The Full Moon in Aries is conjunct Chiron, a major asteroid named after the mythic centaur known for his wisdom and skill in medicine.  Both oppose the Sun and Venus in Libra, Sol and Luna’s fleeting stare-down the physical definition of any full moon.  Venus’ opposition to Chiron exacts tomorrow, on the other hand a dynamic permeating the psychic atmosphere for several days.

This climaxing fullness of the lunation cycle was preceded by the Moon’s conjunction to Neptune, the sea god planet long in the mutable water sign whose tides are sympathetic to it.  There was a gentle, dreamier repose leading into the weekend, if not a touch spacey, as Friday held that nearness of Luna and Neptune.

With her present fullness, a rather airy or mental moon with Mars in Gemini ruling, a different tone froths to the top.  It is one both decisive and deviating, active and sacrificial — pointing to wounds, psychic shadows and covert strategies that need confronting.  These could be sudden twists in the plot, or perhaps ongoing narratives surrounding our relationship to getting what we want.

Mars in Gemini as ruler of the Full Moon in Aries — Mars rules Aries and Scorpio — emphasizing this ‘master strategist’ archetype, but perhaps excessively so at times.  Aries Moons are known for impulse, and the preponderance of ‘yang’ placements across the present planetary spread might leave us feeling a bit ungrounded, or not fully registering the somatic effects of our actions.

Mars in Gemini’s ‘finger in each pie’ fluency is sometimes less about the literal or metaphoric master marksman or the many-armed endeavors we might aspire to — sometimes it’s the paradox unraveled when we realize that winning or getting our way isn’t always that gratifying.

Mars in Gemini is good at winning.  And part of Gemini’s back-and-forth kink relativizes victory and defeat across all arenas of life.  We set ourselves up to learn lessons, draining the cup of each experience.  Whether or not we find disillusionment at the bottom is no finality; whatever we find, it’s a reminder of our own growth, the soul-making and character-building we’re blessed with the opportunity to do our whole lives, even as our bodies decay.

While we might fancy it a more ‘yin’ or ‘emptying’ kind of truth, I find myself coming back to the Buddhist notion of desire as the root of all suffering.  With the Full Moon and Chiron opposing the Sun and Venus, across the sign axis of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’, Momentum and Balance, Abrasion and Cohesion… for me, it really begs an examination, even a confrontation of whether the way in which we go about fulfilling our desires is safe.  Does your appetite hurt others?  Does it hurt you?

The Sun and Venus are both in Libra, very nearly conjunct and so we have a few orbital bodies ruled by the ‘benefic’ planets — Venus being at present the most dignified among them.  In her diurnal or ‘yang’ home of Libra, the Star of Aphrodite sees concern with balancing in relationships, transactions, and matters of beauty not just in aesthetics but in principles of social harmony.

Many different exchanges take place across the fulcrum of human relationships; compromises between partners, working with the unexpected to reach new plateaus of peace and pleasure; discerning what is fair in communication or commerce; feeling seen and appreciative of even power dynamics among people.  It is likely that the full moon’s fever pitch refers back to some of these arenas.

Libra is the sign of Saturn’s exaltation, a place where the slow planet’s laboring precision and architecture of long works finds a sympathetic appreciation from Venus’ diurnal home.  Saturn as exaltation ruler of Libra always points to the reality that there can be no true, consummate beauty without structure, just as we’d be piles of flesh without a skeleton to drape them across.

It is in such frameworks that the mystical, the ecstatic, the boundlessness of union between peoples is had, if only for a time.  This is not as much a statement of ‘one must color inside the lines to live their art outside them’, although that truth might be helpful to to one person or another in these moments.  It’s more the realization that every beauty has innate structures it decorates, and social frameworks across which it is evaluated or judged.

Self-belief versus doubt and revision, and in human relationships there may be some adjustments or course re-correcting yet.  Appetite examination.  Aries Moon can be like a glowing, disembodied head floating about… what corpus are you connected to?  What desires are dictating your words and ravenous bites of flesh as Venus’ copper mirror captures all the ardor and devouring?

Some of the placements most likely to feel this Full Moon in Aries include Aries and Libra rising, Taurus and Scorpio Rising, and any cardinal placements around the 16° point.  March / Spring ‘91 births will also find Pluto stationing on their North Node.

Just some of the themes to look out for / partial summaries of the above:

*decisiveness and fence-sitting, momentum and balance

*deviation and deviousness

*relational spice or stagnation

*self-serving and sacrifice [h/t Elodie Miaow of 9th House Astrology]

*predator and prey [h/t Paetra Tauchert of Mountain Astrologer]

*an appetite unreconciled with the body

*finding that the fulfillment of our desires seems to compromise or even hurt another

*conversely, sacrificial works, tending to another’s needs at the risk of fulfilling our own

*saying less, doing more

*at the same time, examining why we don’t say as much about particular things; the hidden disingenuousness of everyday life

*taking a look at covert strategies we employ that need confronting, self-leveling

*sudden twists in the plot

*getting what we want, or getting what we want feeling overrated

*virtue and vice

*living in one’s thoughts inevitably brings sorrow

*desire as the root of all suffering

*desire as the only force that gets anything done

*does your appetite hurt others?  do you even enjoy it?  do you have a say?

Pluto stationing direct also adds a kind of volcanic edge to structures and frameworks in our lives, especially those that surround our innermost desires, motivations, and the psychic riches that can be mined from the erosion of these things.

Swim well, stargazers ~

—A.B.