Category: pisces

Boundary fence
2024, astrology, neptune, new moon, pisces, saturn

Mar 2024 – Near and Far Perspectives

Karena

There is a New Moon every month, but we only (typically) get a New Moon in any specific zodiac sign once a year. In March we get a Pisces New Moon, and, as with all astrological events, this one has some uniqueness to its energy!

What is special about this New Moon?

The New Moon occurs when the Moon and the Sun are right on top of each other in the sky (from our perspective on Earth – of course the Sun and Moon aren’t actually on top of each other!). When a New Moon occurs, we can’t see the Moon – the Sun is so bright that it overwhelms the Moon (the only exception to this is eclipses…. but we will talk about that in a few weeks when we enter eclipse season!). Therefore, during this Pisces New Moon, the Moon will not be visible, and the night sky will be very dark. Only the stars will be visible.

Physically, as well as metaphorically, the New Moon indicates a time of darkness. A time when our physical eyes don’t allow us to see much, and we are encouraged to turn our eyes inward and self-reflect. Slowing down and turning inward often results in realizations that we want to take action on, and as a result, New Moons are also times associated with completing cycles in our lives and beginning new cycles. These cycles could be related to relationships, careers, behaviors, etc. Because of the importance of this periodic self-reflection to ensure we are changing anything in our life that is ripe for change, there are a plethora of New Moon meditations and rituals to help facilitate ending cycles that we are spiritually finished with, and starting new cycles of growth.

As mentioned, a New Moon occurs every month. How often are each of us really closing down major cycles in our lives and starting new ones? Certainly not monthly! So how do we know the relative importance of each New Moon, and the area of our life we should be contemplating change? There are two things that help us determine this:

  • An individual’s birth chart
  • The other planet’s positionis at the time of the New Moon.

An individual’s birth chart

Each person usually only gets one New Moon in a particular area of life each year. For example, you will only get one New Moon per year in the area of love and partnerships. One New Moon in the area of career. One New Moon in the area of Self. So to fully get the most out of each month’s New Moon, it is helpful to know your individual birth chart to see the areas of life where you personally can contemplate beginnings/endings.

The other planets’ positions

Of course, the Sun and the Moon are just the two most visible points in the sky – there are other bodies moving around us constantly – Mercury, Venus, Mars, etc, are always somewhere in the sky, whether we can see them with the naked eye or not! And they affect the quality and energy of each New Moon as well.

What makes this month’s New Moon in Pisces unique, is that it occurs with both the Sun and Moon sandwiched between Saturn and Neptune in Pisces. This means that this New Moon will have generally Piscean themes, but will be heavily impacted by both Saturn’s and Neptune’s energies as well.

Saturn is the planet of Time. It encourages long-term thinking, delayed gratification, working in a disciplined way toward your goals, and setting strong boundaries around your work and life to help you reach those goals.

Neptune helps us recognize the Universal one-ness of all things. From Neptune’s lens, too much focus on our own individual goals and lives isn’t useful; Neptune encourages us to let go of our ego and bask in the fact that all beings are interconnected. From Neptune’s perspective, ambiguity is better than firm boundaries, and fuzziness is better than clarity.

The energies of these two planets are very different – almost opposed to each other!

So with planetary encouragement to focus on boundaries but also to ignore boundaries, to focus on the long term but also to focus on the present moment, what will this Pisces New Moon look like for each of us? Neptune has an edge in this interaction, because the Sun, Moon, Saturn, and Neptune are all in Neptune’s sign of Pisces. So the Neptunian energy of floating in blissful nebulousness will feel most natural during this New Moon. However, Saturn will be right there to prevent us from completely basking in the present moment and will be encouraging us to set some goals and diligently start working toward them.

Therefore, this New Moon energy will be very focused around long-term thinking vs short-term thinking. We will find ourselves saying “yes, but” frequently.

“Yes, I really like my friends, but I don’t feel like I can be authentically myself with them.”

“Yes, I am happy by myself, but I would really like a partner I love and depend on.”

“Yes, my job is going well, but I don’t enjoy it and wish I could do something more meaningful to me.”

As we create New Moon meditations and rituals for this Pisces New Moon, these questions of balance are the best ones to be asking ourselves.

We can’t focus for too long only on happiness and bliss in the current moment (Neptune), but we also can’t only focus on the long-term such that we are perpetually miserable in the short-term. What do we want this balance to look like for ourselves individually? With the hugely personal “planets”, the Sun and Moon, located in Pisces between Saturn and Neptune, we have to understand that there is no one correct answer – there is only the answer that we determine is right for us.

What in our lives feels dissonant or out of balance? We can never achieve perfect balance, but how do we want to move our existing balance points to be more aligned with our souls? This New Moon, borrowing energy from both Saturn and Neptune, offers us a unique set of energies to help us move our lives towards greater balance.

If you are looking for a New Moon meditation specifically for this New Moon, I have one on my YouTube channel!

Photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash

2023, aquarius, astrology, eclipse, moon, new moon, pisces, pluto, saturn

April 2023: Finding a new equilibrium

Karena

The energetic shifts of March were intense!  With Pluto, Saturn, and Mars all changing signs within two weeks of each other, the seismic shift in energy created was enormous.  And, just as with a geological earthquake, an energetic earthquake also has aftershock waves that continue to reverberate as a new equilibrium is found.

