by Robert Wilkinson

This initiating, integrating, destiny activating Full Moon occurs at 7:52 pm PDT, 10:52 pm EDT September 24, 3:52 am BST September 25, and falls at the 2nd degree of Libra and Aries. As with all Full Moons, use the light of the adventure you’ve been seeing and expressing since the New Moon, and give it form and focus through simplifying the expression and elevating the view.

Continuing the theme that proceeds at each Full Moon as they move through each polarity, this one gives us the ability to bring to surface the spiritual power resulting from the explosions resulting from our “will to wholeness” that have erupted these past two weeks. We’ve all broken up and broken free of some “old complexes” the past two weeks, and this one gives us a broader view of the pulses of creating perfect forms.

Today’s Full Moon post will be an overview of the Lunation and some of its primary qualities. In parts 2 and 3 we’ll cover the Sabian Symbols, aspects, distributions, and patterns.

An Overview

Continuing the theme that proceeds at each Full Moon as they move through each polarity, this one gives us the ability to use the transformational process in a balanced way to express emergent individuality. As Mars is direct and involved in the chain of rulerships of the Lunation, this is a time of healing whatever needs to be healed on any level of our lives.

This Full Moon helps us anticipate what we need to clear out, what needs repair, and what’s been distracting us from our main focus. This one requires a lot of “feeling knowing” about what we need and don’t need, and what brings us security. This is a “turning of the corner of destiny” period, with particularly dynamic changes for those with planets in the early degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn.

From mid-June through mid-September, we’ve been shown what we needed to withdraw from, and plan anew in several areas of our life. We now have a technique that can help us “read the tea leaves” and know our individual spiritual place in the larger group work we’re a part of. Many things ended, or we simply no longer like doing those things any more and are now moving in new directions.

Because of this Summer’s Solar Eclipses, things continue to shut down in the areas of our chart between 21 Cancer and 19 Leo, within the massive irrationality pervading our times thanks to The Grand Irrationality V.2 driven by Uranus biseptile Pluto. I’ll discuss that later in this series. Many have reached a peak or the end of a quest, and now must cut loose from social rules that keep their lives less than joyous. Find others you can have fun with, or at least lighten up around.

To remind you, we’re still receiving signs and signals about our ancestral (genetic) Wisdom, and new long term views based in the integrity we’ve embraced and the understanding we’ve received since the Cancer Solar Eclipse in July. The entire last half of 2018 is a period of phenomenal growth through embracing Heart power and demonstrating it through our understanding.

Now that Mars is direct, even though it’s still in its shadow zone for a little while, we’re done reworking many things, delaying other things, re-evaluated what we want to do and how we want to do it, took care of neglected things and “planned anew,” and had times of asking ourselves what we really want, don’t want, like, and don’t like. What is worth our effort? Could something be done differently that will make it run more smoothly in the future? Now we know.

The Rhombus

As Uranus is still semisquare Neptune, anchoring the off-again, on-again friction Rhombus Diamond configuration, we’ll have to continue to deal with this “cutting, grinding, and polishing” quality each time the Moon moves through the middle of the mutable signs and the end of the cardinal and beginning of the fixed signs. We recently experienced the extreme grind in the middle of September, with Mercury in mid-Virgo opposing Neptune at the same time Venus was opposed Uranus, with double semisquares and sesquisquares created between those planets. This created a massive Octile frictional configuration, indicative of the widespread grinding going on this past 10 days.

We had a perfect complete Diamond several times last year when planets transited mid-Virgo and late Libra at the same time. However, the good news is that Mars is now past the square to Uranus and semisquare to Neptune, decreasing the friction of the recent past.

This long wave general agitation began in mid-May when Mars entered Aquarius and semisquared Neptune and squared Uranus, and continued through the next two Mars square Uranus aspects made in early August and mid-September. We’ve now been cut, ground, and polished to perfection in multiple areas of our lives!

Is the Grand Irrationality A Factor in this Full Moon?

The Grand Irrationality is a phenomenon we’ve been living within since 1993. Since then, we’ve been put through an irrational period that continues to this day. To refresh you, the Grand Irrationality is a long wave configuration set into motion every time a planet makes a conjunction, septile, biseptile, or triseptile to Neptune and/or Pluto. Septile series aspects show us points in time when our future destiny is precipitated by critical choices made in the present.

