On the new moon in Pisces
On February 20th at 0:05 (MT) the new moon in Pisces takes place at 1 degree. While the Moon and Sun conjoin at the beginning of the sign, while Neptune (the modern ruler of Pisces) and Venus swim in the 3rd decan of the sign. Less than an hour later, Venus will ingress into Aries, and join Jupiter, the traditional ruler of Pisces.
Last month, I realized how The Star lets me easily reconcile the traditional and modern rulers of Aquarius, as the Star can be seen as a depiction of Venus Urania, or the Venus who arose from sea foam after Saturn (traditional ruler of Aquarius) severed Uranus’ (modern ruler of Aquarius) genitals. I cannot so easily integrate the Neptunian significations with the Jovial for the sign of Pisces. I will, however, take a winding path akin to the one depicted on the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot card for The Moon.
The Hermetic title of The Moon is the “Ruler of Flux and Reflux” which alludes to the tides, or the gravitational pull the Moon has on the waters on Earth. Something about this phrasing “of flux and reflux” reminds me of Sir Issac Newton’s 3rd law of motion:
Whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first.
Neptune was first posited in 1846 by Urbain LeVerrier, a French mathematician who sought to explain the abberations observed in the orbit of Uranus. Later that year the planet was discovered in the exact location predicted by LeVerrier by German astronomer Johann Galle, who continued naming the tradition of naming the planets after Greco-Roman Gods. He dubbed the planet Neptune (Poseidon) - Ruler of the Seas and brother of King of The Gods Jupiter (Zeus). Thus, Neptune was the first planet discovered using Newton’s Laws of Physics, particularly the 3rd law, as Neptune was exerting its gravitational force on Uranus and its orbit.
In traditional astrology, Pisces is ruled by Jupiter, the Greater Benefic, and thus had some positive associations that seem to be obscured or altered by the signs association with Neptune and the 12th house in modern astrology. In fact, I was a bit taken aback while reading Chris Brennan’s Hellensitic Astrology this week. In a section describing the basic natures’ of the zodiac signs, Pisces is described as “ to stabilize” and put in opposition with Virgo’s nature “to destabilize”… Pisces is stereotyped in contemporary pop astrology as the heads-in-the-clouds dreamer who would rather escape into their imagination than do a single minute of actual work.
While its hard to wrap my head around the idea of a Pisces stabilizing anything, the signs association with The Moon, the Ruler of Flux and Reflux, actually helped me conceptualize this association. As previously stated the title “Ruler of Flux and Reflux” seems to be alluding to the tides that the moons graviational pull create on Earth. If it’s also been over a decade since your last Earth Science class, here’s the basics of how the tides work:
The Moon’s gravitational pull causes water to bulge on both the side of Earth closest to the Moon and on the opposite side of the planet. The Moon’s gravity has a stronger pull on the side of Earth that is closest to it, which makes the ocean bulge on that side, while on the opposite side of the planet the centrifugal force created by the Moon and Earth orbiting around one another pulls the ocean water out…
Meanwhile, Earth continues to spin. As Earth rotates, the water bulges stay in line with the Moon while the planet’s surface moves underneath it. A specific point on the planet will pass through both of the bulges and both of the valleys. When a specific place is in the location of a bulge it experiences a high tide. When a specific place is in the location of a valley it experiences a low tide. During one planetary rotation (or one day) a specific location will pass through both bulges and both valleys, and this is why we have two high tides and two low tides in a day.(x)
The tides, the moon’s gravitational pull, and a few other forces create the currents that help stabilize our climate. Pisces, as a mutable water sign, stabilizes the changing of the seasons from Winter to Spring (in the N. Hemisphere).
The fact that The Moon card is associated with the sign Pisces, and not the Earth’s literal satellite we call “the moon” baffled me when I first learned the correspondences. However, the significations associated with the Moon card and Neptune parallel each other in peculiar ways. The primary meanings of The Moon are illusion, fantasy, deception. In his book Cosmos and Psyche, Richard Tarnas lists Neptunes associations, including “tendencies towards illusions and delusions, deception and self-deception, escapism, intoxiation, psychosis, perceptual and cognitive distortions, conflation and confusion, projection, fantasy…” Both of these sets of associations can be put succinctly as ”lunacy” or the contested idea that the moon drives humans to insanity.
Newton was proportedly discovered these laws of motion, which describe the force of gravity, when an apple fell on his head, or so the legend goes. The Moon is associated with the Hebrew letter ק (qoph) meaning back of the head. Sigmund Freud, the Father of Psychology, was born 1856, approximately a decade after the discover of Neptune, and Arthur Edward (A.E). Waite was born the following year. Both psychology and Western esotericism seek to under stand the “back of the head” or the unconscious, but through different means and approaches. This growing interest in psychology and spirituality, while Neptune was accumulating its associations in astrology, irrevocably changed how we view the sign Pisces.
At a certain point, Pisces became the less the “expansive dreamer” ruled by Jupiter, and more the “deluded lunatic” ruled by Neptune. Tarnas further associates Neptune with “the fluid nature of psychic life generally” and and “slipping into madness or addiction” The development of this association could be connected the growing (but nascent) understanding of conditions like addiction, alcoholism*, and bipolar disorder. These themes were explored by Waite’s and Freud’s contemporary Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1880 novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which portrays the struggle of a proper Victorian doctor’s struggle to suppress his evil alter ego. Dr. Jekyll develops a serum that would permanently compartmentalize and repress the evil Mr. Hyde. However, the serum just results in Jekyll transforming into Hyde and vice versa, and ultimately Dr. Jekyll losing complete control over Hyde.
In recent times, Pisces has become connected to the 12th house. Whereas the thema mundi places Cancer as the ascendant sign / first house, what’s known as the “natural chart” places Aries as the ascendant sign. While, I adore the thema mundi, I am coincidentally an Aries rising, so I have a “natural chart” in the parlance of modern astrology. The 12th house is traditionally known as the “House of Bad Spirit” and it’s said to be where Saturn, the Greater Malefic, finds its joy. Therefore the 12th house, for this reason, is thought of as the most negative house. It is associated with sickness, danger, and suffering.
While listing significations of Neptune, Tarnas states, “It is in a sense the archetype of the archetypal dimension itself.” Tarnas later points out that the discovery of Neptune coincides with “the growing focus on the unconscious, dreams, myths, hypnosis, and non-ordinary states of consciousness” Arguably the most influential use of Freud’s study of the unconscious is his protege Carl Gustav Jung’s development of the “collective unconscious” which could be a synonym for the “archetypal dimension itself.” It is from Jung’s collective unconscious and study of archetypes is what archetypal astrology is founded on.
As an astrologer living in 2023, with over 170 years of associations built up between Neptune, Pisces, and the 12th house, it is hard to conceptualize what the classical astrologers understood about the sign Pisces. I’ve attempted to untangle how The Moon card became associated with Pisces, and how it also got tangled up in the developing significations of the planet Neptune.
In honor of this new moon, I am contemplating what hidden or unconscious things could be knocking me off the path to my dreams.
*The 19th Century did give rise to the American Temperance movement, after all, and Jupiter’s other sign Sagittarius is associated with the card Temperance. (No, I couldn’t go one post with out mentioning Temperance).