aquarius, astrology, full moon, leo, leo, moon, the bends

Full Moon in Leo: A Time to Go Back to Ourselves

We have a Full Moon in Leo this month, and while that in itself is not unusual (it is an approximately yearly occurrence), it is unusual that we get this Full Moon while the Aquarius Sun and the Leo Moon are square the Moon Nodes.

What is a Moon Node?

First let’s talk about a little astronomy: what are the Moon Nodes? At a high level, there are a few different orbits to understand in order to comprehend the Moon Nodes. The earth is tilted as it revolves around this Sun; this results in the Sun and the Planets following a tilted path across our night sky rather than following the earth’s equator; this tilted path is called the ecliptic. If we ignore the rest of the sky and just look at the earth and the Moon, the Moon is also tilted as it revolves around the earth. So we have a tilted Moon orbit around a tilted earth orbit, and these two orbits have about 5 degrees of difference between them. What this means is that you will see the Moon at different parts of the sky as it revolves around the earth; sometimes it will appear farther north, and sometimes it will appear farther south (depending on where it is on its tilted orbit). There are two points (exactly opposite each other) where the earth’s tilted orbit (the ecliptic) and the moon’s tilted orbit intersect; these are known as the Moon Nodes. See this picture to easily visualize them! When the Moon is lined up with the Sun along these Nodes, that is when we get Solar and Lunar eclipses (but that is a topic for a different day).

When the Moon is midway between the two Lunar Nodes, it reaches a local “high” or “low” point in the sky, where it appears furthest north or furthest south before it starts moving back in the direction of the nodes. This area is called “the bends”. We could have a whole study just on the bends, but at a high level, it shows a time when the Moon is least likely to be eclipsed (or to eclipse) the Sun, because it is far away from the Nodes. This is an area that represents change (as the Moon at this point is preparing to change directions from the earth’s perspective to move back toward the neutrality of the nodes).

The Moon Nodes and this Leo Full Moon

Coming all the way back to our Leo Full Moon this week, the Leo Full Moon occurs exactly at “the bends” between the Nodes, so in addition to the usual exuberant Leo Full Moon energy we would usually expect, there is something a little different this year. There is a sense of change in the air. A sense of trying something we have not tried before. A sense of finding ourselves and bringing ourselves back.

The Energy of this Leo Full Moon

The Leo Full Moon is also always interesting, because by definition when the Full Moon is in Leo, the Sun has to be exactly opposite to it in Aquarius. (Full Moons always occur when the Sun and the Moon are opposite each other.) The Sun rules Leo and excels in Leo, but struggles to find its footing in Aquarius. The Sun is hot and bright, Aquarius is cold and dark. The Sun is joyous and loud; Aquarius is quieter and more circumspect. However, done carefully, the Sun can find its balancing force in Aquarius. Learning to integrate the heat and the cold, the noise and the quiet is truly a worthy cause, and the Leo Full Moon each year gives us a chance to do that, and no year more so than this one which finds the Sun and the Moon in the area of the Moon’s orbit that most promotes change: This area midway between the Moon Nodes.

Think about how you show up to yourself and to the world during this Full Moon. How much do you feel like a masked performer on the stage of your own life, vs how much do you feel free to allow your truest light to shine forth? Living our truth is hard and requires so much vulnerability and so much trust – trust that people will either love us for who we are or that we have decided their opinion is not central to us. This is a time to evaluate if there is anything we are showing to the world that feels so difficult to maintain that it doesn’t actually feel worth it. For those things…. how do we find ways to let our true self shine out via our Sun (Leo) while also recognizing that we may have very real social duties and obligations that are important to us?

In short: how do we bring our best true self to the world in a way that serves to help others rather than only ourselves? How do we use our brightest gifts in the service of each other and our larger groups and communities? How do we shift the narrative from one of duty to joy? And lastly: if we embrace this challenge and bring our whole selves to the world, how do we make peace with that and accept that there will be limitations in doing this? If our true self is viewed as being too strange, there may be people who no longer want to be our friends. If our true self doesn’t involve a high-powered corporate job, we may struggle more to have financial stability (or to be ok with not having financial stability!). A wise friend of mine called out that there is never a choice between the “good, easy way” and the “hard, bad way”. There are difficulties with any path we choose in life; what we have this week is a golden (an appropriate color for Leo!) opportunity to consciously make this choice. This Full Moon is about finding our true self in a sea of other people’s expectations and our own self-imposed duties and to decide how we want to present ourselves and our gifts to the world.

