Ever since Mars entered Pisces on the 15th of November, things have been getting rather murky, or dreamy, or more undefined and with less of a sense of direction. Pisces is a mutable water sign, and so feelings are frequently changeable, like its symbol of two fishes swimming in opposite directions. Mercury’s retrograde period which began the day after on the 16th, only served to enhance the feelings of non-directionality. At this New Moon, Mars has conjoined Neptune, the ruling planet of Pisces, which  reinforces the feeling of being pulled into the underworld. And in this era of “fake news” it reinforces  feelings of ungroundedness, of unreality, during this New Moon cycle. Neptune’s influence is to place everything in the realm of fantasy, possibility, and vagueness. But the two planets are like oil and water, Mars being about taking action, and Neptune and Pisces being more about the inner worlds of dream and visions.

And with Mars and Neptune forming a strong square (challenging 90˚ angle) to this New Moon in the usually optimistic sign of Sagittarius, our Sagittarian optimism is now being deeply questioned. Perhaps we are left with a shattered idealism. Perhaps we are grasping for new ways to hold onto reality, given the vast changes that will be necessary for our global society to begin to become human-centered rather than money-centered. So if we habitually rely upon our more cognitive ways of grasping the world, it would seem those old ways don’t work as well as they used to. Fortunately Mercury goes direct the same day as this New Moon, and so we can begin to gather ourselves together and find new ways of achieving a sense of balance in the midst of great changes and tragic events. But Mercury’s advance will take some time to get up to speed, re-tracking the  steps it made while retrograding through the zodiac, so its direct motion will not be immediately felt.

Saturn, usually the planet of limitation and contraction, is actually the release point for the tensions in this New Moon chart. With its sextiles (60˚ harmonious angles) to Venus and Mars/Neptune we are being asked to invite in those structures and activities that connect us with our artistic and imaginative  sensibilities, with the creative impulses. At our deepest source, we are creative beings. When we are in tune with this source, there are guiding forces and energies of wisdom and creativity available to us. Saturn is asking us to pay attention to the activities that help us bypass our thinking minds, our reason, so that we can be receptive to other parts of our psyche, the parts that our present day warrior culture often denies or denigrates. As we dance, draw, sing, garden, cook, meditate, or open our hearts and give compassionate attention to another, deeper parts of us emerge which help to bring us a sense of soul, of the indwelling life force that brought us here to this lifetime in the first place.

This is the time to work with these energies, to help us bridge the anxious and troubled outer world with a sense of a deeper purpose and connection to the life force within us. As the Winter Solstice approaches in the Northern hemisphere, this New Moon cycle encourages us to work with rather than curse the darkness, so that it serves as a guide to finding our inner light, our deepest optimism. This may mean we will need to “re-source” and find new ways to be connected to our inner wellspring of life force, to find new paths to our soulfulness, to what opens our hearts to love, to what inspires us to greet the world each day and make a difference.