The Black Side of the Moon
Embracing Lunar Cycles of Depression
by Antero Alli
Sometimes I think Sun-sign astrology columns in newspapers have done more damage to real astrology than all the world's most literal-minded, empirically oriented cynics combined. Astrology remains one of the more misunderstood and misrepresented of the so-called occult sciences.
I think part of the problem lies with this mistaken notion, posited by some astrologers, that astrology is actually a science. Astrology is not a science; it's a language and its interpretation, an art form at best. Add to this pseudo-scientific confusion millions of nonastrologers everywhere blindly assuming that astrology is the same as newspaper Sun-sign columns, fortune-telling and, from more fundamentalist vantages, the work of the devil. If astrologers are to be understood on our own terms, we must become far more intuitive, imaginative and cunning about how the astrological language is represented.
The most obvious and perhaps radical shift I can think of is relaxing the over-rated fixation on Sun signs and redirecting it onto the Moon.
This astrological reorientation instigates an important mental shift in the way we think about our lives during these end times. In the event you have not heard the news, a severe crisis in collective consciousness now divides people between those - blindly and intentionally - propagating the "victim" archetype and those struggling to actively defuse it. Will the human race martyr itself through overpopulation, greed and depletion of natural resources, or will enough of us wake up and take charge of our collective destiny? The current cluster of essays on lunar symbology is presented by people working to defuse Armageddon by their contribution to a language expressing not just a rebirth of the archetypal feminine but its outright insurrection.
This "rebellion of the feminine" has been in effect since Descartes' widely accepted deification of reason, science and intellectual achievement. In retrospect, it seems that an inflated intellect became necessary for species evolution at that time, yet I question its ultimate worth to collective survival now. In fact, it looks more like a mask for an underlying death wish of a species gone mad, if you will.
My premise: The revolt of our species' own poetic genius is at hand; the revolution is within us.
Losing your Moon is easy to do
The astrological Moon constitutes a multi-textural symbology of depth and complexity representing what is most personal to us and most personal about us. I'm taking the Moon to symbolize the multi-layered textures of the homing instinct, from our most literal dwelling place to early upbringing to how one feels most "at home" anywhere and on to what constitutes familiarity and emotional shelter in every way imaginable. Once in a while - sometimes daily - everybody strays and loses touch with the familiar comfort zones of their Moon to drift disconnected into genuinely weird, and sometimes depressing, states.
My chosen focus in this essay is what I'm calling the "Black Moon" phase and how we come to know that experience through symptoms of depression, despair and hopelessness. I am not interested in merely furthering anyone's (or my own) conceptual understanding of pat, symbolic truths. I encourage your open and direct knowledge, or experience, of what I'm writing about, no matter how difficult or inconvenient that state may become. Use your birth chart as a map for getting "home" when things get weird. Know where your Moon is.
A few words on the state of depression. Depression is not an emotion.
More precisely, depression is an utter absence of emotion. An emotional flatness characterizes a depressed, or deflated, state. By comparison, grief and sorrow are lively. With real depression, there is no emotional color, only flatter shades of black. Black, blacker, blackest. The Black Moon refers to that natural process of losing touch with your emotional responsiveness - your real-time connection with reality - while dropping down into the blackening nadir of depression.
This process is as natural as a woman's menses cycle, yet modern society - friends, parents, teachers - never taught us how to accept depression as an ordinary event. When depressed, we are instead conditioned to believe something is "wrong" with us. Instead of feeling our way through our depressions, we become hypochondriac negativity adepts making a bad thing worse, or emotional escape artists refusing to feel anything unpleasant. This pattern of denial functions so smoothly within a severely limited emotional range that it eventually creates a behavior of false shame and modesty around who we really are. We are truly giants raised as dwarves.
The art of falling apart
Emotional self-victimization is often propagated by depression naiveté, that is avoiding and resisting depression. Natural cycles of real life express ongoing processes of decay and dissolution vital to regeneration; no life without death; no death without rebirth. It's as if Life-at-Large requires periodic phases of ego-collapse.
It's logical to assume that the quality, style and frequency of that collapse differs for each person. Some people need to "die" more often than others; mystics choose to die every day. Other people get by falling apart once during every lunar cycle or so. The frequency may depend on how alive you actually are and how much "death" you need to renew that life; the greater the life, the greater the need for collapsing that life when it gets old. By postponing the Black Moon phase, depression merely accumulates more momentum and gravity. With enough avoidance, what starts out depressed turns blacker and heavier, and then with further resistance blacker still. How black does it have to get before you're ready to fall apart?
