Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Moonwalk: Pisces


© 2011 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved


While the picture for last month’s Moonwalk: Aquarius found me, searching for the right art to illustrate Pisces Moon this month was—illusive! This photo called me, in the end, because it had so many Piscean characteristics. First, it’s a little confusing and foggy. Are we in the sky or sea? There appear to be stars and the Moon peeking through, but last I knew; fish don’t fly. Initially, the swirling school looked like silhouettes of small Plecostomus fish I might find in my home aquarium. On closer look, they might be big—and sharks. Welcome to the gauzy world of Pisces Moon where one moment’s perception gives way to another and all things merge into a liquid sensory medium where it’s hard to know which end is up—or the difference between what is benevolent or a danger.

Moon to the Max

But that’s just the murky part. If you’re a Pisces Moon native, you also know the amazing benefits of this Moon configuration—one I consider “Moon to the max.” This is a sensitive, naturally intuitive Moon, often downright psychic. Kindness, compassion, and understanding are what calls to this individual—and to all of us when the Moon is Fishy. Among the deep feeling water Moons, these individuals tend toward artists, poets, musicians—and, yes, sometimes the drugs, alcohol, and sex-as-addiction side of ecstasy. Pisces Moons are often service-oriented and enjoy humanitarian careers—nursing, psychology, and counseling, as examples. Many people with Pisces Moon help others overcome addiction and a variety of other painful human conditions, working in various types of treatment programs. Others are clairvoyant to the point of being professional channels. The religious life is another path some follow. They are at home in open-ended realms like dreams and myth where meanings are indefinite and interpretations are in the eye of the beholder.

Pisces Moon, too, also tends to be romantic and tenderhearted. Like all planets in Pisces, the Moon especially, this is not an individual that normally does well with conflict. The “slippery” nature of Pisces Moon and sometimes lack of forthrightness by reputation often has more to do with avoidance of confrontation or disappointment than malice. This is made more difficult by Pisces’ well-known boundary issues. (See Boundaries 101 for more on this theme.) Pisces Moon merges so easily; it’s difficult to know where Self ends and Other begins. This is can be a challenge when trying to get an answer out of him or her. Pisces Moon sometimes doesn’t even realize you don’t already know the answer. (“Don’t you know how I feel?”)

Yin and Yang, Heaven and Earth

There is light and dark in all of us.  Pisces is the yin/yang symbol, where the darkness as a dot of light and the light has a dot of dark. Can you see the fish swimming in both directions? Read more about this culmination placement of the zodiac signs in my article, High Signs 3: Living on the Upside of the Zodiac.

When Sun and Moon conjoin and start the lunar month in Fish, as described in High Signs, we are all on a mission between bliss and grounding.

Bliss and Grounding could be the name of the two fish swimming in opposite directions in the Pisces symbol.

The mission of Pisces is to go to ecstatic states (Heaven) and bring the information and feelings encountered back to Earth. If this blog is The Radical Virgo, its complement is Radical Pisces—evolving toward the best of this two-way mission. While Pisces can sometimes struggle with grounding, Virgo is too earthbound and needs to get a little high now and then.

Regardless of whether or not you have planets in Fish, this month Pisces is highly emphasized. Let’s do an exercise to maximize our month in the aquarium or the deep blue sea, depending how broad or narrow you want to draw your Neptunian boundaries.

Pisces New Moon Pause-and-Ponder

1.    Where does the New Moon at 13+ Pisces fall in your chart? Which house?
2.    What does this say about where you should focus your intuition, creativity, compassion and bliss? Devotion?
3.    Close your eyes and think about what makes you ecstatic. Are you doing enough of this in your life? If not, how will you “get in the swim” for more of it this month?
4.    What can you create in the next 28 days that will make a difference in your little corner of the world or fish tank, including to you?
5.    What is your relationship to watery Pisces’ complement, the  Earth element, and the sign of Virgo? Are you dealing with necessary details in life? Are you feet on the ground?
6.    How deep is your ocean? How big is your sky? (This isn’t just an old song and a rhetorical question. Ponder the metaphor and the answers will be meaningful.)



Click to enlarge
This Month’s Pisces New Moon

In the opening paragraph, I talked about a school of fish. The gathering of Pisces in this month’s New Moon chart looks more like a university. With Chiron, Mars, Mercury, and Uranus all in the sign of the Fish along with the Sun/Moon conjunction, there’s a whole lot of swimming going on—fish and water everywhere. It’s a stellium aquarium.

The university metaphor may be right on the mark. After a close dance that included three exact conjunctions between June 2010 and January 2011, Jupiter separated from Uranus and moved forward into Aries on January 22. It’s almost as though the school of fish is chasing Jupiter, some fish more slowly than others, as each planet inches from Pisces to Aries. What do we do when good luck, benevolence, and Jupiter in his professorial teaching role are several steps ahead of us? How do we catch up, and what do we do while we’re waiting for some of these planets to shift from the End Sign of Pisces to the New Beginnings Sign of Aries?

