Mercury just moved into Pisces as I write this. He’s paving the way for Saturn’s arrival on March 7th. We Astrologers have been waiting for this because it’s one of several major energetic shifts occurring in 2023. Coincidentally, Saturn enters Pisces just one hour after the Full Moon in Virgo, the sign of discernment, whose emissary is Mercury. As we close out the zodiacal year, we are liberated from five years of harsh Saturn schooling in Capricorn and Aquarius. Before we move on, it’s time to harvest the wealth of our experience.
Saturn was once the outer limit of our solar system. Our perception of reality was limited to what we could apprehend with our five senses. We knew what was real – we could touch it. Saturn is the planet that presents us with a manifestation of our collective consciousness. It reveals our brilliance along with our limitations. One of the biggest handicaps we have now is our paradigm. We’ve outgrown it, and it’s holding us back.
Somehow we have devolved into a collective that believes some of us are more valuable than others; that views life as mechanical, the cosmos as meaningless and humanity as prey. These themes have been in our collective faces for the past thirty years. The last time Saturn entered Pisces was in 1994. Things were winding down from the sixties and we were approaching the threshold of a new century.
Most of us had high hopes for the Millennium. I know I did – idealist than I am. I was seeing the blinding light of a bright new future ahead. Little did I anticipate the drama of the past 23 years, nor see the darkness festering in the underworld. But it came raging out of confinement with the advent of 9/11. We have lived with terror for 22 years! And it is growing. Why? Because we believe in it. We believe in duality. We believe in separation. We live fearfully, on the defensive, and we see everyone “out there” as an enemy. And so we go out and get guns to protect ourselves from the “Others.”
This is the world that Saturn is showing us and asking, “Is this what you want?” We see the consequences: war, famine, genocide, mass murders, pandemic and constant toxic conflict.
Well here’s our chance to leave that behind. For the last five years Saturn has been ruling from his favorite houses – Capricorn where he evokes patriarchal domination and Aquarius where he defends tradition and resists progress. Saturn is still king of our physical reality. His function is to reveal to us the errors of our way, be it personally or as a nation, a planet, a humanity. Bottom line, our world won’t change until we do.
On March 7th, Saturn escapes the bonds of his two ruling signs and enters the mysterious waters of Oneness, where he surrenders control to Spirit. The next three years can set us free.
Pisces and Virgo
We’ve actually made a lot of progress in terms of awakening over the past 30 years, but we’re seeing the backlash, fueled by fear of the unknown. Symptoms of this fear include the insurrection, voter suppression, censorship and a renewed passion for authoritarian control. Saturn revealed our dark underbelly and is now giving us the chance to steer a different course.
We have an addiction (Pisces) to our beliefs. No matter how wild and crazy they may be. The shadow side of Pisces has to do with illusion. Pisces is expansive, limitless, the great sea of consciousness in which we all swim. The lack of boundaries can feel liberating, but it can also foster delusion. Beliefs turn into convictions, become principles and spawn more rules and laws in the attempt to control everyone else. We create organizations to institutionalize our beliefs. That’s why Pisces is associated with religion.
Somewhere in my studies of mysticism I learned that the great Avatars who launch Ages, appear at the beginning of the previous Age in order to point the way. In other words, Jesus is the Avatar of the Aquarian Age, not the Piscean, and he arrived with a message that Love is the Way. He spoke of caring for one another, protecting our children, the poor, the weak, the suffering. These are Aquarian values.
At the Beginning of the Age of Aries, the Buddha was born. He pointed the way to Inner Peace. Detachment through meditation. But it didn’t really catch on until the 20th century, the end years of the Piscean Age. So what is the Avatar of the of the next age – of Capricorn? This is an interesting question and we have at least two candidates. On the one hand the Avatar could be AI. There are a lot of people envisioning an age when we don’t need to worry about our toxic environment because computer chips will carry our consciousness and our bodies will become obsolete. This vision is based on the patriarchal belief that the mind is all that matters.
This faction sees the “Singularity” as the reunion of consciousness through computer technology. We’ll all hook up to the mainframe and have access to unlimited information. The problem with this path is that it denies Soul, Spirit, the body, and the Divine Feminine. I have heard endless arguments about how spiritual it will be to live life as a microchip, but Spirit inhabits the glory of nature, the beauty that inspires the Soul, the body that lets us touch and taste and see the wonders of creation. Our bodies are living biofeedback machines. We don’t need microchips. We have all the power we need within our own consciousness. We just need to relax our limited beliefs to access it.
