The spiritual life
does not remove us
from the world
but leads us
deeper into it.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
The Full Moon on August 30, 2023, at 7 Pisces allows our spiritual connectedness to infuse wisdom, love and beauty into mundane tasks, communications and routines.
With an inclination to slow down (seven planets Retrograde), we can hear the messages coming from within and trust what we are feeling. Our sensitivities are heightened, we can be overwhelmed by a world that we perceive as louder, faster and brasher than before. We are more flexible, able to adapt to circumstance and willing to consider differing points of view (five planets in mutable signs).
Our heightened sensitivity attunes us to the spiritual truths we cherish and supports us to walk our talk while we tend to the details and tasks that need attention. We may easily sink into feelings of being the victim or disappear into escapist activities to avoid the depth of our sensitivity. But it is through our sensitive nature that the gold is found with this Full Moon.
Resolution of the Pisces/Virgo Polarity
Saturn conjunct the Pisces Moon
Full Moon Ruler: Neptune oppose Mars and sextile Pluto
Classic Full Moon Ruler: Jupiter trine Mercury conjunct Uranus and square Venus
Retrogrades
Venus Retrograde in Leo (July 22 - September 3)
Mercury Retrograde in Virgo (August 23 - September 15)
Pluto Retrograde in Capricorn square the Nodal Axis
All Outer Planets Retrograde
Full Moons are the peak of each lunar cycle, when something in our life reaches a culmination point. There is often a feeling of increased momentum and pressure in the days leading up to the Full Moon. And then, things come to a head through a crisis, breakthrough, and/or resolution. Emotions and tides run high. When the Full Moon is in a water sign, like Pisces, we feel more sensitive and vulnerable. With this Full Moon being a Super Moon, our feeling nature is further amplified. The two weeks following the Full Moon we are to bring something to completion and distill the wisdom from the recent lunar cycle, so we are ready for the invitation of the next New Moon.
A Pisces Full Moon can coincide with water surges and flooding. It is notable that Hurricane Idalia is moving across Florida, into Georgia and towards the Carolinas on the Full Moon, which would indicate that the hurricane will be strengthened by the Full Moon influence.
We are children of the earth.
We rely on the earth, and
the earth relies on us.
Whether the earth is
beautiful, fresh, and green,
or arid and parched, depends
on our way of walking.
Please touch the earth
in mindfulness, with joy and
concentration. The earth
will heal you and
you will heal the earth.
Thich Nhat Hanh
We are in the Virgo Season, the time each year where we get organized and get things done. It is the time of the harvest, time to go back to school, or the time to rededicate ourselves to the care of mundane concerns. The Pisces Full Moon helps us to bring a spiritual dedication and sensibility to the taskd at hand. It supports us in the practice of ‘chop wood, carry water’ so that each movement, word and action is filled with compassionate attention and inspired direction.
Practical Use of Intuition
Pisces/Virgo Polarity
The Full Moon in Pisces is directly opposite the Sun in Virgo. Virgo and Pisces share a value for service – Pisces through compassionate presence and Virgo through practical action. The Full Moon compels us to not favor one over the other, but to utilize both for effective action.
Pisces as Sky is the primordial waters from where we all emerge and return, the realm where all is one. When Pisces is operating in our lives, we intuit and feel something beyond ourselves and the times we live in. We tap into potentialities which we can identify as ideals, dreams or universal divine truths.
Virgo as Earth is focused on the details and specifics of the mundane tasks we give ourselves to day to day. Pisces sees the forest for the trees. Virgo is focused on what is happening with one particular tree, and more specifically with the health of the bark, the strength of the roots, and the care a particular tree may need. The Full Moon invites us to be the bridge between the dream and the reality, to water the dry earth of mundane existence with the abundant compassion, creativity and sensitivity found in our connection to that eternal spring that births and renews all life.
The Pisces Moon heightens the gentle side of our nature - the tender, kindhearted, contemplative side. This can be felt as a spiritual attunement, a burst of creativity or simply a desire to find sanctuary where we can be alone with ourselves. By finding the quiet within, we can intuit or receive messages that seem divinely timed. It is beneficial to pay attention to our night dreams, the lyrics to songs that pop into our heads or to images we are doodling.