Our modern society shows a grave absence of "Black Moon rituals" and other "arts for falling apart" to honor and dignify the state of depression. Unfortunately or fortunately, there are no "depression Bibles" out there to show you how to fall apart on purpose even if that's what you feel like doing. You have to create your own rituals. Observe the species' wisdom in the younger generation with Pluto in Libra (born October 1971 through December 1983), and among some of those born with Pluto conjunct Uranus, who are creating their own Black Moon rites with shocking fashion statements, utterly depressing dress codes and the hard-core "gothic industrial" music they listen and dance to (Nine Inch Nails and so on).
When emotionally depressed, we're not usually encouraged to stick with it, not by ourselves or society or our friends. There are just too many diversions and distractions, yet if embraced wholeheartedly, commitment to Black Moon follow-through can eventually transform depression. The Black Moon phase can also unfold more gracefully given enough knowledge about your emotional needs, symbolized by the house placement of your natal Moon. This house placement is a information-rich resource for getting back in touch with reality, specifically your personal style of moment-to-moment responsiveness - your Moon sign. Find your Moon.
Desperately seeking information
Another misunderstood yet potentially informative condition of the Black Moon phase - of losing your Moon - is despair. Despair expresses an emotional state of hopelessness, where we feel helpless to change that condition. The key to understanding despair is observing the distinction between being helpless and our genuine feelings of helplessness. Notice how easily, how effectively, we hypnotize ourselves into emotional immobility and self-victimization by self-imposed convictions of "being helpless," when, in fact, we may be denying our true feelings in reaction to a real situation. Feeling helpless is a natural enough response to any situation exposing the limitations of our personal efforts. No matter how hard we try sometimes, our personal efforts fall short of success. Feeling helpless continues as a healthy emotional response to a personally difficult situation.
Our feelings of helplessness originate in infancy. The bonding imprints developed with our mothers (or surrogate) determine the nature and severity of those helpless feelings. Some of this bonding imprint may express itself through the sign and placement of your natal Moon. Is your Moon smothered by conjunctions to other forces (planets)? Is it unaspected and alone? Is it connected with other forces by hard aspects or easy ones? Your personal style of dealing with helpless feelings pretty much determines how you move through them; everyone moves differently. Sometimes, your natal Moon tells you how that happens.
Despair is a symptom of the denial of these helpless feelings. If you do not create space in your life for these feelings of helplessness - when confronting insurmountable odds - the odds are that your own emotional stupidity will overcome you. Some people run over their denial of helpless feelings by pumping themselves up way out of proportion and pushing, forcing and attempting to overpower the opposition; others express their denial by their self-created, downward-spiraling collapse into despair. Whatever your style of denial, when you experience despair you have lost touch with your Moon, and it is only a matter of time before the universe reminds you this is so. The Moon also represents the living organism of you, which courtesy of DNA and other mysterious connective tissues attaches you to all living things. When your Moon slips out of reach - when the Black Moon phase begins - the universe listens and responds.
Immediacy, not immediate gratification
In this society of giants raised as dwarves, many of us are held to emotionally immature behavior despite our sophisticated ideas of who we are and want to become. Emotional maturity cannot be forced or made to happen by anything the conceptual mind creates for that purpose. Emotions simply follow their own rules; they are a not mental issue.
Emotional maturity instead depends more on a certain kind of emotional responsibility, and I don't mean this popular conception of "owning your feelings"; who can own anything so ephemeral and unpredictable as emotions? Emotional responsibility seems to me a willingness to make a definite commitment to remaining responsive to immediacy, as if your emotional response-ability depended on it. This maturity also demands a deepening commitment to present-time living, so that your moment-to-moment responses are connected to actual events and situations and less to past habit patterns and the monkey-grip of emotional memory.
Your most direct and personal responsiveness to present-time life experiences expresses a commitment to the value of immediacy. Returning to a greater immediacy gives the soul - that invisible, indescribable force nurtured by our emotions - a more direct outlet of expression in the world. Living life with a greater sense of immediacy, a soul makes more meaningful connection with the community and surrounding world.
Without this type of immediate world-involvement, a soul remains shackled down in the darker recesses of our so-called subconscious minds, sadly awaiting release.
To clarify the term, "immediacy" has nothing whatsoever to do with the consumer purchasing power of instant, or immediate, gratification, which only acts as a cheap dime-store decoy substitute. Real immediacy involves more direct and unmediated - un-media - experience. The innate hunger and need for greater immediacy in our lives may be our strongest and most effective weapon/tool in the revolution raging during these "dreamtime media soul wars." The natal Moon, by its representation of where and how our feelings become known, contributes to the information our misinformed intellects need to join the fight against emotional stupidity and violence to ourselves.
Antero Alli is a practicing astrologer and author. He can be reached by writing P.O. Box 45758, Seattle WA 98145, or by e-mail at anteros@speakeasy.org
Or visit Antero's World Wide Web site at: http://www.wolfe.net/~majamaki/ptrs.html
Antero also is available for personal or mail-order astrology readings through any of these addresses.
Copyright © 2006 by the article's author
