Wednesday, March 6, 2013

The Pisces Circus Starts Pulling Up Stakes

The upcoming week opens into a New Moon in Pisces at 21 degrees on March 11, which conjuncts Venus at 17 Pisces and Mars at 29 Pisces, on the last degree of the zodiac.

At this New Moon, we have both relationship planets (Venus and Mars) along with Neptune, Chiron, Mercury retrograde, and the Sun and Moon in the sign of the fishies. This ongoing stellium in Pisces has had us swimming around in circles for over a month now. It's hard to even remember the last time things weren't soggy-foggy, swirly-whirly confusing. The Piscean mind fuzz.

All this mutable water has worn us down over the past weeks. Or is it over the past 2,000 years?

Some of  those gorgeous and glowing Neptunian mirages are looking mighty tantalizing right about now. Like the answers to our prayers. (Don't they always?) But keep your eye on things. Keep moving through the spectral images. Don't chase dead ends or tired siren songs. We're being tested on the end-of-Pisces karmic loops this week. Keep in mind that a lot of this is make-believe.

You can pick up a good and lovey Neptunian buzz from all this Pisces. You can indulge in some high romanticism and fantasy and woo woo. But don't make the mistake of believing these things are concrete, stationary, or long-lasting. The Pisces circus starts pulling up stakes coming out of this New Moon and will move on down the etheric highway, regardless of how many hearts may be broken in its wake.

We've been completely immersed, swallowed whole by this Pisces stellium, but it starts to break up after the New Moon, as Mars moves from the last degree of the zodiac to the first, entering home sweet home Aries on March 12.

At that point, though still very influential, the Pisces stellium energy has reached its peak.

This Pisces New Moon on March 11 marks the two-year anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. It also marks the two-year anniversary of Uranus entering Aries for its full transit of the sign. Fukushima was kicked off as Uranus moved from 29 Pisces to 0 Aries. Now, we have Mars moving over those degrees. In 2012, we had Mercury retrograde moving over those degrees. You can read more on that here: Stationing Mercury Conjunct Uranus in Aries on the One-Year Anniversary of Fukushima and a Retrograde Over the Zero Aries/29 Pisces Point

This 29 Pisces/0 Aries point is highly symbolic as the simultaneous close of one cycle and opening of another.

With Mars on this point at the New Moon, our personal directions, our desires, our goals, our sex drives, and our fighting/masculine/yang energy enter a new phase of expression, breaking the Piscean-era hold and patterns.

Since the beginning of February, we've been using the Mars in Pisces transit to actively carve out a new and healthier track for the sign of Pisces. This New Moon is an official portal, an official opening into this new expression of Pisces: Pisces for the astrological Aquarian era. This is our theme for the week and for the monthly lunar cycle that will be unfolding. Make your choices and your moves with this in mind.

We can be Piscean masochists, setting ourselves up to be victimized by the same old tantalizing karmic scenarios. We can give in and fall for it. We can accept the weakened position. We can allow ourselves to be set up as scapegoat or sacrificial lamb or whipping post.

Or, with Mercury in Pisces retrograding back to conjunctions to Chiron and Neptune, we can out-smart these karmic scenarios, moving out of their reach, going against the grain, choosing new and healing territory.

We can leave many of the wounding illusions and draining dynamics of the astrological Piscean era behind us here - with a little help from the perspectives of our friends and advisers!

With Mars transiting Pisces, we've been fighting our way through some fairly dense pockets of end-of-era listlessness, despondence, depression, and futility. The state of this planet is enraging. Disgusting. Sickening. Overwhelming. And we're tired of slogging our way through it, through this transition time, with seemingly no end to the struggle.

But at this Pisces New Moon, we have energizing, refreshing, fire-us-up Mars on the most karmic of degrees - the 29th degree of Pisces, the last degree of the zodiac, the degree that has all the hopes and dreams and disappointments and devastation of the entire zodiac dissolved into it.

Here, we have the opportunity for a fresh start and a new direction of the most intensive and healing kind related to the themes of this sign.

