Full Moon in Pisces
Leading up to this Full Moon, I had been meditating on a myth related to Pisces, involving Typhon, Aphrodite and Eros (also known as Venus and Cupid).
… And, to begin with a kind of side note that feels relevant to include here with Pisces, I’m feeling especially struck by Jupiter’s rulership of this sign, and the Jupiterean process of seeing constellations, myths, and dreams —
How humans, throughout time, have gazed into the night sky and seen patterns in the stars, which now offer a backdrop to planetary movements that mirror and give context to our life experiences.
How ancient paintings, sculptures, and poetry have evoked from our imaginations a constellation of images and feelings into myth, which now serve as maps for us to locate ourselves in a bigger picture, and recognize our personal struggles as something universal and human.
How the collection of images we receive in our sleep are re-membered by our daytime consciousness upon waking, forming a storyline of a dream that can be referenced and related to.
And how these archetypal stories of both myth and dream come through each of us as a creative process of re-membering deep imagery, in the particularized (Virgo) journey of consciousness of the “reader” (Pisces).
Astrology is an opportunity to recognize what archetypal story we find ourselves in — to wake up within the Dream that is dreaming us — and be able to slowly, curiously, humbly, gently, bravely re-dream it, opening up new possibilities for perception, alignment, and flow in our lives.
And, also, I imagine when we make this lucid Dreaming real within our own lives through discipline, devotion and repetition, we make it more available within the collective consciousness, for others to access in their own unique ways. For more people to co-create this reality from a dream that is lucidly dreamt from soul truth, conscious intention, a seed that we hold in our hearts …
This myth related to Pisces, as told by Jason Holley, takes place during the end of a world order, a changing of Ages, as rulership transitions from the Titans to the Olympians. In efforts to maintain their power, the Titans created the most terrifying monster of all monsters, Typhon. This monster seems to have been chaos incarnate, with hundreds of snake heads screaming noises that could sometimes be made out as speech and more often the ineligible utterings of all creatures combined. As he is released into the world, he begins to destroy without discrimination, driven by this immense experience of power.
Eventually, this monster goes after Aphrodite and Eros (Venus and Cupid), two figures that represent a kind of sweet purity and innocence. Many paintings show Aphrodite soothing the small, winged Eros who had just been stung by a bee, as if it was the worst thing that these two had ever experienced. And, now the monster of all monsters is chasing these two innocents.
In response, Aphrodite and Eros jump into the Euphrates river as two fish, with a cord tied between one another to not lose each other, and they escape.
Under this Full Moon, I’m feeling that innocent desire to have free reign to just love what or who we love, without complications or conditions. To long and keep hoping for a way to just be able to let our love flow and be received. To keep pursuing love, or negotiating a recovery of what we remember a past love once was. To immortalize the sweetness of intimacy. To immortalize the experience, the promise or the possibility of being fully met and one with a larger relationship.
Pisces is a beautiful sign in its imagination and sensitivities, its innate wisdom around the creative powers of feeling, and devotional capacity. Alongside profound inspiration and replenishment, natal planets and astrological transits in Pisces (Neptune/12th house) can also bring up a sense of the impending turn to Aries …. and an undercurrent feeling of powerlessness, anxiety or grief.
Because, in the transition from Pisces to Aries, we go from Oneness to Individuality.
From the Ocean to the Drop.
From the womb of a relationship, to this separate existence. Where just letting love flow becomes confounding.
So, in Pisces, there can be a grasping, bracing, or recoil sensation in the body, as we sense this turn into the next hemicircle. An instinctive urge to go back, return, hang on.
Chiron’s current transit through Aries reiterates this recoil sensation.
And also, Chiron guides us to come into relationship with it. To stay with it. And even enter it, when it is time.
Pema Chödrön's book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, comes to mind in support of that process. She writes:
“Fear is a universal experience. Even the smallest insect feels it. We wade in the tidal pools and put our finger near the soft open bodies of sea anemones and they close up. Everything spontaneously does that. It’s not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.”
One way to dream this myth, is that in the face of our greatest fear, we jump into the water as an escape route. And, we all have our ways — whether its working harder or procrastinating, analyzing a thing to bits or sticking one’s head in the sand, eating, drinking or dieting, blaming or over-explaining, etc. Regardless of the healthiness of the escape route, it’s a structure (when “x” happens, I do “y”) used to blur the present moment, soften its hard edges, as if we’re looking at it through water.
Another way to dream this myth, is that we still do jump into the water, but as a surrender to full feeling and a way to meet the Typhon. A conscious choice and acceptance of Piscean sensitivity as the path to Aries. Where the Ocean can become the drop, but doesn’t forget its oceanic nature. It’s a path of awakening our individuality and independent personality.
