Henry Seltzer – The First Quarter Moon of the late evening of Thursday, September 5th, early morning the 6th for Europe and point further east, is quite a fascinating one. This is because in the midst of the usual somewhat stressful Sun-Moon square alignment, we find as well that the Moon in Sagittarius is conjunct optimistic and future-oriented Jupiter, highlighting Jupiter’s own square with Neptune, while at the same time, the Sun and Mercury precisely trine Saturn, archetype of limitation and contraction.

This push-pull between positive and negative, optimism and pessimism, up and down, makes for an even more difficult First Quarter Moon than normal. On the one hand we are feeling the urge to make light of our situation, perhaps (with Neptune involved) even to seek to escape reality on at least a temporary basis by means of travel, movies, or drugs, while on the other we have that constant prompt for staying with the practical, and the merely real. This could take the form of the small but effective critical voice in your head, or some authority figure coming down on you and keeping you in line.

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Henry Seltzer – Friday’s First Quarter Moon in Sagittarius makes for quite a vigorous time, because the Moon is conjunct feisty Mars as the Sun squares him, bringing out an urge for action that is not easily fulfilled. There is a sense of frustration implicit in the square aspect between Sun and Moon, and that between Saturn and Neptune, the important alignment featured in the recent extremely powerful New Moon eclipse from the previous week, which landed in close opposition to Neptune.

With the veil between the physical and the unseen worlds becoming very thin indeed, we may feel for this entire month as though living in something of a dream. You might want to recognize, however, that there are important consequences for your waking life as well, because throughout this monthly cycle you are getting to know yourself better in undercover layers of your psyche.

Coming into closer contact with the dark and largely unconscious sides of ourselves is vitally important in order that we grow in wisdom, self-understanding, and self-control. With all the frustration of this configuration comes also the temptation for dysfunctional patterns of interpersonal interaction to overwhelm the more mindful and inherently peaceful side of your nature, so that there is a very real potential for masked anger and walled-off inner wounding to emerge. If untoward events do occur, you are well advised to treat such reactivity within you with the respect that it deserves, taking a good, long and hard look at what you are up to in the hidden realms within, of which we are all habitually unaware.

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