Full Moon in Taurus; Balancing between holding on and letting go

On Friday, November 15, at 1:29 PST/4:29 EST. our last supermoon of the year, a Full Moon in Taurus takes place.  The Moon is the heavenly body that is the closest to us, both astronomically and astrologically.  Its position affects the tides of the ocean and, in many ways, the tides of our lives.  Astrologically, the Moon is our embodiment, where we live from moment to moment when we aren’t thinking about it.  It’s our familiar, comfortable state of being with ourselves, how and where we come home. 

Every New or Full Moon is an invitation to pause and reconnect to ourselves and our lives; this one brings fierce and unexpected energy that will powerfully mirror both what we need to hold onto and what we need to release.  Uranus, the planet of revolutionary change and the unexpected is directly aligned alongside it for the last time during Uranus’s journey through the sign of Taurus. This Full Moon is giving us a nudge forward. 

All of the outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, move us beyond the known, out of the realm of our ordinary experience, and are symbols of transformation in our charts because they carry the seeds of what we must become but what we do not yet recognize in ourselves.  

My natal Moon happens to be in Taurus, and as I search for words while writing this post, I can see how this colors my approach to astrology.  I don’t want to just be able to chart the road ahead, knowing what turns, nooks and crannies lie ahead in my life, I desire to actively use it to make a difference in my life and those who I am privileged to work with.  That’s Taurus for you, it likes things to be useful. 

If you are willing to look, this Full Moon will reflect the areas in our lives where emotional patterns keep us locked into ways of being that no longer serve us but rather prevent us from the freedom to truly move forward.  What else are our lives comprised of than our responses to each moment? These ultimately are the steps we take that create the pathways that we journey upon throughout our lives. These steps, even the smallest, determine our final destination and how we experience the journey. 

When I contemplate someone’s Moon in their chart, it gives me a profound amount of personal information. The Moon is the symbol of our consciousness, the repository of all of our experiences, and the emotional, psychological, and spiritual resonance of that experience. Our Moon shows us our needs, how we deal or don’t deal with them, and reflects our most tender and vulnerable side.  Our Moon is hungry, and if we are willing to explore it (our inner world), it can light the way toward understanding how to better nourish ourselves. 

So, I see the electric energy of this lunation as an invitation to connect more deeply with ourselves by creating a space, just a small one, to contemplate and rediscover ourselves.  To consciously slow down, breathe deeply, and delve below our hyper-kinetic surface energy to the vast expense below the surface of our inner world. Past our assumptions and expectations about our all too busy lives lies the unexpected.  The needs we have that we most often have stopped seeing in ourselves lie here.  

I have shared this story before:  Years ago I was helping to facilitate a seminar and the leader shared the story of how he had proposed to his wife.  He said to her I promise to never “know” you but to continuously discover you in each moment. I remember thinking how incredibly romantic that was but also how powerful.  In other words, he was saying I promise to always be present to you.  

We forget how to be present to others but, unfortunately, even more so to ourselves. This is where understanding your Moon comes in; the Moon is who we are without thinking about it.  It is what we assume through the stories we have both been told and told ourselves about ourselves and life. 

Your mission during this Full Moon in Taurus, conjunct Uranus for the very last time in this sign, if you accept it, is to slow down and feel.  Let its vibrant light open you to a new context for your life. That’s the beauty of vacations and retreats: they slow us down and take us out of a familiar environment, and from this place, we reconnect and have a new perspective.  

Aren’t we all hoping to connect more deeply to something or someone within our lives?  

Yet, the initial connection is just the beginning, then, we must learn to sustain and cultivate it. That is the essence of Taurus; developing our resources by cultivating them.  Use the energy of this Full Moon to move beyond the known, out of the realm of our ordinary experience. 

Even if you don’t journal regularly, I suggest it for this Full Moon.  The practice of journaling is a powerful tool for being present to yourself and understanding yourself more deeply.  There is no right or wrong way to do it, and using this tool over time makes an enormous difference in how you experience yourself and your life. If you feel stuck or don’t know where to begin,  I have been posting journaling prompts daily over this past month on Instagram, and intend to continue this practice indefinitely.   You can find me here: https://www.instagram.com/mindymendelsohn/