​Around midday, the Moon in Capricorn makes a sextile to Neptune in Pisces then a sextile to Mercury in Scorpio. This is an opportunity to begin to embody the fantasies and dreams that we are coming to articulate for ourselves and others. As we vision for the kinds of lives and worlds that we long to bring into being, the Moon in Capricorn invites us to lay the foundations of such living worlds through developing tangible practices that align with our visions. In order to sustain and nurture the possibilities of worlds to come, we must begin to practice living in such worlds as tangible realities. The Moon then moves through conjunctions to Saturn and Pluto, and we may feel the pressure, pull, or force of the existing systems through which we are living. Material realities that are resistant to change and the ways they act on and through us will undoubtedly assert themselves. Remember what adrienne maree brown teaches us in Emergent Strategy: “We are realizing that we must become the systems we need—no government, political party, or corporation is going to care for us, so we have to remember how to care for each other. And that will take time, and commitment, a willingness to step outside of the comfort of the current and lean into the unknown, together. To listen to each other across all real and perceived divides.” It is our responsibility to not only dream of worlds capable of caring for us, but to begin to put such worlds into practice, dreaming for the future through how we practice for such worlds in the tangible processes of our daily lives.

​Today Mercury in Scorpio makes the third of three trines to Neptune in Pisces. With both planets now moving direct, we may feel clarity around naming and speaking our dreams, our fantasies, and messages we’ve been perceiving from beyond the visible, known world. The Moon makes its final conjunction to Jupiter in Sagittarius before Jupiter departs Sagittarius for the next 11 years. Hold this experience of openness and abundance in your body; remember these lessons even as Jupiter moves on to Capricorn in a few days. The Moon then ingresses into Capricorn, the sign of its antithesis or detriment, drawing our attention to our responsibilities, commitments, and long-term projects. The Moon signifies the body and the emotional life, both of which can feel neglected when there is too much emphasis on work and productivity. Remember to make time for the things that nourish and support your well-being, especially if it does not feel as if the world around you is offering these resources. Next, the Moon makes a conjunction to Venus just as Venus perfects its trine to Uranus in Taurus. We are just days into this new Venus/Jupiter cycle, but here we come to the waning trine of the Venus/Uranus cycle. Venus was conjunct Uranus on May 18 and opposed Uranus on October 12. This trine is part of the integration and dissemination of this cycle, a process of growing into revolutionary practices of love. Here we begin to ask: how do we make these new ways of loving sustainable? Capricorn is deeply invested in longevity; as we have spent this year unlearning old patterns of what we believed love to be, as we move into this new cycle of abundant love initiated by the Venus/Jupiter conjunction, now we begin to shape our disciplines of devotion to radical love. Finally, the Moon makes a sextile to Mars in Scorpio, giving us motivation to create the conditions necessary to support ourselves in taking the risk of being vulnerable. Vulnerability requires courage, and in order to be courageous, sometimes we have to build spaces and contexts that support us in being brave.

​Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, when we memorialize and honor the hundreds of transgender people who have been murdered world-wide this year.
The Moon in Virgo makes a trine to Uranus in Taurus, inviting us into radical right-relationship with change. Virgo is the mutable earth sign, signifying material adaptability and the transformation of material processes; the Moon signifies the body, and Uranus demands revolution. As I hold the grief of the relentless violence against trans and gender-nonconforming people—particularly trans women of color in the U.S. and abroad—I know that the roots of this violence are in rigid attachments to immutable gender categories, resistance to change and changeability, and in the toxic repression of all of the ways in which we fear difference in one another and ourselves. The Moon in Virgo’s trine to Uranus is asking us to open to new revolutionary relationships to our own bodies and the bodies of others, to difference, and to change. The Moon then makes a sextile to Mercury which is stationing direct in Scorpio after several weeks of retrograde motion. It is time to name our fears, speak our shame, and share the harm we’ve kept hidden—because hidden harm, shame, and fear become the soil in which violence takes root. In the final minutes of the day (EST), the Moon in Virgo opposes Neptune in Pisces. This confrontation asks us to look inward and to do the work of putting our dreams, fantasies, and ideals into practice. If you can imagine a better world, a world without the conditions for harm and violence, how do you put that into practice today? If we are living in an imagination battle, as adrienne maree brown has written, how do we imagine a different world, not only in our hearts and minds, but in our real lives and in our ongoing material practices? How will you live into your imagination of a better world through the actions that you take today and every day?

