Feeling the Moon
As I write, the Full Moon is still in Aquarius. There is a three day window around the New and the Full Moons in which you can feel a heightened lunar influence. You might even feel lunar for longer periods of time, with more vivid dreams or anxiety. This Full Moon may have hit you with a vengeance. I talked to a friend today who said she had been angry for a week before it went exact and yesterday my mother was more worried than usual. I felt it strongly, in a restrictive way as well. This Full Moon, the opposition between the Sun and the Moon, between Leo and Aquarius, felt harsh to me, as if swords were coming down on all sides.
The Leo and Aquarius
Leo is a fire sign, all about expansion and self expression, and Aquarius is rational air, which feeds the fire, but can also blow it out. The Sun and the Moon were also square Uranus in Taurus, which may have contributed to this feeling of restriction. There was also a Mars in Aries/Jupiter in Capricorn square that we will feel for a while - two goats butting heads - explosions and storms should perhaps not be a surprise.
Seeking Balance
At the Full Moon, Aquarius and Leo were seeking balance, a balance difficult to find, between internal, liberated, intellectual activity and exterior, physical manifestation and attention. Uranus, the change God, was zapping us with potential that felt unreachable.
Peace
When I sat down to feel the Moon and see what she had to tell me, I felt held in the unresolved tension of these demands. Where was my peace within it all? I like to imagine myself at the center of the wheel, in the place of calm at the eye of the storm. Tuning in to cycles can help us feel this peace, even as the chaos of human life whirls around us.
The Wheel of the Year
On the wheel of the year we have just come past the first Celtic harvest festival, Lughnasadh or Lammas, celebrated around the time of the first of August, when the fruit of the seeds planted in the spring start to ripen. At Beltane, the Green Man and the May Queen mated and now their child, Lugh, begins to age. we are in the full bounty of growth, but the weather where I am is stormy and the sky is grey. The wind speaks words to me that feel weary. Still, we are alive this day, still blowing they say.
To Shine or Not to Shine
The Moon wanted me to talk bout individuation. Leo the lion, where the Sun is, is a fire sign. He wants us all to shine. He is the king, in power, and he wants us all to have a piece of it. We all deserve attention. We all want to be king. But Aquarius, in the air element, friend to the mental, reminds us there are limits to all things, and limits to this shine. Aquarius brings the sword down, pounds his fist on the table, wants the rational first and a solution to things. He wants us to forget this exuberant shining. Is there a middle ground? The Full Moon time, a land of extremes, often asks us this. Where do we need to find balance?
Individuation
So what is individuation? I started to think about it simply in terms of existing as a self in relation to a community, on the spectrum the runs from being independent to being dependent or integrated. The word process is important and comes up again and again in philosophical discussions of individuation. We are never fully individuated but always differentiating ourselves, or being differentiated, from what exists around us. We are not separate from, we are a part of something greater, though at times it seems we have collectively forgotten. Individuation is a process that starts when we are born and never really ends while we are alive.
Psychological Individuation
Starting a business is lonely…
For Jung it was the “achievement of self-actualization through a process of integrating the conscious and the unconscious.” It is a process of becoming one, of becoming whole and entire. It seems to me can engage more or less consciously with this process, and for Jung it was certainly a life’s work, and probably never complete.
Too Visible or Not Enough
This Full Moon got me thinking about how we individuate and whether we find this easy to do or not. Are we protected when we do so, protected enough to grow? We wish we knew. We want to be sure. But we are often left on one side of the two extremes, isolated, either too visible or not enough.
Starting a Business
I had trouble starting a business because it was difficult for me to stand out. Why share something when there are others doing similar things? Who am I to share on this topic when others are doing it better and more fluently? What if I stand out and people don’t like what they see?
Copycat
When I was younger I was sometimes accused of copying, and this left a mark on me. Telling someone not to copy, or making them feel bad because they do, makes people feel that they should only share something if it is truly unique and special. That seems like a good way to keep people silent, doesn’t it? If only someone who is truly unique has a right to share, if you don’t feel special you won’t even try.
Self Worth
Feeling special comes from how we were treated while we were growing up and the sense of self worth that was given to us as children. I don’t know about you, but in my family, the emphasis was definitely placed on us siblings all being treated equally, which, as you can imagine, led to some problems and definitely didn’t help me understand how to express my individuality. And some people aren’t even given the chance of equal treatment. From birth they are told by society that their voice doesn’t count. It’s tricky to value yourself when the world around you doesn’t.
