A Full Moon Time of Brilliance and of Balance

Tuesday's Full Moon comes at that time of fulfillment in the lunar cycle, when what was conceived at the moment of inspiration represented by the New Moon two weeks prior becomes seasoned by the intervening trials and insights to become the original idea's mature flowering and culmination. The masculine and feminine elements of Sun and Moon, in their balance across the Zodiac, are symbolically also about relating to one another. In this particular configuration this concept of relationship is also symbolized by a prominent Venus, in her own sign of Libra, and in aspect with both Saturn and Neptune.

Saturn and Neptune are still for one more week caught up in their long-running trine, which brings their antithetical natures into uneasy combination. Saturn represents physical reality and practicality, perhaps even too much of that, while Neptune represents the numinous realm of otherworldly dream imagination that you might consider to be orthogonal to that earthly plane of existence that Saturn symbolizes, in what noted astrologer Antero Ali likes to call the vertical dimension. We need some of each of these for good relating to others around us; both the divine spark, and as well the practicality of being able to work things out together. Since both planetary archetypes are currently in aspect to Venus in her sign of relationship, both come into play right now for getting on with our process of connection, one important part of what we all came here to do.

Saturn with Venus and with Neptune can in some ways stifle the divine spark of imaginative interaction, but this Full Moon also provides another chime with the creativity of divine imagination, because Jupiter in Cancer comes into an exact square with Uranus in Aries, both of them at the 13th degree of their respective cardinal signs, and also both aspecting Chiron in Pisces. This Chiron factor symbolizes the profound healing of our original psychological wounding that can now unexpectedly take place.

The Jupiter-Uranus part of this alignment is also very beautiful, symbolizing the creativity of individual uniqueness and the potential for rebellion from a stale and outmoded status quo. In his epochal must-read work Cosmos and Psyche, astrologer Richard Tarnas describes Jupiter-Uranus in his section entitled "Cycles of Creativity and Expansion," detailing the multiple forms of scientific and political/social breakthrough that have occurred under their combination. This summer, centered around this Full Moon, is therefore a time of brilliant ideas and cultural breakthrough. As regards significant partnership, if Saturn represents a cage that has grown up and calcified within a relationship context, Jupiter-Uranus represents a sudden doorway that can release both participants from the cage.

The Sabian symbols for Jupiter and Uranus are interesting. For Jupiter "A hand, flexed, with a prominent thumb," representing — as well as a Jupiterian thumbs-up — the human tool-making capacity that by extension applies to the creative mind as well. For Uranus we have "An unsuccessful bomb explosion," for which Marc Edmond Jones has the very Uranian keyword IMPETUOUSNESS. He states that this symbol equates to "a dramatic rejection of any accomplishment falling at all short of very deep or hallowed purpose."

In the flurry of these times that we are living through, in their impetuousness and sacred wonder, we must indeed constantly strive, each one of us, to aim for the very highest — as we can currently conceive it.

A Full Moon Time of Brilliance and of Balance

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Chart for the Full Moon on August 20, 2013

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