ARIES FULL MOON
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2024, 06:26 CST
beginnings end and ends begin
Flak Bait
was the name of my grandfather’s warplane.
An Aquarian, flying, emotionally detached, high in the sky nearly a century ago
an airplane decorated with scantily clad femmes with silly names to lighten the load of human turmoil
flak
is that stuff of shrapnel of broken bits of bone and metal of wood shards of weaponry that break off after the trajectory has made impact.
And whether you are the target or you are a bystander, innocent or involved
you are at risk of receiving those shards of glass or lead, of bullet fractures and splinters in the eye
war has a cost
as all investments do
and where we apply our attention — whether it be loving or aggressive
it will always have a toll
whether it benefits us or causes harm to enemy or neighbor is not up to us to know.
we have little to no control
We can aim well and miss. We can intend and fall short. We can run out of gas, have an emergency landing. We can over or undershoot our target. There are too many variables and we cannot take all the blame, and we cannot take all the responsibility.
and in those shrapnel bites and in the wounds we wear emotionally or physically, comes the story of our victimhood or our triumph, over our powerlessness or our compromise or our unwillingness to react or respond. And in the end
It’s just a story.
it just is
the situation just is and it becomes part of us.
with all its variables and history and storyline and narrative and hero’s journey and plot twists with no beginning and no end. the dance of reality that is endless, transforming, composting, decomposing in order to be reborn again, with the same new characters, new plots, but the same story:
to find balance.
and balance is a moving target.
Welcome to the Moon Mailer
Welcome to this space.
This whole astrology writing thing was a freak incident instigated by a request for bespoke astrological musings for a unique shop in Des Moines, Iowa (hometown!) called KIN.
Those who know my story know that “my mom is/was the astrologer” and for me, energy work has always been my calling in other forms… typically, through my hands and voice, my writing. Then my mom challenged me that astrology IS energy work.
Those of you who’ve stuck around the nearly six years I’ve produced these moon meditations, I appreciate you and feel honored by your attention, sporadic emails of revelation, and patronage of my services, classes, and offerings.
The Format:
a) planetary poetry/musings
b) astrological jargon and deeper interpretation
c) random thoughts, often an additional poem, play, inspiration, quote, photograph or rant about society, corruption, oppression or something whimsical. tends to depend on the mood (mine or the moon’s).
d) “notes from this one” refers to me, being a bit more direct about stuff happening in my world that I don’t mind sharing. I like being vulnerable because it helps me process things and I’m told it helps others to feel more human. So that’s good.
the Moon Mailer is free.
I consider the Moon Mailer an offering. This is my work and a heartfelt outpour. The financial gifts and tips sent via Venmo @laurenkhickman or a monthly contribution to Dragon Dāna as a teaching offering help provide the platform. Thank you.
Dāna (dahna) is a tradition of supporting spiritual teachers through financial gifts. Grief work, emotional work, and spiritual service are oft unpaid labor. Femmes, healers, and wisdom keepers tend to go uncompensated and under-supported for their time and skill in modern society — historically, we were integral parts of community and cared for as such. Discounting healers coincides with gender bias— that it’s not considered “work” to hold space or share art and inspiration. Many great teachers, artists, and healers have discontinued their offerings because their time is not compensated and reciprocity is not present.
I think about that a lot. How much content I consume and I forget who is paying for it. On some platforms, the advertisements are paying the producers. For others, it is an algorithmic game of cat and mouse and our attention is the commodity more than the quality of content.
Your donations and commitment to the material keep me motivated and help to cover the annual costs of website domains and all the add-ons. This is also my opportunity to offer value and advertise that the Moon Mailer is only one facet of Ursidae.
I am here to be of service.
I provide peer support (akin to coaching except without the power dynamic), astrological readings, reiki energy balancing, and now mentorship accompanied by years of metaphysical education, herbal and nutritional education, and studies in anthropology and psychology to serve you and help doula you through the darkness.
You can read about my background, commitment to ongoing education, my path as a clinical social worker (i.e., psychotherapist), and commitment to educating other healers (and those seeking healing) without causing harm.
Here, you will get me raw, directly sent to your inbox. I’ve been putting the work up on my blog WORDS in the archives of my beautiful website.
Enjoy. <3
this lunation
( is, like, a lot.)
If you were an astrologer, and maybe you are, you’d look at this and then side-eye whoever is in the room with you.
This lunation is tense. It is a rubber band snapping. It is the end. It is the beginning and I cannot promise you this is an enjoyable moment in time, but I can promise you that it is a necessary one in yours and existences growth trajectory.
Because I trust.
Even when I absolutely hate everything I am experiencing, there are glimmers of faith. That I can notice the light dancing on the walls in the afternoon and know that it’s going to be okay. That the calm after a storm will come, that the tension I’ve been anticipating has arrived and will dissipate.
This lunation is the Full Moon in Aries that occurs in Libra season. Libra is associated with Venus, who at the tail end (29’) of its stay in Scorpio is aspecting Neptune and Pluto and Mars and opposing Uranus (Libra’s esoteric ruler) and the Mars-ruled Full Moon in Aries is square to the Sun and Moon and to Pluto, also involved in this cardinal T-square.
What does it mean?
Well, I can give you my hot-take interpretation on this.
