September 12, 2011
2:27 PDT / 5:27 AM EDT / 9 27 AM GMT
19 Pisces 17 / 19 Virgo 17
Separation vs. interconnectedness. Boundaries vs. enmeshment. Service vs. sacrifice. Intellectual analysis vs. immersion in the nonrational. Faultfinding vs. compassion. These dichotomies have been running through the news as well as our lives, haven’t they? They are cresting now under September’s Full Moon, which takes place on the morning after a somber anniversary that is itself bound up with these energies.
This Full Moon is on the Virgo/Pisces spectrum, which spans each of the pairs of concepts that start this forecast. Virgo wants everything to be neat, orderly and distinct; Pisces blurs everything together. When these two extremes are equally activated, as they are now, nothing can be black or white. That has delivered a lot of us into circumstances that are muddy, murky or turned to ash.
Mutually inconsistent ideas are piling up and challenging us to live in harmony with them both — just as each of us has to figure out how to live with the rest of the folks on this planet. I am a rock; I am an island. No man is an island. Each person bears primary responsibility for his personal side of the fence: his health, his habits, his work, his garden. At some point each fence comes into contact with other fences. That’s when the questions start swirling, as they are swirling now.
All those fences may look intact and separate, but in many, many ways events, energies and repercussions flow through our interpersonal boundaries as if they were tea bags. Sometimes it’s easy to see immediately how one person’s actions affect another. As Justice Oliver Wendell explained, “The right to swing my fist ends when the other man’s nose begins.” Often, though, cause and effect blur, or an impact has an ever-widening sphere of influence, like the ripple in water when a pebble hits a pond.
That’s where we are under this Pisces Full Moon. The pond of existence is jiggling and reverberating with ripples from more pebbles than a human mind can count. The events of our lives are spreading to and through every person with whom we are in contact, consciously or not. At the same time, events are touching us from the lives of countless people around us, from friends and family to strangers whose plights we hear about on the news.
This is always the case; circumstances are simply reminding us of this truth now.
This Full Moon’s line-up presents a formula for living in accordance with this truth. An entirely analytical, detached approach is not going to get us through. The heart and emotions must participate.
Venus, ruler of our relationships and all that we value, is standing with the Sun as he opposes the Moon. This teaming gives the masculine, will-driven force of the ego awareness of what is most important (and, since Venus is in Virgo, of what is most healthy, appropriate and of highest service). The mind is also getting a good look at the realm of emotions, embodied by the Moon in Pisces, which includes the suffering of others and the universality of their experience.
We get “it,” heart, mind and soul. We understand on all levels what the right action is within our fences and outside of them. It’s like what happens in the aftermath of a disaster: Neighbors rally, reach out to each other (in some cases, begin to get to know each other) and share resources until the the power and water come back, the destruction is cleared away and some sense of normalcy returns. For many of us, this is exactly what has been happening since the Virgo New Moon at the end of August.
This time, “normalcy” will not return in its old form. All of us have been lifted off the playing field, shaken up and tossed back down, some more obviously than others. No one has landed in his or her previous position.
Pluto’s stationing to turn direct, signaling that there’s no going back. He, Jupiter and Mercury are in easy round robin of earth energy called a grand trine, which will keep the aftermath of this Full Moon from evaporating into memory and the theoretical. Rethinking and reconstruction will be occurring in tangible, physical ways into next spring, when Pluto and Jupiter meet for the third and final time in this trine aspect.
We’re flowing into new ways of obtaining information and getting around that are more suited to current circumstances. We are rethinking a lot, for some of us, everything. We’re ripping out foundations and basement walls that flooded one too many times, razing shells of charred houses and rebuilding, metaphorically and concretely. We are renovating everything on our side of the fence, as well as our relationship to what’s outside it.
We have the potential to carry the recent reminders in our hearts and live with a greater awareness of our inner connectedness. What happens to the weakest of us happens to the strongest. That will be increasingly evident over the next few years, as ongoing seismic activity in the cardinal signs continues to reshape our conscious and physical circumstances.
Many of us have recently been on the receiving end of an outpouring of assistance, backed up by immediate, practical and tangible follow-through. One of my benefactresses explained her automatic and unceasing impulses with the simple, nondramatic statement that the next time around, she’ll be the one in need.
She’s got the right idea. We’re all in an interconnected web, whether you choose to see that as your immediate circle, or your community, or far beyond that. When one part of the web takes a hit or frays, the whole web benefits from the undamaged portions pitching in and helping rebuild.
If you know someone who has been hit by the storms and flooding in the Northeast, or wildfires in Texas and Montana, or another form of devastation, please reach out to them directly if you have not. Send something that is sign of hope and optimism: words of loving and caring, a gift card, replacements for fundamental belongings that have been destroyed.
Or find a relief effort that goes directly into a community, rather than through a huge organization — for example, the Hurricane Irene Relief Fund set up by the town of Denville, NJ, where the streets became a raging river that took out the downtown business district and hundreds of homes. With a little research you could likely turn up efforts all over the flooded portions of the East Coast and in Central Texas counties being consumed by fire.
If you don’t personally know someone, I have a candidate to recommend: Kandra Niagra, an extraordinarily creative, curious and joyous spirit who lost her home to a Texas wildfire. (Being an artist, she had the presence of mind to document the devastation; photos here.) Amazingly, her studio survived, and she is focusing on amassing materials for continuing to make the magical dolls that are her living. Prowl around her site to see the scope and power of her work. You can purchase dolls here and find her email address if you want to send her a gift by PayPal. If you feel called to help with materials or send something, her address is PO Box 326, Smithville, TX 78957. Her suppliers of choice, if you want to send a gift certificate, are Hobby Lobby, Hancocks Fabric, Dollar Tree and Walmart.
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. — I Am the Walrus, Lennon/McCartney.
© 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 