by Robert Wilkinson
This distributive, practical, adaptive, and culminative Full Moon illuminating how to move through intensified relationships expressed in organized expansive work occurs Feb 22 at 10:20 am PST, 1:20 pm EST, 6:20 pm GMT, and falls at the 4th degree of Pisces and Virgo. As with all Full Moons at this time, use the light of the Aquarius blessing you’ve been seeing and expressing since the New Moon, and give it form and focus to see how to move things forward in newer, more effective ways.
Today’s Full Moon post will be an overview of the Lunation and some of its primary qualities. In parts 2 and 3 we’ll cover the Sabian Symbols, aspects, distributions, and patterns.
We’ve now been in many months where the Full Moon Sun is not the same as the Sun sign of the previous New Moon. I’ll explain the importance of this later in this article. Because the New Moon preceding the Full Moon always represents the seed forms that are brought to surface at and after the Full Moon, please check out the recent New Moon articles The New Moon in Aquarius Pt. 1 – What’s Happening in February-March 2016 as well as The February 2016 New Moon in Aquarius Pt. 2 - Signs, Sabian Symbols, and What It All Means.
An Overview
This is an extremely important Lunation, since the Sun now begins its yearly Neptune cycle and Venus and Mercury show us a bigger picture and cosmic mutations. As with last month, we have major spiritual aspects in play this Full Moon, as well as the Grand Irrationality thanks to Mars making the first of a series of septiles to Pluto and biseptiles to Neptune, giving us portents of things in play through July.
This Full Moon will illuminate how we have trained to “fly by the seat of our pants,” and though it could get very cloudy or foggy, we already have the skills we’ll need to move into a higher view and awareness of our evolutionary process. This will tune us in to collective consciousness, and show us how to adapt based in our innocent instincts. During the next two weeks, we can take the integrity we’re been demonstrating through what we’ve released since the last New Moon and see how we’ve being educated, or educating others, on the social-emotional level of life. And due to the Moon in Virgo with Jupiter and the North Node in Virgo taking some very powerful spiritual aspects, the next two weeks bring rolling spiritual realizations and a further development of the practical seeds of material productivity.
Now that Jupiter is retrograde, we’re re-tracing ground we covered in late 2015. This is a review of opportunities that have opened in the past few months, with the need to take a new look at whatever Jupiterian promise we have received.
By May, when it goes stationary direct in mid-Virgo conjunct the degrees where Venus and Mars conjuncted it last October, we will see rapid forward movement on both personal and social levels, even with Mars still retrograde at that time. And it is conjunct the North Node for many months, showing our generic line of greatest development involves “the expansive principle” being pushed to a greater effectiveness.
Is the Grand Irrationality A Factor in this Full Moon?
The Grand Irrationality, along with the other non-rational configurations that happen off and on, indicate that we’ve been living in an era of very heavy decisions determining the future destiny of humanity since 1993. To refresh you, the Grand Irrationality is a long wave configuration set into motion every time a planet makes a conjunction, septile, biseptile, or triseptile to Neptune and Pluto. Septile series aspects show us points in time when our future destiny is precipitated by critical choices made in the present.
This Lunation directly triggers the Grand Irrationality, since we now have Mars septile Pluto and biseptile Neptune for the first of three times it will make these aspects. That makes the period between now and late July very important in terms of global events. We can certainly expect affected areas of our charts into “forks in the road of destiny,” and many will find they need efficiency in adapting to changing locations and circumstances. Much will be put on the move over the next 5 months, and NOW is the point where it’s jumpstarted!
Because this configuration involves Neptune and Pluto, the outermost spiritual planets, they show a long wave evolutionary crisis for the entire human race. Since 1993, at one point or another, everyone on Earth has experienced a nonstop energy of having to choose, at the bottom of our beings, the path to evolution or devolution, progress or regress, love or fear, joy or control. It’s why things have been so weird, irrational, and hard-edged.
At this time, the current seven “hot zone” spans that trigger the Grand Irrationality are approximately 11-15 Leo, 3-7 Libra, 24-28 Scorpio, 16-20 Capricorn, 8-12 Pisces, 29 Aries-3 Taurus, and 20-24 Gemini.
This is one of the last Full Moons for many months where the configuration will be powerfully active, since the Neptune septile Pluto is separating, slowly but surely. We are now moving through Winter when is it is strongest, since the aspect is still very close, being 52d 32m in this chart.
