Dear Friend and Reader:
Friday at 1:22 pm EDT, the Sun and Moon form an opposition across the Taurus-Scorpio axis, also known as the Full Moon. First, let’s pay homage to the Scorpio Full Moon, with all of its lusty, emotional and transformative implications that might keep you up at night with thoughts of unwrapping…whomever you fancy.
The chart has some unusual features, including Mercury aligned exactly with Chiron in late Aries. This (once again) lights up the still-close Chiron-Eris conjunction that is behind everything we’re experiencing.
You know, that daily or hourly shock that might lead you to ask WTF, but you know it’s just 2026. But I don’t think you recognize just how strange existence has become, and how far our patience and tolerance have been pushed.
Mercury and Chiron in a Degree of Confrontation
Chiron and Eris together are the “destabilization of intellect and culture” being pounded into our consciousness using every conceivable bias, including that of the digital environment itself. This is changing you in ways you don’t understand. Chiron represents the possible introduction of coherence into our situation.
Everyone is looking for this but has not necessarily named it, and does not know what it might seem like or where to find it.
Mercury is spot on Chiron for the Full Moon. That is emphasis, which lands in degree 28. When you see Mercury, that means stop, think and get the message. They are in the same degree; the Sabian symbol for that degree is a confrontation. The image is of a large audience confronting a “performer” who has not met its expectations. Does this sound familiar? A reality TV president?
Mercury conjunct Chiron emphasizes the need to seek some cogency in an environment of accelerating chaos. It’s available, if you want it. Seek and ye shall find. If you think you’re confused, perhaps ask what role the confusion serves. Usually it is a form of insulation from awareness. As long as you’re confused, you have an excuse to withdraw awareness rather than to raise it.
To confuse means to pull apart. Are you really pulled apart?
One last point to consider. Mercury and Chiron are conjunct Sphinx. So we have a new thing to confront: a mystery. People read mystery books and go to mystery (suspense) movies but I think actually, tend to hate actual mysteries.
The Full Moon does not seem to be in aspect to Chiron, Mercury and Sphinx. But looking at the chart below, do you see the little green lines in the center of the wheel with a kind of Q on them? Not the pencil line that I’ve drawn in. The ones the computer drew in. Those are a 165-degree aspect (incorrectly called the ‘quindecile’ and which I call the Johndro) connecting the Scorpio Full Moon to Chiron-Eris-Sphinx — with added obsession and extra high voltage.
Another View of the Full Moon
In the background of my astrology practice are a diversity of approaches that I’ve slowly grown into over the years, usually by picking up the phone and engaging older and more experienced astrologers in conversations. Kids, you would be amazed how well that works.
One such approach is Esoteric Astrology, channeled by Alice Bailey and published in 1951. However, to learn this, there is no getting around reading the book, which is not easy. But then you have a basis for conversation after which you might feel like you know less than you did when you began.
In Bailey’s approach, the Moon has no life of its own but rather is considered a veil for other planets. The way you would read that is where you see the Moon, you assume that something else is there…with the Moon and its tendencies serving as a kind of curtain in front of another energy.
At times, that curtain opens and you see through the veil. We are in such a moment right now: the veil is wide open and you can see exactly what is going on, if you care to look.
The Moon Acts Like This Anyway
Even in conventional astrology, the Moon serves as a reflection screen, or a projection screen, or a counterweight. We use it that way intuitively (another lunar concept). The Moon is also an indication of cycles. Wherever the Moon is there will be tidal activity; the house and sign not only offer clues, but express themselves through the cosmic tofu of the otherwise flavorless lunar body.
You can think of the Moon as a condenser for other elements in the chart, focusing them and drawing them into ordinary awareness.
The Moon also keeps time. In horary and progressed astrology, what the Moon just did, what it’s now doing, what it does next and what it does last, are the things to watch. So even in Western or Greek astrology, the Moon is defined by its surrounding environment.
The Moon sometimes represents women (such as your mother), sometimes girls, sometimes the public, and sometimes your original childhood personality. That is versatile; there is no simple delineation (Ceres works like this as well, highly context specific).
The Moon’s connection to female humans is no doubt related to the menstrual cycle being approximately one lunar cycle. We could read deeply into this, or agree that it’s simply natural. I’m much happier keeping time using a solar/lunar calendar (Sun through the signs, 13 lunar months a year, and the eclipse epicycle) than I am using the civil calendar — a ridiculous, imprecise and politically burdened clunky thing.
Julius? Augustus? Go away you corrupt fools! Stay in your own century! [Fill in a 5,000 word rant about how stupid the civil calendar is.] Breaking News: Trump to rename the month of August after himself.
An Ordinary Reading (Sort Of)
The Moon-Sun opposition takes place at 12 degrees fixed, close to the cross-quarter, about four days ahead of “official” Beltane at 15 degrees fixed. This marks the midpoint between the beginning of spring and the beginning of summer. In some traditions, Beltane actually is the beginning of summer.
For us it is the Midspring holiday, the time of fucking in the fields to ensure a good growing season. But it’s still a little chilly, at least here. Cars were coming down off of the mountain covered with snow two weeks ago, and it’s not even a very big mountain (that would be Hunter).
