#19: We need consolidation and complication both.
The limits of using just one side of the Virgo-Pisces axis.
You can use this auto-dialer to share your anti-Israel war sentiments with your representatives.
Upcoming Astrology:
There are plenty of week ahead resources out there (the CHANI podcast is a good one), so I thought it might be more fun to read a focused interpretation of one dynamic in the sky.
Mercury Cazimi on Friday, October 20: My goldfish brain doesn’t remember if I’ve written much or anything at all about Mercury Cazimi before. It’s an important phase of each planet’s solar cycle in which the planet (in this case Mercury) sits in the heart of the Sun, taking a break from being torched by the heat 15° on either side of the Sun.
In non-astrological language: this is a moment where Mercury topics receive focus and clarity. It’s a great time to have an important conversation, work out some business details, send a letter (or text), or just have a hard think about something you have been avoiding.
I’d be a bad Hellenistic astrologer if I didn’t also say note that it’s in a very tight conjunction with the South Node, meaning it’s a little less high charged than other Cazimis and whatever you put that energy into might leave you feeling more depleted than you’d like. Such is the nature of the Dragon’s Tail.
Seven months into Saturn’s journey through Pisces, some reflections.
Last week, Venus entered Virgo and immediately sat opposite Saturn in Pisces. I talked in the “astrodynamics” last week a teensy bit about why it’s uncomfortable for Venus to sit in Virgo and how having her fall in Virgo can manifest. However, similar to how I discussed the axis of Aries-Libra, we can use the planets and their traditional preferences to go deeper in understanding the Virgo-Pisces axis.
At a high level, the important components to remember about the Virgo-Pisces axis are that: Mercury rules Virgo and is at home there, Jupiter rules Pisces and is at home there, Mercury exalts in Virgo, and Venus exalts in Pisces. Here’s a chart to make it clearer:
Mercury is quick moving, discerning, curious, detail-oriented, socially-minded. Not a prickly prude, despite the stereotypes of Virgo. Jupiter is fun, open-minded, spiritual, wise, expansive. A poet and a counselor, especially in relation to Pisces. Both planets rule exclusively mutable signs, meaning both represent a certain flexibility and adaptability, though, along this axis, they manifest it in different ways.
Looking more specifically at the axis itself, Pisces is hope and Virgo is years of hard work. Pisces is the desire and Virgo is the body that holds it. Pisces is ambiguity, Virgo is clarity. Pisces is your intuition, Virgo is your skepticism. Pisces is delusion and Virgo is the slap across the face that snaps you out of it. Pisces is too many drinks, Virgo is waiting to have the conversation until morning.
One of the simplest and best gifts of the Virgo-Pisces axis is that on one side we have Pisces representing our dreams and on the other we have Virgo who represents our means to achieve them. Dreams can mean a lot of things. They can be for love and laughter. They can be for your mark on the world. They can be erotic. What they have in common is that they happen in some other time. Dreams have not yet happened. Work happens now. Or it happens now. Or it happens now.
Virgo offers Pisces structure. The Pisces principle is prone to falling for whoever paints the best picture. There is not a lot of clarity in the sign of Pisces. It’s permeable, with only a thin mucous membrane between the fish’s scales and whichever fisherman gets ahold of it. Virgo is grounding. Virgo is the focus, the presence, that is necessary to keep from getting swept away in a cult or, more common, by political leaders and social media waves that eat away at your reason and make you a more and more amenable pawn. That’s the danger of a hyperactive Pisces principle and why you need to balance the Virgo-Pisces axis so carefully.
I’ve probably oversimplified Pisces as sweet and soft “hopes” and “dreams”—oversimplification, incidentally, is a good example of Virgo unchecked. Another important contribution of the Piscean side of the axis is necessary complication.
There’s a reason art and poetry are so deeply associated with Pisces and it’s that they provide ways of existing that thrive on ambiguity and felt meaning. Pisces (think “the ocean”) has room for everything. Currents slipping quickly around the world, depths humans haven’t ever touched, porous sources of life. When an artist creates work, they have their experience of it and when you take in the work you have your experience of it. The understanding that each of you have of the piece is valid, but it is in all likelihood unique. This is Pisces, not Virgo. Pisces thrives on that ambiguity while Virgo wants to articulate, to describe, and to define.
