Written by Pacific Essences Facilitator and Distributor Matthew Wyman
Working with our astrological birth chart is a speedy way to gather insights into our gifts and our life challenges this time round. One of the most straightforward and powerful ways to do this is through exploration of our Moon sign, since the Moon mirrors our earliest emotional experiences, the programming we receive in the preconscious phase of our lives before we develop language and thinking, sometimes the effect of our birth or even pre-birth experiences. It also symbolises the lessons on how to survive, whether positive or negative, received from our mother and our maternal lineage. It therefore represents our default behaviour and our default responses.
Essences can support us in self-nurturing, embracing the more useful expressions of our Moon signs, and overcoming the habits that tend to trip us up. If you've never explored your astrological chart or Moon sign before, Astrodient is a free birth chart service to try.
Moon in Aries or Moon-Mars connections
Often this Moon placement reflects a rapid birth experience or one involving surgery or cutting. The default reactions to crisis is to meet it head on like the Ram of its symbol, angrily, rather than fearfully or passively.
Suggested Essences: Indian Pipe, Coral, Narcissus
The Aries Moon responds to stress actively, spontaneously and instinctively. Any kind of action will do, so long as it keeps away those unwelcome emotions.
Suggested Essence: Sea Palm
Moon in Taurus or Moon-Venus connections
The Moon loves to hang out in Taurus, in traditional astrology her sign of exultation. In the more useful expressions this is an early experience where the young child felt loved and nurtured and mother modeled patience and a developed sense of the right time to act, and how to enjoy the good things in life. However under stress the Bull can default to a very fixed, stubborn refusal to change.
Suggested Essences: Jellyfish, Surfgrass, Silver Birch, Starfish
Another challenge for Taurus is to overcome overattachment to the material, to overconsuming in order to stay safe and feel nurtured.
Suggested Essences: Douglas Aster, Yellow Pond Lily, Sponge
Moon in Gemini or Moon-Mercury connections
Here the young child was raised in an environment full of verbal stimulation, and so the default response to stress is to talk, or as Mercury’s yang expression, to research more information. Talk and analysis can be a way of rationalising away difficult emotions.
Suggested Essences: Goatsbeard, Anemone
Gemini sometimes struggles to see the wood for the trees, and is balanced by reaching for the intuition and the wider perspective of the opposite sign, Sagittarius
Suggested Essences: Ox-Eye Daisy, Blue Camas
Moon in Cancer
For the young Cancerian, mother was protective and nurturing and highly emotionally aware, Cancer is after all the Moon’s sign of rulership, where she feels most comfortable. However it is possible to overdo the emotional responses and go into overwhelm, anger rather than sulking and tears is sometimes appropriate.
Suggested Essences: Windflower, Urchin
The crab is sidewaysly mobile, typical lunar lack of courage can lead it to skirt the issues rather than facing them head on, and here we can treat like with like.
Suggested Essences: Hermit Crab, Cherry
Moon in Leo
Often this is an easy Moon placement, the infant is adored and the centre of the mother’s world. However in more difficult this can slide into self-absorption and narcissism, and is helpfully balanced with the opposite sign, Aquarius’ concern with others’ needs.
Suggested Essences: Harvest Lily, Coral, Sitka Spruce
The wounded Leo may struggle with the self-expression this Moon needs for self-care.
Suggested Essences: Weigela, Camellia, Bluebell
Moon in Virgo or Moon-Mercury connections
Virgo is the yin expression of Mercury, and here the young child often has a mother who models skill, craft and attention to detail, or in more difficult expressions is highly critical, judgmental and overthinks. Ideally the attention to detail needs to be balanced with the sense of service of the opposite sign Pisces.
Suggested Essences: Twin Flower, Pearly Everlasting
Similarly over analysis is helpfully balanced by learning to trust intuition.
Suggested Essences: Viburnum, Blue Camas, Whale
The perfectionist Virgo Moon can also drive itself too hard, so boosting self-acceptance can help overcome the tendency to overdo.
