A Pisces New Moon Eclipse of Darkness and Light

This Tuesday we have an especially powerful New Moon that is also a solar eclipse, and this serves to remind us that we are in the midst of great societal and personal transformation. This is because the eclipse degree, the 19th of Pisces, simultaneously aspects Uranus and Pluto in their square alignment, active over this entire decade of the "turbulent teens," and both ends as well of the forming square between Jupiter and Saturn, of much shorter term but still a major factor in these spring skies. The Sun and Moon also aspect Chiron, the Wounded Healer, less than a degree away from this extra-potent New Moon, speaking to feelings of angst and lack of confidence. Then, too, we also would want to make note of the dark symbolism of Saturn with Pluto, and the polarity indicated by conservative Saturn in forming trine with revolutionary Uranus, while Jupiter and Uranus, in close alignment also, presage brilliant flashes of insight and inventiveness. This combination of inspirational planetary archetypes also represents deep intuitional knowing that seems to bypass the slow process of arid logic with an instant apprehension of an unusual answer to a seemingly insolvable problem. This is the up side of this configuration, while a dire sense of an extra weight of responsibility, represented by Saturn-Pluto, is also very much with us, making for a volatile and a darkly wise time period characterized by fundamental optimism, and yet with many clashes of differing viewpoints.

We are seeing this kind of thing right now in the surrounding culture, and you might be feeling it as well in your own life. Where are the places where you feel truly confident of the way forward that you know in your heart is right, and where do you feel a sense of dread about the future? When can you say that you know what course of action you must take, and simply take it? What holds you back, from inside yourself, from being all that you desire to be?

The Jupiter-Saturn polarity has a twenty-year cycle. The origin of this current cycle was in the year 2000, based on the conjunction in Taurus, an Earth sign, and we are in the closing square and final four years, of this current cycle. Usually the first half, in this case the ten years from 2000 to 2009, is an upswing of a movement, while the last ten years takes the form of a consolidation. The W years brought us war, and perhaps the years after 2010 will slowly bring us out of that, to a time of greater diplomacy and global cooperation.

This eclipse actually acts as a focalizer of consciousness regarding what is going on within our global culture, and of course, most poignantly, within our individual lives as well. The truth of the impact of the Uranus-Pluto square that defines our fractious decade is that we must choose, and discover the future that truly calls to us. Once we know from deep intuition the direction that we desire to go, we must then have the courage to follow that road in spite of distractions and attempts to pull us back into conditioned responses and half-truths. We need to bring our whole entire selves to the table of action in order that we not only survive, but thrive.

The Sabian symbol for this special New Moon, the 19th degree of Pisces, is "A master instructing his pupil," which Marc Edmund Jones describes as "the unlimited potentiality of existence," and "the demand of human intelligence for the self-refinement and self-orientation by which a greater understanding is possible." He goes on to refer to "genuine psychological insight," and states that Life entreats us to enjoy its bounty, giving "every encouragement to that initiative of spirit" by which one may be led to this, finding that "personality comes into its own as it is able to direct its own destiny." May it be so.