Table of contents
A tarot + astrology reading
September 1oth marks the full moon in Pisces. ♓
Illuminated by the sun, a full moon symbolizes bringing what was hidden into the light. Metaphorically, it's a time to acknowledge what you've been avoiding and to send some loving goodness to the shadows in your psyche.
In the reading for the new moon in Virgo, I wrote about the journey to becoming your ideal self. This reading explores the internal part of that journey. If you haven't had a minute to catch up with the previous reading, please do a quick read-through first because it lays a lot of the groundwork for the work here.
The Archetype of Pisces
Pisces represents the part of you that's most in touch with your intuition.
The part of you that's disillusioned by the material world and put off by hyper-capitalism. Instead, it feels most at home in the watery depths of your soul, where you can just be, without trying to be anyone.
In short, Pisces is the perfect representation of your spiritual self. And because it represents something so liminal, it's as difficult to pin down as water itself.
That's a drastic change from the Virgo archetype we've spent the past couple weeks in – the diligent worker who loves details, and structures, and routines.
And it's also where we begin our work for this full moon... so let's get started!
Virgo & Pisces: The Opposites
If we're talking about becoming your ideal self, Virgo knows exactly how to get that shit done. She exudes confidence because she believes that hard work and commitment is the key to achieving your goals. Virgo believes her destiny is in her hands, and she's not about to drop the ball.
For a lot of us, this energy feels familiar because it's what we know. We've all been conditioned to hold this view since birth. Wherever you're reading this from, I bet your academic and professional life has pretty much revolved around teaching you how to grind and hustle. So it makes sense that our confidence blooms when we know what we're expected to do and we can see a clear path ahead.
But being in Pisces is the polar opposite. It feels more like being adrift, no land in sight. Pisces energy doesn't feel familiar. In fact, for most of us, it's pretty fucking scary.
See, Pisces doesn't care about order. She definitely doesn't care about structure. Pisces is the seat of spirituality. And all the rules of society that dominate in the outside world and dictate how we should live? In here, they're brushed aside without a second thought. At best, they're mere suggestions. At worst, they're active obstacles to what Soul wants to do, and so she finds joy in doing the exact opposite of what they say.
It's a very intuitive space to be in, where you do things because they feel right, even though they may only be right for you and no one else. We're used to rules being something that everyone agrees on, but how the hell do you create rules for yourself that other people may disapprove of? It goes against everything we've learned from society.
So how can we get comfortable in Pisces, when we only how to build an identity based on what society told us to do or be?
Well, we have to undergo a radical shift. It starts by recognizing that we're in new waters. The skills that we've come to rely on may not be the best for this new space. It calls for a re-learning. A rewilding, which we'll explore further down when we get to the tarot card.
But here's one example. Going back to the theme of this month – becoming the ideal self – the different approaches between the two can be summarized like this:
Pisces in Shadow
In the last post, I explored how in shadow, Virgo becomes hypercritical and demands too much from herself. And I talked about how perfectionism is just a blanket we use to cover up our deepest hurts. Because if you believe you're inadequate, you'll constantly try and compensate by shooting for the moon.
On the other side of the spectrum, in shadow, Pisces deals with her insecurities by doubling down on her introversion. She withdraws even deeper into herself. She basically stops living and begins just going through the motions.
It's painful to sit in the awareness that you're not who you want to be; when your thoughts are constantly reminding you that you don't have what it takes. It's like a physical weight on your chest. And the only way Pisces knows how to respond is by escaping. Detaching from life. She becomes a shell, using distractions to keep her numb from what's going on internally.
I'm a Pisces in shadow whenever I use self-care as avoidance, which happened just this week (haha). I'm an emotional eater, and it's particularly triggered by anxiety. I end up taking something designed to give me pleasure and nourishment, and instead make it an outlet for my pain; an escape that allows me to flee from reality. And it never works long-term. Because all I've done is replaced one painful feeling with another, allowing the cycle of self-loathing to go on.
Ask yourself this:
Is what you do for self-care nourishing your soul, or is it a crutch? Does it build you back up when you're down, or does it leave you feeling even more drained?
