Full Moon in Aquarius: Fire in the Head

Tomorrow morning, August 15 at 8:29 am EDT the Full Moon in Aquarius arrives, which means the Moon will look most full tonight.

At the Full Moon, we reach the castle, the fortress, the cave, the hidden room. We scale the tower. At this moment of illumination, we find the clue, discover the secret, and know how to reach the goal of our quest.

We have reached the climax, the apotheosis, in which we become like gods.

If this sounds very high-minded and dramatic, remember this is the Full Moon in Aquarius, the sign of high principles and bright visions. Which means the Sun is in passionately theatrical Leo, accompanied by Venus, Mars, and Mercury.

This is a Full Moon for big, bright dreams.

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The rewards of our quest, though, may not be easily won. The Moon and Sun are in the third decans of Aquarius and Leo.

Aquarius welcomes change. Yet this last decan speaks to the experience of changes so deep they feel like exile, leaving us with the need to learn how to cope with that. The last decan of Leo calls for steadfast dedication in the face of obstacles.

This could be one of those quest stories in which just as we think we have triumphed, some last challenger arises, more fierce than any other. Only deep commitment will win through.

Let’s think for a moment about Venus and where she is on her journey.

Venus reached her exact conjunction with the Sun in the early hours of August 14. At this Full Moon, she is only 21’ away from the Sun. Is she still cazimi? Or is she now combust and therefore burnt and obscured?

Well, how big is the Sun’s throne? Cazmini, also called sharing the throne or sitting in the Sun’s lap, has been defined differently through the ages, ranging from less than a degree to only 16’.

This cazimi was a superior conjunction, when Venus is farthest from Earth on the other side of the Sun. This is like a Full Moon, so, the day before our Full Moon in Aquarius, we’ve also had a Full Venus in Leo.

This is a Venus in transition. She has received the power and illumination of her cazimi and is stepping into the Sun’s furnace on her way out. In a little over a month, we will see her again as the Evening Star, but for now, she is hidden.

Let’s assume that Venus makes this journey willingly. Having finished her traverse to the Sun and received illumination, she wants to return with her boon. Her desire is to share what she’s learned with us.

For this, she is willing to walk through fire.

Imagine how powerful her illumination must have been to make her undertake this. And how strong her love. This is an example of Fire in the Head, the blaze of poetical and spiritual insight that ignites the desire to create.

Most of us have heard about fire in the head from W.B. Yeats, in his poem The Song of Wandering Aengus. The opening lines are:

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head.

Until the moment the fish he catches becomes a glimmering girl, we might think this was a poem about getting the idea to go fishing. Yet if we know how magical the hazel tree is, we realize from the beginning that going to the hazel wood with a fire in one’s head means something much more.

We first encounter a line of poetry about fire in the head far earlier, in the Song of Amergin who says “I am the god who puts fire in the head.”

Amergin was the first chief bard of Ireland, one of three brothers (as so much in Celtic lore comes in threes) who spearhead the invasion of Ireland by the Milesians. They triumphed over the magical Tuatha Dé Danann, who agreed as a result to leave the visible land to the people of Amergin and move beneath, to inhabit the hollow lands in which Aengus searches for his muse, the glimmering girl who ran away.

Fire in the Head is the strongest, most desired form of poetical inspiration among the ancient Celts. This level of poetry went beyond mere mastery of form and language to show the mark of the gods. In ancient Irish, it was imbas forosnai. In Welsh, it is awen.

If you’re familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert’s famous TED talk on genius (https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius), this is exactly the kind of thing she is pointing to when she says we would all be better off and in fact healthier if we stopped thinking we were totally responsible for our own creative output.

Accepting that deep inspiration comes from outside—God, gods and goddesses, the collective unconscious, the wind. However we see the wider world, looking beyond the individual self for inspiration has merit and value.

The Moon in Aquarius is all about wider visions that come from beyond. This is the sign that looks beyond the individual to the bright city on the hill. In Aquarius, we long for that, for the Big Idea we can commit to, for the blazing comet we can hook our wagon to.

If the Aquarius Moon helps us receive our vision, the Sun, Venus, Mars, and Mercury in Leo help make it real. Aquarius can become so entranced with the visionary that nothing actually happens. Leo wants an audience, wants the lights, the stage set, the music, the great lines.

Interestingly, this is a Full Moon without a lot of extra aspects to it. Just Aquarius and Leo having a passionately serious conversation.

There is a very wide trine from the Sun and Venus to Jupiter, which serves to intensify the passion.

Then there is a yod, the awkward aspect pattern made up of two quincunxes and a sextile that is called the Finger of Fate or sometimes the Finger of God.

In this case, Pluto and Neptune, ancient gods of great transformative power, are sextiling each other while quincunx the Sun. This reminds us, if we needed a reminder, that our world is changing beneath our feet and we have no clear idea where those changes will lead.

It’s said that the answer, the solution, to a yod lies directly opposite the apex of the triangle. Since the Sun and Venus are at the apex, this of course means the Full Moon itself is the answer.

In other words, the boon, the goal of our quest, the apotheosis we reach at this Full Moon, is clarity of vision. We are offered our own Fire in the Head, our own deep inspiration.

As Elizabeth Gilbert makes clear in her talk, this gift from the gods rarely or never shows up out of nowhere. Instead, as the ancient Celts also knew, it takes years of dedicated training and practice for genius to appear.

We have been on a quest, symbolized by this most recent waxing Moon cycle but reflected in our own years of study, of effort, of creative exploration, of sheer hard work that we put into living our lives.

At this Full Moon, our illumination can indeed be that Fire in the Head that keeps us going through dark times and hard times as we reach for the bright vision we follow.

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I use Unsplash for most of my photo illustrations.

All astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title,
adapted from the portrait by Gabriel Silvério,
and the following images:
white flowers by Annie Sprat,
hand holding light by Riccardo Annandale,
sun heart by Mayur Gala