This year’s Scorpio Full Moon arrives on the first of May, a hinge of the year in many traditions across the world. The Sun in Taurus, sign of the fertile Earth, illuminates the Moon in Scorpio, a place of mystery and the unseen.
We’re reminded of the balance between them.
May 1 is linked to celebrations across Europe that welcome the generosity of the land in supporting herds and growing crops. These celebrations also ask for protection from hidden forces that may threaten the land’s bounty and the wellbeing of human communities.
Light and dark together.
In the ancient Celtic calendar, Bealtaine and Samhain are the hinges between the light and dark halves of the year, celebrated as the light of springtime and the darkness of autumn. Both essential.
This May Full Moon is celebrated in Buddhist communities as Vesak, a celebration of the life of the Buddha. Let me note here something that differs from many Western commemorations. Vesak celebrates the birth of the Buddha, his enlightenment, and his passing all at once. The full cycle, not only its beginning or ending.
Taurus and Scorpio, birth, growth, decline, and death, are all represented, as they are at the Full Moon in May.
We see this balance in mythic traditions that include agricultural gods who are born in spring and die in autumn, to be reborn in annual cycles.
In a quantum framework, we can associate our manifest physical world with Taurus, and the superposition of coherent quantum states with Scorpio, a mode of being hidden from our ordinary senses. Without the coherent superposition, though, our physical reality wouldn’t be here.
In the cycle of the year, Taurus and Scorpio, spring and autumn, birth and death, are separate and balanced. At this Scorpio Full Moon, we’re reminded of the deeper reality that light and dark are always present. Our lives are upheld by both the seen and unseen.
The patterns in this Full Moon chart show these interrelationships in all their symmetry and complexity.
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Sun and Moon oppose each other at 11º 20’ of Taurus and Scorpio. The second decans of these fixed signs present themes of balance.
In the middle of Taurus, we see the fruits of patient labor. By tending the earth, investing time, energy, and skill, we’re rewarded with bounty.
In the middle of Scorpio, we confront the balance between growth and destruction. Life comes from life, but not everything can live at once, and nothing lives forever. All natural cycles include death as well as birth.
The Sun and Moon form one axis of an aspect pattern called a mystic rectangle, with the Nodes of the Moon as the other axis. This pattern is linked to ideas of balance that supports growth, because the two oppositions forming a cross in the middle of the pattern are surrounded by trines and sextiles that create a supportive, balanced container.
In this pattern, we have a Full Moon that sits at the hinge of the year as one axis, and the Nodes of the Moon that represent another hinge between what we long for and what we’re letting go of. These are consequential places, the luminaries and the Nodes, who at this Full Moon are both challenging and supporting each other.
The Moon also sits at the apex of a yod with Venus in Gemini at one lower corner and Saturn in Aries at the other. A yod is a tall triangle. It’s an awkward pattern because, as as you see with this trio, the three planets share neither an element nor a mode.
The Moon is fixed Water. Venus, mutable Air. Saturn, cardinal Fire. These three connect but can’t communicate well. The answer to a yod is the point opposite the apex, which in this case, is the Sun in mid Taurus, a place of patience. Sometimes we cannot put it all together right away. Something we need to nurture and support our emerging understanding.
We still see the shallow triangle that captures the key energies in the zeitgeist right now: Pluto in Aquarius still trines Uranus in Gemini as both sextile Neptune in Aries. We’re still in this bizarre timeline, now with an off the wall Uranus in active, curious Gemini.
The Moon also applies to trine Jupiter in Cancer, as Jupiter squares Mars in Aries.
How do we integrate all this? One key theme is the hinge, the fulcrum, the balance point.
A Full Moon is always a Sun-Moon balance fully illuminated. This Scorpio Full Moon sits at an important hinge of the year, between the time of growth and time of loss, between Bealtaine and Samhain. This Full Moon in May also celebrates the full cycle of the Buddha: his birth, enlightenment, and passing.
All of this points to both/and thinking, not either/or. Ursula le Guin said, to light a candle is to cast a shadow. The light cannot exist without the dark.
There’s one aspect I didn’t name yet, which is a conjunction between Mercury and Chiron in Aries. Mercury, who is our perception, processing, and communication, sits with Chiron, the wounded healer who wants us to reclaim what is our own.
With these two in Aries, ruled by an Aries Mars, there’s a strong pull to speak truth. First, to ourselves. What do we need to say, to us? Then, having said it, how do we bring that truth into action? Aries is all about action.
Lit from within is the sole secure way
to traverse dark matter.
opening line of The Ghost Light
by Robin Morgan
Thich Nhat Hanh is a revered Buddhist teacher who envisioned an engaged Buddhism, one that interacted with the realities of life. He described this recognition of interdependence as “interbeing.” He taught that we are all of us, all the time, part of a larger whole. We are embedded.
At this Full Moon in Scorpio that is so patterned and highlights so many ways we’re in relationship, I can’t think of a better way to capture this concept than “interbeing,” which goes beyond the idea of relationship between separate individuals, to say that in our very existence, we are part of each other.
This is the light the Scorpio Moon brings, the illumination of seeing reality from both sides, night and day, birth and death, dark and light.
Checking where this Full Moon falls in our birth charts will personalize this.
For example, if we already have a lot of Scorpio, we know the importance of what cannot be seen. That’s a given. Sometimes we can discount what’s right in front of our eyes in favor of what we sense underneath.
If we live in Taurus territory, we’ll have a strong connection to the beauties and terrors of the manifest world, but might struggle to engage with what is beyond the physical.
This Full Moon has enough light across a wide spectrum to illuminate whichever parts of experience we may not be seeing clearly. Whatever we need to find balance will be there at this Full Moon, if we look for it.
Title image from a photo by Alexis Antonio on Unsplash
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