Love and roses are for life - not just for Valentine’s Day - Full Moon February 9th, 2020
The Moon is full on February 9th in the sign of Leo, symbolized by the majestic and proud Lion, honoured and respected for his courage – think Richard the Lionheart, think Simba in the ‘Lion King’ and the lion of ‘the Yellow Brick Road’. Very often films are like modern myths – they carry a message. As Simba fought his wicked uncle’s attempts to take over the kingdom, the message was that the difficulties of the past are our learning tools so that we know how to deal with the future. The Cowardly Lion from the Land of Oz was scared of everything – even the sheep he counted in order to go to sleep. He didn’t feel he could live up to the lion’s reputation as King of Beasts and thought his fears made him inadequate. However, he eventually discovered that he carried out courageous acts in spite of his fears and he realized that this was the whole point – you could still have fears, but the courage was to face those fears and still act.
The Full Moon always shows what we have in our harvest pot. At the Full Moon we can see exactly what we have in there that we can take forward to serve our future lives as well as discard what no longer serves us. Leo here is shining the light on how we can be heroes and leaders, how we can be brave in the face of fear and how we all have a need for recognition for our deeds.
I spoke at the last New Moon in Aquarius of the upcoming new cycles we have ahead of us. The Moon at that point was in a dynamic aspect with Uranus, the planet of shocks, surprises and awakening. In this respect the coronavirus coming out of China could well be one of those shocks. But I will leave that for discussion at the next New Moon in Pisces.
Aquarius (the Sun’s sign at this Full Moon) represents where we are different, how we walk to a different drumbeat and how we can happily be ‘not normal’ or even be ‘the weirdo’. What I didn’t really talk about at the time of the Aquarius New Moon is the excitement that goes with being different, the excitement to be ‘not normal’ and the potential inspiration that goes with this. Personally I like being different – I don’t really get the desire to look like the person next to me, be like the person next to me or dance the same dance as them? It’s exciting to be awakened, to be liberated or to do something new and different? Why do we fear being different to the next guy and standing out because of that?
This Leo Full Moon is standing totally on her own – she is in the other half of the chart from all the other planets. She needs to gather all the courage she can muster to face up to her challenges. We may feel fear that life tomorrow may not be the same as yesterday, but rather than buy into the fear of this, we must embrace and accept that it is our tomorrow and that change can be exciting. So at this Full Moon (Moon in Leo and Sun in Aquarius) – what we need is to find courage in our hearts (Leo) to look forward to the new (Aquarius) – to face our fears and find the excitement in being here at such a point of change and new beginnings. As Simba and the Lion of Oz found, the past was designed to lay down the foundations to teach us how to move forward in a positive way and deal with the challenges of the future.
Uranus was discovered in 1781 around the time of the Scientific Revolution – it encompasses the energy of scientific and technological discoveries. Since the Scientific Revolution became the dogma of the time though we have been encouraged to find a rational scientific explanation for everything, but at times we are left wanting. So perhaps we have now come full circle and we are seeking the more Uranian magical explanation that there can be both a rational and an alternative view and that not all answers can be rational.
As an example of something ‘different’ or being ‘the weirdo’, magic is an area that we have been taught to regard as occult and sinister in some way and that it is something to be feared. But part of my point in the recent series of Reconnecting with Ancient Wisdom was to actually reconnect to the magic of the Universe and the wisdom of the past. Indeed, the astrologers of old were also the magicians – they provided celestial magic for healing and wisdom. The three wise men who visited Jesus after his birth were Magi and the very early Magi came from the Zoroastrian religion of western Iran/ancient Persia – the oldest still practiced religion. Zoroastrians believe that God created the natural environment and, therefore, do nothing to harm it. Their mantra for life is “Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds. It’s almost an ecological religion that calls for the protection of water, earth, fire and air. We now think we are the inventors of this thinking but it’s just a basic reconnection with ancient wisdom.
Leo also represents the organ of the heart, which I personally believe is actually the seat of the soul. So at this Full Moon I think it is important to honour your Soul and indeed your Soul’s purpose for being here; to realise that following your Soul’s purpose will be the ultimate harvest.
