Thursday morning, we follow the Moon into a labyrinth of dreams.
The Moon’s semisquare to the Sun marks the opening of the Balsamic phase.
The Moon is losing her light and will soon be dark, before the New Moon. It’s a time of letting go. We release what is finished, or what no longer helps us.
This Moon nears the end of the second decan of Pisces. Jupiter rules this decan, ready to bestow boons, if only we can solve the riddles–we are challenged with integrating the world and the cosmos, the everyday with the numinous.
This second decan can be a tricksy place, where things shift and change in their appearance or meaning. We’ll need to be on our toes.
We might say the language of this middle section of Pisces is the language of dreams.
Have you ever kept a dream journal, and gone back months or even years later to reread it? The images can seem strange, incoherent, and at the same time, oddly meaningful. It’s not unusual for a dream to make more sense when we reread it that when we first dreamt it.
The Moon at 19º Pisces moves to conjunct Ceres, the fierce mother of Persephone, the goddess of spring who turned away from green and growing things when her beloved daughter disappeared.
Next, the Moon will reach the triple conjunction of North Node, Venus, and Saturn. There is so much desire here. A tantalizing sense that we can have what we want, except for the insidious appearance of Saturnian limits.
The Moon will then cross the zodiacal boundary into Aries, to meet Mercury, and then Chiron and Eris.
We see what’s happening. The Moon recapitulates where we’ve been these last months as one planet after another moved through this crowded borderland. The Moon is our Balsamic guide.
Perhaps, instead of dreamscapes, we navigate a memory palace. This technique, known to the classical Greeks and Romans, popular in the Renaissance, involves creating (or remembering) a richly detailed space in our memory. We “store” each thing we need to remember in a special location, creating a unique link between something in our palace and the thing to be remembered,
What have we stored in Pisces’ memory palaces? As we move through this shifting landscape over the next few days, we stumble across memories of Venus retrograde, Mercury retrograde, Neptune’s final time in her watery home, and Saturn’s inexorable journey toward Aries.
What do we let go of? What to we hold on to? Only we know for sure.
The Sun in early Taurus holds the T-square with Mars and Pluto. The final exact opposition arrives April 26, less than a day before the New Moon. The Sun shows us possibilities here, for good or ill. We must consider what might happen.
Whatever that is, the Balsamic Moon can help us be ready. Whatever we can release, we should. It may help us get over rough ground lightly.
Consult your dreams. Revisit memories. Sort the true from the false, the valuable from the worn out, the gold from the dross.
The North Node in Pisces could make it difficult to let go: Usually this is the place where we want more, and then more again.
Yet this too can be helpful. Remember the zen monk who poured tea into a student’s cup until it overflowed. The lesson was, only an empty cup can be filled with new things.
Follow your thread. Remember. Dream. Let go.
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