The Moon is Queen

The Moon is one of the "Big Three" along with the Sun and the Rising Sign. 

If our personality was a kingdom, the big three would be the three most important people. the Sun would be the King, the Moon the Queen and the Rising Sign would be the Knight- who-interacts-with-the-outside-world-on-their-behalf. 

 Have you heard of the concept of "sub personalities"? Usually, we think of ourselves as one person, which we call "me" but what if we were actually more like several people sharing one body?

Have you already had the experience of having a friend who you usually meet for certain activities, and one day, they invite you to their home; there, your friend looks like they have become another person! You are finding out another "facet" of their personality...     
 The energies represented by the planets don't blend seamlessly; we can consider them as sub personalities in their own right. 

  The Sun is the King. The Moon is the Queen. Let's drop immediately our feminist views, or rather let's keep them for the world of people, but not for the world of symbols. 

 The Sun and the Moon are present in everyone's chart, so whatever our gender, we all have our fair share of masculine and feminine energies. Say Yang and Yin if you prefer.

Masculine  or Yang energies are expressed from inside out, they are creative, active, dynamic, self centred. Feminine energies are receptive, reactive or passive, attractive, relationship centred. They become fecundated and give birth to new forms.

 When we read a chart, we should always start with looking for whether Yang or Yin is dominant. Traditional gender roles have been confusing energies and people. Men used to believe they could express only the Sun and Mars, women were supposed to express only the Moon and Venus, as if all these energies weren't present in everyone's make up... 

 The Moon is our Yin side. Our inside. The Moon is us when we are receptive, when we submit or surrender, when we let go, when we relax, when we relate to others and the environment. (To relate we need to shut up and open to whoever or whatever is not us. That's Yin) 

 The Moon is how we are when we are at home, when we find ourselves in a safe environment, in private, able to express our emotions and be receptive to other people's emotions.

 The Sun by contrast, is how we are when we leave home and shine our own light in the world. The Moon is our most intimate personality, the vulnerable part of us. The Sun is not vulnerable. How could it be? He's all from inside out. No arrow can hit the Sun's heart! 

 The Moon in a birth chart also tells about our own childhood, how we were as a child, how was our mother, or more specifically how was our relationship with our mother when it came to caring and nurturing us, and even more specifically, how we felt about this relationship. 

  I don't believe that planets represent people. You will often read that the Moon is the mother. I understand the Moon as the nurturing function, which is in most cases carried out primarily by the mother. When our mother was forcing us to do things, when she was forbidding or punishing, she was Saturn. When she was the great love of our life, she was Venus; When she was a role model, she was the Sun, when she taught us things she was Jupiter or Mercury and when she was a rival for our father's attention, she was Mars! When our father was preparing food or telling a story before we slept, he was the Moon. 

Now that we have grown up (if we have) the Moon represents our "inner child" that is the most vulnerable and sensitive part of us. The Moon in our chart shows how we need to be cared for in what we need to feel safe. 

 The Sun also represents our "inner child" but it's the creative and playful inner child which is symbolised by the Sun, not the vulnerable and sensitive one. 

 The Moon in a few key verbs:

 If you remember only four, remember: 
 I belong I feel I need I nurture

If you can remember more:

I dream I imagine I remember I am fecund I am pregnant I give birth

I change I go round in cycles

I care I long I howl I attract I react

I feed I eat I share I intuit I absorb... 

I mother I cuddle I smother I embrace... 

I like to repeat that everything in life is the expression of the fundamental energies of the zodiac. A great way to learn is to look around and put "energy tags" on things and people... Let's go for a walk in the street. What are we going to label "Moon"? 

 If you feel like being serious about learning, don't read the following straight away. Go for an imaginary walk in a street and search for buildings, things and people to tag "Moon" .... 

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 OK!  here are my answers: 

 First of all, all the private houses get the "Moon" label. That's where families live! 

