Today is Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011. The Moon is in Taurus all day, waxing to full at 3:16 pm EST. We’ve been working with this energy all week, noting in particular that centaur planet Nessus is square the configuration. One other distinctive feature of today’s Full Moon is how many planets in the sky right now align with black holes.
We asked astrologer Alex Miller — a specialist in deep-space objects — about that and this is what he had to say:
“The Full Moon of November 10th is unusual in having a preponderance of exact conjunctions and aspects to black holes, signaling an advanced degree of instability and change for the lunation period. Although neither the Moon at 18 Taurus nor the Sun at 18 Scorpio make exact aspects, the Moon is within two degrees of the anomaly at 16 Taurus, and still reverberates with its power, albeit in a more chaotic, less precise manner, eliciting greater randomness over all in the level of manifestation.
“But the unique character of the lunation stems from the many deep space contacts by the other celestials of our system: Mercury and Venus together exactly conjoin a black hole at 10 Sagittarius; Jupiter at 3 Taurus is exactly square a black hole at 3 Leo; Uranus at 1 Aries is in exact opposition to a black hole at 1 Libra; both Neptune at 28 Aquarius and Pluto at 5 Capricorn exactly conjoin others; while Mars at 29 Leo and Saturn at 23 Libra are within a degree of exact conjunction to two more.
“Alteration and change in the status quo reality are the hallmarks of black hole interaction, which also indicates energy drain or attraction. Change is likely to be swift, unexpected and dramatic, although it can also be transient in its effects. The essence of black hole activation is the substitution of a radically different reality for the one that had previously pertained, often at great cost in energy or resources.
“Having so many planetary bodies in exact aspect to black holes indicates a period of extreme turmoil, which can also be a highly creative period; one where the manipulation of reality is at once more easily facilitated, and more difficult to control or predict the ramifications of.”
“Alteration and change in the status quo” seems already to be the dominant theme in the astrology this fall, and we’ve been watching it play out in the news like never before. Kind of makes you wonder if everyone involved in the Occupy movement is an astrologer. Any change the Occupiers effect will certainly take a lot of energy and resources, but will it necessarily be transient? With Uranus square Pluto, that harbinger of upheaval behind the scenes, there may be some longevity – although even those two planets are aspecting black holes right now, too.
You may be feeling this energy palpably, especially the part about increased creative energy. After all, many astrologers are noting that the traditional themes of Taurus and Scorpio for this Full Moon are sensuality and sex. We create using our senses; sex is the original creative energy.
Stephanie Gailing, at planetaryapothecary.com, dives right into this angle. She writes:
During the Taurus Full Moon the question “Does this feel good?” takes high precedence, becoming a compass with which we can navigate the choices we make. We can use it to evaluate relationships and situations, reflecting upon whether they help us to feel safe, secure, and inherently appreciated and affirmed.
With the heightened sensuality that this Full Moon yields, we can also ask ourselves “Does this feel good?” from a physical perspective, allowing ourselves to further assess the foods, aromas, sounds, and kinesthetic experiences through which we find valuable nourishment. With both signs relating to between-the-sheets experiences — Taurus because of its affinity with sensual pleasures, Scorpio because of its alignment with our sexual nature — we may feel more drawn to express passions of the heart (et al.) today.
“Does this feel good?” is an especially relevant question given that Taurus likes comfort while Scorpio oftentimes finds regeneration inspired by discomfort. The Taurus Full Moon can provide an opportunity to help us identify how to strike a balance — to nourish ourselves without resting in stasis while inspiring our inner transformation in a compassionate, rather than ruthless, manner.
John Townley at astrococktail.com slows things down a notch. He makes the association between the Choctaw tribe’s name for this Moon – the Frost Moon – and two hallmarks of the signs involved: a measured pace (Taurus) and deep transformation (Scorpio). He says,
This “Frost” Moon makes the usual full Moon craziness turn into slow motion, and a lot of the action is happening beneath the surface, hidden from view. Like moles in the ground, everybody’s pursuing an agenda that may not be entirely clear but is clearly plowing up the vicinity. The challenge is to get all of it working for you and not against you and to keep your pace up even if it seems like you’re wading through molasses. Nevertheless, when all is said and done the scope of accomplishment available now is both large and long-lasting, directly proportionate to the extra labor involved making it all happen.
