Last month, we had an unusual stellium, or cluster, of planets in Aquarius at the New Moon.
This month, at the New Moon on March 13, the Aquarius gang has broken up a bit, with Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn still together there.
Now we’re in Pisces season, meaning that the Sun and Moon meet will meet up in that sign. And we will also have Neptune, which is very slow moving and has been in Pisces since 2012, conjoined by Venus, both close by degree to the Sun and the Moon. With the move from a stellium in Aquarius to one in Pisces, we’ve moved from the fixed mode to the mutable. We may enjoy a bit of a reprieve from where we were a year ago, with a feeling of greater ease and flow.
Every sign has an up and down side to it. Pisces is changeable water, vast as the great oceans. There is beauty and solace there. There’s also potential danger: have you ever slipped on the shore and been drawn under a crashing wave? Pisces is associated with the deepest, undifferentiated love for all beings. There’s a boundarilessness to it. It can be dreamy. It can also be a pitfall. Someone with a lot of Piscean energy may be a great humanitarian and a visionary poet. Or they may be indecisive, an addict, or a liar. With any placement, one’s consciousness and level of personal development and responsibility account largely for how an astrological placement will manifest.
Venus, the planet of love and beauty, is considered to be in its “exaltation,” like an honored guest, when it transits through the sign of Pisces. Neptune is nebulous, a way-out-there planet. When Venus is conjoined with Neptune, Venus’ sweetness and charm rise to a transcendental dimension. There is an invitation to focus on our most altruistic desires.
Lest this idea seem too vague or unrealistic, the chart for this New Moon gives us some other advantages. Mercury is still in fixed, airy Aquarius, where there’s a focus on thinking, even critical or contrarian thinking. Additionally, Mars, the planetary force of getting things done, is in Gemini, the mutable air sign of wit and storytelling, with Mars making a harmonious trine aspect to Saturn, the workhorse. We’re still under a hard square aspect all year between Saturn – the past and what we want to keep of it – and Uranus, which wants to “break on through to the other side.” But things at this moment are not feeling as dire as they were all last year. There’s a bit of ease and flow.
And that’s good because it’s almost spring in the northern hemisphere.
Astronomically, spring begins at the March 20 Equinox, when the Sun reaches the part of the sky that is 0 degrees of Aries. It is no coincidence that the March equinox marks the New Year in many cultures. It’s the astrological New Year with Aries being a cardinal fire sign, the first sign of the zodiac. Aries, named for the Greek god of war, is about assertion, not just aggression.
At the Equinox, the Aries Sun will be inching toward a conjunction with Chiron, a “dwarf planet” of great symbolism. Chiron was discovered astronomically only in 1977, making it one of the most recent bodies to be studied in astrology. Chiron is called the “wounded healer.” In astrology, its symbol or glyph looks like a key.
Mythic Chiron was a centaur, half human and half horse (both rational and instinctual). He was a master of difficult-to-understand disciplines, including medicine, botany, mathematics, astronomy and astrology. He shared his vast knowledge with other mythic figures, including Asclepius, child of Apollo, who became a deity of the healing arts.
One day, the god Hercules was shooting arrows at a group of centaurs and he accidentally hit Chiron, who became wounded so badly that he could not be healed. He suffered immensely, but because he was an immortal god, he could not die. That was until Chiron made a bargain with his half-brother, the god Zeus. Chiron would give up his immortality in exchange for the liberation of Prometheus, who’d been chained to a rock as punishment for having given fire to humanity.
Chiron was able to end his suffering. He became immortalized in the sky as the constellation Sagittarius, and forever known as a teacher of perennial wisdom. He’s a Piscean figure in that he transmuted his own suffering through an act of compassion.
In whatever house and sign the centaur Chiron lies in our own chart, we’re asked to transform our wounds into a teaching, a wisdom we share with others.
One of the words most commonly associated with Pisces is compassion. From the Latin, com or with, and passion, meaning suffering or enduring, compassion means to accompany those who are suffering.
At the time of the March 20 Equinox, Venus will be in the last degrees of Pisces, still with Neptune, still inviting our focus on etheric beauty. And Mercury will be in the early degrees of Pisces, opening ways for our thinking and communication to be more imaginative and kind.
By late in the month, with the Full Moon of March 28, Venus will have reached 8 degrees of Aries, conjoined exactly by degree with Chiron and the Sun in Aries, opposite the Moon in relational, balanced Libra. At peak fullness, with the Moon reflecting the light of the Sun, alongside Venus and Chiron, in Aries, the sign of the Warrior, let’s ask ourselves: What is it that we love and value, that we want to heal and that we are willing to struggle for? Compassion is our key.
New Moon Blessings, Sara
Available for readings: www.SaraDiamondAstrology.com
Sara R. Diamond, an astrologer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a life-long student and practitioner in several esoteric paths. Her style of astrology combines modern-psychological astrology with insights from traditional astrology. Sara is also an estate planning attorney. In addition, she has published four books on right-wing movements in the United States and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. You are invited to contact Sara via her website at www.SaraDiamondAstrology.com.
Sara wrote a lovely clear easy to understand piece, especially on Chiron. thank you so much Charlotte Louise