Under the Virgo Full Moon

I wade in the waters of Pisces.

Photo by Kyaw Tun on Unsplash

The tides of my life wash over me, again and again. I float in the shallows, feeling the sand brush against my back. My eyes are closed and the light of the full moon ripples on my skin. We stay afloat best when we are still, focusing on our breath, letting the water hold us. I am reminded of the time I went into a sensory deprivation tank last February. The water is so salty that you float perfectly on 10 inches of water and you feel how much tension your body holds. It was almost impossible to fully relax my neck and shoulders that instinctively hold the weight of my life. As a practice, I send my breath into my cervical spine and imagine the 20+ muscles relaxing, releasing. I am alone, and I am safe to feel what comes forth.

Last year, I was dating someone named E.¹ E would often violently crack their neck, shoving their fist into their jaw as they whipped their head from side to side. One side would crack, but not the other, and they would exclaim in frustration, “That’s not good! That is not good." It honestly kind of freaked me out, and the repetition of it began to sit wrong with me. But, as we often do with those we spend time with, I started to pick up on this behavior. Although it wouldn’t be quite as forceful, I began harshly pushing my head to the right and left after I would do something that made me feel embarrassment or shame. Often times, my neck wouldn’t crack at all, or if it did it would do so in a way that was painful and made it uncomfortable. I stopped this habit shortly after I broke up with E in March 2023 - it reminded me of them and that would fill me with a sort of disappointment in myself.

When I was dating E, I took epsom salt baths all of the time. My partner recently made the observation that it was a self-care routine centered on maintenance - I was not mentally well when I was dating E and baths helped me maintain some sense of sanity. They were breaking my emotional and physical boundaries, and I was not listening to my body. When I was alone, I was abusing substances and punching walls and screaming, a lot. I recognized the dissociated and anxiety-filled headspace I was in because I had been there in a previous relationship. This recognition scared me. I told myself that I was just being insecure and blamed my attachment issues for the constant turmoil. It didn’t take very long for me to process the field of red flags around me and take action. Ultimately, the relationship was short-lived, and it’s taken almost this full year to feel like I’ve rebuilt the internal foundations that exploded under the weight of it.

With pop astrology, it’s easy to build biases against a certain sign. E is a Pisces, and since another ex of mine has a Pisces moon, I began to feel a bit suspicious of this placement. I saw it as uncontrollably emotional, reactive, annoying, and needing to be coddled. I didn’t really understand Pisces, having spent much more time utilizing Scorpio energy in my practice and being personally closer with Cancers. I think having a Virgo moon also played a role in this, being the highly materially-organized sister of expansive and matter-rejecting Pisces. Virgo wants coherent structure where Pisces wants limitless, elusive space. It took some internal battling to remember that astrological signs, like emotions, are neutral energies. One of my closest romantic friends is a Pisces, and he reminds me of the awe that this placement inspires. Pisces are reassuring, accommodating, rejuvenating, and giving.

Coming out of meditative Aquarius season, Pisces is a baptismal initiation into the next phase of our lives, full of possibility. Pisces rules the Twelfth House of the natal chart because it is twelfth and final sign of the Zodiac. This house deals with the subconscious, karma, intuition, spirituality, and what lies beneath the surface.² In my post from the Aquarius new moon, I speak at length about my Twelfth House because that is where Saturn (Aquarius’s ruler) is located in my birth chart. It turns out, my Twelfth House falls on Pisces, which means it is very at home in its familiar habitat: “all Pisces’ natural traits and abilities are amplified in this placement.”³ This realization is synchronous with me having just delved into my Twelfth House and the time of year, especially since I have no water signs in my planetary placements. I hear the call, and I’m ready to feel what it means to immerse myself in Pisces. This also helps me appreciate Pisces a little more - its energy strengthens my divination practice.

The inner turmoil I felt in my relationship with E was my body telling me that my boundaries were being broken, and I needed to make a change. After I broke up them, I didn’t take a salt bath for months. We had practiced witchcraft together - their elemental focus being fire and mine water. They characterized me as a water witch and I agreed with this role because I respected their spiritual knowledge. Truthfully, I didn’t want to be associated with only water, and I wasn’t sure if that accurately described my practice in its fullness. I wanted to be like the Magician, skillfully utilizing every element with grace and care. After I cut E from my life and stopped taking baths, I wanted to make fire my own, learn how to utilize it my way:

I decided to burn everything in sight. . . . I sat in my room and I burned note after note, rose petal after rose petal. I said every incantation I could to rid myself of the pain that felt never ending. I was reckless and sloppy, and I knew it was burning for the sake of feeling in control of a fire.⁴

I soon found myself in a flat, parched landscape. Everything was covered in a layer of ash. Stones and rubble from the collapsed Tower of that relationship were in my periphery. I saw cracked, brown land as far as the horizon. I made the conscious decision to stay in this place, to sit down cross-legged and wait. I needed to be with the grief and the anger and the wind and the earth. At this point, I decided to cut fire and water out of my practice for the time being. I created a council of advisors from the Air and Earth cards of the Major Arcana by separating them from the rest of my deck. I felt the lingering heat on my skin, utilized only the water I needed to survive, and waited for the rain to come on its own.

