Upholding Peaceful Equilibrium… Full Moon Report
Venus Builds Her Temple in the Underworld
The story of Inanna’s descent into the underworld is the story of Venus’ alchemical journey across the night sky. Each month as she conjuncts the moon she crosses another gateway represented by each of our body's energy centers, the Chakras. The first gateway in this cycle was July 20th at the Crown Chakra. This month, when Venus was conjunct the moon she will have moved through all of the centers and is now at the Root Chakra the “Gate of Manifestation”. From here she will enter the eighth gate, Earth Star Chakra “death by intent” on February 10th, and then spend almost 90 days in the underworld behind the beams of the sun. This happens right as we step into the High Holy Day Celebration of Imbolc. As we are held in the underground sanctuary, nestled in the warm waters of the Great Mother, steeped in imaginal cells, what dreams and visions are you nurturing? As we await metamorphosis, ritual, drumming, dancing, journaling, anointing, and bathing are all things that can help us water our Holy seeds of intention.
Art by; Guilia Valente
Venus is moving into an exact conjunction with Pluto at 25 Capricorn, which perfects on January 28th the date of the full moon.
Venus, distilled to her most rarefied form represents our longing for the Goddess, and the multitude of ways that manifests on both the inner and outer plane of our being. There is a subtle beauty to meeting the Goddess in the Wasteland of Pluto’s boggy forgotten landscape. Pluto can excavate our greatest fears, unearth our insecurities, and reflect issues of unworthiness. What does it look like when we bring the abiding love and beauty of Venus to encounters with Pluto? As I meditate on this question I am reminded of a quote I read recently by Mark Nepo...
“The messy miracle called life is fragile and resilient, ever present and never guaranteed. Love moves us toward the miracle while fear moves us towards the mess. Fear gets its power from not looking, we are called, no matter our circumstance, to enlist the strength of heart to look through our fear with the eyes of love.” These words perfectly encapsulate a meeting between these two archetypal guru’s.
Pluto is the ruler of my sun sign, and I also have Venus in Scorpio. So I am no stranger to the fears that can arise when something or someone I love feels threatened. This year has been an initiation in feeling everything I love and hold dear is in some kind of danger. As I read my morning devotional on one particularly fearful morning earlier in the pandemic I found this proverb that almost instantaneously calmed me. It was as if the Great Mother poured them into me like an Elixir of Beauty...
There is an old Buddhist proverb in which An aging master grew tired of his apprentice’s forebodings. One morning, he sent him to get some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master told him to mix a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink it.
“How does it taste?” the master asked.
“Bitter,” said the apprentice.
The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.”
As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the master asked, “How does it taste?”
“Fresh,” remarked the apprentice.
“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.
“No,” said the young man. At this the master sat beside this serious young man, and explained softly,
“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”
Pluto is the ruler of my sun sign, and I also have Venus in Scorpio. So I am no stranger to the fears that can arise when something or someone I love feels threatened. This year has been an initiation in feeling everything I love and hold dear is in some kind of danger. As I read my morning devotional on one particularly fearful morning earlier in the pandemic I found this proverb that almost instantaneously calmed me. It was as if the Great Mother poured them into me like an Elixir of Beauty...
Venus can help us bring the feeling of expansiveness, presence, and beauty back into a life that feels contracted by the blackness of fear. By zoom lensing out, and getting a more meta view, we are able to more fully perceive our situation by bringing light to it. When I hear a suggestion of taking a larger perspective, I am reminded of the Iroquis Peoples’, Principle of Seven Generations. The principle asks us to ground into the present by embodying our ancestors of seven generations past, AND, visioning seven generations into the future. That in this moment, WE ARE the bridge between them. Every moment that we bring presence and intention too, is a moment that we are seeding the future. And the Great Mother has been with us through them all. Across all timelines, and dimensions, she is our anchor. We can be confident that no matter the fear that is compelled by life's saltiness, the Great Mother is always waiting, ready embrace all of us. Helping us to love ourselves, WITH the thoughts, with the shadow qualities, in our unhealed form.