Pisces in shadow occurs when you've conditioned yourself to escape from anything that causes internal discomfort. If your emotions feel too 'wild' and out of control, if you have feelings you believe you shouldn't be having, that you blame for holding you back or making you weak, then the quote from Jung below was written exactly for you.
If you don't make the unconscious conscious, it'll direct your life and you'll call it fate – Carl Jung.
What this quote means is that what you avoid doesn't go away. In fact, it controls you. It comes up over and over, maybe dressed in different disguises but always the same underneath. And each time, you beat yourself up for feeling this way. It becomes this huge monster living inside you that you try – and fail – to avoid. Over time, this repetitive 'failure' reinforces your original belief that you're flawed or broken.
You end up thinking that you're destined to fail, to stay small, to feel trapped. Even though none of that is true. It is not true in the slightest. Jung theorized that the psyche must always be balanced. If there's too much in the unconscious, it has to break through into the conscious in order to re-establish balance.
So when these feelings keep coming up, it's not that you need 'fixing'. It's just the result of avoiding your unconscious. And it can be released by allowing yourself to go into those spaces that you've been running away from. Safely, of course. With trusted friends, therapists, or teachers for support.
But the only way to heal is by surrendering ourselves to the pain. We have to be willing to let the current carry us away, trusting that the water will not harm us. We have to believe that although we may be frightened of the intensity of the waves, we can never drown in the waters of the Soul. Your Soul is your essence, so how can you drown in who you are?
Repeating what I said above, when you're in a new space, you just need to develop new skills. In this case, grab a floatie and start to learn how to swim... And to help us in this work, we turn, like always, to the cards.
The Moon
In tarot, the Moon card is ruled by Pisces. The Moon symbolizes the act of rewilding, shedding the persona you put on in front of the world and embracing the wildness that lives within. Just like Pisces who laughs in the face of man-made rules, The Moon shines a light on the untamed part of us who exists beyond the masks we wear.
The Moon is freedom. She is our most authentic self.
And in Virgo season (Aug 22 - Sep 21), when we're reflecting on the work we do and how we contribute, the Moon asks a simple question:
Is your contribution to the world aligned with your Soul? Are you allowing yourself to be who you naturally are, to feel what you naturally feel, without allowing the mind to interrupt with judgement about how you're supposed to feel? Supposed according to who, anyway? Who gets to decide what are appropriate emotions and what aren't?
Because from where I'm sitting, a lot of these 'shoulds' come from a society that's obsessed with unhealthy models of masculinity, believing that we should be machines, constantly producing, never slowing, and definitely, definitely never having any feeling that would make others think we're weak.
It's absolutely ridiculous. Even nature has winter, where the crops stop growing and the animals go into hiding. The moon has times when it's dark, hidden from us, before it comes out shining brightly again like it never left.
If the cycles of day-and-night, work-and-rest are found in Nature herself, why would we beat ourselves up because our bodies and spirits follow the same pattern? Are we not part of the very same nature? Or have we allowed society to convince us that our big brains and technology can allow us to bypass our humanness itself?
You know me, I love a good rant about hyper-capitalism... 😄 But the point of all this is to say that if you don't give your unconscious room to speak, like Jung said, it will continue to control you from the shadows.
It will continue to manifest in unhealthy behaviors that you just can't shake, no matter how hard you put your Virgo hat on and make to-do lists, trying to completely change your life from the outside-in.
Pisces demands depth. She understands that healing doesn't happen without work. And in some ways, her work is tougher than what we have to do in Virgo. It requires us to go into our pain and just be with it, instead of trying to fix it.
If you ask me, that is one of the most direct ways to discover and reconnect with your essence. Your Soul already knows who the highest and best version of your Self is. In fact, it's whispering it to you constantly throughout the day.
You just need the courage to stop running away and start listening. To stop putting up barriers between you and your feelings, and start paying attention to the messages they bring. Then you can rightfully claim your title as a Piscean badass, swimming in the mysterious depths of Spirit. 👑
I hope this reading resonated with you, my dears. This was so much fun to write! Until you hear from me later this month for the new moon in Libra, I wish you peace and ease.
From my Soul to yours,
Terri. 🌝