Molly Hall keeps with the “chilled out” take on this Moon. “This is an ideal Moon to find your patch of calm, in the chaos,” she notes. “Try standing or sitting on the ground, and surrendering all the crazy/anxious/worry/rage down to the magma of the Earth, to be mixed and transformed. This is the most tranquil of Moons, if you avoid sketchy situations, and media that is playing on your fears. There’s something deeper here, to draw comfort from, that’s fortifying and a path of growth. What’s your way of finding it?”
Meanwhile, Cathy Pagano takes us deeper into the creative cycle of death and rebirth inherent in this lunation:
This month’s Taurus Full Moon stands across from the Scorpio Sun, making us aware of life flashing before our eyes during this season of death. The Taurus Moon energizes the beauty and possibilities of life that we want to conserve and protect during the coming months of darkness and cold, so they can blossom again next May. At this Full Moon, we stand at that moment before death when we see what we have chosen to believe is important in life. Look deeply at what you value and decide if it’s still important to you. If it is, conserve it; if it’s not, let it go – let it die.
Nadia Gilchrist adds, “What’s working will bring rewards and what’s not will bring endings.” These ideas are even contained in the Sabian symbol for the Full Moon’s degree, 19 Taurus. It is “A new continent rising up out of the ocean,” and Dane Rudhyar gives it the keynote, “The surge of new potentiality after the crisis.” Goodness — continents rising, surging potentiality, oceans… kinda sexy, huh? Is all this talk getting you fired up to get that black hole-syled change energy moving? In the vein of the ‘spiritual warrior’ model we mentioned yesterday in this space, Michelle Pillar writes on Sasstrology.com, “This Full Moon’s got balls, and it’s telling you to grab a set. Own who you are; love who you are; and if you’re still not content, then keep on growing into the you you want to be.” You heard the woman.
Looking for insights on how this week’s astrology affects your personal Sun and rising signs? Try out Planet Waves Light, our streamlined horoscope service. For deeper cultural context and astrological investigation, the premium Planet Waves subscription includes the same horoscopes, plus extensively-researched articles on Fridays.
Tom Robbins…words cannot express…vibes of warmth and love and admiration will have to do…thank you across every whichway in time and space
Oh God. That picture makes me cry with the deepest longing to go THERE and Jerusalem and Sounion and Jerico. My heart NEEDS to travel, NEEDS to share those places with my kids and husband, needs to BE there NOW.
Happy Birthday HS! MY Scorpio DH just had his last Sunday too!
There’s so much to think about here….I will just have to ruminate when I am less tired.
Just printed out this article, picture and thread (I just learned what to call what I have been calling “our posts”). If this is premonitory of what is coming, creativity is abounding (as long as we watch our step. Hug to you: Patti. So glad you have the arnica and ice. And are elevating it, I am sure).
Rob44. WOW. and Yeah.
There is at least one phrase or more that you each wrote today that I want to put to heart memory. Thank you, all.
Happy birthday, Hugging Scorpio! Sounds like it will be a memorable one.
“‘that line between chaos and control, abandonment and the need for safety’ – I feel I’m walking that right now, patti. It’s a tightrope.”
Oh, good heavens, me too. The changes for me personally have been happening so fast — every week seems faster — but at the same time as I’ve been feeling overwhelmed (like, how am I supposed to take this all on? how I am strong enough to bear this? sometimes, I would rather just my life be over), I’ve been increasingly able to achieve a kind of calm grounding (Taurean strength) that I previously had no idea was possible. So it’s like, just as everything is beginning to run out of control, the stillness is gathering.
I believe Henry Miller said, “The only real miracle is to stand still.” To be calm and aware instead of reactive. Action may be necessary, but if the action originates from that foundation of stillness & awareness, we remain whole, we keep our integrity, and we act on behalf of the entire universe.
Yesterday & today I’m finding myself eagerly, consciously embracing and embodying certain social-sexual aspects of myself that I was still carrying some shame about, including (as per Eric’s most recent podcast — thanks for that) the simple truth and beauty of being first and foremost my own lover, which is probably where all the rest of it starts. I’ve followed Betty Dodson and Eric for years, but let me say it: I don’t think I really understood the concept of being one’s own lover until today! Something clicked. So maybe there’s something to that full moon.
There have been other sexually-themed transformations happening in my life, but they involve longer stories, and are more personal. The common element is tossing out socially-enforced criteria and accepting what exists (what I simply am, what I simply feel, what I simply want). Also, accepting the liberating, transformative, and empowering potential (at the levels of self & society) of this.