At this point in the year, Neptune is no longer septile Pluto, and even when they are at their closest in Winter, they no longer make an exact septile, showing the return of a long wave sextile at some point. However, it seems these past 26 years were preparing us for the current radical irrationality indicated by Uranus biseptile Pluto!

At this Full Moon, Mercury is triseptile Uranus and biseptile Pluto, activating the configuration in a BIG way! This indicates ideas and information exchanged the next two weeks will be important in the larger destiny unfolding both at large and in our individual lives.

This particular period is even stranger than it’s been, since it combines Uranus biseptile Pluto with Uranus’ semisquare to Neptune. So it’s not exactly the Grand Irrationality as we’ve known it, but it’s still a “never-ending revolution” now that the Cosmic Awakener has hit its “fork in the road of destiny” with the Lord of Transformation. I term this phase The Grand Irrationality V.2!

We’re now slowly moving out of that Neptune-involved configuration, and are moving into a period when Neptune and Pluto are beginning to form a long term sextile, as they were for most of the last half of the 20th century. At this time, the Grand Irrationality gains strength as we move into Autumn and Winter, and will again lessen in strength in the late Winter into the Spring and Summer. (Right now they’re 55d 51m apart, still closer to a sextile than a septile.)

As I’ve explained in other articles, that means that in the Autumn and Winter (in the Northern Hemisphere) they operate as a simultaneous “pulse,” since they’re both aspected near the same time. But in the Spring and Summer we experience it as a rolling influence, with first Pluto aspected, and then Neptune at some time after that, depending on which planet is doing the aspect to these planets.

Because this configuration involves Neptune and Pluto, the outermost spiritual planets, they show a long wave evolutionary crisis for the entire human race. Since 1993, at one point or another, everyone on Earth has experienced a nonstop energy of having to choose, at the bottom of our beings, the path to evolution or devolution, progress or regress, love or fear, joy or control. It’s why things have been so weird, irrational, and hard-edged.

More on Uranus Biseptile Pluto

As I offered back in May when Uranus first entered Taurus, “… they will soon make a biseptile, guaranteed to be a very unstable and irrational time!” That prophesy has certainly played out in the news with trumpets blaring, thanks to other transits triggering these 7th harmonic non-rational energies.

This began at the end of June 2018 with Uranus 101+ degrees from Pluto, lasting through October when the orb gets too large. We then enjoy a brief return to the trielftile between December 2018 and April 2019. The biseptile comes roaring back between May and July, and again October 2019 through December 2019.

This is the first biseptile in the larger Uranus/Pluto cycle that began at their conjunctions in the mid-1960s. The waxing septile occurred 1989-1991, so this is the next point in that larger “Pulse of Destiny.” The hot zones, measured from the current Uranus biseptile Pluto, are around 18-22 Capricorn, 10-14 Pisces, 1-5 Taurus, 22-26 Gemini, 13-17 Leo, 4-8 Libra, and 26-30 Scorpio. If you have anything near these zones, your life has had some abrupt transformational experiences this Summer, with more to come over the next few weeks!

As this aspect was in play during the Solstice, and will still be in play in the coming September Equinox chart, it’s no wonder that we’ve had radical events, and continue to have radical events, now and into the future! This is a major fork in the road for the entire world, and things may become extraordinarily irrational at times.

As I told you at the Solstice, if things don’t make sense, they don’t have to. The only thing that matters is to know how to focus and not get distracted by the craziness in the atmosphere. Sometimes, when we keep our heads when all around us are losing theirs, we come out on the other side looking and feeling good!

Planetary Distribution

In this Full Moon, the span occupied by the inner planets (in this chart Sun at 2 Libra though Venus at 9 Scorpio spans 36+ degrees. This span will be the focus of broad activity in our charts. There are no other clusters near this span, but there is a very active zone between Saturn at 3 Capricorn and Mars at 4 Aquarius, with 3 planets in that 30+ degree span, making it also very active. We hit maximum compression last March, with all planets between Jupiter at 24 Scorpio and Uranus at 27 Aries, making a very powerful triseptile between the bookends.

At this time we have the 10 traditional planets occupying 7 signs, in an uneven widespread distribution. Currently, the outer planet occupied span begins with Jupiter in Scorpio, then moves through Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, Neptune in Pisces, and Uranus in Taurus, with the inner planets (except Mars) now occupying Libra and Scorpio, with the Moon inside the outer planet span at 2 Aries.

