“I visited with the Moon tonight
She was full – bright and endless
She reached into my heart
And filled it with Love
She cradled me in her warm silvery arms
Her soft voice told me that …
I am beautiful … I am love …
I have purpose … there is meaning to my life!”
During times of major transition in our lives, understanding the exoteric and esoteric core needs of our Moon sign can bring about a greater sense of inner emotional security essential for survival on the Earth plane. The Moon, in its waxing and waning cycle around the Earth every month, reveals how we respond emotionally and instinctively to our environment. It rules the sign of Cancer, whose key phrase is : ”I am what I am through what I feel”. It is the fastest moving body that revolves around the Earth every month, moving through all of the zodiac signs. It spends about two-and-a-half days in each of the twelve zodiac signs.
The Moon is regarded as the receptacle for all the cellular soul memories from the past. It symbolizes the unconscious emotional patterns, which can imprison the soul and which need to be transmuted in this lifetime. Your Moon’s journey involves opening yourself up to your intuitive Soul memories – to allow the nurturing guidance of your Higher Soul Self to nourish and heal you. This involves the transcendence of the ‘lower emotional bodies’ where we are driven by instinct and our own dysfunctional unconscious urges. The Moon governs the entire scope of our biological history (firmly locked within the molecules of DNA in our genes and chromosomes) and is thus the source of our instinctual responses to life.
Spiritual evolvement requires that we move from instinct to intuition – from past unconscious patterns of response to a full conscious participation in the creation of life in the present moment. This means becoming aware and releasing the Moon’s emotional attachments and compulsions which no longer serve the soul’s highest good.
The significance of the 12 Moon signs from both a personality need and a soul lesson perspective.
Moon in Aries:
Personality: a need to be independent; direct in expressing a fiery, impulsive and passionate emotional nature, with the tendency for impatient displays of temper.
Soul: developing the intellect/intuition to master all actions; to purify unthinking aggression, selfishness and a desire for dominance. Use your pioneering and leadership skills to benefit others.
Moon in Taurus:
Personality: needs stability and security in environment through attachment to people and things.
Soul: purifying and disciplining lower self desires and bullheaded emotions; learning that security is within and true happiness occurs through transcending personal desires (letting go attachment). In exaltation, this Moon sign will lack nothing in the way of material security, providing it is used for the highest good of all.
Moon in Gemini:
Personality: needs variety and diversity; difficulty expressing feelings.
Soul: purifying emotional instability, shallowness, being too changeable, rationalizing to justify one’s negative behaviour. Learning to commune with the soul so that the emotional nature can communicate wise and intelligent love through the written or spoken word.
Moon in Cancer:
Personality: Compassionate, nurturing and sensitive. Defensive and ultra-protective. Attached to mother, family and home.
Soul: Purifying extreme emotional patterns that submerge the individual in emotional highs and lows of life. Developing the intuition intellectually to overcome reactive emotionalism; to create reality-based life structures, rather than fantasy ones.
Moon in Leo:
Personality : needs attention – is generous and magnetic. Tendency for arrogance and wanting to control everything.
Soul: purifying emotional egocentricity, and need to be adored and recognized. Learning to reorient dramatic feelings and natural creative talents for good of all. To rule with the power of love rather than the love of power; to allow the light of the soul to shine through an open generous heart.
Moon in Virgo:
Personality: needs to feel appreciated and helpful – tendency for criticism.
Soul: purifying extreme perfectionism, judgment and unattainable standards for self and others. Using higher will to purify the mind and emotions by practicing harmlessness in thought and deed; strong potential for world service work.
Moon in Libra:
Personality: needs to feel peaceful and relate to others harmoniously. Tendency for sitting on the fence.
Soul: purifying extreme mood swings, procrastination and emphasis on keeping up appearances. Developing balance with true values concerning justice, sex and money. Working within a team with all types of humanistic plans and projects.
Moon in Scorpio:
Personality: needs loyalty; intense and passionate emotions; can be secretive, hiding vulnerabililty; distrust can lead to manipulation in getting needs met.
Soul: purifying extreme emotional desires, rampant appetites and desires. Allowing the higher intuitive light of the soul to bring to the surface any negative emotional patterns lurking in the deep regions of the psyche, so that they can be transmuted and destroyed. To become the eagle or be the phoenix rising from the ashes.
Moon in Sagittarius:
Personality: needs freedom to explore the world. Can be self-righteous in pursuit of truth.