Pluto acts as the expiration date of all things. He says if you try to hold on to something after it’s expiration date he will allow it to spoil. He then purges it from your life through a process of primal, regenerative, purification, so that you experience a restoration of health, vitality, strength, and power. This is especially true in matters pertaining to Venus. In the simplest understanding of Venus she governs the objects of our senses that we think will satiate us, it could be money, status, a partner, a practice, food, the image that we go towards that we think will satisfy us. When we think to ourselves, “if I have that, if I touch it, taste it, consume it, or hold it”, those things pertain to Venus. Venus can represent those things in benevolent, or malignant ways. For instance, when Venus’ desire is to serve people in the spirit of harmony and love, that is Venus in her highest octave. If Venus’ desire is to appear to be serving people so she can gain followers, likes, or influence, that is Venus in her lower octave. Her high frequency qualities are unconditional love, beautifying ourselves and the world, presence in the present moment, intimacy, vulnerability, a fruitful harvest, open heartedness, sensual alchemy, gratitude, invitation, self-love, ripeness, sensory adept, and sensuality. When Venus is acting in her shadow, that can be us being overly self-identified and self interested, Her shadow qualities are Competitiveness, jealousy, comparison, sexual manipulation, distorted body image, focus on the outer rather than inner beauty, obsessive emotions, insecurity, flattery, self-absorption.
Art by; Amanda Lindupp
Venus makes a supportive trine to Vesta at 21 degrees Virgo. Virgo is The Temple of the Vestal Virgins. She signifies the things we have most devoted our lives to. Our souls work in the world. She tends the sacred inner flame. The Vestal Virgins use kundalini energy which resides in the etheric body, to increase their psychic circuitry. Therefore, each Vestal Goddess was Whole and Holy, Sacred and Sovereign, unto themselves. Unmarried, self contained, self reliant, personally integrated, centered, focused, purified, with immense inner strength and self discipline. In Virgo, Vesta’s shadow can show up as perfectionism, obsessive thoughts, addiction to productivity, and overworking oneself to depletion. Venus connecting with Vesta helps bring a shot of novel love and creativity to those things we have devoted our lives to. Whether it is a project at work, or your family, this transit can help warm and wet the heart to what may feel like a desert of duty and repetition. Vesta is Opposite Neptune in Pisces, which opens a portal of spiritual potential. Neptune can help us access altered states when sitting in meditation, or chanting, dancing or drumming. In keeping this archetype of the goddess in balance, what ritual can you create to re-consecrate your piece of the divine thread as you weave it into the world? What self-care practice can you create to keep your devotional life feeling fresh?
This full moon, Uranus at 6 Taurus and Mars at 10 Taurus, forms a T-square to the Sun and Jupiter at 9 Aquarius opposite The Moon 9 Leo. Uranus’ role is something like getting woke in the matrix. Sudden truths being revealed, Storms that rail through the land, stirring up old stories, the ways we cling to control and the structures that keep us safe. It was Uraunus who kicked up the tornado in the Wizard of Oz. He asks us to watch as our monsters and familiars blow by allowing us to explore their sentimental meanings. Like lightning he brings change to our lives. In a flash we wake up in Oz, where the door we walked in, the life we left behind at the threshold, will never be the same. Uranus asks us to be brave as we bridge earth’s shifting tectonic plates. We will need people who are willing to hold their peace, carry the frequency of love, in these rapidly shifting times. To prepare, ask yourself, what fears, can you release again and again to train for the great awakening? Use the sword of clarity to cut the sticky cobwebs in your mind that keep you trapped, limited, and playing small. Uranus is all about liberation. The energy is ripe for a renaissance of freedom.
