The Virgo Full Moon peaks at 6.46 pm Sunday 16th March 2014 opposing the Sun in its opposite sign Pisces. This full moon marks the completion of the last new moon cycle beginning on 1st March.
This Virgo-Pisces Axis shines a light on the sensitive realms of the dreaming and the physical realms. With the Virgo-Pisces Axis, the themes are order and chaos, control and trust, reality and the dreaming world, service and devotion.
Full moons are a time to take extra care of ourselves – we are more vulnerable and exposed, and this is especially the case with this full moon as Chiron, the wounded healer, made aspects to that 1st March new moon, highlighting the themes of individual and collective wounds and healing.
More generally in the sky, we have transiting Chiron in Pisces, the last of the water signs, asking us to address our distorted ideas of reality, our self-avoidance and escapism. With Mars and Saturn retrograding right now, it’s time to sort out what we want in our lives from what we don’t want and let go of the weight. We are yearning for lightness. All this letting go and integration of our emotions, brains, bodies will lead to better functioning and an enlivening of the soul, all of which this Virgo-Pisces axis similarly highlights.
As impulsive Mars retrogrades back in indecisive Libra, this full moon could exacerbate an underlying hasty, decision-making tendency or alternatively we could be reviewing decisions already taken. Mars is also in a quincunx aspect to the Sun at this full moon, and with other aspects, creates a complex astrological configuration known as a boomerang yod. This is made up of two quincunx aspects which point to a lot of restlessness, movement and change. Being prepared to manage the unexpected through awareness is central to the quincunx energy; we can’t think through quincunxs, its best to access a more creative octave.
With Saturn just turned retrograde in Scorpio, we now enter into real Scorpio territory. Saturn is helping us take responsibility for our inner emotional and psychological patterns. At this full moon, Saturn is making harmonious aspects to the lights (the Sun and Moon), helping us focus in what really matters rather than getting pulled into avoidance or rigid behaviour.
March is the perfect time to start reinventing and reorganising ourselves so we can function in a way that supports our entire growth, from spirit to physical. Virgo energy has a knack for refining and differentiating between that which we need and that which we don’t, particularly in respect to the mastery and fine-tuning of the physical system.
Unlike Pisces, Virgo consciousness segregates, defines and organises, but it also predisposed towards over-analysis and perfectionism, Virgo energy often struggles with control, it resists letting go and letting God. Over-analysis is a paralysis that will squander and dissipate our energy, a form of unhealthy control. It will tie us down and diminish our ability to trust life.
So what form do our Virgo-Pisces compulsions, addictions and attachments come in? People, jobs, food, emotions, home, being liked, contact lenses, writing notes, thought forms, wounds, stories, characteristics, memories, ascension. What are your crutches and shields that prevent you from fully being able to stand alone, free to embody your full power, while simultaneously engaging with the outside world in real relationship? What subtle and not so subtle attachments keep you physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually starved and stagnant? Creating what we want in life is difficult when we are always at the mercy of the past, tight in our habits, conscious or otherwise.
We might think we’re thinking clearly, but most of the time we are just reacting to stimuli and triggers held in our brains and etheric fields. This means that we see the present moment through the narrative of repressed memories and emotions. These old, stored memories and patterns embedded deep within are reruns and repeats from our multidimensionality with the result of diverting us out and away from our presence.
When we really look at ourselves with honesty, we can see how we are trained and train ourselves to focus our attention in such a way that we can maintain a safe and familiar reality. We become so accustomed and attached to ‘ourselves’ with all our habits that things even feel right when there is a clear infringement upon our ability to function healthily. This unconscious world is stored in us as sensory information, as a felt sense. We don’t need to name and attach to this sensory information in order to process it. Indeed sometimes we can’t even name it, and we lose something from trying to name it, feeling it is enough.
Acknowledgement of stories holds an important place in the healing process, but there’s a fine line between acknowledging and attachment. Our stories can make us feel more special, they can separate us from others and our divinity. What if we were to throw all our stories, wounds, past lives into the fire of spirit? Well, the ego would immediately rebel – it wants us to keep its story, that’s how it maintains itself. If we see can release the hold that our stories and wounds have on us then we open up a space for fresh energy to enter, simply seeing wounds as making it easier for the divine fire to get in supports the healing process, and deeply ingrained wounds doesn’t equate with permanent.
