Full Moon in Pisces: Cultivating Flow

This full moon invites us to awaken a self-honoring flow.

To find the best mix of a spacious Piscean vibe

and Virgo-inspired tidiness and order.

Let’s talk through some questions that will help you

zero in on the support, structures, and surroundings

you crave to unlock that precious creative energy.

Subscribe! Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pandora | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn

Mentioned:

My insightful astrology teacher, Austin Coppock.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver.

Make Magic:

You’ll find the questions for every 2022 full (and new) moon in the book

New and Full Moon Rituals for Entrepreneurs and Changemakers,

co-authored with my friend and fellow witch Leslie Tagorda,

host of The Savvy Luminary podcast.

Transcript: Full Moon in Pisces: Cultivating Flow

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. I am back. I am back. I took a three-week break for coming and sitting down and recording new episodes for you. And during that time, my family and I went to Maine for a couple of weeks, and then I did a little work in Texas, and I did a little learning in California. And now I'm home again, and the kids are in school, and we're all back into the swing of things, and it's feeling very Virgo season. [laugh] 

Virgo season is all about kind of putting everything in its place, and getting organized, and getting all set. I always think of Virgo season as the time that we sit with the back-to-school supply list, and then we choose all of the supplies that we want. So, we have everything that we need, and everything's all organized, and it's a lovely time of year, I think.

So, I'm back to tell you about this year's Full Moon in Pisces. And perhaps I am biased because I myself am Pisces Rising and Pisces Moon. My Natal Moon is in Pisces. But I think that a Full Moon in Pisces is pretty much always glorious. [laugh] 

Pisces is mutable water. I love to think of Pisces as oceanic. And, you know, if you imagine the Full Moon glittering over top of the ocean, it's like there's oceans of sky. There's skies of ocean. It's just a deep blue, glittering, glorious wholeness that is the Full Moon in Pisces. Pisces, being a sign of flow, a sign of oneness, a sign of very deep interconnectedness—that is Pisces. 

So, as always, I will tell you a little bit about the astrology of the Full Moon, and then I will home in on specific questions that you might ask yourself at the Full Moon because, for me, astrology is very, very best in that it helps us to think differently and creatively about ourselves and our lives and our situations. So, the Full Moon is always a great opportunity to do that, and that is what we will do in this episode.

So, for starters, I want to share with you something that my astrology teacher Austin Coppock said about Full Moons just generally. So, whenever we have a Full Moon, we have the Moon in the sign opposite where the Sun is. So, right now, it is Virgo season, and so our Full Moon is happening in Pisces, which is all the way across the Zodiac from Virgo.

So, Virgo, being the—well, I like to think of it as the back-to-school sign, the sign that is very organized, that is putting all of the little pieces together in the right order, the sign that is Mercury ruled and so thinks a lot about things, like, is very interested in figuring things out, and putting things into order. It is mutable earth, Virgo. 

Virgo is associated with the Earth goddess Demeter, so the goddess of the harvest, the goddess of the grains, right. So, you want to think of Virgo as being the one who is kind of raking through, tilling the soil, choosing what stays and what goes. So, that is Virgo in Virgo season. 

The polar opposite of that is Pisces, which is where we have our Full Moon. Pisces, as mutable water, is ruled by Jupiter, and Jupiter is a beneficent and generous and wise and a collective loving sign. If Jupiter were a person, I think Jupiter would give great hugs and rousing speeches, and would just be inspiring and connecting.

Pisces, the sign of mutable water, is not really interested in sorting at all. It's interested in flow. And this, I think, is so fun [laugh] because if, as my teacher says, the Full Moon in the sign opposite the sign whose season we're in, if that Full Moon is showing us something vital, something that we really need to understand, a complementary contrasting element, in order for us to really do Virgo to its most Virgo, it's like the missing piece. 

It's the squeeze of lemon juice in the salty stew, or the pinch of salt in the chocolate chip cookie. Yeah? You know what I'm talking about, yeah? [laugh] That's like what makes it so delicious is that bit of contrast really brings everything together.