I’ll pause my rant on AI to focus on the other alternative. We can evolve without implants. We can wake up to the reality that we are all connected at our roots, not only to one another, but to all of Divine Consciousness. Humanity is going through the most miraculous evolutionary leap imaginable. And Science supports this evolving paradigm. Through advanced technology, physicists discovered the underlying structure of our reality to be a quantum soup of subatomic particles that flash in and out of existence. The only difference between that soup and human beings is time and limited awareness. We believe in time – that it’s a scarce commodity, that it’s linear, that you actually know what time it is. It’s always only one time – NOW. We just experience it in slow motion because we live at a frequency slow enough to experience matter as solid.
We learned from Einstein that energy and matter are interchangeable and reality is relative. If we move fast enough, time stands still. That holds true for energy frequency as well. Our accelerated evolution is happening through the elevation of our collective frequency. This includes Earth which is exhibiting wild spikes in its usual frequency of 7.83 Hertz. We are being invited to join a much larger reality that becomes visible to us when we raise our energy level. To assist our transmutation, the cosmos is bombarding us with energy.
Earth has entered the photon belt and is now bathed in light which is energy. Our DNA is evolving, our bodies are learning how to handle higher frequencies. In the process we are becoming more conscious and seeing through the veils of illusion. Add to that increased solar activity, plasma ejections that are creating beautiful auroras around our poles, energy dancing its beauty in our atmosphere. Then there’s Earth’s orientation to the galactic center from which flows a constant stream of cosmic waves. And of course the alignment of heavenly bodies that are supporting our metamorphosis.
Pisces is the final sign of the Zodiacal year. We are ending one cosmic cycle and preparing for the birth of another. It is in Pisces where we let go of the old and harvest the spiritual richness of the past year. Fortunately we have help from Pisces’ polarity which is Virgo, the practical Earthy sign in which we pick through the details of experience for hidden gems. We harvest the value. To do this job well, we learn to fine tune our discernment.
Full Moon in Virgo
Full Moons bring a lot of light. We can see in the dark. This is true for all the dark, unexplored corners of our psyches as well. Our consciousness is heightened at the Full Moon. The seeds planted in our subconscious at the New Moon are now ready for harvest. We can use the bright light of Virgo and her emissary Mercury to see more of who we are and who we are becoming.
Mercury will be in Pisces until March 18th. Just before the Spring Equinox on the 20th, it will lead the way into Aries. The New Moon occurs hours later in the early hours of next day. This Full Moon is the time to put our discernment to work. What have we learned? How have we grown? What no longer serves us? What is blocking my way? And in Pisces – what is real and what is illusion?
The Sun in Pisces is in the USA 3rd House, traditionally ruled by Mercury and associated with Gemini where the focus is on gathering and evaluating information. Can you feel all the mental energy right now? And Mars is still in Gemini after 7 months. The spotlight is on thinking. The Moon in Virgo is in the 9th House where we integrate this information into a cohesive world view. All is ripe for a paradigm shift.
Our world is changing and once again Uranus is involved through a trine to the Moon in Virgo and sextile to the Sun. Uranus activates, sends flashes of energy and insight, throws up unexpected themes or issues. Uranus has been conjunct the transiting North Node for a whole year, waking us up and shouting “Look where you’re going!” The North Node is finally slipping its grasp as it moves toward Aries. You remember that the nodes move backwards through the signs, just like the Zodiacal Ages. We have another big change ahead when the nodes switch signs in mid-July.
Saturn in Pisces
So what does it mean that Saturn will be in Pisces? It can mean a wide variety of things and it all depends upon our consciousness. I cannot predict, but I can list out some possibilities.
Let’s get the worst out of the way. Pisces shadow side involves illusion. We have been making our way through a sea of half truths for years. Kelly Ann Conway introduced the concept of alternative facts and spawned endless iterations. We can expect that the propagators of lies will continue on the same track. But who knows? Fox could become a champion of truth, especially when Dominion raids their coffers.
