Today the Moon in Virgo is opposite the Sun in Pisces.
This full moon highlights the signs of Jupiter and Mercury and may emphasize learning and faith, the rational mind and the building of systems or methods of knowledge, art, or information, or even the relationship between the student and the teacher or the two sides of the brain, or the use of our technical intellect versus spiritual insight, or a broader comprehension through dreams, oracles, and symbolic awareness.
This full moon is like the reminder of the musical theory within the music, the time signatures, the different lengths of notes and alternating silences, the unfailing precision of half steps and whole steps, but also the hand that plays the hand that plays the song, ringing out life beyond the scales and refrains, giving life to law.
This is a metaphor, by means of which we see music in words. And similarly, laws dedicated to the altars of memory become the beams of light by means of which we see beyond the altar.
And in our lives, this Full Moon marries Jupiter and Mercury, the conductor and each individual part, each individual page. So in our lives, do we tend to lean too far toward the music without any basic comprehension of musical theory or the construction of the altar? How does a more refined or basic understanding of what we’re doing in the various concert halls of our lives bring out the music within the music? How does a more reflective technical awareness, or organizational refinement, bring a purity to the skills we have or the places we work, or the small things we do sing into creation each and every day?
On the other hand, how does technical refinement get in the way of the spirit of what we’re doing? How does our insistence upon the letter of the law or the “reasons for” get in the way of the music? These are important themes to consider at this full moon time, and they resonate with the words of the poet and astrologer Manilius, whose “Astronmica” is of the oldest known surviving treatises on astrology. His writing fits the explanation of the science of astrology to poetic verse. We’ll leave today with his words as our full moon prayer.
Prayer: “It is my delight to traverse the very air and spend my life touring the boundless skies, learning of the constellations and the contrary motions of the planets. But this knowledge alone is not enough. A more fervent delight is it to know thoroughly the very heart of the mighty sky, to mark how it controls the birth of all living beings through its signs, and to tell thereof in verse with Apollo tuning my song. Two altars with flame kindled upon them shine before me; at two shrines I make my prayer, best with a twofold passion, for my song and for its theme. The poet must sing to a fixed measure, and the vast celestial sphere rings in his ear besides, scarce allowing even words of prose to be fitted to their proper phrasing.”
Manilus, from Astronomica
Leave a Reply