Today’s Aquarius Full Moon falls just one degree from the point in the sky occupied by the great star Altair. In the great astrological tradition of India, Altair represents the footprints of Vishnu, preserver and protector of the Universe.

Today the energy shifts, in a bod and bracing way.. Our deep dive into the primal waters of origins and creation is coming to an end.  Both Mercury and Saturn are now direct.  Their vision quests completed, they head for the future whose call within us is more unmistakeable and compelling than ever.

Before us, an energizing and panoramic vista is coming into focus through the mist. The Sun moves into Leo, the part of the sky it rules. As it does, the divine spark within us all begins to burn brighter.

Venus in Virgo: The Cosmic Feminine Leads the Way

Meanwhile, Venus has just entered Virgo, one of the goddess’ ancient signs and full of mysteries we are just beginning to remember.  In that first, ancient degree, she bathes in the light of the great star Regulus, one of the brightest in the sky.  The alpha star of Leo for thousands for years, Regulus has now moved into the very first degree of Virgo — energetically heralding the long-foretold return of the Cosmic Feminine to human consciousness.

The Cosmic Feminine has guided our way throughout the transformative portal that opened within us, and among us, in June 2012. At their  core, the Virgo mysteries are deeply feminine ones of yoking the celestial and the mundane. In Virgo, Venus embodies for us the rituals and practices through which we integrate the sacred and the worldly in our lives.

For the next two months, this will be our focus while all four outer planets are vision questing.  By the time all four are direct again, we’ll be on the threshold of the Winter Solstice.

For on Saturday, as Mercury completed his vision quest, Uranus began his. Along with Chiron, Neptune, and Pluto, the Awakener is in the interior, questing  for the things we’ll need in the fall and beyond. While they quest, we have important work to do.

Full Moon in Aquarius: Expanding Our Vision, Empowering Our Cosmic Identity

While Venus helps us ground the experience of the early part of the summer, Luna excites us with new vision.  At 2:13 p.m. EDT in the U.S., she’ll be exactly across the sky from Sol.  Radiating the expansive vibrations of Aquarius, she’s awakening us to our unique and irreplaceable destinies.  This is what Joni Mitchell sang about decades ago:  “We are star stuff. We are golden. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden” — the garden of our heart’s deepest desires.

This Full Moon unfolds in the first, potent degree of Aquarius. It’s the part of the sky ruled by Uranus, the Cosmic Awakener who liberates us from all that would imprison us – old patterns, outworn dependencies, fears, and all the ways we’ve agreed to play it safe and  live small to “fit in.”

Exhilarating vision and lofty vistas have not been part of our water journey through Cancer over the last month. Instead, we merged. We remembered.  We re-experienced the deepest levels of our being, and the patterns that were formed in the first years of our lives. 

Some of those patterns have become suffocating.  Today we not only hear, but can act on, the call of liberation within us.  And as we do, we take a crucial, decisive step towards next week’s extraordinary Star of David. Otherwise known as a grand sextile, this interlocking chain of creative sextiles will ground all our freed-up energy in the fertile possibilities present moment.

The Message of Aquarius: Your Future is Calling

If there’s one word that encapsulates the power of Aquarius, it’s “future.”  The late writer and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna – who called himself a “psychonaut” — voiced the power of the Aquarian vibration when he said, “We have been too long under the spell of the idea that only the past creates the present.” McKenna went on to observe that “ the present is actually largely created by the appetite for the future.”

When the moon is in Aquarius, we see that future in our dreams.  We hear it in our emotions. We feel it in the cells of our bodies. When Luna is full in Aquarius, she calls the future out of hiding and into the present moment, where it has always been. 

Altair: The Star Power Behind the Aquarian Full Moon

Today’s Full Moon is just a degree away from Altair, the  12^th brightest star in the sky.  Eleven times brighter than our Sun, Altair is an unusual variable star with nine different rates of brightness, waxing and waning.

In Western astrology, Altair (which means eagle in the Arabic Al Tair), is the alpha star of the constellation Aquila, the eagle. To the astrologers of anient India, however, Altair and the stars on either side of it were the footprints of Vishnu, the preserver of the Universe and the embodiment of goodness and mercy.

The great 17^th-century English astrologer William Lilly associated Altair with great fortune. Action and strength are tis gifts, contemporary Australian astrologer and fixed star expert Bernadette Brady tells us..

Today the Sun enters the part of the sky that it calls home — the constellation Leo the Lion, depicted here in the ancient Egyptian temple of Dendera.

Here is where we touch the complementary polarity of the Water Bearer, Aquarius, and the Lion, Leo.  If Leo carries the fire of our creative splendor, Aquarius frees us to embody it and to champion it, in ourselves and others.  Together they tell us that the time to free the cosmic fire within us all has come.  The future has arrived.  The time is now.