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Writer's pictureShannon Soimes

Wisdom of the Owl Moon



The story and power of this month’s Full Owl Moon started days ago. On Saturday, January 20th, the Sun entered into Aquarius according to Tropical astrological tradition, and it wasn't alone. Transiting back—for the last time until it teeters between Aquarius and Pisces in the 2040s—Pluto moved into Aquarius alongside the Sun in a conjunction so close, it has its own terminology—a cazimi


Like the owl rotating its head and all-seeing eyes 270°, this event adds significant meaning to the Full Owl Moon energy occurring tomorrow, Thursday January 25, 2024 at 12:54 pm EST. The moon wings into Leo, providing a counterweight on the Leo-Aquarius axis.


Themes emphasized on the Leo-Aquarius axis include the balance among creativity, innovation, autonomy, and collective consciousness. 


The individual owl’s majestic presence in the night, perceiving and observing its environment resonates with Leo Moon. Meanwhile, the description of a collective of owls—a parliament—aligns with the Aquarius Sun energy. 


Let’s Talk About Cazimi


As I previously mentioned, the Sun and Pluto transited into Aquarius together in a cazimi on Saturday, January 20, 2024.


 But what is a cazimi?


To understand a cazimi, it's important to understand a little bit about how the celestial placements are measured in a chart. The chart is a 360 degree circle segmented into 12 pieces—not unlike a 12-slice pie. Each zodiac slice contains 30 degrees from 0 to 29, allowing for an easy and precise measurement of where a celestial body is in the circle—i.e., the Sun is at 5° Aquarius this full moon. 


A smaller unit within the degrees are the 60 minutes ranging from 0 to 59, which, simply put, allows for reading how long or far the celestial has traveled into that particular degree—Sun is at 5° and 15 minutes of Aqaurius.


Now we can talk cazimi!


Cazimi is a conjunction aspect—where two points are within a certain “orb” or distance from each other and their ripples on the lake’s surface intercept and play together. More specifically, cazimi is a conjunction to the Sun within 17 minutes of the degree. 


On Saturday the Sun and Pluto both occupied the 29 degrees Capricorn and 59 minutes point on the chart at the same time. At 9:08 am that morning the Sun moved into Aquarius first as the faster moving celestial at 00°00’ (0 degrees and 0 minutes)—well within the 17 minutes grace period of a cazimi. 


There’s a plethora of articles, YouTube videos, TikTok reels, and books that supply really good, detailed information about the Pluto transit into Aquarius and its place in history—*cough* American Revolution *cough* the Declaration of Independence *cough* the French Revolution *cough*—so there’s no need to dive into that here. 


Still, it’s an important aspect of this full moon and the energies in play, because the Sun all but skipped into Aquarius holding Pluto’s hand. The Sun-Pluto cazimi highlights a new generation, a change in awareness, and a new era. 


The Sun


During this Owl Full Moon, the Sun and Pluto are no longer cazimi, but they are still in a conjunction. The Sun also has a conjunction with the centaur—an asteroid with comet-like characteristics—Chariklo. 


The Sun in Aquarius offers a spotlight as well as a sense of vitality around Aquarian energy and themes including innovation, invention, scientific and technological progress and advancement, education and learning, change and new ways of doing, thinking, being, etc. 


Pluto in Aquarius exhumes and exposes the corroded and corrupted aspects of society and generational habits. These bits hinder the growth and transformation of society and Aquarius Pluto conjunct the Sun brings those ugly pieces into the light. It makes us collectively aware of what’s not working, what needs to be changed or dismantled in order to create a new way of doing and being. 


As a generational planet, this function of Pluto holds true on a grand scale of society and civilization levels, but it is also a personal exposure to our conscious awareness of where we each have tender and festering wounds that need to be seen and addressed to grow and transform.


Chariklo conjunct the Sun in Aquarius supports us through these changes and revelations by encouraging and providing grace and energetic healing. Chariklo in mythology is the wife of Chiron—also considered a centaur in astrology—and holds a companion role to his mentor and healer. As an energy healer, feeling the flow of personal, localized, and even global energy, she offers to help heal disrupted flows of those energies. She also reminds and teaches us the grace to understand that things are not perfect and that there’s always a learning curve. 


