Tonight’s full moon falls in Sagittarius and reflects light from a Gemini Sun, so be prepared for more little stories, each with its own riddle, even as you long for a clear-cut resolution. Depending upon your inner energy code, you may feel compelled to solve these riddles . . . but I sense that absolute closure is something of an illusion at present.

Our favorite star, the Sun, is making its annual run through Gemini. Usually this means that things lighten up, people chatter more easily with strangers at the bus stop, waiting in line for their morning brew, or standing on the bridge watching the sun set over the river. Gemini loves the wonder found in any given moment. It’s nourished by curiosity. All this we gladly embrace. But . . . this particular season the Sun’s Gemini energy is challenged by a backward moving–some might say a wayward–Mercury (also in Gemini). Trouble, trouble, double-trouble.

Don’t get me wrong . . . I respect the intention of this retrograde ‘mind’ to prod us toward a deeper level of expression of our thoughts. It’s just this desire for depth is equally capable, in the blink of an eye, of creating havoc where we thought we were simply headed to the corner stand for ice cream. You know what I mean? Your mind is focused on lemon sorbet with coconut ice-cream for a chaser and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by a discussion about world cultures and you have become the outrider due to your misunderstanding of the political/social ramifications of coconut ice-cream. How did this happen? Where did the turning occur and how did you miss it?

Then, tonight, along comes a full moon backed into the constellation of Sagittarius. Whew. We tell ourselves that surely Sag will talk some sense into Gemini, counsel it to focus, to allow for logic to lead. Gemini counters by reminding Sagittarius to watch out for its certainty. Gemini and Sag make for fabulous partners when both are honoring the other. The mind expands as it seeks understanding from the library of ideas it’s collected. But as is the case with any full moon (where the energies face off from opposite ends of the cosmos), we have to watch out for attaching ourselves more to one of the fields than the other. There isn’t a question here about whether logic trumps curiosity or whether diversified thinking is of more value than linear tracking. No. We’re asked to notice how much more clear we are when we merge these seemingly disparate tendencies.

To satisfy Gemini’s longing for diversification, here’s one more thing about tonight’s moon. It’s being squared (challenged) by Neptune. Imagine a gigantic triangle in the sky with Thinkers conversing back and forth from two of the points and Mysticism on the third point encouraging these thought-generators to see the pockets of the Unknowable woven into the mind puzzles. Neptune reminds us that everything we need to navigate is not issuing solely from the human brain. Neptune works outside of the confines of Mind, engages us in the Mysterious Unknown dimensions that we try to capture with words and concepts but simply cannot. We give this presence names: God, Source, Consciousness, Creator, The Great Whatever . . . the energy represented by Neptune is beyond thought patterning.

The photo I attached at the top of the column is one I took of a felted mandala exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I love this piece for what feels, initially, like a visual maze, leading the mind through all sorts of delicious curves and around countless square corners. But, ultimately, it reminds us that the Center, the Source, is right there holding everything else together no matter how many times we may “think” we are lost. Neptune squaring tonight’s moon is much like a bearer of Light outside the paradigm of reason, eternally accessible when we turn down the volume in our heads and reach, instead, from our hearts.

Peace of Mind, after all, comes from an acceptance of not knowing. About the Author:



Deborah O’conner



Be humble, for you are made of earth.

Be noble, for you are made of stars.