The Moon in her Fall: The Midwives are Marching

The Moon is in her fall today in Scorpio as hundreds of thousands of women come together all over to say that misogyny and racism and homophobia and xenophobia are not acceptable.

Today I think of my daughter and my wife, my grandmother, my mother and my sister, my cousins, my mother-in-law and all of my adopted Aunts and cousins from my wife’s side of the family. My life has been woven together and supported and loved so tremendously because of these beautiful, strong, and intelligent women. Nobody should treat women unfairly, and nobody should use power to take advantage of or harm another human being, period.

So today, a meditation on the Moon in her fall…

Antiochus of Athens, an early Hellenistic astrologer, wrote, “And again, why is it said that at the place where the Moon is exalted, there nothing is depressed; and where the Moon is depressed, there nothing is exalted? We say that it is because the Moon is the fortune of all. And he whom fortune exalts, no one may depress; while he whom fortune depresses, no one is able to exalt.”
First we should ask ourselves why early astrologers saw the Moon as “the fortune of all?” The answer is complex. The Moon was seen as the planet closest to the realm of earth (called the sub-lunar realm), and as such she was a kind of ambassador for earthly affairs. Earthly affairs themselves are governed by the principle of impermanence and change. We live in a world of coming to be and passing away. Similarly, many early astrologers, influenced to some extent by Platonic thinking, believed the material world of coming to be and passing away reflected (like the reflective light of the Moon) that which was essential, eternal, unchanging, and divine.

The Moon is thus a powerful symbol for our everyday lives here on earth. A world where the high are made low and the low are made high, repeating and repeating. The Moon is the swiftest planet, the one whose face is constantly changing, and the one whose latitude, above and below the ecliptic, also changes most rapidly. The Moon’s reflective light recalls something original, something unspeakable, something here and there and yet fleeting, just as quickly disappearing as it is appearing.

The Moon reflects gestation as her faces change each month and she constantly gathers the light of the other stars and disseminates them. She is the storyteller, the web-weaver, and the bio-matrix of life.

She is the fact that our souls, and the soul of the world, contains something deep and vital while also constantly disappearing or hiding behind the everyday fluctuations. She nurtures the soul by remembering its essence constantly…reflecting back and looking forward simultaneously through her many applications and separations to the other stars. She was related to the concept of “pronoia,” by the early Greek astrologers…the meaningful conspiring and ordering of events…something like providence.

As fortune the Moon also represents the notion that nothing is happening “to us” but rather everything that happens is reflective of what we already are, what already is. In this sense, she is the mother’s embrace, from womb to tomb.

When the Moon is in her fall, there no other planet is exalted. We say this because she is the fortune of everything, and what is fallen cannot be changed but only embraced, held, and accepted. For she knows that this too is the child worth holding. This too is the life worth living. This too is sanctified. This too is someone’s child in need. This isn’t the fiery yes of a hallelujah preacher, heroically trudging up the hill to Calvary and convincing the congregants it will be worth it to die fighting, but rather the rainbow-colored labor pains of the goddess, the nights of sleeplessness she endures as the little one kicks and turns her inside out. Here in the Mars-black of Scorpio, this goddess is more of an anti-hero. She isn’t suffering for a cause, she’s suffering for the weakness of life, which has no cause or aim beyond itself. Necessity creating a forced bravery. Life demanding pain like the faltering fuse or the flint strike that precedes and falters, falters before the light…always primal and always existing before and after whatever we think life is to be lived FOR. Here she waits and here she knows, this too shall pass. Here she waits and here she knows, this faltering fuse cannot be left alone.

But make no mistake, this too shall pass is not passivity. Because when the midwives arrive by the hundreds of thousands, the labor is at hand. And though nothing may raise up that which fortune has cast down, she knows there will be a time where that which has been cast down will be once more lifted up.
​
Prayer: May the goddess be with us. May we remember and nurture the life of the soul, in the good times and the bad.