This week the Moon grows through the evening sky toward Full Phase, passing three bright planets on the way and ending up aligned with the galactic center on Summer Solstice.
This week’s journey of the Moon is a bit like the ancient story of the Olympian gods gathering their forces to overtake the Titans, the first generation of gods in the ancient world.
The story stars Saturn, who was the Titan son of Uranus (the sky) and Gaia (the Earth), to whom it was prophesied that his children, the Olympians, would overtake him, led by the youngest, Jupiter. This dramatic passing of the old gods was the way the Greeks described the mighty, evolutionary processes of becoming.
Looking into the sky this week, you’ll see the Moon high in southwest, just east of Jupiter the Olympian in the region of the lion, the symbol of royalty and kings. On Tuesday the Moon sweeps past Spica, gathering forces from this star of abundance on its way to the warrior planet Mars on Thursday, which signals the impending fight for dominance, which comes at the end of the week when the Moon encounters Saturn, hidden in the clutches of the Scorpion underworld in the southeast region of the sky.
It’s easy to imagine that the English poet John Keats was describing this very scene when he wrote the words: “Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star, sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone…” This is from Keat’s poem “Hyperion”, which is about the fall of the Titans.
Two days later, the Moon will be Full. This will be Summer Solstice, June 20th, when the Sun stands still at its highest hour. The Moon is opposite the Sun when it’s Full, so that means it will be at the Winter Solstice spot~where we find the galactic center. So the two great lights will occupy the Solstice, or standing still moments, as if giving pause to honor the mighty passing away of the old order.
Follow this link to John Keats' poem "Hyperion":
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/44473