Full Moon in Leo
Dear Friends
We have a full moon in Leo today, 1st Feb, at 10.10pm, UK time. It feels like an auspicious moment to celebrate this full moon, co-inciding as it does with the cross-quarter festival of Imbolc. Imbolc signals the first stirrings of life in the soil, in the lactating ewe, a quickening within the belly of Gaia. It coincides with the time when we start to properly experience the light returning with lengthening days that are discernible to the senses. It is the time when the light-bringer, Brigid, is celebrated, bearing her candle flame, and in the Christian calendar, this is the festival of lights, or Candlemas. Technically the cross-quarter day is 4th Feb, when the sun reaches 15˚ Aquarius, but it is widely celebrated today on the 1st. We mark it in a particularly beautiful and poignant way in my own community, Glastonbury, as we honour Brigid at the White Spring and again at the Chalice Well, Brigid, being a goddess associated with holy springs and wells. There are significant changes afoot in the heavens, so we will need her light to guide us.
These are strong times we are living through, full of challenge, but also bright new awakenings and such extraordinary opportunities for healing and transformation. Neptune has now entered Aries, and Saturn about to do the same just before the new moon solar eclipse on 17th Feb. Then we have their exact conjunction on 20th Feb at the zero Aries point, the most powerful degree of the zodiac, the point from which new life springs.
This full moon, which brings the opposition between the Sun in Aquarius and the Moon in Leo, is a time when we can connect to our courage, vitality and authenticity, to the truth of our own burning heart. In Aquarius season, our attention rightly turns toward community, toward society; toward the network or wider field within which we exist, our sense of membership, our hopes the future of humanity, our idea of what we could give back.
The Sovereignty of the Heart
Aquarius will prioritise the 'greater good' of the community over the concerns of the individual, a more dispassionate, abstract overview of what is best for all, but during the Leo full moon, there is a counter/complementary requirement that the sovereignty of the heart be fully recognised; a time when light must be shed on our individual rights, when the need to be seen and authenticated for who we are demands attention.
So the question is: how we can remain fully centred in the heart, and fully present to our feelings as they arise, while also remaining alert to what is occurring at the edges of our thinking? How do we include that and allow that to expand our field of knowing, so that we can the full picture, in order to see where things are going. We could say that Leo brings us into our heart-full presence, while Aquarius inspires our mindful prescience.
The Aspects in the Full Moon Chart
Today’s full moon also occurs at a moment when there are a whole cluster of planets gathered in Aquarius, five in all, including the Sun at 13˚, which sits at the exact midpoint of Venus and Mars which at 7˚ and 19˚ of Aquarius respectively, and this stellium opposes the Moon in Leo (see the chart below). This adds a real potency to the full moon chart, charging it with a forward thinking idealism, which is passionately felt. And it needs to be met with a true and honest expression of personal responsibility, lest it become too remote or removed from lived experience.
Venus is also conjunct Mercury in Aquarius, and all these planets are still visiting the Underworld (unable to be seen as they caught in the beams of the Sun), and have all recently, in past two weeks, made their conjunctions to Pluto, who is occupying the early degrees of Aquarius. So there is much that may be lying in shadow here still that needs addressing, in order for us move forward with clarity and realise the golden potentiality of this special time.
Neptune Has Now Entered Aries…and Saturn is about to!
On Monday 26th Jan, Neptune moved decisively into Aries where it will remain for the next 14 years. When an outer planet changes sign and moves from Pisces into Aries, as Neptune is doing now, it really sends a shudder through the field - for that planet is returning to the first, and most powerful degree of the zodiac, 0˚Aries - the creation degree. With Neptune, this occurs every 168 years. This is where it moves from its own home sign, Pisces: which characterises a dissolving, dis-orienting, sublimely mystical yet confusing 14-year period. As it moves into Aries, a new era of Neptunian experience begins. It is at this juncture that we might reconnect with the mystery of birth, where the mystic remembers and re-invokes the ‘first time’, the time of eternal return, of mythic beginnings. Neptune in Aries stirs of the will of the spiritual warrior, where dreams, intuitions and longings are activated and acted upon.
Saturn makes that same transition from Pisces into Aries on 14th February. This is a statement moment in Saturn’s 29 year cycle, where responsibility and authority is placed squarely on the shoulders of the individual. We will have to take responsibility for ourselves in a way that breaks the victim/perpetrator pattern that we can fall into, collectively, when Saturn is in Pisces. And the challenge is that we each have to do this without falling into thinking that it’s all our own fault, and that ‘the buck stops with me’ and to become isolated in that perspective
These two planets make their monumental, paradigm shifting conjunction at 0˚ Aries on 20th February. I will write more about this in the new moon solar eclipse post which I will send out on 16th/17th Feb.
A Few More Thoughts on the Leo / Aquarius Tension
In the body, Leo rules the heart and spine, while Aquarius oversees the oxygenation and circulation of the blood, and the nervous system. Aquarius, holds a de-centralised vision of the world, where power is invested in the systemic circulation of energy and ideas, and promotes collective accountability. Leo, on the other hand, insists upon central governance, and its truth is rooted in the heroic principles of authenticity, honour, courage and personal accountability. One is not better that the other; both are essential to the healthy sustenance of any organism or system. Yet from the partisan Aquarian perspective, the Leonine focus on self and personal autonomy seems self-centred is blind to the concerns of the wider network. And when one is consumed by the Leo perspective, Aquarius seems to lack heart, is pre-occupied with mentalism and technology, and its systematic approach to situations seems too abstract and aloof from the lived human experience. So this full moon is about getting in touch with that tension within ourselves, recognising where the extremes are, and finding the balance point.
My Leo mantra runs: “I am as I am, and I shine from the centre of my being.”
Full moon blessings to all!
John
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