by Robert Wilkinson
We have a Penumbral Eclipse Full Moon coming soon! This initiating, idealistic, active, inspired, and individualizing Full Moon focusing balanced interactions of heart fire occurs on March 23, 2016, at 5:01 am PDT, 8:01 am EDT, and 12:01 pm GMT and falls at the 4th degree of Libra and Aries. As with all Full Moons, use the light you’ve been seeing and expressing since the New Moon, and give it form and focus through the standards you embraced in 2009.
Today’s Full Moon post will be an overview of the Lunation and some of its primary qualities. In parts 3 and 4 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 Total Solar Eclipse of March 2016 Pt. 1 – Who Does it Affect and For How Long, as well as The Total Solar Eclipse at 19 Pisces Pt. 2 – What’s Happening in March-April 2016 and through 2020 and The Total Solar Eclipse New Moon at 19 Pisces Pt. 3 - Signs, Sabian Symbols, and What It All Means.
An Overview
This is an extremely important Eclipse that picks up and continues the Aries/Libra Eclipses from last year that are helping us clear out elements of our past in these signs and the houses where the early degrees of these signs fall. As with the past two Lunations, we have major spiritual aspects in play this Full Moon, as well as the Grand Irrationality thanks to the Moon making a biseptile to Pluto and a triseptile to Neptune, showing the world will be at a turning point in its Aries-Libra affairs.
This Eclipse will help us remove all that would obstruct us. Our “will to wholeness” will blow up all that has been held back, and many old complexes will be left in the rearview mirror of our lives. This Eclipse is transformational, and show us the way to greater skills as well as a “camouflage” for those who need it because of the spiritual work they’re doing in the world.
We’ll all experience a heightened awareness of our world and others in it, which will lead to new ways to see how we’ve been mentored or are being mentored into living at a different, higher level of existence. Go for the big picture, and how you play a special part within that big picture. This can show us how we are an inspiration to others, or are fulfilling some important needs in the collective field.
Jupiter retrograde leads the occupied span, and is re-tracing ground we covered in the Autumn of 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. Because of Jupiter’s Sabian symbol, there is a lot of education going on through experimental actions that are breaking up whatever has held us back from being a more effective person up to now.
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 as I noted earlier, we now have the Moon biseptile Pluto and triseptile Neptune. This makes the next two weeks (and 4+ months!) 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 allies and a balanced perspective as critical choices arise. 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, 2-6 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 53d 04m 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 six novile series aspects. These are Moon quadranovile Venus, Mercury and the Sun trinovile Mars, Mars binovile Jupiter and novile 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 four Elftile series (11th harmonic) aspects, showing a lot of faith will be require to overcome some dualistic conditions. The Moon is just separating from a pentelftile to Uranus, Venus is exactly trielftile Mars, and Mercury and the Sun are both pentelftile Jupiter. We also have a vigintile (20th harmonic) from the Moon to Jupiter, and a quindecile (15th harmonic) from Mercury and the Sun to Pluto. 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 Sagittarius through Sun in Aries) is a wide spread of 127+ degrees, and includes 3 signs. Within that spread we have a concentration of 5 planets within a 39+ degree span. That makes Pisces and Aries very active these next two weeks (and 18 weeks). This month we have the 10 traditional planets occupying 6 signs, in a widespread distribution.
This Lunation creates an occupied span of 224 degrees that begins with Jupiter in mid-Virgo, then moves through Moon in Libra and the planets in Sagittarius, Capricorn, Pisces, and ends with Uranus in mid-Aries. Because Jupiter in Virgo leads the occupied span through the rest of the planets and ends with Uranus in Aries, it creates a modified “Bowl” Jones chart pattern.
Jupiter in Virgo is still of major importance because it is conjunct the North Node. This position of Jupiter shows that we need to take the humor, vision, sensitivity and and heart strengths we cultivated when Jupiter in Cancer and Leo leading and/or focusing the changing configurations of late 2013 throughout 2014 and 2015, 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 Bowl 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 “Bowl Pattern” and how does it work?
This type of spread, with all the planets occupying approximately half of the signs with an empty half opposite the occupies half, creates a “special type of conscious selfhood,” which Dr. Jones says “marks the Bowl type of temperament. He goes on to state “Fundamentally it is an extreme self-containment,” which “holds things, and a Bowl individual is one who always has something to bear.”
He goes on to state that with the Bowl, “the whole dynamic of man, his total power of achievement, arises in his instinctive realization that he is set off against a definite part of the world, that there is a complete segment of experience from which he is excluded in some subtle fashion. The Bowl not only holds something, but also places whatever it holds into relationship with a larger consideration.”
Dr. Jones continues that “the occupied segment of the Bowl horoscope reveals the activity and organization of the self, since planets are significant according to their place by sign and house, and the unoccupied segment becomes a challenge to existence, or the need and emptiness to which the native must direct his attention. The outstanding characteristic of the Bowl temperament is its marked sense of what is self-contained in contrast with what the self cannot hold, and this take an everyday form in an advocacy of some cause, the furtherance of a mission, an introspective concern over the purpose of experience.”
He concludes his explanation of how the pattern works with “The Bowl native always has something to give to his fellows, whether literally or psychologically, whether constructively or vindictively, because his orientation to the world arises from division; that is, frustration and uncertainty. The leading planets, determined in exactly the same way as for the Locomotive pattern, give a point of application, and shows where and how the native seeks to carry out his mission or gain his everyday justification for existence.”
He brings up another important point of analysis, as he states “the leading planet is of secondary importance in the Bowl pattern, unless it is found in a strong opposition or cosmic cross. The fundamental attack on the problems of life by the Bowl individual is indicated more significantly by the tilt or house-position of the Bowl-segment.”
He concludes this section by stating “the Bowl character is definitely more self-expending, or self-seeking, and more practically interested in what things mean and what they are. It continually throws the emphasis from the signs into the houses. It a general way the Bowl tends to ‘scoop up’ things and initiate experience when the position of the leading planet ranges from the fourth cusp, up and over the ascendant, to the midheaven cusp, and then inclines to “capture” things or consummate various phases of life when the leading planet is placed similarly from the tenth angle down over the descendant to the nadir.”
With Jupiter as the lead planet in this Bowl pattern, open to experience with a discerning eye to what fits where in the bigger picture, and organize a plan or series of plans that will yield practical innovation or the ability to “apprentice” in a way that opens doors to a larger life and effectiveness. Jupiter teaches us lessons involving Wealth v Poverty, and how our consciousness shows whether we are “grasping circumstances with abundance or neediness.
With Jupiter leading the planetary parade, we can see if we’re using time, energy, or money effectively, and open to the eternal abundance of the Universe and accept what we need when we need it. And because Jupiter always searches for truth and bestows mercy according to our faith, be led back to your innocence, or allow your divine discrimination to help you see techniques of learning and teaching innocence in some emotional or social context.
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 19 Pisces, while this Full Moon Sun is at 4 Aries.
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 universal spiritual signs and signals represented by Pisces and comes to a Full Moon illumination through the initiatives of the current Sun in Aries.
See you in the near future with parts three and four, where we will explore the Sabian Symbols, aspects, and other important chart factors.
For more about Eclipses in general, how they are timed for effects, and other seldom considered considerations (con = "to be with" + sider = "the stars"), please check out the previous articles in this series:
Astrology in March 2016 - On The Threshold of a Penumbral Lunar Eclipse at 4 Libra-Aries
© Copyright 2016 Robert Wilkinson
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