A First Quarter Moon of Difficulty and Transformation

The First Quarter Moon of Wednesday late evening, by West Coast time, will take place in the early hours of Thursday morning for the East Coast — and of course even later for further east. This will be an interesting lunation, primarily for the connections made between the inner and the outer planets. Mercury is conjunct the Sun, just escaping by one degree his tightest embrace, creating a thoughtful ambiance, while Venus in exact minor aspect with the Sun and Moon, is also in forming square to Pluto, thus providing a sense of our ongoing transformational process. The Sun is parallel to difficult Saturn, while the Moon closely parallels mystical Neptune. Saturn slows us down, and Neptune relates to inner values and also to escapist tendencies. Mars in the early degrees of Libra is in forming sextile with Saturn, thus indicating that while things will not go entirely smoothly over this somewhat difficult quarter Moon timing, they might eventually be able to resolve themselves.

Mars is also inconjunct to Neptune, just as Saturn comes within a degree of making a square to this numinous and mystical planetary archetype, suggesting the contrast of hard-nosed expediency versus the fanciful dream realities that are at times able to supercede it. This phase is in any case all about making necessary adjustments to what we had thought was well started, what seminal 20th Century astrologer Dane Rudhyar called "crisis in action." The adjustments to be made are in the direction of taking a conservative approach to success, being content with what you can actually get, of being brought down to the real. This configuration therefore represents a cautious and eminently practical response in the midst of an essentially enlightening and transformative period of time, especially with regard to the key relationships of our lives.

As we evolve along the lines of our soul's imperative, this collision of inner and outer planets, and of Saturn and Neptune, mirror the forces within us. We are truly "spirits in the material world" and one realization that emerges over the course of a complex and fractious monthly cycle is that we need to be able to dwell in the personal sphere of getting and spending, and of keeping our earthly affairs well in order, without giving up our stake in those transpersonal psychological spaces that are represented by the outer planet archetypes. We win when we recognize that we must honor each of these realms without sacrificing the other. All our idealism, symbolized by Neptune, is put to the test this month of real-world considerations, demanding of us that we keep our practical heads about us, while yet remaining open to the infinite that we can feel with an expanded sense of reality, all around us.

The Sabian Symbols for this First Quarter Moon may shed additional light on this fundamental conundrum. They are, for the Sun, in the 27th degree of Scorpio, "A military band on the march," a glorification of the call to action with which life continuously presents itself to us. Marc Edmund Jones remarks that this is a symbol of self-affirmation, and goes on to call it, "a rejection of the lesser experience which brings only self-satiety [considering that] its martial nature arises from the realization that things of worth must be gained at the price of a thoroughly self-mobilized effort." We can see this also in the Mars-Saturn forming sextile of this current First Quarter Moon configuration, promoting a conservative and yet impactful effort being expended. For the Moon in the same degree of Aquarius we find a contrasting idea, in: "An ancient pottery bowl filled with violets," which Jones recognizes as a symbol of "the permanence or changelessness of the real as an ultimate assurance to the human heart." He goes on to refer to "values and a real gift for using them," and "an overall continuance of meaning and identity in which the self may anchor itself." Indeed one important lesson for these times is that we need to reflect back on inner values and strength of character to handle life's practical tests, even as we expand outwardly to embrace the true ideal self to which we constantly, and consistently, aspire.