The New Moon at 4.29 Pisces is on Sun. Feb. 23, 2020 at 7:32 am PST / 10:32 am EST / 3:32 pm GMT / 3:52 am AEDT (Feb. 24).
If you’ve ever seen a movie protagonist dramatically subsumed by quicksand, you may be surprised to learn that such a fate is highly unlikely. Usually, even if you should accidentally stumble into one of these wet, sandy pits, you’ll only sink to waist level. That said, if you thrash and struggle to get out, you will be pulled under a bit deeper. And eventually, unable to escape, your greatest peril comes from predators, hypothermia, or dehydration, not from drowning.
It’s not the quicksand that takes you down. It’s the panic.
Most of us wander into metaphorical quicksand from time to time, into situations that overwhelm and incapacitate us. The instinct is to struggle mightily for escape, but that’s the wrong approach. What’s called for instead is a variation on the advice for escaping actual quicksand: Very gently move your legs to increase viscosity, and turn your body slightly so you can gradually float to the top.
Gentle motion, flexibility, and floating: These are your survival tools for this Pisces New Moon. Because if there is an astrological equivalent of quicksand, a Pisces New Moon with four planets and the Moon’s South Node in Capricorn would pretty much have to be it. At times like this, surrender—not struggle—is the key.
Surrender is Pisces territory. But what happens if you were taught, as I was, that the way to succeed and find happiness in life is to work very hard? Born with Mars trine Saturn, I’ve taken struggle as my watchword. But now, just past my second Saturn return, I’m keenly aware that the happiest and most successful people I know have figured out when to take it easy. They know that single-minded dedication to work is the surest way to kill creativity. They laugh easily, treat others with kindness, and walk lightly through the world. (Interestingly enough, many of them were born with the Sun in Pisces.)
It’s difficult to give up the addiction to struggle, though. It’s one thing to know, rationally, that flailing around will only take you deeper into the quagmire. It’s quite another to really understand it.
Gentle motion, flexibility, and floating: These are your survival tools for this Pisces New Moon.
Look for the Pisces symbol in your birth chart. Is it on the cusp of a house or two? Are there planets in Pisces? These are your guideposts, marking the locations of the quicksand in your life. Pisces planets and houses describe the characteristics and situations that can suck you under and immobilize you. They also point the way to joy – but the path that leads there is not always obvious.
For me, Pisces falls in the fourth house, the house of the chart that symbolizes one’s home. Three days after an eclipse in Pisces back in 1997, my husband I closed escrow on our first house together. The entire experience felt like falling into quicksand, and we fought hard, with all our practical Virgo planets, to find solid ground. The harder we struggled, the deeper we sank and the more desperate we felt.
And that quicksand is where we built our home. In the years since we set up camp here, this house has taught us a lot about surrender. We learned that the house rebels at sudden change, so we tackle just a few small projects each year and do most of the work ourselves. Accordingly, it will not make the cover of American Bungalow magazine on our watch. But we learned early on to respect the place and to let it teach us at its own pace. We learned that if we stopped fighting with it, it would reward us with a loving sanctuary.
As we look ahead to our retirement years, we think about letting go of our little bungalow. California’s thermonuclear real estate market has made it more valuable than we could ever have imagined two decades ago. Financially, it makes all kinds of sense to sell it and move someplace less expensive, and free up some of that capital.
But that would be hard. It’s not just a house I’d be letting go, but my home, my teacher, and a big chunk of my heart. I’m not saying it would be impossible, but for now, too much of me rebels at the idea. The more I struggle with it, the deeper I sink.
There are moments to push and persevere, to climb mountains,
but this New Moon isn’t one of them.
The time will probably come though, eventually. As Jupiter forms a series of sextile aspects to Neptune this year (Feb. 20, July 27, Oct. 12, 2020), it invites us to let whatever no longer serves a purpose get washed away. The combination of the Pisces New Moon with so many planets in Capricorn can certainly feel like quicksand. But remember that the Pisces/Neptune waters nourish and irrigate Capricorn’s rocky soil, and Capricorn provides levees and channels to guide the waters of inspiration and keep them from overflowing.
There are moments to push and persevere, to climb mountains, but this New Moon isn’t one of them. Together, Pisces and Capricorn prescribe a different path, alongside the banks of a river, where you can hear the breeze rustling through the reeds. And if you step into quicksand along the way, don’t struggle. Enjoy the delicious, slightly melancholy freedom of letting go. Relax, have faith, and wiggle your legs a little bit. In time, you’ll float right to the top.
© 2016-2024 April Elliott Kent
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