If you have no concept or prior knowledge of what an Out of Bounds Moon is then this post should be read in conjunction with my earlier post on the topic; although I am only using this as a push-off into a much more broadly relevant topic than the apparent one on astrology (you require no interest in astrology to get something from this post). For the record, I am no a astrologer myself and have only the kind of interest in it that that waxes and wanes in an exaggerated way (from fascinated to completely disengaged for long periods), thus I had not given a lingering though to the Out Of Bounds Moon topic for quite some time when this train of thought spontaneously came to me.

I was listening to someone’s playlist of music of the 1970s when a song came up that reminded me of an artist I hadn’t given any thought to for decades. My curiosity piqued, as it often is when I listen to music, I went down a rabbit hole and found out that he was one of those supremely gifted individuals that can turn his hand to anything…making music of any genre, producing, presenting and more. He was also a prolific paedophile, which took me by surprise.

All this had happened since I last gave this person any consideration, decades ago, since I don’t tend to track current affairs very closely and this all came to a head 15 years ago. My immediate thought was “he has got to have an Out of Bounds Moon in his chart”. I haven’t confirmed or denied this as yet, though he was born in an OOB moon year (this year, by the way, is such a year; see my previous post for why that’s significant). Whatever, the reason for my thought is that having an OOB moon (I have one!) feels somehow freeing yet also somewhat like there being no moral or other rules that truly apply to you, as though you are somehow exempt, a bystander to everyone else’s constructs. Its also as though your parent wandered off or got distracted during your formative years (there was an element of that for me but I speak here of the much more abstract circumstance of your personality formation) and you were left free to make up all of your own from scratch; by observing and constructing from some slightly off to the side position on life, when everyone else seems to be caught up in the mosh-pit of it all.

This has an inbuilt sense of “limitlessness” (something I work very hard to preserve in my life) about it but a wise OOB individual will come to realise that its not a case of having no rules at all, since we all do better when we agree to be constrained by some outer limits, but of not accepting those presented to you automatically, mindlessly or without question. Rather, you survey them from an objective point of view, as though you were that OOB moon hovered right at the outer limits of its orbit, you could say “from the fringes of life”, from where you reevaluate them…and then, having observed, you set about adopting your own. Which is not to say you make up rules that serve only yourself but that you take on those more commonly held by others that have the general interest at heart…whilst questioning, even abolishing, those that make no sense or do harm. This is the OOB moon ideal scenario and may take a few decades to come into its zenith. At its best, it can make highly creative, paradigm shifting individuals out of us (see my other post for some well-known individuals with this trait) or it can implode, as a sense of not knowing what to do, where to go, how to fit in (a sense of too many possibilities can undo us all, in the end, if we don’t know how to handle ourselves; like a sort of lottery win of the psyche).

Of course, there is plenty of scope for an individual with an OOB moon to go completely rogue and self-serving, or develop some highly distorted ideology that seeks to sweep away whatever does not conform with their worldview. Astrologer Steven Forest, author of “The Book of the Moon: Astrology’s Lost Dimension” counts Hitler as an OOB moon personality though he was half a degree short. I’ve just discovered a certain present-day warmongering president whose name begins with P is an Out of Bounds Moon individual!

I’m suddenly reminded of a favourite story for reading outloud when my daughter was little, ‘Marvin Wanted More’, about the very hungry sheep who kept eating and eating until he swallowed the whole world! There can be an element of that ‘intense wanting’ to the OOB type personality, which can be turned to light or dark depending…as in, it can be driven towards doing great good for the world, or really not. The thing is, as the world loses its moral and other constructs, a lot of people (besides despots or those with an OOB Moon) are turning into mindless consumers!