The grocery shop, the supermarket... where the food is, Moon goes.  (A restaurant would rather have the Venus tag, because we don't need to eat there, it's rather a pleasure, even a luxury. However, it's food, so a little Moon can still be tagged there anyway...) 
The shop called "Everything for the home"... Moon tag! 
The nursery, the playground, where the children are cared for get the Moon label indeed! 

A wedding shop! The Moon wants to belong, the Moon wants to get married. Big Moon tag for the wedding shop! ... along with a Venus tag, as hopefully wedding is a story of love and partnership between two people (Venus) and not just a story of having children for your parents to become grandparents whilst you are dealing with your in laws! 
  A Honeymoon gets a Venus tag. 

 In the hospital, the nurses get the Moon label. Their job is to care... The hospital itself is tagged Neptune. The doctors get Jupiter and Mercury. (Mercury is the specialist in health. Jupiter is the expert and the VIP) 

 I told you Mercury was associated with the age of 10 or 12, before puberty. Actually Mercury times start as soon as we learn to coordinate our movements, learn to walk and talk etc..  The Moon is associated with our early childhood, when we were just born and lived our most intimate and vulnerable moments. At that time we were mostly soaking in impressions... Our personal unconscious is made of the events and emotional memories we get from these times. 

 The lunar temperament is sensitive, imaginative and impressionable. 
 People with strong Moon energy can even be psychic. 
 
At school, a child with a lot of lunar energy will be easily distracted and even disturbed if the atmosphere is not peaceful enough. They may well be a cry-baby. They will have a lot of imagination and enjoy stories. His or her favorite subject will be history. 

  They will hear "You are too sensitive!" a lot during their lives, unless human beings eventually learn to respect sensitivity.

 When not overwhelmed by family duties, a Moon person will enjoy staying home, cooking and eating good meals, not doing much sitting on the sofa, striking the cat, listening to music, reading or watching TV... 

 If the Moon was an animal... It could be a she wolf, howling at the Moon. The Moon can be wild you know! We may find it hard to believe when contemplating a amorphous being sprawled on the sofa eating tons of chips, but yes there is an deep instinctive wild beast hiding in there... 
 The Moon could be represented by a hen as well. One day I saw a hen followed by ten little chicken, on a farm. A young dog approached. The hen charged the dog and chased it away. I was really impressed by the courage of the hen. 

 Other than that, if the Moon was an animal, it would be a unicorn, a winged horse, a feathered dragon, a kind crocodile in need of affection, a teddy bear, or something like that... a fantasy. A chimera...

 The element associated with the Moon, and with Cancer, the sign it rules, is water. It's all emotions and feelings. Don't try to convince them with logic, kindness works better.  

 Do you get the spirit of the energy? 
 If you remember only a few things... remember: 

Feeling - Mother - Child - Family - Belonging - Imagination - Memory - Emotions - Home - Instinct - Unconscious - Emotional and physical needs - Intimacy - Sensitivity - 
 
More later. Take care! 

Jean-Marc

Magical Doors, published by the Wessex Astrologer, is available in most online stores

Understanding Venus

Venus attracts, charms, values, glues, enjoys, entices, loves, likes, feels, relates, sings, paints, decorates, dresses up, is beautiful, gets in touch, chats, socialises, eats... and owns.

Venus, like Mars, desires and makes love. 

Venus wants to have. Venus wants to bind, to attach, to keep, to cast spells...

One of her favourite game is "catch me if you can".   

"I want to be loved by you,

Just you and nobody else but you

I want to be loved by you

Alone.... poo poo pi doo!"

Venus brings social skills. The Goddess of love can only know what makes things work between people. 
When we tell others how beautiful, how great, how funny, how wonderful they are, when we say "You're a star!" "You're a gem!" or  "You've done an amazing job!", when we tell them we are grateful for who they are or what they do, it becomes possible and even easy to get what social animals want: company, help, attention, protection, security, pleasures... We find friends, allies, companions, lovers. We know how to be with others. We hope they will know how to be with us. If they don't, we'll teach them! Venus knows how to bond...