If we think about what an actual earthquake consists of, we start to more closely see the parallels between our energetic experiences last month, and where we find ourselves today.

Earthquakes occur when the giant set of tectonic plates that make up the earth’s upper crust shift against each other and the pressure becomes enough to cause movement along the boundaries of the tectonic plates (or fault lines) as they shift to release pressure that has built up between them.

Most of us have heard of the “aftershocks” that often come after an earthquake, but what are they really?  According to The United States Geological Survey, Aftershocks are a sequence of earthquakes that happen after a larger mainshock on a fault. Aftershocks occur near the fault zone where the mainshock rupture occurred and are part of the “readjustment process” after the main slip on the fault.

This, friends, is what the month of April is really about!  Several large shifts have occurred, and there is a readjustment process that has to occur to find the new “normal” after all of this tension has been released.  Practically, what does that look like?

If we look at what our biggest “fault lines” were in the month of March, they consist of Pluto at the end of Capricorn and in early Aquarius, Saturn at the end of Aquarius and in early Pisces, and Mars at the end of Gemini and in early Cancer.  For those with personal planets in any of these areas of the zodiac, the energy shift will have felt even more momentous.  Post seismic shift, let’s look at where the energies will settle out over the next few months (and, in Pluto’s case, years).

With Pluto being the slowest moving planet, its movement is likely to create the largest and most far-reaching cosmic shift.  We are now experiencing the early days of Pluto in Aquarius.  Pluto will retrograde back into Capricorn in June and will continue moving back-and-forth across the Capricorn/Aquarius boundary for the next few years.  These early days of Pluto in Aquarius are likely to feel initially less restrictive.  Capricorn is a highly structured sign, and Pluto moving through Capricorn has given all of us reason to feel more keenly the bonds that societal structures place on us.  When we pair Pluto’s move into Aquarius, with Saturn moving out of Aquarius with its disciplined energy, there will be ways in which Pluto in Aquarius feels incredibly freeing from a societal perspective.  This may mean moving more fully toward the end of covid, being freer to move about freely without restrictions, travel, etc.  It also may mean more freedom in the way we interact societally.  For example, many of us are now very used to using video calls and other means to stay in touch with people beyond just in-person conversations.  For the new group of people working from home more permanently, there is a whole new freedom in the way they can show up to work (i.e. their cat walking in front of their computer screen during a meeting, or wearing yoga pants instead of dress slacks).  A lot of this energy is freeing and amazing.  

However, Pluto will never let us linger blissfully ignorant at the surface.  Pluto will always prompt us to go deeper and to understand more fully.  With so many of us having spent so much time by ourselves and in our homes during covid, what does reintegrating with society look like?  Is it more stressful for us to interact societally?  Are we realizing that what was “working” for us societally before was only working because we didn’t know any other way?  Pluto in Aquarius will be helping us plumb the depths to understand our relationship with society and our place in it.  Whereas several years ago, we may have seen ourselves by default as members of specific communities, neighborhoods, and friend groups, we may now be questioning whether those are the groups we want to be part of.   What in our existing pre-covid societal structure was working for us, and what actually wasn’t that we now want to change?  These are questions Puto in Aquarius will encourage us to ask.  There may be people considering job changes, moving to new cities, and intentionally creating new friend groups, because they are starting to realize the limitations of their previous communities.

In the midst of this big shift as we try to parse what we did and did not like with our previous societal interactions, we have a New Moon in Aries – the second one this year!  It is rare to get two New or Full Moons in the same sign in the same year.  However, we had an Aries New Moon kicking off the equinox at 0 degrees of Aries in March, and now we have a second one a month later in the final degree of Aries right before the Sun and Moon move into Taurus.  And to supercharge this rare second New Moon in Aries even more, it takes place within a few degrees of the North Moon Node, meaning that it is also a total solar eclipse.

What does this mean, especially as we are all trying to stabilize after the intensity of the planetary shifts in March?

This Aries New Moon and Solar Eclipse will be about embracing new ideas, new paradigms, and new ways of “being” after this cosmic shift.  Rather than focusing on how to “get things back to normal”, which wouldn’t allow us to integrate the learnings from the past few years, we can use the New Moon/Eclipse energy to make the deep, Plutonian changes we need to make.  Oftentime, recognizing a change that needs to be made is Step 1, but if we can’t get beyond that to actually making the change, the new energy withers before it really gets going.  In the synchronicity of the Universe, right after this tectonic shift comes, it is followed by initiatory energy to help us take that shift and run with it to create something better – in our own lives and in our communities.  This is the great task for all of us throughout the month of April – identify the old and stale that is no longer helping us, determine what changes we need to make, and start working to make those changes in a real and concrete way.  We can even think of this as a break-down to build-up.  Wherever we feel stuck and limited, and feel like we can’t build farther, those are areas that are prime candidates to start deconstructing during this month to build a foundation for a whole new set of behaviors and structures.  Big work like this takes time!  So remember that small, baby steps in this direction are perfect; certainly don’t feel the need to complete all of this by the end of April!  If we all start taking positive steps and making positive changes, we will see more opportunities emerge to take that energy farther as we move further into 2023.

Photo by Jason Ortego on Unsplash