This isn't easy. We have to put conscious effort into it, and this can be frustrating and exhausting. We could burst into tears at the seeming hopelessness of it. All things considered, it can seem pointless. The themes of this sign are some of the most tricky, sticky, confusing, overwhelming, and painful of the bunch. Anything anyone doesn't want to deal with gets dropped into this psychic ocean. It touches us all.

Pisces problems are the inter-related problems of the human condition on Planet Earth - past, present, and future. The invisible connections that link us in love, faith, spirit, pain, problem, and suffering.

With so much Chiron-infused Pisces, our sensitivity levels can be off the charts. It's as if our protective barriers have been removed altogether. Gaping wounds - psychic, emotional, or physical - are being exposed to the air.

Pain so unrelenting, cruel, and defeating that all you can do is stick a needle in your arm, snort some powder that might take it away, or pop a pharmaceutical designed to make it all fuzzy.

Or maybe watch eight hours of television, buy a bunch of stuff you don't need online, gorge on junk food, have sex with someone you just met, or turn on the drone of mind-numbing mainstream music.

Pisces pain might fade, but it doesn't really go away. The loss, the desolation, the dysfunction, the crushing disappointment, the cherished dreams that have been annihilated - this stuff stays with us.

All we may want to say at this point is, "Fuck it. I don't want to be here anymore."

But here we have a very exciting opportunity to infuse the sign of Pisces with some new Aquarian-era mojo. And this opportunity can't be missed.

At this New Moon, we're opening into an expression of Pisces that is more active and proactive. We're opening into a Pisces that will stand up and fight when it has to, instead of rolling over, paralyzed by the immensity and pain of the task. We're applying some healthy Aquarian-era detachment through the sign of Pisces, refusing to individually take on burdens for the collective any longer.

The people who have been and are being victimized by the way things are done on this planet don't have to take it anymore. We're joining forces around the globe to say enough is enough. We're shifting blame from the victims (whom we are trained to blame) onto the true causes of our pain and suffering...

With the relationship planets so strongly involved in this New Moon, the "New Pisces" expression will have a direct application in love, romance, and relationship.

There is an Aquarian-era reclassification and redefinition of relationships underway, particularly prevalent for people who have not fit the standard models up to now. This process can be very confusing, as we are giving up certain of our ideals and putting others in their place. We're determining what we really need (Venus) and what we really want (Mars) in relationship within the context of the major shifts we are experiencing.

From a previous post:

"Jupiter direct is in an applying square to Chiron in Pisces (wounding illusions, deluded thinking, disappointing information and realizations of the truth) for the next two months, forming its third exact square to Chiron on March 27, 2013. This Jupiter-Chiron square will be lit up as Mercury, Mars, the Sun, and Venus conjunct Chiron in Pisces and square Jupiter over the next couple months. This square colours all of Pisces season (Sun in Pisces, February 19 - March 20), and we're strongly challenged to outsmart the end-of-Pisces themes over the next months.

The Piscean era is over - if we choose to make it so. And these last layers of wounding Piscean-era thinking, particularly around love and relationship, are set to go now.

We can have the best of Pisces in relationship - the full, spiritual love, the delightful intermingling of auras, the compassion, the magic, the bliss, the romance, the sweetness. But we don't have to turn relationships into one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs by insisting in juvenile fashion that they be ONLY those things. 

Pisces has a place in love and relationship in the astrological Aquarian era. A big place. But it isn't the ONLY place, as it has been. It doesn't colour the ideals as heavily. It isn't the version of love placed atop a pedestal to worship.

Love and relationships are different in the astrological Aquarian era. That's all there is to it.

Under this umbrella, we're complete as we are. Self-contained. We don't need anyone to prop us up, to complete us, to add what we lack. That doesn't mean we don't need people or that we don't need love. It means that we aren't incomplete without it. We aren't damaged beyond all recovery by not having a personal love relationship.

We come together as two (or more) equal and self-contained units in Aquarius. We create the win-win by being ultra fabulous and skilled in what we bring to the partnership and in partnering with others who bring ultra fabulous skills to the table.

We don't fully immerse ourselves in the energetic forcefield of another. We don't lose ourselves or allow another to be lost in us. We don't join with people purely for healing purposes. We stand on our own and accept the healing that comes to us through love and relationship.

