This note is being sent to the main subscriber list and our product customer list, together. Reminder to horoscope subscribers that this is a ‘Wednesday night’ week; there’s just one horoscope mailing, on Wednesday evening EST. This week I’m recording some overdue birthday reports and the forthcoming Spring Report.
Boats stored for the winter on Fort Pond, town of Montauk, NY. In the background on the left is Montauk Tower, part of the failed plan to make Montauk the ‘Miami of the North’. Photo by Eric.
As you may know, the New Moon that takes place at 5:34 pm EST on Tuesday is pretty special — the Sun and Moon are right at the midpoint of Chiron and Neptune, both newly arrived in Pisces for a long, long visit. It’s also conjunct an asteroid, Pallas Athene. I explain this in the posts above, which were written with input from our blogging team.
I correspond with many other writers, and I asked Zane Stein, author of the first book on Chiron, for his perspective. He’s one of the original Chiron pioneers (as far as I know, the first astrologer to ever see an ephemeris for Chiron). While I have your attention, here is what he said to me this morning, writing in from Australia:
New Moons mean new beginnings. They can be little beginnings or huge ones, but each month when the transiting Moon reaches the transiting Sun, a new cycle begins. The lunation influences everyone, to one degree or another, but its influence is felt the most by individuals who experience a contact from the New Moon to a personal part of the chart. For those individuals, the new beginning is something quite personal.
Pisces New Moon — no houses, just signs. Look at all those planets gathered to one side of the sky, mostly in Pisces. The Sun and Moon are toward the top, in yellow and gray.
The energy of the New Moon is shaped, first of all, by the sign it is in. Today’s lunation falls in Pisces which is, positively, the energy of spiritual growth, imagination, and seeking to become one with the universe, and all of these things may be emphasized in the next few weeks following. The other side, though, is that the New Moon may force people to deal in new ways with some of the negative Piscean energy, such as illusions and delusions, as well as escapism.
When a lunation occurs very close to another body, that closeness emphasizes the effect, makes it stronger, more noticeable. And this lunation, falling at 2 Pisces 42, is conjunct Neptune (0 Pisces 41) on the one side, and Chiron (4 Pisces 59) on the other, and in fact is almost exactly on the midpoint of those two bodies. And in between the lunation and Chiron we also find one of the larger asteroids, Pallas, at 3 Pisces 14. Clearly there is much more to this than just another Pisces lunation.
Neptune has only recently entered Pisces, but it is feeling quite at home as it rules that sign. If a normal New Moon in this sign emphasizes the extremes of the two fish swimming in opposite directions (spiritual growth, for example, versus escapism), consider the conjunction with Neptune as upping the ante. The potential for spiritual growth is so much, much moreso now than any of us have ever experienced in this lifetime, but likewise the potential for self-destruction is equaly greater.
Many of you who read this may remember the last time Chiron was in Pisces (although as the old joke goes, “If you can remember the Sixties you weren’t there”). It passed through Pisces to teach us many things, but its method was to help us heal our wounds by first polarizing society so we could see just how far from whole we really were. Even if you don’t remember the Sixties you probably have read of all the ways we were pulled into two different directions. So add this to the mix, and you can easily see the polarization, which has already begun, intensifying as a result of the lunation.
Then there is Pallas. She doesn’t start fights, but if she feels a battle has begun she fights to defend her people. She also is quite adept at mapping out plans, perceiving patterns. Her part in this lunation, I fear, is to stir people to clearly draw out the battle lines.
The potential energy of this lunation is unbelievable. Pallas/Chiron can enable us to fight against anything that is blocking us from trying to heal our wounds, and linked with Neptune enable us to see a much, much larger picture than we even dreamt possible. But there will be so many, many temptations to follow other pathways…false paths that lead nowhere, false gurus that are full of lies, drugs that promise enlightenment.
One key to making this the beginning of a positive new cycle is for each person to truly believe (Pisces’ keywords include ‘I believe’) in the basic goodness of the universe, and that we are all its children, made out of the same ‘goodness’. Then ask yourself, “What inner dichotomy, what inner battle, do I need to face, and heal, to make me more whole and more at one with Spirit?”
Thank you for that perspective, Zane. Remember, whatever commentary you read from any astrologer is just that: a perspective on something with no truly objective interpretation. But interpretations can be more or less grounded, more or less trustworthy.
See you Wednesday night with the March horoscope. Note, in the introduction to the horoscope, I may be quoting some of the material you’ve read in this post. It seemed sensible to get it to you sooner rather than later.
