The Last Quarter Moon is a time to get things done. We want to complete current projects, especially any tied to this lunar cycle.
Today’s Last Quarter gives us a Moon in mid Aries ready to do the work. She’s conjunct Saturn, who loves getting work done, but now she feels conflicted: Is this really the right work? Am I doing it the right way? Will it last?
We enter this phase with a sense of urgency (Aries) linked to a desire to do the right thing (Moon) in the right way (Saturn).
The Moon-Saturn conjunction squares the Sun in mid Cancer, one of my favorite decans, which Austin Coppock names ‘The Walled Garden.’ Here we have Cancerian nurturing wrapped around our creative goals and desires. What do we need emotionally, to do our best work? What most supports our creative selves?
This contained focus of Sun, Moon, and Saturn is at odds with the rest of the chart.
The trapezoid Barbault named ‘the basket,’ a focus of astrological interest right now, is still forming. Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus are in place at 4º of their signs, sharpening the shallow triangle aspect they’ve been in and out of for months now. Jupiter, who completes the pattern, is at 1º Leo.
This basket holds change–great change, according to Barbault, who was a French astrologer interested both in symbols and in empirical verification.
While some focus on this pattern as the door to a new golden age, I lean into something more open-ended: We’re already in a time of great change, however you measure it, and whether it turns out well or badly remains unknown.
Meanwhile, Mars begins to separate from Uranus, while still being within orb. He’s holding his conjunction to Uranus, sextile to Neptune, and trine to Pluto, while beginning to chart his own course of action.
I’ve been thinking about Neptune in Aries, especially since their retrograde began. What dreams does Neptune have in focused, singular, active Aries?
How about Many Worlds theory? At the beginning of Aries, we separate, become an individual, and act in the world. We might say the first decan of Aries wants to make a world, or make the world in their own image.
In quantum physics, Many Worlds says that each significant, interactive choice causes the world we’re in to split into other worlds, each following one possible outcome.
This is exhausting to think about in terms of number, and intriguing if we focus on the power of making choices. Either way, Many Worlds theory feels like a very Neptune-in-Aries dream: creating new worlds through personal choice.
The tricky part is figuring out which choices will land us in a world we’ll love.
Here we come to Mercury retrograde at the end of Cancer. We know we can’t have everything, all the time, and have some feels about it. Sometimes we can’t have the one thing we really long for. In retrograde, we revisit how we manage those feelings. How we care for others and the world, and make that caring real.
These days of the Last Quarter Moon are made for getting things done. Yet our goals are tangled up in our emotions and challenged by the rapid pace of change.
Look for a balance among emotions, goals, and the very real forces of change we’re living with.
Title image from an image from NASA on Unsplash
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