August 13, 2011
11:59 AM PDT / 2:59 PM EDT / 6:59 PM GMT
20 Aquarius 41
A Full Moon brings emotions to a crest, even in the most intellectual sign of them all, Aquarius. This time around, the working is a bit backwards, in that the wellspring of the emotion is not really the Moon, for a change. With the Sun in Leo, inner children want to come out and play — and if not that, get applause. And if not that, get attention, any way they can.
People will be cavorting, tap-dancing and stomping around all over this spectrum of possibilities. This weekend’s event carries a great potential, though, for emphasizing the highest end of the spectrum. Both planets of love, worldly Venus and transcendent Neptune, form an honor guard for the Sun and the Moon, respectively. Venus is the last planet each of luminaries touches before facing each other, and Neptune is the first they encounter after disengaging. This sets up a process that starts with love, terran style, crescendos into a good, long, emotional look at yourself and where you fit in the scheme of things, and shoots off into spiritual, universal, outright divine experiences and expressions of love and unity.
Compassion and love for yourself are on offer, and they could be the greatest gift to you and to everyone around you. This is not selfish, but healthily self-aware. You can not truly love and accept others until you love and accept yourself; otherwise you judge, balk at and react to your own qualities that you detect in other people. Fill yourself up love and compassion, though, and you’ll have an abundance to pass on to others.
Get ready to fill up and pour out. This weekend brings events to a head that show how well you are succeeding at being yourself — how fully you are expressing your unique nature and how brightly you are allowing yourself to shine. Leo loves and needs an audience, of course, while Aquarius prefers observer mode, even in his or her own life. You get to have both now, in two ways.
The first and more important way: You are your own audience as well as the performer at center stage. Your reaction to yourself is more important than that of any other person, even your mother’s. View yourself through the eyes of love. Interpret your actions and achievements of late in the most positive, encouraging, approving light. Retrograde Mercury will help you with this; he’s just on the other side of the Sun and will be backing towards him as the luminaries move apart.
Still have trouble with putting the most positive spin on your life? Try this: What would you think about your recent developments if a friend lived them out? How about a stranger? There you go. Now dance and sing and perform for your own joy. Applaud yourself. Delight in what you’ve accomplished (and given how brutal recent weeks have been, even pat yourself on the back simply for getting up and facing each day).
The delight, pride and joy that you take in yourself will be magnetic and contagious, and leads to the second way: drawing an appreciative audience to you now. Watch for affirming and validating feedback now. Notice who sees you — not the mask, not the role, but You — and is smiling, clapping and cheering because of that fact alone. Take a bow. Catch the bouquets being tossed at your feet.
Notice, too, who is not getting you. That might be because they are getting an exit cue and are going off on a storyline that departs from yours. It also might be because their inner children are acting out. Neptune’s participation in the Full Moon will be whipping up self-pitying and delusional tendencies in people who feel unloved (or unlovable). This week’s build-up to the Full Moon has already shown some people to be perceiving and nursing slights because of completely innocent behavior that happened to not treat them as the center of the universe.
It’s not your job to placate squalling inner children or to accept whatever blame they fling at you for their wretchedness. If you’re happily taking care of your own business, especially if you’re treating yourself kindly, and someone throws a self-aggrandizing snit at you, consider it screaming signal to rethink that person’s place in your life. Rethink your impulsive reaction, too. What’s the loving response? At some point, that is not caving in, but setting boundaries and not shouldering someone else’s problem. Think tough love. Look at the situation with that famous Aquarian detachment, and you might even understand and forgive the person. That might not change your decision about their place in your life, but it will change (improve, lighten) the energy of the connection.
But that’s the worst case scenario: divas and drama queens stamping their well shod little feet, throwing hissy fits and demanding their due (a phrase I have actually seen invoked this week). Given what most of us have been going through lately, that’s a cakewalk. Turn your back on the ploys for attention. Look in the mirror and make funny faces at yourself. Even better, salute yourself. Take a bow. Celebrate. Then it’s time for an encore.
© Kathy Biehl 2011. All Rights Reserved. You may forward this article as long as the copyright notice is intact. No part may be used or reprinted without my prior written permission. Karma, ya know.
Astro-Insight 