Soul: purifying emotional excessiveness, irresponsibility and lack of discipline. To encompass universal truths. Nurture through wisdom gained by traveling spiritually both mentally and physically. To develop harmlessness in thought and speech.
Moon in Capricorn:
Personality: needs to feel responsible and be respected. Tendency for guilt and resentment.
Soul: purifying insatiable appetite for power and material wealth; being calculating and hard; using resources selfishly. To serve responsibly and ethically by achieving life success with great humility. To utilize both personal and collective resources to serve others for the benefit of group purposes.
Moon in Aquarius:
Personality: needs to have emotional freedom within friendship or group alliances; dislikes commitment.
Soul: patterns to be purified are fixed desires for gratification on physical plane and mental instability. Developing group consciousness by speaking up on the violation of human rights. Utilising the highest potential of detachment for compassionate humanitarian world service.
Moon in Pisces:
Personality: needs to be of service to others through idealistic compassion. Yearning for something that can never be attained.
Soul: purifying hypersensitivity; fluctuating and debilitating emotional currents; victim consciousness; having no healthy boundaries and being prey to delusion and fantasy. From a soul level, this sign’s connection to the ocean of all human pain and experience gives it the capacity to embrace the universal truth of love and oneness to unselfishly serve humanity.
Phases of the Moon
The Moon’s journey around the Earth, through its waxing and waning phases, assists humanity in understanding that there is a regular pattern of sequential events to their existence and purpose in life.
The Moon’s 8 Phases depict the moving and changing angular distances between the Sun & Moon in their monthly cycle of relationship with each other. This cycle follows a pattern of the Moon, increasing and decreasing in light as ‘she’ separates from the Sun and then returns back to ‘him’. The successive phases of the Moon Cycle describe the process by which any life form unfolds and continually renews itself.
The eight lunation phases of the Moon can be compared to the growth of a seed from infancy to becoming a full grown plant, which is a metaphor for our own human lives from birth – babyhood – growth – adolescence – to adulthood and eldership – fullness – and as old age sets in – the stages of decay, disappearance – death and rebirth again.
The lunation phases assist us in understanding that all of creation goes through a continual recycling of energy until we return back to the beginning or source where it all began. Each of us is born under a particular phase of the Moon, which reflects facets of our soul’s potential in this lifetime. Knowing what phase we born under gives us tremendous insight into where we are on the karmic wheel of life and why our lives seem to follow a particular cyclic pattern of unique events and connections.
The New Moon Personality – Emergence
The angle between 0 degrees to 44 degrees with the Moon moving ahead of the Sun. The Moon is dark and begins to ‘wax’ or ‘grow’ in light. The New Moon personality tends to experience the world in a very subjective naïve manner, just like a new seed starting to move towards the surface after a period in the darkness. Keywords are ‘enthusiasm, spontaneity and eagerness’ with an urge to experience life. The urge to survive can be strong, but there is also a certain vulnerability and innocence within their psyche. They are similar to the Aries personality in being able to quickly take up a challenge and be a self starter, but not always a finisher. They need the discipline of time – just as the new seed or embryo gestating must be given time to thrive and grow. The soul challenge is to finely tune their instinct to move forward into an unknown future with absolute trust that it holds endless potential.
Crescent Moon Personality – Expansion
The Moon is now waxing 45 degrees to 89 degrees ahead of the Sun. This personality can have insight into what the future might hold, including its pitfalls. Both eagerness and resistance can occur at the same time, with an urge to both move forward and at the same time stay comfortable in the safety zone of what is familiar. Metaphorically, the seedling now has its tiny first leaves and has survived the first dangers of coming into physical existence. The keywords are ‘anticipation and hesitation’.
Although these personalities can be tentative about defining their goals and direction in life, they can often surprise everyone with a purposeful thrust forwards. The soul challenge is to break away from attitudes, values and/or traditions of their past family of origin or culture to develop a whole new individualized social identity. [2]
First Quarter Moon Personality – Crisis of Action
The waxing Moon is ahead of the Sun from 90 degrees to 134 degrees.
The Moon is now half full of light. The metaphorical seed develops its leaves and root structure as it reaches for the sunshine. It can experience a critical cycle of growth as it is exposed to the wind, rain, cold and heat. Will it live, will it die – does it have to compete for its place in the sun with others of its kind? This Moon phase personality may have to make choices between conflicting forces, especially with regards to feelings of taking sides within their primary relationships. Some of their struggles and crises can be in finding a niche to fit into in their life. The soul challenge is to become firmly rooted in a new direction by taking decisive, deliberate and direct action to firmly establish a sense of purpose for existence.