What Pisces process keeps turning us towards, is the way that we can just let love flow. By becoming it. Not by trying to chain our creative Muse to make it predictable. Not by chasing ideals of what love, compassion, forgiveness should look like. (Although, also, that’s what we’ll all do, and it’s part of it, and included). But by coming into relationship within our own selves, all the feelings that we have labeled as not-love, not-compassion, not-forgiveness — without judgment. Even meeting our judgment, with non-judgment. With compassion, understanding it’s there too, to keep us safe.
Looking at other astrological factors involved here, this Full Moon may reveal to us where and how we’ve looked for safe ways to let our love freely flow into the world. Ways we had hoped could be an alternative (escape) route to the terrifying process of actually becoming unconditional Love. And being with our Wholeness.
Right now, we have the Sun in Virgo, Mars and Mercury in Libra, and Vesta just joining Venus in Scorpio. In the last newsletter, I mentioned the constructed split between Virgo (the Virgin) and Scorpio (the Consort), and Libra as a recent intermediary, with an ambivalent history. In the 2nd Millennium BCE, Libra was known as a part of Virgo as the “Balance of Heaven”. Then in classical Greece, it was known as part of Scorpio, as the “Claws”. Then in Hellenistic Greece, it was part of Virgo again, as “the Balance”. In the 9th to 13th centuries, it was the Claw again. This, in itself, reflects the Libra process as one of seeking identity and configuration through relationship — am I part of Virgo? Am I part of Scorpio? What, where and how am I in relationship to my environment?
This question is amplified under this Full Moon in Pisces, as there is a current confrontation and/or processing through of a Typhon-like experience(s), where we have lost grasp of our sense of self, of the world, and of the order of things, that the skin of that relationship had been holding together.
In synastry, we can see how another person’s system plays upon our system in a particular way, kind of like an instrument. When we’ve been in a long-term relationship with that person (such as with a lover), or when we have only ever known ourselves as a part of this relationship (such as with a family member), we come to identify with that particular “playing” or “singing” of our system. If that relationship changes or is lost, it is a shift from Pisces to Aries. From the cohesion and connectivity of a relationship, we confront chaos consciousness and the unknown and questions of “what is real?” (Typhon). Where does that singing go? What is our real song?
Pema Chödrön writes:
“What we’re talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye - not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and thinking. The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we’re going to continually be humbled. There’s not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have much more to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die continually.
Instructions on mindfulness or emptiness or working with energy all point to the same thing: being right on the spot nails us. It nails us right to the point of time and space that we are in. When we stop there and don’t act out, don’t repress, don’t blame it on anyone else, and also don’t blame it on ourselves, then we meet with an open-ended question that has no conceptual answer. We also encounter our heart.”
During this Full Moon, Mars in Libra forms a trine with the North Node in Gemini and weaves the Libran impulse to configure in relationship to Others, into the cardinal cross between Pisces-Virgo and Sagittarius-Gemini. This points to this kind of being nailed “right to the point of time and space that we are in.” This is where our song is discovered and comes through.
Also, we have Mercury in Libra forming a trine to Jupiter in Aquarius, bringing us back to this Jupiter’s rulership of Pisces. Jupiter doesn’t just connect the dots and make meaning. Jupiter expands. Jupiter includes.
Pisces is so, so creative. Such vast imagination. A capacity to touch infinite possibilities. And, in the process of giving birth to a Vision, all of our parts catch up and are “birthed” into our awareness as well. Here is the opportunity to become unconditional Love. Here, we meet our Inner Perfectionist, Fixer, Judge, Critic, “What If-er”, Comparer, People-pleaser, Performer … on and on and on …
It is a mishmashed cacophony that is absolutely terrifying, that is Typhon, that is something with fiery eyes and a hundred snake heads that makes us want to stay in the realm of possibility and dreaming and imagination, where the hard edges become softened.
With the Sun in Virgo, this Full Moon in Pisces gives the medicine of rest and full feeling-ness to the ways we’re currently ordering and prioritizing our life. But, the invitation of a Full Moon is integration. We’re not meant to leave the Sun in Virgo behind and dive fully into a Pisces Moon, opening up to digest and integrate Typhon all in one sitting, or in one season. We can take the information that comes in and work with the Virgoan skills of discernment, organization, and whole-hearted ritual to contain these moments with Typhon, in a way that doesn’t out-pace our humanity and self-acceptance.
Be well, much love and Full Moon Blessings,
Nicole
