By Amanda Painter

Tonight is the Virgo Full Moon. This is the Moon in Virgo opposite the Sun in Pisces, exact at 7:51 pm EST tonight (00:51 UTC) — with some company. Along with the usual Full Moon effects that you might be noticing, Neptune’s presence (conjunct the Sun) is likely making things just a little more slippery than usual.

Earth Under a Full Moon; collage by Stacy Bergener.

In one way, that might be helpful. Full Moons often signify interpersonal confrontations, seemingly stuck situations, or a pressurized feeling like ‘something’s gotta give’. With Neptune adding extra softness and lubrication, you might find it easier to sidestep blowups or shift perspective in a way that opens up your options.

In fact, you might even find that heightened intuition and sensitivity to how others feel enables you to care a little more about their benefit and wellbeing, rather than getting stuck in defending your ego. Mercury and Venus in Pisces are currently in a trine to Jupiter in Scorpio, and appear to be playing supporting roles in the goodwill-and-good-feelings department, including for relationship conversations and sex.

On the other hand, Neptune so intimately involved in a Full Moon — especially involving Pisces — could also heighten a kind of psychological weariness with the world and the desire to escape it. Daydreaming the day away is not the worst thing in the world, and might actually offer just the psychic break needed, if this is how you’re feeling. The place where things can get dicey is if you try to make a full-on effort to evade reality. Modern culture is already playing fast and loose with things like facts, identity, social function and so on, thanks to the internet. Watch out for digital rabbit holes from now through the weekend.

Yet the real caution comes around using alcohol or drugs to try and cope with stress. Mind-altering substances could be a little harder to control right now. Meditation or similar, a walk in the woods, immersion in art creation (or appreciation), trying one of those float tanks (also known as sensory deprivation tanks or isolation/relaxation tanks) — if you’re not claustrophobic — and similar activities might be better ways to ‘escape’ the world without simultaneously escaping yourself.

The Sun makes its exact conjunction to Neptune on Sunday at 8:54 am EST (13:54 UTC), after which point any sense of overwhelm (if that’s what you’re feeling) should start to gradually lessen over the next few days. (After the Full Moon peaks tonight, you should also be able to notice a distinct dissipation of any interpersonal tension that’s been building up this week.)

Also on Sunday, Mercury, Venus and Chiron make a triple conjunction in late Pisces. Those three planets simultaneously make square aspects to the Galactic Core (which is the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way) and centaur Ixion in Sagittarius.

On a broad level, this is part of Chiron’s send-off before it begins transitioning out of Pisces and into Aries this spring. With Mercury and Venus — the two innermost planets of our solar system, representing the inner experiences of our mind and emotions — we get an illustration of the personalization or internal accounting of whatever Chiron’s journey through Pisces has meant to you: the lessons learned, the crises endured that have lead to healing, the awareness raised about your path of growth and individuation. The last seven or eight years have been busy and dynamic for most people I know; you might want to sit down with your journal (or any other method of documentation, including art-making) and connect some of the dots of your evolution during that time span.

Yet what about the square to the Galactic Core (GC) and Ixion? The GC would seem to relate this process, and this particular moment of it, to something much broader and vaster — perhaps something as vast and unknowable as ‘Source’ (however you think of it), or something as intangible-yet-essential as everyone’s shared humanity. Ixion brings in the question of ethics, of what you do with second chances, and of every individual’s potential to abandon their moral compass.

That these objects in Sagittarius are receiving a square from personal planets Mercury and Venus, plus provocative centaur Chiron in Pisces, implies the need to take action. And that action would seem to exist in the realm of allowing ‘spiritual-emotional awareness’ to motivate us to make choices that serve our inner growth — and, at the same time, serve the highest good of all.

Something about this aspect pattern reminds me of the famous quote by Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

‘Coming alive’ might often seem like a hard or impossible thing to figure out, especially given the demands and chaos and pain of modern life. But with such vibrant activity in the mutable signs (Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces — Gemini is not very busy right now), the implication is that you have more ability to bend, shift and evolve that you might sometimes think. As the Virgo Full Moon shines its light, maybe you’ll see a new way forward.

The 2018 Planet Waves annual, The Art of Becoming, is almost complete and is getting amazing reviews. Order all 12 signs here to read your Sun, Moon and rising sign and those of loved ones, or choose your individual signs here.