The Play's the Thing - Getting Creative about Deconstructing the Pride/Shame Matrix, Realizing Real Sovereignty in Our Lives

This Leo Full Moon is going to help us transform in important ways, to step into our sovereignty in our lives, to engage difficult material creatively, even playfully... but there are some potential pitfalls as well as positive potentials here.

This time is challenging us to see where we may be putting on a brave face to compensate for some perceived failing or deep insecurity. People may be lashing out egotistically at this time, and the Internet is going to probably be particularly polarizing. Pluto conjunct the Sun, opposite the Moon and square Jupiter is stirring up some deep stuff, and it might be more than usually on display right now, especially with Mars conjunct Mercury and square Chiron.

It's a time to be honest with ourselves about our real feelings about the grand act we are all participating in, to be somewhat playful within that, not to take it too seriously, and thus paradoxically find real belonging and real action in our very real lives. We can use the power of Pluto in Aquarius to get some perspective before diving headlong into over-identification with an argument. Take a step back, take a breather, and remember you are the one calling the shots in your own being.

There may be a swinging pendulum here between disassociation and action, and Jupiter in Taurus is going to help us ground into what's needful while also stirring up some larger-than-life feelings and occurrences. Go get some tea, eat a dang crumpet.

Ultimately this is a time when we can actually step out of the matrix of pride and shame (two sides of the same coin) and into an understanding of true sovereignty and creativity in our lives.

So let's explore that.

Sovereignty is not where others give us blind allegiance just because we exist, it doesn't mean that we should become tyrants, suppressing any dissonance or discord, refusing to acknowledge problems or pain~ and nor does it mean taking everything on and being crushed under the weight of our perceived failings.

Sovereignty means taking radical responsibility for that which is within our personal sphere, cultivating a deep sense of strength in knowing that we belong to ourselves and to the places and people in our lives. It means that we are responsible to ourselves and to them. Our responsibility to and belonging in our lives brings a humility and a strength that isn't easily sabotaged by pride or shame. Like go butter the crumpet, you'll feel better.

Leo is Fixed Fire: fire that remains in one place, as bright and strong as the Sun, an endlessly giving life-force which never doubts its identity (it never has time for that nonsense, too busy giving and shining, thank you!). Fixed Fire also calls forth the idea of a fire that is rooted to a single source, flickering on a single log, like Calcifer (of Howl's Moving Castle.. I'm really going to town with the Ghibli references lately!), who when unmoored from his hearth becomes extremely vulnerable.

Fixed Fire (Leo) as well as Fixed Air (Aquarius) have a certain vulnerability, precisely because of their distancing (dissociation) from, and closeness to/reliance on themselves... They can be brittle and sensitive underneath their respective strength and aloofness, because the world turning around you, or being so far out that you become detached from the world, can both present problems.

The Heart of your life, Leo and the Sun are calling you home, to do justice to yourself through remembering what you center around, and what centers around you. Rooting in that. Jupiter in Taurus is a really grounding energy here actually, even though it will also blow up and expand some issues and some egos. It's a lot of material for that fire to chew on!

Leo wants to show a brave face to the world, thinking that being the Queen/King of their world, they can't afford to show weakness... they can become over-invested in being the center and forget to shine. Aquarius may not care what the world thinks, is placidly observing and choosing (with supreme disdain) what it will or will not engage with... but in that observation, it sees too much and becomes vulnerable by the sheer amount of information it is consuming/accessing/processing. They need to balance one another out.

This means participating with creativity and joy in the full spectrum of life, both observing and acting.

Aquarius rules the Internet, is "the audience".. and the antidote to an imbalance here, or getting trapped in the mind, endless scrolling... the antidote is active participation in the world, shining your light, being creative and active, giving from your heart, a la Leo (the performer to Aquarius' audience). Make a post, don't just read them!

The performer/audience axis must be balanced appropriately. We need to act in our own lives, participate in our own dramas, not just let it pass us by.

Be the sovereign in your own life. Be the Star (that's what you are!).

This Full Moon's tightest aspect is Mars in Capricorn square Chiron in Aries. Venus in Capricorn is also participating in the quincunx picture, and all this very activated Capricorn energy, along with the Chiron signature, is why I bring up the subject of shame... Something that is overall quite foreign to Leo, being more on the Pride end of the spectrum, but which Capricorn knows well (Capricorn is quincunx, Virgo semi-sextile, Scorpio square Leo~all acquainted well with shame).

But this is the magic of totally disparate energies combining and activating one another; we get to use the strangeness, the dissonance, to cultivate some radical new energetic pathways in our lives and to solve some real problems in creative ways.

Through tackling some difficult and dark subjects (such as over-doing it ego-wise, as Jupiter square Sun/Moon is prone to do) creatively, even playfully--by engaging with the drama of the material of our lives--that could be through some form of art therapy, or just working with ideas and behaviours in a more playful, engaged, direct way--we can heal from a lot of things.

That's the magic and power of Leo: it burns away shame through showing us that everything is occurring on a grand stage, it is all roles that we are playing, and this lets us harness that creativity, that impulse towards joy and play to transform some very real things in our lives.

Play doesn't have to be 'haha' fun, it can be serious. If you've ever seen children running around with sticks in their hands, or puppies play-fighting, you know how real play can get! We push it to the outer edge to find out where our boundaries are.

I sat and drew a lot last night, and some powerful feeling archetypes came through, such as a woman who reminded me a lot of Sedna... Sedna, currently at 29 Taurus about to make an enormous leap into Gemini (more on this later), really helps us transform shame energetically, and step into sovereignty and personal responsibility. She is an Indigenous (Inuit) Goddess, whose name was given to a deep space being that orbits far beyond Pluto.

Sedna's father cast her from a boat in a storm, believing the storm was caused by something she did--in some stories, this was marrying an animal unknowingly. She tried to get back on board, and her cut off her fingers, hands, and arms, which were immediately transmogrified into seals, whales, narhwal... She became a Goddess of the deep, sheltering these creatures in her hair.

Sedna's journey from the personal realm of human shame constructs into the deep transpersonal nature-realm made her into the Sovereign of the Sea, the one who protects all the Sea Animals from hunters who do not give their bodies the proper respect. She became a teacher, a protector, a sovereign.

How are you becoming sovereign in your own life? What transformations, contradictions, and challenges are you transforming into potent responsibility to yourself? How are you cultivating creativity, play, and joy in the midst of all this?