The expression at the end of a movie comes to mind. “It’s a wrap!” Since Pisces rules film, it’s an apt allusion. What do you need to wrap in the next couple of weeks? Once the Sun arrives at the Cardinal 0-Aries point at Spring Equinox on Mar. 20, the sap rises in trees—and people. It’s time for planting new seeds. By Equinox, the only planets left in the large cluster of Fish from this New Moon will be Chiron at 2o and Mars at 20o Pisces.

Salving the Pain

What do the Fish left behind have in common? They are both wounders. As astrologer Wendy Ashley once noted, Mars was our planet of wounding before we had Chiron. Chiron stays behind in Pisces a long time, till 2019. Mars finally moves into Aries on April 1 this year. Between now and then, it’s an excellent time to ask yourself what old pain still lingers and what you need to do about it. In confrontation-resistant Pisces, Mars can fool you into denying anger and old injuries. (Perhaps it’s a cosmic joke, Mars moving into Aries on April Fool’s Day—denial over!) When these issues become clearer as Mars moves into its own sign—the one that’s at home with anger and aggression—Chiron in Pisces will help us gently find tools to salve any pain that remains behind as our teacher while we work on overcoming it—or living with any lingering residuals. These achy leftovers act like an old cowboy’s lumbago, warning him/us of upcoming storms.

Chiron Returnees

Many younger baby boomers, including President Barack Obama, will experience their Chiron Return while Chiron is in Pisces. This month’s New Moon chart offers us such a Fish feast, we are bound to encounter most, if not all the themes 50-somethings have to look forward to in their last major midlife transit before their second Saturn Return. As one of the boomers happens to be the leader of the free world, this might be a good time for a recap on why the Chiron Return is so important. It’s good to contemplate how this might influence world leadership.

Chiron pioneer Barbara Hand Clow speaks of the “maturing” transits as follows: Saturn Return (around age 30) is a physical crisis. The Uranus Opposition to itself (around 40) is an emotional crisis. She calls the Chiron Return (age 50-51) a consciousness crisis. [1] Imagine how much more a change in consciousness might be part of the curriculum in the sign of consciousness, Pisces.

The foregoing paragraphs put this month’s huge stellium in Pisces into a larger upcoming context. In the short-term, many people have felt “out of sorts” as we’ve approached this month’s New Moon, and as one friend put it, learning of the school of Fish starting to swarm, “No wonder I’m so emotional.” We’ll be in a feeling, sensing state during this New Moon which coincides with the end of winter. It’s a time to honor gut instincts. It’s not the time for being “out there.” It’s a time of being “in here,” (envision my saying that hand on heart), referring to an inner and contemplative orientation. It’s a time for meditation, merging into our Oneness, and touching that Bliss I talked about earlier as one of the seeds we can plant for our future. Watch carefully how world events reflect the one global family we are creating on the Internet, including the refusal to accept domination knowing how “the other half lives.” The quincunx Saturn makes to the Sun/Moon conjunction in this New Moon chart seems an understatement of the readjustments required in today’s world. As Pluto in Capricorn continues to break down so many structures that no longer work, humans are regrouping and groping for new ones that do.

Dark Before the Dawn of the Natural New Year

I’m sure I go on about this enough times every year to sound preachy, but it’s only because I’m still convincing myself, too, to be in better synch with nature. Winter is not for leaping tall buildings in a single bound. All of nature rests, and humans feel punk because they refuse to. Hard as it is to accept, we are mammals and are part of the animal kingdom. This may be one of the many reasons I resonate to the archetype of Chiron, who shows us in his mythical half-man/half-horse persona; we are still part of Real Nature.

Cut yourself some slack this New Moon. Gather seed energy, so that by the time of the Full Moon on Mar. 19 and the Vernal Equinox on Mar. 20, you’ll be ready for a major energetic shift.

These two weeks before official spring are similar to the Dark of the Moon—the end cycle. Spring Equinox is the Natural New Year, the best time for new beginnings of all kinds. We are entering the days of the finale of your annual movie. Part of your anxiety may be that time is running out for the wrap.

