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Friday, February 28, 2014

A Pisces New Moon: Sensitivity, Focused


Ruby Falls, inside Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN
(photo credit: Jtesla16, March 2009)

A New Moon will occur on March 1st at 8:01 a.m. (UT/+0). It will be at 10 Pisces, a degree which gives us the symbol of MEN TRAVELING A NARROW PATH, SEEKING ILLUMINATION. Astrologer Marc Edmund Jones refers to this symbol as ‘the capacity inherent in every individual to seek at whatever cost entrance to a transcendent realm of reality’ …to which the ever-philosophic Dane Rudhyar adds the Zen injunction to ‘walk on.’ 

Since this reference is to a New Moon, all of this refers to something which comes from the less hard-and-fast fact-bound side of life. Call it instinct, call it that grappling we all do inside our Self in light of what we know or know needs to be done.

How we feel about that – that’s the Pisces quality,  Pisces being first and foremost where we feel ourselves feeling. Wherever Pisces falls in your natal chart, by house that is where you will encounter not necessarily the reality of weakness…but an occasional (or more than occasional) feeling of weakness?

Yes, that is guaranteed…and though we all dislike the emotional whirlpools life tosses us into, we learn more (and sometimes better) for such experiences.

It’s part of why water (emotionality) is considered by many the strongest of the four (western) metaphysical elements…not to mention that people are feeling beings. Even those who seem hard or seem cold are feeling people.

They probably just can’t afford to feel vulnerable. In other words, the cold or hard or callous soul we confront in life isn’t showing strength, they’re showing us all the strength they can muster so that we shouldn’t know how afraid they are of feeling vulnerable.

And yet…if you think about the order of the zodiac and how it all leads to Pisces, that very sort of vulnerability would seem to be the ‘object’ at the end of the road. Where Scorpio tests our emotions through situations and what we might call ‘our relationship to relationships’ personal or platonic, intimate or impersonal, Pisces tests our emotions against our notion of emotionality in ways which bring ultimately bring about knowing not just what we feel about anything – but why we feel that way.

And what we feel about feeling that way.

And what we feel about others feeling the same way we do…or differently – and why we feel that.

Pisces teaches that knowing how we feel creates a willingness to feel ourselves being one sweet soul in a boundless sea of human experience who is equal  to the whole through the willingness to feel even as we realize the reality of our individuality and all the mortality and vulnerability which goes with living life.

Reaching that inner illumination…that’s our goal – one which asks whether we are willing to walk within ‘narrow’ confines, whether that means requiring certain ‘standards’ of ourselves or focusing on our sensitivities, whether we even know how to be compassionate in our own cause. Ours now is a growing understanding; the probing nuances of Mercury in Aquarius remain with us, carrying us through to where on March 4th we finally…at very long last, arrive at the point where cycles begun in late December (as Venus went retrograde on December 21st) complete and reveal their purpose.

That’s just a couple of days from now. The Moon will be in Aries by then, setting off aspects of life which harder to predict and which require a 'lighter touch' in managing. But such is the moment. We need to know our mind at the same time that we need to be willing to listen. Life is asking us to go beyond old expectations and anticipations, which in a world of other people overly preoccupied with their goals can be a problem...and then again can afford us exactly the space we need in which to operate.

In its association with Uranus, this New Moon signals change and changing times as well as many a shift of position, alteration of 'circumstance,' endings and beginnings of relationships and perspectives on life - and through any (or all of that), long-term opportunities to grow our life and advance our cause with, and through others.

A deal of thrust will emerge between the mid-afternoon of March 2nd (UT/+0) and late on March 4th (UT/+0), with the focus being on whether we are on the 'doing' or 'receiving' end of things and our motivations for whatever it is we are involved in. Here, immediate and eventual results depend on whether we are leading others along a path (i.e., using them) or walking our own path among equals in this life.

Where we are doing what we should, we proceed. Where we are doing things at the expense/disregard of others...or where we are involved in something other than what we purely think of as our purpose, something happens. It could be as simple as a distraction, a postponement or an interruption.

Then again, life may need to throw us off course in order to get us to get ourselves back on track. It all depends.


The 2014 Pisces New Moon at 10 Pisces (glyph chart)
March 1, 2014 - 8:01 a.m. (UT/+0) - Aries Wheel/location not specific 

That Venus clears the point of its December-January brings us to the point of reckoning with all we did back then and how we did it. We all made errors even as things in the world seemed to make making those errors inevitable.

