The chart for tonight’s Full Moon is amazing. Considering the times we live in, this almost offers comfort: At least what we see mirrors the complexity we are living.
This is a supermoon, the biggest and brightest of 2020. Sailing through the skies the last few nights, we’ve already seen the beauty and mystery of this Full Moon.
The Moon appears larger because she is closer, which means her pull on the tides of the oceans and our emotions is stronger. This, too, we’ve already been feeling.
The Sun coursing through fiery Aries means this is the Libra Full Moon. Cardinal Fire opposing cardinal Air, Mars (ruler of Aries) opposing Venus (ruler of Libra). The forces pulling us apart opposing those calling us together.
Yes, we can feel this Full Moon as a call to appreciate and create community. First, though, we are going to see how we, each of us, draw lines around who is in our tribe and who is not.
Who do we define as “other”?
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Who do we find disgusting, abhorrent, unacceptable? Who do we see as undeserving? Who do we just not care about?
We none of us accept everyone equally all the time. Not if we’re ordinary human beings, anyway.
“Othering” goes beyond that. It is the process of defining someone, or a community, as “not us,” as so different we can’t find common ground, as possibly not even fully human.
Prejudice and its accompanying discrimination are the classical examples. Seeing people from other places, who look different from us, who don’t speak our language, who follow a different religion, who define their gender identity differently: These are all ways to “other.”
In the current crisis, as data emerge showing rates of infection and mortality are higher––in places like Detroit and Chicago, much higher––among communities of color, we see the stark results of ongoing systemic discrimination. The results of poverty, lack of access to health care, and less attention and treatment when care is sought.
Most of us like to believe we are not prejudiced.
Being progressive myself, my Facebook community leans strongly in that direction. Despite our tendency to see ourselves as “big tent” types, we are not immune. In the last weeks, I have seen posts that were clearly “othering.”
One example: A photo went around of young women carrying plastic bags of groceries down a sidewalk. The caption said strippers in Portland were delivering food to the elderly after their clubs had been shut down.
Responses ranged from laughter to disgust. “I wouldn’t want to touch anything they touched,” was a common comment. There was nothing in the photograph that suggested any need for these reactions. Sex workers have always been marginalized. This is “othering.”
Another example: The largely boomer outcry against millennials as spring break photos of crowded beaches circulated. Sure, is was a dumb idea in a pandemic. People have become infected. They now wish they hadn’t done it.
But millennials were not hugely represented in the images. The photos clearly showed older people, like, boomer age, and college students too young to be millennials. It was an everybody problem, exacerbated––even encouraged––by governors who refused to close the beaches.
Othering
Full Moons illuminate. Who do you “other”? What do you gain from that? What do you lose?
This Libra Moon is ruled by Venus, who’s just begun a long stay in Gemini. Our brains work by looking for and identifying differences, contrasts, anomalies. Gemini loves figuring out which of these is not like the other. This is useful and interesting. We learn through exploring difference.
The impulse to separate, though, does not come from Venus. In Gemini, Venus wants to celebrate the vast varieties of life. To say, wow, you are like this and I am like this and that is so interesting! To say, hey, these things are similar in this odd way we usually miss. What can we learn from that?
Gregory Bateson said our minds, starting at perception, must find differences. We look for the edge between red and orange, hot and cold, day and night. What is not hardwired, although we like to pretend it is, is where those boundaries are.
We must discern differences. Where we set the edge and what we say it means are up to us.
Playing with ideas of variety is very different from building walls.
Venus stations retrograde in Gemini on May 13, not long after Mercury enters Gemini. Venus will station direct on June 25. She will finally leave Gemini on August 7.
We’re being offered an extended invitation to explore how we see and celebrate differences while still maintaining connection. It begins at the Full Moon.
The Sun and Moon are at 18 Aries and Libra, respectively. They are applying to aspect Eris, the chaos goddess at 23 Aries, and also Pluto and Jupiter, at 24 and 25 Capricorn. This creates a T-square involving a most important conjunction for this year between Pluto and Jupiter.
The Full Moon is front and center with the chaotic, life threatening, utterly transformative happenings of our time. At this point, I do not limit this to covid19.
As a consequence of the pandemic, we also face economic upheaval, political grabs for power that are clearly unethical even when not technically illegal, and corporations seeking to overturn any environmental and safety regulations they deem inconvenient.
We also see, every day, tremendous sacrifice and altruism on the part of ordinary citizens, some leaders in all sectors, and especially nurses, doctors, and other health care providers.
There is more going on than we can take in. We know these months will remake this era.
It would be wonderful to say this Full Moon will illuminate the answers. That is not going to happen. Instead, the illumination we experience is likely to be personal.
How are we doing? How have our coping strategies been holding up? Where do we need to adjust? If our lives have been touched by tragedy and loss, are we able to access the support we need? Can we treat ourselves gently and lovingly?
Aries is the self. Libra is others. Right now, we find ourselves looking at that edge. How am !? How are you?
Mars has passed his conjunction with Saturn in Aquarius and now moves to square Uranus. We’re having a tough experience with limits. Hard limits. We want a clear action plan. We want to know what to do. We want positive change. And we need to remember we are still in a time of great uncertainty.
Much is still up in the air. As astrologer Tony Howard outlined in his recent article, we’re still in the confusion of Mercury and Neptune together in Pisces. We look forward to more clarity and incisiveness when Mercury enters Mars-ruled Aries on April 11.
We come back to ourselves in the light of this Full Moon. The entire question of how and when and with whom we can connect is up for grabs. Or, not grabs. No grabbing. We are isolated in ways we have never been, most of us, and are unclear how to manage.
Consider where Aries and Libra fall in your birth chart. This is an important axis, highlighted now. The houses, which of your own planets and points are touched, which signs are activated, all of these offer pointers to how these questions show up for you.
This is likely to be an emotional Full Moon. We might want to shut down. We feel a desperate need to reach out. First, be with your own experience. Open up the space to feel what you feel.
Building honest and compassionate connections with our own hearts, minds, souls, beings, is the best foundation for creating the communities we long for.
The astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title,
adapted from the black and white hand by Mattia Ascenzo,
and the following images:
multicolored hands by Tim Mossholder
computer screen by @markusspiske
Vietnamese children by Larm Rmah, and
Rita
Hi, I listen to your podcasts each month and thank-you. I am wondering where the music in the beginning and end come from. It is mesmerizing to me.
Mary Pat Lynch
Thank you, Rita, and the music is by Suzanne Teng from her album Enchanted Wind. I licensed the music through Magnatune. Her own website is here: https://mysticjourney.net/