The last Full Moon of 2012 occurs on Friday, Dec. 28 at 5:21 am EST. This is the Cancer Full Moon, in which the Moon opposes the Capricorn Sun. The Moon is in Cancer, its home sign — the sign of nourishment, raising the young, maternity, the home and the emotions.
The Capricorn Sun will be aligned with Pluto, just one degree away. The Moon will oppose the Sun and Pluto, adding an urgent quality to this lunation: emotionally urgent, something palpable and even physically visceral. This Full Moon tends to translates to ‘nourishment or death’ — or perhaps, nourish or death.
We have a strange relationship to nourishment in the era of processed foods and kids raised by daycare, TV and computer. Families are in crisis; the concept of the family is in crisis, with little to replace it; the notion of taking care of another person is straining in our era of gimme, gimme, gimme.
Because the Full Moon is happening early in the season, opposite Pluto, and therefore in a square to Uranus, this event is linked to the solstice and the meta-themes of 2012. After a revolutionary 2011, 2012 was introspective and thoughtful by comparison.
Let’s take a quick look at the Sabian symbol for the Moon’s degree on Dec. 28. (The Sabian symbols are a set of channeled symbols created in the early 20th century, one for each degree of the zodiac, most famously interpreted by the Rev. Dr. Marc Edmund Jones and then by Dane Rudhyar.)
The symbol for the Moon at 8 Cancer is, “A group of rabbits dressed in human clothes walk as if on parade.” Rudhyar in his book An Astrological Mandala explains that this represents, “The tendency in all forms of life to imitate higher forms as a stimulus to growth.”
If nothing else, we’ve had plenty of growth stimuli this past year: a series of inner planet retrogrades, Venus transiting the Sun, the beginning of the Uranus-Pluto squares, a much-hyped solstice and countless personal, social and global challenges and celebrations.
Now here we are in the days just past solstice and Christmas, on the edge of a new year. It’s a time when, if you can cut through the noise of toy ads and super-sales and carols (and this year, Mayan hype), you can start to hear the stories that actually make this season meaningful. Those are the stories of generosity and service, compassion and inclusion, gratitude and love. Not the latest Hallmark Cards TV special. I mean those everyday acts of kindness, done with humility, that can turn someone’s day (or even their life) around.
It’s unclear what to imagine in terms of a “higher life form” to emulate. Right now we could learn a lot from emulating allegedly ‘lower’ forms of life, such as cats and dogs, who have neither forgotten how to take care of their little ones, nor refuse to do so.