Pisces Full Moon Meditation:
Imagining Peace in a World of Terror
By Jean Hinson Lall

At the New Moon on August 27 we noted the strong polarity involving the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter early in Virgo opposite Mars and Uranus in Pisces. Now the Moon has moved halfway round the wheel and joined Mars and Uranus in Pisces, adding her weight to that side of the scale. Meanwhile Pluto is at 17 Sagittarius, square to both Sun and Moon. Thus three of the four Mutable signs are strongly expressed. The Mutables are the signs that seek to understand, to communicate, to teach, to adapt, to improve, to inspire and to serve. When they are highly activated we feel "wired." There's a sense of urgency about making ourselves and the world better or getting our message out there.

Let's look first at the Sun-Moon polarity in Virgo-Pisces. While Virgo tends to the things of the world, Pisces cultivates the life of images. Virgo separates; Pisces unites. Virgo makes critical distinctions; Pisces blurs them, showing the hidden unity in all things. Virgo harvests the grapes to be pressed into wine; Pisces drinks the wine and enters a state of communion with all that is. Virgo motivates us to get our act together and take responsibility for our individual lives; Pisces lets go of the self-contained personality and merges empathically (or neurotically) with others.

Spiritually, Pisces represents faith and mystical experience, while Virgo concerns itself with good works, spiritual disciplines, moral reflection and self-criticism. What Virgo gains by study and self-denial, Pisces receives through grace. In creative work, Pisces provides the inspiration and creative imagination, while Virgo supplies the discipline and structure needed to bring the work to completion.

So each year when the Sun is in Virgo and the Moon at its full in Pisces, we have the possibility of sensing the mystical and poetic underpinnings to our practical lives. We can take on difficult and demanding projects because the Pisces Moon reflects back to us the soul value and the spiritual meaning they embody.

This year, with five other planets joining the Virgo-Pisces lineup and Pluto forming a T-square with the Sun-Moon opposition, the stakes are higher than usual. Pluto, the force of transformation, is now more than halfway through Sagittarius, the sign connected with religion, philosophy and higher education. As Michael Lutin puts it, by the time Pluto is midway into a sign, "the truck is already in the living room." Deep changes are taking place in religious institutions and the spiritual lives of individuals. Sagittarius is the religion of "uplift", the belief that things can be better, that we are meant for higher things, and that whatever happens has meaning and purpose. Pluto, lord of the Underworld, confronts this optimistic faith with evidence of the dark and destructive aspects of human nature and the reality of fate. He forces us to recognize that not everything can be saved, or even understood or improved, and that much of life is beyond our control. But he also gives us the courage to face the dark side and to make needed changes in our thinking and our institutions.

Pluto in fact can teach us about the holiness of suffering and horror. I saw a striking example of this the other night on a documentary about the bombing of Laos by American forces during the 1960s and its horrific legacy of millions of unexploded cluster bombs that still infest the countryside and continue to kill farmers, schoolchildren and animals. A retired U. S. serviceman who had taken part in the bombing raids had suffered from chronic sleeplessness and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder ever since. Some thirty years after the war, still crippled by guilt and grief, he made a pilgrimage to Laos to try to atone. In a Buddhist temple in a small village he saw, next to the image of the Buddha, murals vividly depicting the suffering inflicted by the bombs. This experience healed him. The horrors in which he had taken part were still a reality, and he still bore responsibility for them, but they were no longer cast into outer darkness (and he with them) -- rather, they were brought to the attention of the compassionate Buddha. After this he was able to sleep, and turned his attention to helping the local people obtain badly-needed medical supplies.

This story reminded me of a sermon preached during the Vietnam War by the Rev. N. Gordon Cosby of Washington, D. C. He warned that the greatest danger for a person working for justice and peace was that of becoming "paralyzed by evil." Those were apt words for that time, and equally so today. In the midst of the economic distress, the lies and corruption, the terror and warfare of our time, we each have the possibility of bringing our own horrors into the temple - the wrongs we have witnessed, those we have suffered and those we have committed - and placing them before the eyes of the Compassionate one. This breaks the paralysis, freeing us to imagine a more loving and beautiful world and to keep on working to create it.

Look for the Libra New Moon September 25, 2003