Editor's note: This essay aired on IPR as scheduled, Jan. 22, 2024, but the web post did not make it online on schedule. It's here now to complete the catalog. We apologize for the oversight.
There are three things that draw my attention to this week’s Full Moon, which occurs on Thursday, January 25 around noon.
The first thing is the Full Moon itself, the first the year. It occurs among the stars of Cancer.
The second thing is the date, January 25, which, in the Christian calendar, is observed as the Feast of Paul’s Conversion at the Gates of Damascus, a story told in the New Testament.
The third thing is the Nodes of the Moon, the two points in space that are defined as the place where the plane of the Moon’s orbit intersects the plane of the Earth’s orbit. The Nodes are like doorways through the Moon’s sphere ~ allowing for cosmic forces to stream in and earthly forces to stream out.
The Moon is like a mighty cosmic observatory, gathering all available celestial light and focusing it earthward. This kind of focused intensity at Full Moon gives it the quality of breaking up things that are stuck. That’s the first step.
The story of Paul’s conversion describes a dramatic turn that can happen within an individual, through an experience that can be described like the focused intensity of “seeing the light.”
Then there’s the Moon’s Nodes, which on Thursday are in the same degree of zodiac where the Total Solar Eclipse will happen in April, as though in anticipation. The path of this eclipse moves up through the center of the U.S. and arcs northeastward.
These three elements combined suggest to me that there is upon us the potential for a dramatic shift in perspective that includes releasing old, potentially fixed ideas that no longer serve.
It is easier to say these things than to live them, and so there is starshine, and poetry, and as Paul wrote, There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.
