the full moon in aquarius for writers
Hi everyone,
Some news: payment plans have been released for my 8-week course, Astrology for Writers: How to Make Your Writing Work for You. There’s also been a slight schedule change — one of the classes was scheduled for Labor Day weekend, which I realize is a holiday for many folks here in the US, so we will no longer be meeting that Sunday. The updated schedule is on the course page.
Doors close in 8 days (!) on July 31, and the first class meets the next day on August 1! I can’t wait to get started with y’all.
Xx,
Jeanna
Tonight, there is a Full Moon in Aquarius, arriving at 10:37p Eastern. What a way to start Leo season.
Full moons inherently highlight the tension in a season. Leo and Aquarius are opposite signs, fire and air, obsessed with seemingly different things. Leo’s concern is self-realization, creation; Aquarius’, innovation and systemic understanding. Leo is ruled by the sun, the center of the solar system who loves a good show; Aquarius, by our dyke-daddy taskmaster Saturn, who would rather that everyone got their shit together and understood the rules so that we could break them more efficiently.
To understand and contextualize what we are experiencing both on individual (Leo) and collective (Aquarius) levels in this moment, it’s essential to look back to the New Moon in Aquarius on February 11th.
Full Moons are often regarded as maturations, as the blossomings of a cycle; the moon is full, waxed to its maximum brightness, after which its visibility wanes — and with it, the energy of a cycle. What, exactly, has been grown? We always look back to the previous new moon for clues, to what was being seeded — intentionally or no — around that time, in the area of life in the birth chart ruled by this particular sign.
The New Moon in Aquarius was buoyed by a particularly special conjunction between the two benefics of the sky, Venus and Jupiter. This seeded what I, at the time, citing a lot of Audre Lorde, called a healing erotic. In that newsletter, I wrote:
Within astrology, artistic creativity and the erotic live in the same part of the birth chart. To tap into one is to tap into the other. Lorde is exhorting us to value feeling and erotic instinct and motivation — the basis of our creativity.
With this new moon, it is vital that we begin or continue the process of shucking off the old lessons and messaging, that we examine the deeply internalized systems that put us on autopilot when it comes to our relationship with our own bodies and desires — and what we think we’re capable of. But there is an absolutely vital, second component to this essay that is often forgotten. The erotic is to be claimed, recognized, but — perhaps most importantly — shared. How deeply communal and community-oriented. How Aquarian.
That energy is being invoked today, in this Full Moon — certainly, we are being called to bring our attentiveness not just to ourselves in Leo season but also to the collectives and communities in Leo season. But there is also a somewhat different inflection that Leo season offers the erotic Lorde discusses, that we discussed earlier this year around that generous and bountiful New Moon.
When reduced to a stereotype or a meme, Leo is maligned for being egotistical or for needing attention, for needing to be on stage. This could not be further from the truth. (Although: how deeply human to crave appreciation, attention, and affection!) The Leo archetype, the energy of the sun itself, embodies the profound warmth and courage that comes from self-acceptance, self-respect, and the desire to express that self-love and create and share more of it with the world. (This is not to say that Leos themselves do this easily or well; they are humans, after all, with the same insecurities as the rest of us.)
Leo energy reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses from the days when I still believed — that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). Leo energy, at its best, is contagious because the confidence a secure person has in themselves also encourages others, knows how to direct the spotlight onto others. The profound self-acceptance of Leo energy, distributed amongst the Aquarian community, is deeply threatening to a white supremacist, patriarchal society that seeks to sell you self-doubt through capitalism.
As Audre Lorde writes, “Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.”
The healing erotic that we seeded collectively earlier this year is, today, empowered and emboldened in its maturation through the boldness of Leo’s self-love and desire to, as Lorde also once wrote, “define myself for myself.”
Shuck off the old lessons and messaging.
Happy Full Moon.
Writing Prompts for the Full Moon in Aquarius
What projects, creations, communities, or ideas feel like they are coming to a point of maturity, resolution, or completion? What is requiring re-thinking?
Look back to your journaling/calendaring from the New Moon in Aquarius on February 11th. What were you growing then? What were your intentions? What were you planting?
This Full Moon is at 1 degree and 26 minutes of Aquarius, which means it’s within a degree of last December’s Great Conjunction between taskmaster Saturn and medicinal Jupiter — a 20-year new cycle. This moon may activate some emotions that have been seeded around or are connected to what that point in your chart indicates for you. Look back to your horoscopes from that time to see what was seeded then; with long-term cycles, things may not be evident immediately or quickly, but moments such as these offer insight into what may be occurring.
P.S. Doors close for this next session of Astrology for Writers: How to Make Your Writing Work for You on July 31! Register here.
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