The shadow side of the Full Moon surfaces if we sidestep or minimize the connection to our sensitive, spiritual nature. If we wish to quiet, numb or ignore it, we may experience a surge of feeling that leaves us confused, overwhelmed or feeling lost. If we fear our own sensitivity, the Piscean impulse can have us romanticize a situation or indulge in substances that assist in disconnecting us from reality and our true feelings. The opportunity is to bring a compassionate presence to whatever is happening (Pisces) and to assume responsibility for what needs tending in our lives (Virgo).
Virgo likes order and revels in handling the details of practical matters so that everything runs smoothly and efficiently. With the Sun and Mercury Retrograde both in Virgo, we may get caught in our heads, obsessing about some detail and worrying how to get something just right. Being out of balance with the Virgo drives, we can have digestive issues or sleeplessness. We are needing to balance the analytical, empirical way of approaching a given circumstance with the intuitive insight that can help us see how to handle something in a way that will result in a more satisfying outcome than relying solely on analysis of evidence and facts.
Virgo seeks balance as an essential ingredient to good order. We may be looking at the balance between our work and home life, the balance of being social versus the time we need for ourselves. The Pisces Full Moon helps us to not strive for perfection, needing to get all the details right.
Virgo rules imbalances in our personal health and the Pisces Full Moon can inspire us to establish or re-establish daily routines and rituals that foster and help sustain wellbeing. It is an opportune time to introduce or recommit to a health process or practice. This can include a practice that serves to nurture our relationship with the unseen through meditation, prayer, mindful walking, or simply prioritizing downtime to be quiet with ourselves.
Be not afraid of anything.
You will do marvelous work.
It is fearlessness that brings
Heaven even in a moment.
Swami Vivekananda
Devotion to What is Real
Saturn conjunct the Pisces Moon
Saturn entered Pisces in March 2023 and has now returned to the place in the sky it occupied last April. We are working through the dreams we have of life and for our life. We are gaining increasing clarity on what is fantasy or just wishful thinking as we come face to face with our delusions. Within this, there is an acute awareness that life and everything we engage is impermanent.
Things we thought would endure are dissolving. We can readily see this with western civilization and cultural norms The world we lived in a decade ago, the shared agreements, and our definition of the status quo is changing rapidly. We need space to grieve what has been lost, let go, and come to embrace and move with what is happening. To accomplish this, Saturn in Pisces and the Full Moon call us to put our faith in something that is enduring, something that will not erode or be lost in time.
We are being prodded to root ourselves in what is eternally real, and to find a measure of peace through our relationship to the divine presence that permeates all time. Western culture in its desire to control the environment has rejected the divine in favor of science. Rather than seeing the divine as essential to the wellbeing and balance of human life, we deny our vulnerability and believe we can play god in managing and bettering our lives. For the sky to kiss the earth, we need to feel our vulnerability and welcome divine guidance and movement.
The Pisces Moon conjunct Saturn brings a reality check to the dream of how we see life and what we are doing here. Illusions ae dispelled. Saturn is all about facing reality, but Pisces counters Saturn with the perspective that the reality of our mundane life is the illusion. There is a greater reality - an ineffable something that propels, shapes, enlivens and guides the course of our lives.
The Pisces Moon combined with Saturn does not remove us from the realities of our earthly life but illuminates our physical world, the structures and responsibilities so we can readily see what needs handling and what has run its course. There are loose ends we need to tie up and tasks that need completing that we have perhaps backburnered because they are not easy to face head on. It is because they involve soul lessons, life lessons. We may feel discouraged, confused, uncertain or powerless in how to handle a particular something. In fact, we may need to handle some issue alone and are unsure how to proceed.
Both Saturn and the planets in Virgo ground the Pisces Moon in the here and now, bringing our imagination, ideals and mystical ideals down to earth. We may feel heavy or burdened by what we need to handle. Yet, Saturn supports us to meet the challenge, and the Piscean Moon opens us to the spiritual insight needed to guide our actions.
Insight can come to us in meditation, a dream, or from a walk in nature. Its source is mysterious, but we know it when we encounter it. We need only the humility and willingness to open ourselves to cultivating our innate connection to that something beyond what we know to receive the spiritual support that is always available. The Full Moon supports us in finding a greater balance between the effectiveness of our rational mind and our relationship to something mysterious and ephemeral that we can intuit and trust.
