My client called me the other day, confused by the way the very ground of a decision she had just confidently made had quickly emotionally bottomed out. “Yesterday I was so sure of my decisions but today I’m feeling anxious, uncertain about everything.” I looked at her chart: the Sun, currently in Pisces was transiting her Twelfth House, the house of Pisces. During the 30-day or solar transit we each experience annually, our fears loom larger, life feels topsy-turvy, chaotic. Any load we’ve been carrying around, preventing us from moving forward, demands deep surrender, release –without knowing what’s next. During this time we undergo a mini-lesson in being comfortable with uncertainty.  If it weren’t so confusing it’d be downright spiritual.

Precisely. Pisces is the Twelfth, and last, sign of the zodiac, and is the most spiritual of all signs precisely because during this phase we are being charged to let go, to release, see all the world (and our problems) as nothing more than a stage. To gain admission to the higher realms of Pisces –that of enlightenment, creativity and the sort of crazy wisdom we can only achieve by viewing life as a dream we will never fully understand –we must surrender logic for the life of the soul, and have faith that we are exactly where we need to be.  Meditation, long walks in nature, spiritual contemplation, just be-ing help this.

Which brings me to Virgo. Virgo is the earthly counterpart to Pisces, grounding its yearly foray into crazy wisdom by drawing our attention to practical action, daily tasks, rituals and routines. Friday night I attended a dinner party hosted by a Virgo friend. Our hostess had visited our local farmer’s market, so the spread as meticulously thought out as it was delicious and environmentally friendly. When we arrived she was unwrapping what looked like fifty or so tiny tin foil packages; before, she’d cooked them all together in one big pocket and since they cooked unevenly decided to wrap each golden baby beet individually, yet now the wastefulness of the aluminum foil left her chagrined, and she confided she wouldn’t use this method again. How Virgo, I laughed to myself, and silently thanked the Virgo Goddesses for creating this tribe called Virgo, folks who can always be counted on for taking every dinner party, work activity, every humble task they encounter to the next level of perfection.

Virgo Full Moon pulls us back into the body and gives us something to do with our time on Earth, often filling our plate with meticulous and impossible tasks of perfection because we all need earthly obstacles and work to advance our spiritual lessons through. Just as Pisces puts our attention on the space between our ears, our consciousness, Virgo puts our attention on our hands – the work, attentiveness, consciousness we put into the earthly world. It’s easy to see how they work together: when we get too absorbed in our consciousness, all unstructured, disembodied and floating about on Neptune without a grounding cord, Virgo calls us back to Earth and puts a seemingly-impossible-to-get-perfect task before us like: cooking perfect beets.

And Virgo Full Moon reminds us to not spend too much Pisces time between our ears, be-ing, at the expense of improving our earthly existence, do-ing. Too much Pisces is like a person who spends so much time “out of time” they lose track of their very Self. It is possible to get a little too comfortable with the diffuse, unstructured awareness of Pisces. Witness the number of people who unravel, are addicted, go crazy, people who go missing in their own lives, who may simply be afraid to show up. We all know how to avoid, or procrastinate about, something we know we could be do-ing to improve our life in a meaningful way. Simply, we each know earthly work is a vehicle to soul perfection. Enter Virgo Full Moon, with its to-do lists, personal improvement projects, chores. I personally think when we experience the be-ing and the do-ing not at opposite ends of the spectrum, we’ve found the Virgo-Pisces sweet spot. When we know cooking perfect beets, writing the perfect grant, sorting through an impossible bureaucratic tangle at work is the perfect vehicle for our spiritual growth, we’ve truly found heaven on earth.