We don't pin illusory expectations on anyone to fulfill our pink-tinged dreams of Hollywood romance and Happily Ever After. We make the Happily Ever After ourselves. We build it together one step at a time. And some of those steps are pretty fucking rough. Don't let that convince you that your relationships are anything less than those "twin flame" couples'..."

We use the astrological symbols as benchmarks. Indicators of "what time it is."

The Sabian symbol for the degree of Pisces where this New Moon falls is: "A Prophet Bringing Down New Law From the Mountain."

I'm no prophet, but I am telling you this: there are new laws for the sign of Pisces. Following the old rules brings the old pain. Pick up on this now, start to apply it, and you're ahead of the pack.

With this New Moon, we have the opportunity to move out of certain detrimental expressions of this sign. These are the expressions that will keep people manipulated, deluded, unsatisfied, and giving their power away. They keep people wishing and hoping and longing and pining for things that have not materialized - and will not materialize under the current energetic overlay.

With Mars transiting Pisces, there can be a strong desire to give up our will to someone else: to a saviour, to a martyr, to a lover, to a guru, to someone perceived as more spiritual or more special or more in-the-know.

There are major, major pitfalls to doing this moving forward.

When you know better, you have to do better. We know better now. It's just a matter of strengthening those healthy, New Pisces muscles until they take over.

Our dreams have to change - slightly or dramatically - if we have any hope of making them concrete reality. This can sting like a son-of-a-bitch, but it also angers and motivates. And with Mars finishing its transit of Pisces, we'll take all the motivation we can get.

Venus, exalted in Pisces, formed a conjunction to Chiron March 5. Mercury Rx and Venus form an exact conjunction today, still conjunct Chiron. Venus will then get some distance from both bodies, pulling out of that conjunction next week. This will alleviate some of the more difficult or overwheming aspects of the Pisces stellium themes.

The Moon and Mars enter Aries March 12.
The Sun enters Aries March 20.
Venus enters Aries March 21.
Mercury enters Aries April 14.

9 comments:

Liz said...

Wow! At last, dear Willow! This wonderful piece explains what I've been wading through, unremittingly these days(have Chiron in Pisces return to boot). Thank you SO much for this - you've lifted my spirits no end - and boy did they need lifting...

Holly said...

"It's as if our protective barriers have been removed altogether, exposing the pain to the outside. Gaping wounds - psychic, emotional, or physical - are being exposed to the air.

Pain so unrelenting, cruel, and defeating that all you can do is stick a needle in your arm, snort some powder that might take it away, or pop a pharmaceutical designed to make it all fuzzy.

Pisces pain might fade, but it doesn't really go away. The loss, the desolation, the dysfunction, the crushing disappointment, the cherished dreams that have been annihilated - this stuff stays with us. All we may want to say at this point is, "Fuck it. I don't want to be here anymore."

My moon is at 8 degrees Pisces so it has been conjunct Neptune and/or Chiron for some time now. This article is the verbalization of what I've been going through. I've never felt such deep, gut wrenching hurt as I have these past couple years. I'm honestly amazed I'm still able to feel anything at this point. I also have my Sun/Mar in exact conjunction @ 12 degrees Gemini in the 12th house with Saturn and Pluto transiting my 5th and 7th houses (the yod). I feel like I'm being smothered in emotional pain and no matter how I try to escape it, it just seems to keep coming back for me in some new twisted form I don't see coming.

I always find solace in your blog though. It helps me step outside my own experience momentarily to try and gain some perspective on the bigger picture. Which is very difficult when, as you said, it all seems pointless because nothing I do seems to make a difference.

As I write this I am completely heartbroken over one of those "wounding illusions and disappointing realizations of the truth." So I am certainly counting on this New Moon to give me the strength I need to finally close the door on all my negative Pisces behaviors.

You do a wonderful job of describing the agony of what it is to be Pisces at times. Where others see a lost cause, Pisces sees a soul in need of saving, and Pisces doesn't believe in lost causes. We may go in knowing that only one of us will come out the other end and still sincerely hope it's the other person because others pain is more unbearable for us than carrying our own. Beautifully sadistic I suppose...

Anyhow, thank you. I hope you know what a gifted and inspirational person you are.

Willow said...

