on the new moon in pisces and the role of the artist

feat. william wordsworth and toni cade bambara

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And now, for the New Moon.

the lake district at dusk

The New Moon arrives at 9* of Pisces, at 7:45pm Eastern on Thursday, February 27th.

When I sit with the chart of this New Moon, which is co-present with Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune in Pisces, what comes to mind is Romantic poet William Wordsworth’s famous meditation from Lyrical Ballads: that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Wordsworth was a Mercury in Pisces native himself, someone for whom language sprung from the well of feeling, words only available once the energy of them had been sifted and sorted.

I think that sometimes, it’s too easy to focus on the first part of that line — poetry as spontaneous overflow — and less on the latter half, where Wordsworth notes that creative work “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” We must sit with that overflow of feelings first before the perspective offered by space and time allows us to give shape and narrative to them. And that requires intention. Slowing down. Being willing to sit in the muck of uncertainty. Only when we do that do we have a hope of making narrative out of feeling.

In this, I am reminded of the upcoming March forecast at Call Your Coven, wherein my co-host

Rebecca Scolnick

cites Toni Cade Bambara: “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” Some are called to be on the front lines. And some make the art that calls others to the front lines, helping folks to deconstruct the assumptions and beliefs that would make us subservient to the ruling class. Art helps us re-orient and re-train our gut so that our first instinct is not to obey in advance. In decolonizing my mind from white supremacy, evangelical Christianity, and other -isms, I have been as informed by reading the sci-fi novels of N.K. Jemisin as I have the theory of Audre Lorde, as enlightened by other memoirists like Garrard Conley as I have by reading histories of the religious right.

And it is a moment to appreciate that this kind of art has not always been appreciated. In arguing for poetry as birthed from feeling, from interiority, and in taking inspiration from observing the natural world, Wordsworth and his fellow Romantics broke with poetic tradition which had then, in the early 19th century, prioritized a materialist formalism and Enlightenment-esque scientific inquiry. And so it is that this New Moon calls us back to seed of Romanticism: to the way that so much art is born of interiority, in that strange irony that the more specific a narrative is in representing individual experience, the more “relatable” it is to others.

Feeling may be spontaneous, but the working artist knows that to recollect in tranquility is not. The recollection that ultimately births narrative can be a long, arduous process. But this lunation will offer potent help in getting us there. Aided by Mercury (which governs language) sitting with Saturn (which gives structure), this New Moon is a powerful time for beginnings and initiations that have to do with authentic expression, with spiritual understanding, with collective union.

Trust that your work takes the time it takes. Trust that the artist has a role in the revolution. And trust that meaning is made even when we do not expect it.

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