The next lunar cycle gets started today with a New Moon at 4-degrees of Pisces, which takes place this morning at 7:32am PST.  The Sun moved into the Pisces mansion last week, but it is this lunation that drops us directly into the waters of the unconscious mind, and we are invited into consideration of how we relate to the collective.  Pisces is all about the forgiveness and compassion that heals the world as it goes ‘round.  Even, and maybe especially in this day and era of tremendous polarization, it is through the archetype of Pisces that we understand that there is only one thing playing out there, and we are all part of it.  The world we live in is a direct projection of our collective consciousness, and Pisces invented the shared domain out of which everything must emerge.  And this includes each of us as individuals.

The signs are constructed in a system that has an order to it, and Pisces is the last stop on the train track of archetypal consciousness.  As such, it has the energy of every other mansion held within it.  This is how Pisces can contain something as enormous as the collective that every sentient being on the planet is connected to.  And because the principle of unity began here, this is where the power of love, forgiveness, compassion, and empathy can be the healing balm that it is.  Ultimately, as much as it seems like we live in a world of separation, that divide is an illusion that we are destined to heal and transform.  This is our intention setting moment for all the big healing modalities that dwell in the realm of love, and boy do we need an enormous dose of that right now.

Nothing outside of you is separate from you, but rather a reflection of you, and in this mansion, we can actually feel this connection more powerfully than in any other.  This is why people who have a strong presence of this sign in their natal charts can suffer from an overabundance of empathy.  Through this openness, we bring in more peace to ourselves and to the world as a whole.  But this is a tricky construct; it can be very tempting to shrink back from feeling so open in a world that can be assaultive to move through.  Feel too little, and you can’t participate in the world around you in a contributory manner.  Feel too much, and you may drown in all the feels.  Use this lunation to realign yourself into the center of this groove, which is going to be very different for each individual.

Mars has moved into Capricorn and is about to activate the entire Capricorn mansion, where all change, responsibility, expansion, and the ability to release the past is hanging out (Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter and the South Node).  That means that this entire lunar cycle ahead has Mars’ activating energy hitting each one of those planets, highlighting all of the ways that things are changing in an overwhelming way.  This Mars crossing will retrigger a lot of the intensity of January, and bring into focus the very real-world ways that things are breaking down and being reformed before our very eyes.  This may be difficult to reconcile with the empathic openness that this mansion generates.  Truly, the trope of “Be in the world, but not of it,” is the moniker of this lunar cycle.

Mercury is retrograde in this sign, so there is much about this moment that will be buried in the unconscious till Mercury finishes his backward journey.  We fly blind in Pisces on the one hand, but we feel unshakable spiritual guidance in this mansion as well.  The rest of Mercury’s retrograde plays out as this lunar cycle unfolds, and the sense of moving with blinders on may be a strong sensation during this entire lunar cycle.  Pisces can play with time and rationality, and what happens on land plays second fiddle to the inner seas of our unconscious mind.  We may not know where we are going this next month, but when we get there, we will certainly be somewhere entirely different.

Of course, as a water sign, Pisces connects us to our feelings, and the feels may be rising up in a way that feels a bit insane right now.  Do try and remember that waves of feeling are energies that are designed to pass right through us.  Grab onto them, wrestle them down to the ground and attempt to figure out why you are feeling so much is the perfect way to drown in them.  If your sensitivity to the world gone mad are causing you to suffer, this is the New Moon to set intentions for balance and grace in the experience of openness that you move through the world with.  Also pay particular attention to your dream life for the next month, as Pisces invented dreaming as a tether and touchstone into the unconscious.