Through the Inner Doors

Full moon at 27° of Aquarius

All the gorgeous Aquarian art in this newsletter is from artist Rose Ides

First, a content warning, and a personal note

Hey everyone - happy full moon! Quick content warning. This newsletter does talk a bit about death and moms, and I just - if you are in a place where even a light mention of that is going to hurt too much, maybe you just skip this one. Ok - the personal note:

Two weeks ago, on the new moon in Leo, I got the call that my mom Lynne, who has had a terminal diagnosis for some years, was suddenly and precipitously nearing her death. So I packed a bag and got a plane ticket and flew south to be with her at the end. I will write more about it, and her, in the coming months and probably years, but for now I will say that sitting vigil for and with my mom, singing to her and loving on her and helping her to feel safe and comforted and important for the days it took her body to die, was one of the most intense, beautiful, and enriching experiences of my life. And also, wow, hard. One world, the world with her physically in it, has ended. I will never be the same. And as with all apocalypses, life goes on. Writing this full moon post is the first bit of work I’ve gotten into, after writing a tribute and obituary. And if I was still burrowed deep in one of her quilts, crying my eyes out, unable to write it, that would be ok. But somehow here I am, holding the moon again, and being held by the moon, and feeling able to speak and write as this waxing moon and all my feelings from the heart of the vortex culminate, and that’s ok too. It actually feels very steadying at the moment to lean into the arms of what time it is, to lean into this devotional practice, and feel my whole being within the larger being of the universe. So, here we go…

On Monday, the Moon’s day, August 19th to be exact, at 11:25am PT, the moon’s light is bright and full at 27° of Aquarius, the cosmic water bearer. In spite of its symbol, Aquarius is not a water sign, it is fixed air, the sign of deep winter in the northern hemisphere. Its archetypal territory is the vessel of the mind, the vessel of conscious awareness, through which all phenomenon flows. Its full moon peaks during Leo sun season, as Aquarius holds the opposite pole of Leo. If Leo is all body, all heart, all closeness and heat, Aquarius is all intellect and imagination, all disembodied spirit and sparkling inner vision, all cool and reflective and distant. It’s the part of the Self that can journey the farthest metaphysically, that can reach an outer world only accessible by going through the inner doors. All full moons highlight this kind of opposition and exaggerate any tension that exists between these two sides of our selves, which are just two sides of many many sides. In this case, the Leonine individual self, the personal creative drive, the embodied present, is being held in tension with the collective Aquarian self, with a vision our collective evolution, and what is calling to us from the future. The purpose is to hold both of them at once, to not seek to resolve any paradoxes or force any reductionist choices; the purpose is to see if its possible, right now, to experience just a little more of our wholeness.

Because the Aquarius nature is essentially pure consciousness, which can temporarily initiate what we call a mind body split—the knower must split from that which it seeks to know—it’s known for appearing aloof and spacey and disconnected. But Aquarius is, in fact, furiously connecting. It seeks to experience our interconnectedness with all things, and to ask questions from within that interconnectedness, to discover both old truths and new possibilities. It is therefore also associated with inventions and technologies, with democracy and cooperation, with futurism and farsightedness. But its main practice is the totally free, portable spiritual technology of conscious awareness; an open mind free from fear, confusion, and certainty; the mind high on wonder. Its full moon is arriving in the heart of some of the most challenging astrology of the year, apart from the eclipses. Mercury is retrograde, and Pluto, too, still sitting on that 0° of Aquarius. We’ve just had an explosive, once-in-12-years Jupiter Mars conjunction in Gemini, close together with both planets squaring the hard limits of Saturn in Pisces and the stricter love of Venus in Virgo. On the day of the full moon, the Sun and Moon make an exact square to Uranus in Taurus. It’s all very startling and activating. Not necessarily bad or good, but new and disruptive and activating: perfect for both breakthroughs and breakdowns.

Depending on your current state of well-being, these conditions could be very rough, and if that’s true for you, I really feel you. I’m in it too. Full moons are already emotional high tides, and with all these additional points of tension, any existing inner or outer conflicts can get the volume turned up. We could be experiencing a lot of extra nervous system activation, which can kick up a lot of unhelpful reactivity and mental management strategies. The freaked out Aquarius energy tends towards anxiety and fear, right? Fear is the mind killer and all that. Just remember that the antidote to worry and fear is curiosity and trust. If possible, see if you can ask yourself to trust just a little more than you are trusting right now—whether that’s in a process, in yourself, in the universe. Or see if you can simply pause on identifying with the experience you’re having and instead connect with your own inner witness, the part of you that can be like, oh wow, I’m really in it, I’m really having this experience. You could try turning on wonder, like “I wonder why this experience is so strong or hard for me,” or whatever makes sense for you, and then resist any old answers or stories that arise, the script of your trauma defenses. Just be in the wonder and the listening to yourself with respect and empathy. Let all your parts speak, maybe especially the parts that you don’t readily identify with, like, “oh that’s not me, that’s not what I’m like.” Suspend all that judgement. Just be the complicated, shapeshifting, multiplicity that you are. Be the loving awareness. Just listen. See what reveals itself to you.

Today, as I write this, the day before this full moon, Mercury has retrograded back into Leo and has reached its cazimi with the Sun. It’s possibly the single bright clear point of this astrology, and maybe that’s what’s helping me write this. Right now, I am acutely aware of the parts of me that are my ancestors, and the parts of me that are my mom, my newest ancestor, that together we are this fractal, this evolving repeating collective pattern. When I was younger, even just four years ago, I was so eager to define myself against all of them, to not be them somehow. Now, in this moment, I just want my defining to get looser and roomier. I want the definition of me to get big enough to include all of them, and all of past-me, and all of the possibilities of me and my life I have yet to explore. While sometimes of course my heart is just aching, and my body is in grief, and that’s all real and part of love, I have to say it feels very good to pendulate over to this Aquarian expansion, to this part of me capable of reimagining my life now as not one marked by loss, but by something profoundly gained, something I don’t fully see yet.

This might be what this Aquarius full moon has for each of us—some kind of breakthrough perspective, a sudden ability to widen our lens dramatically to include more potential expression, more co-created truth, more wholeness. We get to be larger. We get to try on being everything and everyone. What would we do if we were everyone? Like, we might already know that our healing and liberation is entangled, but what if we went just a little further than that? What if that held the secret fuel to you being even more of yourself, and to me being even more of myself? Whatever hits you on this full moon, just know that even a small dose of this perspective expansion will be necessary medicine for navigating the rest of the year, and meeting the change we are in. Trust what arrives. Capture it in writing, or in paint, or in song, or in some way you know how to hold something sacred. Let it instruct you in what is ending now, and what is beginning. Let it help you shed any old selves, stories, or genius forms, anything that served you for a time, but is ready to be liberated and let go.

From artist Rose Ides

Ritual & Writing Prompts

Below, for paid subscribers, some shortcut links to the archive of writings on Aquarius in In the River of What’s Happening Now, and some additional writing and guidance for personally working with this full moon, including inspiration for rituals and a creative writing prompt for those feeling some imagination surge.

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