Art by Mandy Richardson
In Taurus, Mars is a visitor in the Temple of Venus, which means he will express himself, through Venusian qualities. Venus and Mars are forbidden lovers, as the God of Love and the God of War. Think of the paradoxes of these qualities. Why does a warrior fight? To bring peace, abundance and prosperity to the land. As we move through this full moon portal, be on the lookout for paradoxes. Instead of letting yourself be triggered by the tension between them, try getting curious about what each piece of the is trying to highlight. See the beautiful interplay between them. Also, this aspect could lend to conflict in relationships and partnerships. One partner may try to bully and dominate the other, conversely, the other partner may have trouble exerting their will, or they may try and manipulate the object of their desire with honeyed words. It is important that we are able to respond with presence in an empowered way, rather than reacting in the moment from a less than desirable vantage point.
Testing our fates and fortunes, The Sun moved across Saturn, on January 24 at the beginning of the week, forcing us to look at what has karmically been cut by his scythe. He is an integral partner in readying the fields for sowing. Cutting away the things that are no longer part of our mythic journey. Lightening our load, asking us to surrender to the larger story, preparing us to face the dragon. Pushing us to lay down our self-authoring pen and take up our place in the greater cosmos. Often successfully working with Saturn involves an acceptance of the universality of things. That we are to do what is being asked of us. So if you have any connections in your own chart to 4 degrees Aquarius, especially anything at the beginning of the fixed signs, then you may be hearing a call that Saturn expects you to answer. Do it.
The Sun is Conjunct Jupiter at 9 degrees Aquarius which brings limitless expansion, breakthroughs. And truly exciting, hopeful, larger than life, experiences. It also means this full moon is going to be super sized. Whatever is waiting on the horizon of January 28th, will have a HUGE seed of potential. While Jupiter is known as a benefic, that brings luck and good fortune to all he touches, he also has the capacity to overshoot the mark, and act with arrogance, and hubris. It’s imperative to be working your full moon magic with extra intention this month. Aquarius is an air sign, which means the energy is mobile, signals move through ether, like a cell phone hits it’s satellite in milliseconds, so too is the potential to manifest the seeds we are planting almost instantaneously. Therefore, if we are holding a frequency of negativity, we may find we attract that back onto ourselves rapidly, so it is imperative as we move through the full moon portal to be holding the frequency of love.
The Chandra Symbol for this new moon is ...
A man putting olive oil all over his body.
“Physical life is so much agony and so much ecstasy that it stretches your body's ability to move with the flux and ferment. You are called upon to behold yourself, to witness to the central flame and to endow your personal embodied self with a daily rhythm of self-remembrance and self-revitalization. You can do nothing for anybody else unless you are whole within yourself. There is an urgent call, an inward stirring to offer to yourself the full power of your destiny path, to become bonded and fused with the truth of your being. There is also a transcendent power, a greater selfhood-presence blessing, preserving, and sustaining your path in this world. So that the light can burn brighter through the joy in your heart and your vital physical embodiment, given through yourself to all”. - Elias Lonsdale Inside Degrees
This is in perfect synergy to Venus’ alchemical mandate at this gateway. The Root Chakra is all about physicality, and how we care for and honor our body temple. What do we do to root into our lives? To create a sense of groundedness? How do we cultivate security without needing the outside world to show up in a certain way for us to experience the Radiant Contentment of the Goddess?
Here I share some deeper insights on this Mercury Retrograde which begins January 30th at 26 degrees Aquarius, and how to weave in the energies of Pallas Athena and Black Moon Lilith.
I must release the shadow of perfectionism in posting this video. While I was pleased with how the substance came through, right at the end, in the last minute, I referred to the full moon as the new moon, and added a dot com to my web address instead of a dot org. Giving that up now. If you liked the content in this video, Gary P Caton does this subject masterfully. You can access a deep dive with him here.
*higher octave frequencies of Venus taken from “The Goddess of Love” Archetype of the “13 Moon Mystery Oracle” by Ariel Spilsbury