There is also the danger of more addiction. Shadow Pisces wants to escape reality through alcohol and other drugs, through conspiracy theories and borderline schizophrenia. But there are so many amazing opportunities for us with Saturn in Pisces. Pisces is vast, an enormous place in which to expand, an ocean in which boundaries dissolve. Saturn manifests, defines, concretizes, establishes boundaries, institutionalizes our consciousness. Two basically opposing functions. So here are some possibilities:
1. Saturn can help us ground our faith and embody Spirit.
2. Pisces can dissolve our resistance to change, to new information, to the truth of who we really are.
3. Saturn can show us our limitations, where we are blocked in our spiritual growth, where we are paralyzed by fear.
4. Saturn can manifest our dreams. Jupiter is the traditional ruler of Pisces. Lord of the Heavens, Jupiter has expansive dreams and faith that they can come true. Saturn makes it happen. It can draw out our optimism and anchor our spiritual aspirations in the physical world. We will begin to see all our work pay off as our physical reality starts to reflect our awakening.
5. Saturn brings a reality check. With a built-in BS detector, he applies rational, practical, common sense to lies and illusion. Yay!
6. Saturn can help us evolve a new paradigm built upon our imagination and growing spiritual awareness, as we reflect upon the lessons of the last five years..
7. Saturn can equip us for the next 30-year cycle with compassion, maturity, an expanded sense of responsibility, not just to the self, but to all of manifested life.
8. Saturn brings unresolved karma into Pisces enabling us to let go of the past and leave our burdens behind.
9. Saturn can strengthen our sense of responsibility for our own evolution. We can develop spiritual discipline. We can commit to a spiritual practice of meditation, take responsibility for our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes, transmute our shadow material through love. We can embody the values we profess to hold.
10. Saturn can channel more compassion and expanded awareness into our physical world.
This is a partial list but I see great potential for spiritual freedom and sovereignty over the next three years. And this is just the beginning. The Aries Equinox chart is powerful and at the New Moon in Aries, Pluto will be crossing the threshold into Aquarius. More on that next time.
Assorted Influences
At the Full Moon the Sun is conjunct Nessus, the centaur associated with bad behavior and death by poison. I wrote last time about the toxic spills, which are a Saturnian manifestation of our toxic collective consciousness. We can no longer deny how we have poisoned our resources and the minds of our young with the conditioning of fear. Saturn and Nessus are conjunct the USA natal Sedna, the goddess who now defines the new boundaries of our solar system, the spiritual destiny toward which we are evolving. Our toxic environment, physical and psychic, must be cleansed.
Mercury is conjunct the dwarf planet Gonggong. This Chinese god wreaked havoc with his anger until one day he hit his head on a mountain and woke up. It’s wake-up time. Actually the alarm has been ringing for quite a while.
Neptune is conjunct Selena, suggesting that the path forward is the Way of Spirit toward Oneness. All these planets are clustered at the bottom of the USA chart. Time to look at the cracks in our foundation.
The 4th House is packed with Vesta, Jupiter, Chiron, Venus, Eris and Juno in Aries preparing a spiritual path of faith and devotion, optimism, healing, compassion, authenticity, and commitment to a better future. At the Full Moon Venus is conjunct our natal Chiron bringing grace and compassion to our psychic wounds. Throughout this month, Jupiter is moving toward a conjunction with Chiron, our inner shaman and healer, supporting our collective healing.
Mars on the Full Moon will make a return to our natal Mars, kicking off a new 2-year cycle. This can trigger anger and aggression, but it can also activate our minds (Mars in Gemini) and our conviction to right some wrongs. In Gemini, Mars actually stops to think before rash behavior. With the benefits of Saturn in Pisces, our collective martial approach to life will be softened and our mature, effective, protective Mars can emerge.
Pallas is conjunct our natal Sun in Cancer. Pallas is telling us to nurture ourselves and one another, to seek wisdom through the courage of facing what we fear, and to fight for our children’s future.
The dwarf planet Varuna is conjunct our natal North Node pointing to a future of sovereignty, not authoritarianism. Our North Node is in Leo, supporting a courageous heart, reminding us that our light shines brightest through the heart. The way forward is through the heart. We can practice breathing through the heart chakra. This simple act transforms our reality.
All in all, this Full Moon chart is a pretty good report card for the last zodiacal year and a hopeful, positive sign of growth to come. The next two weeks are about harvesting our inner riches and releasing the past. Pisces will support our flexibility as we integrate new cosmic energies. We can trust the process and surrender to the flow.
In two weeks we will feel the rush of rebirth as the Sun enters Aries on the 20th followed quickly by the New Moon. Prepare to launch into a new cycle of evolution.
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