March is by far the biggest month of the year as go impactful astrological transits, and we’re still feeling more than resonant flickers of the emboldened Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Aries that announced its outset.  Now approaching a Full Moon in Virgo tomorrow, its valence is lent to the ingress of Saturn into Pisces’ watery fugue on the same day.  And we’re not even halfway through.

The Virgo Full Moon, which sits implicitly across from the Sun in Pisces, is ruled by a fallen Mercury also in the sign of the Fish — a lunation of clarity somewhat permeated by an aura of confusion, the momentous and momentum-filled transits of late just as daunting in our own unsureness of what’s to come.  The martial prompt to forge ahead is not guaranteed the accompaniment of certainty.

Luna’s fullness also washes over Saturn’s entrance to Pisces, this change of signs for the Star of Kronos being a topic I will touch upon here, and in greater detail along days upcoming.  There is a sacrificial dimension to this Moon, emphasized in the axis of Virgo and Pisces and their contrasting archetypal bouquets — but also in Venus’ and Jupiter’s successive contacts to Chiron in Aries.

The blend of faith and critical realism brought by our Lights in Pisces and Virgo — it speaks among many things to the seeking of joy, and the human gainfulness, that can work together or against each other in the tension of their archetypal dance.  Where Pisces and its ruler Jupiter often swell to grandiosity in incubating the vision, Virgo and its ruler Mercury sometimes poke holes of reasonable doubt.  Where a Jupiter-ruled Sun in Pisces might seek to drain the cup, a Mercury-ruled Moon in Virgo might take the piss, seeking to pop that balloon of jovian grandeur or cut into its tender faith.

This is a common tension between Mercury and Jupiter, like haughty priest and silver-tongued heretic, though perhaps more so for their yang homes of Gemini and Sagittarius.  With the luminaries presently in Pisces and Virgo, there is an element of joy and wistfulness, of delight and divine discontent, of confusion amidst our natural want for some modicum of control.

Our heart-minds are going through a kind of reset in assessing the relationship between our aims and methods, our desire and devotion, as well as our openness to not knowing what the next fruition may look like.  The solemnity of Saturn soon into Pisces also brings some kind of “ocean floor,” as Diana Rose Harper put it a few months back, to the mutable movement and existential uncertainties of this time.  

Yes, as much as an afflicted Mercury dispatches what is otherwise the mental poise of this Moon, a bold Jupiter rules the Sun.  As Gray Crawford writes, this Full Moon itself “heralds the coming together of Jupiter and Chiron into a conjunction on 12 March at 14°26’ Aries,” with Venus already some ways past their positions along the ecliptic.

Crawford goes on to quote astrologer Brian Clark: “Chiron’s gaze was down, to an inner landscape, a cave of night… as an embodiment of suffering, of pain and mortality, Chiron confronts our compulsion to fix, to overcome and resolve… in his cave, the instinct to fix it and feel better is held long enough for the soulful symbols in our symptoms to be appreciated as images of healing.”

Jupiter’s upcoming conjunction with Chiron, and rulership of our present Sun, as well as the Moon in Virgo’s ruler Mercury… it constellates these planetary archetypes very near to the wound.  I’m fond of saying that we are all wounded healers and learning teachers — this is not in the sense of calling, so much as being custodians of our own spirits and willful wellbeing.

Saturn has been in its consecutive home signs of Capricorn and Aquarius for over five years — since December 17th of 2017, in fact.  A domiciled Saturn still presents the paradox of a malefic strong, but still poised to do what it does best.  Negation as much as concretization.  Denial and deprivation as much as constructive discipline.  Death and human resentment as much as revolution and reorganization.

Now the Time-binding planet moves into the mutable waters of Pisces, like a skeleton feeling its way into malleable matrices where there exist less corporeal forms, though hopefully not to the detriment of one’s sense of boundary.  Inner vision thrives at the task of imagining our way out of our problems… while Mercury’s auspices often imagine moves ahead, along the back-and-forth of reply, in Jupiter’s home it likes to bend things and See around, through the expansiveness of faith and risk.  From Mercury’s angles to Jupiter’s curves, there is an art to casting our vision around the way, of holding ourselves with dignity and curiosity through every corridor, columns swaying in these cosmic waters.

Some things to look out for ~

*desire and confusion
*drivenness and doubt
*clarity with a touch of confusion
*strides less like a stutter, more like a sprint along ebbing shoreline
*endings of chapters feeling like a murky drift where one might want a starting block
*a renewed sense of sanctity of one’s own virtues
*selfhood and sacrifice
*joy, contentment, happiness in being one’s unbridled essence, versus trying to fix a situation or transcend any obstacle
*the importance of imagining our way out of problems, as part of the soul’s participation in existence and realization of our dharma

More on Saturn in Pisces in the coming couple days.  Swim well, stargazers ~

—A.B.

[art by Fritz Hegenbart]