The Yuletide Full Moon

December opens with a Full Moon and a Mercury retrograde on December 3, the Moon being full at 7:47 am PDT, 11 degrees Gemini (chart at bottom of page).

It's also a supermoon, the year's closest and largest full Moon. Its medicine is about standing up and speaking out, as an important way of caring for our physical and mental health. But it's VERY important that our words are credible, and in alignment.

Remedios Varo

It also is the same day that MERCURY turns retrograde, which will right itself just in time for Christmas Eve, but will encompass the final leg of our time with Saturn in Sagittarius. Mercury retro in Sag will join Saturn for the first week of its retrograde. Honest and clear communication on all levels is essential now,

if not prepare for immediate negative karma. This is likely to be an extra intense retrograde period.

All the usual guidance and warnings accompany this: unless you can avoid it, don't make any significant purchases in this time, especially technological and mechanical things. If you must, as this is holiday shopping time, then be sure you get the extended service plan with your purchases and check out the return policies. The times to really really try and avoid any major purchases are the "stations" of Mercury, at the beginning and end of the retrograde. That's when things can go extra haywire. (Nov 30-Dec 7 and then Dec 20-28). Beyond that Mercury retrogrades are always a deep journey into all the words that begin with 'RE' such as: REFRESH RELIEVE REALIZE RECYCLE RELAX REFOCUS RECOVER REVIVE RESPECT RESHAPE RENEW RESOLVE REVEAL REFILL and REJOICE.

If allowed to be, the retrogrades are a creative time and one where you may learn to do things in a different way than you are accustomed. They are medicine. They may not always taste great, but they are helpful to our deeper psyche's health.

With this Full Moon, there is a tide of empowerment sweeping the land, a great wave of so many saying "I'm not going to take it anymore!", and finally being heard.

Jupiter in Scorpio is no joke.

So far we have Hollywood experiencing a very bright light being shone into its darkness, we have the revealing of the Paradise Papers, and we have a vast, radical, massive, upheaval in the power structure of Saudi Arabia, an incredibly wealthy, powerful country that has many financial and political strings extending deep into the US. And we're only just shy of 2 months deep!

11 months to go. Buckle up. There will be more.

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Accompanying this full Moon we have a tight conjunction between Saturn and Mercury conjunct the Galactic Center, (found at 27 degrees of Sag), the central point around which our entire solar system spins!

The GC is thought by astronomers to contain a supermassive black hole in the center, the size of a large star, but containing the mass of four million suns. Due to what is being pulled into the black hole, the GC contains and radiates outward the energy of many different frequencies. The fact that our 'planet of alignment' is here right now is very significant. It only happens once every 27.5 years. Time to really bring your "A game" to all that you do. It's extra important right now.

This is the graduation ceremony for our last 2.5 year transit of Saturn in Sag.

To review, Saturn is always the bottom line and the hardest work, and if it's done in proper alignment with the universal laws that govern life, it aids us in having a healthy, functional life, and we get to move on to the next level. We are rewarded by genuine and healthy growth.

Sag/Jupiter is about seeking a philosophy or a spirituality to live by in order to find a greater meaning in life, one that we believe in that guides us, that helps us to be expansive truth tellers and storytellers. There is an earned wisdom here that Sag shares with people who are trying to find their own way. Though beware the self-righteous 'Sagittarian on a soapbox', as they (the Sag part of all of us) certainly can pontificate....

As they are always aiming their arrows at the Moon and the stars, Jupiter ruled Sagittarians are always seeking adventure, and are very resistant to fences of any kind. They are good for laughter and levity, and no matter what, they are somehow, always, 'astonishingly handsome'. They are the light in the darkness of the cold winter season. This is the Sag/Jupiter/9th house part of all of us. We all have it somewhere.

Howard Pyle, the Buccaneer, 1905

This Moon invites you to find out where you aren't going to take it anymore.

Where do you need to say more 'no's? Where have your boundaries been a little too lax? Contemplate the power of limits.

The beauty of Saturn in Sag is the balance it teaches between expansion (Sag) and contraction (Saturn). It has admittedly, clipped the most expansive (Sag) parts of ourselves during its tenure, which has been challenging. But in the same way that holding a tough yoga pose for longer than you are comfortable with can create greater strength and expansion upon release, so has this transit been. Soon Jupiter will emerge from his testing time and will expand his essential nature once again.

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We are just 16 days away from a big changing of the guard. Saturn will be moving into Capricorn on December 19. This will bring a different set of lessons, so let's be present now, under this luminous full Moon, with gratitude for the particular set of lessons that have been ours since December 23, 2014.

What comes next will be very different, as is the natural cycle and pulse of the zodiacal archetypes.