On May 20, 2023, during the Taurus new moon, I laid out the council of Major Arcana and saw a linear timeline. The cards showed me my story:

• The Fool meets the Mentor⁵ (Hierophant)

  • I was both the Fool and the Mentor, having made naive decisions and knowing the advice I needed to give myself. In entering this new relationship with E, I had tried to release the baggage of my past. In this process, I ignored previous mistakes, repeating my cycle of jumping into relationships too hard and too fast. Releasing baggage does not mean forgetting wisdom earned through previous struggles. I was foolish, and I knew better. I was also taking in the advice of friends and family who saw the situation from the outside and helped guide me out of it.

• The Magician meets the Hermit

  • This was me and my ex - the Magician was the card they always pulled for me and the Hermit was the card they always pulled for themself. I was a curious practitioner learning from a lone, more experienced one. One of the reasons E’s actions hurt me so badly was because I had been spiritually vulnerable with them. I learned from them and I incorporated what I learned into my spiritual practice. This made it hard to not think of them whenever I would enact rituals, and that was devastating. It felt like they could remain hidden from sight and responsibility, while I struggled to accept the new tools they had given me.

• The Lovers meet the Devil

  • This was my primary partner and myself becoming aware of our own self delusions in relationship to E. We both imagined that reality was going better than it actually was. The decision to invite E into our lives happened shortly after we moved in together, which made it hard to find balance. We were trying to settle into our home and build our foundation while bringing another person closer into our orbit. There was a lot of wishful thinking and gravitational imbalance. We had put blind trust in E before knowing if they could be trusted. Their actions revealed that they weren’t worthy of our trust at all.

• Justice Meets the Prince of Liminality⁶ (Hanged Man)

  • This is where I was when I was meeting this council in May. What I craved from E was accountability. I wanted them to acknowledge the ways they hurt me and my primary partner and make amends. We opened space for them to take accountability and they slammed the door. I imagined myself going up to them and telling them off, outlining the ways they broke boundaries and how wrong it was. I wanted to yell in their face and walk away. I knew that this wouldn’t bring forth Justice, and it wouldn’t make me feel better. I was struggling with not having control. All I had was feeling and waiting and listening: it was the only way forward.

• The Star meets the World

  • This is where I am now. When I first saw this pairing nine months ago, I didn’t understand it clearly. Now, it is coming to light: the Star is associated with Aquarius and the World is associated with Saturn.⁷ The internal work I’m doing now is the culmination of these experiences. The World is also the final card in the Major Arcana, symbolizing the end of a cycle with everything that comes with it. According to Phantasma Tarot: “Deeper understanding has been gained through effort and experience, and new perspectives are carried into future journeys. Barriers are successfully overcome, and the growth that has been achieved is empowering.”

This message, first received almost a year ago, is hitting me as I write this. For months before and after breaking up with E, I was in deep emotional pain. This relationship challenged all of the progress I had made in my mental and spiritual health. I was angry with myself for being hasty with my vulnerability and trust. I was processing the hurt every day and it felt endless. But, I had therapists and a support system in place. I sunk into a new friendship and spent more time with the friends I’ve had for years. I worked with my primary partner to rebalance our shared life. I leaned on my ancestors. I gathered what others lovingly gave me, things I created for myself, and let go of what was no longer needed.

It was around October when I started taking regular baths again. In the first bath I took in months, I floated in the aromatic, salty water and sent my breath to my cervical spine. I gently tilted my head from left to right, feeling the water run through my hair and support my neck. As I made this motion, the deepest, most relieving crack erupted from my bones. Waves of warmth emanated from my muscles around the source, and I knew I was releasing tension I held from my relationship with E. I have experienced deep cracks like this before, and they are so beautifully liberating. Bath after bath, I experienced cracks in my neck like this. Gentle movement that realigned my body to a world where E and their actions no longer weigh on my life.

As I sort and release the remnants of this relationship, I trust in water to guide me. Mutable Pisces is shaped by what it holds and what surrounds it, adding a dimension of its own. It isn’t the ocean depths of Scorpio, nor the moon-eyed tides of Cancer. Pisces is the splash of the surf, the waves, the shallows. It refracts under the light of the Sun and dimples with the fall of rain. Pisces is a cleansing salt bath. What needs to be left behind is washed away, and we emerge ready to begin a new cycle with wisdom and clarity. As we move through this season, the waves may catch us off guard, but they teach us how to flow and stand firm. When the water is still, take a pause to watch: you’ll find yourself just below the surface.

1. Pseudonym

2. Cafe Astrology - Pisces Sign Symbols and Associations

3. Astrology.com - Pisces in the 12th House

4. The Journey - my first post

5. In Phantasma Tarot, the “Hierophant” is called the “Mentor”

6. Calling the “Hanged Man” the “Prince of Liminality” comes from Sarah Cargill’s podcast Tarot for the End of Times

7. For further context, I recommend reading my essays Reflections and Readings for the Aquarius New Moon and The Journey