The Gibbous Personality – Perfection
The Moon is three quarters full of light, 135 degrees to 179 degrees ahead of the Sun. The metaphorical planet is beginning to show its potential out in the world. It knows, and begins to perfect its future form – feeding and growing at a rapid rate, whilst drawing its sustenance from the firm roots in the Earth. This personality is beginning to understand the essence of being a separate self who knows what they want. Like the ‘gatherer’, they are capable of a persevering, consistent approach with a progressive and optimistic outlook. They can be successful through their willingness to use whatever skills and materials are at hand. The soul challenge is one of perfection and commitment to a higher purpose by linking ideas to concepts for the possibility of illumination.
The Full Moon Personality – Fruition
The Moon is fully illuminated 180 to 224 degrees ahead of the Sun. The metaphorical plant has now become an adult tree. Its purpose now is one of ‘preservation’ of its species, and so it sets the fruit and seeds. Those that are fertile will mature further, whilst those that are not will fall to the Earth. Relationships with others and with the world become important for this personality’s growth. Innately aware of both the Ego and the Soul, they can feel torn between their objective world experiences and subjective inner experiences. The soul challenge is to awaken the mental intuitive faculty for further growth of higher consciousness to occur. This is especially important in learning to think before acting, so that all actions are meaningful and considerate. [2]
The Disseminating Moon Personality – Demonstration
The Waning Moon is now 225 degrees to 269 degrees ahead of the Sun. This is the phase of distribution and communication. The tree’s fruit and seeds are in abundance. Because the tree’s purpose is well defined, it scatters the seeds that are ripe. The shedding of these seeds ensures that life is meaningful and its species will survive. This is the Moon phase personality with social leadership potential, who is able to convey the needs and ideas of the group, to act in protecting, altering the thinking and attitudes of the collective. Oriented towards causes and quite often the helping professions, they can use their innate ability to communicate by becoming a spokesperson for society. The soul challenge is to display the fruits of accomplishment by living out what has been learned via the teaching and sharing of wisdom. The evolving consciousness is learning to be open, nonjudgemental and inclusive of all beliefs, ideas and views. [2 ]
The Last Quarter Moon Personality- Crisis of Consciousness
This Waning Moon phase is now 270 degrees to 314 degrees behind the Sun.
The tree’s fruiting is over, its seeds are scattered – it is time to assimilate what has gone before. Withered branches and dead leaves fall to mother Earth. All that is useless is discarded, in preparation for the next season. This Moon phase can feel torn in a dilemma of moral consciousness between traditional values and futuristic trends. A crisis in social consciousness is likely to occur with a testing of beliefs and ideologies, both personal and societal. The soul challenge is to reevaluate the attitudes and beliefs they were born into, and to let go anything that no longer has any timeless value and meaning in terms of futuristic truths and values.
The Balsamic Moon Personality – Release
Now the waning Moon is almost dark again is 315 to 359 degrees behind the Sun. This is the phase of transition and preparation for transformation. The tree now enters a period of dormancy, confident that in due time and in the right season, it will ‘be born again’. Seeds which were shed earlier are beginning to feed on the warm fertile compost beneath the Earth. The final Moon phase personality can experience hard lessons in life by being forced to let go of, discard and deal with ‘loss’ at different levels both within and without. Yet there can be an innate sense of the transformative impermanence of life, relationships and their own selves. The soul challenge is to distill wisdom gained from the past; and to infuse this meaning into a new vision that will emerge in the incarnating soul’s future lives. Tying up karmic loose ends with events and relationships from the past will be part of this process. [2]
The Moon who has domain over the nocturnal night time, is unconscious, feminine, receptive, yin energy reflecting the light of the Sun – the conscious, masculine, fiery yang energy who has dominion over the daytime hours. The relationship between the conscious and unconscious part of ourselves (Sun and Moon) is a continual ebb and flow cycle of our Earthly existence. By honouring our feminine, emotional and intuitive Moon selves, we have the potential to create a harmonious union of both our unconscious inner and conscious outer selves, which is essential for our evolvement towards wholeness.
References/Resources:
1. The Lunation Cycle: Dane Rudhyar 1967
2. Finding Our Way Through the Dark : Demetra George 1995
3. Esoteric Astrology: Alice A Bailey 1991
4. Soul-Centered Astrology: Alan Oken 1996
5. http://www.btinternet.com/~seamaid/Esotericmoon.htm
6. http://www.esotericastrologer.org