Eclipse Season Part 2: Emptying with the New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aquarius | Pisces Spree
Thursday, February 15 | Ghosts of Potential
New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aquarius
1:03pm PST | 27 degrees
Emptiness.
We take endless journeys to the bottoms of our souls. We duly follow the winding pathways and learn many tricks along the way. And yet when we come to the bottom, we find only the emptiness that shows itself there time and time again. Despite all the infrastructure we build along the way and with which we create security in this life, there is no safety from that particular emptiness. All of our efforts, when taken in earnest, lead us directly back to the necessity of surrender to the open expanses of the subtle vacuums within us.
This New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aquarius is particularly mental. It calls for healing the mind’s response to emptiness. This Moon is ripe for this, for airy Mercury, ruler of the mind’s mechanics, is closely conjunct the Sun and Moon as they meet. Two days later, Mercury will go Cazimi, conjunct the Sun while still in late Aquarius. The mind is how we perceive. With it, we shape our reality.
Emptiness becomes uncluttered space. Lack becomes potential. Apprehension becomes the taut string of a violin.
Figure Under a Blossoming Tree | Odilon Redon | 1904/1905 | sourced via Google Arts & Culture
Take time to meditate on what you are not. The aspirations you have not conquered. Train the mind to learn from the ghosts of your potential. Give thanks for what you have not yet manifested. That is where you have the greatest vantage, and where strategies will operate more potently over time.
Right now, the sky has really your back on this. Allow yourself to empty out and acknowledge your roots in the primordial maw of the sky. Acknowledge your relationship with the Moon and the power of the stars. Acknowledge that not everything is in your hands. If you do this now, the cosmos will be exponentially more navigable in your future endeavors.
The coolness of this Moon’s emptying-out will be refreshing, but it won’t necessarily your body’s obvious answer to the recent fire of the Full Moon Solar Eclipse in hot-blooded Leo of two weeks ago. It will require the effort and discipline of Mercury in Aquarius. Only the mind can direct this one properly.
Remember that Mercury (the mind) is the link between the soul and the personality. The soul expands beyond personality, but the personality is the soul’s vehicle here on Earth. It’s a wise move to tailor the personality to the needs of the soul.
So, the needs of the soul. This is the main course you’ll want to feed the purified mind this week. In a culture where we are constantly digesting new information, it is less than easy to serve the mind such a hearty meal. If need be, take the second half of this week to detox from social media or the mindless consumption of information. Assess your needs, and take a step back from excess.
The New Moon, especially a Solar Eclipse, is a time for new beginnings. Beginning fresh requires purging the past. Release fruitless habits, release resentments. Keep only the knowledge that serves you in the present. Let this one be a proper beginning.
Fresco from Pompei | Casa di Venus | 1st century AD. | sourced via Wikimedia Commons
On a Pisces Spree: Enter the Enigma
After the intense hot-and-cold polarity of the Leo/Aquarius axis, late February and early March will see a cluster of energy in enigmatic Pisces. This Eclipse Season has been a full-blown rollercoaster cycle of extremes, from Leo’s emotional highs to Aquarius’s cerebral, hyper-analytical lows. As we shift energy into the oceanic sign of the fish, consciousness opens up. Dichotomies and contradictions begin to matter less, to the degree of feeling trivial. The page turns to a distinctly mystical chapter, and as the ink dries we can exhale the drama loops of January and early February.
We began to feel this out-breath when Venus entered Pisces on Saturday, February 10. Venus is considered exalted in Pisces. Pisces’ non-dualistic love of diversity makes it much easier to get over problems we have with friends and lovers for needing to do their own thing. Venus’s agenda here is to be a legitimately benevolent lover. And love comes in many forms.
Tales tell us that Aphrodite, goddess of connection, was born from the foam of the sea, and indeed, she rules seafaring. Seafaring was, previous to the 20th century, the primary connective tissue between diverse cultures. The act of crossing the ocean to explore uncharted territories signals, for better or for worse, the kinds of profound cultural transformation that shape the course of global civilization.
Taken to the personal level (and Venus is deeply personal), we want to remember that every time we form a relationship with another individual, we are crossing an ocean in an act of connection. We have learned well from the history of colonialism how crucial it is to go humbly into another’s territory. We must go ready to be transformed by what we encounter.
The dreamy Piscean Venus can take us in several directions. At best, she offers us lucid insight into our own and others’ emotional patterning, and tips us off in the process of creating harmony. At worst, this Venus will have us grossly projecting our utopian fantasies onto our friends and lovers, as though they were our canvas, and fickly leaving them when they fail to meet unreal expectations. To make this mistake would be grave. For real connection is dynamic. It requires consent and participation between both parties.
On February 17, Mercury will enter Pisces. While extremely psychic here, Mercury can have a hard time in with this transit because the sign of the fish is no archetypal Clear Thinker. It will be extra important to stay clear on clear intuitive downloads vs. emotional thinking, and we will want to be careful of how we language ourselves as we attempt to communicate our experiences.
The Sun will follow on Mercury’s heels on February 18, officially transitioning us into Pisces season. The sensitivity and feels-heavy energy of this mutable sign will become the predominant ambience. Remember that Pisces Season is itself a transitional one, situated between Winter and Spring. This is a time when we are undergoing personal transformation, sometimes graceful, sometimes awkward, always oriented toward psychic expansion.
Finally, while the personal planets will be transiting Pisces, Chiron and Neptune have had residence here since 2011. These two have been doing the slow work of shifting the current zeitgeist towards consciousness, mindfulness, and healing.
Vincent Van Gogh | Almond Blossom | 1890 | sourced via Wikimedia Commons
So as February unfolds and all of this planetary energy congregates in early Pisces, we will see each planet apply to a trine with their traditional ruler, Jupiter, who is still transiting Scorpio. This is an auspicious aspect, suggesting that if we are willing to expand into the darker (and perhaps more usually taboo) dimensions of ourselves, we will shed our skins and go about our psychic blossoming with some degree of ease and success.
The only antagonist the sky shows this Pisces stellium is a rather useful one. Mars in Sagittarius will be in square with these planets, creating friction around the choice to throw our full weight behind the beliefs we’ve formulated through personal experience. If Eclipse Season has been handled well and you’ve done the work training the mind on the basic necessities you feel on the level of the soul, this square will provide the circumstantial challenges you need to cultivate a lifestyle that supports those necessities.
Pisces is anything but simple. The last sign in the zodiac, it contains multitudes. Its art is the art of personality integration and emotional maturation. We are heavy in Pisces energy until March 20, when the Sun leaves the sign of the Mystic. Until then, we will be navigating the elusive waters of emotion and consciousness itself. Be careful of getting lost in the fog, but while you are there, allow yourself to further develop your subtler senses. You will come out on the other side with a refined sense of who, but also what exactly, you are.