11:00 pm  AHST  03/09/2024
  1:00 am    PST  03/10/2024
  4:00 am    EST  03/10/2024
  9:00 am   GMT 03/10/2024

This Pisces New Moon (which is also a Super New Moon, at its nearest distance from the Earth) is an especially Piscean one, as it is conjoined with the planetary ruler of Pisces: Neptune. Neptune rules the deepest part of our soul, the depths of image, archetype, vision, and dreams. Wherever and however it is placed in our chart signifies our lifetime relationship to those elements of our psyche that everyone shares. Neptune, like the other outer planets, is not only generational according to the sign that it’s in (each 7 year period everyone has Neptune in the same sign) but we all have a commonality to what it represents: the great oceanic depths of mystery from which all Life emerges.

This New Moon cycle has the quality of a lack of clarity, due to a strong emotionality, but perhaps also there may be feelings of being lost, or without direction. This is a time to honor the need for one’s internal and personal space. Of course, it’s happening at a time in the US when we are vying for what our vision for this country is, and so duplicity and deception can flourish, which are also part of Neptune’s influence.

But the Pisces influence accents the deepest parts of our psyche, which exist mostly in what we refer to as the unconscious. These soul parts often well up into consciousness as feelings of longing. Not just our own personal desires for this or that, but more soulful longings: for a more peaceful world, for the end to war, for deep understanding from others, for a connection to the meaning of our lives. When these longings are frustrated, they lead to the desire for dissolving into another imaginal world, for escape, for illusion, and for substances to ingest that appease our longing.

There is a very tight aspect of this New Moon to Uranus, the revolutionary force of the zodiac, a 60˚ angle (a sextile), a positive angle that indicates a possibility of reform, of breaking through old, stale behaviors and beliefs to create new ones. Sextiles, however are not automatic (not anything in astrological forces totally compels us), they require a bit of effort to push against the past habitual responses and behaviors. We will see more action-oriented changes happening after Equinox this year, when a more Aries influence will occur. But change is in the air.

Pluto has recently entered Aquarius for the first time since the late 1700’s, and so all bets are off, so to speak, in terms of what we can expect, since the transformational energy of Pluto (breakdown and rebirth) is in the sign ruled by revolutionary Uranus. This means that the future we all hoped for is no longer recognizable; it keeps on shifting as our mass consciousness turns and churns with the karma of awakening (Aquarius) shaking us up. Our minds can’t know how this new era will play out, but we can trust that the Universe (and the Earth’s ecology) doesn’t put up with deception and abuse for too much longer. We are here to evolve.

The old systems of domination and control still have weaponry at their disposal, and so we must witness the age-old tactic of using the destruction of lives and property to instill fear. And fear overrides reason, sensitivity and insight. But this is Pluto’s “job”, to push us to evolve no matter the price, to have us come face to face with each other, with our projections of our own darkness, so that we may begin to do the healing that is so necessary for humanity to survive.

Mars and Venus, still somewhat together in Aquarius, have been accenting this need for a sea change. Venus will slip into Pisces on the 11^th and then Mars in Pisces on the 22^nd. So we’re in for a kind of month where our vision for the future is called into question and is up for grabs. Too often we resign ourselves to feeling as though nothing matters and “what’s the use,” but unless we can envision even a glimmer of hope for our world, we may find ourselves entering a desperate reality. It’s our responsibility to hold the possibility of healing. This is the path of Chiron, of the wounded healer.

For the past month, Chiron has been conjoined the North Node in Aries. The North Node represents our collective destiny. This is about becoming aware of the need for examining and integrating our woundedness, which will be our salvation. In the US, we can no longer pretend that our image of ourselves is the heroes of the world. This country produces and sells more weaponry than all other countries combined, and so we are complicit in the wars that are taking place. Addressing our history of years of slavery and genocide is necessary for the US to heal. It’s no wonder that those who wish to keep the populace in fear and ignorance are banning books that deal with these aspects of our past and denigrating this kind of awakening as “woke”.

Mercury has just entered Aries, but is conjunct with Neptune in its later degrees of Pisces. It’s the harbinger of what is to come, the only fire planet in this chart. This is a time for making a “fresh start,” for innovative dreaming into new habits and ways of living our lives that include re-visioning our present ways of being.

We may feel we’re in the underworld in many ways this month, but this is a time of preparing for that shift into Aries that occurs at Equinox on March 19^th. When that happens, it’s when there’s fire under us. This is the beginning of the astrological New Year, and is celebrated as New Year’s in other cultures. And we’re also entering into eclipse season (every 6 months) with a lunar eclipse on the 25^th and a solar eclipse on April 8^th. And coming up on April 20^th, the all-important, rare conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus. More on this later. Use this time of dreaming into the possibility of building new structures and initiating change, so that we can hold and contain the fire that will be surging from the awakening of Spring’s energy. Major consciousness shifting is happening, despite what the media portrays. We are all called upon to make our personal contributions to the massive healing that’s urgently needed, for humanity, and for the Earth.