A Full Moon Reverie: Meaning and the Big Other
Aries and 'me.' Libra and 'we.' With the Earth bookended between these two cardinal signs, we're reminded that we're all Earthlings floating in the mystery of space—together.
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YESTERDAY’S FULL MOON IN ARIES highlighted what occurs during every full Moon, when the Earth becomes the fulcrum between the two luminaries that keep everything humming on our planet. Placed in the signs Aries and Libra, this realization is made more emphatic—undeniable. The cosmic message reads: We’re individuals who are dependent on others for our survival. Not just physically, but psychologically. As organic beings, we are participants in a grand reciprocal exchange of forces and energies. We are alone (Aries) together (Libra).
The Sun and Moon’s light nourishes us in literal and secret ways, some obvious, some subtle and esoteric. What we forget is that we owe something of our presence back to the ‘lights.’ To participate consciously with this arrangement—through meditation, contemplation, study, or some creative outlet—is to be conscious of the bigger picture and to give thanks for the bodies we were bequeathed by the Earth—our original Mother. Probably the greatest form of ‘inner work’ that we can do is to try to disrupt the entrenched illusion of Self and Other.
We read reality incorrectly when we assume that we ‘came’ into this world as if we were outsiders arriving by boat. We are born from the Earth, just as an apple is a natural expression of an apple tree. And so, we are Earthlings. Our mother and father are/were Earthlings. And at each full Moon we’re reminded of this procession. Especially if you are fortunate enough to live in an area where you can observe the simultaneous set and rise of the Sun and Moon on the horizons—during a full Moon lunation. You can’t escape the potency and poetry at play watching these two magnificent beings communicate with each other through the intermediary of the Earth. Which is to say, you.
The atmosphere seems to lean toward each luminary, as if the Earth is paying homage. And you might feel yourself bending or bowing as well, tugged into the biospheric tide. I love taking a long walk during the time of the Moonrise; it’s a peripatetic ritual that reawakens the primordial heart and mind—ancient-seeming, mysterious, and rejuvenating. The photo above was taken yesterday, not long after the Moon cleared the horizon off the island.
The cardinal signs of the Zodiac are the most definitive when it comes to our central life experiences (or orientations) as Earthlings. The Self (Aries), the Other (Libra), the private Self (Cancer), and the public Self (Capricorn). You could also read these four directions, respectively, as. Me. We. Home. Career. Anyone consulting an astrologer will usually have these four points as central to their inquiry.
You can also view the polarity of Aries and Libra as echoing common mythological tropes of binary opposition: light/dark, life/death, etc. In fact, it is the Aries-Libra polarity that establishes the underlying structure or impulse to all the binaries within the Zodiac. And of course, within the Tao, it is the toggling of the yin-yang that guides the ‘process’—another word that is often used in lieu of “the way” when translating the word Tao.
Human beings emulate the Earth,
The Earth emulates the heavens,
The heavens, emulate way-making,
And way-making emulates what is spontaneously so.
—Tao De JingThe Aries-Libra lunation illuminates, or reminds us of, the predicament of tribalism. A distortion we’re living through and witnessing at a hypermanic level all over the globe now. Of course this is the oldest impasses in human history. The more uncertain I am of my authority, the more I cling to family and tribe to help shore up and help me reassert my rule, to secure my place. Existentially, we each harbor fears of what the world is about beyond everything that is familiar. And over time, everything beyond the familiar becomes the Big Other.
The philosopher Slavoj Žižek defines the Big Other as an externalization of our “inner ideological failure—the way we invent an ultimate evil to sustain our fantasy of a meaningful struggle.” As creatures who are aware of our imminent death, purpose and meaning become all-encompassing rationales for almost everything we do. I mean, what was life all about if at the end it didn’t have ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’? But then if we observe other expressions of nature—the plants and the animals that share the planet with us—are they driven by meaning or purpose, or are they simply being? This is a real question to contemplate.
Meaning becomes the stories we tell ourselves, the rationalizations we invent to shore up the habit of trying to explain the mystery of life—which, simply put, is, what is this all about? Going back to Žižek again, it’s easy to understand—with our obsession with meaning—why xenophobia isn’t easily resolved, especially when you consider the fuel it provides for our ‘meaningful struggle.’ You can see how we’re trapped in this equation.
The Aries and Libra lunations allow us two opportunities each year to place ourselves in the middle of the seeming division—that Self/Other polarity. And this is the secret of the dichotomy as it applies to the ‘meaning’ question. For the Self, the resolve—the ‘meaning’—is found in the Other.
What I ‘mean’ by that is, if you stop and take a step beyond your own self-circulating, self-palpating concerns—if you can stop and observe someone across from you, you should be able to note the thousand and one ways you are the same. We have told ourselves different stories, in that Aries way of self-mythologizing. But anctually our needs are the same, the instincts are the same, and the response to kindness and love is the same.
This is why I do most of my writing in my favorite coffee shop on the island. I’m surrounded by other Earthlings, and I’m reminded that the details in our historical narratives are different, but we’re each living together within the same mysterious story, not different in significant ways at all.
Crimped then whole,
Warped then true,
Hollow then full,
Modest then satisfied,
Demanding then bewildered.It is for this reason that the sages grasp oneness
To be shepherds to the world.Those who are not self-promoting are distinguished,
Those who do not show off shine,
Those who do not brag have lots to show,
Those who are not self-important are enduring.It is only because they do not contend
That none are able to contend with them.Isn’t what the ancient called ‘giving up the crimped for the sake of the whole’
Getting close to what these words mean!
This expression indeed says it all.—Tao De Jing
Love,
Opening photograph by FW, ©2025 Nightcharm, Inc.
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