Stopping to ask ‘what am I doing?’ cultivates awareness through invoking the observer within. This observer is a detached witness, a facilitator. This interrupts our habitual patterns of moving, thinking, feeling and seeing without concious drive. This is how we can use ourselves. Virgo intrinsically understands this idea: that the quality of that use, either conscious or unconscious, directly affects the quality of how we function in the world.
One of my own pharmakons (crutches, drugs, poisons) is note taking – I am always writing down things. In Castaneda’s writings, this is synonymous with the first attention, it’s the doing part of us, something Virgo also knows all too well. The first attention is the way we ordinarily perceive the world through the rational mind. It’s the logical thinking, viewing the world through a linear lenses of three dimensional reality. But this is also leads to an indirect experience of the world. For example, through my note taking, I’m not trusting knowledge (I’m not in my beingness) so instead I try to claim and grab it by force so it becomes mine (in the doing). This happens in a linear, duality-ruled reality.
Castaneda also talks about non-ordinary awareness, which is the second attention. This is like the dreaming mind of depth perception, “the mind that is in the body”, the Tao that cannot be spoken, feeling something but not being able to put it into words, our sensory awareness. Castaneda believed that meaningful change only came through this second attention. That the rational mind of the first attention can’t actually create anything new; it can only process and analyse what it already knows, and what it already knows arises from the dream world of the second attention.
Only when we return to the second attention and see through the illusion of the first attention, will we learn something new. So, it might sound weird for me to start taking notes with my finger instead of my pen but this would be directly engaging my second attention, allowing the not-doing world of the second attention to enter.
The attachments that keep us bided to the linear world are barriers to the realisation that the dreaming realm is the real reality. Yet the physical, linear reality needs also to acknowledged as of equal importance in the process of spiritual individuation. Jesus talked about not being attached to physical reality, about being ready to lose ideas about who and what you think you are, and this Piscean attitude is important: “for whoever wants to save his life shall lose it; but whoever will lose his life for me will find it” (INV Matthew 16 verse 25-26); but Jesus’ entire life journey mirrored direct engagement with the physical and social reality of the day; this was the means by which he stepped into his full divinity.
This stuff always reminds me of that Buddhist meditation, where you watch your consciousness by entering into what you are not; not your body, your mind, your feelings. We so readily want to define ourselves as this or that consciousness, this or that part of us. We say, “that’s just the way I am” as though the energies that flow through us belong to us. Even as we discover more facets of our wholeness, we perpetuate our attachment under the guise of shadow spirituality; we get attached to being more whole, more expansive, more… better. Our primary identity attaches to colonising our secondary identity, the more hidden part, so to make it more primary, more whole.
Virgo shows us how we can be of service, how we can practically unfold our divine blueprint and destiny held within our personal astrology or Earth Path. Virgo helps us make practical use of what we have acquired and honed along the way. Virgo tries to achieve perfection through a process of ordering and organising the psyche. Pisces meanwhile, searches for perfection through dissolving the ego and transcending into a place of connectedness. Pisces does not cling, it trusts the fluidity of our parts, identifies as nothing and everything at the same time. Both Virgo and Pisces have their shadows – Pisces escapism and self-avoidance, Virgo judgment and control.
Essentially though, consciousness moves through us. We are a vessel for consciousness, for its dance and play. We all come from the same essence, energy and molecules that manifest and express in its myriad forms. We are the movement of the Tao, the expression of forces and energy as it takes on those different forms. It is Pisces which fluidly allows the universal, archetypal force to express itself through us, without overly identifying with or marginalising the personal dimension that these forces also exist at.
This full moon and these current transits are opportunities to learn about yet another layer or level of what it means to human being. I always get so excited when I learn about a new part of the puzzle of me, or experience myself in a new way. I have to constantly remind myself that I am not a puzzle to be analysed and taken apart and then fixed – this is shadow Virgo. This is where I lose my ability to be present and this creates a backlog.
Stepping into our full presence or divinity, we become neither this nor that, we simply exist. By consciously attending to ourselves without over-identifying, we create the fluidity necessary to function and move into our fullest, highest potential. So use this full moon to call in and release your presence, use your intention to be present. From your presence, start speaking to the transcendental and sensory awareness moving through you. Ask at this full moon, for an expanded world awareness of the play of these ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ energies, so that we might welcome in a fluid, whole-being, whole-body dance for our world.
