Full Moon Reflections (printable)

Pisces, as we saw at the New Moon, completes the zodiacal round. The forms and attachments created in this cycle are allowed to dissolve. Hierarchies and distinctions that served us well in former times now give way to a renewed sense of unity with our fellow beings and a readiness to abandon ourselves to the flow of life. Now, at this last Full Moon before the Spring Equinox, we begin to sense the shape of things to come. For the waters of Pisces not only dissolve the old but incubate the new. The Virgo Moon is that first bit of dry land sighted by the dove after Noah’s flood, or the tiny bit of mud under the fingernail of the deep-diving animal in creation myths, signaling the promise of a foothold in a new world.

This Full Moon, all the planets except for Neptune and Pluto are in Earth and Water signs. Sun, Mercury, Saturn and Uranus are in Water, while Moon, Venus, Mars and Jupiter are in Earth. This gives us an unusual opportunity to observe the interactions between these two elements in a fairly unobstructed way. But what are these "elements"?

The idea of fundamental substances goes back in the Western tradition to early Greek thought. Empedocles, who lived in the fifth century BCE, theorized that there are four fundamental kinds of matter out of which everything is composed. He called them "roots" and regarded them as deities. According to Empedocles, everything we can see or touch is the result of combinations of these elements effected by the two contrary forces of Love and Strife.

This way of picturing the world is both empirical and metaphorical. If we observe things closely we find that some of them flow, some flame up, some are solid and stable, and some are invisible and subtle. We also see how each of these affects the others: water moistens or erodes solids, earth absorbs and contains fluids, fire makes water boil, water puts out fire, air feeds flame or stirs up water, and so on. The marriages, divorces and metamorphoses of these four principles were for thousands of years considered sufficient to account for the complex world we see around us. They were fundamental to the thinking of scientists, philosophers and physicians. Astrology and alchemy could not be imagined without them.

Today’s chemistry is, of course, based on elements of a different sort, but we should not think that the classical substances have become irrelevant. Though left behind by scientific theory, they remain powerful in shaping our imagination of reality. The French philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) maintained that the Four Elements still describe the world as we actually experience it, and especially as we dream it. Bachelard wrote several books on the Elements, showing their immense poetic force. In Water and Dreams, he gave special attention to the alchemy of Earth and Water. When mixed together, these two produce a clay or paste which immediately activates the deep imagination. As we work the clay (or dough or potting soil) with our hands, we are carried beyond our usual concern with forms to an intimate knowledge of the materials themselves and their complex interactions. The marriage of Water and Earth cannot be grasped fully except through the hand, which Bachelard says "helps us to understand matter in its inmost being."

The effects of one Element on another were well known to the alchemists. A prime objective of their work was expressed in the formula "Solve et coagula," "Dissolve and coagulate." Water breaks down Earth by dissolving or eroding solid forms. But then it becomes a binder, making possible the creation of new forms. In Michael Maier’s great alchemical music book Atalanta Fugiens (first published 1617) we find an engraving of the potter at the wheel. "Let the work of the potter, consisting of the dry and the wet, teach you," says the heading. The verse reads:

It would be difficult to find a text better suited to this Full Moon. With these two elements so strong and balanced, we can look beneath the myriad forms of our lives (jobs, houses, relatives, plans, bills, goals, deadlines), and even the specifics of planetary placements, and pay attention to the fundamentals of Earth and Water, of which all these forms are made. One secret of alchemy is that a problem which cannot be solved at the level of form may yield at the elemental level. For your meditation this month, then, let your hands get into mud, clay, paste or pastry. Notice how the wet and the dry can undo each other but also temper and bind each other. Then reflect on your life and the state of the world. See where things are softening, absorbing, dissolving, melting, eroding, or subtly beginning to form a moist medium that could be shaped into something new. Allow your hands to dream the new forms into being.

1. Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, translated by Edith R. Farrell (Dallas: The Pegasus Foundation, 1983), chapter 4. Originally published in 1942 as L’eau et les Rêves, Essai sur l’imagination de la matière.

2. Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens, translated and edited by Joscelyn Godwin (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1989), p. 135.

3. M. R. Wright (ed.), Empedocles: The Extant Fragments (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1981).