TRANSCRIPT EP. 163 | Leo Full Moon: Sunshine After a Storm! (Jan. 30, 2023)
Listen and read show notes hereApril: Hello, invisible friend, April here – and the date today is January 30th, 2023. Welcome to Episode 163 of the Big Sky Astrology Podcast.
This week, the Leo Full Moon and the Sun’s square to Uranus show us how well we’re doing with changing stagnant patterns. Venus and Mars review a cycle that began almost exactly one year ago, and we have to stop asking for approval and instead demand what is ours. And I answer a Listener Question about the difference between the Sun and the Ascendant or Rising Degree in your birth chart.
Sun square Uranus (Feb. 3, 2023, 6:50 pm PST)
This week begins very quietly. There are the usual Lunar aspects on January 30, 31, and on February 1 and 2, but it is not until February 3 that we have a pretty significant aspect, and this is the Sun’s square to Uranus on February 3rd at 6:50 PM Pacific Time. This aspect is very prominent in the chart for the Full Moon on February 5, so we’ll talk about it again a little bit later. This is a final critical point in a cycle between the Sun and Uranus that began on May 5, 2022 when they came together at 14º47’ Taurus.
To understand what this aspect might mean, it’s useful to stop and break it down and say, what is the Sun about? And what is Uranus about? The Sun is the ways in which we define who we are, and Uranus is a planet that always wants to change things, to disrupt things. It is the disruptor planet. The Sun is the symbol of us trying really hard to get specific about how we see ourselves, and that involves making a certain number of rules and creating boundaries around who we think we are. If you look at this symbol for the Sun in astrology, it’s like the logo for the department store Target. It is a circle with a little dot in the middle. The little dot in the middle is the nucleus of who we are, and the circle around the outside we can think of as the boundary that separates us from other people and we say, “This is me and that is you.”
There’s nothing wrong with the Sun. It’s very important for us to develop a strong sense of self. But, from time to time, we can become a little bit trapped in our sense of who we are, who we’ve always been, perhaps who we feel we have to keep being. And what I love about the Sun coming into aspect with Uranus is that Uranus shakes that up and it invites us to think what we could be if we didn’t feel that we had to stay within this very constrained limitation and definition of who we think we are.
When the Sun and Uranus come together in an easy aspect like a sextile or trine, this process can actually be kind of gentle and fun. We might get to know a new group of people that introduce us to new ideas or new pastimes and get shaken up in that way. But, when the aspect is like this one, a square or an opposition, even the conjunction, it’s much less an invitation to change and much more a mandate. So because this is the final square in this cycle between the Sun and Uranus that began in May, it has the nature of a Last Quarter Moon Phase, for example, where you are looking back at what you’ve done along the way during the cycle and it’s your last moment to really change course to make sure that you accomplish everything that you wanted to accomplish since the cycle began.
Now, this wasn’t necessarily on a conscious level, but the ongoing cycle between the Sun and Uranus is where we’re trying to walk the fine line between having a strong sense of who we are and on the other hand, not becoming enslaved to it, of being willing and ready to make changes, to keep things fresh, to allow ourselves the freedom to change our interests, our personality, our relationships. So, at this closing square of the sequence, something usually comes along in our environment that provokes us a little bit to make us ask, “Are you confident and unsure of yourself? Or are you stagnating?” And to the extent that you’re not challenging yourself enough and getting out of your predictable patterns, Uranus likes to come along and shake you up and say, “What would happen if you liberated yourself from some of these ways of being?” It would really charge you up. It would probably make you feel more alive.
Venus square Mars (Feb. 4, 2023, 7:29 pm PST)
On February 4th, Venus makes a square to Mars at 7:29 PM at 11°14’ Pisces and Gemini. The Sabian symbol for Venus, 12 Pisces, is An examination of initiates. And the symbol for Mars is 12° Gemini, A slave girl demands her rights of her mistress. And what a fabulous set of symbols this is. Venus is a planet that describes our worth and how we view our importance. So, having it on this symbol, An examination of initiates, isn’t bad in and of itself, but it is a symbol that seems to represent letting others tell us what we’re worth – do we deserve to be let in? And Mars’ symbol, this very, very strong girl demanding her rights of her mistress, seems to say, “Don’t tell me what I deserve!”
