3.06.23 Moon Tracks
This last week was a culminating week of multiple planetary energies, which include Pluto and Saturn both at their final degrees of their signs. This final degree, 29, also known as the anaretic degree, is known to be one of intensifying, reflecting and falling apart. It is a culminating point of everything that has came before and that which is to come. It is a point to pay attention to in your own life, what is showing up around this degree point, what are the themes. When outer planets, like Pluto, or inner slow moving planet, Saturn is at 29 degrees of a sign, the environment will reflect a pivotal movement.
For my own life, there were a couple of major surprises, including deep reflections of where my life has been since 2008 when Pluto entered and reviewing the period when Saturn last left Aquarius and entered Pisces.
The year was 1994, and this was my first year of high school. I also have always referred to this year, as “the year the veil lifted”. I began to see deeper underpinnings to this world and worlds beyond. My heart opened and broke for the first time. My mind expanded and cracked open many doors, some intense and scary.
When Saturn began to make his move into Pisces, right around the 29th degree, was when I first experienced true melancholy.
Saturn moving into Pisces can bring up themes of sadness, issues around mental health and anxiety, explorations around spirituality, maybe connecting with a mentor or deepening into a philosophy. Saturn in Pisces can teach harder lessons around love, loss and boundaries. It may force us to look deeper into our own hearts and ask what is it we are seeking, and are we receiving? Pisces, the sign of mutable water, swaying more in rhythm with spirit than the mind. With the presence of Saturn, the mind and heart can feel this division, and creating a land bridge between the two is a challenge. Sometimes we need to fall back on poetry, art, music, symbolism when swimming with the zodiacal fishes.
My teacher, Adam Elenbaas of Nightlight Astrology, was just speaking on the association of melancholy to Saturn, and Pisces to poets. This period of melancholy, I began to explore new music that spoke to these more depressed periods, and it is music that still holds a sacred space in my heart. It allowed me to feel deeper, place imagery to my emotions, and from there I began to write my first poems. I had never really done that, nothing deep inside of me wished to be expressed pen to paper. I filled journals, still do. Music has always been one of my closest friends, it was during this period where I realized the importance of having a different tool to process how life comes in.
In the next two years, the veil lifted in ways I could never pull back or turn my head to far from. I experienced love and loss that created deeper psyche wounds have never fully been closed, experienced the tragedy of murder in a loved ones life, suicide of peers, experienced highs induced by external factors, and lows induced by excess ingestion. These were challenging and growing years, and I was young and dumb, and maybe I came out of the other side a little wiser. These were years when I truly first began to question and examine the concept of God and the infinite, and it is still a journey I am on in many ways. A search and examination that will never fully be complete until my own wheel stops cycling.
Now as the year’s wheel turns, and Saturn hits the 29th and on March 7th splashes into the dreamy expanses of Pisces, I reflect on what is ahead and how it relates back to that angsty and moody 16-yr old who was attempting to first make sense out of this whole thing called life. What new emotions, moods will I have to navigate?
The answer has been rolling in, and honestly I have felt the building of tidal waves pressing in on my mind and heart and soul. They still include poetry, music, melancholy, mental health, spiritual wisdom, and my own relationship to my family and the collective. They come with heavier themes of personal responsibility unto the collective and to my own family, the direction we all are growing in. At times I still need to let it all loose by playing a record loud, or writing my thoughts down for pages on end.
Themes are slowly revealing, hitting on the Venus/Jupiter conjunction and the Mercury Saturn at 29 deg, I was given a large hint of how this is going to go, and I am vigilant. This time I get the opportunity to approach from an adult perspective, a clearer, detoxed mind, a tad bit wiser and gentler spirit, backed by the knowledge of the past and lessons learned. I am ready, I think.
These two cards represent the decan the Sun and Moon occupy during the Full Moon in Pisces. 9’s represent the closing out of a cycle.
Saturn enters Pisces on the 7th, this is the same day as the Full Moon hits in Virgo. The Moon and Sun sit in opposition at the 16 deg mark. The Sun in the second decan of Pisces. The tarot associated with this decan is 9 of Cups, the Lord of Happiness. A man smugly sits surrounded by a crescent of 9 cups, reminiscent of the moon, crossing his arms, surely pleased with his achievement. This decan is ruled by Jupiter, and Jupiter himself rules Pisces. Jupiter is associated with good fortune, expansion, luck and a higher wisdom. The Moon and the Wheel of Fortune are also strongly connected to this tarot card, and rule over fortune, both cards turn the tides on us, up and down we go.
