110: OH MOTHER!
MON 30 NOV 09:29 - Mooning Monthly making a date with mummy....
Happy Gemini Lunar Eclipse one and All
After all the song and dance of the recent Scorpio New Moon festival of lights (DJ LunaTech's Discoman On The Moon spotify playlist is still available here) our groove under the approaching Gemini Lunar Eclipse is likely to be a tad subdued in comparison......possibly more of a wobbly sway. The eclipse influenced among us will feel we're coming down from that glorious, liberating lunar high to a quieter, necessarily contemplative space, to recover from the solid bass exertions of our collective kitchen disco.
The eclipse will prove excellent night time viewing for our Mooning brothers and sisters in Australia, Asia, Africa and South America, so get out there and marvel at the heavens if you're in the southern hemisphere. The rest of us will have to rely on internet footage to watch La Luna turn dark red for a couple of hours.
A lunar eclipse adds potency to an already emotionally charged full moon. In this instance, we've got a fortuitous opportunity to explore the sometimes cavernous gulf that lies between what we think we desire and what actually seems to be manifesting in our lives. Do we actually need what we think we need? Do we truly want what we say want? Quite often what we think we want: liberty, love, abundance is contradicted by our automatic, compulsive mind set and behaviour: control, anger and fear of lack. Guess which message of manifesting desire broadcasts louder across the universal airwaves?
We are currently traversing a tense astrological axis (lunar Gemini opposite solar Sagittarius) whose dynamic plays out between the most intense, personal aspects of our lives and our place and actions (purpose) in the wider, collective picture. It will pay to consider both equally during the coming weeks. To ignore one at the expense of the other risks evoking enduring imbalances, likely requiring radical overhaul somewhere not too far down the line - often an uncomfortable, messy process.
The last time an eclipse shared this precise astrological alignment was in November 2012. Those of us that can remember back that far, would be well advised to spend a few quiet moments returning to that time frame and comparing our current state of affairs with that at the completion of the great Mayan Calendar (Harmonic Convergence 2012). The process can provide useful context for our life journey over the past eight years and a constructive reference point moving forward into 2021.
How have things worked out? Are we happier now than we were? What kind of (inevitable) shit has hit the fan and how well did we cope with it? Just as importantly, where were the moments of joyful pleasure and what state of mind allowed those heady days to arise and even hang around awhile? In retrospect, are the labels of 'shit' and 'pleasure' helpful, appropriate or even adequate, to describe what actually, simply happened?
Bizarrely, we humans dwell so intently on the negative experiences we encounter and create, giving them far greater weight of importance than the positive. Perhaps it is because the positive, in its everyday forms, is less dramatic and challenging to our preferred, often compulsively negative, way of processing reality. The extreme of a 'life's shit and then you die' outlook will not leave much room for experiencing life as a living, unfolding miracle in each and every moment.
Can we contextualise ideas of good and bad into a wider perspective that marries our personal concerns, pain and pleasure with a wider world to which we contribute through every thought, word and action? As we often suggest in this column, the path of Love is a wide one, upon which there is plenty of room to balance the extremes of our conditioned, illusory sense of self with what is true.
The trick to staying upright and traveling in a forward direction seems to rest in aligning with and accepting circumstances as they arise, then dealing with them in as positive and grateful a manner as can be mustered. This can be a consciously adopted attitude shift (life moves expansively forward with or without our consent) that can help even the really difficult stuff lose some of its sting.
Under this Gemini Lunar Eclipse there's an additional, strong Venus influence which traditionally evokes feminine principles. In the next couple of weeks pay special attention to the important women in your life. Honour their femininity. Shower them with gifts and praise. Let them know just how important they are in your life. Flowers wouldn't go amiss.
Primarily that would be mums of course. Whether living or dead, they represent our notions of nurture, throughout our childhood and then in our subsequent roles as friends, lovers and sometimes parents ourselves. The next fortnight is a great time to attend to this relationship with Mother. Give her a call. Make a visit or certainly plan for a socially distanced one in the near future. If Ma's no longer with us, evoke her presence in contemplation of that relationship and examine whether there are still wounds to heal before only ever remembering her (and her overbearing control mechanisms - lol) with love.
If there are wounds to heal with a living mama then this is the time to give it a go. Let's see if our compulsive, reactive responses can be kept in check....even under provocation. Our mothers, those glorious beacons of womanhood, are essentially the reason for our living presence. Let's be grateful. Let's forgive them. They were/are only trying to do their best based on what they have been conditioned to think of as being a good mum. Let's love those mothers. It frees up so much emotional space.
