Strange Days New Moon
Today the sun and the moon meet at the Nth degree of Aquarius. The very last minute of the very last degree of the second to last sign of the zodiac. This is the second new moon in Aquarius this year, the last one on January 20th coincided with Mercury turning retrograde in the sign. The emphasis on air (even though Aquarius sounds like 'aqua' and carries the image of the water bearer IT IS an air sign) highlights the year-long air-y emphasis that is made by three Mercury retrograde phases in all of the air signs, all at degrees which will mark a grand trine.
All new moons are moments of subjective darkness and signify an instant when our psyches turn away from the light of consciousness and are absorbed into the mysterious, sensory, and internal landscape of the moon's realm. The moon holds our earliest instincts- she remembers the emotional needs of our mothers and mother's mothers; the ways in which we feel nurtured and seek to nurture; our perceptions of normalcy and safety, and the manifestations of Earthly life that let us know (for better or for worse) that we are at home. The moment of the new moon is a moment to reset in one's root and to pause in quietude. Behind your closed eyelids you can see figures of the future dancing, but don't yet know the meaning of their gestures. At the new moon we imagine and wish the seeds of our future, and that is enough.
This new moon bookends the Mercury Rx phase and asks for the final offerings of your attention towards how you utilize your perceptive abilities. Mercury, organ of perception, is still in the early degrees of Aquarius and through March 4th will be making its third pass over the steps it made forward through the sign the first time, and backwards the second time. Mercury in Aquarius wants to know how you perceive and honor the otherness of your individual experience within the larger collective experience. Are you greatly concerned or pulled by the group mind? Do you hide in your strangeness and refuse to consider that you could be totally UN-unique? What are your future thoughts and goals as they relate to the planet, to our existence here with other species, and to the larger questions of the human condition and the suffering we are so prone and compelled to?
The moon will quickly move into the watery depths of Pisces just moments after conjunction with the sun. The Sun will follow the moon into Pisces tomorrow and both will head towards a meeting with Neptune in the next week. This moon is also the midway point between Uranus and Pluto and therefore adds an exclamation point to the upcoming Uranus/Pluto square, the last exact square in a series of seven that in many ways defines the current era we are living through.
Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac, rules the places where all of our runoff and excess is collected: oceans, dumps, prisons, and asylums being a few of the literal locations, and our collective unconscious the energetic equivalent. In Pisces we are completely immersed in togetherness, so much so that the question of individuality is a moot point. You came from the places where everything is all mixed up together and you will return there. In fact, you are there right now and your feelings of separateness and uniqueness are nonsense. In Pisces we are disillusioned by ideas of individual grandeur and feel, acutely, the pain created by our illusions of autonomy and the faults of the individual ego. Immersed in the suffering of separateness, Pisces longs to return to oneness and unity, to transcend and return to the sea of everything from whence we came. Pisces is both the most compassionate and the most martyred. The one with no ego suffers for her lack of ability to anchor in a firm sense of self.
Our emotional instincts (moon) and energetic output (sun) will both make conjunctions to Pisces' ruling planet Neptune in the next week. Neptune epitomizes Pisces' urge to transcend, to sanctify, and expand/disperse into everything. Neptune is currently in a square with Saturn. Saturn is Neptune's energetic opposite and seeks to materialize, constrict and achieve. As the sun and the moon touch upon this point, notice the tensions that arise in yourself between creative inspiration and mundane needs; between the absorption of love and sense of self-authorship; between boundless empathy and seeing someone for "who they really are". Just notice.
Here is your new moon meditation: Imagine.
As you stand at the shoreline and look out at the horizon you feel the tide rolling in and over your feet. Notice the sensation of water moving between your toes and around your heels. Feel the buoyancy of the sand as it is filled with water. Feel its shifting as the tide is pulled back, and notice how the ground moves beneath your feet. Soften from your belly and connect through your legs and into your feet. Allow your spine and torso to shift and sway as the water gently moves you and your feet readjust. Soften your eyes and relax your brain. Allow your peripheral vision to expand and see everything at once instead of looking to focus. Breathe.
Stay in this imaginative space as the world around you passes by- wherever you are. Hear the sounds, smell the smells, notice when your duties and thoughts tug at you. Stay and shift and soften and breathe.
Only when you can bring the sea and shifting sand with you, as a sensory residue... only then return to work. Notice everything that needs to be done. Do it. And as you go about your tasks feel the waves around your ankles, the sand between your toes, and the endless, quiet horizon in the corners of your eyes.
Love, Renée
To find out more about what Pisces means for you, and how to work with Pisces and Neptune please join us for our upcoming Embodying The Zodiac class. Please note that this will be our last class for a little while. We are reconfiguring our offerings and will return to teaching later in the spring. Until then we will continue to develop the blog, energy medicine, yoga and maybe more online offerings. xo
Embodying the Zodiac - Pisces Tuesday, February 24th 7-9PM Be Space - 211 SE 11th Ave. Portland, OR $15 Preregister to save your space
