Lunar News: New Moon in Pisces
An aviator in the clouds
New Moon at 9° Pisces on February 27th at 5:44 PM MST
Sabian Symbol: An aviator in the clouds
Did you know the Lunar News Spotify playlist has 12 songs, one for each zodiac sign? Each song a horoscope for your sign’s lunar cycle
The Pisces New Moon marks the beginning of eclipse season and also initiates us into the new genre of solar and lunar eclipses we’ll be experiencing over the next year and a half. This particular syzygy is not a solar eclipse, but the Moon and Sun are co-present with the North Node. There will be certain shades and flavors to this New Moon that will grant us a taste of what the next few eclipses on this Virgo-Pisces axis will be like. Also together with the Sun, Moon, and North Node in Pisces are Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune. Six celestial points all together in the same sign brings an extra concentration of that sign’s qualities to this moment in time. We are getting—and have been getting—a heavy dose of Piscean energy infused into our lives. A stellium (when three or more planets are in one sign) is intense to begin with, but on top of that, Pisces is the most intense sign of the zodiac. During this New Moon, we’re likely to feel things at a stronger level than normal; our idealism and romanticization will border on dangerous; and we’ll be channeling creative inspiration with greater ease. This is not a time for efficiency, productivity, or even anything intellectual; this time is for dreaming and listening to the feelings that are evoked in us through our experiences.
Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac and, because of this, it is said to embody a little bit of every sign within it (this is why Pisces tends to feel psychotic). It’s the epic culmination point; the final stop on the journey to shambala; the portal opening up to the vast unconscious. Pisces borders the material and spiritual worlds, it acts as a bridge with roots stretching across worlds. This crossroads existence gives the sign its mutable quality and also is what tends to drive people crazy. Straddling, as it does, two different realms, we tend to get lost in the illusory nature of it all. There are no boundaries between what is real and what isn’t and the not-so-potable Pisces water brings us delusions that can cause us grief later on when we have to confront them in their reality.
If Aquarius is the sign that is reaching toward an ideal, then Pisces is that ideal, but it’s slippery and not always what it seems. During the month-long progression from Aquarius to Pisces, we’ve been moving through a time of intellectualizing and imagining what our ideal lives—careers, relationships, creative projects—look like and getting caught up in the fantasy of it all. Typically, this progression is smooth and functional; we go from calm, ordered thought to creative inspiration and imagination, and a Pisces New Moon is a great opportunity to shape the content of our wildest dreams into a fully realized form that serves a purpose in our lives. There are extenuating circumstances this year, however, making this a very atypical Pisces season. The presence of Saturn, Neptune, and now the North Node, in this sign are forcing us into a reality check with our wildest dreams. It’s not enough to simply imagine the life that you want, you must also examine your ideals, test them to see if they hold water, and also examine yourself and figure out if you are truly ready to meet these fantasies in real life. With it being the end of the zodiac and forming an aggregate of all eleven prior sings, Pisces embodies the Ideal, it is All. Encountering the Ideal is a harrowing experience; sometimes it is everything we wanted and fantasized about; sometimes it is everything we need, but are not ready for, sometimes it is too much for us to take in, too much to grasp. Pisces is also self-deception, denial, and avoidance, those are the negative side effects to confronting our ideals. Usually when we self-sabotage through avoidance it’s because we have met success or have attained our desire and we aren’t ready or don’t actually want the thing we got.
This New Moon is a strange portal that’s putting us out of time in order to unpack our dreams and fantasies, see them for what they are, and figure out if we want to move forward pursuing them and actualizing them in our lives. We must be aware, too, that this is just the beginning of the story and over the course of the next several weeks, these themes will be revisited. The upcoming Mercury and Venus retrogrades through Aries and Pisces will be periods of mistakes and reflection on our fantasies and delusions. As always, it’s good to set your intentions during a New Moon, but keep in mind that nothing is set in stone and all that we do from here forward is subject to drastic change. Surf’s up on the choppy waters.
LUNAR CYCLE TRANSITS
March 1: Mercury conjunct the North Node
Racing thoughts, neurotic paranoia, and meaningless nonsense blabbering are all in order for today. When Mercury meets the North Node we feel our mind moving at a quickening pace. It is tempting to want to either write every thought down, or try to verbally communicate all these thoughts, but with this conjunction happening in Pisces, that’s not such a good idea. At least, it’s not such a good idea if you want to communicate these thoughts in a coherent manner. The insights that are occurring now are highly charged with inspiration and creativity, but we might not be able to make sense of them as they are coming to us. David Lynch always said forgetting an idea is agonizing and the only way to mitigate this is to write it down. The useful thing to do would be to write down, or otherwise record somehow, every thought and idea that seems to have a spark in it, and return back to it when there’s more mental clarity in a day or so.