​Today the Moon in Cancer makes a trine to Mercury moving retrograde through Scorpio. Mercury is reviewing what might be hidden from view, remembering feelings we maybe cannot yet recall. The Moon in Cancer is calling us back to our own origin stories, the ways in which we have and have not known love. We may find ourselves doing the important work of feeling backwards to the places we believe we were loved, only to find that we understand them differently now. As bell hooks writes, “Initially, I did not want to accept a definition of love that would also compel me to face the possibility that I had not known love in the relationships that were most primary to me … if one’s goal is self-recovery, to be well in one’s soul, honestly and realistically confronting lovelessness is part of the healing process … I had to first learn anew the meaning of love and from there learn how to be loving.” How are you being invited to reflect on the deep feelings beneath your memories of love and care? Are you willing to feel differently, to see and understand love and care differently, if doing so is a necessary part of your healing? The Moon then makes a trine to Neptune, and we may feel swept up in our ideals and fantasies of what care and nurturing could be. As the Moon then opposes Saturn, these processes of review and idealization may bring us into confrontation with authority. Fear and resistance are not unexpected as we clarify what it is that actually offers us safety and security, especially if it means acknowledging the ways in which we have not been given what we need by authority figures who were responsible for our care. But the Moon is in its domicile, strong and connected to its resources. As we do the work of healing from what we were never given, we will find that all that we need in order to sooth and support our systems is already available to us in our own bodies. Ask yourself what it is that you need, then take the steps to provide for yourself—whether or not anyone ever showed you how.

​The Moon spends the first half of the day completing its time in Gemini before ingressing into its domicile Cancer. In the last degrees of Gemini, the Moon opposes Jupiter in Sagittarius then makes a trine to Mars in Libra. We may feel pulled between the capaciousness of our hopes and faith in what is possible and the practical thinking that is needed to give those expansive possibilities a tangible reality. As adrienne maree brown writes in Emergent Strategy, “How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale. The patterns of the universe repeat at scale … what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” As you confront your hopes and beliefs for what is possible, remember that you make such things possible by practicing them in small, embodied ways. And we don’t have to do it alone. Mars is completing its time in Libra, where it has been learning and teaching the lessons of collaboration and coalition, taking actions together that we cannot take on our own. As you consider the small-scale practices for bringing the world in which you want to live into being, remember to seek out allies and co-conspirators with whom you might do this work. As the Moon enters its home sign of Cancer, we are brought back to what nurtures and nourishes us. However, the Moon moves almost immediately into a sextile to Uranus which could shake up our experiences or expectations of care. The ways in which we have been accustomed to giving and receiving care may require adjustment. As Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes in Care Work, “What does it mean to shift our ideas of access and care (whether it’s disability, childcare, economic access, or many more) from an individual chore, an unfortunate cost of having an unfortunate body, to a collective responsibility that’s maybe even deeply joyful?” These are question we may be asking about what it means to give and receive what we need, to ask for and offer help, and to revolutionize our understanding of care.

​Today we move through a tight T-square as the Moon in Gemini opposes Venus in Sagittarius then makes a square to Neptune in Pisces, followed by Venus squaring Neptune. Our ideals for love are being called into question by what we can know. The Moon opposing Venus asks: how are you bringing your liberated visions of love into daily practice? Can you balance critical thinking and affection? That which we love cannot be beyond examination or critique; in fact, the ability to critically consider that which we love may be evidence of how much we value it. If our love cannot be subjected to careful and thoughtful examination, we may be more invested in our own ideals than that or those we love. The Moon square Neptune challenges us to discriminate between illusion and knowledge that can be intersubjectively shared and affirmed. This aspect reminds me of Donna Haraway’s description of “situated knowledges” and “feminist objectivity.” She writes, “Feminists don’t need a doctrine of objectivity that promises transcendence, a story that loses track of its mediations just where someone might be held responsible for something … Feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object.” In other words, objective knowledge is not defined by transcendence or universality; feminist objectivity is committed to the partial and the particular, the locatable, the embodied, and the situated. As Neptune squares the Moon, we may feel the allure of the transcendent or the universal, but truly objective knowledge happens in the details, at the scale of what can be known from our limited, embodied positions. Finally, Venus in Sagittarius squares Neptune in Pisces. Both Sagittarius and Pisces are mutable signs ruled by Jupiter. It can be difficult to maintain our boundaries or our footing in the here-and-now in these signs. This T-square is reminding us that however expansive our ideals for love might feel, they must remain accountable to the details of how such love is practiced and acted out. As Judith Butler writes, “Love always returns us to what we do and do not know. We have no other choice than to become shaken by doubt, and to persist with what we can know when we can know it.”

