Full Moon Watch: Revealing the Heart of the Matter

Tonight’s full moon in Cancer is perigee again (as it was last month). This makes the moon appear gigantic at the horizon and also connotes big emotions, big turmoils and big revelations and resolutions.

In a bit of cosmic irony, Saturn turned retrograde exactly on New Year’s day, dampening the sense of enthusiasm we usually associate with the start of a new year. This reinforces the unavoidable fact that we’re still entrenched in a cathartic re-arrangment of our culture, politics and economy. We need a mystic’s perspective to navigate our current predicament — meaning a deep faith that despite the collapse of existing structures, the loss and turmoil, a Phoenix will rise from the ashes. And, wow — ask and you shall receive:

The arrangement of planets during tonight’s full moon create what is termed a ‘mystic rectangle’, involving the Sun in Capricorn with Saturn in Virgo, Uranus in Pisces, and the Moon in Cancer — all water and earth signs. A mystic rectangle features two oppositions, two trines and two sextiles. That combination of aspects is enough to unravel our best efforts to control or become too literal-minded, and perhaps this is why Dane Rudhyar interpreted this pattern as being one of “practical mysticism.” We’re forced into a non-secular orientation that takes us out of our box, our modus operandi. Surprisingly, we discover that we can function just fine from this new place. We underestimated our capacities. We need this particular type of soul training, this kind of reminder right now, to take on the task of the year ahead.

Saturn’s stationery position throughout last week (where the planet appears motionless in its orbit for a duration of time), corresponds with a sense of stillness (or stuck-ness) in life. A condition that fires up our frustration. Events aren’t progressing at a quick enough pace, aren’t resolving, aren’t lifting. The psyche freezes and we’re face to face with our shadow, unable to dodge the particular truths that manifest at this time. We’re stuck on a particular spot, working a particular theme, moving towards the center of our mandala.

Tonight’s full moon should bring the unconscious, the hidden, the avoided into bright illumination. Even the most poker-faced individuals are running off at the mouth, throwing dishes or declaring their deepest desires. Fallout from this full moon indicates the work or project or form of healing that we’ll commit to during Saturn’s retrograde motion — a motion that takes us right into May of this year, before the planet turns direct again. So we’ve nearly half of the year to repair, restructure, reexamine — and then, come June we begin integrating our wisdom into setting up a brand new system, a new health regiment, a new commitment to excellence — all benchmarks set by Saturn’s continued motion through Virgo.

The Sabian symbol for tonight’s full moon is melancholic and calls to mind a dreamy sort of longing to return some quality to the self that has gone amiss. If we feel estranged from ourselves this indicates we’ve lost contact with the richness of our soul, the kind of nurturance that stillness, contemplation and meditation can evoke. Perhaps we’ve become too tangled with surface concerns and particulars — losing touch with our sacred center. The symbol reads: A young woman awaiting a sailboat. Rudhyar interprets this beautifully:

“The longing for transcendent happiness in the soul opened to great dreams…From the unconscious beyond, the concretization of a spiritual image…is hoped for and expected. The Beloved may come — not in a glittering opera house, but in the silence of the inner sea of consciousness.”