 To be able to value others we need to believe in our own worth. Feeling comfortable in our own skin helps a lot! If we feel insecure, nervous, self conscious things won't work well.  A compliment by an ugly duckling is not a compliment by a swan. 

Ugly ducklings sometimes try to convince others that the ugliest ducklings are them. It's understandable. It's terrible to be the ugliest duckling.  If Venus is afflicted in our chart, we may get caught in spirals of negative valuation. We should do to others as we would have them do onto us, because others usually do to us as we do to them. 

If we do to them as they did to us as we did to them as they did to us, and if the result is painful, we better come back and work on our own sense of self worth, and maybe ask for help... Venus don't mind asking. 

If there is only one key word to remember about Venus, it is "Value". 
We don't value intellectually. We like, we love, we desire, we admire... On social media, what we write is from Mercury, but the smileys, likes, loves, laugh, sad, or angry emojis are from Venus. 

 If we remember only two key words, let them be "Value" and "Relationship". 

If you can remember three words, remember "Glue" as well.  Mercury connects with no strings attached. Venus unites. 

Ah yes, please, remember also "Harmony". That's all what Venus wishes for, in love, in bed and in art galleries. 

Remember also "Enjoy!"
 Without pleasure, is life worth living? 

Astrology is mental yoga. It consists of understanding energies enough to guess what happens when you mix them. The more we become familiar with what the planet energies are by themselves, the easier it will be to understand how signs, houses and other planets sending aspects will precise or modify their expression. I hope you enjoyed this Venusian ballad! 

Jean-Marc Pierson 

Homepage

A few things about Mercury

I like to think of the planet-energies as our psychic organs.

If we were studying anatomy, we would start learning about things that are true for every human being. For instance, whatever we may learn about the lungs and the human respiratory system would be valid for anybody. At this level of knowledge, we are all the same, and that's great. I could be hospitalized in China and be taken proper care of.

Now, we are also all different. Some people may have a huge respiratory capacity and others may suffer from asthma. Similarly, everyone has Mercury in their chart, but mine is in Libra, connected by aspects to Venus, Jupiter and Saturn and in the fourth house. 

However, understanding what is true for everyone is absolutely necessary before getting into particularities.

Planets can be summarized by key verbs.

Mercury says:

I think- I communicate

If you remember only two key verbs, remember those!

If you're ready for more, Mercury also says:

I speak - I analyse - I imitate - I move - I serve - I pass on the message - I learn - I study - I reason - I read - I write - I trade - I exchange - I walk - I run - I speed up - I drive the car! - I do the DIY - I talk- I lie - I trick - I joke- I sing - I play music - I observe- I classify - I pay attention to details - I multiply - I divide - I count - I adapt - I adjust - I know - I repair - I link - I connect - I go get the info - I explore - I am curious about everything - I heal - I collect - I make lists....

Mercury symbolizes our mind! With Mercury however it is not a case of the mind and nothing but the mind though. Mercury has a lot to do with our ability to reason, to use words and numbers and to apply common sense. We'll try to define the mind another day.

 


Mercury is also our ability to move.

Sometimes Mercury is the monkey mind. Sometimes it is the awakened mind with an ability to heal.

When we talk about mind-body connection, we're talking about the magic of Mercury, the connector.




Planets can also represent people who appear in our lives. Mercury can represent a sibling, a young person, a peer or a neighbour.




It is associated with the age of 10 or 12, before puberty. At that age, children are interested in learning and knowing. They may know, for instance, every kind of dinosaur that once existed, and look at you with pity if you don't know the difference between a Stegosaurus and a Pterodactyl. Later on, when boys become the main focus of girls and vice versa, the dinosaurs will lose their aura of prestige...

Do you get the spirit of Mercury?

At school, a child with a strong Mercury will be... Wait a little bit and try to guess before reading the next lines.

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They will be good at school indeed, unless they are so clever that they get bored and distracted.