To more tangibly explore this shade of the Virgo-Pisces axis, I’m going to quote from On Freedom by Maggie Nelson at length:
As artist Paul Chan has it: “Collective social power needs the language of politics, which means, among other things, that people need to consolidate identities, to provide answers ... to make things happen. Whereas my art is nothing if not the dispersion of power.... And so, in a way, the political project and the art project are sometimes in opposition.” Acknowledging and allowing for this opposition (when it occurs) is not the same as cordoning aesthetics off from politics. It is about attending to and allowing for differences— between sensibilities, between spheres, and between types of experience— and letting go of the insistence that aesthetic and political practice mirror each other, or even correspond amicably.
In the above, Pisces represents that dispersion of power that art allows while Virgo represents the consolidation of power that politics allows. I like this articulation of the right use of each of these principles a lot. They each are necessary even when they are at odds. My interest in exploring the structure of the Zodiac that relies upon these tense axes is because either side of each axis demands its due in life. The artistic and the political aren’t mutually exclusive but they aren’t mutually interchangeable. Put another way: when you need hope you want hope and when you need healthcare you want healthcare.
I believe this axis also highlights something that our culture is less and less comfortable with, and that people, especially (but not only) people on the Internet, are less and less resilient to. I’m referring to the quick take and the brand-aligned belief. It’s possible this is an overhyped concern. I’ll admit that I’ve seen less of it myself as I’ve slowly removed myself from TikTok, Twitter, and parts of Instagram that aren’t my close, real-life friends. But it’s still a discussion point that comes up regularly with my friends who poke around various parts of the web. The hot take and its implications for your moral correctness is alive and well.
This is not news. I’m embarrassed to even be gesturing at this idea in a newsletter in 2023. Make it a blog and it might as well be 2013. But the grip that this particular Virgo-Pisces imbalance has had on the culture for ten plus years is concerning.
The more we demand certainty of our beliefs (Virgo), the less room there is for the complexity that certainly exists in anything human (Pisces). And, notably, complexity doesn’t have to be a copout to prevent you from acknowledging hard truths about inhumanity and moral failures. Real complexity, and real balance between the Virgoan and the Piscean, enables you to look at these failures head on and to understand them to their roots. And whether those complexities are interpersonal or global, that’s the only way you can begin to address them.
Pisces allows for connecting with others, learning their stories and enjoying the permeability of the human boundary that lets us share. Whatever it is in humans that lets us rely upon others, that lets us be weak and taken care of by others, that lets us be so ridiculous on this planet and still create art and love. The Virgo is that which allows us to maintain our rootedness and individuality. That keeps us from losing sight of those individual pieces and allows us to maintain networks of care and support that actually work.
The social theorist and utopian scholar Ernst Bloch says of the dynamic between hope and the work that goes into it, in the introduction to his work, Principles of Hope, “The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming, to which they themselves belong. It will not tolerate a dog’s life which feels itself only passively thrown into What Is, which is not seen through, even wretchedly recognized.” Virgo is the work that happens right now, while Pisces gives you the vision of “what is becoming”.
The tension between Virgo and Pisces is the tension between the future and where we are now. If you don’t have that Virgoan awareness and the ability to discern, you will fall for anything. It’s easier than ever to find a mob to join and you don’t even have to leave your home. Turn on your phone and the mob will come to you. When people latch onto stories of tragedy and use them to motivate underbaked action, to motivate fear and hatred, they are leveraging the Piscean and relying upon underdeveloped Virgoan principles. On the other hand, if you don’t have an active practice putting you in touch with the Piscean, you will lack connection to your human community. Without that connection, which I see as a spiritual one, we risk being defined by the role we play in the market of black and white takes that further isolate us. We risk becoming empty.
Saturn will be in Pisces until May 24, 2025 and the nodes will transit this axis starting in January of 2025. Up to and through these cycles, questions of Piscean interdependence and Virgoan discernment will remain front of mind and active, giving us lots of time to take stock of our practices, both personal and communal.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.