The Moon is now moving through Aquarius until late Sunday. Such a lunar position by itself highlights deeply felt issues in common. The fact that the Moon will also be in its first quarter phase tonight (Friday) is informative for those who seek an empowering resolution of those issues.

Each of astrology’s twelve signs is a unique combination of element (fire, earth, air or water) and quality (cardinal, fixed, or mutable). Both Aquarius and Scorpio (where the Sun is now moving) are fixed signs.

Signs which share the same quality are either at right angles or in opposition to each other on the zodiac’s circle. Because of that, any two objects which are expressing through the same quality of background will be in what astrologers call “hard aspect” to each other.

The word “hard” comes with baggage. For astrologers, not all of that luggage is appropriate. Granted, correlations with challenge can rarely be ruled out when interpreting the most prominent of hard aspects. Yet, by the same token, the inevitability of a corresponding reward for acting on difficulty should not be forgotten when reading conjunctions (objects in the same degree of the same sign), squares (90 degree separations on the zodiac) or oppositions.

Interestingly, the best known lunar phases (New Moon, Full Moon, first and last quarters) all represent hard aspects from the Sun to the Moon. Tonight’s lunar first quarter, for example, is the “opening” square – a separation of 90 degrees from the Sun to the Moon which takes place one week after the immediately preceding New Moon and one week before the Full Moon to follow.

Appropriately, the Moon at quarter phase is half lit and half dark, a fitting symbol for both the challenges and rewards a square aspect represents. That’s where you come in.

Much as with politics, astrology is everybody’s business. In both cases, participation is rewarded with a proportional amount of influence. Lack of involvement, on the other hand, usually results in a forfeit.

It should be pretty clear for anybody paying attention that politics is too important to be left to professional politicians. The same principle can be said to apply to astrology. Either way, informing yourself is a crucial requisite for participation.

Simply being aware confers you a surprising amount of power. Acting on that awareness empowers you even more. It should therefore be no surprise that history’s most infamous authoritarians all have at least one thing in common: discrediting or blocking access to any source of information which is at odds with what the putative leader professes.

Of course, it takes two to tango. Despots could not exist were they not enabled by those who choose to be not only ignorant, but also hostile towards anybody who contests a dictatorial point of view.

All of which leads back to tonight’s lunar first quarter. Because the Sun and Moon are in square aspect to each other, a challenge some sort of is likely to go with your territory this weekend. If you know simply that, you have a leg up on those who don’t.

Beyond being aware, perhaps the most salient meaning behind this particular First Quarter Moon has to do with what the nature of any challenges will probably be.

With both Sun and Moon in fixed signs, the most likely difficulties will have to do with knowing the difference between maximizing the light (for instance: persistence and definition) and minimizing the dark (for example: intransigence) sides of that quality.

That’s because, with a Full Moon coming, all which light represents in the context of fixed signs will implicitly prevail over this next week. If you will but act to have the same thing happen in your life (and ideally, in community), the two weeks which follow will be all the more likely to see an integration, rather than a dominance, of darkness in the second half of our current lunar cycle.

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