New Moon in Pisces

Pisces New Moon, 13 March 2021

Hi ya’ll… before getting into the upcoming New Moon I wanted to put some context around what is happening on the collective level astrologically this year. There is always more going on than what I have space to write about, and so I’ve tried to keep the focus on the New Moon. I think though, that our own individual journeys are often best navigated when held in the context of a larger picture. And since this New Moon is in Pisces, which is all about the context of connectivity it seems apt to give a bit more background this month.

The big activity this entire year is the square between Saturn (structure, authority, duty responsibility, linear time, cause and effect) and Uranus (left field, rebellion, individuality, surprises, lightening, technology). Saturn inspires form, while Uranus inspires change. When these energies integrate there is potential for a lot of growth and evolution. Squares however are two energies coming at 90 degrees to one another… they often feel like they are t-boning into one another. We struggle the most with squares, but we often learn the most with them too. You will hear folks spending a lot of energy talking about how hard squares are. Its true for sure, but it also misses the point. All aspects are essentially about integration – that is their goal. How to get two energies right angles to integrate? That is the question of the square. The interesting thing about this square, is that Saturn is in Aquarius (where Uranus is very comfortable) and Uranus is in Taurus (where Saturn is also comfortable). This makes them more able to relate and thus softens the inherent tension. The Saturn-Uranus square this year calls for us to pay attention because someplace where we are stuck and slow to change or are stubbornly limiting ourselves (Taurus), is receiving a stimulating jolt or surprise for the purpose of change and individuation (Uranus). Simultaneously in the areas where we can be overly mental or cold or not very practical or tangible (Aquarius), we are being brought up short through some form of real life limitation or duty in order to ground us and also to force us to take better responsibility for ourselves and our actions (Saturn). Its like expansion and contraction of energies are happening to us on conflicting fronts at the same time and it can feel that we are being tortured with no clear direction forward. But think of metal in a forge being heated and folded and pounded and heated again….over and over. The point of this process is to slow us down, to keep it real and honest. The result of this heating and pounding will be to clarify our commitments, strengthen our integrity. At the end of the day this square is about shifting power structures and how we interact with them (Uranus in Taurus) to better integrate communal responsibility (Saturn in Aquarius). How we address these topics as they arise in our personal lives will have big implications on the vibration of the collective, which is what happens when transpersonal planets like Uranus engage with the gatekeeper of the earth plane (Saturn). We will undoubtedly see this energy playing out on the global field. And it will be particularly relevant for anyone who has planets in the early degrees of any fixed signs. This square is active all year but you might notice it most when it is nearest to exact (17 Feb 2021, 15 June 2021, 24 December 2021 - there is one more a close but not precisely exact conjunction 1-12 October 2022). More often than not, it is not the exact moments when we feel the intensity of an aspect, but rather when it is triggered for us by a faster moving personal planet.

Ok, so this upcoming New Moon is in Pisces. This is the energy of Mutable Water. Mutable, again means changing, moving – in the process of transformation. Its form is flexible, and thus its ideas about itself are flexible too. Water rules the realm of the emotion and feeling. Water signs are often quite intuitive, because like water, they are very conductive. Water itself is also often moving and formless, so mutable water is an amplification of these qualities. Mutable water is thus incredibly transforming, incredibly non-attached. Think of that point of ‘in between’ – like when the organism is not quite a caterpillar anymore but not yet a butterfly or that space in where something might not be dead, but is not alive either. This is often the state of ripe fruit plucked from the vine and sitting on your table offering itself to you. Because of this ‘in between state’, there are many doorways available to mutable water energy. This is perhaps why Pisces naturally rules the 12^th house, which governs the ending of cycles, where ego and attachments dissolve and are stripped away. Ideas matter less and less, and feelings more and more.

The goal of Piscean energy is to soften and become porous because ultimately Piscean energy is the embodiment oneness. The opening and releasing of form or ideas are so that we awaken to the energetic truth that everything is connected; that there is no separation. Piscean energy teaches unity consciousness… something very difficult, but very necessary for the little human animal who has been so steeped in separation consciousness.