As we move into Spring, Neptune and Pluto will separate in distance, and unlike the past 22 years, by Summer they will no longer be in septile. Winter is when they are closest, but by Summer they’ll be too wide to be a septile. We’re now slowly moving out of the configuration, and within a few years Neptune and Pluto will be back in long term sextile, as they were for most of the last half of the 20th century.
At this time, the Grand Irrationality gains strength as we move through Autumn and into Winter, and will again lessen in strength in the late Winter into the Spring and Summer. As I’ve explained in other articles, that means that in the Autumn and Winter (in the Northern Hemisphere) they operate as a simultaneous “pulse,” since they’re both aspected near the same time. But in the Spring and Summer we experience it as a rolling influence, with first Pluto aspected, and then Neptune at some time after that, depending on which planet is doing the aspect to these planets.
Important Factors
This Lunation brings us a mixed bag of forming aspects which I’ll discuss in parts 2 & 3. In this chart, there are four novile series aspects. These are Moon binovile Mars, Sun binovile Saturn, Jupiter trinovile Pluto, and Uranus novile Neptune. These all put thing into gestation, or show a time when many things we’ve been waiting for will finally come forth.
Besides these powerful spiritual aspects, we also have three septile-series aspects. Besides the Mars aspects triggering the Grand Irrationality, we also find Venus is septile Saturn, showing a major turning point in this year’s Saturn lessons, where manifestations of cosmic mutations can come forth in forms that free us from “local conditions!” Be alertly ready to act, and don’t fall into distress at not knowing what’s coming or when.
We also have three Elftile series (11th harmonic) aspects, showing a lot of faith will be require to overcome some dualistic conditions. Mercury is bielftile Uranus, the Sun is pentelftile Jupiter, and Mars is bielftile Jupiter. The Sun is just separating trielftile Mars, which of course opens void points in other signs to each of these. These subtle but powerful spiritual aspects will bring their own interlocking influence to the party.
In this Full Moon, the span occupied by the inner planets (in this chart Mars in Scorpio through Sun in Pisces) is a wide spread of 98+ degrees, and includes 5 signs. Within that spread we have 4 planets within a 32+ degree span. That makes Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces very active these next two weeks. This month we have the 10 traditional planets occupying 7 signs, in a widespread distribution.
This Lunation creates an occupied span of 224 degrees that begins with the Moon in early Virgo, then moves through Jupiter in late Virgo and the planets in Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, and ends with Uranus in mid-Aries. Because the Moon in Virgo now leads the occupied span between Jupiter in Virgo and Uranus in Aries, it creates a “Locomotive” Jones chart pattern, where we lead with Moon and Jupiter in Virgo and close with Uranus in Aries.
Even though the Moon will no longer lead the pattern next month, Jupiter in Virgo is still of major importance because it leads the occupied half while conjunct the North Node. This position of Jupiter shows that we need to take the humor, vision, and heart strengths we cultivated when Jupiter in Leo was the leading planet of the Locomotive in 2014, and find ways to reclaim that power and vision in a practical form.
Be willing to experiment and be educated, or be experimental when called to educate another. Improve your effectiveness in forms of group interaction and training, since the next two weeks we can improve our social cooperation and effectiveness.
We can use the Jupiterian vision and optimism in precise ways to initiate concentrated Virgo actions. Because the leading edge of the Locomotive is in Earth and the closing edge is in Fire, keep opening to a simple, grounded practicality and enjoyment of life, and close cycles of activity with an inspired individuality that knows when to hang tough and when to withdraw from agitated people and circumstances.
So What is a “Locomotive Pattern” and how does it work?
This type of spread, with all the planets occupying 2/3 of the signs with an empty third, creates an imbalance that leads to power if we can find the compensatory “weight” to make things move forward smoothly rather than rock side to side creating friction. Target what is needed, and provide compensatory energies accordingly.
As Marc Jones put it, “this type of horoscope reveals a balance of this sort in the life. A third part of things… consisting of a free span in experience, is set against a two-thirds part, embracing a related but limited span in experience…. The basis of the dynamic is found in the native’s resulting strong sense of a lack or a need, of a problem to be solved, a task to be achieved in the social and intellectual world around him.”