This is the nature of our conflicts with others this week, or even conflicts within ourselves. The question is, What do we deserve? Do we deserve to be let in in the examination of initiates? Are we deserving of a place? But then on the other hand, this young girl demanding her rights of her mistress, which is, “Don’t tell me what I deserve!” So, there’s the tension here. Are we going to let others decide our worth and whether we get to be included? Or, do we stand up for what we believe we deserve?
Venus and Mars came together in a conjunction on February 16th, 2022, and since then, they made a square on September 16th, 2022 and an opposition on November 30th, 2022. This is the final square in this sequence, very much like the Sun square to Uranus on February 3rd. So, this is the end of a process rather than just one aspect. And it began about this time last year. Along the way, we have been evaluating – what do we love? What do we value? And, how do we insist on being valued by the world? And since they came together in that conjunction, Mars had that long, difficult retrograde period between October 30th, of 2022 and just recently January 12th, there was a lot of pent-up frustration in that particular retrograde. And I think it is showing itself in this Sabian symbol of the Girl demanding her rights of her mistress. “I’ve been taking your orders long enough and now I insist on getting what’s mine.”
Leo Full Moon (Feb. 5, 2023, 10:28 am PST)
And now for the Moon Report for the week of January 30th. It features a Full Moon in Leo on February 5 at 10:28 AM Pacific Time at 15°40’ Leo, with the Sun at 15°40’ Aquarius. The Sabian symbol for this Full Moon degree is 16 Leo, Sunshine just after a storm. What a lovely vision for anything involving Leo. The symbol for the Sun is 16 Aquarius, A big-business man at his desk. So, those are two very opposite images, as we might expect at a Full Moon.
The nature of a Full Moon is that what we set in motion at the New Moon and then took action on at the First Quarter Moon is now revealed. We start to get a really good picture of what it is that we set into motion and how well we have tended that and cultivated it.
At the Aquarius New Moon on January 21st, we conceived a vision for the future. Aquarius is a planet of long-range planning, it has a dream, it sees not just what’s happening now, but what’s possible much further down the road, and in fact, what we can create that might even live on after us. Now, that’s a very ambitious vision. It’s not all going to happen in 28 days or even over the Lunar Phase Family that we talk about, that takes about two and a quarter years to make all of its critical points, but we can at least begin to get a clearer picture now.
The New Moon is a very dark phase. We have some dim idea maybe of what it is that we’re hopeful for, that we want to accomplish, that we intend to do something about, and then, we just sort of move forward in faith, and at the First Quarter Moon take some kind of action. But we’re still not exactly sure what it is that we are birthing from the New Moon. It’s not until we get to the Full Moon that we have some perspective, that matters are illuminated, that we can say, “Oh, that is actually what I was putting into place.”
Interestingly, that New Moon, that Aquarius New Moon, was on the Sabian symbol, An unexpected thunderstorm, and now we have the Full Moon on the Sabian symbol Sunshine just after a storm. So, even though this New Moon cycle might have had a bit of a turbulent beginning – that New Moon was very close to Pluto – now, the skies are brightening a bit, showing to us not just the potential and the possibility of something that we might want to do much further out in the future, but the joyfulness of beginning to actually create in the present what we hope to see in that far-off future.
The Sun in Aquarius and Moon in Leo at this Full Moon are both square Uranus. So, we have a T-square configuration with them. The First Quarter Moon in Taurus, which I talked about on my last episode, was in a very close conjunction with Uranus. So, we have this Uranian feeling following on into this Full Moon. As I talked about earlier in this episode when I was talking about the Sun making it square to Uranus, that flavors this Full Moon Chart very strongly. How are we holding ourselves back? What do we need to liberate ourselves? The Sabian symbol for the Sun, that “big-business man at his desk” makes me think of the Sun in the chart approaching its conjunction with Saturn, the business planet. That’ll happen exactly on February 16, so, we’ll talk about that more when the time comes, but it is something that’s sitting there in this chart and just waiting to become exact. So, there is the tension between the Saturn side of things and the Uranus side of things.
The Sun is making this close square to Uranus. It says, liberate yourself, do things differently. But, at the same time, the Sun is approaching the conjunction with Saturn that says, “No, you need to have a stronger sense of who you are. You need to be pushing in a really determined direction to achieve your goals and the things you want to do.” So, there’s a lot of tension really at this Full Moon, a certain amount of drama.
