The Partial Lunar Eclipse & Full Moon in Pisces
We’re officially on the other side of the Leo solar eclipse, which means it’s time to look at the second half of this eclipse season.
On August 28th, we have a deep partial lunar eclipse and Full Moon at 4°54′ Pisces, opposite the Sun in Virgo. When we look at the full picture, there’s a lot going on with this one…
We have the Pisces/Virgo axis coming back for one more round, even though the Nodes have moved on to Aquarius and Leo, Mercury right on top of the Sun after a cazimi, and Uranus in Gemini squaring pretty much the entire situation.
Let’s get into it….
Last Words From Pisces and Virgo
The North Node has moved into Aquarius and the South Node into Leo, per the nodal cycle I wrote about a few weeks ago. But we’re not completely finished with Pisces and Virgo just yet.
This is the sixth eclipse in a series of seven across the Virgo/Pisces axis, beginning back in September 2024 and wrapping up in February 2027. If the last couple of years have had a recurring theme for you around Pisces/Virgo topics, I would pay attention to what comes up here. Especially if you have significant mutable placements or this axis falls somewhere important in your chart.
As a quick refresher, the Virgo and Pisces axis deals with the balance of structure and fluidity. Virgo wants to understand, plan, and fix; Pisces is much more comfortable admitting that some things aren’t ours to fix in the first place. Neither approach works 100% of the time; the point is to learn both and apply them where appropriate. Too much Virgo and we’ll drive ourselves insane trying to organize and analyze our way out of situations that require acceptance. Too much Pisces and “surrender” can start looking suspiciously like avoidance.
If you think back over what’s changed for you since fall 2024, it might be worth reflecting on where you’ve needed to learn that distinction.
New Moon to Full Moon
The obvious shift from the first eclipse of the month is it’s lunar cycle pairing.
August 12th gave us a New Moon and total solar eclipse in Leo. New Moons occur when the Sun and Moon meet at the same point in the zodiac, a beginning of sorts. New Moons are a time for those things starting to take shape.
During the Full Moon, the Sun and Moon are opposite each other. The Pisces Moon is sitting across the chart from the Sun in Virgo. Things are much more visible than they may have been two weeks ago.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll receive a giant revelation on the 28th. It could be as simple as having enough distance or new information to understand something differently than you did at the beginning of the month. It could be that you’ve had more time to consider, or made up your mind on something.
Pisces adds another layer because so much of what this sign deals with isn’t immediately tangible. Intuition, dreams, imagination, spirituality, compassion, escapism, projection. Sometimes you know something long before you can explain how you know it. That’s well within Pisces’ domain.
Sometimes, though, we let our overthinking masquerade as intuition when we should be using discernment. That’s also Pisces’ domain, but fortunately this chart has some grounding aspects.
Mercury’s Bringing Receipts
Sitting beside the Virgo Sun is Mercury in Virgo, forming an important piece of the eclipse puzzle.
Mercury rules Virgo, so it’s currently very much at home. It’s analytical, observant, detail-oriented, and wants to know how all the pieces connect. It also has a cazimi with the Sun on August 27th, the day before the eclipse.
A cazimi happens when a planet is extremely close to the Sun, and it’s traditionally considered a point of strength and clarity for that planet. So immediately before this Full Moon, Mercury gets a concentrated moment in one of the signs where it functions best.
An important balance to the Moon in Pisces.
This could show up for you as finally understanding where a feeling you’ve had is coming from, or a conversation providing missing context.
Whatever it looks like for you personally, I would pay attention to information that comes up around the eclipse, especially anything that gives language or context to something that’s been difficult to pin down.
And Then There’s Uranus
Uranus will be around 5° Gemini, forming a very tight square to the Pisces/Virgo eclipse axis.
This leaves us with a mutable T-square: the Moon in Pisces opposite the Sun and Mercury in Virgo, with Uranus in Gemini squaring both sides.
Uranus tends to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming. It shakes things loose or introduces something unexpected, giving us a completely different way of looking at whatever we’ve been doing.
Currently, Uranus is doing that from Gemini, another Mercury-ruled sign.
There’s a lot of emphasis here on Mercury themes: information, communication, perception, the way we make sense of what we’re experiencing. Something you learn could change your understanding of a situation. A conversation could go somewhere you weren’t expecting. Plans could change. You could become aware of a connection between two things that you didn’t see before.
Uranus can absolutely be disruptive, but that isn’t automatically a bad thing. Sometimes you’re working from an incomplete picture, and one unexpected information rearranges the entire thing. Pay attention to anything that has the potential to change your perspective around this eclipse.
Intuition Still Needs Discernment
There’s a balance in the lessons of this eclipse.
The Pisces Full Moon opposite an extremely active Mercury in Virgo, with Uranus sitting in another Mercury-ruled sign demands that rather than lean into one side of the Virgo/Pisces axis, we approach situations with a balanced approach and let information guide our perception.
We’re being told not to ignore logic in favor of intuition, while also having feeling validated as an important tool. This lunation is about balancing the two and using them in tandem to form a coherent understanding.
If something feels off, look closer. If the facts aren’t lining up with the story you’ve been telling yourself, look at that too. Sometimes intuition notices a pattern before the conscious mind catches up; sometimes fear or hope get dressed up as intuition because we really want something to be true.
The lesson is holding two opposing truths and using your discernment appropriately. You can trust yourself enough to listen to what you’re feeling, and be reasonable enough to still ask questions about it.
Back to the Leo Eclipse
The Leo solar eclipse on August 12th was the beginning of this eclipse season, and we talked a lot about visibility, creativity, and self-expression.
Two weeks further into the story, has anything changed?
Did something you were excited about become more complicated once you actually started doing it?
Did something that seemed unclear make more sense once you had more information?
Did you realize that getting what you want is going to require changing something you hadn’t really considered?
Maybe nothing dramatic has happened at all, but you’re starting to notice where the theme is showing up. I wouldn’t worry about forcing a connection between the two eclipses, but some casual reflection might be worthwhile. Sometimes the pattern is immediately obvious, but sometimes you won’t recognize it until you look back months from now.
Take It to Your Chart
The eclipse happens at 4°54′ Pisces, opposite the Sun at 4°54′ Virgo. Find roughly 5° Pisces in your natal chart first and see what house it falls in. Then look directly across the chart to the Virgo house.
Those two houses can tell you a lot more about what this eclipse is doing in your life. I’d also look for planets or angles in the early degrees of the mutable signs: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces.
Those placements are going to interact most directly with the eclipse, and placements around 5° are especially worth looking at because Uranus is right there in Gemini too.
If you looked at the Leo eclipse’s interaction with your chart, I’d compare the two. It might just give you a missing clue that changes your perspective. 😉
A Few Questions Worth Sitting With
- What’s become clearer since the solar eclipse on August 12th?
- Where does the Pisces/Virgo axis fall in your chart, and how have those areas of your life changed since 2024?
- Is there something you’ve been feeling that you’ve recently gained a better understanding of?
- Where might you be calling something intuition without questioning it?
- Have you been trying to fix something that you might need to accept instead?
- Have you been accepting something because you don’t want to deal with it?
- What are you noticing now that you couldn’t see two weeks ago?
