A First Quarter Moon of Imaginative Angst and Dreamy Activity

Friday's First Quarter Moon in Sagittarius makes for quite a vigorous time, because the Moon is conjunct feisty Mars as the Sun squares him, bringing out an urge for action that is not easily fulfilled. There is a sense of frustration implicit in the square aspect between Sun and Moon, and that between Saturn and Neptune, the important alignment featured in the recent extremely powerful New Moon eclipse from the previous week, which landed in close opposition to Neptune. With the veil between the physical and the unseen worlds become very thin indeed, we may feel for this entire month as though living in something of a dream. You might want to recognize, however, that there are important consequences for your waking life as well, because throughout this monthly cycle you are getting to know yourself better in undercover layers of your psyche. Coming into closer contact with the dark and largely unconscious sides of ourselves is vitally important in order that we grow in wisdom, self-understanding, and self-control. With all the frustration of this configuration comes also the temptation for dysfunctional patterns of interpersonal interaction to overwhelm the more mindful and inherently peaceful side of your nature, so that there is a very real potential for masked anger and walled-off inner wounding to emerge. If untoward events do occur, you are well advised to treat such reactivity within you with the respect that it deserves, taking a good, long and hard look at what you are up to in the hidden realms within, of which we are all habitually unaware.

Such hidden rage and buried feelings of not-good-enough are symbolized in modern humanistic Western astrology by Chiron, the Wounded Healer, which is also very prominent in this First Quarter Moon configuration. Mercury, retrograde at 24 degrees of Virgo, almost exactly opposes Chiron in 23 Pisces. Then, too, Jupiter, newly entered into Libra in close parallel to Chiron, also triggers this archetype, as do Uranus and Eris in close conjunction with each other at 23 Aries. All that charged focus on Chiron implies that we can use this potent energy to get a better handle on what is going on deep within ourselves, to the extent that we can make a departure from the normative rationalism of our linear-thinking and surface-oriented social matrix in order to be able to see it.

If you are willing to confront yourself head-on in the painful places within you, you become more conscious of any distracting behavior that tends to blur the lines and allow projection onto others to take the place of self-examination. There could be shame or blame associated with generative prior events, usually stemming from childhood when parental figures misapplied their authority, or when peers or siblings acted cruelly. Not being well defended at that early age, you had no resources to be able to cope with sadness, loss, and pain. Although this is no longer the case in your adult stage, the habit still holds, of ducking away by one means or another from the pain that is held inside, when what works the very best for you is simply to face it.

Another strong factor in this quarter Moon configuration is the continuing close square between Neptune and Saturn, which tends toward confusion in the physical plane, and yet a stronger presence in the worlds of fantasy and imagination that we also find within ourselves. When we are able to open to these layers, they can provide valuable lessons to our waking awareness. This is an excellent time to write down your dreams, those subtle indicators of our unconscious regions. This is also a very powerful time for mythic symbolism and synchronicities to enter into everyday consciousness. During this entire month of September and the timing of this extra-potent retrograde cycle, you can gain much from paying the closest possible attention to everything that happens to you, beginning by reading the scenes around you as a kind of a movie. When we approach life from the standpoint that it possesses a far-larger significance than what is revealed at the surface level of events, we are living more consciously, and wisely, in the mythic universe that surrounds us.

The Sabian symbols for this First Quarter Moon are of great interest also. They are, for the Sun, in the 18th degree of Virgo, "An ouija board," which fits in well with the veil between the worlds becoming thin to reveal the unseen realms within us, and those outside of ourselves also. Marc Edmund Jones references "everyday insights and intuitions," and "the completeness with which [one] is able to see experience both steadily and whole." For the Moon, in the same degree of Sagittarius, we find, "A gigantic tent." This symbol reminds us that our human life is indeed vase and multivalent, so that no one part of our experience can be separated from any of the other factors. Jones remarks upon "an utterly naïve intensification of self-consciousness [by means of which] the totality of life is brought to some single center in every moment of true excitement." Indeed, there is much to be discerned in each and every detail, as Blake would have it, "A world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower," when we are paying attention.