14 Aug The Setting Sun ~ August 15th-21st, 2016

This is the week of the Full Moon in Aquarius and it is also the last week of the Sun’s transit through Leo. Thus, we are nearing the end of the intense exploration of the autobiography of the Self that will culminate in a profound moment of reflection when the Sun opposes the Moon in Aquarius in the early morning hours on Thursday.

Next Monday, the Sun will enter the sign of Virgo, where the emphasis will become less focused on dramatic narrative, transforming some of your excess pomp and pageantry into selfless service. But until then, spend these days reveling in your own self-directed performance of life.           

You’re coming on strong

You’re showing your color

Like a setting sun

Where do I begin

When the Sun is in its last days of Leo, the perception of individual identity will come on strong, skimming through the stream of consciousness that flows within you, organizing that interior monologue into a narrative that commences with the question, “Where do I begin?”

You’re the devil in me I brought in from the cold

You said your body was young but your mind was very old

In the setting of the Leo Sun, there is still a dramatic character study to be made from your tempestuous feelings which find the crux of their expression within conflict and paradox. “O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms”.  

Whatever broiling pains and swelling joys direct your actions this week, they will produce a golden thread of continuity that connects all your past, present, and future selves. Therein do you perfect the art of autobiographical narrative which artfully employs the illusion of authentic Self-expression.

You’re coming on strong and I like the way

The visions we had have faded away

You’re part of a life I’ve never had

I’ll tell you that it’s just too bad

Monday/Tuesday: You’re Showing Your Color

At the beginning of the week, the Moon will be in Capricorn, conjuncting Pluto and trining Mercury and Jupiter in Virgo. The Moon moves very swiftly so these aspects will be but the  briefest flashes of deep feeling and intuition. However, when the Moon skims over Pluto, it will deepen your readiness for the electric Full Moon that will arrive later in the week.

In contact with Jupiter and Mercury in Virgo, the Moon will summon your most well developed qualities of discernment. Any choices or decisions you are faced with on Monday will very likely be well played.

On Tuesday, the Sun in Leo will trine Uranus in Aries. Your quest for Self discovery and satisfaction will be revolutionized by this influence. Your interpretation of your current situation will be given a brilliant new revision and suddenly, your performance will go from dull-witted to ingenious! This is an excellent influence in which to quickly dissolve preconceived notions about your potential in order to receive flashes of ingenuity.

If you have struggled to play a particular song on piano, it may suddenly flow with ease from your fingertips. If you have been unable to finish a story based on your original outline, this is a day to discover a new way to write it. If you have been unable to tell your lover how you really feel about something that affects both of you, this is a day where you may suddenly be filled with the courage to express yourself.

Wednesday/Thursday: You’re Coming On Strong

On Wednesday, the Moon is in Aquarius, but before it becomes full, Venus in Virgo makes an exact trine to Pluto in Capricorn. Any sense of complacency that you have been clinging to will be torn off and buried deep beneath the earth for later resurrection.

Because Pluto creates such an intense aspect with Venus, circumstances will impose upon you some expectation that requires you bare your soul through acts of love and devotion; through art or music; or through the meritorious use of wealth. To Venus, beauty is truth.

Though you may feel vulnerable on this day, Venus herself is always artfully nude but never stripped naked. Thus, Venusian nudity reveals that there is a nuanced way to be vulnerable and yet still remain exalted. When your vulnerability is willingly offered as a loving gift, then everyone is blessed. You may indeed receive great good fortune for what you offer to the world today.

In the earliest hours of Thursday morning, the Full Moon in Aquarius will be exact. This moment in the lunation cycle barely qualifies as an eclipse, but nevertheless it hints at the commencement of the eclipse season which will fully begin next month.

During Leo season, it is important for this focused Self study to culminate in the objective gaze that the Aquarian Moon offers. At this time you will feel divided by the inner voices of actor and critic.

The trine to the Sun from Uranus and the sextile to the Moon from Uranus will likely bring up new forms of philosophical examination from which you can create a new architecture of thought. Expect to do some heavy thinking that radicalizes some of your outworn assumptions.

Consider how in the West, it has become acceptable to be a fairly solipsistic relativist. This state of mind is an opium den for the intellect that slowly drowns all artistic potency and philosophical inquiry. What seems an exciting journey for the Self is quickly cast adrift upon murky waters. Nothing ever has to be true, nothing has to be investigated, and everything loses purpose as tension dissolves into endless slack.

This view of reality positions the Western individual as a Divine Creator, but one that more resembles the blind and ignorant Gnostic demiurge, rather than a radiant spark of Divine Wisdom.

Rather than finding true compassion and inspiration from the infinite well that is the human heart, relativism seeks to pantomime divine love and creation with a litany of empirical facts and their prescribed knee-jerk responses. The mythical Age of Aquarius, this is not.

Thus, at this Full Moon, use this reflexive moment between lunar and solar light to find the courage to acknowledge the Anima Mundi, the soul of the Universe, which embodies truth and wisdom that are not subject to subjectivity.

The ultimate purpose of Leo is to discover that “persona” or the sense of Self is an expression of the stream of consciousness which flows through all living things. A heartfelt performance of consciousness through personality should not fall into the trap of hardening into a concrete ego that gets caught in the tape loop of “all that can be known is the self”.

The wider mystical perspective of the Aquarian Full Moon reveals to the Leonic Sun that if the Universe has a soul, then each being will have a unique way of manifesting that soul’s consciousness.

Friday/Saturday/ Sunday: Like A Setting Sun

Over the weekend, the Moon begins to wane in the sign of Pisces. By Saturday, there will be a conjunction between Mercury and Jupiter in Virgo that will oppose the Moon. Expect your emotional capacity to be as broad your intellectual attitudes. Jupiter is the planet of wisdom and expansion, whereas Mercury represents the exchange of information.

Because Mercury is ruled by and exalted in the sign of Virgo, this conjunction with Jupiter has great potential to fertilize your mind to grow healthily towards any pursuit of higher knowledge or wisdom.

This aspect will make also make it easier for you to engage in some heavy critique of the so-called wisdom that has been made so widely available to you in this Information Age. In rutheless Virgoan fashion, you may now throw out whatever nonsense has been cluttering your mind and start a serious investigation about the nature of reality.

Sunday is the last day of the Sun’s magnificent transit through the sign Leo. But as the sun sets on Leo, it will rise in Virgo to enable you to illuminate your search for deeper truth.

The problem unique to humanity is that it has created a global society that works against its own best interests by steadily wielding destruction upon the whole planet. Thus, there is an artificial conflict between nature, which we are born of, and culture, which we have born.

The ecological function of Virgo is to sort out some of these gaping issues and nurture that which is still healthy in humanity. In Virgo, the harvest season for the fruits of mythopoesis, divine love and gnosis arrives.