So, for me, if Virgo season is all about efficiency and effectiveness and putting things in order, the Full Moon in Pisces is saying, "Yes, and the most efficient way is the way that enables flow." The Full Moon in Pisces is saying, "Yes, effectiveness, and what is effectiveness for if not for the best of health and the best of feeling and the best of connectedness." 

It's not all dotted i's and crossed t's, unless it is dotted i's and crossed t's that really light you up. Pisces season is sort of saying, "OK, let's see the forest," as Virgo season is taking care of and cataloging all of the trees. Yeah? OK. So, that's the idea for the Full Moon in Pisces. It is awakening a self-honoring flow. 

So, OK, here are your questions. As always, these questions are in the book that Leslie Tagorda and I coauthored. It is called New and Full Moon Rituals for Entrepreneurs + Changemakers. They're all on page 143, y’all, and you can go and read along there. But let me ask you here in the episode, and you can think about them while you're driving, or strolling, or folding laundry, or whatever it is that you're doing. 

So, question number one for this Full Moon: what helps you access a flow state? What helps you access a flow state? Because we're all different where this is concerned. For some people, tight timelines and schedules and structures are really helpful. Like, putting containers around flow enables flow. That is not me, but I do know people like that. 

For other people, like me, it is flexibility that really is essential to flow. Like, I need to have abundant unscheduled time. I need to have permission to work when I'm inspired, and to work on what I want to work when I'm inspired. Permission to rest, like, lots and lots and lots of freedom, for me, that is really important to unlocking flow.

And, so, what is it for you? What helps you access a flow state? Probably the best way to think about this is kind of engineer backward. [laugh] We'll get a little Virgo about this. So, look at places where you do really get to flow, and be present and creative and really in the moment. It might be like, oh, it was when I was walking through the woods, or it was when I was sitting and staring at the ocean waves rolling in, or it was when I was out for a really sweaty hike.

You might say, OK, well, what are the common denominators there? What helps me access flow? It sounds like for this person, it might be nature. It might be moving their body. Those might be things that enable flow. 

For me, I know that flow state is almost always most accessible in the morning. Like, morning time, quiet in the house, the sun rising, all of that is really great for me to do writing especially, and so I take care as much as I can to protect that time for creativity.

Now, like I said before, I can't be having assignments. [laugh] Like, that's very challenging for me, so I can't say what I'm going to work on or, like, in the case of my Sunday Letter, for example, I do write it every Sunday morning. But what I'm going to write about, I really don't have much of an idea until Saturday evening and sometimes even Sunday itself. I don't put a particular timeline on it, and I don't put a particular assignment on it. I need that plus the sunrise and the quiet house. That all helps me to access a flow state, and that is where I am the most efficient writer. 

Oh, my gosh, I should mention one more thing. I also tend not to do any kind of thinking work after 2 p.m. on Friday. So, from 2 p.m. on Friday all the way until Sunday morning, I tend not to do any work that involves my brain. So, also, for me, requisite to enabling and supporting a flow state is a nice long brain rest. So, that's a component too. 

OK. So, what is it for you? Look at the places where you do get those little moments of flow, where things are just easy, where you feel at one with whatever it is that you are doing, and then find the common denominators, and you can use Virgo season to engineer more and more of those denominators into your life.

OK. Second question might help too. Looking back to your childhood and your adolescence and your young adulthood, where was it easiest to lose yourself? How can you reconnect with those access points now? So, what did you just get swept up in as a kid, as a teen, as a young adult? And are you still engaging those kinds of activities today? 

I myself have almost always been a voracious reader. I love to get lost in a book. I've been lost in books since—I don’t know—1983 [laugh], except for a period after I quit graduate school. When I left my PhD program just a little bit shy of the actual PhD, I took a many years' break from reading for pleasure. Like, I just couldn't do it. 

But now, again, it's a really important part of my life. And, I have to say, for me, there is nothing more fun than going to the library with a half list of books I'm interested in reading, and then just spending an hour there, browsing the shelves, and finding treasures to come home and lose myself in. 

So, I give you this example because that's what it might look like. It really might look like, hey, are you reading enough? [laugh] Like, if you love reading, if you get to deeply connect with humanity when you read, how can you integrate reading into your everyday life, rather than just having books that are pretty and collecting dust? 

