November's Full Moon: Fertility, Gestation, and Cosmic Partnership

Our current Full Moon happens as the Sun is in a precise trine with Neptune, and Venus is in an opposition with Uranus, a lightning flash foreshadows the movement around relationships, sensuality, and creative fertility that will occur in multiple aspects in the next few weeks.

Full Moons bring tangible experiences of archetypal tensions. This Full Moon is colored with two fundamental oppositions. First, we have the Sun, fresh off an expansive conjunction with Jupiter and infused with a dose of magic and imagination from Neptune, working out a way to live out its colorful and adventurous dreams with the Moon, who is currently in the Vedic Nakshatra of Bharani. As well as being ‘The Bearer of New Life,’ Bahrani is also called ‘The Star of Restraint.’ It’s given the image of a womb and associated with Yama, the God of Death. Thus, whatever high theatre that might be wanting to come out of us is being tempered by a gestational phase, constraining and cathartic yet gentle and progressive. Interestingly, it’s said that Bharani's process creates ‘one who is free from grief.’

Alongside this, Venus is in an exact opposition with Uranus. Venus is in Libra, a sign she traditionally rules, placing an emphasis on diplomacy, equality and equilibrium, a sense of aesthetic harmony and balanced compromise. At odds with this, Uranus, a fundamentally electric and revolutionary force, is in Aries, a sign of speed and aggressive engagement. Since Uranus is retrograde, reworking its understanding and expression of this radical and liberating force, we might envision Venus as a loving and lovable force initiating or training this trickster within us. At the same time, Venus is surely getting zapped with some intuition of a deeper, more wild or authentic type of love or relationship with the procreative force. As Venus is also conjunct Vesta, we might consider how a spirit of service or selflessness is floating around this conversation.

These archetypal tensions stretch our consciousness in new ways. In dealing with my own internal dilemmas or undigested dualities, I’ve lately been enjoying letting myself swing from one side to the other. It seems that when I’m trying to lasso both in, finding some sort of middle ground or path, energy stays stagnant. Trusting the intelligence of both sides, of both selves or stories, I often find that they spontaneously support each other—that the perceived opposition is sometimes connected to a reticence or resistance to fully activating some potential. In this case, navigating tension feels more like a lesson in courageous play, in allowing myself not to have the story straight and to enjoy a shapeshift-y dance without exclusively identifying with one self. It also looks like giving focused attention to each part of the puzzle, even if we don’t expect the pieces to come together. Uranus, this electric and innovative energy, is in a free-flowing, connective trine with Saturn, a force of discipline and hard work.

As we progress towards the new moon, these oppositional tensions will subside. Instead, we will find many powerful conjunctions and a sharp square, emphasizing synthesis and shifts of energy.

First up is a Juno/Pluto conjunction, which is exact on the 11th and is already quite strong. On a fundamental level, this combination speaks to an intensity around partnerships and models for relationships. Juno was the Queen of Heaven, consort to Jupiter. In traditional astrology, she’s thought to relate to marriage, but she also speaks to contractual relationships and soul-level partnerships of all kinds—think of those uncanny, nearly inescapable connections you have with different people, or the way that patterns of or strategies for partnership are core shapers of identity.
Pluto cooks whatever it comes in contact with—pulling us down into the depths of our experience in that realm. We already spent a good spell of time in this cauldron this year—in late April, Juno ran right up next to Pluto before going retrograde and finally backing away at the start of June. You might think of what was going on then—was the strength of existing relationships being tested? Did you find some nourishing possibilities underneath the concrete of conditioned stories? The conjunction was never completed—it might have just felt as if something was boiling without a concluding phase shift.

Strikingly, at the same time as Juno and Pluto finish this long, slow conjunction, Venus and Jupiter will enjoy a week-long meeting in the morning sky. While this could easily spell romance, it also speaks to a broader opening of the heart and activation of an artistic spirit. Taken in the context of Juno and Pluto, this makes me think of the movie Cloud Atlas, where several characters move with each other across multiple lifetimes, lovingly liberating one another and combining forces to fight powers of ignorance and destruction. Perhaps this phase shift will accompany an appreciation of the cosmic dimension of partnership and our interconnectedness with all of life. As Jupiter will be in a trine with Neptune, we will have a great chance to connect with this larger vision and source of inspiration until the middle of December. At the same time, Mars will square Pluto and Juno and keep pace with Juno as she moves out of the underworld, igniting friction in this partnership dynamic as it resolves.

As we finish out the month, Venus will start catching up to the Sun, coming up close as it meets Saturn and a retrograde Mercury in December. By itself, this is a time of empowered creativity, pleasure, and connection which will then receive a bigger boost of depth and intensity on January 9th. The last time this happened was June 7th, 2016—you might think back to whatever shifts, interactions, or supplies were coming in then. On the exact day Venus becomes an Evening star, Venus and the Sun will be precisely conjunct Pluto, another stunning, synchronistic image. As opposed to Venus as a morning star, which is often demeaned as a proud or self-indulgent force, Venus as an evening star is thought to have a sophisticated energy. In more gentle terms, we might think of this moment bringing whatever exploration or experimentation in our navigation of beauty, creativity, and relationship into a stronger, more public expression. More on this to come!

poem prayer:
Aligning the spine, electricity flowing smoothly, with design.
Connection, pulling possibility into line and cutting the fruitless off the vine.
Remembering a promise and painting a new one,
lover and muse, catching up to the Sun.
Ignoring the narcoleptic and knocking on the noble,
A dancer bravely aloft, balanced on top of a bull.
The nimble, nubile knees sowing seeds for flying trees:
Planting and redirecting, thawing with the freeze.
Coming to vision in sleep: falling into the breeze.
Allowing the sneeze (not the snooze),
and discerning the clearest dream.

To learn more about how this is playing out in your chart, reach out for a reading or check out astrologyally.com/readings !