My front porch faces east. As I sit here, I see the almost-full Moon rising over massed clouds, mountain ridges, and the dark green of summer trees.
Tonight’s Moon rides through late Sagittarius, the final decan ruled by Saturn, who of course will rule over tomorrow’s Capricorn Full Moon.
This Moon is beautiful. The Sun sets late at this Solstice time. The sky shifts colors as it darkens, the clouds whiter against the darkening sky now tinged with mauve. This is a late Gibbous Moon. Are we still facing challenges? Or have we made peace with whatever has happened, or not happened?
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Tomorrow afternoon at 2:40 pm EDT, the Full Moon will be exact. The Sun at 3 Cancer, the Moon’s home sign, will oppose the Moon at 3 Capricorn, the place where the Moon is not at their best. Generally, we see any connection between the Moon and Saturnian themes as depressive. Sometimes, this is emotional depression and sometimes a more general sense of being held back and unable to make progress.
Yet the first decan of Cancer and the first decan of Capricorn present an intriguing overlap thematically.
The first decan of Cancer, Coppock names Mother and Child. He reminds us that in ancient times, at the beginning of astrology, the world began with the Summer Solstice. The image of the child growing within the mother’s womb’s speaks to the fruitfulness of this time of year.
The Tarot card associated with this decan is the Two of Cups, the sweetheart card. Here we see two lovers wrapped up in each other, their gaze filled with the other, who seems almost an extension of the self. The planetary ruler is Venus, who loves lovers.
The first decan of Capricorn has the rather macabre name, The Headless Body. The connection is there, though, because the theme here is of coming into the body fully and completely. In this decan of Capricorn, we’re not concerned with the mind. We let the endless cycles of ideas drift away as we deliberately, consciously sink into the core of the body itself.
The Tarot card for this decan is the Two of Pentacles. Its ruler is Jupiter. So here, rather than a sense of being constricted inside a physical body, we expand, we extend, and we have choices to make.
Perhaps incarnating fully and completely is not a limitation. Perhaps being born into a physical body is not the penance some spiritual paths would have us believe.
It could be that being here on Earth is something worth doing. Something to experience and enjoy, even when it’s challenging.
Jupiter, newly retrograde at 2 Pisces, trines the Sun and sextiles the Moon. This supportive communication to both Sun and Moon the only aspect to this lunation, a pleasant contrast to the recent eclipses. We’re not even dealing with the Saturn–Uranus square right now. It’s still in play, but it’s separating and no other planets are activating it.
The other key aspect pattern involves Venus, who is separating from both a trine to Neptune and an opposition to Pluto. Here we explore deeper, more mystical spaces ranging from the far reaches of the cosmos to the shadowy realms of our own psyches. Here, too, we’re in yin, receptive signs.
This Full Moon is all about Earth and Water, body and emotion.
So if it’s really ok to be in a body, to fully in habit one, then it must be ok to take care of that body, perhaps even seek out experiences that are loving and pleasurable. Notice the invitation that comes with accepting our physical self: We can take care of ourselves and those we care about.
But wait, this is a Capricorn Full Moon. Shouldn’t this one be about responsibility and hard work and following the dictates of authority?
The harsh taskmaster is the face of Saturn we saw in Capricorn in 2020 and still see this year in Aquarius. Is this the only way, though? Are there other ways to see Saturn?
It appears there is at least slight evidence that the ancient Greeks viewed Saturn as a feminine planet, although this is far from certain. Because of the age and fragmentary nature of the texts, and the many translations over centuries, it’s difficult to know how much weight to put on one reference found in Dorotheus of Sidon.
Perhaps we don’t need a definitive answer. That’s something the mind does and with this Full Moon we’re in the realm of the body. Let’s instead imagine what it might feel like to reclaim Saturn and especially Saturn in Capricorn as a feminine archetype. Surely responsibility and hard work are not masculine traits. And just as surely, following tradition is something anyone, of any gender can do.
At this Full Moon, let your physical self, your body, be illuminated. What do you experience in your body that is uniquely physical? How are you growing? Changing? Connecting with the physically manifest world?
Feel your way especially into words that evoke experiences typically associate with women and the mother. How are you nurtured by your body? How do you nurture yourself? How do you feed yourself? Where do you sleep? Who is your family? What do you create in the world? How is the world creating you?
We’ve been through some significant upheavals during eclipse season, accompanied as it was by the second Saturn–Uranus square and other challenges. A this Full Moon, we get a sense of how we’ve weathered the changes. Are we ok? What care and support do we need now and going forward? How do we find, create, and sustain support?
These are not just Cancerian questions. These rely on Capricorn’s ability to create structures to hold the things we need.
We need not assume that Capricornian structures are masculine any more than we assume that Cancerian emotional support is exclusively feminine. Both can be true. Both are needed.
Since Cancer and Capricorn are traditional signs, hearkening back to the past, I’ll close with a quote from William Irwin Thompson, from his 1981 book The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. In this book, he examined and critiqued the assumptions built into current theories of the origins of civilization.
“Because we have separated humanity from nature, subject from object, values from analysis, knowledge from myth, and universities from the universe, it is enormously difficult for anyone but a poet or a mystic to understand what is going on in the holistic and mythopoeic thought of Ice Age humanity. The very language we use to discuss the past speaks of tools, hunters, and men, when every statue and painting we discover cries out to us that this Ice Age humanity was a culture of art, the love of animals, and women.”
The astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title,
adapted from the pregnant silhouette by davide ragusa,
and the following images:
dancers by Robert Collins,
black body by Sam Burriss, and
cave art by Don Pinnock