by Robert Wilkinson
This Full Moon should bring fulfillment, recognition, and forms of closure wherever we have late Virgo and late Pisces in our charts.
This distributive, practical, dislodging, and destiny-shifting Full Moon bringing recognition, closure, long term passages, and powerful new openings occurs at 12:05 pm PDT, 3:05 pm EDT, and 8:05 pm BST on September 16, and falls at the 25th degree of Virgo-Pisces. 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 cooperating with others!
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.
This is the fourth Full Moon where the Full Moon Sun is the same as the Sun sign of the previous New Moon. I’ll explain the importance of where we’ve been and where we’re going 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, this Lunar Eclipse fulfills the recent Solar Eclipse. To learn more about that powerful Eclipse at 10 Virgo, please check out the recent articles The Annular Solar Eclipse at 10 Virgo Pt. 2 - What’s Happening in August-Sept 2016 (links to previous parts at the bottom of that article) as well as The Annular New Moon Eclipse at 10 Virgo Pt. 3 - Signs, Sabian Symbols, and What It All Means.
This continues the prototype we’ll be experiencing for many months! This one offers us the ability to use the light of the New Moon in Virgo and the willingness, training, and the dawning of a new day you’re been seeing and expressing since the New Moon, and give it form and focus to see how to organize and express whatever needs expression.
An Overview
This Full Moon brings forth forms of fulfillment for jobs well done, and many things from the past can be reviewed anew to let go of those which are no longer needed in your ego structure or life. This purifies us of all useless material as we receive concentrated doses of spiritual energy, and brings a new magnetism for those who have been courageous and focused the higher Will through their little wills.
The losses we’ll go through the next 4 months will create space for incredible happiness to come forth, with crucial turning points promised by the Moon triseptile Venus and Jupiter biseptile Pluto, creating major shifts in areas where we have Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. As you can see, this Eclipse will lead to changes across a wide swath of our lives!
And, because Jupiter is setting the Grand Irrationality into motion via the biseptile, I’d say there will be huge new Jupiter in Libra developments to come these next few months. That would imply some Jupiterians will leave the world stage, and others will show up!
We’ve all navigated some powerful Mutable T-square due to recent transits in early Virgo, capped by the Solar T Eclipse two weeks ago. A lot has been fractured via the Mutable T-squares and Grand Mutable Cross since the beginning of the year, and we get echoes each time the Moon squares or opposed Saturn or Neptune. In this chart, the Mutable T is just past, but the driver Mars is in tight trine to Uranus from a degree of happiness, so how bad could that be? Even the Saturn square Neptune is now past, and in this chart the Sun quintiles Saturn and Mars quintiles Neptune, giving high specialization for those with planets in 5th harmonic degree zones made by those two quintiles.
We are now in a time when we’ll have shifting Jones Patterns. We’re no longer in the Bucket with Jupiter as the handle for focusing all the other planetary energies, and like last month, since the Sun, Venus, Mercury and Jupiter are all clustered in Virgo, this Full Moon Eclipse is an approximate Bowl pattern. Right now the Moon determines whether we’re in a Locomotive, Bucket, or Splay pattern.
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.
As noted earlier, the Grand Irrationality is triggered by Jupiter at 2 Libra in this Eclipse. This indicates a huge pressure of externalizing some form of Jupiter energy relative to the larger Plutonic forces active right now. Changes are front and center over the next 4 months! At this time, the current seven “hot zone” spans that trigger the Grand Irrationality are approximately 10-14 Leo, 1-5 Libra, 23-27 Scorpio , 15-19 Capricorn, 7-11 Pisces, 28 Aries-2 Taurus, and 19-23 Gemini.
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. In this Eclipse, the Plutonic energy part of the equation is set off by Jupiter.
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.
Planetary Distribution
In this Full Moon, the span occupied by the inner planets (in this chart Mercury in Virgo through Venus in Libra spans 34+ degrees. Once the inner planets catch up to Mars beginning October 2016, then we’ll again begin to have significant clusters in a very narrow span. For now, we have a focus of 4 planets in the 34+ degrees between the Mercury and Venus, making mid-Virgo through late Libra very active these next two weeks (and 4 months!). This month we have the 10 traditional planets occupying 6 signs, in a widespread distribution.