Suggested Essence: Vanilla Leaf
Moon in Libra or Moon-Venus connections
Libra energy, the yang expression of Venus, is all about affinity, connection and being in relationship. However the challenge is to balance the drive to connect with self-care, rather than becoming overfocused on others’ needs, and to take the needed action rather than being overwhelmed with the question of what others will think.
Suggested Essences: Indian Pipe, Grass Widow
Moon in Scorpio, Moon-Mars or Moon-Pluto connections
This is one of the most challenging Moon placements. Often it is associated with a birth experience full of crisis, one where the life of the mother or of the child is threatened. Alternatively, it can be a birth where the mother is overwhelmed with ‘adult’, intense emotions such as rage, jealously, or betrayal. The infant has no way to process these emotions and so suppresses them. The world is unsafe and a great deal of caution must be exercised in revealing oneself, for fear of existential annihilation. There are good reasons why Scorpio is traditionally the Moon’s sign of fall, in the sense of a place where she finds it difficult to operate easily. The go-to essences for Moon Scorpio therefore seek to support a sense of safety and address fears.
Suggested Essences: Urchin, Snowdrop, Fireweed
Scorpions are noted for their poisonous sting, and often there is a need to help defuse issues which have become life-and-death struggles for this Moon sign.
Suggested Essences: Salal, Plantain, Chickweed
Moon in Sagittarius or Moon-Jupiter connections
Here sometimes mother is experienced as larger than life, or a teacher or preacher, sometimes highly religious, or living in a foreign society, or the early childhood is one containing a lot of freedom and few restrictions. In general this is a Moon placement with a lot of enthusiasm, optimism and desire to explore. However all the philosophising can over-rationalise the feelings. In other more challenging expressions, over optimism can lead to gambling and other kinds of excessive risk taking. In both scenarios Essences promoting grounding and encouraging free emotional flow are beneficial.
Suggested Essences: Windflower, Narcissus, Snowberry
Moon in Capricorn or Moon-Saturn connections
Capricorn is the Moon’s traditional sign of detriment, and classically an experience of a difficult or delayed birth experience, an older mother or a mother who is so exhausted by the birth experience that the infant isn’t held during the first independent moments. So the early programming is ‘skin hunger’, if mother didn’t hold me, I can’t be good enough. This is deeply challenging emotional programming, a life sentence of being tried and found guilty by the inner judge. The response to perceived failure is to do more, so this placement often represents a treadmill of hard work. Essences to balance this are ones which promote self-worth.
Suggested Essences: Barnacle, Polyanthus, Sea Palm, Red Huckleberry
There is also a seriousness and highly developed sense of being the one who needs to take care of everything with the Capricorn Moon.
Suggested Essences: Dolphin, Hooker’s Onion
Moon in Aquarius, Moon-Saturn or Moon-Uranus connections
Although there is no traditional debility, the second of Saturn’s signs is also one where the Moon is not entirely comfortable. An Aquarian Moon in the more positive expression is the signature of an unusual mother and unconventional family structures. More normally though this is the signature of erratic nurturing in early childhood, with mother sometimes present and sometimes not. This leads to a tendency to mistrust emotions because they are not reliable and consistent, so the primary trait of the Aquarian Moon is to intellectualise. We might therefore choose essences which support experiencing feelings, and help us to let intuition balance analysis.
Suggested Essences: Moon Snail, Blue Camas, Grass Widow
Moon in Pisces, Moon-Jupiter or Moon-Neptune connections
Pisces as the final sign of the zodiac represents where we end and everything else begins, and the blurry line between the two. Sometimes this is the kind of pre-birth where the child in the womb is deeply aware of the mother’s feelings and vice versa. Boundaries are weak. As the child grows and separates from mother, this intuitive sense extends to others and to the environment, and so this placement can make it difficult to distinguish what comes from inside from what is being picked up from others.
Suggested Essences: Urchin
Using substances or addictive habits to block out intuitive overwhelm is sometimes a characteristic of this Moon placement, so essences which support the clarity of thinking of Pisces opposite sign, Virgo, as well as those which support strong willpower can be valuable.
Suggested Essences: Forsythia, Bluebell, Blue Lupin