Meditations on Fearlessness

Full moon at 16° of Aquarius

All of this brilliant work is made by outsider folk artist Linda DiLeva, who is living life and making art and raising her children in Brooklyn, NY. Her work takes me directly into the radical potential of imagination to plot our emotional, spiritual, and physical survival. This piece is called Holding On.

In the dark hour just after Friday night becomes Saturday morning, on August 9th, at 12:55am PT, the moon gets full and peaks at 16° of Aquarius, the cosmic water bearer. Aquarius is the fixed air sign of the Zodiac, represented by the image of a vessel, pouring out. In the northern hemisphere, it leads us through the peak of winter, the time in the cycle when the outer world and life is in a frozen, dormant, seed-incubating state, and our personal physical lifeforce is most turned inward. So it’s closely associated with the inner life of the mind—the rational mind and imagination both—and with our experience of being vessels for consciousness, or what consciousness itself is a vessel for, what we might call spirit, or sacred energy. Aquarius teaches us about the part of us that is boundaryless, expansive, and ultimately collective; the part of us that might precede and also live beyond our bodies. We still have a thread of our individuality intact here—Pisces is the fully unified, mysterious cosmic soup—but that self is opened to its widest setting. Aquarius wants us transcending all old rules and norms and limiting forms, including the limiting form of the physical body. It wants us merging with other intelligences, meditating on multiverses, and generally getting as far out as it can to catch the big vision fish, the next inspired innovation. Without a strong anchor in embodiment, it’s easy to get lost in the sauce here, in this metaphysical world of ideas and luminous forms; it’s easy to forget what’s really real. But Aquarius wants to remind us that we, too, were once just ideas; just possibilities. It’s a powerful thing, to be an idea come to life. And it’s an incredibly powerful thing to be able to have ideas that themselves could be brought to life. Imagination, here, is the holiest ground. The ground of inception. The place where our power to shape the world begins.

An Aquarius moon, then, is a dream frosted, crystalline, intellectual-spiritual moon. A moog moon. A deep receiver moon. A streaming visions of near and distant futures kind of moon. It’s energy is very different from the Leo energy being illuminated by the Sun right now. Leo is all physical body, all heat, all heart, all here and now. It’s personal and passionate and active and expressive. Leo is the part of us, after all, that’s here to celebrate this exact incarnation—not the cool concept of it, not the new and different shapes we could try on becoming in future incarnations, but the living, breathing, crying, laughing beings we are now. Leo wants us all the way in, playing this life all the way out. In Leo, each of us a main character in our own story, each of us a burning sun at the center of the universe. When the Aquarius and Leo parts of us aren’t equally developed or fully integrated, it shows up as a disconnect between our mind and our body, or a disavowal of one or the other. It shows up in our inability to hold the experience of the collective and our own personal lived experience at the same time, and properly value them both. When they are developed and well integrated, we get to find out what’s possible when self love, radical permission, and whole-hearted expression become the fuel for our love for the world and each other. So no matter what else this full moon is, it’s another chance at that. Our sweaty, messy, self-centered, soul-bright Leo selves are getting a strong dose of Aquarian starlight, and chance to widen the lens significantly on our lives and what’s happening. Our cool, spiritual, transhuman Aquarian selves are getting called down into the live wire of the body.

Conditions around this one are supportive but confrontational, possibly brutally so. We are in the midst of an astrology of revolution. “Support” in this context might look like challenges that spur rapid change and growth. It might look like the closing of some doors and the foreclosing on some possibilities, forcing us onto a path of new action and real change. It might look like having to face something we would honestly put off facing forever if we could. Pluto is in Aquarius of course, and that’s part of it. It’s a good 14° away from the moon but still in a whole sign conjunction, bringing its soul screaming intensity. We are still in the very early days of the transformation its working to bring about over the next 20 years, but we can feel the shape of the initial healing crisis. It’s putting immense pressure on us to wake up to our true nature as beings interconnected with and inseparable from all life, and to use our collective power to influence the direction we’re evolving in. It wants us ascending, right fucking now, to a whole other level of integrity. It wants us realigning our personal lifeforce more directly with the needs of the collective. It wants us fiercely protecting ourselves and each other—especially our minds and imaginations—from the dark spells of greed and fascism. We should be treating our imaginations as the portal to futures that they are, futures where all life is mutually, communally thriving.

