Following the Moon: Aug. 30, 2023
The New Moon chart for Aug. 16 had some dramatic configurations I had expected the events of the past two weeks to follow suit. However, aside from the usual spat of senseless shootings, this lunation provided little in the way of drama. We did get a good dose of novelty, though, with an ex-president and a slew of his supporters being forced to report to the Fulton County Jail and a glowering mug shot for the ages.
Aside from the novelty of a former President of the United States being fingerprinted and booked, the outstanding feature of this past lunation was the steady drumbeat of climate change. We had the tragic aftermath of the Maui fires, tornadoes in New England (where they don't typically get tornadoes), a hurricane in the Southwest (where they don't typically have to worry about hurricanes) and a brutal heat wave impacting much of the country. I attribute this to the square of Pluto to the Lunar Nodes, and that aspect is also a factor in the Full Moon chart for Aug. 30. (Click on Full Moon to see the horoscope.)
This lunation chart places Pluto in the Tenth House and the Nodes on the Ascendant/Descendant axis, giving this T-square sspecial prominence. At the present time northern Florida is bracing for its first hurricane of the year. This chart indicates that this storm may be just the beginning of the weather related problems coming at us during the next two weeks.
The good news is that, aside from the ominous placement of Pluto and the Node, the Full Moon chart for Aug. 30 seems to be fairly friendly. We have the Sun in the Fifth House and the Moon in the Eleventh. Saturn forms a rather wide conjunction and opposition to the Sun and Moon but, other than that, the only hard aspect in the chart is a square between Venus and Jupiter which, in general, signals too much of a good thing.
With the Sun in the Fifth House of entertainment I wonder if this lunation period might bring us a resolution of the long strike by writers and actors. The connection to Saturn might be seen as a negative, but Saturn is also about facing hard realities. In any negotiated settlement both sides have give up something in order to get something. Achieving that sort of balance is very much an attribute of Saturn.
Venus is also in the Fifth House (in the house system I’m using here) and it’s square to Jupiter might play a part in this. Both Venus in Jupiter are connected to pleasure and that’s what the entertainment industry provides. The square aspect describes a need for action.
Of course, there are issues more important than entertainment content that are currently hanging over the country. Climate change is one of them. The political situation is another. Though the current developments are not conclusive, there is a sense of a cataclysmic reckoning waiting for us in the future. One factor in this is the triple connection of the three outer planets. Uranus is trine Pluto with both of those planets sextile Neptune. This configuration has been around for a while and it’s going to continue through the next two weeks. This is not an aspect for change, but it is a combination that carries an ominous weight. That is what we are feeling as we watch the various developments in Washington and in courtrooms around the country. It might, at times, seem entertaining but it also a bit scary.