Paradox
To reconcile the extremes of community and individuality you need to embrace a paradox: that the more fully we individuate, the more able we are to come into community. Art itself, or any form of self expression, was not initially meant to demarcate an artist but to unite the community around a moment of channeled creation. Art used to be a channel that erased the individual who thus served his or her community. The artist was a mystic who knew how to blend and to become one with his audience, and on a fundamental level I think we still know this, when we lose ourselves in a play or a painting.
My Words Are Not Me
As a writer, I’ve always found it interesting that the first Latin word for poet was vates, which means seer or prophet. I’ve always felt in writing poetry that something was passing through me, like a divine wind. Other poets have felt this too. When I make flower essences, I have a similar feeling, of channeling a kind of prophetic healing message to humans from the plants. My words are not me. Sometimes people don’t understand this, but it isn’t just false modesty. My individual gifts are only special when I forget who I am and speak for something greater.
Creativity
Creative expression comes through us as through a channel. Our uniqueness is in fact what attaches us to the whole. The paradox of individuality is that we can’t be happy being completely individuated but must learn somehow how to reconnect ourselves to the bigger picture of the world around us. Without this grounding force, we are either too much or nothing at all.
How Plants Individuate
Last week I wrote about being green and I continue to wonder what this means. It could mean we strive to be more like our green relatives. If we want to be more like plants, can we observe how they individuate? Do plants individuate? At first glance, it might seem that they don’t. Their sense of the collective is certainly stronger than ours, yet I have experienced distinct, personal interactions with individual plants. Individual plants come from seeds which produce the same genes - they grow as a type. Yet each one reacts individually to the environment that surrounds them and faces individual challenges to their existence. It seems to me that plants have mastered the skill of being individual in community. What can we learn from them?
Mullein
Mullein, king of my garden
Mullein grows straight up to the sky. He is a magical plant, associated with both Saturn and Mercury, who reminds me to stand tall. His medicine is for the bones - structural, spinal - and also for the throat and the ear. A vast teacher, he represents for me how to grow vastly, deeply, and reach for the sky. Each stalk has its own character, and one or a few branches of flowers. Each flower on the stalk flowers individually, and over some time. For me he is the example of how to thrive in community, yet stand tall in one’s own individuality. There is nothing uncomfortable about each plants individual blooming. They take two years to bloom, and are sweet and soft at first, becoming harder and taller in the second year, making seeds and sowing himself readily. His root is long, smooth and woody. To me he is very masculine, and teaches how to be tall and strong despite what may be going on in his vicinity.
Water lily
Water lily, queen of my pond
I’ve also been contemplating Waterlily, growing on my pond, pink and round, a stark contrast to our friend Mullein standing up above at the entrance to the garden. Waterlily is utterly feminine to me, growing sideways, spreading out, living in water, made of earth and water, as opposed to Mullein’s air and fire. She is a nymph, Nymphaea is her name, and she is home to many green frogs who sit on her and seem to contemplate their life, much like Kermit did as he sang his song. The Egyptians believed that Isis was born from a lotus and her petals suggest that place from which all human life is born. What is her approach to individuation? Growing in my pond, each flower also blooms individually, a different size and color, at her own rhythm and in her own time, yet they seem to thrive together, expanding outwards horizontally, supporting and sharing the surface of the water where everyone seems to want to be.
Learning From the Flowers
Perhaps like flowers, expressing the highest energy of our type, we can lose ourselves in the creation of who we are and who we were meant to be. This places individuality in service to the community. It is only by losing ourselves in something greater that we find our true purpose. Both Mullein and Water lily, in their different ways, show us how to be comfortable as who we are in community yet shine in our own unique way.
Separate and Together
Perhaps we too ready to see ourselves as both separate and together, different and the same, at the same time. Perhaps in the right community, with the right support, we can thrive. I think the important thing is not to cut ourselves off from community in order to forge our individuality. Human society has made this mistake too many times. By seeing our our similarities, we thrive together and by supporting each other in our differences, we blossom. I believe it is possible to do both. I think that is what the Full Moon wanted to tell to me. The Moon encouraged me to observe the plants growing around me, to listen to the green realm and learn about individuality. The paradox of Leo and Aquarius need not be so harsh: after all, they both live in the same sky.
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I wish you a beautifully balanced day! Between air and fire, mental and material, mind and body, may you be wonderfully integrated and fabulously yourself, at the very same time.
Love,
Amy
