Today’s new moon in Pisces is sextile Uranus in Taurus and Mars in Capricorn. Mercury is retrograding back into an alignment with the Moon that will perfect in just a few hours (from now, the moment I’m writing, at 11:54AM CT) and will meet up with the Sun on Tuesday.

A new moon in Pisces offers a symbol for awareness of all the cycles that end and begin concurrently, moment-to-moment, day-by-day. Pisces energy represents The Great Unknown. The vast, fathomless mystery of existence that might be sensed, meditated upon, honored, feared, ignored, dreamed of, fantasized about, made into films and storybooks and songs – but never actually explained or known in any kind of tangible way that we can grasp with our small minds and limited time. Pisces is too big to be known and that’s the point. It’s good and healing for us to not know. Not knowing does something essential and important for our minds, bodies and hearts. We need to be in awe and wonder and without a clue.

Mercury retrograde enhances the unknown element. Mercury – symbol of mind, cognition, language – travels backward and inward in Pisces. What a blessing this moment could be. Don’t be scared of missing appointments or fumbling texts. Be a blank slate, be a long pause, be emptiness. We fill our time and lives with so many details. Mercury retrograde conjunct the new moon reminds us that details often obscure the big picture. Take a deep breath, get ready, let go.

The new moon sextile with Uranus in Taurus and Mars in Capricorn suggests possible changes we’ve been moving towards: to be more embodied, more present, to let go of small concerns, to dismantle oppressive inner states, to shift consumption habits, to realign values, to honor what’s natural, to awaken to choice… If these indeed are the small shifts we’ve been inviting in, then today’s new moon offers pleasure and encouragement in return. Feel a new state emerging. Again, we don’t need to know the outcome, or even the next step. The message of embodied presence resounds as the path forward. We will let ourselves emerge.

However, there is also death. Massively. And, horror, everywhere. The new moon sextile with Uranus and Mars points to a pressing need to awaken in compassion. We are breathing our potentially last breaths. The insane demagogues and pundits are rabid and lusty for blood and money. What will it take to overthrow them? Pisces teaches that further separation into categories and identities is our downfall. When we are divided, we are divided. Division is an internal state that manifests in the external. Somehow, against all odds, facts, prejudices, institutionalized systems, ignorances, and probabilities… we have to come together. Pisces reminds us of the wave that will drown and erase unless we become the wave the encompasses and uplifts.

Over the next two weeks, as we move into the growing lunar cycle, there are several possibilities and invitations to make fresh starts and dream new dreams. However, these starts really do need to be fresh. Meaning, that first they require releasing an old idea. Mercury’s upcoming conjunction with the Sun this week brings support for this letting go. If your mind is feeling hazy or foggy, please don’t push it harder, it’s best to just let it rest. If plans you’re working on feel tiresome and confusing, imagine what could open up if you just simply stopped working so hard.

Today’s new moon lunar attunement is another word-based ritual. In the last months I’ve really been enjoying the ways that poetry and story can act as oracle and today’s exercise felt exciting and deeply restorative for me as a means of connecting with Pisces and its invitations for simultaneous obscuration and illumination. The form of this ritual is redaction and erasure. Here’s the score:

• Find an article or piece of text you want to work with. The article or text can be chosen randomly (as oracle itself) or purposefully in its representation for what you’d like to work with.

• Read the text and enjoy it

• Offer an internal question for yourself - are you looking for an answer, an oracle, a poem, a statement?

• Reread the article for the words themselves, not their meaning. Hold the words in your awareness and notice which words compel and provoke. Underline those words with pencil.

• When you’re finished, look back at your text and read the underlined words to yourself. Now is when you craft your piece. Do the words flow together? What alternate meanings have they illuminated? Does another word you didn’t see before now make a better choice?

• When you’ve decided on the words to keep, obscure the rest with marker or white-out or actually cut them out with a razor.

• Let the remnants remain.

I’d like to offer this redaction ritual as a good practice for the next two weeks of the growing moon. You might play with it several times. Use it with emails you write, letters you’ve been sent, newspaper articles you hate, stories you love. See what emerges. Enjoy the unknown. Improvise. Be surprised. Let the exercise infuse the rest of your life in its suggestion.

Happy new moon dear beings. I hope that it is truly simple and sweet for you and yours.
R

For more on Pisces Season, click here.