This is the Full Moon in a Lunar Phase Family or Lunar Gestation Cycle that began with a New Moon on August 8th, 2021 at 16°14’ Leo. In that New Moon Chart, the Sun and Moon were opposed Saturn and square Uranus. So, this definitely fits into that pattern and takes this Lunar Gestation Cycle a little bit further in its development. lt’s very much been a story from the start about how free you can be to express who you really are. And we have the beautiful Sabian symbol with this Full Moon, Sunshine just after a storm – it’s time to get out there and begin showing our joyful, creative selves. The Sun’s interaction with Uranus seems to want to help us do that.
But then, what do we make of the Saturn influence? It’s the reminder of what we’ve been examining ever since that long square between Saturn and Uranus in 2021, which kind of continued into last year, where we’re reminded it’s not one or the other, we have to do both. We have to have healthy boundaries and lay the foundation for future success, all of those things that Saturn wants from us. But we also have to honor the Uranian side, which opens us up out of our existing patterns and helps us become the person we need to be to move towards the future that we want to experience.
Void-of-Course Periods
Let’s look at the Void-of-Course Moon periods for this week. On February 1, the Moon in Gemini makes trine aspect to Saturn at 3:58 AM Pacific Time. It’s void-of-course for a little over 8 hours before it enters Cancer at 12:11 PM.
Recently, I was sitting on my neighbor’s front porch, and she has this beautiful front yard full of sages. It attracts all kinds of bees and especially hummingbirds. I was sitting there and became transfixed by watching this little hummingbird, because he actually had stopped flying for a few minutes. I remember seeing on some documentary that hummingbirds actually cannot stop flying for very long. And so, it was fascinating to me to see it sitting there so that I could really get a good look at it. That’s a little bit of the picture that comes to mind for me as I think about the Moon in Gemini, which is so restless, always in motion. And it comes together with Saturn, which is a very grounding influence, and for a moment, it sits still.
Now, it won’t stay still for long because that’s not its nature. But, what’s lovely about the Moon in Gemini is, these are days out of each month that the whole world is kind of talking to us, and we don’t necessarily filter out the things that are important from the things that aren’t, because the job of Moon in Gemini is to just collect everything. But as it sits for a few minutes in that trine with Saturn and actually for a very long Void-of-Course Moon period, there is the moment where the hummingbird is stationary. And perhaps we can sit with some of the things that we’ve been observing and perceiving, listening to, noticing, over the last couple of days, and maybe pick through them and decide – what is it that we can use to make something important and permanent that will last?
On February 3, the Moon in Cancer makes an opposition to Pluto at 10:19 PM Pacific Time. It’s void-of-course for just about two and a half hours before it enters Leo on February 4 at 12:48 AM Pacific Time. The Moon is very strong in the sign of Cancer, but it’s extraordinarily sensitive as well. And when it comes together in any kind of aspect to Pluto, we are very sensitive to criticism that’s coming from outside us. When it happens, the Moon in Cancer retreats into its shell.
Here in the United States, this is pretty much happening through the night. Prepare by trying not to go to bed angry or holding on to any hurts or aggravations with those close to us in our home, especially. If you’re a person who likes to do some journaling, maybe just before you go to bed, take out your journal, write what you’re feeling, and especially, write about what you became aware of today, and in particular in terms of your dealings with others. What are the things that they might have been directing at you that were not yours to take on? Those are their issues. We have to be careful always with an opposition aspect. We can tend to project on others the things that we actually are working through on our own, but the opposite can also be true. So, at the opposition, we have to be humble and we have to be willing to look at our culpability in problematic relationship patterns, but at the same time, it’s not okay for other people to dump their stuff on us, and that is what we are working through at this particular Void-of-Course time.
Listener Question: Sun Sign vs. Rising Sign
In this week’s Listener Question, Listener April – this is lovely, I feel like I’m talking to myself! – asked me on Facebook, “My eternal astrological question it seems, is, what do you see as the relationship between the Sun sign and the Rising sign?”
