2021 Pisces Full Moon

photo of a still cove with purple water and a purple tinted sky, a large mountainy hill on the right and a small stony island center and a skeletal boat in the upper left just below the horizon

September 20, 2021|
4:54 PM PDT / 7:54 PM EDT / 11:54 PM GMT

The Pisces Full Moon turns up the light on dreams and inspirations and connections to all that is. Like a child overdoing cotton candy at a carnival, though, what we experience may not be entirely comfortable – a result that may encourage the letting go that comes with any full moon.

Plus it’s hardly all sunsets, rainbows and unicorns. Sweetness and gentleness may be wafting through the air, but so are lenses to cut through the haze and hone in on something closer to truth than illusion.

This Moon takes place at the next to last degree of the last sign in the zodiac. The position brings the sense of being on the brink of culmination, of something building but not quite reaching the end just yet.

The location also encourages emotions that are higher than high, and possibly not all ours. Pisces’ all-encompassing waters have a way of blurring boundaries and sloshing other people’s feelings, experiences and dramas onto you. The sensation of blurring and dissolving is heightened now, with the Moon having just crossed over the sign’s ruler Neptune.

Because of Neptune’s participation, the build-up to this Full Moon is rife with glamour, illusion, fun house mirror effects, flights of fancy, magic and confusion. Neptune’s in a woozy-making aspect with retrograde Jupiter, the traditional ruler of Pisces (Neptune’s the modern ruler) and a master in his own way of pushing boundaries. The semi-sextile between the two is stirring nostalgia, ghosts of lovers and desires past, and other phantasms that could be fool’s gold or sweet nothings.

We could be nigh on drunk on memories and fantasies as the Full Moon perfects, and come to as if from a dream. A sextile from the Moon to Pluto offers truth, clarity and resolution, with the power to pop many a bubble. (Think: Titania awakening from the enchantment that caused her to fall in love with a donkey-headed mortal, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

That aspect could work the other way, softening the institutional and foundation deconstruction and renovation coming off Pluto’s journey through Capricorn. Compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and/or a higher perspective are on tap as we strip down priorities and grapple with ongoing shifts in the metaphoric ground beneath our feet.

The sextile also facilitates letting go, gently, easily, organically, in ever so many ways: with love and understanding; with tears, sentimentality and nostalgia; with escape into others’ stories (binge epidemic alert!), into alternate storylines, into a bottle of spirits or puff of mind-soothing smoke.

Use this Moon to sit, to soak, to contemplate; to take note of where the waters of other lives are lapping at your shores (or door); and to be gentle and kind no matter what may float by. The sextile to Pluto provides tools for dredging the currents and redrawing boundaries and shorelines.

Vegging is an acceptable option, too. This Pisces Moon is a respite between bouts of frenzied activity. Revelations and hard truths will be rocking reality when Mercury squares Pluto three times from late September to early November. The coming impact is already buzzing through the waters. No need to look closely, just yet; Neptune is clouding the view. For now, soak, and let the waters soothe and settle.