The Dance of the Sun and Moon

by Adam Gainsburg

Together, the astrological Sun and Moon form the core of our individuated Identity. Where the Sun is how we are seen by others because it symbolizes our type of life energy, the Moon is how we see and feel about ourselves because it represents our inner egoic security.1 It is to the Sun and the Moon that an astrologer will look to understand the basic psychoid relationship between self-stabilization and self-experimentation. With the Moon as the inner stability of self and the Sun as the energetic means of self-enactment, we discover more fully what our core Identity requirements are. Looking to our astrological birth chart is the only tool we need to discover just how our Identity is so wired.

If we were to return to the time of our birth, identify the positions of the Sun and the Moon, and then calculate the distance between them, we would be taking our first step toward determining our personal New and Full Moons.

“…What’s that you say Adam? My personal New and Full Moons? I didn’t know I had either!?”

Well, you do! Most people know that when the Moon’s orb is completely visible, we are having a Full Moon. But this is the Full Moon for all of us. As a healer and counseling astrologer, I’ve found it is equally if not more useful for individuals to work with their personal lunar timings as well.  Let’s look at an example of this. Let’s say you discover that at the time of your birth the Sun and Moon were 123° from one another. From this you would know that each month when the Sun and the Moon reached this degree of distance no matter which signs they occupy, you would be experiencing your personal New Moon, or a highly fertile time for you to be making your prayers and seeding your intentions. From this, you could then calculate when your personal Full Moon would occur by simply adding 14 ½ days to it. Therefore, at some point each month the Sun and the Moon will also reach this distance, which would mark your personal Full Moon time. But what does this mean? What’s behind this? In classes and workshops, I teach that our natal Sun and Moon energies produce a specific energetic which we might call our personal fertility cycle. The moment we take our first breath in those empowered moments during/after our physical birth, we are the most open, innocent, undifferentiated, and in a sense fertile with life potential. This moment is cellularly imprinted at the level of core Identity by the Sun and the Moon’s spatial relationship. And each subsequent month’s repeat of that Sun-Moon spatial relationship will naturally align us back to our natal Sun-Moon imprint, thereby re-potentiating our capacity to ‘be our own self within a social collective.’ As adults, we can harness the raw potential of these monthly timings to plant our intentions for ourselves and our lives. During our personal New Moon times, the natural alignment between our birth Sun-Moon dance and the current Sun-Moon dance would produce fruit far more efficiently, quickly and powerfully. And wouldn’t we rather throw our seeds into fertile soil than into desert dust?

The Sun

The astrological Sun signifies the specific quality or range of energetic frequencies which run through our body-mind, animate it and produce our ‘aliveness.’ It is the quality of current or light which we bring to everything (because it is in everything we are!) It juices our actions, or our ACT-SUNs if you will! It is ‘how’ we are the way we are. It determines how others see us because it is the most visible part of us, just like the Sun is the center of our solar system. It is through our Solar nature that we discover our uniqueness among others and determine what we want for ourselves. So the Sun can be seen as our Light Energy For Growing/Creating/Manifesting.

The Moon

Within the framework of this ‘formula’ for manifestation, the Moon provides the second ingredient for this alchemy to work. In Soulsign Astrology, we learn that our natal Moon (by sign, house and aspects) signifies our current-life ego identity and methodology for structuring ourselves as an independent self. The Moon provides a container or a context which includes aspects of our subconscious, our dreaming life and our relations with ancestors and our past. The Moon’s domain is thus well-populated but many of us aren’t familiar with this populace because some of the inhabitants are the very things we are afraid of and don’t choose to address. Nonetheless, it is through our Lunar nature that our intentions either align or mismatch with what we consciously choose to pray for. The Moon is thus our Soil For Growing/Creating/ Manifesting.

The Third Ingredient

What’s missing from our formula for manifestation is Our Intention, or what we want to attract to ourselves or create.  Many of us think we know what we want, but more often we remain secretly fixed in the wanting itself. In other words, we don’t often look under the surface of our worldly desires (which we often experience as thoughts and emotions) and ask questions like, ‘Who’s the one doing the wanting here?’ or ‘Do I really want that?’ One very good way to clarify our desires and intentions is to come to understand our Sun and our Moon energies more deeply. This requires going beyond mainstream and Sun-sign astrology meanings of the signs and houses (like the stuff we read in horoscopes). It means delving into the energies themselves with eyes open and heart guiding the way. It means being honest with ourselves. As many have discovered, it is often not the quality of our prayers which are the reason for them not manifesting in our lives, but our insufficient self-awareness underneath the prayers we make. What this vibrational mismatch produces can be thought of as sending ‘weak signals’ out to the universe in the form of our prayers and intentions for the ‘right’ things yet without the engine of our deeper self-awareness fueling them.

Putting It All Together

The combination of strengthening our Sun sign energy, deepening our Moon sign energy, and refining our prayers and intentions can unleash our manifestation capabilities beyond what we thought was possible. ‘Strengthening our Sun’ perhaps can look like facing our fear of professional, creative or social visibility by putting ourselves out there in ways beautifully authentic to us. And ‘deepening our Moon’ may come to feel like allowing ourselves to feel every emotion as it arises, to trust that after they pass we will remain, and to gradually learn the art of stabilizing ourselves amidst the risings and fallings of fear, concern, joy, laughter, pain and peace. When worked with together, the Sun and the Moon create a unifying of what would otherwise be rather oppositional processes within us. Reconciling these together requires an open heart and a willingness to forgive ourselves. Together, they produce a tremendously effective ‘inner structure’ for manifestation.

As many of us have learned, Loving Universe needs strong, clear messages from us so She knows what and how to respond and support us. When we strengthen ourselves in this way, a significant alignment becomes catalyzed between pray-er and prayer. ‘The one praying’ and ‘the thing prayed for’ become two expressions of the same source. With this, Loving Universe has what She needs to send it our way. We can then plant our intents (seeds) into this personal soil through dreams, sacred altars, ceremonies, practices, affirmations, and more. Life becomes fun! We awaken to the secret of creation!

For further exploration about your personal New and Full Moon periods each month, look beyond the signs of both the Sun and Moon to the houses and aspected planets involved on your birth chart. For example, though you may have been born with Sun in Taurus and Moon in Sagittarius 123° apart, each month when this distance is repeated, the Sun and the Moon will be in different signs, houses, and aspects to different planets. Remember, it is the spatial distance – the relationship – between them that is the key for your monthly manifestation times, not the signs and houses. Here are some general tips on working with your personal.

New and Full Moon Times:

• Physically observe the Sun and Moon in the sky at these times and feel the energetic relationship between them through your being.
• Allow a one-day window of time before and after each personal New and Full Moon (for a total of 48 hours) for any ceremony, quiet time or other activity. It’s this 48 hour period that’s your portal or creatively fertile time for working with the energies.
• I like to suggest to clients to create and maintain a Sun-Moon altar of some kind which each month or twice a month you return to. Each month, change, adjust, or check in with your new intentions and prayers for that month. AT ALL TIMES, appreciate the beauty you’ve created in the altar itself!
• If calculating your personal New and Full Moons each month seems daunting, find an astrologer to calculate them for you. I offer such a service for a nominal fee, as do other astrologers.  Enjoy your manifestations, and many blessings for you!

NOTES

1. If we then add the ‘personal’ planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter) and the four Angles (Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven and Lowheaven) we gain a complete picture of our current-life Identity.