The point wasn’t what we did or didn’t do. It was getting us to this moment, this time, this place where in the light of much else we can consider what it all means…and from here look back at (Mars’ station as a ‘turning around to look’) and see who we were then and just how we have changed since then.

And what that means about our capacity to grow, for good, bad and unknown. That Mars will go retrograde at 27 Libra in tandem with the New Moon’s setting up our next four weeks of activity says that whatever starts or ‘takes a turn’ now, whatever is ‘new’ – how at a personal level that speaks to the emotional thread we will be following throughout the next several weeks.


We’re likely to find going forward that assertion isn’t the path to success, comprehension is – specifically that which allows us to comprehend how things…and others (Mars in Libra) work. Or how they aren’t (or haven’t) worked. Between Mars’ station and this Pisces New Moon we may now ‘turn away’ from one phase of (Mars) effort to a next.

In this text chart of the 2014 Pisces New Moon (cast as an Aries chart to take location and time
zone out of the equation because of limits imposed by writing on the internet) Sun-Uranus
is a semi-sextile, the aspect most known as feeling like an offense or ego bruise - even an
ego attack or an attack on the validity of one's being. By itself, a Pisces Sun/Aries Uranus
speaks to personal feelings/things being taken personally...or a wrestling with feelings
of weakness or intolerance of feelings/unwillingness-or-inability to feel compassion. Presented
in conjunction with Dionysus, there is a definite strain on emotionalism which is
likely to erupt either physically or in self-sacrifice (and maybe both) with the astrological
origin being the Uranus square Jupiter (in Cancer) suggesting some sort of ingrained idea
which is more about habit (or longevity - perhaps of tradition) than necessity. Ultimately
the question presented her concerns the nature of what is "sacred": is the priority who we
are or the world and times in which we are born?

Or even ‘turn into’ something which means more to us personally.

In short, whether we are turning towards or away from something, someone or some idea reflective of Mercury’s February 28th station in Aquarius…the fact we are doing it means what it means something vital to us.

THAT’s the point. We cannot expect everyone will feel the same way as we do, and we cannot expect that everyone will understand exactly why we feel as we do.

What we can get to…and get across right now is the importance of human emotionality. For some that will be insight into something like market appeal in business while others may experience an upsurge…even a crisis of (Pisces/Aquarius) conscience.

There’s a good deal of energy available at this time; how we tap into it is the central question. Given that Libra and Pisces are both worldly signs, the combination of New Moon and Mars station is likely to trigger events in the world and which affect our lives with the basic question being whether we have come into this time to be active or reactive.

Neither is right, neither is wrong. Each simply has its own plus and minuses. Those who are more active (more ‘Mars-like,’ we might say) will do best where they are able to temper personal emotions in an effort to be more inclusive where those who feel more ‘on the line’ emotionally will need to summon internal fortitude.

We’re all human. We all have work to do on ourselves and that which life is moving us towards and into is where we will do that work. As much of it will be initiated, engendered, required, requested or earned by others as by ourselves; it’s up to us to see the value on both sides and to neither sell ourselves short nor insist on having our own way.

That’s the bottom line on the Sabian Symbol we started out with: this ‘illumination’ we’re seeking is coming from Pisces. It’s feeling. It’s emotional.

It’s needed. In fact, with solar eclipse effects having begun (as of February 28th) anyone who believes the great maxim that unbeknownst to us, the universe is unfolding as it should and that all things happen when they should’ there is every reason to believe this New Moon is indeed the start of something new.

Not necessarily in the world…but in ours? Yes. It would seem we’re all our own ‘work in progress’ at the moment. We’re at a place where we don’t know what is going to come or become of us…we’re know what we’re doing but not feeling entirely secure about how it’s all going to work.

That’s what we’re working towards…and why this feels like a critical time. These days we’re going through may have the same number of minutes in them as any other day does, but they feel more vital and important because we’re encountering something which provokes us.

This is our life…our life’s time. Whatever it means that you care and whatever it is you care about, whether that’s in the fervency of the moment or not, that you feel what you feel now will make an impression on you.

That impression is likely to stay with you for the whole of this lunation – at least. If you take it to heart, in time…as the stations and effects surrounding this New Moon slowly give rise to new orders…that impression well lead you to an even greater insight. Or an opportunity which teaches you how or why having faith in that which is correct and not merely pleasant ultimately provides the richest rewards.

This is a moment of letting go – mostly of what we thought would be there forever. Acceptance of that is the only simple answer, one which lies beyond our sensitivities of ego, illusion and focus.

Are we willing to own our beliefs through who we are in this world, this life...this skin we inhabit?
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