The Moon


One of the prominent sayings within many witchcraft, pagan, and earth-based spiritualities is “Know Thyself.” The Moon represents knowing ourselves on a primal and emotional level. The Moon highlights what we feel, why we feel that way and even our ability to understand not only our own responses but others’ as well. 


With the Moon perched in Leo, this Owl Full Moon aligns with the new incoming energies and information, asking us to observe, understand, and manage our unique emotional triggers, reactions, and responses.


The Leo Moon encourages us to take care of our own emotions and emotional, subtle bodies. Our personal agency and empowerment comes from knowing what our triggers are, how we respond, and what are the best ways for us to get back to homeostasis. If a hobby—knitting, whittling wood, painting for example—brings you joy or a rerun of an old sitcom makes you laugh, and that brings you out of the triggered response, then do it. 


Putting personal emotional needs first not only allows for more mindfulness in the moments when your tribe and community need you, but it also strengthens self-reliance, validation, and sovereignty. That lens changes how the reality and world around you is perceived and what should be changed for more people to find and hold the same strengths. 


Vulkan in Leo conjuncts the Moon. The creativity and artistic energy of Vulkan forges a path of greater self-awareness. Vulkan supports the Moon’s energy with creative tools to manage our emotions and selves and the inspiration to lead by example, not through autocratic means. 


X Marks the Spot


Squares are sharp, right-angle aspects that offer challenges in order to prompt action and change in stressful and tense environments. A Grand Cross—an X in the sky—comprises of four squares and two oppositions. This figure is fundamentally stressful, as it highlights the challenges present in four areas that need to be addressed. The key to integrating these challenging energies is balancing the oppositions in order to lay a strong foundation and the core strength to change the present and future. 


The Grand Cross celestials reside in fixed modalities with the Sun in Aquarius, Moon in Leo, Jupiter in Taurus, and Haumea in Scorpio. Due to the modality’s fixed and stubborn nature, this Grand Cross could provide a stable and solid foundation, but it can present difficult challenges. 


Think along the lines of getting a lion to hunt—not a lioness, but a lion—or a scorpion to swim, a bull to move when it doesn’t want to, or an intrusive thought or inner critic voice to be silent. None of these are technically impossible, but they’re not exactly the easiest tasks to accomplish either. 


Jupiter in Taurus expands the practical and comfortable aspects of our realities, growing value—not exclusive to the monetary and financial acumen. 


The Jupiter point on the Grand Cross, especially the squares to the Sun and Moon, increase our comfort levels and practical application of valuing ourselves, our self-worth. This can be incredibly tense as it expands the opportunities to value our talents, skills, and abilities in the midst of the Leo Moon emphasizing our self-agency and responsibility to self manage our emotional responses and the Aquarius Sun leading us into a period of community based aspirations and change. 


Haumea on the Grand Cross, sits opposite Jupiter in Scorpio. Haumea is a Hawaiian earth and fire goddess, with both fertility and destructive aspects. In astrology, Haumea represents nature, the natural cycles and processes, and our connection to both the Earth energies as well as to Cosmic Source. Haumea highlights life’s profound ability to survive and thrive through adversity. 


In Scorpio, Haumea, squaring the Sun and Moon, challenges our deep subscious fears and desires around nature and the cycles therein. These challenges to the Leo Moon pushes away the shallow attempts to manage our emotional triggers and responses, propelling us deeper to why those triggers exist, what fears and desires anchor them into our lives. 


On the other hand, the challenge Scorpio Haumea presents to the Aquarius Sun includes overreaching, overdoing, and overcompensating the community at the expense of deeper, lasting intimate change. Abandoning the old way of doing things without investigative and deep research into how they worked for us and thus why we started those old ways in the first place as well as how they stopped working for us will only continue this vicious and unnatural cycle. Nature doesn’t just abandon the processes that are not efficient, it builds off the failures in order to have a successful trait prevail. 


Finding the balance between the Sun-Moon Aquarius-Leo axis—collective consciousness and emotional self-validation—and between Jupiter-Haumea on the Taurus-Scorpio axis—expansion of mundane—practical and comfortable—value and the deepening of understanding of why and how our nature works builds a strong and fundamental base to approach and utilize the incoming energies.