Dr. Jones states “The temperament reveals a self-driving individuality, an executive eccentricity that is not … unbalance but rather is power. It exhibits a dynamic and exceptionally practical capacity which is neither the broad universality of the Splash pattern, nor the special obsession with some particularly narrowed aspect of experience characteristic of the Bundle people.
He goes on to state “The Locomotive classification is … moved more by external factors in the environment than by aspects of its own character. The point of application for the powers of the self is shown … by the “leading planet,” or the one of the two in the empty trine which forms its aspect clockwise in the zodiac, irrespective of any distinction as “applying” or “separating.”
The Moon is the leading planet in the Locomotive. Find appropriate Virgo forms of expressing things so they take relevant shape in your life, and be willing to adapt anything that makes your fellowships work better. Be practical and expansive as you educate others and are educated yourself, and find balanced ways to “live rhythmically” and preserve potency by avoiding extremes.
As the Locomotive keeps things out of balance, the Moon is now the front end to finding the way of initiating activity that must be accompanied by a compensatory “weight” to keep things moving forward rather than sideways. The more we work with the imbalances that can lead us to understand why we’re having to stand for what we believe is venerable and exercise with others in teamwork, the easier it will be to use the Moon’s energies skillfully.
Is the Sun Following the Moon, or the Moon Following the Sun?
We now continue the pattern of the Full Moon Sun falling in a different sign than the Sun of the previous New Moon. We’ve now completed the “normal” pattern we last experienced between September 2013 and September 2014, and are now in the “reversed pattern” we last experienced between June 2012 and August 2013, where the Full Moon Sun was in a different sign than the previous New Moon.
As I've explained in previous Full Moon articles,
... the Full Moon being in a subsequent sign than the previous New Moon indicates that what is released as realizations in the Full Moon period actually "prepares the ground" for the coming New Moon seed. Strange reversal of function, since you would think the New Moon provides the seed for the next Full Moon. But this set of Lunations works the opposite way....Another way to look at this is the Sun sign of the Full Moon is the same as and precedes the Sun sign of the next New Moon, reversing the usual way Lunations work. So the fulfillment of the Full Moon sets up the next "seed" to be revealed at the next New Moon....
The first New Moon in the new pattern had the Sun at 30 Aquarius in February 2015, with the Full Moon Sun at 15 Pisces in March. The second New Moon was the Solar Eclipse at 30 Pisces, with the following Full Moon Sun at 15 Aries. The third had the New Moon Sun at 29 Aries, and the Sun at the next Full Moon at 14 Taurus. The fourth had the New Moon Sun at 26 Gemini, and the last Full Moon Sun is at 10 Cancer. The last New Moon was at 20 Aquarius, while this Full Moon Sun is at 4 Pisces.
So we’re at the far end of “the other” natural pattern, and will return to the pattern of the “natural” order of Lunation Suns beginning in June 2016 with the New Moon in Gemini and the subsequent Full Moon Sun also in Gemini. Since the New Moon offers us seeds in the first half of the month’s lunar cycle, and fulfillment in the second half, and we’re still in the stage of different Sun signs at the Lunations, this one takes the “Seed Light” of spiritual signs and signals represented by Aquarius and comes to a Full Moon illumination through the universality of the current Sun in Pisces.
See you in the near future with parts two and three, where we will explore the Sabian Symbols, aspects, and other important chart factors.
© Copyright 2016 Robert Wilkinson
Oh dear, there's more on the way? I should be happy to refine what has already come to light.
Posted by: caliban | February 21, 2016 at 10:35 AM
Thank you Robert for a e- mail about my son's suicide it has helped me more than any counselor or therapy , I just am so grateful for the words or wisdom. Sheryl smith. Lithia , Florida February 2016 bless you
Posted by: Sheryl. Smith | February 22, 2016 at 07:30 AM
Robert, I would like to express my deep gratitude for your mindful study and sharing. As I sit in silence under the Full Moon, in a friend's home in Hawai'i Kai this morning, your writings help clarify and give me a deeper sense of peace, understanding, hope, and joy. Namaste' Brother.
I am grateful for our dear Brother Clay Uptain for introducing me to your writings so many years ago where I live in the Black Hills.
In Light and Love. Good day.
Posted by: Anni Harjes | February 22, 2016 at 12:20 PM