A Last Quarter Moon of Epiphany and Regrouping

Saturday morning's Last Quarter Moon, taking place quite early on the West Coast and at nearly mid-day for Europe, is another very special lunation that will somewhat try our patience, and where great rewards are available to us when we pay the closest possible attention to our inner motivations. This remains a transformational time period. In this current configuration, there is a huge emphasis on trickster Uranus, bringer of epiphanies regarding the way that we are adjusting to our changes, with the other outer planets of Neptune and Pluto also prominent, and including Saturn. This lunar phase in any case signals a timing when we are shifting in our perceptions, adding things up inside our heads in an entirely new way, in response the accumulated wisdom from the previous three weeks of the cycle, which is to say, based on what is largely an internal vision. We do best at this time when we adhere to the maxim that what goes on deep inside of us, very nearly unseen and unnoticed by our conscious mentality, has more to do with our moods and our triumphs than the rational logic that this culture values so highly, and which yet falls so far short in creating peace of mind within us or between each other, or, indeed, between national and ethnic groupings.

The mystical and numinous archetype of Neptune, quite prominent in the recent Full Moon from the last weekend of the previous month, is triggered once again at this Last Quarter Moon timing, by an unusual set of contra-parallel aspects from a stationing Venus and from Jupiter. Venus is greatly slowing, and is therefore quite potent, getting ready to return to direct motion on Sunday this same weekend. As she stations, Venus aspects Pluto while Mars, close by, does the same. The Sun and Moon in square also aspect Pluto, in an almost exact trine and inconjunct. With both Neptune and Pluto triggered, major changes are once again upon us, although in some sense, of course, they never left; the entire period of these last few years has been about major metamorphosis coming down. There is great joy and yet also tremendous angst in acknowledging our evolutionary destiny. As these cycles of extreme developmental intention constantly remind us, while we honor the transformation that results in the butterfly, we do have to admit that it is not necessarily that much fun to be the caterpillar.

Uranus is also powerful in this Last Quarter Moon, being aspected by Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Eris, while Mercury, slowing down in the sky and preparing to retrograde later in the month, connects to Uranus via a contra-parallel. Saturn is also emphasized now, and indeed all this month, via an extremely close bi-quintile aspect from Eris. As I have consistently found in my research, close aspects from Eris strongly highlight the planet involved, so that lately there has been a quite-evident Saturn flavor to the astrological currents. The focus and limitation of Saturn makes for an interesting counterpoint to the spaciness and other-dimensionality of strong Uranus and Neptune. We are in this quarter moon timing either suffering from or else rising above the conflict of these antithetical viewpoints. We are caught up in working things out in the concrete reality of the physical, including grounding our relationships in here-and-now practical concerns, while nevertheless fully inhabiting as well our sense of that which is beyond the physical, the love-essence of our true humanity, wherein we recognize that we live our fundamental existence as spirits in the material world.

The Sabian Symbols for this Last Quarter Moon speak to this dichotomy, so difficult to embrace, and so important as we attempt to stay sane in the midst of seeming polarity. They are, for the Sun, in the thirteenth degree of Virgo, "A strong hand supplanting political hysteria," which Marc Edmund Jones explains as a symbol of "the real weight of human personality [epitomized] by the direct intervention of outstanding individuals [to counter] a counsel of confusion ... when events are allowed to drift." He goes on to state that, "the greatest opportunity for self-discovery lies in the transient crises of everyday living." This is a comment from which, as we face our individual struggles and interpersonal dilemmas, we might be able to take heart. For the Moon we find "A great musician at his piano," invoking Neptune, symbolizing the artistic and musical representation of that which lies beyond the physical, as well as the concrete means (Saturn) to provide it. Jones remarks, "Here is experience at a climax on the side of self-refinement in skills and talent, and ... its promise of continuing effort." In these times of difficulty and polarity we are thus enjoined nevertheless to try. Indeed it often seems that there is nothing else that we can do but to keep on keeping on, engaging, insofar we are able, the highest within us, rising up from deep inside. In this way we hold up as best we can our end of the common humanity in which we all share.