MahaShivaRatri & the Pisces New Moon

We have arrived at the last new moon of the zodiacal year, one which marks a period of great release and epic surrender, of letting go of who and what we once were but can no longer be. Shedding our skin, surrendering our identities, relinquishing what seemed to fit but cannot possibly now — these are the themes of the Pisces New Moon that is upon us. Neptune, ruling planet of the Mystic and the Dreamer, who has been in its own sign since 2012, will move into the energy of Aries soon enough, where it will leave quite a different mark in the cosmic unfolding. Saturn, who arrived in the sign of the Intuitive in 2023, will spend one more year here until just before the Pisces New Moon in 2026, when it, too, will move into more fiery territory. And though the lunar nodal and eclipse axis has shifted to that of Virgo and Pisces until February 20, 2027, certainly inviting us to similar themes as what we know under the current transcendental skies, the planetary motifs that have been significant as of late will be changing immensely in the years to come.

Pisces — the last sign of the zodiac. It is here and now when we experience the great release back into the vast Ocean of Consciousness, the place from whence all of life arises and to which all of life returns. It is in this place that we feel most held by the grace that weaves together all things, carried by its currents toward distant and far-reaching shores, yet ones that have something to teach us and to remind us, if only we can realize what it is. Pisces invites us to return, over and again, to the place where we surrender ourselves to this great mystery that cannot be named, only known. In this place, titles do not matter, nor do the kinds of clothing we wear or the types of cars we drive; nor do even the roles we play in the world or the ideas we carry in our heads. For in primordial Piscean waters, we are all waves in an infinite ocean of life, making up something so much greater than we are that our minds are unable to begin to grasp at what it is, but which a part of us deeply knows already.

Which brings me to this…Have you ever lost your keys? I know, right? Silly question. Who hasn’t? Have you ever lost your keys, and before you can even ask St. Anthony for his unfaltering help, you begin to frantically look here, there, and everywhere, only to come up empty-handed again? And so you begin the search once more, only to have the same thing happen! Maybe you try this a few times at least, well, maybe more like ten. And then you can’t imagine what else to do at this point, so use your mind to think about where in the h*ll (you don’t talk like that except for in moments like these, of course!) you could have put them, looking hither and thither, this way and that, until, well, then what do you do? Finally, you stop. You stop looking. You put down the search. And what happens next? Well, I think we all know the answer to this one. You find exactly what you were looking for the whole time. And where have those darn keys been for the last hour of your looking? Hiding, of course! Where they’d been the entire time, just under your nose.

What does all of this have to do with Pisces, you might think. Seriously. If Pisces were the only sign in the zodiac to ever lose its keys, I think we’d all have a hard time relating to it. But thankfully, we all kinda get this one. Pisces, the mystic, is meant to truly and deeply know this place of interconnected, interrelated, interbeing. It’s meant to know this place of union with all of reality so well that it can sense its presence in the ever-unfolding play of life, even (or should I say ‘especially’?) when the world feels so utterly disconnected from and devoid of anything divine or magical or cosmic that we couldn’t imagine it even being present in the first place. And yet, just like your keys, at the heart of and underlying all things, there it is — the thing our minds and hearts were looking for from the moment we thought we were separate, only to find that it was here, with us, the entire time. This is of course what Pisces is here to do, and in moments like this one right now, it actually has a massive chance to experience this reality so profoundly and fully that its life is changed for once and for all. But only if we stop using our minds for a few seconds. And stop scrolling. And stop engaging with the internet for a moment or two. And stop — insert whatever you’d like there. The point is, in times like these, we are meant to create space and spaciousness for a dose of real, true reality to come alive. And when we tap into this profound knowing, we realize that it was there the whole time, but we certainly were not. And now that we are, perhaps things will change. But this is up to us, and it always was.

One of my favorite yogic holidays is MahaShivaRatri, the great night of Shiva, which always takes place at the Pisces New Moon. And this is no accident, for Shiva, the Hindu deity associated with dissolution and returning to the Source, is definitely a primary archetype of the Meditator, representing an energy who disintegrates reality, then creates it and sustains it, and then once again, when the time is supremely auspicious, dissolves it once again into the formless potential that lies at the heart of life. It is said that on this night, Shiva drank the most poisonous poison of all possible poisons, one that turned his throat blue and was so potent it would have even done him, a god, terrible damage. Yet Shiva did not let the venomous substance consume him, nor did he let any harm come to the world (or three worlds, so the story goes) that he cared so much about. Instead, he used his Super Yogi Powers to neutralize the Halahala (poison), transforming part of it into Amrita, or nectar of immortality, so that his followers would know the truth of reality, tasting its sweet ambrosia-like flavor on this special night, but perhaps more importantly, in times of hardship and challenge. What Shiva reminds us is that his true nature is your own, and just like your missing keys, it’s always with you, hiding deep within your experience, but only if you’re open to finding it, and of course without using your mind to do so. That will only deter the whole process, if you haven’t gathered it by now!

Jupiter squares the New Moon from the sign of Gemini, the headiest of signs by far. ‘Heady’ as in ‘thinking,’ not as in how I’d use it for Aquarius, just to be clear. Yet, as you can imagine, if we open our minds to receive the cosmic downloads that are most definitely floating around for us to remember, we will get the memos we’re meant to and actually remember what they have to offer us. We’ll be able to weave their celestial wisdom into our earthly, grounded lives, and perhaps get a glimmer of who we always were even though we’ve donned these earth suits for longer than our human minds can remember. Yet if we get too much in our heads as in shadow Gemini territory, we know the chaos and mental overstimulation that can ensue considering how much practice our culture has with this one as of late. We will miss the message, it will miss us, and we will stay deluded and diluted, only operating at a fraction of our potential, and though we may feel tuned in to current events or whatever else our minds are telling us is too important to walk away from, our souls know the truth, and they’d much rather be tuned into a frequency that uplifts, expands, and distills.

So during this Pisces New Moon portal, my wish to you is that you lose your keys. And my next one is that you find them, without even thinking about where you put them in the first place.