With Eric Francis

We’re approaching another peak in the lunar cycle — the Taurus Full Moon (exact at 1:23 am on Saturday, Nov. 4). For many reasons this is a deeper event than it may seem on its face; it’s not just another lunation. Still, we’re talking about the Full Moon here, which typically comes with the sense of the emotional tide rising, the pressure to make decisions and a touch more than usual of the microwave-induced insomnia of our times.

For months now, every time the sky aligns in an particularly focused way, we see some kind of horrid event manifest in the world. While we cannot (and will not) predict additional crisis based on the Full Moon chart, there is a level of collective fear that when things get intense, something new will go seriously wrong.

Illustrations by Jess Shepherd.

That fear is the thing to keep an eye on. It’s collective, not merely individual; yet it’s not easily spoken about. It’s not considered appropriate yet.

If the chart has a message, let’s see if we can pick up some clues to what it is.

The first obvious thing to look at would be the Moon and the Sun themselves. Positioned in Taurus and Scorpio, respectively, there’s a theme of sex — though usually as it manifests in the context of attachment. One of the underlying themes of the seemingly endless sex scandal we’re seeing erupt out of Hollywood, television, politics and the rest of society is that sex is a property right, which is a theme of the Taurus-Scorpio axis.

Look for the places where your sexuality is linked to your personal resources, shared household or couple resources, and any fear you have of not being sustained by life. In what ways have you monetized sex, and are you doing so consciously? How does this influence your experience of your relationships?

The Full Moon can open things up. Culturally, this might point to things such as awareness coming to a new peak around the massive ‘open secret’ of the impact that sexual assault and harassment has on the lives and livelihoods of women — and therefore on all of us, and on all of our sexual relationships.

With the goddess asteroid (properly, dwarf planet) Ceres in Leo, within a one-degree orb of the Sun and Moon, we’re looking right at the question of sustenance. Ceres is first and foremost about the food that we eat. It’s also about other forms of emotion and affirmation as nourishment, which take on a dimension of needing one’s personality ‘fed’ by a relationship, and the power that it seems to bestow.

Leadership is called for: each one of us can take charge of understanding what nourishes us sexually, and can recognize the ways we can ensure our sexual encounters nourish those we’re interacting with. This can come from the heart; it can even be playful. But ego (meaning fearful self-interest) needs to take a back seat.

There’s another standout pattern in the chart, also involving oppositions (in the style of the Full Moon). In Aries, Uranus and Eris are still in an approximately three-degree conjunction (that’s pretty close). Across the sky in Libra, Venus and Vesta are looking right into that mirror.

Illustrations by Jess Shepherd.

Venus-Vesta is offering itself to the greater good, while Uranus-Eris seems devoted to stirring the pot of crisis and chaos. One question that arises when blending a sexually themed point such as Venus with Vesta is: what is the purpose of sex? Is it something offered and freely given, or must there be an agenda, a price and a victim? Is it a service, or a disservice?

Venus-Vesta opposite Uranus-Eris connects this Full Moon intimately with the rampant digital identity crisis and social upheaval — and disembodiment — that now passes for normal, everyday life.

There is a seemingly all-encompassing, almost invisible (astral level) psychic mine field on one side of the equation. On the other, Venus and Vesta ask a question: what are the ways you can devote yourself to real relationships, social justice, and your creative and sexual fire (which are the same thing) while plugged into the collective robot?

What’s really fair in love and war? Or, perhaps more importantly, are you aware of how your perceptions of that have likely changed, as a result of how life-via-digital-media has altered the field upon which you’re engaging your fellow human beings?

Finally, there’s Saturn in late Sagittarius — conjunct the Galactic Core — making a square to Chiron in Pisces. We have in that a representation of the potential to rupture and heal the beliefs around sex and relationships that are being pushed to the surface of our digital-cultural consciousness by Uranus-Eris.

Saturn may be lending form to the message from our cosmic homing signal (the Galactic Core) that we most need to hear. True, it’s possible to hear the message and then simply try to dig in one’s heels and cling to the old, familiar structures. But anyone who’s been through a Saturn return or a Chiron return knows how futile and painful that can be.

If you believe that we’re being shown so much shadow right now so that we can drain the toxins and let the light disinfect what’s infected, then you know a different kind of action is needed here. You know that if you really tune in, there’s a message asking you to do the work you came here to do — within yourself, within your relationships, within your community.

By any standards, 2018 will be a distinctive year astrologically. Get your essential guide to riding the waves of the next 12 months and beyond. Pre-order The Art of Becoming, the 2018 Planet Waves Annual by Eric Francis.