And let's extend that love to the big Mumma herself, Lady Gaia. Our relationship with Mother Earth relationship needs some serious attention. Currently, we may as well be sticking red hot pins into her ever receptive, generous, supportive body. Modern consumerist society is the epitome of an abusive, over-indulged, whining toddler, still suckling but biting the nipple with its razor edged teeth when it can't get enough milk at each draining feed. We need to wean ourselves off our insatiable, unsustainable dependencies and let our great matriarch recover. With concerted will, it wouldn't take long for the glowing paragon of her femininity to regenerate and continue to nurture us all with abundant benevolence for many generations and millennia to come.
This weaning necessarily involves reassessing our own priorities and financial imperatives. Do the cultural, political and economic systems in which we currently invest our time, energy and cash, support our beautiful Mother Earth's capacity to sustain and nurture us all? If not (and they clearly don't) then those systems need a meaningful reorientation. What part can we play in their reconstruction?
Systemic change won't happen without punter pressure. Our hard earned buck deserves to be consciously placed and wisely invested in those institutions (banks and pension funds in particular) with a clear mandate for positive environmental change. (Top 5 ethical banks report here) Let's explore the possibilities and act before it's too late. Let's not accept the constantly enforced plutocratic story line that the consumerist, capitalist calamity is the only 'safe', trustworthy economic and political narrative in town. Let's challenge the rhetoric of privilege inwardly and externally by doing what we can to help NOW, at home and in our local communities; by putting our money where our hearts lie in charting new routes to prosperity for All.
As always at Full Moon, our instinctive emotional reactions and habitual patterns of behaviour will be hitting their peak. Under this Gemini Lunar Eclipse we may become more aware of how we can balance our individual needs and aspirations with those of others and the planetary biosphere, of which we are a vital, interdependent part.
As ever, we offer an entirely positive selection of do's without don'ts that might help bridge the perceived gaps and lacks in our lives toward a more holistic appreciation of the unlimited abundance that accompanies us in every moment.
DO make a date with mummy. Find a socially distanced window in the coming days to devote your attention to her: how she's feeling, what she needs and wants and how you might help realise those aspirations. If it's not possible in person, do it online or by phone. Make her feel valued and nurtured herself.
DO make a date with Mummy Earth. Get out in the open air. Breathe HER in. See, smell, taste, touch and hear HER. Don't rush HER by being in a rush yourself. Devote an open ended moment to HER in which you can be located and spoken to. Be still in HER presence and fall in Love for eternity. Return to your day to day activities when you have truly felt HER and been filled. Make this a regular date.
DO celebrate the Divine Feminine. Macho folks beware. The Divine Feminine is around and WITHIN you. Make sure you honour it in a meaningful manner. Some of the male staff at Mooning HQ like to paint one finger nail a flamboyant colour in acknowledgement of a softer, subtler expression of beauty in an often harsh, male dominated world. Sunflower yellow is the current nail varnish hue of choice. Camp defiance? Who gives a monkey's toss what people think? Hats off to all gender and non gender specific souls claiming the Divine Feminine in themselves.
DO honour the important women in your life. Treat them as you would the Goddess they represent.
A prayer of gratitude: Sisters of the world we love and salute you for the crap you gracefully endure. We honour your balancing, redemptive, intuitive allowance. Thank you.
DO make your money work ethically for you and others by investing in the world you want to see. It's a very practical way of making your dreams come true. This is the week to hold your current bank to account. Even if you're still banking with the bank you first joined as a teenager, now is the time to question if that choice is still appropriate. (Top 5 ethical banks report here) You don't have to look very far to uncover which of the major banks continue to invest in carbon burning PetroChemical multinationals and hold massive amounts of debt over poverty stricken, nation states in the developing world.
DO consider a bit of financial rebellion. This week Extinction Rebellion launched its passive resistance campaign to disrupt the consumerist, capitalist paradigm by encouraging lawful non-cooperation with the all pervasive financial institutions that govern the fiscal value of our homes, health, pensions and working lives. Go to the Extinction Rebellion site and follow the links to Money Rebellion (moneyrebellion.earth). There's a 45 minute film there,Tackling the Root of the Problem, that's well worth a view.
We hope this mother of all messages spurs our burgeoning international Mooning Community to constructive loving action, in our personal lives and their collective context. Do please share its well intentioned, Divine Feminine disposition with friends of a similarly divine complexion - it's another way in which the path of Love may be kept well maintained for clear, safe and enlightened passage.
With love 'til next time....
FULL MOON MARKS
EACH MONTH WE PUBLISH A LUNAR INSPIRED DRAWING BY MARK WEIGHTON
GEMINI LUNAR ECLIPSE
18 x 18cm charcoal on paper
The twelfth of 13 Full Moon inspired drawings for 2020 by artist Mark Weighton