Currently, the occupied span begins with the Mercury retrograde in Virgo, and proceeds through planets in Virgo, Libra, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Pisces, and Aries. If would qualify as a See Saw but for the 49 degree span between Venus and Saturn, which traditionally would not be wide enough to warrant the See Saw classification. Though there is not a clear half empty that usually determines a Bowl, in this case the Venus opposition Uranus defines the axis of opposition that will get more defined as planets move through Libra and leave late Aries through Virgo unoccupied. So I believe we’re living within a forming Bowl pattern.
The Bowl Pattern and how it works
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 Mercury retrograde leading this Bowl pattern, it shows this is another look back before leaping forward. Use retrograde Virgo energies to open experience. Organize, practice, learn, experiment, and cooperate. This retrograde quality looking back to find “inner guidance” will be the entry to new experience. It may involve taking a new look at recent forms of training in social setups.
Is the Sun Following the Moon, or the Moon Following the Sun?
We now have finished the pattern of the Full Moon Sun falling in a different sign than the Sun of the previous New Moon. This is the fourth Full Moon echoing the pattern we last had between September 2013 and September 2014, and we have left behind the “reversed pattern” we have been in since then.
So we’re now in many months of the “natural” order of Lunation Suns, since the last New Moon Sun was in Virgo, and this Full Moon Sun is also in Virgo. Since the New Moon offers us seeds in the first half of the month’s lunar cycle, and fulfillment in the second half, we now have the “Seed Light” of Virgo that will come to a Full Moon illumination through the current Sun in Virgo and Moon in Pisces.
A New Look At Mercury Retrograde
Because we’ll still be dealing with Mercury retrograde through September 21-22 (and to some extent for the 2 weeks after that while Mercury is still in its shadow zone), if you’re new to the site and haven’t already obtained your copy, you can find out all you need by getting a copy of my award winning 2nd edition of A New Look At Mercury Retrograde. It offers in-depth information about Mercury retrograde in the various signs and houses, and what the Mercury Retrograde phenomenon is about.
By knowing more about 2014's Mercury retrograde periods in Pisces/Aquarius, Cancer/Gemini, and Scorpio/Libra, as well as 2015’s Mercury retrograde periods in Aquarius, Gemini, and Libra, you may see patterns in what was going on in your life, what you were taking a new look at and why, and how this "looking back" influenced your choices as you moved through past events. And taking a look forward beyond the current retrograde we see Mercury retrograde in Capricorn and Sagittarius in December 2016 and January 2017. It’s all in the book!
Here's the Amazon link to the page where you can purchase a paperback edition of A New Look at Mercury Retrograde. You can also get a Kindle ebook at that site, or go to Barnes and Noble for a copy on Nook. (Please note that if you go to amazon, make sure you're ordering the 2015 edition, and not the earlier one. There are plenty of used ones for sale, but they are far inferior to the newest edition.)
See you in the near future with parts three and four, where we will explore the Sabian Symbols, aspects, and other important chart factors.
© Copyright 2016 Robert Wilkinson
Hi Robert. I was just realizing that the eclipse tommorow in 24 pisces is conjunct my ascendant, as well as north node, and trines my mars. I was searching google for lunar eclipse conjunct ascendant, and the article you wrote, when the eclipse conjuncted your ascendant in 1989 came up. funny things is that right now i have similar feelings uncertainty of knowing what the future holds, and I currently also reside in Texas - Houston. I have been contemplating moving back to the place of my birth and upbringing for some time now, but I feel somewhat stuck and question whether thats really the right decision. I moved to Houston 5 years ago after being hired by a company which I ended up leaving after 3 and a half years after finding myself unhappy and burnt out. Since then I have attempted to make a home for myself, but I don't think this is my place. Ive also not yet found a stable full time job and source of income. I feel like I need complete reorientation in all areas of my life - work and finances, love and relationships. Im hoping this eclipse sheds some light on what I need to do to find happiness and fullfilment
Posted by: Symara | September 15, 2016 at 08:52 PM
"It may involve taking a new look at recent forms of training in social setups". And thank goodness. Whatever was I trying to comply with. The confirmation came from two other peeps this week who have experience in those same exact social setups. Unreal looking back at it in a new light.
Posted by: caliban | September 17, 2016 at 09:33 AM