Over these last weeks, we’ve been living in a cloud of magic and glamour. It’s been haunting, glorious, disturbing, enlightening, and distracting.
Aside from big issues like spiritual enlightenment and whether our biosphere will survive, there’s the challenge of meeting day to day commitments when blocks of time go inexplicably missing.
Or keys. Or that one form you need because the deadline is today. So, yes, it’s been confusing, inspiring, and also anxiety-producing.
We’ve seen and felt all of that with Mercury retrograde in Pisces, with Neptune and the Sun for extra mystery. There’s the massive pileup in Capricorn that might keep us grounded, but only by chaining us to a boulder.
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Somehow, we’re made it to the Full Moon in Virgo, gloriously bright in the sky tonight.
This is a Supermoon, the Moon larger in the sky because she is closer to Earth. This brings stronger spring tides, which surprises no one, as the surges of emotion this past month have been intense.
As always at a Full Moon, we’re at a point of illumination. The Sun and Moon face each other full on, no hiding. We have the chance to see something that has been hidden in the Piscean mists.
What’s been coming up for you during the Mercury retrograde? Situations, memories, and people from the past might have been showing up––in your thoughts, in your dreams, or via phone or mail.
Relationships, too, have been under stress. Maybe issues have come up that need to be addressed, but we’ve also been prey to unfounded fears and anxieties, concerns about our own worthiness and value.
The areas of life where we’ve felt anxious or stressed, or felt the winds of change, will vary depending on where the Pisces planets, and of course the Capricorn planets, show up in our charts.
Now we enter a window of time during which insights can arrive.
Perhaps a dream tonight will bring a new understanding or sense of calm. Perhaps a random conversation will lead to an important insight. Uranus remains very close to Venus, so, expect the unexpected.
This is also a time when deliberate effort can lead to illumination. Full Moons are not the best times to manifest but can be excellent for divination. Practices like journaling or expressive arts can also yield fruit now.
The role of the Virgo Moon is vital. With so much confusion and fog around, the careful precision of Virgo is exactly what we need. This Earth Moon also trines the Capricorn group, offering support and channeling understanding as we continue to transform (or mightily resist any and all changes).
And what about Gwion Bach and Finn macCool, the two boys whose stories we followed during the waxing cycle?
They are right where they’re meant to be, ready to explicate the patterns of this Virgo Full Moon.
At the time each of these poet magicians lived, poetry was more about public performance than private soul searching. Poets were historians, praising the achievements of the leaders and families they served.
The poets of Ireland, Wales, and other Celtic lands kept ancient tales alive, encoding myth and history into the landscapes they knew. They studied for years, committing poetry and also complex rules of poetical forms to memory. They were expected to stand up and create poetry in the moment, extemporaneously.
The work of poets and mystics is to receive inspiration and bring it into form. The words of poets had power: satire was a high art and a form of cursing, bringing blisters to the skin and shame to the target.
This kind of poetry reflects the combined virtues of Virgo and Pisces: careful attention to detail infused with mythic power, precise use of language to invoke ancient tradition. Skill, the purview of Virgo, was essential.
Gwion Bach showed signs of magical promise from earliest childhood and was brought before the court bards to be examined. He answers questions, solved riddles, and displayed a command of history that could scarcely be believed in one so young.
He was renamed Taliesin, which means shining brow. He grew to be one of Wales’ greatest poets and was a friend and companion of King Arthur, as the legends tell us. Having captured his fiery inspiration, he absorbed it, learned from it, and turned his talents to the benefit and glory of his community.
Finn likewise had an illustrious and magical career that included poetry, battle, love, and loss.
The Irish tradition offers a way for us to weave the Pisces and Virgo in with the Capricornian. One practice for composing poetry was for the poet to enter a low hut made of stone. The poet would lie down on a stone slab. A flat stone would be placed on his or her chest.
The stone hut would be closed up, the poet lying in darkness, where he or she would remain until the composition was complete, the fullness of the inspiration received and made into its rightful form.
Sometimes we need the weight of earth, the heaviness of stone, to provide solidity and structure. Magical flights of fancy only carry us so far. Small, precise steps can sometimes hide the big picture and obscure the goal.
Imagine yourself lying on stone, surrounded by stone, a stone on your chest. You are safe. This is a refuge, not a prison. You are quiet, undistracted. A focus, a core of insight begins to grow. Words emerge.
Whether we create a poem or a spell, or something between the two, we need the careful precision of Virgo, the flowing magic of Pisces, and the solid structures of Capricorn to find the deepest truth.
It’s worth the effort. This Full Moon is a turning point not only in the lunar cycle, but in Mercury’s cycle and in the zodiacal year.
About nine hours after the Full Moon, on Monday night, Mercury stations direct in Aquarius. We still need Mercury to emerge from its shadow phase, but direct motion will be welcome.
We are moving toward the New Moon in Aries and the Spring Equinox. Depending on whether you prefer a lunar or a solar calendar, one or the other marks the beginning of the new zodiacal year. The equinox will arrive first.
Make the most of this Full Moon. Dive into the magic, mystery, and illumination. The tides are strong right now, and they are turning. We want to catch the currents that are the best fit for the journeys we have ahead.
The astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title,
adapted from the stone circle by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos,
and the following images:
foggy landscape by Ricardo Gomez Angel, and
large stone by Zoltan Tasi