Angular Moon types among the gifted

[Jim Eshelman]

I have an angular Moon and have known a lot of angular Moon men (and several Cancer Sun men) who have a pattern I well recognize in myself: Foreground Moon children are hyper-sensitive. It takes longer for their nervous systems to "click" that they are not literally the same as their mother. (I don't mean years, I mean extra months.) Most importantly, they respond (attentively and minutely) to every impression, psychological nuance, emotional shift and tone. It is this ability to be so minutely attentive to and responsive to other people's feelings, moods, psychic states, subtle impressions, etc., that often has them singled out as gifted early in life: Nearly every child whose chart I have that was in the early years of the Gifted Children's Society (that started in Southern California and spread to big cities around the country - parents with children who were miles ahead of their school grade and bored to tears, that were provided other options by the program) - nearly every one of these was an angular Moon child.

Two or three decades later, psychologists started writing that the old "gifted" category was not so much intellectual brilliance (though most of them had that, too) as this hyper-sensitivity to people, moods, and environments.

In fact, the majority of men with angular Moons, and a majority of Cancer men, come across as hyper-intellectual. You keep wanting to find the Mercury in the chart. It might be there but, primarily, the "intellect" is in their absorption, rapid adaptation, feeling and perceiving everything acutely AND THEN defending against it - an intellectual front, an insensitive wall, to ward away ALL THAT STUFF THAT'S BOMBARDING THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.

The most important thing to know, first, about such a boy is that he is picking up on and responding to everything.. Mother's moods, her shifting impressions, her opportunistic frustrations of the moment are going to be felt by the child as condemnation. "Condemnation" is not too strong a word for at least some of these inadvertent shifts of attention. Therefore, what's REALLY important from Mom in lunar children is authenticity. None of this, "I'm trying to be a good mother and, yes, I have other things on my mind and, yes, I need to put on a strong smile and pretend that in this very moment when I should be doing three other things, I'm here only for this crying child." No, authenticity is crucial, otherwise the child will be trained to trust neither the impressions nor the people. One needs to remain kind AND know that the child's whole nervous system will pick up on any well-meaning {bs} (without knowing it's well-meaning: that's a value judgment, and the ability for those hasn't grown yet).