The Moon will begin a new cycle with the Sun on February 19 at 11:04 p.m. on the West Coast (2:04 a.m. Sunday, February 20, ET).
When the Moon is new in Pisces each year in late February or early March, where I live it’s the time when the pink blossoms on ornamental plum trees make their full display. Winter’s end is near.
Pisces is the mutable water sign, coming between the cool breeze of Aquarius and fiery Aries to follow. The mutable signs roll with changes. They are like the shoreline where the waves are in constant, even if subtle, motion. Something must be dissolved before something new can be considered, much less formed.
Coming and going. Like a circle or a spiral with no beginning or end.
Pisces’ totem animal is a fish. Its glyph is two crescents, facing opposite directions, united by a horizontal bar. Pisces has two planetary rulers. In recent times, it’s Neptune, visionary and nebulous. Traditionally, and still, Pisces is ruled by gas giant Jupiter, the beneficent one who welcomes wayfarers through an open door.
Some people call Pisces the “spiritual” sign, but that can’t be true because nothing in astrology is less spiritual than anything else.
What may be meant is that Piscean energy is vast like an ocean. Without a firm boundary between Me and You, we know each other as connected. We listen and hear each other’s suffering—that is the meaning of compassion, the ultimate of Piscean essence. Compassion leads to empathy, forgiveness, and an impulse to serve.
Pisces is an edge and an invitation. The shoreline—is it earth or sea, or both? Pisces is not knowing, and in not holding tight to any one idea, possibilities multiply. If you listen very closely while you pray, you may sense that the Divine One is both infinitely near and far.
If you’re familiar with your own natal chart, look to the house or houses where Pisces resides. There lie the clues for feeling into the areas of life and of your own psyche tapped by this New Moon. Curiously, at each New Moon, we want to set our intentions in particular ways based on the themes of each sign, and the houses where the Sun and Moon will conjoin, and the many aspects unique to each person. That’s different at this time of year when the initiatory New Moon occurs in Pisces, the sign of endings and closures, making this a time for a pause.
At the February 19 lunation, Mercury will be prominent in several transiting aspects in the sky. Mercury will be moving toward a tense square with Uranus, meaning that some kind of eruption is likely in the mercurial realms of thought and communication. At the same time, Mercury will be headed toward a harmonious trine with Gemini. You might get a bright new thought and want to share it with someone. And, with Mercury in an encouraging sextile with Jupiter and Chiron—now conjunct in Aries—there is a call to do something healing just for yourself. Isn’t it always time for that?
Unusually, at this time, all planets are moving in direct motion. There is relative calm at this lunation before March when two big players will make a rare sign change: Saturn will ingress Pisces on March 7, and Pluto will make its first foray into Aquarius on March 23.
The most striking feature of the February 19 lunation is Venus at 29° 57’ Pisces, raring to leap into Aries within an hour of the precise time of the New Moon. Venus has been in Pisces since January 27. For Valentine’s Day, Venus was conjoined with Neptune, exactly so in the early hours of February 15. Venus, the planet of love, together with the dreaminess of Neptune, has offered a month of gentle romanticism.
Just before midnight, February 19, in the dark of the New Moon, Venus will move from Pisces to Aries for a different type of passion. Venus is soft and accommodating while Aries, one of Mars’ signs, is decisive, driving full steam ahead.
In love, Venus in Aries is like the sweetheart who—without your asking—gets up and makes you a perfect cup of coffee before he (or she) cleans out your garage and starts reorganizing your bookshelves. Venus in Aries is devotion in action.
It will also, this year, be a harbinger of spring.
Blessings for the Pisces New Moon with the ingress of Venus in Aries!
~ Sara
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