The first message in my Facebook feed this morning was from my nephew, marking himself safe in “The Violent Incident in Las Vegas”. His notification linked to a news story about the latest mass shooting, this one involving a gunman opening fire from his hotel room into an open-air concert next door, killing at least 50 people and injuring hundreds of others.
I closed down Facebook and made breakfast.
To entertain myself while I brewed coffee, I put on the latest episode of one of my favorite podcasts. The hosts were describing the horrors in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. The hosts sounded like I felt, their voices flat, as if letting themselves fully feel what they were talking about would splinter them into a million pieces.
I turned off the podcast.
Next on the day’s agenda: an essay about the Full Moon in Aries. I mean, what can I say? That it’s the best Full Moon of the year for getting motivated, standing up for yourself, fighting the good fight? All that’s true, of course, but it feels a bit inadequate to focus on personal growth when the whole damn world seems to be falling apart.
I have to confess, though, that I’m doing a lot of that these days—letting the world fall apart while I keep my eyes on my own paper. After seven years of destructive Uranus in Aries (ruled by Mars, the god of war), I’ve become somewhat inured to the world’s vesuvian eruptions of violence, disaster, and cruelty. It’s as though my lifetime supply of outrage has been used up. I have short-circuited from anger. Why not perform little rituals to increase my business, I guess.
For the past year, I’ve avoided the news out of respect for my blood pressure. Of course, it’s easy for me to abdicate my role as an outraged citizen. As a white woman in a middle-class suburb of a gentle, coastal city in Southern California, I don’t experience much danger in my daily life. Uranus in Aries has made mostly congenial aspects to my birthchart; it’s relatively easy for me to remain on the sidelines while the world explodes in violence. I can simply close down Facebook, turn off the podcast, stop watching the blood-soaked Ken Burns documentary about the Vietnam War. I have that luxury. For now.
Or so it seems. The concertgoers in Las Vegas probably thought the same thing.
The Full Moon shines a floodlight on the matters dear to its sign. This Full Moon in Aries and square Pluto shines its light on a world full of fellow humans fighting for their lives —and the danger that we have learned to take such battles in stride. Pluto symbolizes not only the power we wield but also the power that fellow beings and nature hold over us—the sense that we are powerless and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. “Why should I pay attention when there’s nothing I can do about any of it?” our Pluto-subjugated selves might ask. “It doesn’t matter what anyone does, nothing changes.”
It’s an understandable point of view. It’s how I’ve been feeling for a long time. But if Aries wants to teach us anything, it’s that a noble cause is always worth fighting for—not because it changes the outside world, necessarily, but because it makes us better people.
So here’s what I’m taking away from this fraught morning and the shining light of the coming Aries Full Moon: Keep fighting. Some might argue about whether it’s best to fight for your cause on social media, at the ballot box, or in the streets. I wouldn’t argue for one venue over another. Some want to fight peacefully, some violently; I am inherently peaceful, and yet the other day, when a guy gave my car a strong bump while parallel parking in front of my house, I was sorely tempted to relocate some dog poo from my yard to a spot where he might step in it as he came back to his vehicle. So let’s just say I paint in shades of gray.
Mostly, we’ll fight wherever we find ourselves and in accordance with our individual strengths. The one thing we can’t do is let ourselves go flat, lose our Uranian fizz, and decide it’s every man and woman for themselves. That’s the kind of thinking that, the last time Uranus was in Taurus (as it will be again, beginning next May), contributed to the rise of fascism.
So we have to keep fighting, for ourselves, for others, for the good of all. Fight as you’re able. Stand up for what is humane and for what moves us forward as a species. Small acts of bravery in daily life are as important to those around us as the larger, global ones. Keep your eyes open, and your ears, and your heart. Keep fighting.
But let’s keep the dog poo out of it.
© 2017 April Elliott Kent
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