New Moon in Pisces

A single blow and all the ties that bind us to the grand ideas of our reality fall away, and we vanish from the net they weave about us. We slip free of our social status, step off the wheels of production and consumption and are cast out into the flux of matter to be made into things. Our surfaces smooth, like an orange, or a chair, or a bone. Things knit into their surrounds; they conceal no inner secret. Silently drowning in our bodies, we are restored to the limitless potential which resides in matter before it takes on form. We are returned to nature: its indifference and indifference to value. We are hooked up to the blind forces which flow through existence, the mysterious forces we spend our days vainly attempting to subdue in order to gain some relief from their brutal assaults. But does it then go away, this thing we become in sleep? If history is the account of individual selves and their occupations, then things which are compelled to silence do not stand outside it but rather at the juncture where it intersects with the primal forces which surround it: where history is open to unselfed becomings.

The Book of Sleep by Haytham El Wardany

Some say Pisces is like the ocean. There is vastness. Immeasurable tides, waves that reach us from afar, source unknown. The mutability, ever shifting flexibility of the water in Pisces is protean and seemingly limitless in the potential sensed. The nocturnal, inner dreamscape of Jupiter, the exaltation of Venus, Pisces is known as zodiacal terrain that can kindle hope in the darkest hour. Yet Pisces is also a place that puts us into touch with the chaos in the Mystery, the great unknown that none of our coping strategies of security can in the end control. Pisces is a place of mystery, yet within that mystery lies our own salvation. Pisces is a place of devotion, and the New Moon in Pisces can bring realization regarding the dream we have been living, questions regarding the ideals we have been devoted to.

If you have been following astrology and astrologers who forecast the year ahead, you already know that the New Moon in Pisces on 10 March 2024 will initiate us into a volatile eclipse season sure to set major new storylines into motion. The lunar cycle following the Pisces New Moon will wax into a Lunar Eclipse in Libra on 25 March followed by an incredibly intense Total Solar Eclipse in Aries on 8 April, with Mercury stationing retrograde in Aries in between the eclipses at the same time the Sun in Aries will approach a conjunction with the North Node of the Moon. With hunger crises set amidst catastrophic killing of civilians in Sudan and Palestine already happening, the war in Ukraine continuing, and accelerated violence erupting in Haiti among many other global crises, the way that eclipses in cardinal signs can accelerate the speed of chaotic events is cause for the kind of concern difficult to encapsulate in words. You don’t really need to be into astrology to realize we are passing through an incredibly harrowing collective time period.

The great unravelling occurring, the great dissolution breaking down ideals and illusions, fits well with Saturn and Neptune coming to the end of their cycle in Pisces. The New Moon in Pisces is at the center of the spiral in the sea between Saturn and Neptune, as the Moon in Pisces will be separating away from a conjunction with Saturn and applying to a conjunction with Neptune. Yet the Pisces New Moon is simultaneously configured to the accelerating potency building between Jupiter and Uranus in Taurus, a combination that can overturn power dynamics, open new pathways of invention and innovation, and activate liberatory forces taking direct action. The New Moon is in the watery home of Jupiter while separating from a harmonious sextile with Jupiter and Uranus, with the sextile between the Pisces Moon and Uranus particularly potent in its closeness. The conjunctions of Jupiter and Uranus as well as Saturn and Neptune are the two biggest astrological alignments of the next few years, and so the New Moon in Pisces being configured to both makes it an ideal lunation for centering and discovering insight into the elements of old dreams that are now washing away with finality, while making deeper contact with the inner sources of nourishment, inspiration and devotion that can become focal points of creative action.

The Pisces New Moon moving from Uranus into Neptune can open a portal into the big dream that can carry you through the years ahead. While there is mass confusion occurring in current events, and numerous astrological aspects reflect the chaotic confusion in many ways such as Mars in Aquarius clashing with Uranus in Taurus in a square aspect at the same time as the Pisces New Moon, there is nonetheless potential to gain greater understanding for the work that truly matters to you. The gravity felt in the air as the sweep of historical events accelerates only adds to the potency of the moment, and so the catalytic force of Mars and Uranus coming together can serve as a massive wake-up call regarding your life and where you need to take action. See how you can use the tension of whatever difficulties you are facing to spur you into more resilient, persistent focus on your core values and goals.