Venus stations retrograde
And now Venus begins her 40 day descent into the underworld. In the mythical allegory to the Venus Rx, the Sumerian goddess Inanna travels to the underworld where she is killed and then eventually resurrected. The myth gives narrative structure and reason for why Venus does this backtracking at the end of her year-and-a-half synodic cycle. It tells us that our values and relationships must undergo a period of intense reflection via a journey into the shadowy realm of the dead in order to be maintained properly. These retrogrades are like hygiene, and so we must not fear them.
Relationships, our ability to show up as good partners, and our sense of who we are as an individual in constant collaboration with other individuals is questioned and tested relentlessly during this time period. Some relationships will end at this time, some will begin, some will be strengthened, some will be revisited. We must be disciplined and strong so as not to make this journey into a crash-out style downward spiral. Venus will transit back through the first decan of Aries and the last few degrees of Pisces, so the messages are going to revolve around explorations of the headstrong self and the boundlessness of the unconscious.
March 2: Sun square Jupiter
This is an energetic and joyful day that boosts our confidence to get ahead on our goals and aspirations. Jupiter assists us with an outpouring of luck in our pursuits, but the tricky thing with this transit is we can get too in over our own heads. The self-confidence can easily turn into self-aggrandizement and we can cause problems if we don’t regularly check for errors or stupid mistakes. Since the Sun will be making the square from its position in Pisces, delusions of grandeur are always lurking. We could tend to think we have everything going for us, not paying attention to all the ways we could lose everything in an instant of carelessness. Moreover, be wary of the ways in which your boisterous way of being could come across as cocky; don’t be surprised if people react to you as though you are posing a threat or challenge to them. Moving with subtlety is key.
March 3: Mercury ingress into Aries
Mercury progresses out of the mental fog and confusion of Pisces into the more action-oriented sign of Aries today. This transit through Aries will bring us toward a stronger way of channeling the messages we want to transmit out to the world, but it will be interrupted with a retrograde period. We can take this extended Mercury transit through Aries as an exercise in clarifying our self-expression and putting the emphasis back onto ourselves for the sake of our own development.
March 7: Sun trine Mars
Now that Mars is moving prograde again, this trine from the Sun is going to feel like an extra boost of energetic power. It’s a good day to activate physically—go for a hike, start a new exercise regimen, take back control of your health. Beyond these embodied focuses, we will also feel more motivated than normal to get back on track with our hobbies, projects, side hustles, etc. Mars journey is now focused on fixing any blunders made during its retrograde transit. This is a great time to be making amends and integrating the lessons from when we felt frustrated and stuck over the last two months.
March 11: Venus Rx conjunct Mercury
This bittersweet conjunction is like those dramatic irony plots where two lovers’ miscommunication ends up derailing their entire romance; we’re watching the opening scenes of the drama. This transit gives words to our feelings, and usually this is a great time to be effusive with your language and gush with verbal affection. However, Venus is afflicted, making our words fall on deaf ears, or worse, misunderstood entirely. Be careful what and how you communicate today because what you might be saying with pure intention could easily turn into lovers’ quarrels or crossed wires. Furthermore, be prepared to eat your words later on after Mercury joins Venus in a precession, making us even more confused.
What is so striking about this conjunction is that, even though Mercury will eventually also station retrograde and travel on the same path as Venus, they won’t make another conjunction this go around. (In fact, the two planets won’t make another conjunction again until November 24th, at which time Mercury will be retrograde). Mercury will backtrack through Aries, re-ingress into Pisces, spending all its time trying to catch up to Venus, but it will station direct before the two planets meet again. For us Earthside, this is going to feel profoundly frustrating, especially if we recklessly went out on a limb today and expressed ourselves without getting clear on what we actually feel. Whatever misunderstandings arise, if they do, from the March 11th conjunction, we won’t have a chance to reconcile them again for a while (mid-May).
Be aware of these risks before you say anything you do not mean.
March 12: Sun conjunct Saturn
To make matters worse after yesterday’s blunders, the Sun will hit Saturn today and will leave us all feeling a little lonely and isolated. It is a perfect day to get crucial work done, however, and we can take advantage of this alone time—or create some—to get to any tasks that have been neglected over the last few weeks.