For 2023, with both Saturn and Neptune in Pisces, and especially now at the Piscean Full Moon, it is time to get real about our spiritual practice - a daily practice that deepens our spiritual sensibilities and supports us in walking our talk. Being dedicated to a practice will keep us attuned to divine will and our own divine nature. The practice will help deepen our trust and relationship with the great mystery. It is time to put our ideals into practice and embody our divine nature. In this, sky kisses earth, and we create heaven on earth.
You must live in the present,
launch yourself on every wave,
find your eternity in each moment.
Fools stand on their island
of opportunities and look toward
another land. There is no other land;
there is no other life but this.
Henry David Thoreau
Divinely Guided
Full Moon Ruler: Neptune oppose Mars and sextile Pluto
Neptune entered Pisces in 2011 affording us a prolonged opportunity to experience the spiritual as real and present so that it become more integrated and interwoven in our lives. We can look back to 2011 and see how our relationship with the unseen, the divine has deepened and the methods we have used to grow in our feeling of it, trusting of it, wooing of it, and willingness to surrender to it. Through Neptune's journey through Pisces, if we heeded its call, our sensitivity and intuitive channel has been further refined. We can better see what matters and what doesn’t, what is true and what is fleeting. Our perspective of life has been expanding and opening so we can better navigate circumstance and move from what feels correct for us and less from what some other says is the best way to go. If we have not heeded the call, we may be feeling lost and confused. Neptune has another year in Pisces, so there is still time to engage the realm from where all things emerge and return.
The Full Moon illuminates the full measure of who we are beyond our name, beyond our titles, beyond our ego. We are in contact with the soul of us, its wisdom and its longing, its directions and guidance. We perceive something beyond our ego, where we connect with our soul and recognize our life as a soul journey to learn and grow. Our inner guidance system is becoming stronger. We have only to recognize and trust it. With this, we can navigate our way through the maze of untruth and spin, cultural misconceptions and the complexity of 21st century life. If we have been negligent in establishing and trusting this connection, we can feel like we are walking through a house of mirrors, not knowing what to trust or which way to go. The way out of overwhelm, confusion or self-doubt is found in our connection and relationship to the great unseen presence that can provide guidance and clarity we can trust.
Slowing Down, Allows Needed Reflection Time
Venus, Mercury and all Outer Planets Retrograde
Pluto retrograde (April 29 - October 10)
Saturn Retrograde (June 17 - November 4)
Neptune Retrograde (June 30 – December 6)
Venus Retrograde (July 22 – September 3)
Mercury Retrograde (August 23 – September 15)
Chiron Retrograde (August 23 – September 15)
Uranus Retrograde (August 28 – January 26, 2024)
Jupiter Retrograde (September 4 – December 30)
We are in the Retrograde Season when the vast majority of planets are Retrograde. This happens roughly around this time each year. All planets are or will be shortly turn Retrograde - except for Mars, and of course the Sun and Moon which do not have a retrograde cycle. What is unique, perhaps, is that this year's Venus Retrograde is part of the mix.
Outer planets in retrograde motion may or may not impact us significantly, however having all outer planets Retrograde gives us pause. It is invites us to pause, or at the very least, to slow ourselves down. We are being called to reflect and re-evaluate, to catch up with and replenish ourselves. Something within us is ready for change that will give rise to new clarity understandings about how to move forward. We are refrain from filling our schedules with lots of activity so that we can glean the rewards of what the Retrograde Season can offer us.
Mercury Retrograde in Virgo (August 23 – September 15). We are to heed the impulse to take a step back to re-valuate the details of what is working and not working. The house where 21 – 8 Virgo resides in our chart show the arena of life where that needs analysis and some revision. Virgo is a sign that appreciates order, and so it can be a perfect time to clean out a closet, clean up our diet, or begin some routine that can support our wellbeing. The Mercury Retrogrades of 2023 are all in earth signs, inspiring us to give extended attention to reviewing and refining the details of plans and daily routines so that are lives are more functional and smooth running.
The Retrograde Season supports us to slow down so we can listen to what is happening within ourselves. By slimming down the pace of our life and the number of activities we will engage in on a given day, we can be in touch with our feelings, intuition and a spiritual, soul movement. By accepting the invitation of the Pisces Full Moon, we can feel the sky kissing the earth; we can have a direct experience of how our divine nature nourishes and supports our human journey.
When you do things from your soul you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
Rumi
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