As the phrase commonly attributed to the great writer Oscar Wilde says, Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. In 1882, Oscar Wilde also wrote the following:

In some such way as this we could gather up these strewn and scattered petals of song into one perfect rose of life, and yet, perhaps, in so doing, we might be missing the true quality of the poems; one’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead

Photo by Kiwihug on Unsplash

astrology, leo, leo, lionsgate, lunation, moon

The Lionsgate New Moon – A Portal to our Future

Sometimes writing is about effectively communicating information. Sometimes it is more evocative such that it conveys a feeling rather than specific information. Sometimes writing is a form of self-expression. Sometimes, though, writing is about attempting to grasp higher level universal truths and fit them to the lines and curves of our primitive human language and existence.

That is where I have mentally been the past week. There is a lot to say about the skies, as there always is, because the skies are always changing in endless (one might even suggest, eternal) cycles regardless of whether or not we notice.

But that is not what is on my heart to say tonight. Tonight, with Mercury exalted in Virgo loosely opposing Jupiter retrograde in Aquarius, I want to attempt to share larger, more philosophical thoughts in a way that I only might be able to tonight – with the stars aligning as they are.

Recently I heard news that a wonderful woman and a very wise psychic and astrologer had died unexpectedly. Although I did not know her well, I had experienced firsthand the power of her readings and her connection with the other world, and I mourned what the world lost in her wisdom and what her family lost through her passing.

We speak of “losing” someone, and that is exactly what a person’s passing feels like. Like a light going out on a dark night. Like your map blowing away while you are in an unfamiliar city. Like feeling lost even though you haven’t actually gone anywhere.

And of course for those who were closest to her, they didn’t lose only a spiritual woman and teacher; they lost a dear family member.

I don’t have any adequate words to mark her passing, but I felt compelled to say something. Because everything she taught and shared and believed in is so vital. And so real. On March 31, 2020 (coincidentally??) just as the pandemic was really starting and exactly as Jupiter and Pluto conjoined in Capricorn, and Saturn and Mars conjoined at 0 degrees of Aquarius, I had my first and only live conversation with her. A friend gifted me a reading with her, and I was not prepared by how much my life would change as a result of that reading. As she went through the reading, starting with my astrology chart and then fluidly moving to messages from my guides, I felt seen in a way that I had never felt before. As we spoke over the phone, the sky outside my home grew suddenly dark with clouds, and it started pouring rain. When we got off the phone, I felt almost as though I was awakening from a trance. I knew before my reading with her that I was just taking my first footsteps onto a different spiritual path…. what would become my life purpose, but her words affirmed that and gave me some specific direction. I have come so far spiritually over the past year and a half, and a huge part of this is due to her. I had actually just contacted her about a second reading since the skies (my inner skies and the outer skies) had changed a lot since our last conversation. I never got that second reading, but I am so grateful that I got the first.

The night before she passed, one of her sons and I got together to send her reiki, and I was just blown away by an image of her face in my mind with a powerful Leo energy and immense joy associated with it.

She passed as the New Moon in Leo was forming (on August 7th), midway between the double consecutive Aquarius Full Moons that bookend our Leo season (which she had written about just a few weeks before on instagram). It is unusual to have two consecutive Full Moons in the same sign. And it is a particularly unusual time this year, because midway between those Full Moons, the New Moon in Leo occurs just as the Sun conjoins Sirius (the day each year called Lionsgate).

Although it didn’t occur to me at the time that we were one day away from the Lionsgate Portal and the New Moon in Leo, it feels so natural that this time would have resonated with her. With the warm, enveloping energy of Leo so strong, and with the intuitive portal of rebirth and moving to higher levels of consciousness wide open, this seems like it would have been exactly a time for her energy. Nothing makes it better or easier that the world lost her, but it does at least feel as though she left surrounded by energy that resonated with her.

I am not able to articulate Universal Truth. Some things really are too big for the human brain, and certainly bigger than the human vocabulary. But A Universal Truth, such as I can describe it in words, seems to be that we actually never really lose a person. They go on ahead in order to be more fully found. But they continue to be knit with us through the memories in our soul, our shared experiences with them, and the fact that all life and all energy, and even all time, is intertwined. Wherever her beautiful energy and soul still exist, whatever astral planes she may be inhabiting, I send her the same wonderful vibes that she sent to everyone during her time on this earth.