With Saturn in Capricorn and Mars still in Aquarius, we again have ALL the planets disposited by Saturn! I’ll discuss the ruling dispositors in another article. We’re also back in a time when no planet leads the Sun, which will last until Venus makes its “Inferior conjunction” with the Sun, after which it will “lead the Light” until the next Mercury Inferior conjunction in late November.

We’ve now moved into a time period of shifting Jones pattern. The patterns change mainly due to the position of the Moon, and at this Full Moon, we’re in an imperfect “Bowl” Jones pattern.

The Bowl Pattern and how it works

This type of spread, with all the planets occupying approximately half of the signs with an empty half opposite the occupies half, creates a “special type of conscious selfhood,” which Dr. Jones says “marks the Bowl type of temperament. He goes on to state “Fundamentally it is an extreme self-containment,” which “holds things, and a Bowl individual is one who always has something to bear.”

He goes on to state that with the Bowl, “the whole dynamic of man, his total power of achievement, arises in his instinctive realization that he is set off against a definite part of the world, that there is a complete segment of experience from which he is excluded in some subtle fashion. The Bowl not only holds something, but also places whatever it holds into relationship with a larger consideration.”

Dr. Jones continues that “the occupied segment of the Bowl horoscope reveals the activity and organization of the self, since planets are significant according to their place by sign and house, and the unoccupied segment becomes a challenge to existence, or the need and emptiness to which the native must direct his attention. The outstanding characteristic of the Bowl temperament is its marked sense of what is self-contained in contrast with what the self cannot hold, and this take an everyday form in an advocacy of some cause, the furtherance of a mission, an introspective concern over the purpose of experience.”

He concludes his explanation of how the pattern works with “The Bowl native always has something to give to his fellows, whether literally or psychologically, whether constructively or vindictively, because his orientation to the world arises from division; that is, frustration and uncertainty. The leading planets, determined in exactly the same way as for the Locomotive pattern, give a point of application, and shows where and how the native seeks to carry out his mission or gain his everyday justification for existence.”

He brings up another important point of analysis, as he states “the leading planet is of secondary importance in the Bowl pattern, unless it is found in a strong opposition or cosmic cross. The fundamental attack on the problems of life by the Bowl individual is indicated more significantly by the tilt or house-position of the Bowl-segment.”

He concludes this section by stating “the Bowl character is definitely more self-expending, or self-seeking, and more practically interested in what things mean and what they are. It continually throws the emphasis from the signs into the houses. It a general way the Bowl tends to ‘scoop up’ things and initiate experience when the position of the leading planet ranges from the fourth cusp, up and over the ascendant, to the Midheaven cusp, and then inclines to “capture” things or consummate various phases of life when the leading planet is placed similarly from the tenth angle down over the descendant to the nadir.”

With the Sun leading this Bowl pattern, it shows us the need to use “enlightened balanced perspective,” “well-reasoned illumination,” and “abundant justice” to open our planetary experience. Libra is a very creative sign, and offers us forms of creative renewal for a day that’s just now dawning. Take an illuminated and/or enlightened view of the many ways a thing can be approached or understood in its larger picture. As the Sun is in Air, understanding and a sense of how things are related in a balanced overview will open doors to experience.

Is the Sun Following the Moon, or the Moon Following the Sun?

There are two patterns; one is when the Full Moon Sun is the same sign as the previous New Moon Sun, and the other is when the Full Moon Sun is in the next sign from the Sun in the previous New Moon. We had the Sun in the same sign in both the New Moon and Full Moon between September 2013 and September 2014. We then changed pattern, and between October 2014 and May 2016 we had a “reversed pattern” of the Sun of the Full Moon occupying the sign after the New Moon Sun.

We then went back to the “natural” order between June 2016 and the late July 2017 New Moon in Leo, when the Full Moon Sun fell in the same sign as the Sun of the previous New Moon. This is the fourteenth Full Moon since then where we again are in a “reversed pattern” of the Sun of the Full Moon occupying the sign after the New Moon Sun. So we’re now in “the other” New Moon/Full Moon sign expression.

