The Full Wolf Moon in Leo exacted at 12:54pm EST today, still shining across from the Sun in Aquarius ruling it.  Given that any Leo placement is implicitly ruled by the Sun, the once yearly (occasionally twice inside the same month) Full Moon in Leo places particular emphasis on the transitory condition of the Aquarius Sun — now in momentous and cathartic reconsiderations of personal and collective power.

The Leo-Aquarius axis conjures questions of warmth and cool detachment, centrality and periphery, of belonging and exile — a sense of radiating from one’s core, or conversely bearing witness to one’s identity in the third person.  Whereas Leo shines from the inside out, a cat stretching in the sunlight, knowing the divinity that is one’s birthright… the archetype of Aquarius, perched upon the city gates, often elicits words like ‘individualism, iconoclasm, rebellion’ — and the essential ‘utility of genius’, as I like to say, that comes with that sort of distance or perspective ‘outside the box.’

Aquarius is not necessarily a rebel without a cause, but can be rather like a humanist who has identified their inner pariah… one which gives the gift of seeing what makes a person, themselves or another, as such — and says ‘hey, I see you, I see what makes you irrevocably yourself… I know what it means to feel separate, exiled, a freak cut off from the light.’  And reminds them of their divinity, invites them back to the party, the movement of life through the Central Image.

While Aquarius can also be a highly conservative reformer, waging a return to some past ideal with an almost paranoiac vigor, building walls as much a rattling them in the process — the archetypal nuance of this full moon holds much more than the (un)conventional Leo-Aquarius seesaw.  This is a lunation that has quite a bit to do with Venus, and perhaps even more so the generative power of Pluto, whose recent epochal movement into Aquarius for a nearly two-decade era sees only one more retrograde clarification this coming fall.

The Moon’s fleeting presence across the first decan (10°) of Leo, where it reached fullness earlier today, implies an emergence from the shell, into a central identity or more active role in one arena or another.  Yes, the Sun ruling this full moon from the first face of Aquarius gives it significations of individual autonomy, new endeavors, and a sense of where one is or isn’t fitting in their lives… yet Pluto’s presence, now in Aquarius, conjures a cold fire, expediting how we view personal power within the collective aquarian tapestry of geo-social considerations as a whole.  Do we even want our identities this digitized?  Is the genius and utility of this hyper-space connectedness eclipsed by our disassociation in its streams of endless novelty?

The full moon earlier made a fleeting square to Jupiter — in the fixed earth of Venus-ruled Taurus since last spring — with the Sun’s square to Jove lasting another couple days.  As Adam Elenbaas pointed out, the Sun in Aquarius is presently within Venus’ bounds, a type of ‘minor dignity’ further influencing the Sun’s agency here.  He went on to speak of how queendom, feminine agency and feminine sovereignty might play a big role in this full moon for some — all beautifully restorative points.

I would add that Venus also rules the entire first decan (10° or ten days) of Aquarius, by way of the Chaldean order — the zodiac’s 36 decans or ‘faces’ having their own minor dignities which mitigate the greater influence of the planet ruling a given sign.  Aside from the fact that Saturn exalts in Libra, one major ‘essential dignity’ of the time-binding planet, I’ve long felt that the first decan of Aquarius and its rulership by Venus is one of the zodiac’s most important intersections of Venus and Saturn’s influence together — Aquarius of course being the yang home of Saturn.  The relationship of the decans to the Minor Arcana in the Tarot were, after all, a huge part of my earliest immersions in astrology, and play a central role in my delineations to this day.

The first face of Aquarius has an affinity for overlooked treasures, as Austin Coppock remarked in ’36 Faces’… so as we feel new momentum in our considerations of personal and collective power, may a missing piece right now, in this Leo Full Moon, be a regality we overlooked, as much as an emergent aquarian novelty or ever-craved ‘newness’ as often characterizes this era?  Treasures right in the fabric of the everyday, before and beyond these myths of endless content?  Janus, namesake of January wherein the Sun enters zodiacal Aquarius each year, is a god looking both forward and backward.

With the Sun still conjunct Pluto by a reasonable orb, and the Full Moon as such beginning to wane from its opposition to Pluto, there is a sense of power and movement behind our contemplations as to where we do or don’t belong.  This may be colored by venusian topics such as creative power, the arts, and how one feels as though they do or don’t fit into the aesthetic tapestry of their life as they’ve created it thus far.  Intersections of Venus and Saturn in this time for me summon questions of self-valuation, and boundaries amidst Pluto’s cathartic and purgative push. Mercury’s conjunction to an exalted Mars in Capricorn, now nearly exact, also adds much to the momentum of this week and the coming days.

There is much more to be said, particularly about Pluto in Aquarius as I have in the pipeline… but in brief, here are some of the themes to feel around for:

*warmth and cool detachment
*centrality and periphery
*belonging and exile
*a sense of radiating from one’s core, or conversely of something like bearing witness to one’s identity in the third person
*individualism, iconoclasm, rebellion
*the essential ‘utility of genius’ that comes with thinking outside the box
*’out with the old, in with the new’
*re-evaluating our relationship to powers already present in our lives
*queendom, feminine agency, feminine sovereignty, as per Adam Elenbaas’ delineations
*venusian themes such as creative power, the arts, and how one feels as though they do or don’t fit into the aesthetic tapestry of their life as they’ve created it thus far
*a feeling of personal power, yet possible disassociation amidst technological streams of endless novelty
*how we view personal power within the collective aquarian tapestry of geo-social considerations as a whole
*do we even want our identities this digitized?

Swim well, stargazers ~

—A.B.

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