Of course, for you, it might be something else entirely. You might love to cook. You might love to ice skate. You might really love dog agility events, in which case, I would love for you to come teach my dog Kevin how to do dog agility because [laugh] I think that would be really fun. Anyway, speaking of getting lost, that's where I am. [laugh] So, back to the question. Where did you lose yourself when you were younger, and how can you integrate that into your life now?

OK. That interconnectedness of Pisces is also very intuitive. Remember, I mentioned that Virgo is Mercury-ruled. It is a thinking and figuring out kind of sign, and Pisces is Jupiter-ruled, and it is a feeling and vibing and inspiring kind of sign. So, what is your intuition calling you to do in order to better support your health and wellness? 

What are your Spidey senses telling you? What do you need to feel better? Maybe it's an activity that you have been curious about trying. Maybe it is something you know in your bones around your sleeping schedule or your eating right now. Maybe it is intuition around certain people or substances or activities that just are not good for you. What is your intuition calling you to do in order to better support your health and wellness?

All right, so, Full Moons always help us to see more clearly. I love to imagine being out under a Full Moon, and I can see all kinds of things, even in the dark. Right. I just have expanded vision of my surroundings. So, with this expanding vision, what can you see is blocking your ability to access flow or creativity or care for your body and soul? What is in your way?

And I'd love for you to think about this in, like, your actual calendar, your daily agenda. What is in your way? What's in the way of you having time and space to flow, and lose yourself, and enjoy and be creative, and take care of yourself? What is in the way?

And then you might also think about it in terms of your mindset, in terms of your thoughts and beliefs. What are the thoughts, the beliefs that are getting in your way of flow, creativity, and self-care? In a Piscean moment, especially, and there's a huge Neptune influence with this particular Full Moon, so Moon, Neptune, Jupiter-ruled Pisces, all of that sort of says, whatever is blocking you, you can flow right around it.

And I really want you to think about the power of ocean here. Like, ocean is not stopped by much [laugh]—not for long anyway—and, so, even the most seemingly insurmountable doubts or obstacles you can sort of flow around or dislodge in this moment, and how do you do that? I really think it's an orientation toward your values. Values are a very Jupiterian kind of thing. Values ask, hey, why are we doing this? 

And Virgo needs that, right? Virgo needs the forest; not just the trees. It needs to say, "Yeah, what actually am I cultivating here? I know that I am pruning and tilling and harvesting but in the name of what?" And I think Pisces, that sign of interconnectedness, that sign of flow and oneness and self with a big "S"—big-s self—like, big-s self is an ocean, and each of us is a wave or a drop in that ocean. 

And, so, when we are contemplating how we interweave with, how we interconnect with the whole, I think we're asking ourselves, "Why am I here? What is this for? What is the bigger picture?" Probably my favorite way of asking myself that question is, "Who do I want to be? Who do I want to be?" And that guiding question is so incredibly important for Virgo season. What am I arranging this for? What is it all for?

Now, my hope and belief is that all of these questions inform one another because where you access flow, where you lose yourself, that is a place that you are interfacing with and interweaving with that which is important to you, that which lights up your little ocean drop, and enables you to be most connected with the oneness, with everything. That when you are listening to your intuition, you are attuning to what is true and important for you. And that when you are identifying what is getting in the way of you being able to create and enjoy and care for yourself and be in that flow, when you identify what is in the way, you know what to turn away from and what to turn toward.

OK. I know I gave you a lot to think about here. [laugh] But, actually, for the Full Moon time itself, which is around the 10th of September—I know, a couple days before, a couple days after, the Moon looks full for a while so, to me, that works. During this Full Moon, it's actually not really about thinking hard, even if we are in Virgo season. It is more about actually feeling it, living it, being it. 

So, as you remember some of these things that help you to access flow, I hope you will just do them. Take the time and the space—maybe even make the time and the space—to do that which makes you feel connected with this one wild and precious life. Thank you, Mary Oliver. Now, there was a lady who could access some interconnectivity and flow. 

All right, my loves, I wish you a beautiful Full Moon. May it illuminate exactly what you need to feel good. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording