The Moon

I decided to dive into the Moon head first. No safety net. No parachute. Not even a spaceship. Only in-copious amounts of caffeine for my fragile frame and tons of books, notes, and lectures. Wait a minute. That sounds suspiciously like I have a Gemini Moon. You see, Moon is all about feelings. If you had to choose one word to describe the Moon, it would be emotions. It is a challenging pursuit to explore the emotional realm through the lens of the intellect. Although ask anyone with an Air Moon, and they would tell you that intellectualizing emotions is the safest way to feel. Okay, they might not tell you. Some people live unconsciously, unaware of how they process their feelings. Now, we have found ourselves in the realm of Earth Moons. Most of these types don't see the importance in feeling unless, of course, they either have water in their charts or they have lived - in wisdom. I digress. 

I have been trying to understand something with my mind that can only be felt. Emotions and the terminologies we ascribe to them do not matter at the moment - we feel unbearable pain in our heart and knots in our stomach, and we want to cry. We call it sad. But in that moment of despair, when it feels like someone punched you in your stomach and tears are about to run down your cheeks, do you even care what you call that emotion? Do you care if your crying is described as slightly upset or miserable? No, you just need to let it out. 

Water doesn't care much for words. So it's always a challenge to research and write about the Moon. She is elusive, after all. My girlfriends and I get together during every major lunation: the full Moon and the new Moon. Every two weeks, I hear from the girls, "Is it the Full Moon already? I thought we just did that." Yep, the Moon changes as fast as Leonardo Di changes girlfriends. Actually, the Moon transitions a lot more often; let's give Leo a break. I believe it's because of her shifting nature that the Moon's definition is hazy. 

There are classical symbology that are inherently part of the Lunar Goddess, like the Earth's gravity is inherent to the Moon. Authors like Richard Tarnas and Robert Hand remind us that the Moon is the Matrix of Being. Ariel Guttman and Steven Forrest, along with Hand and Tarnas, all write in unison a well-known fact that the Moon represents the Mother. Although, astrologers disagree when relating the Moon to either the ego or the heart. While most astrologers refer to the Moon as our Soul, the definition of a Soul is vague. Steven Forrest reiterates in his books that the Moon refers to our heart and relationship with this precious centre. In his podcasts, classes, and articles, an OG astrology podcaster, Adam Sommer, proposes the idea of the Moon being as close to the ego as we can get. 

I don't think it matters whether we call the Moon our soul, ego, or heart. The meanings of all three are personal to one's culture, upbringing, and experiences. Besides, soul, ego, and heart overlap and cross over somewhere - in a different place for everyone. Perhaps they overlap with the incredible synchronicity between our feelings, our nature and our past. Our background, childhood, and past are the groundworks of what Hand, Tarnas, and Guttman referred to as "the matrix of being". Our experiences combined create the blueprint for our emotional and reactionary selves. Pierre Janet wrote about trauma (the emotional mark that is imprinted into us for years to come) back in 1889 in this way, “automatic actions and reactions, sensations and attitudes…replayed and reenacted in visceral sensations.” 

In a personal astrology chart, one could understand their "average mood throughout their lifetime" (quote, Steven Forrest) and why they feel that way by looking at the Moon. The "why" is the remedy to our emotional suffering. The Moon is like a celestial mood ring. Have you ever hung out with a hormonal teenager for a day? At 9 am, they are groggy; at 9:10 am, they are excited about brunch, and at 9:30, the world is a miserable place. I am oversimplifying to make a point, not all teenagers are the same but something about hormones and the Moon that goes hand in hand. Even though we might have grown out of our teenage hormones our emotions might still have the tendency to swing - how far is different for everyone. The Moon does the dance every day in the outer sky and in the inner realm; today, she is adventurous, and tomorrow she is gloomy and that has an impact on all of us. 

The formation of our Moon begins in utero. The first nine months, give or take, of the development of the foetus are crucial for establishing the baby's feeling nature and therefore perspective on life as an adult. In the womb the baby and Mother are one. The baby feels what the Mother feels; it senses her sadness, joy, curiosity, suspicion, fear, and anxiety. Whatever feelings permeates during pregnancy are the feelings the baby is drinking like milk from the tit. A number of studies have been done on the phenomenon that a stressful pregnancy affects the baby’s ability to cope with stress, to maintain a balanced nervous system, and regulate emotions.

One notable study was done at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2002; it stated that prenatal stress could influence the foetus by delaying cognitive development and impairing adaptation to stressful situations, aka anxiety. It's not to say that anxious mothers are monsters, but whether we like it or not, we pass on to our children the best and the worst of us. Another study published in a Swiss publication Karger, states findings that prenatal psychobiological stress can lead to a baby’s inability to regulate their emotions, delayed fetal maturation, and impaired brain performance. There are plenty more studies like the ones mentioned above, google scholar came back with 334,000 search results if you are curious. 

Dr. Gabor Mate reminds us of the crucial fact that the parents and the caregivers can unwittingly pass on trauma from generation to generation. Dr. Bruce Perry co - authored a book with Oprah Winfrey titled “What happened to you” that explores the concepts of childhood wounds but also generational trauma. This is in essence the connection of inner psychological wounds to the astrological Moon. The Moon doesn’t necessarily indicated trauma, but because of the world we live in often times the Moon can reveal to us tremendous hurt, strange automatic behaviours and reactions because of her associations with the childhood, the Mother, the past, and our ancestors. Pick up any history book to confirm that none of us are free from generational trauma that permeates the soil we walk upon. Earth’s chronology is filled with war, famine, plague, abuse, slavery, betrayal, deceit, and a whole list of misfortunes plenty to traumatise several generations to come. I hope together we can break the cycles of hurt. 