The nearly-full moon shown through a veil of cloud last night and it was a foggy evening here in Brooklyn. From my bed well after midnight I heard the fog horns from the ships on Upper New York Bay, each with its own pitch and tone, some high, some low. I wondered why, after over 5 years in this apartment, I only began to notice the horns this year. But then, there is so much I’ve noticed for the first time over the past year or so. Fog horns from ships on the water… Chiron in Pisces, conjunct Neptune?
— 2nd house Scorpio moon opposite 8th house Taurus Chiron B.C.
“That one and one is two–yet no one asks what ‘and’ is.”
I. Just. Love. This.
Annie, Sarah, rucognizant: Thank you for the b-day wishes!!
“And now with the astro-weather report, author Tom Robbins. Tom, where’s this front coming from?”
Ten memories north of the left bank of night; across whitewater rapids bordering doubt. Near hushed awe and past blind ambition, up where sleep drips sideways across windowpanes older than the warehouse of time. Flying from mountains veined with muted arteries of mothlight, pulsing like strings on nature’s Stratocaster. Creeping from the disarray of root spores bleeding under weeping leaves, victims of a shoot-out between warring gangs of aspen. Sprung from fractal questionnaires you didn’t answer, blossomed into paper cities brighter than their secret dream of fire. It rose from molten history under granite mantles, leapt full-grown from a highchair at the end of the Periodic Table. Pandeville. Danteburg. Chaosadelphia. That’s where it’s coming from.
“And where is the storm track headed?”
Tracing out rust’s eternal pilgrimage; its family packed in dented cans caroming across dust bowls, over Brailled cliffs brittle as old sermons, above calderas spilling from jeweled bodices around the Pacific Rim. Going gets going and morphs into gone, leaving a tattered chrysalis as hieroglyph. Part verb and promise, part veiled threat, Going stands silent as an obelisk at the end of the cosmic mall, its siren’s call insistent but discrete. It’s headed where stardust kicks up its heels to steal another dance with distance, before the lights come up. Flip a coin and both sides give it’s destination’s address, every time.
“Any ideas on the factors behind its intensity, or what we can expect from it?”
It came to write the alphabet of longing. Bowed beneath the weight of libraries, a caravan of needles threading deserts billion laces, it catalogs beetles scribbling tales of lost kingdoms on waves of statue dust. Three small bones that spring its feet are Grail seeking altar, relics wrapped in living wings, led by starlight to waiting boughs cloaked in canyon shadow. Course-bound ship and restless horse, it plows before the leading edge of winter. Monasteries under moonlight blink like faithful lighthouses; radio waves boomerang from yesterday to calibrate its route. Courier to the stars, it sails on tides unowned by rhythm.
“Is there anything we can learn from these shifting archetypal climate patterns?”
That one and one is two–yet no one asks what ‘and’ is. That light keeps writing checks darkness cannot cover. That no one goes, and no one stays. That there’s only one thing happening in the universe at any given moment. And that it is not necessary to know what that thing is.
“Thanks Tom! And now for sports.”
ok, it just took another emailed horoscope i subscribe to for me to notice that today’s full moon is within 24 arcminutes of my natal sun. man — talk about having your nose so far into it that you forget to notice what’s around you!
now, i wonder what it all means….?
😉
A ‘fixed’ Scorpio with a Virgo moon – all arnica-ed and ice-packed up, thanks Amanda! It’s been a good excuse to ground myself in a comfortable chair and watch re-runs of the West Wing – in between gazing at the MOST beautiful inspirational full moon outside my window tonight in the UK. Still loving the day’s energy and all these great comments; we live to flow another day…x
“Blessed are the fixed signs for they are grounded.”
thanks, bk! and as long as we remember to balance that groundedness with some flow, flexibility, expansion and a little spark now and then, we’re ok.
patti — i hope you have not re-injured your knee! i know how frustrating knee injuries can be when you’re used to being quite mobile. i’ve taken to carrying arnica in my bag at all times.
Happy Birthday HS.It is also my Grandaughter’s birthday, sweet 16!
After 10 days of utter chaos, ( & I expected to just drift gracefully, blissfully, into the next dimension?) which challenged all the basic premises of my life………………
( gratefully, I aced the life lessons fairly successfully, resolved quite a bit……………( with much work ahead………with Mars in VIrgo)
and today with the FM 1o past my N Uranus, I am SITTING on the GROUND, in my garden, planting garlic! Can’t get closer than that!
Taurus Pat
Happy Birthday, Hugging Scorpio! 😀
Blessed are the fixed signs for they are grounded. Patti’s fall says it all. . “stay grounded and watch your step”. It is good to hear how all the astrologers interpret this full moon time so as to prepare ourselves. They seem to agree that chaos and confusion are plentiful, or as Alex sumed it up “instability and change” mark this period in time.
