Full moons have been given a bad rap. We can thank westernized religion for that one. Christianity is so confusing for me. It’s like they picked all the things from other religions that they liked and mashed it all into a book of dominion and power over others. For example, the act of decorating a tree to celebrate the season is derived from paganism. Oh! And that yule log in your fire place, that’s also Pagan. Merry Christmas you filthy animals.
Ironically I love a full moon. I say that because if you have read any of my other offerings, you would know that I spent a few nights in the burn unit due to a certain pesky propane incident. I can make light of it now, but that’s only because people who go through a lot of trauma tend to have a bizarre sense of humor. Full moons illuminate the night sky, and can help shine a light on the things that we hide in the dark places inside of us. We all have skeletons in our closets, things about ourselves that we hide from others. The fear of rejection can have a brutal chokehold on how we present ourselves to the world. Whether we believe it or not, community is vital to our survival, and it can also be extremely damaging. Two things can be true at the same time. So much Gemini energy there.
Gemini Full Moon
This particular full moon is interesting because we are circling back around from its corresponding new moon back on June 10, which also happened to be on our first solar eclipse of 2021. The second one being in Sagittarius very recently on December 3. These nights can be amazing for manifesting whatever type of change you want in your life. I know that change can be scary sometimes. We get so comfortable that we tend to get stuck in certain places. We keep ourselves small, diminishing our own greatness.
For the Gemini New Moon I pulled the rune Isa. This rune, represented in nature as ice, puts us at a standstill with ourselves. Just as the seasons change all around us, they can also change us from the inside out. There is a wintering that happens spiritually during our lives, a time of gestation before a birth. It’s the cocoon part between when the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, or the germination that must occur before a seed can bloom into a flower.
The seed of the new is present in the shell of the old, the seed of unrealized potential.
The Book of Runes, Ralph Blum
I don’t exactly know how to just sit and do nothing, which is exactly what the Daughter of Wands reversed was inviting me to learn how to do. Also known as the Page of Wands, she gave me the permission that I so desperately needed (There is some trauma to unpack there.) to sit in the creative void and allow it to open up to me. I was taught that one needed to be constantly doing in order to be a productive member of society, in order to be a “good person.” I would literally get woken our of bed as a teenager to be told that I was wasting the day away, the underlying lesson being that it was unacceptable to simply rest. This is terrible, by the way, for the growing teenage brain.
Venus Retrograde
Every 18 months Venus goes through a six-week retrograde, this one beginning on December 19 and lasting until January 29 of next year. Venus repeats its retrograde in the same sign every eight years, making the last time the retrograde occurred in Capricorn during December of 2013. That was eight years ago! I know I am a completely different person than who I was then.
So much has changed in my life, and I’m not just talking about during the pandemic (that we are still in the midst of). I started making changes long before that, the first step being to make the conscious decision not to purchase the hippie bar. I can thank that panic attacks occurring in the middle of the night for that lesson. Sometimes your body knows that things are a bad idea before your brain is willing to acquiesce. Stubborn lizard brain.
So this Venus Retrograde, which particularly disrupts relationship, conjuncts with Pluto on Christmas Day drumming up old familial wounds that have yet to be addressed. Might I suggest we double-down on the self-care this holiday season. That fact that we do this much of what feels like forced celebration in the middle of the most depressing time of the year still baffles me. Who can be so freaking jolly when it gets dark at four in the afternoon? Can we for real celebrate Christmas in July? All we are doing is congratulating a woman on having a baby in a barn, right? I can do that any day of the year. You know? As long as it isn’t my baby.
Chiron Direct
Chiron has been in retrograde since July 15. This comet, discovered in 1977, sits between Saturn and Uranus. According to Greek mythology, he was a healer and a teacher who couldn’t heal himself. Story of my fucking life! He calls on us to explore deeper issues around your closest relationships and to examine old trauma impeding your joy. I will be the first to tell you that sometimes it feels completely unsafe to look at your own traumas, so please ask for help from a mental health professional. I have been on several medications and done numerous rounds of therapy utilizing various modalities. There is no shame in reaching out for help no matter what society tells you. It’s actually quite a courageous act, and one of the hardest things I have ever done.
Have you ever climbed a ladder only to realize that you placed the ladder on the wrong building? I do know a painter who painted the wrong house once, but I initially meant this metaphorically. It took me a long time to realize that the restaurant lifestyle was not for me, or at least it no longer served me. Raido reversed reminds us that “what you regard as detours, inconveniences, disruptions, obstacles, and even failures and deaths will actually be rerouting opportunities.” (The Book of Runes, Ralph Blum) I thought that by walking away from that made me a failure, but it actually made me free.
Seven of Cups reversed gives us that gentle reminder that you don’t need to keep searching for that big idea. You know. You know you know. It’s just been trained out of you. Our society demands that we lead with logic, but I am learning more to trust my intuition, especially these days when there is so much misinformation out there. Now if I could only get my head and my heart on the same page, that would be great. Until then? I guess I’ll keep my feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.
Mad love, Jenna
