From Deconstruction to Culmination and Beyond

By Len Wallick

At 1:03 pm EDT the Moon in early Pisces exacts its opposition to the Sun in early Virgo, less than two days after the Sun has entered the new sign. An opposition is when two are directly across the circle of the zodiac from each other, 180 degrees apart, with Earth in between. The opposition of Sol and Luna is what we refer to as a Full Moon. It happens every 29 days or so.

Conceptually, the Full Moon represents the culmination of whatever started when the Sun and Moon were conjoined, otherwise known as the New Moon. Keeping in mind that our objective for this week is to get and stay oriented, let’s back up a bit and do just that.

The big picture — the cardinal T-square —  remains in place, and this Full Moon connects to it from many angles. Get out your paper and writing instrument once again. Draw a circle then draw a cross in the circle. The four parts of the circle are the seasons, the lines are where the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn) begin. It takes the Sun a year to go around the circle, counter-clockwise. When it crosses one of the four lines, a new season begins.

Jupiter is retrograde in eaerly Aries and Saturn is direct in early Libra. Their opposition is separating but still functional; we can still feel it. Pluto is retrograde in early Capricorn. It’s square (90 degrees or a right angle away from) to both Jupiter and Saturn is likewise separating but continues to be operative. This is the current rendition of the cardinal T-square. Expansion on the one side, represented by Jupiter. Contraction of the other side, represented by Saturn. A pushing in and pushing out at the same time, creating a shape like two hands shaping clay on a potters wheel. The nature of that shape is being mediated by Pluto, the planet of transformation and metamorphosis, located in the sign of the established order.

Uranus is still a functional part of the T-square but it is retrograde in Pisces now with its own fish to fry for the moment. Just ask the people of Pakistan.

The message is clear. A new set of paradigms is being formed. Paradigms that will determine the shape of the future for a long time to come. The fact that this set of aspects among slow-moving planets is taking place at or near the first degrees of the cardinal signs also has a clear implication. All human beings are participating in this process, all at the same time. Everything we do every day carries weight and contributes to the process. Never has the responsibility been heavier. Never has the opportunity been greater. It is in how we practice our relationships that the final shape of the future will be determined.

In order to move our understanding of the cardinal T-square from the intellect to the body, we asked you to step outside weather permitting, about three hours after the glow of the Sun has vanished from the West. There to see is Jupiter, climbing out of the East, along the ecliptic, glowing steadily, easily distinguished from the twinkling stars. Turning your left side towards Jupiter, pointing up towards it with your left hand. At the same time extending your right arm down at the same angle your left arm is extended up, thus locating the approximate position of Saturn and knowing that somewhere in the direction you are facing is Pluto.

Tonight you can do the same thing with the Moon. Side on, point up. the other arm down and away towards where the Sun is tracing its course over and around the horizon. Then, once gain, when you go to bed think about your body and its relationship to the directions of north, south, east and west.

This particular Full Moon links two mutable signs. Virgo is a mutable earth sign. Pisces is mutable water. As reviewed yesterday, the time that the Sun is in a mutable sign can be seen as a period when the energetic signature of the current season is being deconstructed in preparation for the next. The fact that the luminaries are in the second degree of their respective signs places them in precise aspect to and connects them with the cardinal T-square.

Now, at this point it is important to note that the word deconstruction does not mean destruction. We are speaking of cycles, not linear processes. Properly speaking, there is no beginning and no end, only a gradual process of transition that repeats itself on a regular and predictable timetable. These cycles engage with other cycles great and small each informing the other. Such is synchronicity. Although each of us may favor one season over others, we must allow each one to pass on its own schedule, being present to the opportunities and challenges of each phase while maintaining a perspective that the phase will ultimately return. Thus we place our awareness in the present and our actions can be in harmony with the whole.

It is also important to note that the culmination of the Moon’s monthly cycle does not mean an end. It is only a crest of reflection that will gradually cycle into a trough of introspection before growing in the light to return once again.

So it is that this culminating point of the monthly lunar cycle coheres with the deconstructive point of the solar cycle which takes place four times annually. Both cycles in turn, find themselves in synchrony with the orientation of the trans-personal planets, Saturn and Jupiter, operating in opposition and demonstrating how our personal lives connect with the cycles of history, as represented by the outer planets.

One further source of orienting ourselves to the present, is the Sun — how it connects to what has been done and what we may yet consider, representing our conscious and creative selves. The Sun is not alone in the second degree of Virgo today. Indeed, the Sun is in a four-way conjunction with three minor planets, just arc minutes apart: Sphinx, Orcus, and Elatus.

Sphinx, with its leonine ambiance, reminds us the Full Moon it opposes carries the ripening of what was initiated with the Leo New Moon earlier in the month. Orcus, an object which crosses the orbit of Neptune, causes us to reflect on the fate of its namesakes,  the cetaceans, our cerebral brothers and sisters who dwell in the oceans. Mammals, who are self-aware, social, like us, and at or near the top of a food chain increasingly compromised. Unlike us, their consciousness is not one of dominion over the Earth, but rather one of harmony with it. In opposition to the Full Moon, we are brought to reflect on what we have done to cetaceans and ourselves in the brief era since the planet Neptune was discovered 165 years ago.

Finally, also in conjunction with the Sun and opposed to the Moon, the centaur Elatus. Like all centaur planets, it is associated with shadow material – the residue of the past that we bring to the present, coloring our response to the now.

In mythology, Elatus was first and fatally stuck by the same arrow that continued on to wound Chiron. It was discovered on October 29, 1999 – ten years to the day before Saturn’s first square with Pluto in our current cardinal T-square. Its discovery degree in Taurus was nearly the same as the discovery degree of Chiron on November 1, 1977. In other words the two have very nearly the same discovery Sun in Scorpio. Finally, Chiron is today in the 29th degree of Aquarius, conjunct the Full Moon, albeit in different signs.

In other words, the axis of today’s Full Moon is very nearly the same as the opposition of Elatus and Chiron. Their opposition started in 2003 when Uranus ingressed Pisces. It has been functionally continuous all this time and will remain so for another five years, about the time Uranus will have concluded its series of seven square aspects with Pluto and the die of our cardinal T-square will have been cast. This concurrence of oppositions today is a sobering one.

Just as Elatus and Chiron are bound in mythology and in astronomy, so today’s Full Moon and the astrological relationships it connects with are bound to their opposition. This implicitly unites the shorter cycles with the longer aspects and links the Sun to Pluto and everything in between with a single tension. The resolution of that tension will be determined by whether we choose consciously to survive as a species and at what cost. And like any other day, it begins now.

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