Adding impetus for action is the ingress of Mercury into Aries shortly before the lunation. While Mercury will still be invisible as the Sun and Moon come together in Pisces, the star of Hermes will be quickly moving across the first degree of Aries known as the Aries Point. Zero degrees of Aries not only demarcates the Aries equinox of equal light and darkness around our planet when the Sun enters Aries, it also marks the intersection of the ecliptic with the Earth’s equator. Considered to be a potent degree in mundane astrology as it’s a point we all share as well as marking the increasing season of light in the northern hemisphere, we can add additional significance to this degree due to it also being the point where Saturn and Neptune will form their conjunction in 2026 and also spend time together in 2025. As a result, the imaginal potency of Mercury will be amplified as well as attuned to the amorphous shape shifting of Saturn and Neptune.

Moreover, not only is Mercury at zero degrees of Aries, Mercury is also forming a harmonious sextile with Pluto in Aquarius. With Pluto still close to the degree of the Jupiter and Saturn conjunction in 2020, the contact between Mercury and Pluto can open inner vision into the long-range plans and dreams you most dearly wish to bring into being in the years ahead. It’s less a time to have all the answers and insist on making things happen exactly the way you want right now, and more a time for deep dreaming and coming into clearer contact with the intersection of your true will with the true dream you wish to live in the years ahead. Keeping in mind that this dream will be shifting and mutating as all dreams do, the New Moon in Pisces can be helpful in letting the elements no longer aligned with the dream taking shape wash away in the waves.

The New Moon in Pisces is also in the exaltation of Venus, with Venus close to crossing the threshold between the intellectual windscape of Aquarius and the watery dreamscape of Pisces. Venus will enter Pisces on 11 March, the day after the Pisces New Moon, adding to the Piscean solutio that will be reshaping matters as we approach the coming eclipse season. Venus will share the sign of Pisces with the Sun and Saturn during the forthcoming lunar cycle until the Sun enters Aries on March 19 or 20, depending upon your time zone. From the New Moon until the Equinox, Venus will be getting closer and closer to a conjunction with Saturn until they eventually form their exact conjunction on 21 March. The following day, Mars will enter Pisces on 22 March and amplify the flooding of Pisces. All of this will occur as the Moon waxes toward becoming eclipsed during the Lunar Eclipse in Libra on 25 March.

In the way that alchemical processes have been applied to psychological processes, the solutio phase will be intensifying with the influx of planets through Pisces at the same time Saturn is activating its balsamic phase with Neptune in Pisces. Passing through a solutio phase can be extremely confusing and we will need to be mindful for how we find our way through the moist fog of multiple elements dissolving and blending together into new mixtures. However, it’s also true that the solutio phase will ultimately lead to the solution, as the solution is the solution. And with the impending conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus building with intensity in the weeks ahead, there can be something incredibly exciting, inspiring, and liberatory emerging from the cauldron we are tending. Take the time needed to sit with processes, be silent when necessary, refraining from trying to rush ahead with answers before the answers can be found. Transmuting turmoil and tension through creative exploration can be fruitful as we traverse the waves of Pisces in the weeks ahead, and even if our creative explorations don’t take solid form they can help guide our creative process where it ultimately needs to go.

