By Amanda Painter

On Saturday, we have the Scorpio Full Moon tucked into a busy chart. Yet it’s happening as Mars makes contact with some potent, society-defining slow movers elsewhere in the sky. There’s a lot of energy zinging around currently — some of it may feel quite personal or internal; some of it might be coming through to you the way the noises of next-door demolition and construction come through a window, even if it’s closed. You may be experiencing a challenging combination of both.

This is Scorpio Moon opposing the Taurus Sun late in their signs. It’s exact at 5:11 pm EDT (21:11:14 UTC).

On the most basic level, if you’re feeling any building emotions that need expression, or if a situation with someone seems a little stuck and you’re not sure how to wiggle it into freer territory, this Full Moon describes that sensation.

Part of this is inherent in any Full Moon: as the Moon moves away from its opposition to the Sun, it’s often easier to find resolution with a person or circumstance that had appeared previously intractable.

Specific to this Full Moon, however, are several factors worth noting. One of these is a conjunction between Venus and Uranus in early Taurus, exact about five hours before the Full Moon peaks.

Venus-Uranus conjunctions, particularly in Taurus, are a reminder to seek tangible ways to experiment or deviate from routines in your relationships — especially any facet of a relationship that has become too routine. Bear in mind that if a situation has lapsed into autopilot, and if you’re not content with that but are doing nothing to address it, you may find that an unexpected disruption tries to get your attention.

Taurus, however, is not a sign that embraces enforced changes from others. So the more you can take the lead in stimulating things in new ways (take that phrase however you like), the less stressful it’s likely to be. I suspect that since the Sun had its own encounter with Uranus just three weeks or so ago, the ground is partially prepared for Venus. But Venus is a very personal, internal energy, and prefers softness and beauty.

The more you can entice, seduce, or otherwise warm yourself up for this (or warm up a partner), the better. Think sensory pleasures and a feeling of ‘security’: who doesn’t feel better equipped to try something daring, challenging or unexpected after a hot, tasty meal or a solid nap in a great bed? Note that this is not about manipulating yourself or anybody else: it’s about finding the place that feels solid so you (and they) can more easily muster the courage to explore the unknown. There is a difference.

As mentioned, the big news this week has been Mars entering into contact with some potent slow-moving planets in the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn). Several of those planets are early in their signs, and Mars is currently completing a cardinal grand cross with them. Eric covered this setup in his Monday Morning essay, mentioning that as Mars and then the Sun make their way through a series of aspects with cardinal planets over the next couple of months, they seem “poised to bring out some of the features of both our personal lives and of society in their current state.”

This Scorpio Full Moon appears to carry some themes that intersect with the Mars configuration — thanks to one particular object, though I want to set the scene a little first. For one, this Full Moon is making a grand cross of its own in the fixed signs, if we look at minor objects.

In Taurus, flanking the Sun (and with Mercury near enough to count), are the super-slow object Sedna and the asteroid Amor. I’m going to come back to Sedna; Amor, according to Martha Lang-Wescott, can represent conditions put on ‘unconditional’ love (or on whatever the asteroid is in aspect to), whether you should put ‘boundaries’ on love, what love means, or what blocks it.

In Leo, square the Moon and Sun, we have the asteroid Memoria: memorializing or reviving/revering the past; good or bad memories.

Conjunct the Scorpio Moon is the asteroid Kassandra. This point can relate to offering prophecies or advice; wasted breath (Kassandra in myth was cursed to tell the future but never be believed); and questions about whether to believe or follow advice that’s been given.

And in Aquarius, square the Sun and Moon, we have the asteroids Damocles (the ever-present peril faced by those in power; the need to fully understand another person’s situation); and Achilles (false confidence, or false lack of confidence — possibly relating to beauty in certain situations, especially for women).

We have themes of love and beauty, confidence and power, the past and the future all wrapped up in this Full Moon grand cross — with Full Moons ultimately being about the present moment: its pressures and confrontations, emotions and ego, conscious expression and unconscious motivations. Then we have Sedna.

