The Feelings are Finally Kicking In

5.3.04


The feelings are finally kicking in… and in a big way. But would you expect any less?

During times of major metamorphosis, such as this current eclipse-weighted instant of considerable development, we often just plow through whatever it is that needs to get done, resilient as oxen. Most of us save our melodrama for the more minor blips and bumps. When it comes to the big life-altering affairs, we surprise ourselves with the clean clarity of our efforts. We must do it, so we do. Only later does the immediate pressure subside, and the emotions come flowing forth, now that we have more space to handle them, and they knock us on our asses.

The powerful solar eclipse on Apr 19 fell in the critical last degree of Aries, that forceful forward-action warrior of the zodiac, and mobilized its might to assure we all made meaningful movement, somehow and in some direction. At the time, I described its energy as a compulsion to take decisive action but 'without actually making the decisions it seems to warrant'. Decisions, as opposed to actions, require more sustained intellectual and emotional consideration (if made consciously and responsibly)—and with the combined influence of an Aries-eclipse Sun and Moon conjoined with Mercury in retrograde, it just didn't seem like the right time to cloud our instinctive maneuvers with ill-conceived or misunderstanding-based conclusions.

Now, two weeks later, the actions may or may not still be in high gear, but the emotional reactions and responses are certainly making themselves known. Under the light of a Full Moon, previously hidden feelings magically appear. What started to develop around the New Moon comes to brimming fruition. In this case, Tuesday's Full Moon is another eclipse, a lunar eclipse in the emotionally heavy water sign of Scorpio. When the Moon is in Scorpio, fierce passions and deep desires rise to the surface, along with a host of fundamentally intense and potentially messy psychological urges that cut to the bone of what it means to be human. In other words, Scorpio is not a light placement for a lunar eclipse—and not one where we can escape acknowledging the deepest emotional ramifications of our last few weeks of hyperactivity.

Of course, through feeling comes healing, a premise underlying the strength inherent in water signs. The Scorpio lunar eclipse emphasizes the theme of restorative renewal through drudging up the complete range of psychological sensations, from light to dark, so that no emotional kernel lies unexplored in the shadows, threatening fullest consciousness with submerged specks of denial. The Scorpio Moon is supported by an ongoing trine between Saturn and Uranus, respectively in water-signs Cancer and Pisces, which helps us combine liberating new psychic allegiances into those structures of feeling we use to care for ourselves and others on an ongoing basis.

Adding to the wateriness, Mars enters Cancer this week, shifting our physical drives into a more sensitive and self-protective gear. This Mars shift will tone down some of the frenzy and add a dose of shifting moodiness. For the next several weeks, we'll become less likely to act spontaneously without consideration and more apt to do what makes us or others feel comforted or nurtured. We're quite ready for this welcome change after the go-out-and-get-it gung-ho Aries flavor of this first third of 2004. And Mars in Cancer presents a perfect foil to Venus, who turns retrograde in Gemini two weeks from now, virtually guaranteeing that our surface-level affections will vacillate from one passing fancy to another throughout May and June. (More about this soon!) Though we may well continue to survey our surroundings by tasting samples of different merchandise (Venus in Gemini), our urges will manifest in a more indirect and sensitive fashion.

Mercury is also in direct motion again, which means our minds and our communications should be starting to feel less scrambled. This week, Mercury makes its third and final pass through a trine with Pluto, granting thoughts and words an extra penetrating power. This Mercury-Pluto trine impacted the recent few weeks with persuasive and intensely resonant thinking and speaking—but with Mercury having reversed its motion, we simply weren't able to mobilize this mental mojo because we couldn't trust the power behind the persuasion. (Should we believe, or should we resist?) This week, we can feel more secure about letting the revelations that come up through intimate discussions or deep introspections lead us somewhere. Two weeks from now, once Mercury reenters Taurus, we'll be ready to craft more stable plans from what we discover now.

One last note about this week's lunar eclipse: The opposed Sun and Moon fall across the Taurus-Scorpio axis in very close proximity to their positions at the last lunar eclipse on Nov 8 2003. As you may recall, that eclipse was labeled the 'Harmonic Concordance' by overzealous light-worker folks who saw it as 'an energetic "Stargate" to the Ascension of Mother Earth'. Well, though it's clear Mother Earth hasn't exactly 'ascended', that Nov 8 03 eclipse did indeed (as I wrote then) provide a mammoth measure of positive reinforcement for any labors taken toward conscious evolution or healing. Now, the same zodiac positions are being reactivated by Tuesday's eclipse, and the same areas of life highlighted by in our charts by these 'harmonically concordant' energies in November are once again in focus.

If you put a lot of heart into healing a particular piece of yourself back then, you should now have some unmistakable evidence of your success. But this week's eclipse will also show you the flip side of the coin, the unforeseen complications of your last efforts or the perspective you overlooked to get where you were going.

Use this eclipse to finish what you started, to revisit the issue from a more knowledgeable position and heal those last bits you missed the last time. Don't fear reengaging with this potential pain—even those wounds we spend energy to heal are always with us, only as transformed sources of wisdom rather than shame.