There are five planets in Pisces right now. And my thoughts are as much of shorelines and containers as they are of the limitless deep this sign symbolizes.
Monday, March 11 marks the Pisces New Moon. Then, there will be six: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus. Neptune, Mars. That’s a lot of deep ocean, dreamtime energy.
I was born under the sign of the shore-dwelling Crab. Even those crabs that live in the ocean scuttle along the sea floor. We don’t swim. We need something to stand on, even if there are tons of saltwater above us. We need a container.
As a Midwesterner, I’m more familiar with ponds, lakes and rivers—things I can see the other side of. I grew up playing in the creeks that flowed through my grandparents’ land. I liked to imagine the little streams flowing into the nearby Kaskaskia River, which joins the Mississippi, and through it, the Gulf of Mexico and the oceans beyond. I loved feeling connected to something so big through a stream so safely small.
I now see all water as part of our great Ocean Mother. The water in our cells, the blood that flows in our veins, the amniotic fluid we swim in before birth, all has the same salinity as the oceans. We carry the memory of it in our souls just as we carry the imprint of it in our bodies. We appear separate, yet are joined to our Mother in every cell.
As it does every month, the New Moon carries the seeds of beginnings. And yet, as the last sign of the Zodiac, Pisces has the energy of the infinite and the great dissolve. One fish swims away from the Divine Source, another swims back towards it.
Pisces for me is also about flow. If a cup doesn’t empty, it cannot be filled. If we think always of scarcity and limits, we cut ourselves off from the universal flow of abundance.
At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the biggest container holds 1.2 million gallons of seawater behind plexiglass 13 inches thick. Another holds a forest of giant kelp 28 feet high. The kelp and sea creatures in those tanks thrive because a system of pipes pump in the bay’s waters at a rate of 2,000 gallons per minute. The tank, in fact, the whole aquarium, is filled with the deeply loving energy of our ocean mother. I think the free flow of the water, the constant renewal, allows this energy to manifest. When I visited, I was moved almost to tears by the force of it.
I’ll be meditating these next few days about the tension between flow and containment. And about those things which enrich my life by flowing in, mingling with my energy, and then flowing out, carrying a part of myself with them. About the experience of standing on the shore, diving into the waves, and swimming safely home.
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