Today is the Libra full moon for the year. Lunations always have an immediate influence on the feeling of the two weeks following, plus some later effects that can arise up to a month later. The chart around them can often feel like a look behind the curtain at things that are going to come up during that time period, and the moon itself is always deeply influenced by the activity in the stars around it.
This full moon is taking place during a quadruple retrograde. We’re nearly finished with Venus retrograde and we’ve already gone over some of the simple parts of this Mercury cycle, but today we’re going to go over some of the emotional effects of those movements and how they’re highlighted by this moon.
I tend to feel personally that Mercury retrogrades come on very fast. The last week of “shadow” prior to them always has a few events occur that make me realize what the “theme” of the retrograde is going to be, and how that might play out. For the past week, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the phrase “identity theft.” Mercury is currently moving backwards through a Venus-ruled sign, as Venus herself cycles up from the dark space of her own larger retrograde cycle. The way they’re woven together this season, you’d expect one’s movement to bring up issues that are related to the other, and I can see that happening right now. And in general, this relationship between the two bodies makes sense.
Relationships are based on communication; values are often reliant on what we’re able to understand and be informed of. Aries, where the Sun is this full moon and where Venus has left and is moving back towards, is about the expression of the self. It stands in opposition to Libra, where the moon and Jupiter are currently shining, and which rules the ways our selves harmonize into one cohesive entity — relationships. The needs of these two parts of our selves and all oppositions in astrology are, I think, often wrongly expressed as a tension. They are also interdependent on each other.
I think Venus’s time through personal-expression Aries and spiritual Pisces has asked us to make some changes to the way we ask others to respect the boundaries of our self. I think Mercury’s time through Venus-ruled Taurus is asking us to consider how other people can bring clarity or confusion into our understandings of ourselves. And so, this full moon is like a perfect thesis for the rest of this retrograde season — how do we define ourselves through each other? How come love and appreciation makes us desire sameness with each other, but necessitates that we understand and put words to our difference?
Because this is moon is wrapped up in a tangle of retrogrades, the way that we’re going to answer these questions is through confusion and agitation. The feeling that maybe we can’t resolve these two interconnected needs, before coming to the resolution that we might be able to. We all know Libra is a sign that wants to talk about balance, and moving into its energy, we often find that we’ve incorrectly weighted the scale so far.
So: back to identity theft. Because we’ve got these retrogrades, the identity theft here can totally mean credit card information, fraudulent accounts & people posing as each other online, false information and other effects that have material consequences. But on the emotional end, I also mean “who is stealing you.” Who is thieving your identity and why? This month is going to have us questioning and identifying how identities (Aries), values (Venus/Taurus), and ways of speaking (Mercury) can be co-opted for personal gain (back to Venus). But beyond that, we will be learning to guard ourselves against people who would speak for us or speak over us. Not just because it’s rude, but because it actually restricts us from speaking ourselves, as ourselves. (That’s the Saturn piece.) This full moon is a beaming, shining highlight on specifically the emotional undercurrent of all of this retrograde energy. It’s asking you to let go from judging yourself so you can more accurately judge the environment and people and communities that surround you, and whether or not they acknowledge you, and how they could be doing that better.
All of these are very inner planet issues, but look at how they intersect with outer planet movements to understand the full story. Neptune in Pisces makes the reality of situations very difficult to grasp. This placement, and its hard aspects with Saturn and Jupiter over the course of the past year or so, are what have given recent events the emotional quality of “unreality,” making world events seem like “fact stranger than fiction.” The inability to tell what Really Happened, what’s Really Going On has pervaded and obscured political discourse and our ability to ascribe cause or accurately describe its effects. This dynamic is the fake news, alternative facts, “not the Onion” influence in recent world astrology.
In our personal relationships, and in the scope of this lunar month, it describes how we often willfully see through other people’s ability to hurt us or use [our thoughts, labor, emotions, selves] us when they’re close to us. In fact, we write it off as something they may be doing unintentionally because they want to be closer to us, and we are intoxicated by the idea that someone desires this sameness and intimacy with us. Neptune in Pisces is the wishful thinking, “they don’t know what they’re really doing” denial of what’s really going on. It’s the part when you ignore the fact that something bothers you because you don’t think the other person did it on purpose and so you’re unwilling to blame them. It makes you forget that intent doesn’t erase impact, and prevents you from being able to identify the problem and speak to it.
Uranus in Aries is about the transformational qualities of self-(re)presentation and how those may change in opposition to our other needs — to connect with others, to relate to them (Jupiter in Libra). The Jupiter energy wants us all to be brought together, to work together, to balance each other. But the Uranus energy comes in bursts and fits, upsetting the delicate weight of the scales. It’s our needs, unique to each one of us, and how wildly unpredictable they can be until we realize they exist. The sun and moon mimic this during tonight’s lunation, and show us the balance that we still have to make.
SITARA DIDI 