Once again, the collective din and chaos begins to come to a head as the Moon becomes totally illuminated by the light of the Sun, this time as a lunar eclipse in Pisces.
There’s are a lot of phenomena coming together to make this lunar eclipse extreme. It happens with a few degrees of Saturn, and at the same time as Mercury begins to station retrograde. All the while Jupiter and Saturn are applying their second square that will perfect in late june.
Needless to say, current events accurately reflect the austerity of the astrological weather. In the U.S. alone: tariffs, weakening international alliances, inflated prices, convulsions in the stock-market, and a looming government shutdown.
With all this chaos and turbulence around us, what is the message? How can we learn from these difficulties in order to continue edifying our souls?
This full moon is occurring in the grounded, practical, earth sign of Virgo in opposition to the Sun in the sensitive, hopeful, intuitive sign of Pisces. Virgo is ruled by Mercury, the vizier, advisor, and mathematician of the 7 planets. As the lord of speech, communication, and the mind, both of Mercury’s signs of rulership indicate strong ratiocinative, reasoning impulses.
In Virgo, we see Mercury’s mentalistic focus turned toward material matters: assessing all the details of any situation, checking our work, dotting our I’s, and crossing our T’s. All the minutiae and particulars of material circumstances are assessed, organized, and codified into functional laws and norms.
This rational, thorough quality shows up clearly in natives with strong Virgo placements. Virgos check your work. Virgos keep the cast iron skillet clean and seasoned at all times. Virgos always have “minor suggestions” to offer. While they may not build, they do polish to perfection. Virgo gets it done just right, and they get it done right the first time.
This full moon stands in opposition to the placement of the Sun in Pisces. Throughout this Pisces season, the feelings of hope and trust in something new and better coming down the road have colored the celestial timbre. Pisces is ruled by Jupiter; in this sign we Jupiters’ role as a mystic - one who has cultivated a profound level of divine awareness within themselves. Connection to the absolute spirit permeates their entire lived experience. They have released the need to control the way their life looks, and have surrendered to the greater Will.
While traveling through this sun, the Sun s us to Surrender, let go, and trust processes that are beyond our control (no matter how painful). Along the way, we become open to messages and guidance from the realm of Spirit that we are otherwise closed off to by being to attached to the material world. Perhaps your dreams have been stronger, your personal guides and tutelary deities have made their presence known, or your preferred divinatory channels have been speaking more clearly.
So as the Moon reaches her apex in opposition and discord with the Sun, we reach a complete antithesis between feelings of having to “get things right,” figure out all the details of our life and get our ducks in a row…
…and a pull to just trust, settle in and allow the Divine Dao to take its course.
The full moon in this placement can illuminate our need for control and our desire to have everything “just so.” To be sure, order and organization have their place, but this full moon will show us how our desire for mastery descends into anxiety-ridden, white-knuckled fear of things not going our way.
This is of course so tremendously difficult now with all the chaos going on in our lives. All the difficult astrological placements coinciding with this eclipse compound to test our mettle and just let go.
It’s far easier for unconscious anxieties and nerves to come to the surface during Pisces season as the call to trust and surrender becomes explicit. We fear losing control and can overburden ourselves with responsibilities and obligations that get in the way of simple trust and surrender.
I’ll share what’s going on with me and my wife Crystal personally. I don’t have any Virgo in my chart, but all my personal Capricorn placements make letting go very, very hard for me. I have so many agendas!
Crystal and I have spent the last 14 months applying for a USDA loan. It’s a government loan in the U.S., which can be notoriously bogged down by bureaucracy and red tape. Throughout this process, literally everything that be delayed or go wrong has done so.
Our first loan worker made us go through so many hoops that it turned out later we didn’t need to. He talked like molasses, and moved through life at glacial speed. His voicemail message was 2 and a half minutes long. It would take forever to get our calls answered or have him do anything. We wasted 5 THOUSAND DOLLARS on a survey that wasn’t necessary. He insisted that our plans satsify an obscure code that most engineers in the area never even heard of.
Well, we finally got approved, the house plans passed appraisal, and the title search is about to be complete after yet another associated hiccup and delay. But now that the lawyer is about to sign off and we can close…….the government is about to shut down. The USDA, as a government agency, cannot operate and close our loan during a government shut down.
Honestly, my capricorn energy is fuming. I am equally furious and despondent. This is not easy for me. But when I take a step back view this objectively as an astrologer, my lesson here is clear: let go.
Again, it’s not easy for me. And I’m not doing a good job with this lesson right now, to be perfectly honest. But I can see that I am holding on to this desire with an iron grip, and it isn’t helping me with my cultivation. I must learn to let go.
So, dear reader, what aspects of your life are you holding onto with an iron grip? How much more joy could you experience if you let go of having things your way? Are there areas of your life in which you could settle into more trust and surrender?
Red Jasper and Amazonite are both good stones for anxiety and fear. You may find working with stones to be especially helpful during this period given all the difficult configurations.
Allow the universe to hold you. Don’t worry about having everything together. If you surrender and let the universe take you where you need to go, you’ll end up somewhere far better than where your overthinking, the fretting mind can take you.