meaning, their destabilising power, as being the main culprit.
Pluto is exactly stationary moving direct over this full moon. A key astrological event of this lunation, it points to some of the things we might have kept to ourselves in order to enter a partnership or get a deal. What could still be hidden and repressed since the end of April, can no longer be. Of course, this is likely to either hurt or be motivated by past wounds. This may drive you into further relational excesses and emotional vulnerability over the next months if you carry on living in denial.
For a few others, the full moon in Aries will also shed some light on some of the self-centric excesses we performed when pursuing our intimate desires with Jupiter in Aries. Jupiter is now back at 0 degree of Aries where it started in May, getting us to confront our lack of tact, the people we ignored, took for granted or hurt in our quest for freedom. From this full moon, the opposition or recurrent frustrations of the Saturn-Uranus squares we experienced over the last two years will start growing and resuming.
As the feeling of vulnerability and rejection grows, discord and strife are almost unavoidable, awakening the wounded kid in most of us. Some will continue drowning deeper into unauthentic versions of themselves, turning the venom within, some will start blaming others and opt for violence, and even less will accept the part of responsibility they owe in those situations and truly grow.
With this full moon, we will truly end the summer on a high and kick off the fall on a frightening transformative low, a deeply delusional fantasy, or a dangerously decadent high….
… that is unless you have put in the liberating work, courtesy of Saturn and Uranus.
So let’s explore what is truly at stake.
The zodiac wheel is built on two axes, the 4 cardinal points, the horizon, defined by where the sun rises and sets and the zenith or midheaven, where the sun is at its highest (and during the night at its lowest).
The first one, is defined by the polarity Aries-Libra.
It marks two thresholds:
The emergence out of the mother matrix or unity consciousness of our individual self into a separated body in Aries.
The emergence of a personality into a greater social group in Libra.
The second axis is defined by the polarity Cancer-Capricorn, ruled by the Moon and Saturn, the mother and father archetypes and has to do with our emotional maturity and how we deal with the reality of this world, care for ourselves and others and manage responsibilities. The axis is feminine and reflects how we internally deal with our environment.
The Aries-Libra axis is masculine though so its concern will mostly be outwardly, how we will seek to impact our environment, respond to our instincts, or seek to share or materialize our thoughts.
Aries is pure fire, ruled by Mars, the first outer planet, capable of forming squares and oppositions to the Sun, highlighting the conflicting nature of this planet. Mars is the god of War and is by no means delicate but forceful, decisive, impetuous, impatient and brave. Aries represents our animal instincts, our passions, what we want, aim at and march toward, our energy, our drive, our goals.
Aries in the zodiac wheel is the spark of life that emerges from the great mother womb (Pisces) into a human body. In a wide-open world where we are no longer fully cared for and perfectly protected.
In Aries, one of our first challenges will be to survive. We realize that our body is different from all others. And with it the need to also shape an identity that must be different if we want to survive, conquer and prevail. We start our hero’s journey into the world. And we quickly grasp that the type of journey, and therefore experiences, we expose ourselves to will shape and influence who we are and can become.
Aries and Mars also define our capacity to assert ourselves, fight for what we want, our fighting style and what we fight for. It also exposes what irritates us and what separates us.
Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac wheel and has almost no experience of the world surrounding itself. It moves from within, animated by an internal fire, a strong faith in its capabilities, innocent, unaware of the dangers, apparently fearless and incredibly confident, going straight to the objective.
Aries therefore marks our first step into building a unique personality which will help us to survive in a rather hostile world and get what we need and desire in this life.
Libra is also marking a first step out, but the motives and modalities are almost diametrically different. With this sign, we venture our newly formed and integrated individual personality in the social world, we get to venture and finally meet the others. Here we totally lack the initial self-confidence of Aries. We have integrated how complex and imperfect we are but seek to find a fair compromise when interacting with others.
