Howling in unison: Full Moon, Varuna-Eris and Mercury-Vesta

Today is Thursday, July 14, 2011. The Moon is in Capricorn, bearingdown on full, and was just conjunct Pluto last night. How are you feeling today? Was yesterday a little cranky for you? The good news is that should lessen a little on one level as the Moon moves further into Capricorn and away from Pluto today. Of course, that means it’s getting closer to its opposition with the Sun Thursday night to Friday morning; this is building its own variety of tension that will still be strong tomorrow. Eric has suggested drumming the energy out, or maybe making art or simply howling — just make sure your howls are in fact directed at the Moon and not at other people. Yelling at a coworker doesn’t quite count as a productive, cathartic outlet, no matter how enticing that option may have been yesterday.

As mentioned recently, operating in the background of the Sun-Moon / father-mother relationship is another aspect about gender balance: the Varuna-Eris square. With Varuna, a male deity hanging out in feminine Cancer and Eris, a female goddess camping out in masculine Aries, we have a beautiful image of the integration of gender between both planet and sign. Yes, these two planets are in a square aspect, which carries some tension — but it’s the kind that gives us something to push against, so we can get somewhere new.

Think of it like a lever-fulcrum setup: by pushing on one end of the lever, the pressure against and balance on the point of the fulcrum is what moves the thing at the other end of the lever. You’re able to move it further and with less effort than if you didn’t use that angular support. But it seems one key to appreciating that fact is to shift your point of identification from the pressure at the point of contact outward to the sweeping arc made by the end of the lever. That’s where we find the journey, the goal attained and the broader perspective — all in one.

This concept of unity was alluded to yesterday regarding Varuna-Eris. As mentioned in Planet Waves many times, Eris the goddess is the archetypal “castaway woman,” and given the planet’s extended stay in Aries, it often represents a fracturing of self or reintegration of self. Varuna, it turns out, is a complementary counterpart in male form. While his myth itself does not seem to involve his being cast out, apparently culture handed him a similar fate. According to the resources in Small World Stories, “Varuna is named for a supreme pre-Vedic creation deity who was demoted to the lord of waters by subsequent kingdoms. He then took up residence as a cult figure rather than a top-level creation deity. There is no way to actually demote a god, but we can pretend that something is less important than it is.”

Varuna and Eris share the dubious distinction of being excluded; if we can say one thing about male-female relations, health, sexual understanding and power in the world, it may be that efforts to strengthen one gender tend to be at the expense or exclusion of the other. One of the great lessons of astrology is that we all contain the same planets in our charts. Therefore, we all share the same facets; we all have an inner male and inner female. At some point, just as our own efforts toward wholeness must include the recognition and reconciliation of these two polarities, so too do our efforts on a global or community scale need to embrace both genders in a way that encourages all to thrive.

One thing the Varuna-Eris square may be asking us to do — and that the Full Moon is energizing — is to see the unity of personal journey, immediate goal and global perspective / universal vision as the singular thing it is. And just in case you’re not quite sure what that looks like or feels like, there’s another aspect that may offer a clue. Mercury in Leo is exactly opposite Vesta in Aquarius. This one doesn’t quite nail the gender integration as elegantly. But it may offer a picture of shining outward — communicating — the light of your Self as an act of devotion to the collective creative fire. Keep that flame between your inner male and female halves hot, loving, alive and visible for your own sake — but know the world needs to see every one of us.