Aries Full Moon

October 18, 2013

4:37 PM PST / 7:37 PM EST / 11:37 PM GMT

25 Aries / Libra

The fall eclipse season is here, and with it yet another tweak in focus. This week’s Aries Full Moon is a graduation exercise in how we maintain our identity in the context of relationships. No matter what else is going on in your life, the starting point is and remains yourself.

We’re not completing this work, of course, but going from one stage of relating to another. Revisiting and rewriting how we get along with each other is a core theme for the next 18 months, which brings six eclipses on the relationship axis of Aries/Libra. The kick-off event is a lunar eclipse, which is a full moon on steroids, escalating emotions and casting light onto matters that have not previously been in clear view. This week’s event is accelerating the door closings on old ways or relating and amping up the incentive and drive to be more fully, boldly yourself, come what may.

Though you may go into metaphoric battle with a well-considered strategy, each key development has a fiery, impulsive, intuitive component. Emotions, realizations and revelations are not so much dawning as igniting. That could spark assertiveness, aggression, anger, and awakening to a new level of self-awareness, self-promotion and gutsiness.

The ruler of the Aries Full Moon is action hero Mars, the planet in charge of how we use our energy. His boisterous, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later inclinations are tempered at the moment, for two reasons. He is traveling in the earth sign of Virgo, which requires moving in a more measured, thoughtful and discriminating manner than is his wont. He is also in an exact opposition with Neptune, who unhinges us from earth-bound existence with poetry, spiritual highs and baser forms of escapism (lies, delusion, alcohol, drugs, distracting ourselves online or in front of the TV).

Oppositions provide distance, so some eclipse revelations may flesh out people’s actions and motivations. Be on the lookout for smokescreens and lies coming to light. You may find yourself wondering what is truth and what is illusion. Oppositions also require compromise to find a common meeting ground. For most beneficial approach, invoke Neptune’s higher qualities of compassionate, oneness and spiritual love.

We last experienced a lunar eclipse at this degree on April 15, 1995. Thinking back to that spring will clue you in to some of the themes and issues returning for you now. The difference is that the positions of the Sun and Moon are flipped (Libra and Aries instead of Aries and Libra) — and that the stakes, and intensity of upheaval, are far, far greater now.

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Backsliding is not a choice. We burst out of previous confines in August, when a cardinal t-square birthed a new phase for each of us. Last month’s Libra New Moon demanded radical, foundational restructuring of specific relationships and our approach to relating in general. The playing out of that New Moon is building the platform for the first seven months of 2014, when we will grapple with relationships but good. The next way station in the process comes in April, with the Libra Full Moon lunar eclipse at the same degree as this week’s event.

Until then, we are lightening our load in preparation. Next month’s New Moon, which is a solar eclipse in Scorpio, will shoot us into a refocused direction for resources, sharing, trust and intimacy. Emotional packrats are being challenged to scale back. Lift-off will go everso much easier if you’re bringing along only what you truly value, need and use. And for that sorting process, the focus is on you. Not only what the other person needs, or what you assume s/he wants, or what you were told relationships were supposed to be about. Nope: You. Be honest with yourself. Be mature (though you’re going to see a lot of inner four-year-olds rampaging.) Be boldly, unapologetically you.

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