Uranus—our planet of revolutions—entered Gemini back on July 7th, forming a near exact trine with Pluto. And then a few days ago on August 6th, our courageous warrior planet Mars entered Libra. So just as this full moon was peaking, a Grand Air Trine was also activating between Uranus in Gemini, Mars in Libra, and Pluto in Aquarius. This signature is a very big deal, and while Mars will keep moving, Pluto and Uranus will be in this place for years. It signals massive upheaval and revolution in the air territories of consciousness, communication, and information exchange; all the languages and technologies and quantum mechanisms that network life together. We know already, of course, we are living this upheaval. Each of these planets is powerful and potentially explosive on its own; they would all start a war to break up an unjust system. Together, in this harmonious power chord of a trine, they have smooth lines of access to each other’s magic and can amplify their shared goal of uprising.

The only thing slowing this trine down is that Mars in Libra is in its detriment. It can’t easily access its healthy aggression to solve problems; it has to humbly bow to Libra and Venus’ preference for empathy and diplomacy. It definitely can’t follow its impulses to just burn it all to the ground. It has to pause, breathe, and try to work it out. That’s a good thing for all of us, even if it doesn’t feel like it now; Mars in Libra is actually pretty ingenious at avoiding conflict long enough to generate solutions that meet the needs of all parties. But at the start of its transit here, Mars is in an exact opposition to Saturn and Neptune, both retrograde at 1° of Aries. A Mars Saturn opposition can really grind things to a halt. It’s all boundaries meeting other boundaries, limitations meeting limitations. The exact time of the opposition is Friday evening, but you may have been feeling it building this whole last week. If in some way, or several ways, you are between a rock and hard place, or if there’s suddenly all these seemingly impassable obstacles in front of you, that’s what time it is. If it hasn’t happened to you personally, just know it’s happening all around you. This is a particularly hard moment. Mars is also opposite Neptune, here too, let’s not forget that. That can heighten confusion and sensitivity. Battle lines are blurry, or we are dealing with wrong information, or our own will and agency are unclear to us. Not to mention the Mercury retrograde in Leo of it all.

Astrologists call this signature a kite configuration, when an opposition is anchoring a Grand Trine. What will help is knowing, first, that this opposition won’t last, and not all of the obstacles appearing right now are real or permanent. Second, if you can picture it with me, it’s called a kite because the trine draws an equilateral triangle in on the wheel, and the opposition draws a taut kite string from one point on the kite on down. Whatever you are noticing in terms of the Mars opposition to Saturn Neptune, whatever limits you are discovering, imagine that this actually setting you up to take flight in some new and better way. It might be kicking you in the ass. It might feel windy as fuck. But this Grand Air Trine has big plans for all of us. And it’s connected to this Saturn Neptune conjunction that’s trying to get us to take the dream we dreamt before coming here—the soul dream we have for this incarnation, the one we sort of know about, but are intimidated by, and have no idea how to pull off—and get to work experimenting with making it real. Imperfect but real.

All of this matters extra because Aquarius’ ruler is Saturn, and Saturn is like the one holding the kite string. Having the ruler of the full moon retrograding in a conjunction with Neptune, facing off with Mars, all while the Air signs are inflating themselves for a big whirlwind of change, it’s a situation. But it’s Saturn, and Saturn, even under these conditions, has the ability to steady us, and bring us into relationship with reality on reality’s terms in a way that helps actualize our growing up. So the third thing it might help to know is that next week starts off with some of the most beautiful, resourcing astrology we will see all year. Mercury will station direct on Monday, on the same day that Venus cozies up to Jupiter in Cancer. Astrologically speaking, help is on the way.