When “The End” appears on the screen of your mind, it’s your choice whether it’s happy, sad, poignant, or a cliff hanger. Take this time of wrap-up to heart, and you’ll have a better spring and new year than you ever imagined possible. With all this help from planets in Pisces, turn to dreams, poetry, music and your imagination for all the guidance you’ll ever need. These tools will help you turn in an academy award winning performance next year.

~~~


Photo Credit:  Deep Blue Sea © Barun Patro | Dreamstime.com


Note

[1] Barbara Hand Clow, Chiron: Rainbow Bridge Between the Inner and Outer Planets (Llewellyn: 1994), p. 33, Fig. 3, Major Life Cycles.

Salacia—News on a Female Sea Divinity

Just in time for this very watery New Moon, there’s a new trans-Neptunian dwarf planet finally named. Formerly known as 2004-SB60, the new object has been called Salacia. 

In Roman Mythology, Salacia is the female divinity of the sea, worshipped as the goddess of salt water who presided over the depths of the ocean. She was the wife and queen of Neptune, god of the sea and water.
Discovered on Sept. 22, 2004, Salacia’s orbital period is around 272 years. As a trans-Neptunian dwarf planet candidate, Salacia has to do with evolutionary intensification.

Since this new object was named after Salacia, a sea goddess, it may be similar to Neptune in regards to dissolution, imagination, inspiration as well as things involving water, sea, and ocean.

Some factoids: At the time of its discovery, Salacia’s Heliocentric Node was at 10o 13’ Capricorn. Its Perihelion is at 20 o33 Scorpio. This suggests that Salacia has Capricornian and Scorpion themes like ambition, concern about social status, transformation, and death/rebirth. The Sabian symbols for these points follow:

11 Capricorn: A Large Group of Pheasant On A Private Estate
The refinement and propagation of aristocratic values by means of which man participates in the evolution of life toward ever more perfect forms of existence.

21 Scorpio: Obeying His Conscience, A Soldier Resists Orders
A readiness to face the results of a refusal to follow the authoritarian patterns of an aggressive society.

Resources on Wikipedia

For more on the Dwarf Planets, read Alison Chester-Lambert’s Guest post, Five More Plutos?

~~~

Thanks to Raymond Andrews for permission to share this material with you from his cutting-edge Facebook site, Divergent Astrology. Divergent Astrology is an open group. If you're interestedin dwarf planets and newly emerging objects, check it out!


7 comments:

Astromama said...

I love your post n Pisces and the influx of Piscean energy. As a Virgo Sun and Pisces Moon I really connected with your descriptions. I really liked the list of questions That was a very effective way of getting people on different levels in astrology all thinking about the same things.

Thanks for your insights fellow Virgo.

Peace. Love. Light.
Astromama

Anonymous said...

Yes, I like the broad scope of your posts generally, and this one is so full of good advice for the weird watery-ness of now.
So cool about Salacia - although I am a Virgo with no planets in Pisces, there is water in my chart. Mermaid me happy to find Salacia snuggled in exactly between my Mars and NN. I just love asteroids and, well, all the new discoveries streaming in are amazing.

Thanks, Joyce.

Joyce Mason said...

Thanks, Astromama. Each Moonwalk is completely intuitive in terms of where I go with it. I just let the Moon and my feelings lead me, so it's good to get confirmation that the Moon knows what She's doing! :) These Moon walks take a lot of trust, and I only know when I've hit the mark from reader feedback. I so appreciate your taking the time to let me know!

Sabina, "weird watery-ness" is a very right-on description! Thank you for it. Couldn't believe I heard about Salacia in the middle of writing this post and how well it fit in. Glad she strikes a chord with you.

Anonymous said...

here here! as another super virgo/pisces moon, i like the idea that i live in my own fish tank- which i am trying to make as happy and beautiful as possible, since we all have to keep swimming around in what we create. at least until we learn to clean the tank. ha ha, fish poo- which also makes me think of one of my favoritest movies, Finding Nemo. now how pisces is that!
also, thanks for that brilliant lumbago comment. it helps me to appreciate that this pain that i must tolerate also serves to warn me when the barbs might be heading my way. i should tattoo that somewhere...

Joyce Mason said...

Hi, Anonymous! Well, you'll notice I saw the fish as Plecostomus (Plecostomii?), which are the cleaner-uppers in a fish tank. I don't think I realized how Virgo that is until this moment!

Thanks for taking time to comment! I think the figurative lumbago doesn't necessarily portend things that are awful but rather a change in weather. That's how the cowboys knew a storm was coming or some sort of barometric change--which is a change in pressure. Nowadays, change, the pressure of change, and the pressure to change are coming at us so fast, I'd hate to be one of those cowpokes! :)

Have a wonderful month and stay in the swim. Thanks for reminding us we get to create our space however we want it!

Lua Astrology said...

Really excellent and thought provoking post Joyce. I was stopped in my tracks when I read "How deep is your ocean? How big is your sky?" It made me consider how I always look to the sky, how I want to fall into it. Yet I only want to trail my hand along the water's surface event hough I'm fascinated by what may lie beneath. Thanks for making me really think!
By the way, we both chose Dolphins for our Moon posts. Must be something in the air :-)

Joyce Mason said...

Thanks, Leah, for letting me know this post was evocative for you! The artist who captured this school of fish did an excellent job of making it very Neptunian, indeed, since I saw a Plecostomus aquarium type fish in it, later a shark, and you saw a dolphin. I love dolphins!

Your comment is evocative for me, too, as I have a lot of fear of water and very little concern about the sky and anything it brings, including wild weather. I'm going to be thinking about that all weekend!

Wishing us both future scuba dives,
Joyce