The Mercury child could become the one that disrupts the class, cracks jokes or plays tricks, whilst being able to answer the teacher’s questions correctly. Which, in their mind, entirely justifies the cheeky behaviour! They can also make a fortune selling sweets to their classmates.

When in love the Mercury teenager (or adult) will not be the most passionate and faithful, as curiosity for all that exists is their main motivation.

For the Mercurial individual, feelings are a very interesting subject to observe, their expression in others are great to imitate in order to make everyone laugh, but being immersed in them… not too much thank you!

The energy of Mercury makes you like things and people, but when you fall in love, it's not Mercury anymore, it's Venus or Mars. Now, when it comes to the business of the heart, Mercury can help a lot, as this energy knows how to communicate. Need a chat-up line?




What kind of jobs, what kind of hobbies would a Mercury person most enjoy?

I will let you guess this one...

If Mercury was an animal, which one would it be?

A squirrel maybe? Not a rhinoceros. A rhinoceros would rather make me think of a combination of Mars and Saturn. (Saturn gives the heavy, armoured twist to the Martian aggressiveness of the beast). Little birds, swallows, robins and carrier pigeons are indeed Mercury in animal form. Let’s not forget the bees either.

When I was young, I read The Adventures of Tintin. Do you know him? He is quite Mercurial.

He is a reporter, always on the move. You don't see him expressing an interest in women, he loves his best friend, Captain Haddock and Milou (or Snowy), his dog. He is very clever. He is curious about everything. He always finds a way to get himself out of the most complicated situations. Mercury is your inner Tintin!

Let's now go for a walk along the street and look at the buildings. Which ones are we going to tag as Mercury?

The post office is a typical one of course. All the shops will be tagged as Mercury because Mercury is a trader.

Yesterday I noticed two shops sitting right next to each other: one was a music shop and the other one a wine shop. I was thinking: it's a Neptune spot! Neptune, the planet of Pisces, is relevant to both music (music expresses feelings without words and connects us with other dimensions, or just offers a way to escape reality) and to wine (drink like a fish; it's liquid and also a way to escape reality!) Now both shops deserve the Mercury tag - simply for being shops: places where exchange takes place. As you see, astrology, like life, has many layers.

Mercury, by the way, is also a musician: you need to be skilled and nimble-fingered to play an instrument. You need to be able to articulate well to sing. It’s communication.

Another shop that expresses Mercury is the stationary shop. Here you will find all you

need to write and do the accounts. The vet, the pet shop, that's Mercury again. The chemist, the dentist, the bus garage, the bus stops, the metro station, even the individual buses and trains, the pavements and roads... Everything that allows movement and communication is an expression of the energy of Mercury. Great journeys are usually associated with Jupiter, the sign Sagittarius and the ninth house, but short trips in the neighbourhood are ruled by Mercury.

The schools where young people attend lessons and mix with their peers are Mercurial places.

The physiotherapist and the health food shop express yet another side of this multifaceted energy.

In the body, Mercury rules the nervous system. It's all about communication, whether of orders from the brain to the muscles, or information from the senses to the central nervous system where everything is stored and interconnected.

It also rules the lungs (breathe in, breathe out, exchange with the environment) and the intestines (break down food into smaller constituents and sort out what to keep and what is rubbish). The collarbones, arms and hands are also under Mercury's rule.

We could look at life as a double movement. A movement from source towards the

multiplicity of things and beings, and a movement from multiplicity back to source. Mercury expresses the movement towards multiplicity. It turns its back to the temple and looks at the world. In philosophy, he is all with Aristotle, and probably sarcastic about Plato. Mercury values observation and experimentation over speculation and metaphysics.



We know all the energies intimately as we have been living them since we were born. All we need is to be able to recognize them and differentiate between them. Recognizing and differentiating are Mercury at work.

I leave you here to meditate...

Enjoy!

Jean-Marc Pierson
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Blog posts written between 2017 and spring 2021, including this one, have become a book: Magical Doors. 

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