The Full Moon in the 8th House is a celebration of the joy hidden in the depths.

Once you start watching closely as the stars constantly weave and re-weave their energies into a rich and sparkling net of potential, every day becomes a revelation.  The Universe shows up at your door each morning ready to make magic with our lives. 

Sometimes it’s the magic of transformation. Something leaves your life or enters it.  Sometimes it’s the magic of grace, bringing forgiveness, or a windfall.  Watching the stars, you can see who’s coming and you have a pretty good idea of what they’re bringing. What you can’t ever be sure about is the package.  The Universe is alive, and like everything else alive, a huge part of it is a mystery.

Yesterday’s Full Moon in Leo was a reminder of that. In full Leo fashion, it came with dramatic flair and an element of surprise. I’d been waiting for its gifts.  They were all the more surprising because they were my deepest truth, coming to embrace me in a way wasn’t expecting.  

Leo is the address of the portal to my 7^th House, where we meet the Other.  The Full Moon, though, didn’t fall in my 7^th House.  It was close to the Descendant, but definitely on the 6^th House side.  That’s the realm of Sacred Process, the place we attune ourselves to the sacred mysteries in the smallest acts of our lives.  It’s where we prepare to let go of ourselves and meet the Other.  As so often in my life, I was ready (or so I thought) to skip the preparation and go straight for the encounter.

For days I’d felt blocked.  The energy wouldn’t flow.  No matter what I did or didn’t do, I felt as if I was missing the mark.  It was frustrating. I just wanted a quick fix.

So I’d had a somewhat greedy eye on this Leo Full Moon.  I knew it would be full of radiant warmth and that it would create opportunity with my 8^th House Libra Sun. I had high hopes it would take me out of myself, as the 7th House does, on a shortcut out of my malaise.  I’m an astrologer.  I should have known it was 6^th House medicine I needed, but  I had my eye on the next step.

I carried my load of expectation with me all day.  A lovely day it was, too—warm and sunny after a stretch of biting gray chill. The morning brought a reading with a delightful client, the afternoon, adventure of art and dinner with cherished friends I’ve known for decades. A marvelous day.  Except for one thing. I was wanting something.  I was expecting something.–a quick fix for my blocked energy.  I wasn’t open to cosmic marvels.  I had a shopping list.

Any planet traveling through the 8th House invites us to go deep.

Just a couple of hours before the Moon was full, I arrived home, still wanting my fix. That’s when the message arrived, suddenly and sharply.  It came at me from left field.  Go deeper.  The words shot right through me in a moment of startling clarity.  Of course.

In my inner sky, the Sun is in the hidden depths of the 8^th House.  Time after time,  I arrive there against my will, just as Persephone did long ago. That was back in the Deep Time, the time when things “never happened and always are,” as the 4^th century Roman mystic Sallustia put it.

The cosmic depths aren’t just within us. They’re all around us.

Over half the solar system was above the horizon when I was born.  My attention naturally focuses above the surface, on the big and manifested world that we can see and hear and touch.  Yet four planets in the 8^th House of my inner sky pull me regularly into the depths, frequently against my will.

From Persephone’s journey until our own, the most powerful trips to the 8^th House are the ones where we’re carried away.  That deepest dimensions of the Mystery are the ones we don’t—and maybe can’t–get to on our own volition.  Sometimes we’re taken through loss or trauma. Sometimes–when we’re lucky–we’re taken because we don’t get just what we want, just the way we think we want it.

Here’s what I’ve learned, though.  Our lives works better when they’re tuned to the resonant mysteries of the depths.  Sometimes all we have to do see or say the  words go deep and we’re halfway there.

Wherever the Sun—or any of the planets—is located in your inner sky, the words go deep holds the key to the richest part of the Mystery. Every house has its depths beneath the surface and its heights above it.  Going deep is how we see that they are actually two dimensions of the same reality.

When you go deep, you actually bring more and more of yourself to each moment.  It keeps less and less of our connection to source—that current always flowing from the depths—leak away. The very act of going deep generates heat and energy, light and power.  Whatever state of being numb or dead or frozen you might find yourself in, to go deep can bring you back to life. Try it and see.  Go ahead.  Go deep.