A Luminously Intelligent First Quarter Moon

Saturday afternoon and evening's First Quarter Moon comes along at an interesting time, just as we are absorbing the lessons for our lives stemming from the rather powerful first three months of the year. The activity of outer planets Uranus and Pluto in combination has been extreme, and has had the effect of raising our awareness for the issues that we must be getting on with, both individually and collectively, in this time of radical transformation. This month of April has been a thoughtful period of time, and next week, kicked off by the quarter Moon, continues this reflective trend. The logical attributes of conscious mental process are invoked, since Mercury is still near Mars in the sky and in close forming aspect to both Chiron and Pluto. Venus, ruler in this configuration of both the Sun and Mercury, remains inconjunct with Pluto while beginning to square Chiron as well. Saturn is also prominent now, aspected by the Sun and Moon, which can be seen as an indication of the seriousness of our current situation, and our commitment to embodying meaningful change.

Along with Chiron, powerful Pluto remains featured in these late spring skies, symbolizing the intensity of the mandate for change that has been so active over the beginning of the year and that in more muted form is yet still with us. The Uranus-Pluto square, which recently completed its seventh of seven exact hits this decade, picks up again with renewed intensity next December, so that we have six months or so to consider what this most recent exact hit has brought to light for us — as we reflect on the deeper meaning of our lives. We might wonder where indeed we are heading in response to the transformational impulse that has been so resonantly stimulated over the past few years.

Chiron, the Wounded Healer, so prominent in April, is quite relevant also for our journey because the biggest obstacle to moving onward might well be the fear inside us of embracing the grace and strength that we can potentially inhabit. You stumble as old trauma arises to cut you off from greater awareness of who you are, and of what positive attributes you might be able to bring. The hope is that the difficult prior circumstances that brought about these crippling doubts of worthiness can be alleviated. Certainly being witness to the wounding within you allows your fears to re-emerge at more conscious levels. They can then be more successfully dealt with. Marianne Williamson addresses this issue well when she so aptly states: "Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world."

The positivity and expansiveness of Jupiter, also prominent in the timing of this First Quarter Moon, speaks to the opportunity that permeates these cosmic currents in contrast with the difficulties implies by these other outer planet alignments. By boosting our optimism, and our faith in ourselves, Jupiter signals that we have the power to rise above, addressing ancient issues of early trauma that then become somewhat easier to access and therefore are more readily surmountable.

The Sabian Symbols for this First Quarter Moon are once again very meaningful. For the Sun, in the 6th degree of Taurus, we have "A bridge being built across a gorge." This is the same symbol as for the degree of Chiron near the ascendant of the chart of Martin Luther King Jr., who worked for all of his too-short life, in a fractured American culture, on forging a nonviolent link between the races. Marc Edmund Jones refers to this degree as "The practical instinct by [means of] which a personality achieves the ultimate benefit of its powers." For the Moon, in the same degree of Leo, we find: "An old-fashioned woman and an up-to-date girl." This is an obvious symbol for the transformation of individuals and of the culture as time moves on. Jones remarks as well upon "the essentially dramatic function of the soul as it plays its various roles" and "Conventionality and initiative — personal achievement through creative appreciation and adaptation." What is incontrovertibly true is that we must now strive to be ourselves at all costs, following the path of our own unique evolution as best we can discern it, and refusing to let our fears hold us back from the fullest expression of our being.