Before we get there though, there is some big, breakthrough healing magic that this full moon’s energy feels exactly good for, and that’s the healing of our defensive systems and survival strategies. That might not normally be Aquarius’s purview, but because it has access to all of our mental defenses and mental fear, because of Saturn’s situation, and because, while I haven’t mentioned it yet, there’s a conjunction to this full moon with the asteroid Pallas Athena, who is all about defensive strategy, it’s very much on the table now. In any way you are ready for that, and in need of that, it’s probably already happening. If you’ve been overprotecting yourself in some ways, and underprotecting yourself in others, this full moon could illuminate that, and show you how and where to start correcting that. If you’ve been surviving by shutting down or isolating in some way, trying to face all of your problems alone; if you’ve been carrying around a lot of unnecessary fear, including just fear of fear itself, or fear of your own power; if you’ve been letting other people’s ideas for you and your life lead, because that’s felt less risky, any of that, all of that, probably has to go. And I think this full moon could be especially devastating to any beliefs we have about ourselves that we thought disqualified us from protection, belonging, and love. In short, this full moon in Aquarius wants to reset our boundaries on all levels. It wants to give us an upgrade. It wants us to see ourselves through the eyes of our ancestors who love us, and are so proud of us, and know we have nothing to fear in being ourselves and facing our life head on. It wants to help us re-strategize, letting go of everything that has not been working, anything we’ve been doing to pursue safety at the expense of our own soul calling, and the the soul of the world. May we all get exactly what we need, so that we can use our precious time here wisely.

Linda DeLeva’s See In Stars.

On a personal note

This full moon is arriving on the one year anniversary of the death of my mom Lynne—now my closest and dearest ancestor. And it just so happens I will literally be taking flight on the full moon to get to Denver, Colorado, to attend memorial services for Andrea Gibson, who joined the ancestors just four weeks ago. If any of you happen to live near there, you are welcome to join us for the public portion of those services—I’m including the flyer below. Poets are gathering from all over to read Andrea’s poems on Andrea’s favorite stage at what was once The Merc, and is now The Pearl. If you are not near there, it’s possible it will be recorded and streamed, I just don’t know at the moment. And either way, you can set your clock and do the very Aquarian thing, which is to join us in the collective field, or on the astral plane, watch videos of Andrea, read their poems, or just think of all us, and mostly—think of Andrea. Direct your consciousness towards them, and lift them up. Giving thanks for their life and their whole vibe and all the gifts they have given us. We will feel you with us.

Next Live Zoom Gathering Coming Thursday, August 14th at 6pm PST

If you want to come hang out with me, I’ll be hosting a live hour of Moon School this next Thursday for paid subscribers. For this one, come prepared if you can with your own birth chart. It will likely be an intimate group. We will be doing a little work with our personal Leo/Aquarius axis to gain insights into where the currents of manifestation and liberation are working through us in this lifetime. The Zoom link will go out in an email the day of!

Ritual & Writing Prompts

And now, some additional moon content for paid subscribers: a collection of links to the archive of writings on Aquarius lunations in In the River of What’s Happening Now, some journal prompts and ritual suggestions for working with this full moon; and a creative writing prompt for those of us who practice writing magic.

(Disclaimer! Prompts are not instructions, they are jumping off points. Play with what inspires you, ignore what’s doesn’t, adapt in any way you see fit.)

The Aquarius archive (in reverse chronological order)

Entering the Fertile Void - new moon at 9° of Aquarius (winter 2025)

Through the Inner Doors - full moon at 27° of Aquarius (summer 2024)

Some Fresh New Headspace - new moon at 20° of Aquarius (winter 2024)

The Road Forward Transforms - full moon at 9° of Aquarius (summer 2023)

The Conditions That Give Birth to Luck - Saturn cazimi in Aquarius (winter 2023)

Predict the Future by Creating It - new moon at 1° of Aquarius (winter 2023)