Is The Full Moon Keeping You Up At Night?
Full Moons are notoriously powerful. They shift the tides, both literally but also metaphorically within our lives. Guided by the light corals spawn for a few days following the Full Moon. Its light is a trigger for all of us. And even though Full Moons are more associated with culmination and release, this is part of a cycle that clears a pathway for new life to emerge.
Today’s Full Moon in Leo (exact at 12:53 pm EST, 9:53 PST) invites us to step forward into the light. In the theatre and film world finding your light has multiple meanings, it can literally be standing in the correct spot so the light shines upon you but metaphorically and in my mind more profoundly, it is a term that calls us to step out onto the stage and find our spotlight. It is about responding with grace under pressure. When we shine wholeheartedly from our authentic selves we can be fully seen both by others near and dear to us.. When we put our true selves forward we are gotten and can experience being met by the world.
During this Full Moon, Pluto conjuncts the Aquarius Sun and opposes the Leo Moon, as Jupiter in Taurus squares them both. There are many layers to this. Things are apt to feel over-the-top, whether in the world at large or your personal life. Pluto, God of the Underworld is connected to the deep unconscious, that which is hidden from view. Jupiter, his brother is the Sky God and is connected to our beliefs. I see this and am reminded of Innana, the Queen of the Great Above’s, journey to visit her sister Erisekgel, the Queen of the Great Below, in the underworld. These sisters are mirror images of each other and intrinsic to each other’s journey.
The dance of the Sun and the Moon each month is alchemical in nature.
Astrologer Giordano Bruno (d.1600) called the Sun the ‘heart’ of the chart.
The Sun rules the sign Leo and also rules the heart. The heart is a perfect metaphor. What does the heart do? It is the engine that keeps the blood circulating. It keeps us alive. The heart can function without the mind, but the mind cannot function independently of the heart. We can be ‘brain-dead’ but not ‘heart-dead’, save in the most poetic way.
The Sun is the life energy itself, the thing that comes into us when we are born and the spark that leaves us and this physical world when we die. The physical Sun literally is illuminated from within, generating its own energy. The Sun is the giver of life and has such a gravitational pull all is centered around it. But it too is always moving forward through the solar system. Its place at the center of our universe is highly symbolic of the role it plays in our lives. The Sun is the creative force in our lives. We need the Sun to feel authentic.
The Full Moon in Leo calls us to profoundly tend to our hearts.
Full Moons always fall in polarities, a tension of opposites that ultimately balance each other.
The Sun and the Moon are classical partners in alchemy. The marriage of these two is symbolically seen as the union of opposites and the key to transforming lead into gold.
The Aquarian Sun is illuminating the path forward, made visible in the night sky in the reflection of this glorious Leo Full Moon. For all that Aquarius is known as the sign of the humanitarian, at its core it is the sign that exclaims “I’ve gotta be me!”
it is urging us to genuinely listen to our heart’s yearnings. Astrologically within our charts, the Moon connects us to our past, and our body, and holds the keys to our inner world through which we respond consciously and unconsciously to the world around us. It’s where we dwell. Understanding your Moon and the role it plays in your chart nourishes your spirit and gives you a sense of belonging. A sense of coming home to yourself.
Tending to our heart requires that we listen to it and be moved by it. Our heart requires us to be connected to it, it doesn’t work when we try to logically analyze it. Our hearts are messy and complicated, they don’t follow plans. So it is laughable when we try to make them do so. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said in his classic The Little Prince “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
This first full moon of the year also captures the Air and fire dynamic that is threaded throughout 2024. The dance between fire and ai ideally, is a call to connect to our inspiration, to be touched by it and altered by the exchange.
Jungian analyst James Hollis asks "Where do you repeatedly undermine yourself, shoot yourself in the foot, cause yourself familiar griefs? Where do you flee from your best, riskiest self?” These questions lie at the core of this lunation. Allow yourself to be bathed in the light of the answers you find.
