Fierce Grace—Full Libra Moon—April 16th.
In quietness are all things answered—A Course in Miracles.
As the pulse of spring quickens and the hedgerows blaze with white blossom, a soft circle Full Moon spills a blessing on the Earth this holy week. This is the season of emergence. Bluebells, wild garlic, primroses and slender stalked daffodils raise their faces to the light as nesting birds sing the sacred rituals of Pesach and Easter into being. We may feel porous, thin-skinned, as an invisible virus continues to circulate, while cities are reduced to ashes, lives broken. And we watch.
The tide is high this week, as expansive Jupiter and ethereal Neptune unite in Pisces sweeping through the Collective, breaching borders, bathing our dream time with images of refugees. Other-worldly Neptune is associated with illusive intangible abstractions like grace and faith. Yet we can be blind-sided by seductive Neptune’s promise of redemption, naively lured into believing what we want to believe as we swim through the muddy waters of media where the refrain of misinformation and propaganda merge as this chilling quote often attributed to Joseph Goebbles reminds us: “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”. Saturn’s ingress into Pisces in 2023 may bring a sobering glimpse of the extent of our magical thinking, the real price of our illusions.
The luminous alignment of Jupiter/ Neptune infuses the Collective all through 2022, and the once-in-a-lifetime confluence when both planets meet at 24 ° Pisces is on April 12th, embracing the whole Zodiac for a brief moment in time.
Seductive Neptune stirs our emotions, sprinkles our imagination with star dust. Neptune blindsides us with glamour and magic, tantalises us with Utopian dreams. Jupiter, the astrological ruler of profligate Sagittarius and diffuse Pisces, is an archetype so often imbued with a tincture of loss and longing. Despite our prayers, despite our positive affirmations, the veils of illusion are washed away in unspeakable grief, we’re sucked into the belly of the whale.
Jupiter is the roll of the fickle dice, the ever-spinning Wheel of Fortune. In myth, Jupiter didn’t stay around long, he was always off, chasing the next conquest, taking what he wanted, when he wanted to, just because he could. The shadow that stretches behind Jupiter’s cheery positivity is self-absorbed grandiosity, a cavalier entitlement, which may be highlighted this year as themes of Dionysian excess, sacrifice and suffering play out on the world stage and perhaps in the events of our own lives.
Watery Neptune, god of the oceans riding in tandem with fickle Jupiter in shape-shifting Pisces may bring more hysteria, illusion, delusion, or an outpouring of compassion in the wake of another extreme weather event, or re-emergence of contagion that washes away our hubris. What is being asked of us now as individuals may seem shrouded in events and circumstances we can’t comprehend as we journey across a foggy sea to a destination we can’t yet see. As Neptune swims with Jupiter this year, we can drown, or we can surrender and float on the currents of this collective sea-change.
Themes of power-over, powerlessness, secrecy, and control, will surface as Pluto begins its five-month Retrograde cycle on April 29th . The tide turns in economies as cunning Plutocrats scramble for higher ground and our personal and Collective Shadow stretches across stormy seas.
This month’s Libran Full Moon reflects the fierce light of an Aries Sun, forming an uncompromising and challenging square to Pluto (intense confrontations, destructive behaviours, toxic relating) symbolising the intensity of our times, the torture, rape and mass murder in Ukraine. On a personal level, this Full Moon may expose our deeply buried feelings, or shadowy behaviour like domestic violence, othering, jealousy, toxic power struggles in our relationships. The trine to Mars and Saturn offers opportunities for accountability, radical self-love, and a deep healing of our internal reality. As we hold the tension of opposites with Aries (self) and Libra (other) this Full Moon will reflect the state of our relationships, the bonds of love and loyalty that hold us tight, or the untethered ambiguity of those casual encounters that so easily tilt and topple. Full Moons are faithful companions in the circle of the month, harbingers of light as we return more fully to what really matters―the beauty in the ordinary things, Grace that glimmers through the darkness as we breathe out and let it be.
In the metaphorical language of astrology, the Libran part of our own birth chart will be illuminated at this Full Moon time as we practice the challenging art of relating to others in an uncertain world. Aries is the beginning, Pisces the end. Libra is midway, a crossroads where the old converges with the new, where the winds of change blow across our lives, exposing the roots, bringing us closer to ourselves, and to others in safe relationships where oxytocin and vasopressin activate parts of the brain associated with calm.
“I know that hope is the hardest love to carry,” writes Jane Hirshfield in her exquisite poem, Hope and Love. The essence of Libra brings harmony to polarities, offers a possibility to let go of the melodrama, to transcend the personal, and touch the heart of another with hope.
At this Full Moon, we offer the warmth and containment of a blessing to the world and those around us. As we bow our heads to our hearts, may we feel lighter, may we notice the grace and beauty in ordinary things. For those who will be celebrating Pesach, Easter or Ēostre, this from poet and mystic, John O’ Donohue: May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquillities. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.