Uranus is seen newly in Gemini, conjunct environmental planet Sedna and also fixed star Alcyone, formerly in Taurus for 2,000 years and now precessed into Gemini. Alcyone has the ancient inflection of grief and the modern (New Age) inflection of the enlightening influence (Goooooood eeeeeevening! I am Satya of Alcyone! I will now tell you about the seven dimensions…)
Pluto is doing its tech billionaire thing in Aquarius, but its current wife (Juno) seems to be moving on. The orgy of digital identity chaos in Aries is trying to get the attention of the Family Hunger Games pattern around the corner in Capricorn. Here is an ad:
However, with Salacia in Aries in the picture so powerfully, we might need to consider the sexual reality side of the equation. Ignore it and it will keep coming back with increased vengeance until you commit yourself to healing and start having some fun, even if you’re 75.
If you’re experiencing chaos and confusion about who you are, or a sense that existence is somehow less meaningful than it’s supposed to be, the Family Hunger Games pattern is saying you might actually consider your sexual reality as much as the idea might make you want to delete this article, break glass or go on a 45-mile walk with your dog to avoid the topic.
The roots of nearly all chaos on the physical plane can be found in lying about sex. Look back through your life and check whether this is true. There is sexual deception or self-deception at the core of just about any personal disaster, and many public ones.
OK, that wasn’t anyone’s idea of an ordinary reading. Let’s go on.
The Esoteric Perspective
There are a lot of ideas in Esoteric Astrology that not so many people understand too good, but those of us drawn to Bailey’s certain je ne sais quoi keep coming back to her. I once saw her book Esoteric Psychology on the bookshelf of my teacher, Joseph Trusso. I asked him what he thought about it. “It’s really, really out there,” he said, in his understated way. He is more the Carlos Castaneda type.
It is best not to take Bailey’s ideas literally. Nothing is smoked, sliced and wrapped in waxed paper. There are no hard and fast rules. Bailey is more oblique than Marshall McLuhan seems to neophytes. What seeps in through both of these authors is a spiritual mist that gradually lubricates the willing and the curious out of their intractable positions and preconceptions.
With Bailey, my approach is, OK, let’s consider that idea: the Moon veils a planet. This could be Uranus. It could be Neptune. But for today, let’s consider a hypothetical planet, Vulcan. This is one of the esoteric rulers of Taurus, the blacksmith in the fiery, smoky metal shop of the soul.
Let’s pretend that when you draw back the veil of the Scorpio Full Moon, you’re looking at Vulcan, working at his anvil. He is shaping and tempering the soul. This is the underlying reality of Taurus; and as Bailey might say, the Taurus-Scorpio axis. The whole axis is one thing (all of them are), and the key to using astrology is working with the integration of seeming opposites.
What’s Back There? A Few Quotes from Bailey Pertaining to Vulcan
Okay! Let’s skip the 11th grade and go right to graduate seminar. In this section, I’m going to quote Bailey and then give an interpretation; then I will wish you a lovely day and begin to prepare a rollicking Planet Waves FM for tomorrow night.
Remember: we are considering the possibility that the Moon veils Vulcan, a nonexistent, conceptual planet that it’s amazing has not been used for a real planet. It’s not associated with Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame; that’s another Vulcan.
Let’s try to read this:
When we come to a consideration of the esoteric ruler of Taurus, we find ourselves confronted by Vulcan, one of the veiled and hidden planets one which is, therefore, little known or understood. I have earlier referred to Vulcan as the Fashioner of divine expression. In a peculiar sense, the energy which streams from Vulcan is fundamentally the strength and potency which sets the world evolutionary process in motion; it embodies also the energy of the first ray, that force which initiates or begins and that which also destroys, bringing about the death of the form in order that the soul may be set free.
Oh, that wasn’t so bad. Pull back the Moon’s veil and this is what you get. Vulcan is what is being revealed as the Full Moon Door opens briefly.
That was so good, let’s try another:
The esoteric ruler of Taurus is Vulcan, the forger of metals, the one who works in the densest, most concrete expression of the natural world (from the human angle). He is the one who goes down into the depths to find the material upon which to expend his innate art and to fashion that which is beautiful and useful.
Wow, wouldn’t that be nice. But I warn you: it’s not going out for ice cream.
Vulcan is, therefore, that which stands for the soul, the individual, inner, spiritual man/woman; in his activity we find the key to the soul’s task upon the eternal round of the wheel of life. You will remember how Hercules upon the Fixed Cross had to fashion his own weapons before he succeeded in his struggle. This is in reality a reference to the art of Vulcan who rules the inner man/woman and guides his/her fashioning.
Oh, that is interesting. In the story of Heracles/Hercules, in order to succeed in his struggle, he had to fashion his own tools. What does it mean to fashion your own tools? It means take all you’ve learned and come up with something original as a means of helping yourself. Create your own forms of self-therapy.
Okay one last for today:
Vulcan also rules nations at a certain stage of embryonic soul expression, such as the present, and governs their activities, fashioning the instruments of war when war and conflict are the only means whereby liberation can come, though woe betide those through whom wars come. Vulcan then takes hold and — since the Middle Ages — has brought the mineral kingdom, “the depths from which supply must come,” under human control.
So not only do you create your own tools, you do so from elements and minerals that you’ve extracted from yourself.
And there you have it.
Planet Waves joke: yesterday I promised my copy team a short letter, not a full article. Ellie, Alison, Lisa and Natalie — thanks for getting this writing into good enough shape to show our subscribers.
Don’t miss Starcast, my extended horoscopes and tomorrow’s Planet Waves FM. The world is on fire. It’s gonna be a hot one.
Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ —
