Monday, February 22, 2016 at 10:20 am Pacific Time the Moon is Full in the sign of Virgo at 3 degress 34 minutes. We have in this full moon the conjunction of the dwarf planet Ceres and Neptune emphasizing earth, mother, harvest, the story of Persophone taken into the underworld by Hades (Pluto) where Ceres, her mother grieves and the flowers do not bloom until she is reunited with Persephone once again. I wonder about their story often, many of us may relate closely with this story based on our own personal stories with mother or as being a mother.
What opens up in the Full Moon that is ready for harvest? With Neptune with her there’s a sense of merging with the mother, maybe the grieving mother, with the open vastness of the ocean of everything, a peak into the vastness and the boundaries are non-existant. Perhaps grief starts as the endless water consuming us, and if we do not struggle where does it takes us? Do we float and begin to feel the ease of not struggling? There is a fluidity to this full moon. We may feel the freedom of it and where we have done some work we are harvesting and feeling the freedom, or on the flip side we can feel the instability of it all and prefer to have boundaries and structures that we had become familiar with over time. I also wonder in this the way we grieve. I’ve often heard and experienced myself grief and how it comes in waves, seeming to overwhelm us and yet just when we we think we cannot stay with it any moment longer it subsides, gently leaving and yet we know it will once again rise again in another moment, perhaps with less momentum and in time we find ourselves finding our footing having become skilled somewhat in the rythym of the grief waves. How many of us still have someone we grieve over from 30, 40, 50 years ago perhaps on the day they left us or the day they passed from this life and we take the moment to be with the grief and yet we find ourselves moving into life, taking our steps forward as we had the moment before the grief wave had come. In the mix of life, grief is as much of our being and our experience as other emotions like joy.
Whenever I ponder Ceres’ (Earth Mother, Demeter in Greek mytholody) and her myth, I cannot do it without considering the heaviness and darkness of Pluto, the utter grief stricken transformation that takes place with her loss of Persephone her daughter (made bride to Pluto against her will). A grief she endures and in her grief and anger (Pluto) she went to live in the world of men, disguised as an old woman, and stopped all the plants and crops from growing, causing faminine. Her grief was men’s grief, all men suffered when she suffered. Think about that for just a moment. We are undoubtly inseparable from her.
Through her grief we see the season of fall, when plants die and replenish the soil from where they once grew. Ceres comes to life again in the spring when Persephone is returned from the underworld. Seeds that were dormant come to life and new life is abundant. When we allow grief to have full expression in our experiences when it is upon us, and when the winter turns again to spring we are open in our hearts to live anew with new blooms from seeds we had forgotten lay within us. Take a moment to appreciate mothers, life givers and men who suffer with her when she grieves. The cycles of life are rich within our experiences of life and death and life once again whether it is here in physical or within the realms of Neptune. Our full moon on Monday is a time to celebrate our connection with both and in the sign of Virgo the feminine within us all. What are you harvesting? What seeds within you are ready to bloom now?
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