​Following the indulgent Full Moon in Taurus yesterday, the Moon ingresses into Gemini, and we are drawn back into the realms of ideas, thought processes, and making connections. However, Mercury—the ruler of Gemini—is retrograde in Scorpio and in aversion to the Moon. It may feel as if we are too swept up in feelings that are not yet intelligible to think clearly or efficiently. Be patient with yourself and others. Speak carefully and listen with care. Mercury makes a sextile to Saturn in Capricorn, the second of three such aspects—the first was on October 14 and the third will be November 30. As Mercury moves through this retrograde cycle, these aspects to Saturn are asking us to review our emotional boundaries as well as the places where we have felt like our voices were limited. Creating and maintaining healthy boundaries requires coming to voice, speaking and articulating what is and is not okay—which may feel unfamiliar or in a process of transition. The Sun in Scorpio makes a sextile to Pluto in Capricorn, offering new understanding or perspective on how power is operating in our bodies and our world. Things that have been hidden have been coming into view for a while. The Sun in Scorpio is reminding us that it isn’t an accident that you feel how you feel; it isn’t merely personal that there are feelings that have been hidden or repressed. Those experiences are always part of larger, social repressions, and as we uncover these hidden places in our own lives, that shifts how power operates throughout the collective as well. Finally, Mercury makes a trine to Neptune in Pisces, also the third of these aspects—the first was on October 15 and the third will be November 28 after both Neptune and Mercury station direct. This trine is an invitation to listen for messages that seem to come from beyond the veil. Allow yourself to drift and dream into non-ordinary states; meditate, daydream, fantasize, journey with the ancestors, and listen for insights that you may not yet understand but will become clearer in the days ahead.

​Today is the Full Moon in Taurus, but before the Moon reaches is climax, it makes a trine to Saturn in Capricorn and opposes Mercury in Scorpio. How might we develop disciplines for supporting ourselves in feeling good, for cultivating more sustainable pleasure in the present and in the long-term? Whatever this Mercury retrograde has been reviewing or uncovering, today we might experience a moment of confrontation, coming to face what needs to be said, and perhaps drawing deep on our courage to ask for the things that we want and need. 
 
The Moon then reaches its climax opposite the Sun in Scorpio. This full moon feels luxurious and abundant. The Moon is exalted in Taurus, and with Venus—the ruler of Taurus—in Sagittarius co-present with Jupiter, we are being told in multiple ways: there is more than enough. As I said on the November forecast episode of Queer Skies, this Full Moon is a time for excellent, nourishing food, getting in touch with sensuous pleasures, having sex with yourself or other people, having orgasms or luxuriating in states of arousal, and maybe also trying something new—finding new pleasures. Maybe indulge in paying for some new feminist or queer porn from ethical sites like PinkLabel.tv (because ethical porn starts when we pay people for their embodied sexual labor).
This lunation also makes me think of what adrienne maree brown writes in Pleasure Activism, that “pleasure is a measure of freedom.” Access to pleasure is disproportionately distributed to different folks because of systems of oppression, ancestral trauma, and the traumas of living in an imperialist, colonialist, white supremacist, capitalist, hetero-patriarchy that is built on us believing that we are not enough, that we don’t have enough. So, this Full Moon is a good reminder to center pleasure in our own lives, because doing so is an act of resistance, a way of claiming our freedom. It’s also a reminder to center the pleasure of those who are most marginalized: in all this abundance, how can you make pleasure and feeling good more available to folks who live at the intersection of multiple systemic oppressions? What can you do to make space or be in service to the pleasure of others?
 
The Moon then makes a trine to Pluto in Capricorn, reminding us that pleasure and feeling good are necessary for personal and political transformation. Feeling good must be part of any revolution to create a world in which all of us have access to feeling good. Your pleasure and making pleasure available to those who are most marginalized are revolutionary acts. Finally, Mars in Libra makes a sextile to Jupiter in Sagittarius. This is the final aspect in this Mars/Jupiter cycle that began almost two years ago—January 6, 2018—and one of the last aspects to Jupiter during its time in Sagittarius. If you’ve spent the last year dreaming big, this aspect gives us the push to act. As adrienne maree brown said this weekend at the ASA Conference, “The future is always being practiced now.” What is the world in which you want to live, and how to you put it into practice today?