Holly, some good news: Chiron is now off the 8th degree of Pisces for good. It will retrograde back to the 9th degree in November 2013, which will squeeze you a bit, but...you're officially on the other side of the Chiron conjunction coming out of this NM!

Jupiter in Gemini is making the final square to your Moon right now, also.

So I would say some relief is on its way for you with this New Moon. Just keep working with it...even though it sucks! You're on the right track.

Holly said...

I can only hope!
I will say, these past couple weeks have brought some pretty profound realizations having to do with some deeply ingrained, destructive patterns relating to my father and men. (Natal Sat/Pluto within one degree Sq. my Venus pretty much covers that).

I'm working on severing ties with all this dysfunctional relating and with people who keep me stuck in it. It's SO painfully hard though! I am drawn and attached to these relationships so intensely. To say I am struggling is an understatement. Neptune conjunct my moon is bound to be a fun time…

But I am determined to escape the sacrificial lamb role in my relationships. If I have the strength to keep enduring the pain, I know the strength to let go must in here somewhere too. Your posts offer some direction and clarity, which is worth more than gold to me right now :)

Nikki said...

I do love your posts, very insightful!

I notice in a few posts you have mentioned the twin soul concept, its been wrongly assumed this is about merging but its not, it's very much an Aquarian and Pisces era, its about being whole within yourself to find another person who is whole within themselves...you create a 3rd entity which is a bigger whole . I know many Pisces heavy people see this in the rose tinted Hollywood way, and its now seen as the new 'soul mates' card....a way of letting partners get away with all sorts because they are a soul mate, now thishas been replaced with the twin soul concept.
Think about non-identical twins , both are different people it they share a strong connection to eachother, and often can communicate in many non-verbal ways , they don't need the other too completely them.

If you want a Hollywood movie to watch to capture the twin soul concept, the best one is an oldie 'love affair' which is a story about two people meeting by chance, already in complicated situation who after a short while decide that it's worth persuing the relationship. To do so requires them to change their lives so they are no longer dependant on others,and find themselves in the process before they get together...it's a big risk! They do it but then life throws another curveball, a big one that again changes the dynamics.

So twin souls are an Aquarian concept but have up until now been hijacked by the pisceans, its time for them to reclaim what the twins are all about.

Willow said...

Twin souls is actually a New Age concept, not Piscean or Aquarian.

You can put it in an astrological framework, but the ideation stems from New Age ideology. That's the superceding layer.

And it just has no validity to me.

I see people wasting time, turning themselves in knots, obsessing over the minutiae of this concept.

It's a diversion of precious time and energy, to me. And a diversion from real human relations. The New Age is good at those.

Anonymous said...


I don't do 'twin souls' either... It's a cutesy concept but a big waste of time.

Sidhe said...

I'm pretty fed up with old school Pisces. I have a conjunction of Mercury, Saturn, and Chiron in the 3rd decan of Pisces in my (Aquarius-ruled) 8th (trine to Neppy in my Scorpio 4th). Oh yeah, and I have that generational Uranus/Pluto conjunction at 15 Virgo. What a pain in the ass. It's just a long cycle of all my well organized personal baggage being opened and re-sorted while I stand by slack-jawed and confused. (My moon is at 8 Cancer, so I got a trine from our friend Chiron)

Anyway, I love what you wrote about the "new" concept of Pisces. With all this fun in my 8th, and an Aquarius Venus in my 7th I've been trying to put a finger on my "ideal" relationship model for a while and never quite able to articulate it. "Happily Ever After" isn't hearts and flowers and rainbow infested unicorns spewing pixie dust. It's 2 individuals who are able to thrive and grow within a partnership. To thrive and grow also means change. To travel along together and hope that we are going in the same direction.
That is my hope for the new model.
With all that said, I'll be attending a really lovely meditation session on Sunday afternoon. A new friend told me about this group. Putting that pre-FM energy in a more productive way.

Cassandra said...

All we may want to say at this point is, "Fuck it. I don't want to be here anymore."

I don't know how many times I have thought this or said this out loud, in various permutations. "This planet is a prison." "Why did I come here?" "I wish I could just go home." Thanks for articulating it so well, as always.