This New Moon opens pathways of possibility for remarkable transformation through radical release. It is both soft and deep. So go and spend time in or around water, floating if you can – allowing yourself to have no agenda but to feel and experience the moment. Imagery along these lines will also help facilitate entry into this energy. Likewise you can imagine yourself sloughing off your skin, shedding your ideas, letting go of your beliefs, even dissolving your form. Chanting Om, just that – lengthening the ‘mmm’ so that you feel the vibration in your bones, releasing all the breath out of your lungs as you do so. Also try to give yourself more time when you are bathing, just be there feeling the water running over you and imagine thought forms and beliefs washing off of you just like dirt would. You can say out loud ‘i release anything and everything that does not serve my highest evolution’. Think of the Grand Canyon and feel the enormous potency of moving water. Feel the porousness of your own temporal existence. You are not your form, you are not your thoughts or even your beliefs. The essence that is you, is much, much larger and has almost nothing to do with ‘you’ at all.

Intentions along these Piscean lines are really about moving with the flow of whatever is happening around you in the moment. There are times to practice having good boundaries – Piscean energy is not one of them. Here its about merger, allowance, flow. You can practice this in everything you do throughout the day. Noticing your resistance where ever you find it or whenever you pull away, and try to soften there however you can. Notice when you are attaching to an agenda or a story or idea and try to let go and see what happens in your experience when those attachments aren’t factors for the moment itself. Maybe you ‘can’t’ let go. That’s ok too. Just be there with that, feel into your own resistance and soften your judgment about it by noticing more deeply, becoming more curious and allowing yourself feel whatever feeling comes up. A mantra I often use throughout the day when I am practicing with mutable water is: ‘Go with the flow. Roll with the punches. Embrace the unknown.’ I sing it as a little song on repeat and just let it play in the background of the entire day. I’ll actively pick it up when I am driving or walking or doing the dishes – just using it to softly keep the thought process of monkey mind ‘distracted’ and to help keep me focused on the feelings of release and allowance.

How can you let more in? How can you let more out? How can you become more and more aware of the membranes that keep you separate? How can you become more porous? This intrinsically means noticing your judgments. It means letting yourself off the hook and also letting others off the hook. It means letting life just be what it is. Allowing it to be complicated, sticky, messy, scary – whatever. This New Moon is about softening into the reality of our feelings and giving ourselves permission to really feel deeply into them – AND practice not doing a single thing about it. When we can learn to sit in this space – this curiously uncomfortable space of wide open allowance and feeling, and just be there, breathing one moment to the next, a radical transformation happens on an energetic level.

As for ritual, I would recommend exploring deeply and pushing your edges around your personal and global suffering through a Buddhist practice called Tonglen. I am including two of my favorite Buddhism teachers speaking on and teaching Tonglen (Pema Chodron – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x95ltQP8qQ and Tara Brach – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apQS0St3PKY). If these teachers don’t resonate for you, there are many Tonglen teachings available online. An important thing to remember with Tonglen practice is that if during the practice (or at the end of the practice) you feel a predominance of heaviness or sadness or weightedness, you most likely need to lengthen your out-breath. Its an indication that the out-breath is not in balance with your in-breath. Its very important in this practice that the in and out breaths are balanced both in force and length – meaning: in both attention and intention (read that last bit again, its important). What should remain at the end of the practice is a feeling of balanced openness – a kind of energetic neutrality through non-resistance and a general feeling of expanded compassion and connectivity. Partaking in a formal Tonglen practice during the New Moon is heightened because this New Moon is joined by both Neptune and Venus. Neptune is said to be the ‘higher octave of Venus’. Both of these planets are fundamentally about relationship and connectivity to both the mundane (Venus) and to the divine (Neptune). There are of course many other things you could formally or ritually practice that would engage oneness – electromagnetic plant communication, shamanic journey work, trance – anything really that helps you to move through the barriers and ideas of separateness and focuses the heart on connectivity. Pisces is the energy that reminds us that “the sea refuses no river” - there is no wrong way, you cannot loose the path or miss the turn. The entire universe is holding you in place, so just let go and be.