The New Moon occurs at 4 Pisces 28 on the 23rd at 7:31 AM PST, semi-square Venus and loosely semi-square Jupiter (placing the NM at the rough midpoint), sextile Uranus and Mars (again, the NM is caught between them), and in loose trine to the North Node point and loose sesquiquadrate to Zeus-Juno in Libra. A New Moon in Pisces can bring a new dream, a dawning awareness of some new facet of the life, of some burgeoning desire or ideal, or the birth of a vision, fantasy, or even deception that inspires, whether what we imagine is true or not.

In this instance we are offered a spark, a fresh idea, that arises from the difficulty in balancing relationships or the need to earn with the social whirl or with a multitude of opportunities. Our own willingness and initiative, and serendipitous events and ‘coincidences’, shape our life direction and put us in a quandary: do we bow to the needs of others, graciously making ourselves small in order to ‘get along’ (and so, we might imagine, earn their Love), or serve our own ambitions and in the process discover who among our companions supports us, who falls away?

The Sabian symbol for this New Moon is, ‘A Church Bazaar’. This is an event where like-minded (we might even say, spiritually attuned to one another) individuals who share a common belief framework about the ‘right’ way to live gather in order to share their handiwork, their creations, in a celebration of fellowship. Nothing wrong with that, right? Except how much do we experience, learn, or test our beliefs if we surround ourselves only with others who share an identical viewpoint to our own? This New Moon may incite a search for the wider world, as we seek the commonalities among, for instance, humankind, or those qualities we share with other sentient beings, rather than shrinking our world down to others who are more like us than not.

Aspects and Sabian combined suggest a need for new and broadening experience with others of the ‘not-like-us’ variety. It dawns on us that there’s more to the world than we suspected. Pisces wants us to dream, wants us to connect with the Collective, wants us to accept and to be accepted–and that last is probably, for anyone, a good place to start.

This is it for at least a couple of weeks. Have a wonderful and safe late winter–see you by spring!