So it seems an OOB trait moon can be a force for extreme light or dark, or perhaps a life-long wrestle between the two, depending on whose hands it is in. Einstein and Henry David Thoreau, who gave up the normal comforts of life and society to live at Waldon Pond, are examples of OOB moon individuals; Freddie Mercury and Kurt Cobain are a couple of others…

I personally feel the invitation of the OOB moon is not to go rogue but to assess it all and then come back to centre; to serve another ideal, one that has harmony and fairness to all life (including your own) as its pivot-point. Whereas it is all too easy to see that life as it is is anything but fair or altruistic, thus the world needs outliers to stand back and point out where things could be better.

In fact, the OOB trait seems to make natural outliers, watchers of the world and its people; perhaps we then tend to other traits that incline us to be those who stand patiently apart, nonplused with meaningless social niceties or trends, who prefer to work alone, to observe, to philosophise, to come up with our own systems, to suggest and innovate. I don’t claim to be a great mover and shaker as an OOB moon person myself but I have given my life to watching and deeply philosophising (from a very young age), putting my ideas out there, daring to stretch, weave and elaborate ideas that may contribute something to the themes of positivity I live for and then daring to live to my personal standards in my own somewhat nonconformist way. Meanwhile I prioritise doing good for the planet and those who share it.

The challenge is, what kind of person do you become in the end, if you feel cut loose (by the moon or anything else that might give you a powerful sense of unwavering structure that stays with you all your life)? If you lack supervision and guidance, a clear sense of a role model (like a kind of motherless child left to “parent” yourself…or be parented by the arbitrary) which do you become in the end…an unholy mess or an exemplar of a life well and fairly lived? That bit is up to us.

It feels timely to have rambled off along this thought-path just as I am reading the “warrior” technique part of Todd E. Pressman’s excellent book “Deconstructing Anxiety: The Journey From Fear to Fulfilment”. He advises (and I am paraphrasing very loosely) that whenever an action or thought feels compulsive to STOP doing what you were doing or thinking and don’t let it continue; in other words, FREEZE your next step and just be with the impulse until all of the compulsion has drizzled out of it…then and only then, move forwards to decide your next action or thought. It may be that you still want to proceed with what you were about to do or think, but at least it is now a conscious decision and not one driven by fear.

If you are already thinking “but my actions aren’t always driven by fear…” then think again, and look more deeply. If there is tension in your body, or if you feel you “ought” to do something (however big or small), then there is anxiety at work and this action is not coming from intrinsic “you” or from where you would naturally choose from, if all things were possible and you were free to go with your better, you could say more heart-centred, thoughts and actions. We live so much in this way that we hardly even notice we are doing it!

I suspect the OOB personality is one of the first to question this and come up with something different, hopefully to better themselves, perhaps even the world if they leave a mark (or, to potentially abuse the fact that so many other people fail to notice their conditioned motivations, if they are that way inclined). All my life, I have been playing some sort of a witness to my actions and, hard though it has been, it feels like it has got me to somewhere I might not otherwise have reached by now, for which I am deeply grateful.

In these confusing times, I think a lot of us feel profoundly cut loose, without a moral or even logical framework by which to modulate our behaviours. Our culture is driven by compulsions of all kinds, mostly those that lead back to fear in all its disguises. If we were to dig to the roots of most of our behaviours, we would discover some anxiety there, that if we didn’t do “this” then “that” would happens. Without the structures once provided from cradle to grave by religious belief and a far simpler construct of what life is all about, many feel lost and all at sea.

This is the natural state of the OOB personality, speaks one who has always felt this way, since long before any curiosity about astrology was piqued. The discovery of astrology isn’t the reason I am this way (or for this post) but it helps to give form to an otherwise abstract construct; one that I suspect far more of us are feeling in these times…as in, cut loose, meaningless, lost, purposeless, confused. Oh yes, I have been there…I suspect, all all my life!

Yet it is also an opportunity; a great opportunity to do great good. If only we could all come back to this simple process of pausing before we act, to let the compulsion behind the action or thought soften and release its grip on us and then…only then…putting our next best foot forward, think how different the world could be. Food for thought, I felt, and so this post is my offering.