A Full Moon of Illusion, Confusion, and Reinvention

Sunday morning’s Full Moon in Gemini on December 3rd marks two very important and fateful astrological combinations. The first is that Mercury, now retrograde, is moving (slowly) backward through the last few degrees of the sign of Sagittarius, about a degree away from Saturn and about to conjunct for the second time this planetary archetype of limitation and conservative holding back from forward-going impulse. The contrasting Trickster archetype of Uranus is also invoked for the first half of December, the remainder of the lunation cycle stemming from the November 18th New Moon, so that there is going on over this period of time a strong push-pull of branching out versus holding back. This is in addition to the extra-potent Mercury Retrograde period that is just beginning, with all its introspection and self-study. The second powerful indication from this Full Moon is the fact that the Sun and Moon make a tight T-square to numinous Neptune, located in his own sign of Pisces, purveyor of illusion in matters of the physical plane, and promoter of spiritual realizations that take us far beyond the mundane affairs of the purely materialistic horizontal worldview.

The strong Neptune presence in this Full Moon configuration makes for an interesting and potentially confusing time. The agendas of day-to-day normative activities go awry, or become lost in mists of divine recollection, so that for these next two weeks we are living in something of a dream world. We may use this time to best advantage when we simply accept it, in order to acknowledge the mystical presence of cosmic power running through our lives. When we are feeling into how we dwell in at least two worlds at once, the daylight Apollonian world of logical consequence being only one of these, we are able at last to celebrate a time period when, as The Jefferson Airplane explained in the passionate sixties, long ago, we are in a time when “logic and proportion have fallen, softly, dead.” The retreat from the world is temporary, and necessary. Only by the time of darkness and sleep each night are we healed for the next day’s adventures; and only by withdrawing from the world for a time, such as this Full Moon two-week period provides, do we regain it.

In reflecting on the timing of this Full Moon it is helpful to recognize the highlighted presence of Chiron, the Wounded Healer, also in Pisces, and stationing on December 5th at the 24-degree mark. This is in precise and forming semi-sextile to Uranus in Aries, bringing an awakening consciousness to each person’s personal story of their own inner wounding, and accentuating the spiritual attributes of this early December time period. In this time of introspection and self-reflection, it is certainly an important component to acknowledge the hurt child within you, perhaps deriving from early childhood trauma, and to make a special point of going deep inside to offer nurturing sustenance to this cut off and lonely part of yourself that may relish the comfort of your more light-filled adult presence that it is starving for. Much of the world’s current imbalance can be traced to the unresolved lingering wounds that we all carry within us.

The Sabian Symbols for this Full Moon may also provide enlightenment regarding our delicate condition in these fractious times. They are, for the Sun in the twelfth degree of Sagittarius, “A flag that turns into an eagle that crows.” This complex and interesting symbol seems to be about converting passive emblems of accomplishment into actual deeds of real-life success. Marc Edmund Jones refers to, “the balance which every individual must maintain between the established allegiances which are the substance of conscious selfhood, and the idealized ambitions by which they are self-sustained as an identity in their own right… successful self-establishment through genuine self-expression.” For the Moon, in the same degree of Gemini, we find, “A young black girl asserts herself.” In a similar way, this symbol reminds us that we must constantly remake ourselves anew, in spite of how social realities or consensus thinking might stand in our way. Jones remarks upon exercising one’s “fledging wings,” and speaking out to life with “spiritual impudence … taking advantage of every new situation in experience.” Indeed we must ever and always strike out for our own unique selves, whatever that takes, in order to foster our own individual growth and to apply ourselves to the holy task of coming to our fullest humanity in the face of ancient unthinking prejudice against what we unequivocally stand for.

A Full Moon of Illusion, Confusion, and Reinvention

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Chart for the Full Moon on December 3, 2017

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