8:37  am  AHST 07/13/2022
  11:37 am   PDT  07/13/2022

  2:37 pm   EDT  07/13/2022
  7:37 pm  BST  07/13/2022

Full Moons are always the halfway mark in the lunar cycle, when the Moon is opposed the Sun, making a full mirror or reflection of its light. They point out the contrasting archetype to the New Moon’s cycle for the Sun’s journey through Cancer this month, dealing with the energetics of nurturing, sensitivity and caring for others. This Full Moon is extra powerful, being a SuperMoon, pulling tides and gravity with greater strength than usual.

At the full Moon in Capricorn, we are dealing with things having to do with responsibility, setting boundaries, getting projects accomplished, as well as dealing with the limitations of those things. Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, also governs karma, the principle of how our actions have consequences.

Looking at the chart, the Sun in Cancer has Mercury on one side and Ceres on the other. Mercury in Cancer is an influence of being able to communicate our feelings, and Ceres, the archetype of Demeter or the Great Mother, strengthens and augments the nurturing aspect of this Full Moon chart.

The Ceres myth resonates strongly in this chart. Very briefly, the drama surrounding her story is that she was the goddess of fertility and agriculture and all things that grew upon Earth. Ceres went into grief when her daughter Persephone was abducted by Pluto, and subsequently withdrew the life force from the Earth, causing everything to wither and die. When the people of the Earth prayed to Zeus for help, a deal was struck in which Persephone would spend half the year above the ground, and the other half in Pluto’s underworld. Thus creating the cycle of birth, growth, flowering, withering and barrenness, only to be repeated each year.

Interesting that Pluto in this chart is conjoined the Moon and opposed (180˚) to Ceres. All over the world nowadays we are faced with what feels like Ceres’s anger and wrath: extreme heat, drought, hurricanes, earthquakes, extreme floods and climate catastrophe. Pluto astrologically rules great power, the power of the underworld that, made conscious in a balanced way, would make us gods. But in the unbalanced and ego-driven society we’ve created thus far, we’ve disrespected the gods, and our hubris has caused the Earth to be out of balance. Hence we are living out the effects of the karma of our ignorance. This Full Moon strongly points out this drama to us, asking us what we’re going to do to change. Humanity is in love with Pluto’s power, which when negatively expressed abducts, steals, lies and murders to get what it wants. Ceres has no choice but to withhold her blessing, until we learn to relent and change our ways.  

When we find trines (angles of 120˚) in a chart, these are clues to working through and finding answers to the challenges the planets present. In this Full Moon chart, the release points to the Full Moon tension are higher octave planets, Uranus and Neptune. These are subtle influences, and yet the more subtle, the more powerful an influence, if we are paying attention. Ceres trine to Neptune in Pisces is the most exact trine in the chart. Neptune is also trine to the Sun and Mercury. Trines to Neptune indicate insight, influences that inspire us, tapping in to our imaginations to transcend our perceived limitations. Often these insights come in dreams, or while awake, as intuitive “hits”.

The Moon in Capricorn also forms a trine to Uranus in Taurus. The people (the Moon) are in a revolutionary mood (Uranus). In this chart there is great tension between those who embody sensitivity and nurturing (Sun/Ceres) and those who love power and will do anything to keep it (Moon/Pluto). But Uranus can give us sudden inspirations, lightning bolt awareness, like revelations that can change our lives. 

Once again, this Full Moon points out that we are at a turning point, and the stakes are nothing less than the welfare of all beings on Earth. We’ve just passed on July 11th, which was another exact transit of Pluto over the point where it was in 1776 when the US was born, called a Pluto Return. The final Pluto return transit will be in December of this year. This is when the shadow of the US becomes center stage, and the keyword is exposure.

Meanwhile, the calling of this Full Moon is to remember to nurture ourselves, our beloveds, our friends and family, and all those we come into contact with as a way to reinforce the glue that holds a society together. That glue is not our laws or the fear of prosecution, but the desire to cooperate, to be living together for a common purpose of living safely, to create life that allows for the pursuit of happiness, for the benefit of not just humans, but for All Our Relations.