The heart is an interesting organ. It’s not just a mechanical part of our body that pumps blood round our bodies; it actually has a brain of its own. The heart has its own intrinsic nervous system that communicates with the brain and the rest of the body. In fact Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, considered the heart to be the centre of reason, thought and emotion, and far more important than the brain, whilst other philosophers considered the brain to be ‘the servant of the heart’. Modern Western theories, however, consider the brain to be the superior organ.
The brain and the heart are inextricably linked and entangled, and stress brings a disconnect between these two organs, causing the life force and sense of happiness to be stripped away? Indeed the heart has been found to have a role to play in the manufacture and release of hormones, and in particular oxytocin. Oxytocin is known as the love or ‘cuddle’ hormone. It is released when people snuggle up together and bond socially. We have tended to believe that the brain is the mind and the seat of all emotions even though we think of the heart as being connected to feelings of love with adjectives like heartbroken, heartfelt, heartwarming, whilst anger causes our hearts to ‘harden’ and we become ‘hard-hearted’.
The heart radiates out a ‘measurable’ energy, which overlaps into the surroundings and to the surrounding people. Our thoughts actually have the power to influence our world around us, which goes back to some of my comments recently about civilization and the evolution of man. Darwin’s theory of the survival of the strongest might apply to some species but not necessarily to Man. Man appears to thrive more when he is in a situation of co-operation and, therefore, within the civilization of community. The idea that social bonding releases ‘love’ hormones really speaks to me in this respect. The idea that ‘growth is everything’ and ‘money is everything’ has made our lives so complicated can be traced back to the start of capitalism in the mid 1800’s. But we are now looking forward to a new age – a prequel perhaps to the Age of Aquarius.
Roses are considered to be the flower of love and, according to legend, the red roses grew as the tears of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and the blood of her lover Adonis flowed into the ground. In Christianity the rose became the symbol of the Virgin Mary as well as the national flower of England. The feast of Saint Valentine celebrated annually on February 14th honoured one or two early saints, but it wasn’t until early writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer mentioned the popular belief that birds chose their mates upon this feast that the day became associated with a celebration of romantic love.
I have also been listening on Instagram Live for the past two Sundays to conversations between my dear friend Jasmine Hemsley (@jasminehemsley) and Gary Gorrow (@garygorrow). The conversation was about mastering the art of ‘deep listening’. I was so interested in this because the discussion was very much in line with what I have also been writing about recently – the fact that we have disconnected with ancient wisdom and what we hold in our hearts, which actually helped us to live our life in accordance with the purpose of our soul. Gary spoke about how we have become a mind-based culture and that we should allow ourselves to get into the ‘flow state’, where there is no mind – a state which is so achievable through meditation. We have become separated from the natural world and in the main are not listening to what we instinctively know and trust – we need to tune into the different layers of our energy body. And this is where listening to our heart is so important. If we connect to what we feel in our heart – the seat of the soul – we can tune into our instincts and our intuitions. We can know if our heart is really ‘in’ something or not. For this to happen Gary reminds us that we must do ‘the deep listening’ for our truths and for the deepest needs of our soul. He also spoke of how social media pulls us to compare ourselves to the ‘false lives’ that we think others have. Our hearts then go into self-protection mode, which then makes it hard for us to follow the path of our soul’s purpose. To fulfill our soul’s purpose Gary tells us to leave behind the punishing patters we put our bodies and minds through; to ‘deep listen’ to our own truths.
Aquarius is what is different. It is the air and space where the energy that spills over from our hearts resides. Air connects us and everyone can connect with each other nowadays through the invention of the internet. I like to think that the Age of Aquarius will be a more humanitarian time, when the value of ‘the community’ can be seen. Once upon a time the area where we lived was our community, with a beating heart at its centre. Everyone needs a beating heart, which has at its centre the ethos of ‘good thoughts, good words and good deeds’ – so that the heart can produce its ‘cuddle hormone’ and we can ‘deep listen’ to the truths we hold inside. So once again, just as I did at the Aquarius New Moon, I hark back to the song ‘This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius’, to the age of the hippies, to ‘flower power’, the ‘Summer of Love’ and the age of the importance of peace and love as an antidote to war.