The Virgo Full Moon is exact on Monday March 9th at 10:47am PST, at 20 degrees. Virgo offers the cool light of critical analysis in the midst of this dreamy, watery, sometimes-confusing Pisces season (only amplified by Mercury retrograde). While Pisces has us contemplating The All, and interconnectedness; Virgo seeks to discern, separate, and define.
At the time of the Full Moon, the Sun is conjunct Neptune (exact March 8), in Neptune’s sign, Pisces, amplifying the Piscean themes: spirituality, universal love, compassion, boundarylessness, confusion, fear, paranoia, addiction, escapism. Also at the same time as the Full Moon, Mercury, stations direct (March 9), making Mercury especially prominent. After tracing its steps back through much of Pisces, and then dipping into Aquarius, Mercury has come to a standstill as it gears up to travel forwards again. This energy of “standing still” is brought into focus now.
A new chapter (of a perhaps old story) began at the beginning of February (Feb 2) (when Mercury entered its retrograde shadow--the exact degree it is at at the time of the Full Moon). Time is strange and cycles and spirals and defies our straight lines. To move this story forward, we had to retreat, into the past, into our hearts, into our minds. We had to revisit where we have been in order to move forward. And now we stand at the threshold, between the past and the present. For a moment there is stillness: a moment to work magic, to draw past into present, to weave our futures forth.
With the ruler of both the Sun (Neptune) and Moon (Mercury) emphasized, there is a strong theme around reconciling mind and heart, logic and intuition. Pisces-Neptune is universal love and compassion, intuition, imagination, spirituality. It knows that we are all one. Virgo-Mercury on the other hand is discerning and analytical. It is meant to separate, define, and question. And this Full Moon reminds us that we need both.
It’s a reminder that our spiritual lives require discernment and a critical eye. Pisces, without Virgo, risks idealism, delusion, and self-sacrifice. So many have been cheated into following gurus, teachers, and cults, that promise salvation but turn out to be frauds. Religions and cults have long abused the energy of Pisces, by convincing us that our critical faculties interfere with our spiritual lives. We ought to trust, have faith, believe, and not question. And then we are ripe for abuse by power hungry, manipulative leaders (Yogi Bhajan of Kundalini yoga being the most recent in a long line of corrupt men to fall).
With the potential for Pisces-Neptune to fall into fear, and with Virgo’s concern for health, the mass fear surrounding Coronavirus is also especially pertinent. While of course we should take pandemics seriously, given that there have been less than 4000 deaths worldwide, the potential for mass paranoia is perhaps a bigger threat than the illness itself.
One of the challenges with this Full Moon is to take responsibility for our state of mind; for the energy we carry. To observe when we are veering into needless fear, or uncritical trust, or unfounded thought patterns, or addictive tendencies, and to steer ourselves away from those states--but without ignoring or bulldozing over the very real, potentially unpleasant and difficult thoughts and feelings that give rise to them. A tall order! And all Full Moons are. Full Moons always challenge us to integrate apparent opposites--to reject the binary delusion that is so pervasive that tells us there are only every two options and that they are directly opposed.
There is no secret to integrating heart and mind--to approaching spirituality with a critical eye. Chances are many of us will have to swing between an overactive mind that trips us up with its loops and ruts, and escapism that takes us beyond ourselves but is ultimately delusional or harmful, until we learn gradually to find the magic within the everyday--to value the questioning, examining mind even in questions of faith, and to find place for the transcendent and ineffable even within our rational thought.
I think integration is always a messy, slow process, that involves learning from experience and figuring it out as we go along. And I don’t think it’s ever done. I think no matter how much we’ve learned, there is always more.