Full Moon in Scorpio: Dark Matter

Each year, Full Moons occur in the sign opposite where the Sun is, bringing a balancing illumination to the keynote energy of the time.

It’s natural, therefore, that the Scorpio Full Moon arrives during the time when the Sun is in Taurus. Today is the day of the Scorpio Full Moon, which is exact at 5:11 pm EDT.

Taurus, ruled by Venus, reigns over spring, the season of burgeoning growth, the greening of the earth. We associate Taurus with gardens, massages, slow food, naps.

Taurus invests, prudently putting money away or following good self care to protect health and longevity.

Taurus can be indulgent, its sins those of sloth and gluttony rather than active malice or bad action.

Taurus focuses attention on physical reality, what we apprehend with the five physical senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.

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Scorpio, ruled classically by Mars and now by Pluto, reigns over the unseen. This is the unconscious, the subconscious, archetypes, the occult (which literally means what is hidden), the dimensions of reality open to the clair senses: clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on.

We are in Taurus season now and I can hear the voices out there saying, but those psychic things aren’t real. That hidden stuff is just ideas, things our brains make up. One day science will understand it all and then we’ll know how things really are.

At each Full Moon in Scorpio, we face the stark limitations of that world view. This year, for several reasons, that confrontation between physical and psychic, manifest and unseen, conscious and un, is especially stark.

Three things make this an intense Scorpio Full Moon.

First, this Full Moon, at 27 Scorpio and Taurus, is directly connected to Pluto and Saturn at 23 and 20 Capricorn. Pluto and Saturn are the heavy hitters in the sky these days as they dance around their grand conjunction in early 2020. These two foretell, foreshadow, and describe the deeply unsettling changes happening in our world, without actually letting us know how it will all turn out.

Second, Venus in Taurus is sitting with Uranus. So, the ruler of Taurus is aligned with a major change agent who may have slowed down since he entered Taurus but is still prepared to inject creative chaos wherever he shows up.

The very things that ground us in Taurus are themselves being shaken.

Third, this Full Moon is opposite Algol, one of the most infamous of the fixed stars. Algol is at 26 Taurus, flanked at the Full Moon by the Sun at 27 and Mercury at 24.

Algol has been associated with violence, especially with the head, either because of injury to the head, events involving heads of state or organizations, or otherwise “losing one’s head.”

Let’s add in a fourth reason, which is that Mars, classical ruler of Scorpio, has just entered Cancer, where he has to deal with feelings (not Mars’ strong suit), can feel thwarted, and sometimes indulges in manipulation and passive aggression.

And a fifth, Mercury in Taurus conjunct the Sun and Algol, opposite the Scorpio Moon, adding an intensity to our thought and communication.

What are we likely to see, learn, discover, or experience at this Full Moon?

This is a time when we see the underneath, the underbelly, the hidden aspects of things.

Thursday’s Newsweek magazine carried an article with the headline “Something Appears to Have Ripped a Huge Hole in the Milky Way and Scientists Don’t Know What.” Ana Bonaca, a Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believes the hole was made by a clump of dark matter. A really big one.

Dark matter makes up far more of our universe than visible matter does, and yet we don’t really understand what dark matter is. In other words, most of the cosmos is made of stuff we can’t see. This seems rather Scorpionic to me.

With the Sun and Moon in fixed signs, things are likely to feel polarized. Two sides, each claiming they are right. Yet the evidence each sign relies on is completely different, so, opposing views coming from radically varied perspectives.

We see that happening in the world today, for sure, with world-changing consequences.

The star Algol is located in the constellation we know as Perseus. It is a triple star system in which the stars eclipse each other, making it appear to blink off and on. Algol is an Arabic name translated as Demon Star, called the ghoul, or the Gorgon.

But who is this Gorgon, but Medusa? It is her head Perseus carries, her monstrous head covered in snakes, the one with the power to turn men to stone.

Medusa was not always a monster. Ovid tells us she began as a beauty. So beautiful that Poseidon wanted her and being a god, took her, raping her in Athena’s temple. Athena, angry, punished not Poseidon, but Medusa, transforming her into the monster who Perseus later, with Athena’s help, killed.

The United States is now in the grip of polarized and politicized campaigns based in ideas of who is responsible for sexual behavior and who pays the consequences. There is plenty of dark matter here and much that is unconscious and hidden.

With emotional tides likely running high this weekend, what can we do to manage the potential overwhelm?

Awareness of this potential can help. This is a good time to avoid confrontation and if it cannot be avoided, to keep things as calm and grounded as possible.

This is the Wesak Full Moon, the celebration of the birth, life, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha. With Scorpio, and this Scorpio Moon in conversation with so many other planets and points, enlightenment is possible.

We can cultivate a compassionate, analytical attitude toward our own psyches.

Scorpio loves to detect, to explore, and to understand. We can learn much about ourselves if we are willing to look closely and unflinchingly at what we actually say and do.

We can ask. Scorpio loves probing questions. Deep conversations are possible. New depths of sharing and vulnerability can be plumbed. Perceptions and understandings can change.

We can consult oracles, another kind of asking. This is a powerful time for divination. If I were going to choose an approach, I would choose something based in the natural world. In other words, a form of divination that connects Scorpio and Taurus.

Understanding where this Full Moon falls in our birth chart can point to where the surprise, the secret, the hidden knowledge, or the intensity may show up for us.

Wherever that is, there is something to be discovered. Something usually hidden will be illuminated. What we do with that insight will be up to us.