Pisces 3 Decan

The Moon will become reanimated and regenerated within the third decan of Pisces associated with the Ten of Cups illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. An image of idealized happiness, it’s form of a joyous couple enraptured by a rainbow, their children blissfully dancing in front of their picturesque home is one manifestation of countless images that could be used to display the inspirational vision underlying and driving inner motivation. A watery, nocturnal face of Mars, the third decan of Pisces is a place of passion where we can become unconditionally devoted to our deepest yearning. As the image of the Ten of Cups evokes fairytale endings, T. Susan Chang in 36 Secrets wrote that the connection between this image and the third decan of Pisces can be found in the fact that mystery, happy fictions, and daring works of imagination are essential to our well-being. Chang wrote that while we could discover “a fantasy to fulfill, an illusion to shatter, or a parable of love and loss” here, “to create fiction and metaphor is the very point of being human.” The New Moon in Pisces is thus a perfect time to check-in with your story and the mythic meaning unfolding in your daily life.

The rainbow pregnant with abundant cups in Pamela Colman Smith’s image for the Ten of Cups evokes the great daimon of Hope found in the ancient story of Pandora’s box. After Pandora opens the box that unleashes evils and ills into the world of humanity, the only presence left in the box is Elpis, the spirit of Hope. It’s the spirit found in cultural ideals such as a young Judy Garland wistfully singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” musing that somewhere exists where the most precious dreams you dare to dream really can come true. Fittingly, the Hellenistic text 36 Airs attributed the figure of Elpis, the daimon of Hope, to the third decan of Pisces. The guiding star we wish upon, the guardian angel we pray to for assistance, the hope we are able to muster in even the bleakest and most desperate of times, is essential to the meaning found in the third face of Pisces, the final face of the zodiac full of the passion required to move through the end and rebirth of the entire cycle of the zodiac.

In Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Henrich Cornelius Agrippa described an image of sensual delight: “In the third face [of Pisces] rises a nude or young man and near him [is] a beautiful maiden, whose head is decorated in flowers.” While this sounds like a pleasant dream, other old images for the third decan of Pisces reveal the terror of loss that can also be encountered in dreams. For example, Ibn Ezra in The Beginning of Wisdom pictured another nude male for the third decan of Pisces, but one who is armed with a lance and yelling for fear of thieves and fire. The burning desire pulsating through the third decan of Pisces, its grandiose dreams of ecstatic bliss as well as the agony of loss that comes from the failure to materialize dreams all fit well with the fact that Mars is the ruler of this decan.

Austin Coppock in 36 Faces ascribed the image of “A Cup of Blood” to the third face of Pisces, describing it as a place revealing one’s willingness to “sacrifice everything” for the “attainment of one’s greatest desire, no matter the cost.” Noting the images of romantic happiness found in the Ten of Cups card as well as in Agrippa’s masterwork, Coppock wrote that the third face of Pisces “inspires the lust and desire implied” by the images, “but the true object of the passions is a merger with the universe itself . . . The face and body of the beloved are a mask, an entry point into the experience of all-as-bliss.” Coppock noted that “the third face unfolds as the quest for true and perfect love,” yet the willingness to sacrifice all for the dream leads to the third face of Pisces becoming “littered with broken dreams and failed martyrs- those who sacrificed themselves for an illusion.”

Neptune transitioned into the third decan of Pisces in 2020 and 2021, and since that time we have collectively passed through a period of coming to terms with the collective and cultural dreams that can condition and unconsciously infiltrate our being if we don’t bring awareness to them. The New Moon in Pisces on 10 March 2024 will be the second to last New Moon conjoining Neptune in Pisces that we will experience in our lifetimes. The Moon becoming reanimated by the Sun in this face is a calling to contemplate the inner images of inspiration that have been motivating your actions, the full implications of the inner dreams contributing to your sense of purpose in the world. May the water of the New Moon in the third decan of Pisces reflect images of your authentic soul purpose, providing an imaginal lodestar to guide you through the coming eclipse season.

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References

Chang, T. Susan. (2021). 36 Secrets: A Decanic Journey through the Minor Arcana of the Tarot. Anima Mundi Press.

Coppock, Austin. (2014). 36 Faces: The History, Astrology and Magic of the Decans. Three Hands Press.

El Wardany, Haytham. (2021). The Book of Sleep. Translated by Robin Moger. Seagull books.