The Bright Cord of Meaning

Full moon at 13° of Sagittarius

Saturday, June 3rd at 8:42 pm PST in the evening, the moon is fat and full and beaming at 13° of Sagittarius. This high tide is accompanied by a watery, spiritual, sensitive trine between Venus in Cancer and Neptune in Pisces, and the creative sparks of a Mercury Uranus conjunction in Taurus. Sagittarius’ ruler Jupiter is also sitting on the exact degree of the north node, so while this isn’t an eclipse, there will likely be some extra intensity, possibly an unsubtle reprise of the themes of the recent eclipses. As with all full moons, shadow energies are getting highlighted, the contents of the heart and the subconscious could be surfacing, and the body might need extra care and support; a fresh current of liberation and release is trying to kick off.

Sagittarius is mutable fire, again, ruled by Jupiter, so it’s very expansive and generous in nature. More than most full moons, it has the potential to dry us off and shine our hearts. Represented by the centaur with its bow and arrow, it activates the archetype of the adventurer as well as the wise philosopher, and the student trying to become the wise philosopher. It’s generally known for its optimism and idealism, and wherever it leads in your chart, you might have extra access to high spirits and a love of expanding both your consciousness and horizons.

It always helps me to remember that in the northern hemisphere, it’s Sagittarius’ job is to guide us out of the funeral of fall and the emotional underworld of Scorpio season and prepare us for winter. So its high spirits are really coming from all the complex emotional shades of the party after the funeral, the drunken wake. It’s like it wants to remind us that while the soul grows through suffering and grief, the heart and the body and the spirit can only take so much of this seriousness and sadness before they have to burst into dancing and laughter. To survive the winter, joy and meaning will have to be restored and stored; they are as necessary as food and shelter.

Sagittarius’ ultimate aim is to seek and arrive at some greater truth that will help us understand our suffering, how to live through it, how to transmute it. If we allow it, it can help us to develop our own mature, guiding philosophy. A philosophy as a sturdy, reliable way of making meaning. You can find a philosophy in a religion, or a poem, or an artistic path or scientific mission. It can come from your family or culture of origin, or from a learned and loved cosmology. You can also make it from your own direct, lived experiences, weaving together threads from many teachings. It just has to be a story that makes sense to you, a story that resonates within your being about the nature of reality or life, about how to be in the world, about being a part of something larger and your relationship to that whole. Making a philosopher’s stone is the first work in alchemy, it’s what you need to have to do the greater work. A philosopher’s stone symbolizes a way of taking the density and suffering and heavy matter of life and death (the stone) and transmuting it with love and understanding, infusing it with meaning, lighting it up and lightening it up with a higher perspective (the philosophy).

My philosophy is definitely many philosophies woven together, and it has something to do with the hidden wholeness in all things, and remembering it’s there, even if I can’t see it or feel it. Our lives, the life of the world, they move in cycles and phases, like the moon. We may only see a crescent of the moon, or even when she’s full, only one side, but the moon is whole; only our perspective is partial. If I am feeling lost or sad or undone, disconnected from my joy or optimism or solid sense of self, a part of me knows that I am still whole, and I am a part of a greater wholeness. I call this knowledge the “bright cord of meaning.” It took me a long time to make mine strong enough, to get a firm grip on it, and to practice not just remembering it’s there but actually using it in emotional deserts and illnesses and dark times, places of emptiness or desecration or shattering. If nothing else, it insists that I be kind to myself when I’m in another abyss, and that kindness itself is a compass.

That’s the medicine Sagittarius is trying to brew up for us, and it might be some of what’s available to us this weekend. There is no one right philosophy or approach to being human. But you have to have a way to go, you have to your own arrow of light, your own philosopher’s stone, or the losses in this life will crush you. If you have found your arrow of light, your bright cord of meaning, reconnect with it on this full moon. Give thanks for it. Use it! If you have not yet found it, or articulated it fully for yourself, that’s ok too. Appreciate and give thanks for where you are on the path of its evolution. Savor your beginning sense of it, your initial threads. Notice where you have felt drawn to different teachers or teachings, notice where you feel called to turn next. If you are working simultaneously to liberate yourself from old, harmful philosophies or beliefs, and who isn’t, this full moon will re-energize that liberation.

No matter where we are at, and what changes we’ve been going through, this full moon is encouraging us to lean into our most generous instincts, and include ourselves in that generosity. To crank up the patience and the mercy and the curiosity and the wonder, and let it help us let go of what we can no longer hold.

Quick note to paid subscribers — thank you to everyone who submitted a yes please and entered the drawing for a free birth chart reading with me! I received them all, and it felt great, it made me feel connected to all of you! I am waiting until the full moon actual to pull four names, but I will reach out to the winners on Sunday.

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Ritual & Writing Prompts

(Disclaimer: Prompts are suggestions, not instructions. Play with what inspires you, ignore what’s doesn’t. Adapt in any way you see fit.)