by Robert Wilkinson
This Full Moon will pull us deeper into the Mystery of our purpose, and Venus triggering 3 points of the Rhombus Diamond octile promises more grinding and polishing! Keep things at a high level, and you’ll do fine. Despite cross currents, Saturn’s steady hand offers us practice in self-sufficiency as we link “the Above and the below” within us to find a revelation. This Full Moon continues the adventure into transformation promised by the New Moon.
This purifying, stabilizing, and powerfully magnetic Full Moon occurs at 10:23 pm PDT November 3, 1:23 am EDT and 5:23 pm GMT November 4, and falls at the 12th degree of Taurus and Scorpio. Continuing the theme that proceeds at each Full Moon as they move through each polarity, this one gives us the ability to use the light of an intense probing scrutiny and give it form and focus through simple pleasures, enjoyable experiences, and “windowshopping” to find what we need to ground what we want to show to the world.
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.
An Overview
This Full Moon in Scorpio-Taurus stabilizes the magnetic flow, while making things more efficient through restructuring and/or eliminating all that would impede the flow. This one is renewing, purifying, intensifying, and allows each of us to greet others from the highest level of social style we can express. This period brings benefits to those who know when and how to move between “hard power” and “soft power,” between will and love, between mind and heart.
Like the last Full Moon, the opposition to Uranus and sesquisquare to Neptune indicates a lot of agitation spurring us to deeper transformation. This is the final transit of the inner planets through late Libra creating this configuration, so perhaps we can find value and appreciation for the “cutting, grinding, and polishing” we’ve been through in recent weeks.
Besides that configuration, this chart has only one other challenging aspect, the widely forming semisquare from Jupiter to Saturn. This is the first “death blow” to the cycle that began with their May 2000 conjunction at 23 Taurus. Even now the seeds of what will begin at the Great Mutation of 2020 are beginning to take shape. 2020 features Saturn conjunct Pluto at 23 Capricorn, followed by Jupiter’s two conjunctions with Pluto at 25 Capricorn that Spring and Summer, culminating in the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction at 1 Aquarius in December. I’ll write more about that very important period in coming months.
We’ve now moved into a time period of shifting Jones pattern. The patterns change mainly due to the position of the Moon, and at this Full Moon, we’ve again returned to a combination of a “Bowl” and “See Saw” pattern. I’ll explain more later in this article.
Venus is the Final dispositor for all the other planets, making her the major influence behind the scenes in this chart. I’ll discuss the ruling dispositors in another article. At this time, Jupiter leads the Sun, making this an expansive, “breaking through and breaking away” Full Moon where a sense of adventure, compassion, and forgiveness as we let go will be the path to the Light.
Is the Grand Irrationality A Factor in this Full Moon?
The Grand Irrationality, along with the other outer planet non-rational configurations that happen off and on throughout the year, 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.
In this Full Moon, Mercury, the Guide of Souls, triggers the Grand Irrationality by making a forming biseptile to Neptune as is barely separates from a septile to Pluto. This is the first in a series of triggers that will be set off successively as the other inner planets move through late Scorpio. Each of these represents a “fork in the road of destiny” for those affected, as well as humanity as a whole.
These most recently have been triggered as the inner planets made a biseptile to Pluto at 3-6 Libra and to Neptune at 7-10 Libra. These began in mid-September via Mercury, followed by the Sun Sept 24 through Oct 2. Venus triggered it during the third week of October, and Mars has been closing the deal between October 23 and now.
This is an extraordinarily powerful time, since as you read this, when the Moon moves into the very early Taurus zone the morning of Nov 3, we’ll have Mars in the Libra zone, Mercury in the Scorpio zone, and the Moon in the early Taurus zone. That means we currently have four planets active, and during a brief period will have FIVE planets active in the 7 pointed Star pattern, and of course, the Ascendant will pass through the two voids each day, so expect MAJOR developments in our world the first 4 days of November!
At this time, the current seven “hot zone” spans that trigger the Grand Irrationality are approximately 13-17 Leo, 4-8 Libra, 25-29 Scorpio, 17-21 Capricorn, 9-13 Pisces, 1-5 Taurus, and 22-26 Gemini.
We’re now slowly moving out of the configuration, and we’ve already hit a point in time when Neptune and Pluto are beginning to form a 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. (Right now they’re 54d 23m apart, en route to their closest orb in late January when they’ll be 52d 58m apart.)
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.
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 Mars in Libra through Mercury in late Scorpio) spans 49+ degrees. Add Saturn, and the span is 77+ degrees. The span of Libra and Scorpio will be very active these next two weeks, as well as through January, and as the inner planets all move through Scorpio, we’ll begin to have a clearer hemispheric planetary spread.
At this time we have the 10 traditional planets occupying 7 signs, in an uneven widespread distribution, which is why this has elements of both a “Bowl” and “See Saw” Jones patterns. Currently, the outer planet occupied span begins with Jupiter in Scorpio, then Saturn in Sagittarius, through Pluto in Capricorn, Neptune in Pisces, and Uranus in Aries, with the inner planets now occupying Libra and Scorpio, extending the occupied span to create the Bowl. Since there is more than one forming opposition it is a clear See Saw, even if the Moon opposition Mercury is wide, and Venus is partile (1 minute!) separating opposition to Uranus.
So What is a “Seesaw Pattern” and how does it work?
This type of spread, with two or more planets on one side of the map and the others on the other side of the map, with at least one or two oppositions to define the axis of awareness, creates a “Seesaw” Jones Pattern. Where a Seesaw pattern is present, stay focused and balanced at the center while taking note of the periphery of things, and don't get off on a tangent or limb.