Libra as the compromiser, the diplomate the master manipulator and skillful harmonizer has been tasked with figuring out what they want. Not what would make other happy, not what would satisfy the short term but what deep, dark, hidden, urgent, chaotic soulful need that it has to feel pleasure and soul satisfaction at this turning point. Venus is also tasked with not idealizing situations but seeing things with emotional clarity amidst the turbulence and rocky surface of these waters we navigate.
This Full Moon, ruled exoterically by Mars (and esoterically by Mercury) so we are looking at a water Mars and a water Mercury. Feelings are high. Emotions are high. Anger is present. Felt sense of injustice is happening and we are embodying the rage it takes to take action in our lives. How rage is channeled is up to us. Do you use it to move all your belongings out of a home after a break up? Do you use it to clean or cry or sublimate it into an intense work out or run or do you swallow it into a lump in your gut. We all deal with anger differently because for many of us — anger was not a welcomed emotion. Anger was not welcomed into our repertoire or was discouraged, abandoned, sublimated or channeled into a different more socially acceptable experience.
Rage misqualified is terrifying. Rage properly channeled is the type of destructive and constructive force we need to rebuild a new life for ourselves, to tear down the shoddy walls and rip up floorboards to create the kind of home, life, world we want to live in.
Where do you feel rage in your body? Now or typically?
How do you express rage normally and what would be an ideal way you would like to potentially express it?
When you let rage leak in ways you deem non constructive how does that make you feel? do you feel shame?
Do people tell you you are angry but you can’t seem to identify it?
How are you afraid of your anger?
How can you reframe anger as energy and deem that a creative and destructive force which is neutral and neither good or bad?
Pluto’s impact on this lunation at the anaretic final) degree of Capricorn is a closure point. I’m sure if you are a social media scroller you’ve been hearing all about this and the powerful ending energy this has — particularly for those with planetary and solar placements in the cardinal signs of
ARIES CANCER LIBRA CAPRICORN
This is to say that Pluto has been in challenging aspect (square/opposition) to these signs as it has transited through Capricorn since November of 2008. Pluto will not be in Capricorn again for centuries, so this chapter of our lives has a significant tone or vibe about it. Pluto as shadow work, Pluto as the underbelly, Pluto as witnessing the flaws and strengths in structures, in power dynamics, in systems and hierarchies. The United States has a Capricorn Pluto natally — the last time Pluto was in this sign was way back in the 18th century. As the US has to come to term with its own power and control issues, we individually have had to make sense of these forces in our own life — and being that it is in Pluto’s domain —- these are namely unconscious forces that we may have been completely oblivious to.
Shadow work is light work.
Shadow work is light work.
Shadow work is light work.
We can only emit as much light as we have integrated our shadow — and if you are on the true healing path for yourself, we cannot sublimate or trespass our shadow selves in the name of progress. We only make them stronger when we evade these forces.
There is so much I could break down with this lunation, but like you probably are, I am feeling a lot, navigating a lot, and working to care for myself so I can hold space for others and do what advocacy work I can collectively through letter writing and education. There is so much to hold in these challenging times so by setting down what is not ours to bear and by taking responsibility for what is ours to care for, we can discern and perhaps move towards what we want.
You may be feeling that you hate this world, this culture, this society that we live in. Anger helps to perpetuate crude and ugly culture as much as it can work towards changing it, destroying it and making space for rebuilding.
Anger is constructive… and with every end there is a beginning… which also promises another end.
Your contributions make this content possible
DRaGON DaNa automated monthly gift
NOTES FROM THIS ONE…
[Sips in a massive breath]
I’m going through it.
I am
going
through it.
No one gets out unscathed in challenging times and how can we take those wounds and use them as road markers for our evolution and our personal change?
Like a tattooed reminder, like a scar, like a piece of sacred jewelry or a talisman on your altar — these are sacred and scary times we are living in.
How can we allow all this change to change us into a forged tool, into a stronger sword, bent and heated and blasted and molded and folded and beaten again to make the strongest version of ourselves?
It’s ugly, I know. It hurts, this we know too. I want for this process to be gentle, but there are some unavoidable steps in the process of change. It hurts. It can be emotional agony. It can be transition after transition until you are completely lost in a hazy dazed state, looking for home, seeking peace, seeking stability.
Aries teaches us to move beyond our fear into full faith and full bravery. Whatever is on the other side of this wall, this barrier, this blockade you are experiencing — you, yes YOU, are on the other side.
I promise to meet you there. But take your time. Take YOUR time your space your rest your rage your puddle your mountain to get there. This is about you right now and it is absolutely not about you simultaneously.
This is about you being more and fully and consistently present with your desires and your heart mission and that in some cases — you are the enemy, you are the villain, you are the one causing harm. For others, we are the by-standing victims, we are the casualty of others’ war for themselves. There is so much we have to allow in other’s journeys — that is relationship — that is friendship, that is not impeding others on their path towards self. But when we feel rammed down, misguided, handed the wrong map, or have used others as a beacon, we have to take ownership of our compromises or our lack of boundaries, sturdiness, or even focus that may have gone blurred.
Whatever is occurring in your life, whatever end, middle or beginning you are experiencing — there are others witnessing you. There are others with the capacity to hold space for you. Those healers are waiting to support you and those ready in the wings to cheer you through all the hardships you might endure. These hard moments shape our lives. They give us battle stories and experience that help us to endure the next circumstance that seems unattainable or impossible. And we do it one step at a time.
Hang in there.
stay inspired.
ursidae