A Row of Parliament


I invite you to imagine: a bright full moon night in the deep, quiet woods where an owl soars overhead, surveying the environment for anything out of place. At some point, the owl swoops down into the trees to catch its meal. Perching on a branch overhead, a parliament of three other owls keeps vigil. 


This parliamentary gathering consists of the harmonious aspects to the Sun and Moon of Makemake, Pallas, and Sedna—two of which are out-of-sign aspects—and feeling a bit like judges preceding on a bench. 


Starting with Makemake in Libra, trines the Aquarius Sun—same element—and sextiles the Leo Moon—same polarity. Makemake is an Easter Island creator god and in astrology he represents manifestation and environmentalism. 


In Libra, Makemake seeks conversation and equilibrium between our human society and the natural world—which society pretends we humans are not a part of. Makemake presents reintegrating our human perspective and capacities with our environments as stewards to help manage the stress and anxieties inflicting both.


The first of the two out-of-sign harmonious placements is Pallas, which generally represents our problem solving, critical and creative thinking abilities.


Pallas in Scorpio watches and judges the sufficiency and intensity of the Leo Moon and Aquarius Sun. Not only is this celestial looking for any inefficiencies and issues along the Leo-Aqarius axis, but Pallas is also looking for new inspiration to solve those problems. 


“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” Scorpio Pallas sees and recognizes the previous attempts of the Sun and Pluto in Aquarius as well as the Moon and Vulkan in Leo and decides to go deeper, to find the hang-ups to creatively solve.


Sedna makes the second out-of-sign harmonious aspect to the Sun and Moon. Sedna is the Inuit goddess of the sea who lost the fingers of one hand in an attempt to elude her responsibilities to her community and herself. 


Sedna’s silent, temperamental energies can present as empathizing—as she is an underworld water goddess who didn’t want to take on the role—and harsh—her fingers get chopped off in order to ensure she enters the ocean to transcend. It also makes her position in the harmonious parliamentary vigil as observant and appraising as Pallas. 


Taurean Sedna identifies what we are holding onto for comfort’s sake alone and is hindering any personal, spiritual growth and transcendence into something greater. This supports the Leo Moon as Sedna reveals what has become an excuse for self-indulgence and is not actually healing and helping manage our emotional triggers and work through them to reach a state of self-confidence. 


Sedna makes a trine to the Aquarius Sun, offering support to release the inefficient and staid ways society functioned before in order to transcend into an innovative, inclusive period that will redefine the how we think and what we know, even if it means going to the bottom and traveling into the underworld to find those innovations.


The Septil 


I don’t mention septiles often. Not only are these aspects, known as the 7th harmonic, rare, I also don’t like overwhelming an article or post with placements that don’t directly aspect the full moon. 


Astrology names the septiles as a minor aspect, but minor does not mean trivial. What makes an aspect minor or major directly translates to math. Minor aspects take longer to calculate, especially mentally. The septile is a minor aspect because it divides the 360 degrees of a circle by 7 into irrational numbers—in this case 51.42857… Major aspects divide the circle into rational numbers—oppositions by 2, squares by 4, trines by 3, and sextiles by 6—all rational numbers. 


Considered a mysterious and mystical angle, septiles connect two celestial energies without rationale or a logical resolution. Instead, the septile requires intuitive and instinctive thinking, forming a bridge between the spiritual and material realms. It's a subtle yet potent influence that transcends the ordinary. 


During this Owl Full Moon, the septile between the Sun and Neptune invites us to explore the psychic and spiritual connections of the collective consciousness with which both Aquarius and Netpune resonate.


The Aquarius Sun focuses on the community and the collective consciousness of our human community to take on new innovations, new and inventive ways of doing society and community, and pulling from the collective consciousness for these ideas so that as many individuals can participate and become engaged with the incoming energies as possible, with as little crack-slippage as possible. 


Neptune, as the higher octave of Venus and the lower octave of Haumea, represents psychic abilities, spiritual love, and connection to the divine—within ourselves, our fellow sentient beings, and to the cosmos. Neptune approaches working with the collective consciousness with love, tolerance, and compassion to help evaluate each individual into a spiritual awakening state. 


The Owl Full Moon flies between the cerebral and the spiritual, emotional realms, the septile aspect encourages us to look beyond the visible and embrace the mystical. It reminds us that the universe whispers secrets, and those willing to listen hear and perceive even the smallest indication of possibilities. 

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