on the pisces eclipse and finding the edge

plus, a sale and writing prompts

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In honor of this year’s final eclipse season, and also as an offering for what I know has been a tremendously difficult year, I’m offering 15% off annual subscriptions from now until the next eclipse on October 2nd of this year. I hope that the more detailed insight into the week’s astrology will support your creative journey. 

The Full Moon, which is also a partial lunar eclipse, is at 17* of Pisces and arrives tonight at 10:34pm Eastern. 

Sitting between dreamy Neptune and responsible Saturn, this moon struggles to articulate its own boundaries, and so we do, too. There is a time warping element to Pisces lunations at the best of times, as if the hours collapse in on themselves, and this tendency is especially pronounced on an eclipse. In this moment, it’s easier to lose track of Saturn-things: not just time but also perspective on our responsibilities and limitations.

This can manifest on a very literal, physical level in regards to our health. Speaking as someone who has been bedridden for most of the last week: please wear a mask and stay home if you’re feeling sick. Don’t push the body too hard, too fast — especially with Mars in Cancer, the astrology just does not support taking big swings physically (unless you’ve already been training and conditioning that way for a long time). This doesn’t just mean not to add weight at the gym. It also means that we aren’t sitting in an uncomfortable desk chair for ten hours and then going home and pushing ourselves to clean the whole goddamn house. This is a cuddle with your (fur) babies, put on Practical Magic, and play video games kind of week.

It is necessary to honor what our bodies, minds, and hearts can do, but perhaps especially important to honor what they can’t. This can prove difficult, especially if the limitations we experience are new(ish)-to-us or belong to that eponymous category of “things we cannot change” — whether it’s publishing industry standards or simply waiting for a response over email. Often, our own intentions and manifestations and goals are tied up with other people and environmental conditions. Sometimes, we don’t see growth or healing (or its results) as quickly as we’d like.

Full Moons are often talked about as being times of completion, and I know I’ve used this terminology plenty in the past. But there is an enormous difference between a particular part of the process reaching culmination or a pivot point and something being finished. Capitalism does so love to consider “completion” as “done.” It’s why I so like to share Matt Bell’s wisdom from the wonderful craft book Refuse to Be Done: that today’s task is never to wholly “write the book,” because 99.9% of days, we aren’t actually finishing the book. Advice that, I think, can be applied to the vast majority of life (and to-do lists). 

Mostly, we are living in the messy middle of process. Often, New and Full Moons — and even eclipse season — find us in maintenance mode rather than in an exciting new stage of development. For the New Moon in Pisces earlier this year, we talked about maintenance in regards to the growth of pearls:

Some pearls form in as little as six months — incidentally, the length of time between a new moon and full moon in the same sign. Others will grow for four, even five years before being ready to harvest. Some oysters only ever produce one worthy pearl in their lifetime. Others will grow two, three, even four. It is unpredictable, which oysters will produce quickly and which will take their time; which will have the endurance and capacity to grow many pearls and which are worn out after a singular push. All a pearl farmer can hope to control — much like any creative person — are the conditions. 

So much of magic isn’t active doing doing doing. Planting planting planting. Ritual ritual ritual. Yes, we make intentions. Sure, we make plans. But then we execute. And then we live. So much magic happens in the maintenance. In the cultivation and keeping and care. In ensuring right relationship and right conditions in everyday life. 

It can be hard — so very hard — to determine where we are in the cycle, to find Saturn’s cool perspective when Neptune diffuses our boundaries and relationship to time itself, when a Pisces lunation prioritizes pathos over logos. In eclipse season, we are even more tenderized by the realizations of what is no longer working and what we crave more of.

It can be so hard to integrate the knowledge that finding the edge of our limitations is, actually, essential to cultivating the right environment.

But we can trust that, eventually, the results will speak for themselves.

Writing Prompts for the Partial Lunar Eclipse in Pisces

• Where does this eclipse find you? Take stock of your relationship to creativity in this moment and what is impacting it — your environment, your health, your duties and responsibilities, etc.

• What plates can you let drop right now? (Feelings are not facts.)

• What conditions do you need to cultivate in order to create the environment you want? What are some small steps or changes (a new office chair; an adjusted family meal time) that might support this?

photo courtesy of billion oyster project

P.S.

In gratitude to oysters and my local water spirits, I ask that, on this Pisces eclipse, if you are so moved, you would join me in donating to New York City’s Billion Oyster Project (to which I make a monthly $25 donation). For the last ten years, this organization has been focused on restoring oyster reefs to New York Harbor through public education initiatives. They’ve restored more than 122 million live oysters to the harbor with the help of more than 20,000 local students, largely through the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School. Their environmental work has a profound impact on the local community, both literally and also spiritually.

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