The full Moon on Wednesday May 10th in 21 Scorpio is carrying a potentially deep and stirring emotional energy, and a focus on the individual as the nexus both within significant change and its apparent opposite, stabilisation. It sees the energy of the Sun in Taurus highlighting areas of life in which we excercise conformity, and this is reflected in balance by the Moon’s emphasis on the roots of individuality and inner freedom. There is a choice being called up between these two seeming polarities; but, the ‘personal’ and the collective, the hereditary and the ‘socio-cultural’ were ever entangled thus.

Where this inner/outer dynamic is harmonious we may feel the magnetism of life pulling us towards those things, and people, in which we find much beauty, correspondence and deep resonances. Mismatches between these two foci is where the tension of this full Moon is expressed most visibly, and felt most implicitly – either way, the affecting energy will increase in us a strong desire to either bed down into our culturally endorsed beliefs or to be rid, once and for all, of all that pollutes our personal lives which hinders us from expressing our true selves.

For a person who might be willing to go along with the mores and dictates of the society they live in, their personal freedoms will be expressed in relation to, if not directly in, the very terms of those ‘rules for living’; but, this also applies whether ‘for’ or ‘against’ these dictates, and where we have a strong sense of conflict present between our own inner needs and those predominantly manifested by society, conversely we are likely to feel an upsurge in rebellious emotions, an impulse to break free and establish a more unique if not unorthodox identity.

Both impulses express the same strong self clarifying desire – to associate with what is most meaningful to us. In sextile with Pluto rx in Capricorn, there is going to be a very real sense from this Moon that the time to give shape and form to these deeper emotional values is upon us, is now, that they can no longer be denied. Its a time for establishing identity either by staying within predefined parameters and abiding by their perceived truths or through using those parameters to differentiate and establish one’s own reality as the true benchmark and foundation for the future.

This harkens back to the strong impulse to ‘stand in our own truth’ of the March full Moon, and its development in ‘balance and right relationship’ in the April full Moon. The eclipses of March have set the tone and theme for this period and its culmination in August through September.

The Scorpio Moon’s impulse carries this theme and its emergent qualities forward, is an adjustment to the future, also reflected in the sign change of the Moon’s nodes, the north node now having entered tropical Leo for the next year.

This shift into a future oriented, self defining and essentially creative energy field will lend a bouyant feeling to the unfolding time, even where strong emotions are felt within. But, this is an ancient dynamic that is now phasing out of a prolonged period of antagonism, and the inherent division has morphed. It is now becoming more clearly defined between those who adhere to an old dream of the past, and those who have discovered a new dream germinating within themselves, the latter being the theme of the Venus retrograde that is now nearing its completion – this retrograde has slipped subtley under the radar, but, it also frames these lunar/solar events.

The old order is seperating away, even while it tries to re-establish itself, while deepening its inherent dichotomy. A new language is emerging from within the creative field of collective consciousness, its old counterpart now becoming redundant, its terms, like the old struggle between ‘conservative versus radical’, becoming irrelevant.

But, the truly radical individual here is courting a new and unknown social reality, is willing to draw more deeply from within themselves and their own personal truths than those endorsed by society. This is a society that is seen to have outlived its relevance and become both unrepresentative and false, and disfunctional to the extent that it no longer represents givens and universal truths. The inevitable result of this, an irrevocable divide, is leading to a breakaway movement, if not reality. Uranus and Mercury aid and abet this shift of perception and awareness. It is both ancient and new, deeply familiar and profoundly awakening, just as it is both poetically charged and reality expanding.

If the Sun’s trine with Pluto underlines this overall dynamic, whatever we do as a result of engaging with it, it must not only feel real, but be ‘real’  – many have had enough of the chicanery and subversion employed to prop up the illusion of the old dream, and Jupiter’s closing inconjunct with Neptune is pushing the issue here, incubating the new dream within collective consciousness.

On the personal level, given the collective nature of this Moon’s energetics and its widely affective focus, the sensitive degrees associated with it are in fairly wide orb, within the 15-25 degree arc of the fixed signs, and 0 to 10 degrees of the Cardinal signs.

The days either side of exact full Moon are also especially sensitised, so keep an eye out for indicators of how emotional undercurrents and drives might emerge, as reflected through your own charts. But, its that Pluto input that gives the cardinal energies of initiation and assertion the edge, so, the question is ‘where, and into what should we put our best energies?’

A positive use of this Moon’s energy might be to clear deeper blockages between ourselves and our ancestors, as these are in some way reflections of the same intrinisc dynamics which we are seeing at work in ‘surface life’ now. Their struggles have been carried forward and, in a very real sense, have been used against us while we are still living them out. Its a karmic loop which is ready and primed to be broken.

There is a fundamental power struggle at the core of this, a matter of survival and will, between those who have engineered the ongoing struggle, its ‘maintainers’, who might coincide with the ‘status quo’, and those who are clear within themselves that this status quo is stifling life and must change .

As the established power structures which seek to impose their power and will over our own personal determinism are highlighted, many of the political and social changes that are now taking place, which have increasingly been coming into the spotlight over the last decade in particular, are going to be in this Moon’s beams.

Social uprising is always preceded by ‘disquiet’ or disemblance beneath the surface, but, there comes a point where its energy must break through – while we won’t necessarily be seeing a new ‘Arab Spring’, the same ‘unrest’ has now become much more widespread and is bubbling away beneath the surface. We now have an opportunity however to use this impulse creatively.

To commit to this dynamic is to open more fully the channels of creative energy that flow from our roots, and this can bring real power to our personal lives if we connect with it positively. This is the energy we need to make changes in the world that correspond to our inner lives more fully, the same positivity and impetus necessary to freeing ourselves from the binding nature of the past and realising its inherent gifts.

Much genetic programming has become rooted here, a habituation of survival instincts at a very deep level. Radical by nature, how do we change this survival instinct from a negative into a positive? Much of the epigenetic memory that belongs to these instincts is collective, belongs in levels of consciousness that require a contiguous quality of awareness to be active, implicitly imbued with a desire to manifest changes perceived through the eyes of necessity.

The answer to this is in Venus retrograde, which has penetrated the dreamtime and fertilised the field, the celestial matrix, with a new and ancient dream-seed. Even though she is unaspected at full Moon, the celestial field conspires to support Venus as she moves toward delivering her story and arrives at back at 13 Aries, the degree in which her inner journey began early in March.

Mars has entered mutual reception with Mercury, each in the other’s home sign, and is squaring off to Neptune, the ruler of Pisces, in whose realms Venus has been travelling. The message she carries is gathering energy and awareness. Saturn’s long slow conjunction with the Galactic Center is a part of the same story behind this message – but, Venus story will be where we pick up this thread next time, and carry the energy of this full Moon forward.

As a hint of what is to come, here is a quote that perfectly sums up the theme of this full Moon and its relationship with Venus retrograde, in its most positive light :