April: Well, April, they are very different. The Sun symbolizes the essence of who you are and what you are becoming. It is the core of you. That’s a very sacred point in the chart, and in many ways it’s aspirational. It talks about the traits and characteristics that we are trying to master and learn in our time on earth. But, it’s not a part of us that we necessarily share with everyone in the world at all times. The example I always find myself using is, if I go up to the supermarket, I’m buying a few things and I’m having an interaction with the checkout clerk. Now, does this checkout clerk need to know all about my hopes and dreams and my struggles to become more fully authentic about who I am, all of my solar stuff? Well, no, she doesn’t! And that’s where the Rising Sign comes in.
So, for those who may not be clear on what the rising sign is, it refers to the sign that was rising in the East at the time of your birth. It’s not exactly the same thing as the Ascendant. The Ascendant is a more specific point in that sign. Each sign has thirty degrees, and the Ascendant tells us which degree of the sign was rising at the time of your birth. It’s a very sensitive point in the chart. It’s as though the rising sign is, say, Los Angeles California, and the Ascendant says the exact address and neighborhood.
In any event, the rising sign tells us how you interact with the world. So, when you find yourself in any new situation, what are the skills and the characteristics that you rely on to navigate that particular situation? Your rising sign will tell us a lot more about how you behave with that checkout clerk at the supermarket probably than the Sun will.
If you’ve got Sagittarius rising, as I do, I’m very chatty with the checkout clerk and trying to be friendly and smile and just make some light chitchat with them. But say you have something like Capricorn rising, which is a little more serious and reserved. You might tend to be pretty business-like in those settings.
So, you can see that the Sun and the rising sign are doing really different things in our charts. And what can become interesting is how they relate to each other. If you have a rising sign that is radically different in tone and personality than your Sun sign, what it probably means is, somebody really has to get to know you for a while and really gain your trust and see you in a variety of situations to begin to grasp who you are in your solar self. If however, the Sun in your chart is making a close aspect to that ascending degree in your chart, then they actually get a pretty strong sense of who they’re dealing with. That would mean that you’re probably a person that kind of has a strong personality and a lot of charisma in your everyday life. Some people are just that way. A lot of us like to fade into the background in certain situations. It’s a lot easier than really putting yourself out there and dealing with the consequences of that. But there are some people whose strength of personality and personal magnetism come through really strongly, and those are often people with the Sun in a close aspect with the Ascendant.
I think of the rising sign as describing traits that are more or less conscious. It’s kind of our little bag of tricks that we learn to rely on from an early age, primarily because these were traits and qualities that kept us safe. The rising sign and the Ascendant are associated with the 1st House of the chart, and that’s a house that’s very much concerned with our safety. And also, these were traits that gained us acceptance. The rising sign is not false, it’s not just a mask that we wear, it really does come from a deep place of learning and instinct that’s really fascinating.
I hope that that helps? I found it a really interesting question, April, and it’s one that I like to think about, because the two are very distinct, but we get a little confused. Because, especially, if you read say, horoscope columns, they will say, “Read for your Rising Sign or for the Sun.” And it’s almost as though they should be interchangeable, but they’re really not. They’re really doing two very different things in your chart.
If you have a question that you’d like me to answer on a future episode of the podcast, leave a message of one minute or less at speakpipe.com/bigskyastrologypodcast, or you can email me at April(at)bigskyastrology(dot)com and be sure to put “Podcast Question” in the subject line.
Donor Thanks
That is everything I have on my show sheet, so I’m going to wrap this one up. Thank you for listening to The Big Sky Astrology Podcast. If you like what you’re hearing, please be sure to follow or subscribe to the podcast in your app of choice. Or, you can leave a rating or a review, maybe you would like to help spread the word about the show by telling an astrology loving friend. You can read full show notes and transcripts and leave your comments about each episode at bigskyastropod.com.
I want to thank everyone who’s shown support for the podcast over the past year. On each episode, I’m thanking some donors by name. This week, I’m giving a Big Sky Astrology podcast shout out to Jack Daft and Ann Flynt!
April: Jack and Ann, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and for supporting the show with your donations. If you’d like to support the show, please go to bigskyastropod.com, and if you donate $10 or more, I’ll send you a link to access my bonus episode for “Donors Only” that was released just after the Capricorn Solstice. And you’ll also get the upcoming bonus episodes for the Aries Equinox and the Cancer Solstice.
That is it for this episode. Please, join me again bright and early next Monday. And until then, keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars!
© 2023 by April Elliott Kent
