By Amanda Painter

Tonight is the Virgo Full Moon. This is the Moon in Virgo opposite the Sun in Pisces, exact at 7:51 pm EST tonight (00:51 UTC) — with some company. Along with the usual Full Moon effects that you might be noticing, Neptune’s presence (conjunct the Sun) is likely making things just a little more slippery than usual.

Earth Under a Full Moon; collage by Stacy Bergener.

In one way, that might be helpful. Full Moons often signify interpersonal confrontations, seemingly stuck situations, or a pressurized feeling like ‘something’s gotta give’. With Neptune adding extra softness and lubrication, you might find it easier to sidestep blowups or shift perspective in a way that opens up your options.

In fact, you might even find that heightened intuition and sensitivity to how others feel enables you to care a little more about their benefit and wellbeing, rather than getting stuck in defending your ego. Mercury and Venus in Pisces are currently in a trine to Jupiter in Scorpio, and appear to be playing supporting roles in the goodwill-and-good-feelings department, including for relationship conversations and sex.

On the other hand, Neptune so intimately involved in a Full Moon — especially involving Pisces — could also heighten a kind of psychological weariness with the world and the desire to escape it. Daydreaming the day away is not the worst thing in the world, and might actually offer just the psychic break needed, if this is how you’re feeling. The place where things can get dicey is if you try to make a full-on effort to evade reality. Modern culture is already playing fast and loose with things like facts, identity, social function and so on, thanks to the internet. Watch out for digital rabbit holes from now through the weekend.

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By Amanda Painter

Author’s note: I wrote and published this piece without any knowledge of yesterday’s senseless and tragic shooting at a high school in Florida that killed 17 students and wounded many others. Rather than try to rewrite the piece, I wanted to acknowledge the way this event seems to spotlight the shadow side of the dynamics I’ve written about below: the potential to become so accustomed to certain shocks to the system (both our own individual biological/psychological systems and the collective cultural/political system) that they no longer carry the capacity to effect change: we become numb to the stimulus and withdraw into denial and shut down, rather than allowing the shock to help us make needed changes. We double-down on the existing pattern; and in so doing, give up more and more of our power to it.

In the case of this particular shooting, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, it happened very close to an eclipse that’s sextile the Uranus-Eris conjunction in Aries. In this digital age, in which cell-phone videos — taken by students as their former classmate opens fire — become part of news reporting, can we allow this latest horror to motivate us to release the entrenched pattern of letting our lawmakers do nothing about gun laws and mental health care? Our collective karma is staring us in the face. If repeated crises are not getting us to act, what will?

Today we experience the second of the pair of eclipses for this season: a partial solar eclipse with the Aquarius New Moon, exact at 4:05 pm EST (21:05 UTC). Despite the ‘fixed’ quality of Aquarius, it looks like the theme of the eclipse chart — and of the weekend astrology — is ‘movement’.

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By Amanda Painter

With yesterday’s last quarter Moon, we reached the midpoint between eclipses. In a week, on Feb. 15, there will be a partial solar eclipse with the New Moon in Aquarius. This means you’re still within the Eclipse Zone — though you might consider this next week a particularly good time for wrapping up any projects or tasks you’d like to get out of the way, to clear the path to where you want to be.

Photo by Amanda Painter

In the next few days, some of the more prominent astrological highlights appear poised to help you along. The biggest of these is the Aquarius Sun making a square to Jupiter in Scorpio, exact Saturday just after 6:20 pm EST (23:21 UTC).

This is the latest in a series of astrological squares this week that have been urging you to take some direct action in various matters, both internal and external. Sun-Jupiter squares are generally very useful: they represent plenty of energy to get ahead — if you are disciplined about it, and avoid veering into excess.

Astrologer Robert Hand also notes with this aspect that if you’re naturally cautious, a Sun-Jupiter square is likely to give you the inclination and ability to do more than usual. Meanwhile, if you tend to be overly optimistic, you might want to beware of biting off more than you can chew as the weekend approaches.

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