March 8-9, 2016
18 Pisces 55
5:54 PM PST / 8:54 PM EST / 1:54 AM GMT
This year’s Pisces New Moon is a game changing pivot point. No one is merely turning on the ball of the foot and moving ahead in any kind of neat and orderly fashion, though. We are being engulfed by a tidal wave. It’s carrying us to shores we can’t make out clearly and bringing certain people and situations along for the journey while washing others out to sea.
The monumental impact comes from this being the year’s first eclipse. It’s a solar, on the Virgo/Pisces axis, which brings issues of habits, health, service, boundaries and interconnectedness up for revisiting and rebooting. The current cycle is our first recurrence of eclipses from March 1997 through September 1998. Looking back to that time is useful, because themes and issues you are encountering now build on the experiences you had during those years.
We have reached the middle of the current cycle, which began with the Pisces New Moon solar eclipse on the first day of spring 2015 and continues until February 2017. Though solar eclipses always launch — or at least, facilitate — forward motion, they always come with endings and departures, as certain givens and factors leave the scene that don’t jibe with the forward thrust.
Think of it as a set change during a play: The lights go out, the crew moves scenery in and out, cast members exit and enter, and the lights come up to reveal the next scene’s set up and characters. In this scenario, though, the lights aren’t coming up to full with any speed. The playing out will occur over months. It’s possible the new parameters may not be entirely clear until fall.
Part of that comes from the potential this event has for overwhelm, particularly for people with the Sun or other major placements in mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces). With bigger-is-better Jupiter challenging the New Moon and amplifying the North Node (the path of the future), tiny currents quickly escalate into tsunamis. This results in conversations going from present circumstances to platforms for all manner of ghosts and stories and memories and bubblings up from psyches and weird dreams. (Speaking of which, dreams are off the charts because of this. Write them down. A pattern could emerge that cracks a problem for you. Or provides the basis for a screenplay.)
Other people’s problems could also trigger tidal waves. Be on the lookout for energy vampires — or emotional Ninjas, as a friend delightfully put it — who suck you in, usually with how much they need you, then flood your borders and overwhelm your schedule, energy and sanity with their crises. You can’t fix an emotional black hole. You can either tumble into it and lose control of yourself, or reinforce your boundaries, or steer clear altogether. If you find yourself being consumed by someone else’s drama, pain, unsolvable problems, whatever, please hit the pause button. Remind yourself how many times you’ve heard/witnessed/tried to help all this before. Draw a magic circle around yourself and your precious, surprisingly finite energy. Banish anything that’s not yours from the circle. Then reinforce and safeguard it.
The water’s churning, the rolling waves, the pressures and the overwhelm are forcing awareness of and commitment to what is truly yours, especially in terms of what you believe. The New Moon and Jupiter are forming a t-square to Saturn in Sagittarius, a dynamic configuration with multiple effects just now. It’s accelerating and amplifying thoughts, talk and the noise level in general. It’s bombarding us with and drowning us in other people’s opinions, perspectives, prejudices, issues and agendas. (Take periodic breathers from the news and social media. Please.)
And when push comes to shove, when some huge force slams you against the clock and the limits of your energy, you will instinctively know, in an instant, what is most important to you and where you have to claim dominion. (Your inspirational image for this portion of the eclipse energies is the Emperor in the Tarot.) With your own emotional issues cresting and flowing out, your own journey surging into rough magic, you do not have the luxury of wasting time or resources. You are being called upon to take responsibility for what you believe, to bring your beliefs and how you live your life into alignment and to — get ready for a notion that is in alarming short practice — be one of the adults in the room. (Since order-loving Saturn in Sagittarius also represents the legal system, this dynamic is also forcing our political system to move from past ways into a new paradigm. Seen any of that in the news?)
Some of this will come easily; some will encourage thrashing and flailing and indulging in victimhood or martyrdom. Yawn. You’ve grown too much in recent years to allow yourself to regress for long. And fighting the waters only leads to futile grasping, gasping for breath and going under. Trying to make sense of them is about as pointless. A lot of what is surfacing or steering is anything but rational and explicable these days. A lot is just plain bonkers, actually. (Use the Moon card from the Tarot as a guiding image.) Ride the waves as much as you can. Or dive through them, like kids do at the shore.
Some of the departures will be surprising (and the goings, too), some emotional and some bittersweet. All bring, ultimately, relief, balm and healing. This effect is particularly great on pain that has been with you for so long that it is part of the fabric of your being. That comes from the New Moon’s honor guard: Chiron, bringer of healing and mastery of physical existence, and the South Node of the Moon, a mathematical point that represents the behavior we came in with or resort to under stress.
They are drenching us in awareness of our ancient and abiding wounds, as well as the pain of all humanity. The potential is here to soothe and even heal wounds of crippling enmeshment, taking the fall for others, abandonment and the illusion of isolation. (Soundtrack for this portion of the influences: “You Are Not Alone” from the Stephen Sondheim musical “Into The Woods.”) The way of the future, and the wake of this eclipse, involves healthier, more intact boundaries, attitudes and habits
Embrace and work with this wild process. Actively toss items overboard, fearlessly and lovingly. Communication is already in a gentle, telepathic mode, with Mercury in Pisces and heading for a meeting with Neptune later this week. Venus, ruler of our sociability, will soon be in Pisces herself, making compassionate, tender, downplayed, if sometimes backhanded approaches absolutely organic. Endings don’t have to be nasty; they can be kind and sweet. And endings are all around, thanks to the Libra lunar eclipse coming in two weeks to slam many a relationship chapter shut.
As varied as the activity is now and will be through the fall, one constant runs through it all. Everything points to the way out of the turmoil of the past four years. Replacement foundations, supports and structures have been increasingly coming into view and taking shape. With exact links to the culprits, cosmic change agents Uranus and Pluto, this New Moon has the power to wash away more of the rubble and facilitate the new.
As befits a Moon ruled by the lord of illusion, pertinent navigational advice comes from a movie, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” As arecent widow named Evelyn Greenslade (played by Judi Dench) observes a few weeks into her first visit to India, “Initially you’re overwhelmed. But gradually you realize it’s like a wave. Resist, and you’ll be knocked over. Dive into it, and you’ll swim out the other side.”
Learn how this fits into the rest of the year in my astro-overview for 2016.
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© Kathy Biehl 2016. All Rights Reserved. You may forward this article as long as the copyright notice is intact. No part may be used or reprinted without my prior written permission. Karma, ya know.
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