Pisces & Late Winter
Sun in Pisces: roughly 2/18 - 3/20
The sun travels through Pisces in the last month of winter. This is a transitional time, when we begin to rouse from our winter dream-time, and feel the subtle stirrings of spring's coming rebirth. We are immersed in these energies at this time, and we revisit the themes below at the full moon in Pisces, during the Virgo solar month.
Sleep & Dreams
This month is a good time to catch up on rest before spring whisks us into a whirl of action. It's also time to pay attention to your dreams - night dreams and day dreams. Mine your impossible fantasies for realizable potentials. Strip away the glitzy bits of dream-stuff, and uncover your unmet longings. Look them in the face, and say, "Hello."
☞ What do your dreams tell you about your deeper longings?
Love
It's also time to turn up the volume on your capacity to give and receive love. Love enables -
☞ Forgiveness - which frees us from the heavy bonds of resentment.
☞ Compassion - which opens the door of our heart to others.
☞ Joy - which deepens and enriches our own experience, and inspires happiness in others.
And love will help you through the vortices of ambivalence, confusion and overwhelm that can ensnare us in the Pisces season if we succumb to the Piscean shadow of escapism. Love is in many ways the opposite of escaping, for love is an utter presence with, and acceptance and embracing of what is.
☞ How can you grow your capacity for giving love?
☞ How can you grow your capacity for receiving love?
Merging & Oneness
Pisces is the great soup of the zodiac, where all the ingredients of the other eleven signs merge into one unified everything-ness. We've spent the past eleven months developing our sense of self through the various lenses of the zodiac - from Aries' assertion, action, and initiation to Aquarius' humanitarian efforts, innovation, and individuation.
This month, however, we benefit from dissolving our sense of being some separate self, and instead merging with the vastness of being but a flicker within the vastness of time and space. Attaining this merged state of being is both -
☞ humbling - to be but a speck within the vastness; and
☞ ennobling - to be an intrinsic & essential part of the incredible complexity of the cosmos.
How to dissolve your sense of a separate self in healthy ways:
☞ creative improvisation - art, music, dance, poetry
☞ devotional prayer
☞ meditation
Letting Go
The Pisces month invites us to let go. Letting go is the great riddle of the human experience - it can be one of the most challenging things to do, but it can only be accomplished with the relinquishing of effort. Letting go is "non-doing," and yet we often need to do a lot in order to reach a point where we are able to let go.
Letting go helps us to dissolve the hardened parts of our egos, and soften the pent-up knots in our musculature. This creates space for others and for the world itself to touch us, to move us, to heal us, and to change us. And thus, we will be ready to burst forth with openness, and with the sureness and vitality of a renewed sense of self at the vernal equinox next month.
Feet & Lymph
Pisces rules the feet & lymph. What do these two things have in common? Much like the way Pisces is the last sign that dissolves and transmutes the energy from the previous eleven signs, these are two parts of the body where toxins are sent to be neutralized, and they both benefit from being actively released. Feet receive toxins largely because of gravity. They can be cleared out with foot baths - add baking soda or salt to help pull toxins out. And lymph can be cleared with the help of herbs and "dry-brushing," saunas, hot baths that make you sweat, and/or lymph massages.
Herbs for the Pisces Month:
LYMPH:
Cleaning your lymph will take pressure off of your immune system, and thus alleviate or at least lessen springtime allergy symptoms. I recommend a cold-water over-night infusion of CLEAVERS - 2 Tbsps in 2 cups water, strain in the AM & then drink throughout the day OR 5 drops tincture 3x/day. Cleavers clean the Pisces-ruled lymph, as well as the liver & gall bladder, & are good for clearing out the winter before we leap into the spring.
DREAMS:
Drink a blend of equal parts mugwort, peppermint and clary sage before bed to enhance dream recall. If you suffer from nightmares, you may benefit from daily decoctions of liver supporting herbs - burdock root, milk thistle seed, and dandelion root (simmer these dense herbs in boiling water 10 minutes or longer). To enhance your imagination during the day, a blend of equal parts garden sage, ginkgo, and jasmine flowers is quite lovely.
NERVINES:
Pisces is a sensitive sign, so calming herbs will help at this time: Mugwort, clary and garden sages, oat straw, passionflower, nutmeg, and vervain are a few calming herbs I recommend for the Pisces month.
FEET:
Feet are full of nerve endings, so foot baths are actually an excellent way to take in herbal medicine. Take any of the calming herbs listed above, and throw them into a foot bath (about 1 cup dry herbs per gallon of water). If you need to build your capacity for love, throw some rose petals in too.
For a deeper exploration of Pisces...
...feel free to schedule a private consultation. Here's wishing you a dreamy and heartful month - Rae