“Ribbons,” chalk pastel by Maria Theresa Maggi
A long time ago, when I was still doing astrological readings in person for those who sought me out for them, I wanted to come up with a way to demonstrate the dynamics of planetary aspects in a birth chart for those clients who were very visual and tactile. I can’t remember where I saw this or how I came to it, but I had a round dining room table, and I came up with the idea of enlarging a chart to the circumference of the table. I taped together two large sheets of blank newsprint cut from big rolls that used to be free at the back of my town’s local newspaper just blocks from our home, and made a blank chart the size of my table. divided into the twelve requisite houses. Then I made large flashcards representing the symbols of the planets and the signs that could be put wherever they fell in a person’s chart. I also had on hand the corresponding cards from the major arcana for the astrological signs prominent in a client’s chart.
But I needed something that would dramatize the dynamics of the aspects between planets in a birth chart. To this day, whether I draw up a chart by hand (which is part of how I “get” my interpretation of it) or print it out from my astrological software, in both instances I use a color coded system for the aspects I came up with long ago that keys into each way these various geometrical relationships form on the zodiac and the ecliptic. I used to feel that as I drew these in and the colors from the markers bled onto my Dad’s old 3 sided ruler and onto my hands that the imprint of those colors on my hands helped me “get” my intuitive take of what to focus on. So it felt inspired when I realized I wanted to get a ride to the fabric store to buy spools of ribbon in the colors I used for each major aspect on a chart, so we could “act out” the dynamic of an aspect during a reading. These spools of ribbon were in the box with the large printed symbols for the planets and the signs. (I’m very much dating myself, but the arrangement I cam up with harkened back to the days of my preschool and kindergarten and how I loved I loved it when my teachers tolda story on a felt board.)
There are several major aspects that go into the reading a birth chart, but I’d like to focus here on two of them and how they inform the lunation cycle each month as the lunation cycle begins and then peaks at the full moon. The first aspect of each cycle is a conjunction. A conjunction describes two bodies that appear to be at the same place in the sky from our vantage point of the ecliptic (the apparent path of the sun) from here on earth. But what does it means when two forces like that appear to be at the exact same point? Visually it’s like a merging of two forces into one, so the way we would act that out was to bring out the yellow spool of ribbon. I would ask my client to stand next to me and I would wind the yellow ribbon around the two of us. Then I would demonstrate (amidst laughter) that if one of us wanted to go one way, the other had to follow. We basically had to travel together, or try to sit down together. We lost our separate autonomy.
Each lunation cycle begins with a new moon—what that means technically from an astrological viewpoint is that the moon returns to appear at the same position as the sun. At this point, the sun, with its bright light, appears to swallow it up: it’s now too close to reflect the sun’s light back to us. From an astrological and metaphorical point of view, at this time the moon merges with the creative energy of the sun. It becomes one with that energy—from an interpretive standpoint it embodies the energy of the sun that particular month. The moon’s emotional instinct merges with the creative will of the sign the sun is currently in. From that origination point it reflect back to us that purpose in our emotional instinct as it waxes toward full.
(Halfway through that cycle it’s 90 degrees from where it start and still 90 degrees from fullness. This is a first quarter moon.)
At the full moon, the moon is within orb of 180 degrees on the circle of the constructed zodiac, an aspect called an opposition. If I wanted to talk about the dynamic of an opposition I would stand directly across the table from my client with each of us holding the end of lovely turquoise blue ribbon. The opposition is an opportunity for awareness. If we are open to it, it gives us a mirror image and teaches us what we might be projecting out onto others rather than owning. The full moon is itself an opposition to the sun. At this moment when the moon is in place to reflect the fullest version of the sun possible, we are always given the opportunity to see ourselves through the opposite viewpoint or lens, or to be aware of how to reflect back to another the essence of who they are or what their creative endeavor has given us. In an opposition of the sun and the moon, we get the opportunity to become aware of what the relationship between our emotional habit and instinct and our heart’s desire or creative spark wills us toward. The opposition opens up for us the possibility of these compelling forces working together.
As a reflective body the moon is a rapidly changing entity reminding us that our emotions and habits are actually quite fluid and so we can learn to “go with the flow, while the sun holds the constant spark of our creative spirit, the energy on which we came to evolve. Each month the sun travels through one of the signs we get to tune into that creative style as it relates to us and our own journey of creative actualization.
So if you’ve had trouble visualizing what the new moon and the full moon actually are, now you can think of both as part of the dance between the sun and the moon each month. At the beginning of the cycle when the moon is new, if it’s helpful, you can think of them tangled up together in the yellow light of the rising sun, as if it were that yellow ribbon I used in my readings for a while so long ago. And when the moon is full, you can think of what it “means” being connected by a stream of blue directly across from the horizon point where the sun sets.
Each cycle begins with a merging that makes the moon literally invisible to us, which is why I can never draw you an exact depiction of the actual moon at that exact point. I can only represent it just before or after when it’s the thinnest of crescents. And each full moon brings us an opportunity for more awareness about our emotional habits and instincts, and that can help us become better partners in relationship and allies to those who need our support in society at large.
Thanks for being here!