There is a Moon quality to the process of weaving the emotional body, our connection with our mother, and how we react to certain situations and environments. Steven Forrest calls, “our mood average over our lifetime” - the inescapable role of the Moon that bewilders its natives once they see that what they feel has been written in the stars. After all, she is so personal.

The most cliche dress the Moon wears is that she represents the Mother; both the Great Goddess - the eternal void; the place from which all things are born and the Earthly Mother; all human beings have come from a Mother, at least in 2022 before AI takes over. If you are a Mother, most commonly, you can see how you have influenced or can influence your child by looking at THEIR Moon. Our experiences with our Mother and the history of our upbringing have a colossal affect on your ability to regulate your emotions, your reactionary behaviour, and your average mood. If your Mother was loving, nurturing, and safe, you are probably less likely to visit a therapist's office or two in adulthood. But if your Mother was absent, neglectful or violent, then at the very least, you might be the perfect patient for a shrink and, at worst, a junkie with a needle in your arm. 

I don't mean to say junkie as a derogatory term. I suppose the message of this article is to strip away judgement from addiction, anxiety, depression and other afflictions of the mind. The message is to point out the apparent correlations between science and astrology. Astrology has been whispering for years about what science claims to be a revelation: how we care for infants, babies, and toddlers defines their reactionary and feeling nature, thus setting up the perspective through which these children as adults view the world. 

The Moon is the lens through which we process our environment. Unless we become aware that we have filters we see our life through, we will go on thinking that our opinion is fact and our viewpoint is shared with all logical people. Jung famously said, "Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes." The part of the quote that is usually not mentioned goes like this, "I realize that under the circumstances you have described, you feel the need to see clearly," Jung states. "But your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart." The Moon, like the eyes, is the window to our soul and a map to our hearts. The way we feel about the world is ultimately how we are going to see it. 

I do not mean to blame it all on the Mother, of course other factors of our upbringing can either tear us down or build us up. As children we are like sponges soaking up every major experience we have as fact. The way that our guardians treat us teaches us what we need to know about nurture. Our first years of life are crucial as that is when we learn how to connect with other people on an emotional level. All of those matter and all of those are features of the astrological Moon. A lot of us are lucky that they either have had a reasonably sane childhood that resulted in a healthy Moon or if they found a way to deal with a world of pain. But for those of us who are still lost there is hope in the gentle whispers of the gurus who found their way to still waters. 

I was listening to Gabor Mate do an interview recently. He retold a Buddha story about two strong men carrying the third towards an abyss. The two strong men were our habits, beliefs, mechanical reactions, inherited patterns, etc., and the third man was you. Buddha was telling this story as a warning to any Earthly attachments as they will inevitably bring us suffering. But we are no Buddha; most of us are very human and thus destined to suffer, even if only a little. Besides, detachment from what we already attached ourselves is painful whether it happens willingly or unwillingly. 

In many ways, this uncomfortable process of shedding what no longer serves you is the process of the Moon. In a tranquil silence, in meditation, we might recognise our afflictions, our automatic patterns of behaviour, and our ability or the lack thereof to emote. That recognition is the first step to recovery from unhealthy attachments. Then, we practice new habits and form a healthier relationship with our emotions. 

Carl Jung experimented with the idea that our inner world reflects our outer world. Jung would recommend his patients to record their dreams to bring them to their next session for analysis. The idea is that the dreams are not literal representations of our life, rather dreams are metaphorical imprints of our unconscious feelings, thoughts, motivations, actions, and directions of our life. If you take dreams seriously, they will reward you with warding you off deterioration and guiding you towards true joy - wholeness. The process of watching your dreams every night, especially as prescribed by Jung is essentially the alchemy of the Moon that causes evolution in your soul. That is one of the keys to getting to know the Moon on a personal level and allowing her to take you on an emotional rollercoaster in the most literal sense of those words. 

There are of course other gurus, healers, and wizards that have written about the feeling states and how to transcend them. After all, people have always longed for the sense of wholeness - whether it was through therapy, a lover’s embrace, or religion. Whoever would have imagined that we need to feel suffering to get to that sweet spot of waking up happy most days. As it turns out, or at least as it is repeated by important people who write books like Orpah and Dr. Perry, Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Carloline Myss, Esther Perel, Pierre Janet, Peter Levine, Freud and of course, Carl Jung, that the first steps to healing is in recognition of the pain and that part is the most painful. This is when we look at the dark side of our Moon without fear. 

You don't even need to know your Moon placement in astrology to begin doing inner work. The authors I mentioned in the paragraph above is a great start to doing Moon work. Saying that, learning about your Moon in an astrological context is an incredibly transformative option that is always available to you. The Moon’s zodiac sign and house position tell a story about your relationship with your mother, your childhood, what automatic behaviours and reactions you have adopted, and how to experience joy in this lifetime. Click here to learn more about the Moon in Zodiac Signs and in Houses.