The Moon sits in Virgo’s second decan, 9 of Pentacles, the Lord of Gain. A Venus-ruled decan. This card also suggest material gain, since pentacles correspond to earth and to the material realm. The tarot card related to this speaks to being independent and self-sufficient, and finding great success through self responsibility. It also speaks to the personal responsibility of being in of this world, where Pisces teaches us relation to the spirit and the numinous.
Numerlogically, the 9’s begin to close out the cycle. We take stock, reflect, look around. What have we harvested?
This opposition, Sun to Moon, Jupiter to Mercury, is a natural opposition in traditional astrology. The Sun and the Moon are luminary opposites one ruling day, other night. The Sun and the Moon set the duality we experience in motion. Sun ruling the spirit, Moon influencing the mind. Sun representing our life goals, the Moon reflecting the actual environment we find ourselves in despite the goals we set.
The tension between the two planets stems from Mercury wanting to pick things apart, and Jupiter wishes to expand. Mercury wants to analyze and break things down and Jupiter wants to set the law and make things wholly united. Jupiter represents faith and trust, Mercury doesn’t move on faith alone, and leans more on intellect.
With these two cards in opposition, I see that ultimate success rests on the ability to possess a keen intellect and a well-balanced faith, trusting the dyadic nature of the universe. One cannot fully live only in the mind and leave out the heart or spirit. We must fulfill all aspects of the human experience, this is especially true as technology is on the fast track to assume this human experience.
This Full Moon lends a greater illumination on the things that tear us apart or divide our mind. If you have been struggling with how to proceed, your mind says one thing and your heart another, maybe you find a more tempered path. If you have been struggling with how to live in this world and yet still remain apart in your own individuality, maybe the light of the Full Moon highlights a road through. The opposition of the luminaries, represents the internal struggles of mind and heart.
Receiving a Full Moon on the day of Saturn entering Jupiters temple seems mighty auspiscious. Jupiter and Venus are still in Aries, fresh off a conjunction, winking at us all that no matter where we are at, everything ultimately will be ok. We must let the story roll out, trust the process, and know our inner child is exalted by a wiser, more grown up, lived-out version. There will be ups and downs, because that is the nature of the Moon, of fortune, of this wheel we are placed on. The key is to find the center, and spin with the wheel, not get ran over by it.
I do think Saturn in Pisces has a lot to do with the collective’s mental health, moving away from Aquarius which is concerned with the collective and now seeks to integrate the spirit into the collective. Saturn has ruled back to back in his own temples and now finds himself in the embrace of Jupiter. Here in Pisces, we can have big feels and an expansive heart, but we also must learn where to place those feelings and how to contain them safely so they do not overwhelm. Saturn may try to teach us this. He brings the knowledge of his previous stay in Aquarius, and some of the lessons are around how we as a collective are moving. Quickly, technology has it hooks in all of us, certainly our children the leaders of the future, and maybe Saturn wants to implement some guard rails on all of this. Can we move forward as technology advances, and still guard our humanity and our own individual development, without the full influence of an algorithm? Again we need to microdose the spirit, remember our humanity.
The Full Moon in Virgo that hits on the same day, illuminates our mind, our concerns, the way we process the world and relate. How can we ground ourselves when it all can just feel overwhelming and too expansive. This is the lesson of Saturn in Pisces.
I do think my younger, naive, fresh-faced self was trying to figure out which boxes to place these huge, expanding emotions. Emotions that engulfed and raged over the soul, and the toolbox was essentially empty.
This time around as Saturn steps into Pisces, under the auspice of the Full Moon, illumination around the gift that can we fill our toolbox and our loved ones may be the story for the next few years. With the wink of Venus and Jupiter, good fortune will be the outcome, and a more connected future is at hand if we properly use all the tools we are given.
Where were you in 1993 through 1996, what themes were circulating around your life, your mind, and heart? Look at what is coming in now and the relation to this past period. This is giving clues to the tough lessons Saturn wants to teach, settle in because he doesn’t complete his work until 2026.