Hey friends! Thanks for making it to the last newsletter of the first quarter of this project! I hope you’ve had as much fun reading as I’ve had writing. If you’ve had even a little fun, perhaps you’d consider buying me a coffee. If you’ve had a lot of fun, perhaps you’d consider sharing this newsletter with someone who might also have a lot of fun (we’re a pretty fun bunch over here at Hearthfire Astrology). If you’ve actually received value, perhaps you’d consider becoming a paid subscriber and member of the Hearthfire Astrology community. My hope is to grow a community here (or on Zoom or **gasp** in person) who can support each other to leave behind rigid, binary, linear ways the world has trained us to be. When the world is falling apart and cruelty is everywhere, the only way to respond is to build the world you’d like to replace it in the here and now. I do this by living cyclically, holding duality, exploring challenges — all with a sense of humor and a willingness to experiment. If you’d like to explore the many ways you might experiment in your own life through the lens of astrology, I invite you to book a reading. There is a lot happening in the cosmos and you’re an essential part of it. See where you are in your own spiral of growth and consider the possibilities for how you could move within it. I look forward to co-building with you.
Also, these newsletters now also appear in Apple Podcasts and Spotify :)
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Welcome to the Last Quarter Moon in Pisces! Again! Remember how at the last quarter Moon of the Taurus lunation, when the Sun was in Gemini and the Moon was in Pisces, I wrote about having fun? Basically, I discussed how you have to loosen up enough to let things be what they are. I stand by assertion and also have to acknowledge my own inconsistency in living that way.
For some background, I've tracked the lunar cycles for about five years. Every New and Full Moon I've written about the happenings of the moment. Over the years, this practice became more and more complex. With more data, I was able to track more patterns over longer periods. But, until now, I've never included quarter Moons in my lunar journal. I'm already tracking transits of every other planet to every other planet so it didn't seem necessary to get so granular with it. I don't even capitalize the "q" in "quarter." This astral year, I added quarter Moons. I thought it would deepen my understanding of the lunar cycle and improve the coherence of this piece.
While preparing to write about the current last quarter Moon of Gemini season, I discovered what appeared to be an "anomaly." In true Gemini rising with Venus in Virgo fashion, I couldn't resist the temptation collect and organize the data. I made tables and graphs and none of it explained anything; it only demonstrated the anomaly. So I did some more more calculation. Again, the anomaly was present but remained unexplained.
After crying in despair and frustration with my inadequate graphing software, I decided to look and see if anyone in the history of the internet had already, perhaps, noticed the same "anomaly" and actually explained it. Guess what? Someone had. I had to get on the Astronomy Stack Exchange but there it was. An explanation complete with proofs, animated graphics, and citations to some textbook published in 1859 written by a man called H. Godfray.
Suffice to say, I expected to write this week on the first repeat in the pattern, marking a clear turning point in the synodic lunar cycle. I was going to write about how it lined up with the Summer Solsice and oh, how beautifully organized is this perfect universe. But, alas, the actual position of the Moon ruined it subverted my expectations, which then sent me into a panicked spiral of self-doubt and desperation for order. So, instead, this newsletter is about something else.
The Moon is back in Pisces and the Sun remains in Gemini, just as it was last month. The configuration has repeated. When I last wrote about this combination, I didn't know I'd be seeing it again so soon. I was prepared to move forward in a perfectly formed spiral. I didn't realize how attached I actually was to its perfectly spiraled form.
When I saw the "anomaly," I really felt something like disillusionment. The perfect vision I had for this piece of writing -- and for the whole of which it is part -- was broken and could never be repaired. The firm roundness of form had been a lie. It was always a lie and I'd been having so much fun I never noticed. The Moon, the celestial body around which my creative practice orbits, wasn't where I wanted her to be. For some unknown reason, she was in Pisces doing God knows what. I felt betrayed by the very nature of creation. And when I couldn't find an explanation satisfying to my grief I was ready to chug a bottle of tequila and throw it into the sky, hopefully shattering this slut of a Moon into dust.