Sedna is very, very far away, with a highly elliptical orbit — most estimates say it takes anywhere from 10,000 to more than 11,000 years to go around the Sun just once. It was named after a rare creation deity who began life as a mortal: a young woman from Inuit myth who — after rejecting all suitors — was married off to the very next one, who turned out to be a demon. After making the winds howl her distress, her father tries to save her; following their struggle with the demon, she falls to the bottom of the sea, where her fingers and toes, arms and legs, fall off and become the ocean’s seals, porpoises, whales and so on.

There’s quite a lot about Sedna’s myth, the location and orbit of her namesake planet, and the astrological delineation that’s worth consideration (and you can read Eric’s article on Sedna here). But what caught my eye most were these two paragraphs by Melanie Reinhart, from her article “The Goddess of the Frozen Waters,” which gets quoted at the link above:

The encounter with what has been lost, drowned out, or frozen long ago is her theme, which can be taken most fruitfully on the inner levels. In other words, our own ‘Ice Age’ is being highlighted here: the wounds in the soul caused by the impatience, condemnation, dismissal or anger of the father; the living hell of unresolved outrage; the violence of hardship where we cut off from what is desperate and vulnerable in ourselves or others in order to survive. And how this harshness is internalized.

She continues:

Even in the face of unrelenting trauma and suffering, we can, indeed must, beat our drum and sing to life. This is not a plea for escapism, but rather an acknowledgment that the Work is about keeping our heart open in hell. Sedna’s story is about acknowledging just how bad things really feel, and starting from there. Radical acceptance is demanded. Allowing love and harmony into our lives (symbolized by the Star of David) may mean opening to the frozen places inside where we are conflicted and feel unloving. To try and manufacture joy is to metaphorically cut off our own fingers.

Hopefully this won’t seem too much of a stretch, but I read Reinhart’s words about “the living hell of unresolved outrage; the violence of hardship where we cut off from what is desperate and vulnerable in ourselves or others in order to survive. And how this harshness is internalized,” and I could not help but think of how descriptive it is of the world we’re living in now. So much of what we encounter daily — via the mainstream news, or via social media and other online outlets — emphasizes our outrage, and the many things to feel outraged about.

So much of digital life in general conditions us to cut off — either from what is overwhelming ‘out there’ or from what is overwhelming (i.e., vulnerable) within ourselves. We internalize so much — despite unprecedented outlets for alleged ‘expression — and a great deal of what we internalize is harshness toward ourselves.

I read, “the Work is about keeping our heart open in hell. Sedna’s story is about acknowledging just how bad things really feel, and starting from there. Radical acceptance is demanded,” and think about so much of what the current planets on the cardinal cross refer to. There’s all the ancestral baggage we’re carrying. There’s all the psychic sludge and abuse history and trauma and denial wrapped up in our collective experience of, and dialogue about, sex and desire; in contrast, conversations about sexual pleasure often must be sought out actively, and can still be emotional minefields. There’s the violence of our corporations and governments, and the chaos that comes with their collapses and restructuring — the toll those institutions of power are taking on the environment and the general populace.

Yes, there is a need to recognize just how bad things are. There is just as crucial a need — perhaps even more so — to keep our hearts open in hell. How do we practice radical acceptance, and recover (or create anew) what has been lost, cut off or drowned out?

What is blocking love for you — and are you willing to see and believe it if Kassanda and the Scorpio Moon reflect your own light back from, and to, your depths? How can you acknowledge both good and bad memories, yet use them as leverage to ground yourself more solidly in the present moment, rather than getting stuck in them? How are your sense of confidence (or its lack) and power (or its precariousness) pushing you to step more fully into being an embodied being — one with full access to all of your senses and empathy?

While these questions may come to a peak this weekend, I suspect we’ll be grappling with them for quite a long while yet. Remember — this weekend and onward — that Taurus is also about values. If we can find value in the questions, I think we stand a good chance of discovering valuable answers. Believe it or not, you embody both.

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