Full Moon at Zero Aries in Cardinal T-Square Formation and The Difficulty of Being Ourselves in Tense Financial Times

So my first week-and-a-half in this new city has been an almost constant case of clusterfuck-itis. Very coloured by the fact that Pluto and Mercury were stationing direct on the day I came into town. I moved in on a notoriously ill-advised day astrologically, but sometimes you can't avoid it. It's as if the universe needs you to throw yourself to the wolves to work with the heavy vibes and crossed wires and infuriating delays and glitches. Like it's your duty or something. 

My internet situation is half-solved. The account has been transferred into my name. But I have to wait until Monday until it is physically changed over and I can reset the wireless password so that I can actually use my computer - rather than the cyber cafe one I'm using at the moment. 

My front door key is not working properly, despite having it recut. So I'm waiting for my new landlady to cut me one from the master, and hopefully that will work. Not being able to get into your new home easily is not a welcoming feeling. 

My roommate is also trying to complete some things with her ex which is making for an odd energy. 

It's like multiple layers of loggerheads we're trying to inch our way out of, and the astrology reflects it. 

All in all, I'm feeling very unhinged and unsettled and, true to the South Node in Cancer, have to fight the urge to pine for the farm, for my old, comforting dreams and for my old life in my old city. The one that doesn't exist anymore. I know there's no going back, but it's hard to inform your ragged emotions of that after yet another Plutonic shattering of familiar ways. I know a lot of us are in similar situations. 

The Aries Full Moon really just highlights the very uncomfortable emotional territory we're in right now. The Moon was full early this morning at zero Aries, opposing the Sun just after it ingressed Libra late last night, marking Fall Equinox. The Full Moon opposition happens in tight square to Pluto in Capricorn, forming - you guessed it - a potent cardinal T-square on the early cardinal degrees. Crisp new directions. 

Throughout the day today, the Moon moves from an opposition to the Sun, to a square to Pluto to an opposition to Saturn. Not the smoothest of emotional sailing. I don't see the tension kicked off by the cardinal T-squares this summer letting up grandscale until late November after Venus and Jupiter station direct and the Sun enters Sagittarius, so get your wiggle room and take your breathers wheresoever you can. 

The Sun in Libra moves to a square to Pluto in Capricorn Saturday. This weekend is dynamic but testy, and we're challenged to shed rough ego edges about the way we would like things to be versus the way they are actually going. There's not much arguing with Pluto in Capricorn these days - maybe not until Ceres enters Capricorn next month. 

The Sun continues to a conjunction with Saturn September 30, and that conjunction takes place in exact square to the North Node in Capricorn. More emphasis on making our way up the rocky mountain face with every false step seeming devastatingly detrimental. There is fear here. Our path forward involves partnering successfully with other people, but the conditions for doing so are difficult, to say the least. 

At the same time, we have Jupiter and Uranus in tight conjunction in late Pisces and Neptune and Chiron in tight conjunction in late Aquarius. Semi-sextile in that Pisces-to-Aquarius-eras formation. 

For all the cardinal energy we've got going on, the path forward is certainly not clear. Decisions are cranked out here heavily and testily amidst confusion and sometimes-paralyzing personal and collective anxiety. The power of being ourselves is what's coming up for me here - as well as the element of emotional survival related to that. Finding a place where we can take our place alongside others without stifling in us the very things that make life worth living. 

I've been exploring the city a bit and found a building devoted to the arts near where my roommate works. There was an interesting woman having a smoke out front. She was dressed in black and had long, white hair pulled into a ponytail and a slightly aggravated artist's look on her face. She looked as if she knew the score. I decided to come back another day and traipsed through the building with my resume hoping for a chance encounter with a like-minded soul that would lead to a small job. I didn't find the encounter I was hoping for, but I did find a magazine office that publishes a local mag. 

Most of the other offices were closed because it was lunch hour, but there was a woman eating her lunch in this office, and I left my resume with her - oddly, even though she told me there were no jobs at this particular office. 

She e-mailed me later asking if she could give me a tip about my resume. I knew right away she wanted to advise me to drop the astrology. I was right. She told me that if I wanted a job in publishing, I would have to tailor my resume to the publishing field. Fair enough. I would agree. The main problem was that I went into that building not specifically knowing I would be applying with a publisher. I was just looking for that connection with a like-minded creative soul. The woman told me that she does reiki and takes whole foods cooking classes and such but that she would never list them on her resume. She also recommended that I advertise in the "local new agey type of newspaper." (Funny. I'll forgive her for that one. But you see how astrology is automatically and unfortunately associated with New Age in most people's minds?) 

She said if she were looking for a person with admin skills, she wouldn't bother to read past 'astrologer' on the resume. She meant well, and her criticisms were valid. But it struck me that they were from a paradigm I don't care to belong to anymore. 

But the screws are tightening, aren't they? The commitment to being ourselves and taking our own paths while still working within (or around) the mainstream structures is difficult. As people are starved of money and opportunities, the bleakness of subverting yourself and re-entering a rigid, colourless, corporate world becomes more of a possibility. 

Working the spaces between is the only way we can honour the demands of both - making a financial living while still honouring our creative flames and flow. But damn, it's tricky. 

I know we can work this alchemical process of Venus-Eros-Mars in Scorpio sextile Pluto-Ceres-North Node in Capricorn and meld things into a new form - one that lights up the vitality in everyone so that it becomes the driving force within the Plutonically morphing structures. But it sure can be disheartening at times if you catch a glimpse of the hugeness of the job. I guess that's the thing about Capricorn. You just eke out one step at a time when it seems safe to do so. That's how we get the sea back into the sea-goat.