A Difficult and Illusory Quarter Moon

Friday's First Quarter Moon exactly squares Neptune in early Pisces with the Sun opposed. This phase tends toward action in pursuit of goals, being traditionally a time of discovering where the various initiatives spawned with the New Moon one week earlier succeed, and where they must run up against the rocks and shoals of difficulty and surmount or else succumb to them. In this case, however, with Neptune so strongly in the picture, a mystical fog overtakes this more practical physical-world orientation so that the action partakes of a dreamy and otherworldly feeling tone that speaks to inner over outer priorities.

We find in this configuration as well that Mars having entered Scorpio is in close trine with Neptune, while Venus remains opposed and contra-parallel to Pluto. There is quite a lot of Pluto in this picture, since Saturn is almost exactly quintile and Uranus is in square, providing a strong symbolic echo of Mars in Scorpio, which it co-rules with Pluto. Relationships therefore take on a deep and intimate connotation, and there is energy for active connections with others on all levels. All this action and relationship-orientation is powerfully colored at this time by the Neptunian archetype representing the mystical side of life. This serves to remind us that the universe is ever on our side, in spite of any and all appearances to the contrary.

Perennial Philosophy and Jungian psychology inform us that the mystical and numinous side of life is ever present and underlies everything that we say and do, either in support or by contrast. A correlate is that we are never angry for the reason that we think we are; it usually goes much deeper within us than we are consciously aware. The same can be said for connections of a loving kind. We benefit at this time from attempting to stay as aware as possible of the potential underlying cause for all of our effects in terms of how we react to situations and to each other.

Any type of knee-jerk reactions that we feel inside and that have at least the potential to explode into hasty action are therefore suspect. There might be early trauma that underlies our reactivity, or another form of projection of inner conflict, or the effects of a bad day – but none of this really matters. What matters is what we make each day of our lives and of our relationships, going forward. We win by maintaining an inner attitude that welcomes the grace of each passing moment and celebrates our place in an ultimately beneficial cosmos.