A Last Quarter Moon of Understanding, Growth and Change

Sunday afternoon's Last Quarter Moon represents a fitting follow-up to last month's solar eclipse, which featured the transformational energies of all three major outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. These numinous archetypal symbols are trans-personal in their nature, helping us to grow beyond previous limitations, and to become more aware of where necessary transformation must take place in our lives. In this process they represent a vital counter to the natural inertia that oftentimes holds us back from real change. This lunar phase is emblematic of a summation and consciousness shift depending on what has come before it, in the preceding three weeks of the cycle. We are taking the impetus for radical epiphany and metamorphosis that has been with us since mid-September, and forging new links to the firm resolve of our higher selves that we move forward in embracing the spiritual dimension of our lives. We are, in this current timing, in the midst of a spate of new growth, through a process of meaningful understanding, and are enjoined to begin to make the next move in what the universe — or in another way of putting it, our highest intention for ourselves — has in store for us.

The Sun and Moon in square, in the second decant of Libra and Cancer, are well positioned now to mark this recent gain in our level of consciousness and intentionality. Wise men say that if they were to sum up the power of God in one word, that word would be "pressure," stimulating, that is to say, the urge within us for necessary change to take place. This is what the Cosmos continually presents to us, like a wise parent, when and where we most need it. By the degree of their respective cardinal signs, the Sun and Moon make a T-square with transformative Pluto, of less than two degrees. Pluto is located in the middle of Capricorn, and drawing closer every day to the near-perfection, at the ending of year, of his square with the perceptive and enlightenment-producing archetype of Uranus in mid-Aries. Although the aspects to Pluto are far closer, the Sun and Moon make a grand cross in Cardinal signs with Pluto and with Uranus.

Uranus himself is also very central to this configuration, being in close aspect with Saturn in the early degrees of Sagittarius, and with Jupiter, as well, a forming bi-quintile. Uranus is also highlighted, in turn, by being almost exactly opposed to the Libra New Moon that arrives about a week later, on October 12th, so that the unexpected and brilliant energy that he represents is quite powerful as the month continues to unfold. You are thus, in this quarter Moon timing, tuning in, with greater awareness, to the necessary changes that you need to make, in keeping with this lunar phase, and with the evolutionary pressure upon you now to simply let go and get on with it.

The Sabian Symbols for this Last Quarter Moon are also significant to our burgeoning understanding. They are, for the Sun, in the twelfth degree of Libra, "A flock of wild geese," reminding us of our quite natural place in what Mary Oliver chose to call "the family of things." Marc Edmund Jones likens this symbol to: "high ego on the impersonal side, evident in the complete and naïve dedication of the individual to some part that he [or she] chooses to play." He also references, "the self-sacrifice required of anybody who would become the creative representation of eternal value." For the Moon, in the same degree of Cancer, we find, "A Chinese woman nursing a baby with a message," which makes us wonder what the message will reveal. The universe sometimes feels like our non-native parent, nursing us along until we can understand the import of the information that we have been born to convey. Jones refers to, "embodying universal values in [one's] everyday consciousness" bringing the more God-like resources of self to a point of real community service." Indeed, as this powerful quarter Moon reminds us, we are in a continual process of changing into that which we were always intended to become, an asset in service to the evolution of the surrounding culture that so sorely requires this of us, in accord with the healing process of our own spiritual unfoldment.