New Moon in Virgo Opposite Chiron in Pisces

Plastic-filled albatross: see here

It’s very hard to know even a little about the damage we’ve inflicted on the world’s oceans without feeling overwhelmed and depressed. Among the most obvious—and difficult to address—problems are overfishing, pollution, and acidification due to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.

With a human population projected to hit 9 billion (from a current 7 billion) by mid-century, the prospects for ‘fixing’ the damage we’ve been doing are dim. In many respects, things are already too far gone to fix.  

Life on Earth depends on the health of the oceans. They are the circulatory system of the planet. We came from the sea and the salinity of our blood mirrors the composition of seawater: the amniotic fluid we developed in.

Pisces is the sign of the sea and the last sign in the zodiac. It signifies our origins as well as our ends: the final dissolution of the ego and the personality; of all the seeming boundaries that make us separate and individual beings. Neptune, the ruler of Pisces, has been in the sign since April of 2011—so in a very nebulous way, our intuitive awareness has been focused on the seas these past few years. And Chiron, the asteroid signifying profound wounding, has been in Pisces since January of 2011, conjunct Neptune—so this awareness we have of Piscean matters is inherently painful. We all have this dim background sense that something is very wrong, whether it can be articulated or not, whether it is faced or evaded (and Neptune is famous for self-delusion and escapism).

Shortly on the heels of Chiron’s ingress into Pisces we watched the Deepwater Horizon disaster unfold in the Gulf of Mexico. Millions of barrels of oil from a blown-out wellhead gushed into the Gulf from April to July of 2011, an environmental calamity with ongoing consequences.

I remember watching the ‘spillcam’ live video footage in horror that spring and summer, hypnotized by sight of oil billowing from the broken pipes. Like blood from a wound that wouldn’t heal.

Chiron, the unhealable wound, is also supposed to teach…but I don’t know what it taught in the case of the Macondo blowout. There is a Neptune-tinged helplessness and despair in the face of such destruction: a resignation to profound loss. BP, the corporation accountable for the disaster, continues to evade real culpability. It is a Pluto in Capricorn theme.      

And now, just in time for the September 5^th new moon in Virgo, comes an escalation of the ongoing (since March of last year) Fukushima crisis: another profound wounding to the health of the seas, and thus, to the overall health of the planet. Another poisoning.

But the situation at Fukushima is much scarier than the Deepwater Horizon disaster because the threat is invisible, intangible. Much easier for corporations and governments to lie about and whitewash into non-existence. How Neptune is that?

Except Saturn is in Scorpio, in mutual reception with Pluto in Capricorn—and the attempts to cover up or avoid dealing with inherently rotten situations can’t work for long these days. Again we are seeing, clear as day, the criminal failure of a corporate structure to prevent or adequately deal with the destruction it has unleashed. 

And again we are seeing environmental catastrophe on a scale that induces abject horror and helplessness. A wound that can’t be fixed, with ramifications that spread across national borders (more Neptune) to encompass the whole web of life on the planet. 

Virgo is the sign of attention to detail, health, orderliness, self-purification. The new moon in Virgo is a good time to start new health regimens or get your physical or psychic house in order.

The question posed by this new moon, which opposes Chiron in Pisces, looks to me like this: how can you adequately safeguard your physical integrity and health in the face of disasters like Fukushima, that threaten everything and everyone indiscriminately? Of what use is it to get your own personal house in order—clean and germ-free!—when the entire planet is being poisoned?

Ultimately there’s not a lot we CAN do, except live with the consciousness of wounding and profound loss these disasters entail—and this is also a consciousness of our own mortality. I mean, we can write letters to ‘responsible’ government bodies; we can avoid eating Pacific fish and seaweed (or anything grown in Japan for that matter); we can move to locations on the planet we hope are ‘safe’ and ‘clean’; we can organize and march in the streets against the expansion of nuclear power generation… and all these actions are necessary and valuable.

But ultimately they only give us the illusion of personal agency. And what’s happening is (always) much bigger than our pitifully limited personal agency. We can’t personally or collectively stop the process that’s underway at Fukushima. It is out of control, and even the attempts at mitigation have proven to be dreadful failures so far. A process has been set in motion that is out of anyone’s hands. 

And it is terrifying and painful to know this—but also healing. Because ultimately our lives are uncontrollable in exactly the same way, and this lack of control must be accepted. You can try to systematize your existence, to purify and perfect it (Virgo)…but the boundaries and routines you build and uphold are temporary and foredoomed to failure. Your attempts at self-mastery are foredoomed…the self does not endure. All boundaries dissolve eventually: you are destined to become part of everything again.

And the retaining walls and containers at Fukushima, sooner or later, will dissolve. Invisible poison will disperse through the world’s bloodstream unhindered, and everything alive will partake of it in some way, for generations and generations. It’s terrible, but it’s the reality. How do you live with this knowledge? How do you live with the knowledge that even if this situation is ‘contained’, there are currently hundreds of nuclear power plants around the world, each as potentially destructive as Fukushima Daiichi?

It’s like asking: how do you live with the knowledge that someday you will die? That despite all your best efforts to eat right and stay healthy and be a decent human being…one day you will die and this is entirely out of your hands?

I pose these questions because they’re the questions this Virgo new moon poses for me, not because I know how to answer them. Everyone has to find their own answers.

As we move toward the new moon, we also move into the current square between Mars in Leo and Saturn in Scorpio. It’s uncomfortable…it’s like, you can try to have fun and be lighthearted, but the awareness of just how bad things are, personally and collectively, will make that difficult. And as we move toward the full moon in Pisces on the 19^th September, Mercury also moves into the Cardinal Grand Cross zone that Venus has just left—so our minds are likely to be preoccupied with the weighty, shocking, difficult things we’re finding out. Pay attention. Don’t try to look away from or evade what you know deep down to be true.

All the thrust of the current story lies with Saturn in Scorpio, which is moving toward conjunction with the north node and Venus, exact on the 18^th September, the day before the full moon in Pisces. Attempts to skate along the surface, especially relationally, just will not work under these skies. The themes are depth and endurance. Find out who and what you trust, and stick to it! You should know pretty well who and what you can’t trust by now: don’t waste any more energy on it.