This makes sense (if that’s possible) what with Neptune just having stationed direct yesterday, and the other planets going direct recently (or soon in the case of Chiron). What they all have in common is they all “stood still” for a relatively brief time. Stand still, something Taurus does better than all the other signs I bet, so I’m taking that as my advice for this full moon period. Just stand still. Observe and don’t be hasty about decisions.
John’s “measured pace” and Molly’s “find a patch of calm” and even Cathy who says we “stand” at that moment before death… . All note the inadvisability of action at this time. Quoting Lauren Gorgo who says “.. keep our feet solidly on the ground. . ” and “. . hold the awareness of our connection to earth. . “, I get the message that it is a test of our ability to maintain a degree of composure through the maelstrom we find ourselves living in now. Be solid like a rock. Til the storm blows over.
Last night I watched a mother eagle (a PBS program. . sorry don’t know which one) sitting on her nest during a storm with her baby eaglette safe and dry beneath her. The storm lasted for 3 days and she got very wet, but her baby was still alive. Well, I could take that as a message for our country as well as we individuals. Stay still, protect what you value most and endure the discomfort for this too shall pass.
be
Happy Birthday Hugging Scorpio 🙂
Sarah – “Walking the tightrope” is changing into “loving the mystery” here in sunny Wales.
Thank you PW writers and community – a beacon in the dark indeed!
What a wonderful article! So beautifully informative. Amazing.
It’s also my birthday today, my 2nd Metonic Return, and I’m in the last few pangs of my Pluto Square (I have Pluto in Libra at 5.52). I love my life. I love you. I’m so grateful. Where’s my Phoenix costume?? 🙂
HS
Wonderful post and the photo by our talented Greek friend, Anthony, so potent. Speaking of slowing things down, I had an insight yesterday. I was talking to a friend at work about how quickly time appears to be going. She noted that it used to be that you heard this comment more from older people, but now even younger ones are noting it.
I was pondering this odd phenomenon, odd especially given that time doesn’t even exist except as a story of the past and a story of the future in our minds – we live, in fact, in an eternal present. Then, it stuck me – I have been seduced by a collective agreement that time is going fast. We all appear to agree, it is spoken of again and again, and I have unconsciously joined with this shared perception. I have done what the mind tends to do – have a belief and only notice evidence that supports the belief. Today’s article helps me understand the timing of this realization.
At the bottom on my email messages for the past couple of years, I have a quote from Martin Buber that is to me a perfect expression of this wonderful Taurus full moon and Scorpio sun moment:
Here is the rose. Dance here.
Your Taurus friend, Kat
In the name of honesty and meaningful coincidence I feel I have to say that fortified by this morning’s post I decided that since I had to go into town today to give a talk it would be good to walk to the train station – having been off my usual vigorous walks after injuring my knee in a bad fall last month. Halfway there I fell flat on my face and banged my knee again! A Freudian slip perhaps!? In the midst of all this inspiring transformational black hole energy maybe there is also the message, stay grounded and watch your step… 😉
Thank you!
“that line between chaos and control, abandonment and the need for safety” – I feel I’m walking that right now, patti. It’s a tightrope.
Many thanks to all those quoted for the inosculated elucidation of an event horizon.
Special thanks to intrepid Anthony for yet another photograph that transcends both words and time.
Thank you-inspiring and encouraging 🙂
Classy… and really spot on for me too. It’s a sensual, creative energy that wants to bolt from anything and anyone that focuses only on what is as opposed to what could be. I felt an affinity this morning for the guy riding the 90 foot wave http://tiny.cc/v54vb – on that line between chaos and control, abandonment and the need for safety. I’m loving these dips into a more dynamic and complex sky that goes well beyond the 12 signs. It’s so inspiring and something PW has always done so well!
I just love your awesome full moon pictures, and this article sizzles with the chaotic opposites I am feeling, palpably (that word you used jumped at me because I have been conscious of this energy palpably), even today as we are moving into this significant moon phase.
The crackling, pushing energy stimulated by the black holes, perhaps, seems to be moving around and outside of me while deep inside is a calm and slow determination to plant my feet into what feels good and right, comforting and fortifying and true, and then to fold myself down into the “magma” of new creative ideas and products and relationships that are pushing up and out from deep within and then to wait, reach out, cherish them with open heart and arms, recognizing what is important to me, what I treasure and am nurtured by, and am open to receive, and then, at last, to be able to let what is not nurturing go. Just let it go.