We’re in transition. In fact, we are in more than one transition. It’s a time of changes, some cyclical, some epochal, some (I hope, anyway) irreversible.
With this New Moon in Pisces, it will take careful discernment indeed to tell one from the other. And perhaps a key perspective at this lunation is that we cannot. Boundaries are dissolving. One thing morphs into another.
We’re not sure what is real, and even the idea of reality itself seems fluid. Changeable.
There’s also a sense of reversals. At the last Full Moon, my keyword was “Seed.” For Virgo, that felt apt. We were shown which seeds held future potential and which did not.
Now here is a New Moon, traditionally a time for planting seeds, and my key phrase is “Full Circle,” also fitting for this time.
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The Sun and Moon sit with Venus and Neptune, all in late Pisces. Neptune and the Sun reached their exact conjunction yesterday. Venus and the Sun will finally meet in early Aries. But they are all close, communing, sharing. Here too is a dissolution of boundaries.
This time feels full–of potential, possibility, dreams and also memories, possibly regrets, nostalgia, and longing.
“Full” is an old, old word that has always meant what it means. One of those seed concepts. The Old English meaning is construed as “containing all that can be received.”
Which brings in the idea of what we are open to receiving. What can we receive? What are we prepared to accept? To consider? To believe in?
What does a world without boundaries look like? Well, in one literal sense, we can never know.
Gregory Bateson, who did not get everything right but was an incisive and expansive thinker, pointed out that our ability to perceive relies on the capacity to notice difference. In other words, we must make distinctions among things. Otherwise, everything is an undifferentiated continuum.
He goes on to say that the distinctions we perceive are chosen, made up, and not inherent in the world. We, individually and collectively, decide where blue ends and green begins–a distinction not all cultures make, by the way.
Some distinctions seem built in to in our physical bodies, but even that is tricky to prove. Languages are built around fundamentally different distinctions among sounds that native speakers will easily learn from birth and outsiders may not be able to hear at all.
We learn to see, hear, taste, smell and touch. They are not as ‘given’ as we might like to think.
One possibility at this New Moon is to consider whether our categories are serving us. Yes, we need to classify things to apprehend the world. But there is nothing sacred about one way over another.
We may be used to questioning the utility of classification systems: Are they useful? Are they valid? Are they reasonable?
At this New Moon we might ask: Are they kind? Are they beautiful? Are they true?
I am now taking a class on how to construct astrological charts by hand. There’s a lot of calculating. In retrospect, this was not the best choice during this intensely Piscean season.
It’s worthwhile peeking under the hood, so to speak, but I find myself wondering more about where logarithms came from than how to add and subtract them. And how the Akkadians calculated charts before anyone thought of latitude, or longitude, or time zones.
It’s good to remember that astrology is a constructed thing, invented as a way to measure and explicate our connections with the cosmos.
“Measure” is another ancient word that has always meant what it means. It refers to the idea of setting a boundary or limit.
So, there are many ways to measure, and while some seem to work better than others, none are given. The cosmos is immeasurable in many senses of the word.
Astrology is a way of saying “you are here” and trying to understand what that means. I find it fascinating and deeply insightful. It is, though, only one of many ways.
So we find ourselves within cycles, circles, and loops. The lunar cycle begins again. The Sun continues the daily round.
We’re also at the end of the cycle of the zodiac. In a few days, the Sun enters Aries, initiating a new circle through the signs. We will be renewed, charged up with fresh fire. Ready to move, act, engage, expand.
This New Moon is the perfect time to feel all the ending kinds of feels: Impermanence, uncertainty, dissolution and the potent potential of what is not yet known. All things and no things are possible now.
This Piscean energy has been with us for a while now. We’re not feeling very grounded, in the usual sense of that word. Our feet might be nowhere near earth. We may have grown wings. Or fins.
The only planets in Earth in the New Moon chart are Pluto and Uranus, neither of whom cares that much about staying grounded. The Pisces group applies to sextile Pluto, highlighting the transformational time we’re in.
Perhaps the concept of being grounded is also worth examining. Is keeping things solid, firm, well established always a good idea? Is Earth the most important element? What would it feel like to be grounded in Air, Fire, or Water? What would we call that?
I like the idea of becoming adept, a word that implies having reached a level of skill and attainment. This New Moon offers a wonderful chance to explore what it might mean to become adept in navigating cosmic waters. What might that feel like? How would you approach it?
Chris Brennan’s most recent episode of The Astrology Podcast is an interview with Israel Ajose, President of the Astrological Lodge of London, about the Moon. It’s a wonderful interview. I recommend it.
I’d like to bring in one idea Ajose shared during the talk, which is that the condition of our Moon says something about what we experienced before birth, while we were in the womb.
This is worth considering in our birth charts and for now, I’d suggest that this Pisces New Moon creates wombs for us all. A shared space of becoming that we each experience in our own way.
We’re about to be reborn into a new life, a new home, a new cycle. In these last hours of the dark Moon, we can still ask, what is moving out of my life now? What is completed?
What am I ready to empty so I can be filled by this potent and magical New Moon?
The astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title,
adapted from the night sky by photo-nic.co.uk,
and the following images:
bubbles by Kyrylo Kholopkin,
Stonehenge by K. Mitch Hodge, and
a nest by Mateusz Stępień