If I hadn't been so caught up in my ideal I might have noticed the usual vibe shift hadn't yet occurred. Pisces, ruled by Jupiter, is the sign of idealism and the creative imaginal. Pisces is so visionary, it can experience the beauty of what might be before it happens and disillusionment when what might be never actually is. This world just doesn't work the way a visionary's creative imagination works. This world is not an ideal.
Rather than dissolve into despondency, I turned to Gemini. I set aside my emotions for a moment and let curiosity lead me back to wonder. Why wasn't the Moon where I'd expected? How does she actually move about in the hard reality of physical space? I set aside everything I thought I knew and gathered the information that was actually in front of me, careful not to allow my expectations to affect what I might learn.
I put my data into graphs of all kinds. I saw the eccentricity of the regression line. I observed how the points wobbled slightly when placed along a dated axis. Wait a minute. Eccentricity? Wobble?? Is it possible the Moon's orbit is not perfectly circular but, in fact, eccentric relative to Earth? Is it possible the Moon's axial tilt combined with the distinct gravitational pulls of the Sun and the Earth cause her orbit to wobble along the ecliptic???
This explanation is a bit oversimplified, but, basically, yes. It’s called perturbation, a disturbance of motion, course, arrangement, or state of equilibrium. Especially a disturbance of the regular and usually elliptical course of motion of a celestial body that is produced by some force additional to that which causes its regular motion. Also, I didn't come to it in the manner described above. I actually cried at my desk and refused to be comforted by my partner, who was surely wondering why a bunch of dots, circles, and a ruler had upset me so. I came to it when I noticed the actual number of degrees between New Moons only averaged 29.5 but were not consistently at that value, meaning the synodic period was also an average, meaning the orbit must not be a perfect multiple of 29.5 and, therefore, not a circle. It was then that I consulted the Astronomy Stack Exchange and found the complete answer, which I reference above as if I had concluded it independently, but I did not.
However the explanation was reached, my awe was restored. My spiritual practice and my creative practice could continue. Everything I had believed about the Platonic ideal of order as beauty could still be possible. And I had learned something. And made some fun little graphs. All was right with the world. Life could go on.
If the previous last quarter challenge of Gemini and Pisces had been about lightening up, this one was, too, but with a twist. It takes a real Grinch to be sour about a cool dip in the pool on a hot day but it is very much human to be frightened when our expectations are subverted. It's also very much human to delight in the unexpected. These are the twin experiences of being human: the fear of losing control and the drive to be free.
Ideally, we could keep these drives in balance... but humans aren't an ideal. Humans are a mess of conflicting drives. Conflicting drives are why they build bridges: to get somewhere else they think they'd rather be that's still just a someplace on earth -- probably filled with more humans -- that will, ultimately, be disappointing. We can practice discernment and optimism and surrender but, still, there will be slips. A judgement creeps in here and some zealousness over there. Toss in some sentimentality and you have.... a human. It's enough to drive one to despair.
Rather than despair at our inability to be the ideal -- or the inability of the world to be an ideal world -- we can turn to curiosity. Curiosity can heal despair because it suspends judgement, zealousness, and sentimentality just long enough to let the humor through. Humor is born when an experiment goes terribly wrong and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. People who have faced terrible things generally become hilarious or fascists. A fascist is just a human who thinks they'll be free when they have total control over others. Hilarious people know for a certainty that they don't control s**t so they may as well enjoy life when they can.
I didn't get my perfectly formed transition into the first quarter square of the astral year. Yet, somehow, this newsletter came easier than any other has. I've had more fun writing it, too. I even learned some really interesting things about my craft; things I'd never have learned otherwise. I have a whole new rabbit hole to tumble down and the time this week to tumble down it, since I won't be slaving over writing that isn't authentic to the situation at hand. Something about willingness to go where the process takes me leads me right back into the center of my creative channel. And I get to go eat a consolation dinner my lovely partner prepared because he saw me crying at my desk and felt compassion for me.
Cyclic time is a wonder, y'all. Every time I move with it, resisting the urge to return to the rigidly linear expectations of my conditioning, I am rewarded. If that's what the first quarter square of this year's project has to teach me, I consider it a success.
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