We finished the period of the “natural” order of Lunation Suns at the August 2017 Solar Eclipse in late Leo and began this other sequence, since that New Moon Sun was in Leo, but the subsequent Full Moon Sun was in Virgo. Since the New Moon offers us seeds in the first half of the month’s lunar cycle, and fulfillment in the second half, we now are in a sequence with the “Seed Light” of Virgo coming to a Full Moon illumination through the current Sun in Libra and Moon in Aries.

Because the New Moon preceding the Full Moon always represents the seed forms that are brought to surface at and after the Full Moon, this begins the fulfillment of the theme of the recent New Moon at 17 Virgo. You can learn more about that New Moon in Virgo by going to The September 2018 New Moon at 17 Virgo Pt. 1 – What’s Happening in September-October 2018, and The September 2018 New Moon at 17 Virgo Pt. 2 – Signs, Sabian Symbols, and What it All Means.

Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend

Because Saturn is in its home sign of Capricorn for the first time since 1991, it is the final dispositor of all planets transiting Capricorn and Aquarius from now through 2023. This chart again returns Saturn to its throne, because it is again the final dispositor of ALL the other planets! It will continue to play a powerful part in world affairs through November 2018 because Mars is still transiting Aquarius during this time. That makes Saturn a major force to be reckoned with in 2018!

Add the fact that we’ve had numerous long term events featuring Saturn in Capricorn trine Uranus in Taurus, we’ve begun the next chapter in learning how to blend past and future together to craft our future destiny in conscious ways. Their 2017 Fire trines stabilized Electric Fire and distributive “Fire by Friction,” which led naturally to the Earth trine helping us ground our efforts in practical ways.

We are all learning to organize and simplify our Saturn-Uranus “dance of individualization” in our lives. If you haven’t already, I cover a lot of their dance guiding us to create our destiny in conscious individualized ways in my book Saturn: Spiritual Master, Spiritual Friend. Saturn helps us give form and structure to our quest for Self-realization, and in Capricorn, teaches us how to construct an “organized personal structure” to the Uranian energies making our spiritual life come alive.

It was written for both astrologers and non-astrologers. Even those with little or no understanding of astrology will benefit from understanding why you had to make certain choices at crucial times that shaped your life in profound ways.

Each time you read any section of this book you will find new insights about your power to steer your personal evolution. You will understand how to throw off all the attitudes and memories which have held you back from finding and living the life and purpose. Through your journey of self-discovery, you can find ways to live your life on your own terms, and fulfill your purpose for being alive as an Eternal having human experiences!

If you’ve haven’t already gotten your copy, you can go to the Createspace page and this should be all you need to order your copy. It’s also available on Amazon and as an ebook on Kindle, so if that’s more to your liking, go for it! I’ve been told people who live outside the US can get their copy much faster by going through Amazon. If you would, whether you’ve gotten the ebook or the paperback, please write a review on the Amazon site, since the more reviews, the more of a boost they give it.

On A Final Note

See you in the near future with parts two and three on this Full Moon integrating new initiatives and releasing archetypal potentials. Despite tremendous friction and pressure, this one helps us yield to our feelings so that we can make crucial choices at the threshold of a new life. Here the adventure makes things seem simple, and simplicity is the means to embrace the adventure!

This Full Moon will help us become perfectly clear about what works and what doesn’t, what we need to move into new effective realms of activity, and helps us find realizations as we move into a time of old forms falling away. The “cutting, grinding, and polishing” energies of the recent past have shown us the value of what is to be done, with this Full Moon revealing the larger sweep of cycles of creation.

As we are still dealing with squares between Libra and Capricorn, beware of dishonest comparisons and false equivalents. Find the right sense of perspective and/or proportion, and make the decisions you need to in order to recalibrate your public and personal life, or the relationship of your outer life to your inner life. Find ways to decrease the heaviness and take care of yourself, or decrease your defensiveness to find ways to be the wisdom of your “Spiritual Adulthood” in the world.

The friction will be obvious, and there is great creative potential if we see how we’re dealing with the results of our previously held ideals. This is a healing Full Moon, where laughter will make things easy, plain, and simple. New developments beckon, but be patient as you work out potential consequences to embracing certain actions. This one throws us into the future!

I’ll see you soon when we’ll discuss Sabian Symbols, aspects, and other important chart factors.

© Copyright 2018 Robert Wilkinson