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I had embraced you… long before I hugged you—Sanober Khan.
Twins in myth and fairy tale, are similar at first glance, then reveal themselves to be fundamentally different. The story of Castor and Pollux, and their beautiful twin sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra is a brutal story of theft and revenge, kidnapping, murder, and loss. Maya Angelou once said, “I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”
Yet, whether we’re twinned, a resourceful only child, a pioneering first born, a cossetted baby, or the lost child in a family too big or too poor to give nurture, we’re engaged with the mythic story of the Twins in our everyday human encounters with friends and colleagues, lovers and husbands. Those sympathetic similarities that draw us in; those polarised differences that repel. As the Sun moves through Gemini expect these themes to be highlighted as our Gemini planets are nudged to think a little differently about finding a twin flame or a Soulmate. The well-worn sweaty T-shirt study by Claus Wedekind showed that the pheromones that attract us most are from people who are genetically very different from us. As the magic sparkles begin to flutter and the golden glow fades, we may find that our Soulmate is both our Jekyll and our Hyde.
As many countries ease restrictions, Mercury and Venus move through sociable Gemini this month as we make space for new relationships, new family configurations; as we move through our grief after months spent shepherding someone through illness, after the loneliness of confinement. We’re reminded that Gemini rules the lungs and the hands as we breathe new energy into those parts of our lives that may still feel cling-wrapped in fear and we re-connect with those vital, resilient parts of ourselves that press up against the warm urgency of longing to touch again. When our world has become precarious, when our natural impulses coil tightly inside us, it may be hard to feel connected to each other as we did before. The old ways of living on this earth have become harder to justify as the long shadow of the pandemic stretches across shrinking glaciers and warming skies.
Mercury backtracks at the end of this month, (May 29 – June 22) symbolising a turning point and a time when a protective chrysalis is shaped around an area of our psyche, depending on where these planets are moving through our birth chart. Pluto moves Retrograde (April 27 – October 6) stirring toxicity in our relationships, dredging secrets, exposing misuse of power, drawing our attention to those anemic areas of our lives that need a transfusion. Jupiter dips into familiar Piscean waters on May 14th amplifying our longing to escape into fantasy or denial, perhaps inflating empathy fatigue, addictive behaviour, or pain. Saturn and Uranus are still in square, a sky story that speaks of liberties curtailed as the old ways of living on this earth become harder to justify, and as the long shadow of the global pandemic stretches across shrinking glaciers and warming skies.
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An agitation of conflicting communication about COVID-19 eddies and twirls across our screens. “There shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are,” says the Boring Prophet in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
As we venture into this liminal space, the road maps offered by our leaders are ambiguous. The familiar landmarks have gone. We’re speculating about fragmenting globalisation. Supply chains are sagging. Prices are higher. Cities are empty. Our ancient human instinct to gather, to touch, to hold and to kiss has lost its innocence. We’re hunkering down. We’re distancing. We’re separating.
Under a cloud of obfuscation, a sequence of planets—Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn—move Retrograde, reflective perhaps of a shift in our collective perspective. The planets mirror the grim modus operandi of change and shrinking economies as they regress through the heavens.
Venus squares dreamy Neptune, raising our hopes high in love but also in escapism, delusion, illusion, and fantasy. She may be the victim, the rescuer. The glimmering Venus/Neptune square (May 3rd, May 20th, July 27th, and December 30th) adds a tincture of loss and longing, a heady cocktail of truth and lies, or a restless yearning for something or someone who is unattainable.
On June 3rd, Venus aligns with the Sun, a mythic mating, a Venus “new moon”, a union that is an alembic for our inner values. This Venus Retrograde transit may expose our deeply buried desires, our failure to ask for what we need. Venus Retrograde may dredge up discord that signals just how far we have drifted off course from what we value. Upheavals in our relationships may intensify as lock-down thaws. Mars moved into Pisces (May 13th) as Venus changed direction. Mars will conjoin with Neptune on June 12th adding to our discontent, or augmenting our compassion and ability to forgive.
Mercury is moving through Gemini, and will unite with Venus on Friday, May 22nd (square Neptune), an invitation to be discerning about the information we ingest or pass along with an unthinking swipe. This is a time of flux, an invitation to grieve what is lost, to bring Neptunian qualities of compassion, communion, and imagination into the world we are returning to. Systemic family therapist Richard Schwartz writes, “it’s possible that this massive shock to our planetary and national systems will wake up enough leaders that we can get off the suicide train we’ve been on and create a slower, fairer, greener one for ourselves. I believe a lot of that depends on how each of us responds to this crisis.”
As we reflect on the sacrifices we have made and the enormous challenges we now face, poet Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us, “let me not squander the hour of my pain.”