Libra is mental, ruled by Venus, an inner planet, unable to wander off the sun more than 44 degrees and thus to form any conflicting aspects, just conjunctions. Venus is the energy that unites and attracts, that make the whole takes shapes and forms. Even though Venus in Libra is mental, the nature of what we like is very subjective and instinctive, we do not think of what we like or are attracted to, we just know it. This comes from a first passage of Venus in the earth element, in the sign of Taurus. The focus of Venus in Libra is not what we value or what our resources are, but how we are valued by others, who we value or would most balance us and what we seek in others.
With the realization that we are imperfect, fragile and cannot get all we need or want, comes the necessity to make choices, partner, choose allies and enter more solid relationships.
Libra will thus seek to collaborate and unite. Since this process is still mental, it is still open to all possibilities and quite idealistic. It has not yet met and integrated the hard reality of human interactions and assumes that all other beings will be moved by the same good intentions. In this sense, both Aries and Libra share the same innocence, sometimes bordering on naivety.
Similarly to Aries, fully immersed into the Self and the definition and affirmation of a differentiated identity, Libra is completely focused on (what) the Other (think). The questions we end up being preoccupied with becoming: how am I coming across, what can I do to make this situation more pleasant, am I being fair, have I made everything I could to bring peace and harmony? And the energy is fully invested into improving how we look, present ourselves, act, support, questioning and weighing whether we have been fair, good enough or the decision is a good one, and adjusting to others so that the social contract we are interested in building with them do not falter.
Venus and Mars were both enemies and lovers.
Venus considered Mars to be a brute, uncivilized and unrefined but she absolutely loved that he adored her, his strength, his confidence, and his decisiveness… well! Turned her on… Mars found Venus irresistible, her beauty, her grace, the way she radiated sensuality made him weak and vulnerable, but he despised weakness especially in himself.
Both energies participate in our duality, what divides and what unites, the two defining our attachments and aversions, our ego trips (Aries), our emotional needs (Cancer), the source of our suffering (Capricorn).
At its primal level, Aries being so focused on defining what it stands for, and forcefully projecting it into the world so that it can be as competitive as possible and aim at the top of the pyramid, NEEDS someone (Libra) to validate his whole ego trip. Our first experience of relationships very often become a co-dependent affair where the validation becomes provisional, love becomes conditional, expectations arise. Validate who I am, and I will validate who you are.
However, for a few of us later in life comes a point when we realize that this cannot continue and the way we interact with others must change.
This year, more than ever, with Mars lost in Gemini for seven months and a retrograde about to hit, we are being challenged to explore the deeper motives of our relationships and this before we may embark on either another karmic cycle or a liberating new path.
The exploration of this axis invites us to explore our relationships and reflect on:
The moon is full in Aries, bringing wisdom on the excesses of a Libra consciousness (Sun) and inviting us to bring more balance by embodying some of the Aries quality over the Libra ones.
Some of the darkest sides of Libra we consequently need to pay attention to are:
An over-concern with beauty, peace, and harmony at the expense of authenticity, courage and faith
You may want to reflect on where you currently compromise your freedom and autonomy through lack of confidence, fear of conflict and of what others may think about you.
An idealistic view of society and attachment to the idea that others will play by your rules
Where do you have a rather simplistic point of view, and have you been challenged by others over the last six months? Where is that rooted into? How is that shaping or reflected in other parts of your life?
An overreliance on Others to get what you need
In what parts of your life are you relying on some of your relationships to compensate for some of your personal challenges and accepting increasingly unbearable compromises? What are you refusing to look in the eyes and to accept responsibility for?
A sacrifice of the self for the sake of cooperation
When and where are you, or have you been, shunning your voice, removing yourself, keeping quiet when your inner flame invites you to act otherwise?
An overattachment to injustices?
Where do you feel you have been wronged over the last six months and still feel angry or frustrated about? What is that injustice resonating with in your earlier life? What are you refusing to accept or integrate? What might still be raw, painful and not healed yet?
If you feel ready to deal with the discomfort that this blog raised within, to be honest with yourself and to muster the courage to face your deepest fears, then do not hesitate to read our second blog to understand how to constructively cocreate with the energy of the moment.
May the light of wisdom and awakenings shine on your path to evolution.
With compassion,
G&J
