Full moons: When ‘completion’ can mean many things!

I wanted a quiet 2010, but so far it’s been pretty turbulent. Not all bad, for sure, but turbulent. We’ve seen two major earthquakes within weeks, and without taking away any of the gravity of those events, I’m willing to bet that many people have been feeling quakes one way or another in their personal lives.

Since I’ve been tracking a few full moon experiences on this blog, I’m starting to find that something dramatic, and unexpected, nearly always happens. And every time, I am reminded that when people say full moons bring events and themes ‘to completion’, one never really know what form that’ll take until it happens.

Close to the previous Full Moon in Leo in late January (conjunct Mars), my Byronesque one, I was bringing to fruition a collaborative project with various partners. Our launch was planned for a date close to that Full Moon — and no, I didn’t pick the date for that reason, it was a group choice, and in that context, I don’t mention astrology. The evening before the launch, I get a call from our key guest speaker saying his flight had been cancelled and he would not be able to get into town on time. For various reasons I won’t go into detail here, I decided to fill in for him with an old presentation I gave to a different audience about a year ago. I hadn’t been scheduled to present that day at all. I had planned to be a behind-the-scenes organiser.

A tale of two (work) cultures

Kermit as Bob Cratchit in A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.

— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Once upon a time, there was an astro-blogger who tried to make sense of two very different work cultures she experienced while working for the same institution. Whether it was because she was born under the sign of the Twins, or that as a Gemini, she was more sensitive to dualities, she found, soon after she started her new job, that she would be working for two different bosses under two sub-groups within the larger organisation. As time went on, it became clear that the two managerial styles, and thus the group work cultures emerging from under them, could not be more opposed.

One was very Jupiterian (say Group 1) — forward- and outward-looking; the other very (almost too) Saturnian (say Group 2) — always cautious, always fearful, always looking over one’s shoulder. While the larger umbrella organisation was already itself Saturnian (Saturn rules institutions), there was never any danger that the Jupiterian culture of Group 1 would indulge itself excessively (this is the era of budget cuts after all); but it meant that the Saturnian culture of Group 2 found its own paranoia reinforced. Jupiterian optimism in Group 1 meant that meetings with them always ended up trying to look for positive ways to work around budget cuts and other limits, while still trying to maintain standards and produce results; and Saturnian caution in Group 2 meant that meetings with them always ended up listing all the things they could never achieve.

New Moon in my 1st house: Introducing Saturn (and Pluto) Girl

Mystic Medusa has been referring to Saturn Girl, a comic book character from the 1950s that was revived in the 1990s, as an archetype to model ourselves against as we learn the lessons of Saturn’s transit through Libra in the next two and the half years. I’m borrowing that reference today to address some new moon revelations.

The recent New Moon in Sagittarius occurred in my 1st house of self (see astrogrrl’s ‘The New Moon in Houses’), followed shortly by transiting Venus across my Ascendant squaring Uranus in Pisces in near my IC. The news I encountered was unexpected but it helped crystallise something.

I wrote last year about a re-encounter with an ex-boyfriend from a relationship that ended in 2002. I wrote that he had tried to re-kindle a cyber-sexual relationship which I’d played along with for a time but put a stop to when I failed to establish and communicate proper boundaries (this will have to be my Saturn in Libra lesson for the next two years). That hasn’t stopped him from trying every few months or so — each time I’ve ignored the messages, always fearful of my capacity for angry words, always believing (naively) that because I keep my space open, people ‘ought to’ respect it.

Poll: Saturn-Pluto square — clash of the titans?

I seem only good for posting polls these days. The last time these two titans made contact was in 2001 (a momentous year everyone remembers), and Saturn opposed Pluto. At the time, Pluto also opposed my natal Sun-Saturn on my Saturn return (which I’ve mentioned here and here).

This time, on 15 November, Saturn is squaring Pluto, while the former is riding over my natal Pluto and the latter opposite my natal Venus. Oh joy.