On Sunday morning, March 12, the Full Moon in Virgo arrives. This will happen just before 11:00 am Eastern DAYLIGHT time, when we in the US will all be groaning and wondering where that extra hour disappeared to. We won’t get it back until autumn.
Look for this Full Moon to appear most full the night before: overnight on Saturday, March 11.
This is a Full Moon in the quiet, unassuming, sometimes fussy sign of Virgo. With all the drama going on in the skies and in our world, we might wonder how a Virgo Full Moon can make a her mark. Full Moons are meant to be times of power, illumination, and crazy energy–and here we have a Virgo Moon looking more like a small David facing Goliath. Or like the new statue on Wall Street of the little girl facing down the big bronze bull.
Let’s take a look at the forces arrayed against the Virgo Full Moon before looking more closely at where her power resides.
There is a whole lotta Pisces going on in the sky these days! As we saw at the New Moon, there are planets and points covering most of this sign’s 30 degrees, although the lineup is different. At the Full Moon, we see the South Node at 2 Pisces, followed by Neptune at 12, then the Sun and all the rest together: Sun at 22 Pisces, Pallas Athena at 23, Chiron at 24, and Mercury at 27.
If you are feeling at sea or lost in a fog, confused and directionless, look to all that Pisces. So many things are happening we don’t what to pay attention to. Sometimes we decide to zone out and ignore it all–another Piscean influence.
At the same time, we remain in a place of powerful dreams and visions. If you work with your dreams, you are probably having powerful ones. The Full Moon will increase that. If you are someone who never remembers your dreams, you might now! With this concentration in cosmically-connected Pisces, the intuitive messages we receive are likely to be powerful, so, find ways to pay attention.
This Full Moon chart also includes a significant amount of Fire. Uranus and Eris are tightly conjunct in Aries, combining the incendiary blast of radical revolution with the disruptive chaos of a goddess who has had it with the ways things are. These two are opposed by Jupiter, retrograde in Libra. Channeling Libra’s diplomatic charm, Jupiter could work to calm the turbulence of Uranus and Eris. But he could also focus on Libra’s desire for justice, toss in his ability to expand and enlarge, and help create something big.
Pluto in hard-hitting Capricorn squares both Jupiter and the Uranus–Eris duo. This creates one of the T-squares we see in the Full Moon chart. Pluto challenges Jupiter, Uranus, and Eris to focus their energies on creating real, meaningful, deep change, and not just creating fireworks for show.
Venus, also in Fire, has begun her retrograde journey through Aries. This turns our attention inward. Venus goes retrograde about every 18 months, so this is significant. She stationed retrograde on March 4 and will turn direct again on April 15, which gives us 40 days for reflecting, revisiting, reworking. Venus is our planet of relating. She governs all of our one-on-one relationships, plus our creative and esthetic values (how we relate to the senses), and our values relating to justice and fairness in the world. Got some things to think about there? We all do.
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During this retrograde, we may feel dissatisfied, irritable, or even angry about some of our Venusian life situations. This is the Aries influence and is not a bad thing. The Fire of Aries can help focus our attention on where things are not working for us. During the retrograde, though, avoid making decisions. This is not the time to find fifty ways to leave your lover, tell your boss where he can put his new work rules, or torch your latest creative project. Don’t, OK? Just don’t. Use the time as Venus retraces her steps to focus on your inner experience. Wait for her to turn direct before deciding how to apply what you’ve learned to your life.
Mars, thankfully, has left Aries for the peace and plenty of Taurus. His more placid temperament in the sign of patience and perseverance can help cool our wilder impulses.
Let’s move back to the Moon in Virgo. We can poke fun at Virgo for being the obsessive-compulsive of the zodiac, inflicting her anxieties on everyone around her, but this is limited and unfair. Virgo, the mutable Earth sign, is a gentle healer. Her connection with the Earth and attention to detail gives her the ability to see exactly where adjustments and corrections are needed. At the time when we are awash in Piscean oceans, Virgo’s ability to focus on essentials is incredibly valuable.
I associate Virgo with Spider Woman, the goddess of the American Southwest who is a weaver who advises and protects those in her care. She is quiet and unassuming, but powerful when needed. Her ability to spin links her to other spinners and weavers, crafts most often practiced by women and associated with the creation of charms and protective magic.
I also have a memory of a folk tale that I could not track down. This tale tells how land was created at a time when the Earth was covered only by one vast ocean. There was no land anywhere, until a turtle managed to reach the bottom of the sea and bring back one small clump of earth. Somehow managing to anchor that bit somewhere, she dove again and again, bringing more land to the surface, until the first island was created.
Perhaps that tale is a dream of my own, but it captures this Virgo Full Moon as she dives over and over into the depths of Pisces and returns with insights to guide us. Each effort might be small, but over time, they add up to real achievements.
The other T-square in this Full Moon chart is created by Saturn the taskmaster, who widely squares the Full Moon from his place in late Sagittarius. His challenge lets us know we can’t float through this Full Moon without effort. Work will be needed to understand the illuminations this Full Moon offers us. Virgo is ready to do that work.
So, are we meant to be reflective or active at this Full Moon? We’ll probably feel pulled in both directions. There is an interesting set of aspects linking the Sun–Moon opposition to the Uranus+Eris–Jupiter opposition: These two sets are inconjunct and semisextile each other, making a long rectangle across the center of the chart. These aspects, which are 150 and 30 degrees respectively, link bodies that have a hard time understanding each other because they don’t have anything in common.
It is possible that one of the insights this Full Moon can offer, mediated by the nuanced understanding of Virgo, is to notice that exact push-pull. Where do we feel a need to act immediately? Where might we be immobilized by the need to study, analyze, and contemplate? If we can approach this Full Moon in a spirit of inquiry, noticing our responses, that might be the best kind of illumination Virgo can offer.