For readers on the West side of the Atlantic, Monday will feature the first Full Moon on New Year’s Day since the 20th Century. Specifically, this opposition from the Capricorn Sun to the Moon in Cancer will be exact at 9:24 pm EST on Jan. 1 (or 2:24 UTC on Jan. 2). Weather permitting, it should be quite a sight to behold.

By itself, this particular correlation between one periodic and easily visible celestial event and a commonly used civil calendar does not have substantial meaning. It may, however, serve as a potential gateway to greater understanding.

If anybody has ever lived during proverbial interesting times it is you, and everybody else currently present on Earth with you. Yet (contrary to easy assumption), that circumstance is not necessarily a curse.

Rather, yours is an unprecedented perspective. You live at a time when there are those who (on one extreme) still fervently believe the Earth to be flat. To the other side are those who choose to perceive reality exclusively through a dominant paradigm commonly called ‘science’, which depends heavily on the validity of abstractions afforded by higher mathematics.

in actual practice, most of us live our lives somewhere in between the extremes, doing our best to get by. That so many of us manage to muddle through one way or the other regardless of perception is a fact worthy of note.

In the process of living our lives, it is also common for human beings to form what may reasonably be called attachments — to other beings, ways of being, material possessions and points of view. It would be fair to say that this phenomenon is worthy of noticing as well.

Attachments are not inherently bad. They are a source of motivation and meaning. It is, however, implicitly problematic when your very identity is bound up with them.

When that happens, it is all too easy to perceive any information, event or experience that could compel you to release an attachment as a threat to your very existence. This, in spite of clear evidence that so many others who do not share your attachments manage to go on living anyway.

During every Full Moon, the Earth (where all of us live together) is physically moving through space between the Sun on one side and the Moon on the other. You can see it with your own eyes. The Full Moon rises, just as the Sun sets, to traverse the sky all night long. You can see it on a zodiac chart, too, with symbols for the Sun and Moon positioned on opposite sides of an emblematic circle.

Without getting all technical on you, the timing and astrological context of this upcoming Full Moon implies that every being on Earth (without exception) is also moving together with every other being between one era and another. All of us are positioned to see the past and envision a future as nobody has been before.

But if any livable future at all is to materialize, each of us will need to see (as clearly as the Sun and a Full Moon may be seen during their respective parts of a day) the only two attachments that are indispensable to your (and, simultaneously, our) continued existence.

The first is as simple as gravity. We are all inextricably attached to the Earth. None of us currently have a viable, sustainable alternative to this planet from which we all take sustenance. With all due respect to Stephen Hawking and other brilliant visionaries, this one fact needs to be seen as clearly as the fact that the Sun and daylight are one and the same.

On the other side (reflecting the first attachment’s light just as a Full Moon reflects the Sun) is the necessity of a more subtle, but no less salient, attachment to each other’s well being. When you act to make yourself well, others are made well for it. When others are harmed, you cannot avoid suffering with them — especially if you contribute to bringing that harm on.

To place any other attachment above those two is to ignore who, what and where you are. It really does come down to taking care of the Earth, yourself and each other as if there were no separation. Because there isn’t. As never before, we are all in this thing called life together. May you, and the New Year, serve to finally make that clear.

Offered In Service

The Art of Becoming, the 2018 Planet Waves Annual by Eric Francis, will be your best guide to the major astrological shifts ahead. If you pre-order now, you’ll not only get all 12 signs of the written reading for $99, but we’ll include three extra videos covering the forthcoming sign changes of Saturn, Chiron and Uranus.