This pattern shows a need to be able to see both sides of any given thing, especially where there are opposing trends or views. The strength is in an ability to triangulate to angles of approach beyond the polarity that allows for progress and understanding.
As Marc Jones put it, “it reveals a less-sharpened but much more definite balancing of life emphases at opposing or contrasting points in experience. It is a persistent move to a balance which is apt to give a characteristic rhythm… The indication is not so much an uncertainly of action, or reaction, as a tendency to act at all times under a consideration of opposing views or through a sensitiveness to contrasting and antagonistic possibilities.”
He continues “the Seesaw temperament has its existence in a world of conflicts, of definite polarities. It is capable of unique achievement, through a development of unsuspected relations in life, but it is also apt to waste its energies through its improper alignment with various situations.”
He states that the ideal will show oppositions around the middle of the opposing “planetary aggregates” (clusters) and that axis will be the “focal determinator.” But, “if no such emphasis is present, the life tends to be significant at the side of the greater number of planets, or sometimes where they are concentrated most closely.”
As this falls away from the ideal, we can estimate the span from late Aries through mid-Taurus opposing the span from late Libra through mid-Scorpio is the focus of the Seesaw tendencies, since that’s where the closest oppositions fall. To note, once Mars passes its opposition to Uranus, the last Rhombus Diamond octile formed by an inner planet will have been triggered, and we won’t have any more inner planet oppositions to the outers until the planets in Taurus oppose Jupiter in Scorpio next Spring.
Is the Sun Following the Moon, or the Moon Following the Sun?
The late July New Moon in Leo was the final Lunation since June 2016 where the Full Moon Sun fell in the same sign as the Sun of the previous New Moon. That pattern happened between June 2016 and August 2017 and before then, between September 2013 and September 2014.
This is third Full Moon since the period between October 2014 and May 2016 where we again have a “reversed pattern” of the Sun of the Full Moon occupying the sign after the New Moon Sun. So we’re now in a different New Moon/Full Moon sign expression.
We finished the period of the “natural” order of Lunation Suns at the Solar Eclipse in late Leo and began the new sequence, since that Sun was in Leo, but the subsequent Full Moon Sun was 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 begin the sequence with the “Seed Light” of Libra that will come to a Full Moon illumination through the current Sun in Scorpio and Moon in Taurus.
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 begins the fulfillment of the theme of the recent New Moon at 27 Libra. You can learn more about the recent New Moon in Libra by going to The New Moon at 27 Libra Pt. 1 – What’s Happening in Oct-Nov 2017, and The October 2017 New Moon at 27 Libra Pt. 2 – Signs, Sabian Symbols, and What it All Means.
Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend
Because Saturn is important as one of the stable legs of the Fire trines happening during the current season, opening up huge love energies via the transits through Leo, it’s a great time for seeing how to blend past and future together and craft your future destiny. For those who have attempted to “ride the Fire,” you’ve learned to stabilize Electric Fire and distributive “Fire by Friction” and found ways to express these in loving, creative forms between mid-July through mid-September.
As Saturn will be in favorable aspect to Uranus for many weeks to come, it’s the key to specializing our Saturn-Uranus “dance of individualization” in our charts, bringing forth our spiritual adulthood in unique forms perfect for our fulfillment of Dharma appropriate to the houses they occupy and rule. You can learn more about mastering the Saturn and Uranus part of generating your future destiny by taking a look at the material in my book Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend. Saturn helps us give form and structure to our quest for Self-realization, and in Sag, will help bring an “expansive structure” to the Uranian energies infused with concentrated doses of spiritual energy that is making our spiritual life come alive.
Our inner Saturn gives us the power to take command of our lives and destiny. Saturn shows us those things we must master to become spiritual adults and fulfill our purpose for being alive on Earth. By knowing our Saturnian strengths, we can overcome fear and any sense of victimization or powerlessness.
It was written for both astrologers and non-astrologers, and gives the reader the power to understand why some things happened when they did. Throughout the book, it offers ways for us to “make friends” with this part of our existence and take command of our destiny. As you read each chapter, you’ll become more aware of all the factors assisting Soul growth through understanding how our Saturn lessons relate to Dharma (our Highest Spiritual Function) and various types of karma, both those we cause and those which are "Sacred Wounds" leading us to a greater compassion and understanding.
This is a book you will reference many times for many reasons, and each time you pick it up you’re sure to find undiscovered gems of insight on each page. This book can help you throw off all the attitudes and memories which have held you back from finding and living the life and purpose you’ve been searching for since you were young. Welcome to the journey of self-discovery, and finding your power to live your life on your own terms, fulfilling your reason for being alive as an Eternal having human experiences!
Please order your copy today! You can go to the Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend page and order your copy of either the paperback or the ebook. It's also available as an ebook on B&N's Nook. I’ve been told that people who live overseas can get their copy much faster by going through Amazon. And if you would, please write a review on the Amazon site, since the more reviews, the bigger the boost on their site.
See you in the near future with parts two and three on this Seesaw Full Moon challenging us to learn how to use power in alternating ways as we embrace a rebeginning and let go of the old, leaping to new opportunities. Keep it all gracious and elegant, and enjoy the intensity of your interactions! We are in the heart of transformation, with Jupiter promising new adventures. See you soon when we’ll discuss Sabian Symbols, aspects, and other important chart factors.
© Copyright 2017 Robert Wilkinson
Robert, thanks for the expanded Overview and Summing Up sections. For those of us who are NOT expert astrologers, this is the meat.
Posted by: Diana | November 01, 2017 at 04:45 PM