Image: ‘Reaching for the Sky’ by Delicia Long
Clearing the Air
By
Sarah Varcas
The Quarter Moon occurs at 3:15 p.m. UT in the 27th degree of Pisces. This is a sensitive Moon, conjunct her own South Node, triggering memories and the emotional imprint of past experiences. However, thanks to the Sun’s square to the North Node, we have all we need to turn what could be a bit of a downer into a positive change of outlook. The Sun in Sagittarius helps us with this, offering optimism to counter doubt and energy to counter malaise.
Any ‘blasts from the past’ encountered at this time, be they thoughts and feelings, memories, events or people, don’t mean we’ve sunk back into past ways or, despite our best intentions, failed to change. Quite the contrary in fact! For this Moon is a clearing moon, releasing the stuff and nonsense that we carry around with us in the form of old energy, rehashed memories, repeat experience that reflects dynamics no longer resonant with who and what we are. Whatever we encounter now it’s on its way out, not its way in! Rising up from within us, this is energy on the move, unsettling our calm, perhaps, but with good reason. You can’t get out of the house without opening the door and walking through it, and the past cannot depart from us without finding its own way out. As it does so we may hear the locks rattle and feel an icy draft blow in, but the space left once it’s gone makes it all worthwhile. The new air is fresh, the light pure and the stillness simply breathtaking as we pause and feel what it’s like to regroup in the present moment, to gather our disparate parts and fractured self together, knowing ourselves as whole.
A waxing quarter moon is on her way to full and therefore requires action alongside stillness. She calls for demonstrable commitment to the intentions of the New Moon a week prior. Which is why this one is clearing a lot of unnecessary detritus, because those intentions were big and we need plenty of inner space to accommodate them! It’s no good courageously daring to envision a bold future whilst replaying the past. That’s like driving with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake: a sure combination for an over-heated engine! If we’re going to follow through on our hopes and dreams there’s work to be done and action to be taken. The last thing we need to do is drag history along like a ball and chain just when we require freedom to create and progress.
We may wonder why during an inner clear out, external circumstances also echo the past, but we don’t end at the boundary of our body! Instead we project our energy throughout time and space, attracting and repelling as it goes, replaying familiar situations, creating new ones, allowing for and resisting change. We contribute to the creation of our environment as much as our environment influences us. We are part of an energetic feedback loop, forever flowing through and around us. If we avoid something within we’ll encounter it without to make the point. Just as if we address inner resistance, the outer world begins to flow once more in surprisingly creative ways.
So if we find this Moon brings trouble to our door we’d best remember that we are that door and whatever’s behind it, as much as we are this side wondering how the heck that old chestnut just reappeared! We are all of it. We can change it by changing ourselves, and be changed by it by allowing life to flow rather than stagnate. It’s not about blaming ourselves for another’s behaviour, or sensing failure if we’re repeatedly faced with the same obstacles; but instead making connections between us and our life, the people that populate it, the events that occur within it and our inner world which reflects and is reflected by it all.
This Quarter Moon may stir up some stuff, but like a passing storm the air will be fresher and clearer for it. New life will spring forth and the Sun begin to shine once the clouds have cleared. It’s all part of life, all part of nature doing what she does to renew herself within us and rejuvenate our bodies, hearts and minds.
Sarah Varcas
