PiscesMoon Astrology

Virgo Eclipse: Releasing Perfectionism and Finding Flow

• Kait Leonard • Season 1 • Episode 32

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Welcome to the PiscesMoon Astrology podcast and to the Total Lunar Eclipse!

The total lunar eclipse in Virgo calls us to release perfectionism and embrace the spiritual flow of Pisces energy, though Saturn's combustion means this lesson will unfold gradually through May rather than hitting all at once. This eclipse differs from others as both Mercury and Venus retrogrades will activate the eclipse point, extending its influence well beyond the actual event.

• Look to the house containing Virgo in your natal chart to identify where you need to release perfectionism
• Virgo's shadow includes self-judgment and the belief that anything short of perfection equals failure 
• The remedy lies in Pisces qualities: trusting intuition, spiritual guidance, and creative flow
• Saturn combustion with the Sun creates invisible boundaries we may not see clearly until late March
• Mercury retrograde begins March 15th and will interact with the eclipse point
• Venus retrograde will also cross the eclipse sensitive degrees around April 11-12
• Expect the full eclipse story to unfold gradually with maximum clarity arriving by early May
• Like Van Gogh's art, true perfection isn't pristine but flows from connection to something greater

Share this podcast with others who might benefit from understanding this significant astrological event.


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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Pisces Moon Astrology. I'm your astrologer, kate Leonard, and I'm excited to explore the stars with you. Hello and welcome to a kind of wonky episode and my voice, with my cold and all of that I'll explain in just a bit. But I'm going to try to cover the 13th, which is the night of the eclipse, and it's going to be the night that I'm releasing this as well. So I am cutting it close through March 22nd. So first let me just apologize in advance for a couple of things. One, my voice. This is the best I can do and I either needed to skip another episode or you get to hear me sound all kind of blech, okay, the other thing is I missed an episode and I missed a sub stack. For the first time since I started doing all of this and I've been doing sub stack for quite a while now I missed my first episode. I've even done episodes when I've been sick, when I'm out on vacation, when I'm doing all kinds of stuff, and I finally just couldn't do it. So I'm sorry and we're just going to jump right in. So the big focus sorry, and we're just going to jump right in. So the big focus is the lunar eclipse. It is a total lunar eclipse in Virgo. It's happening where I am on March 13th and that is literally going to be like tonight, the night I'm posting it. So yeah, so that's cutting it close. But the interesting thing is, the whole point of this episode is going to be about how this eclipse is going to be really different from a lot of other eclipse experiences that we've had. It's a big one, it's a total eclipse, so normally we would feel that like kaboom, right, it would be like this huge life lesson, karmic lesson, kind of event would happen, something would occur and would be like, oh my gosh, that was the eclipse, right. I usually find that in these big ones we feel it more the few days leading up to it. That is not going to be the case for this eclipse and I'm going to explain why. But first I want to talk about what an eclipse in Virgo actually means in general and then we'll talk about how this is the eclipse that is going to take quite a while to unfold and we're going to keep sort of going through it and going through it. We're not going to see the message of it clearly right away for many of us, and then, because of the Venus and Mercury retrograde cycles. We're going to get that eclipse hotspot the 23 degrees of Virgo and Pisces right, we're going to get those two retrograding planets coming close enough to that hotspot that it's going to re-trigger the eclipse energy. All right, so this is a lot.

Speaker 1:

Let me start with just talking about the eclipse in Virgo. Eclipses, as we know, bring about faded karmic change, right, and this is a south node eclipse, so this is about letting go. It's about releasing something. Evolutionary astrologers say that this is often about releasing even past life, karma. So these are big, right, this is really about, you know, not like we see on a full moon or a balsamic moon sometimes, where it's like, yeah, we need to let go of something, and you know those are big enough. You know it's not like those don't mean anything, but this is huge. This is a total eclipse of the moon, our nighttime luminary, right. This is gigantic, and so this is always something that feels heavier, it's more life-changing and it usually is kind of we're not exactly the same after you know, it's that kind of big. This one is so big, with so many activations and stuff. I really think that we're going to look back on this period and there will be like, yeah, this was my life before the eclipse and this is how the world has changed. After we're going to, I think for a long time to come, see this as a big dividing moment. So we're supposed to let go of something.

Speaker 1:

Virgo, what does that mean? Virgo is about perfectionistic thinking or perfectionism, right? I don't know what the right word is there, but you get what I'm saying. Virgo is about attention to detail and controlling situations. And why is that? Because they want this refined and perfect outcome. Virgo as the virgin. Think of that image. It's like this pristine female character. Think in old terms here. I'm not loving a lot of this, but we have to go back to ancient times, right? And Virgo is that perfected, untouched, unsoiled female energy.

Speaker 1:

So there is that need when we're talking about Virgo, kind of tendencies to want things to be absolutely perfect, and anything short of that can really do damage to the self, right? And that's the kind of energy we're looking at releasing. Where are we holding on so tightly? Where are we feeling like? If this doesn't come out just so, just the way you know, I imagine it, this perfect outcome, then I am a failure. That's what we're talking about letting go of that kind of thinking. And in letting go of that thinking, that perfectionistic thinking, we can let go of some of that self-judgment that need to judge ourselves at such high standards. I'm talking about letting go of that sense that if every little detail isn't perfect, then I failed.

Speaker 1:

So one thing I want you to do. I say this every week what house is your Virgo in? Don't look at a chart of the eclipse chart or something like that. Look at your natal chart. Where is Virgo? That's the house that the eclipse is activating in your chart. So, as an example, my Virgo is fifth house. Fifth house is creativity.

Speaker 1:

Do I feel like a failure if every single thing I write isn't published? I do. Let me just I will be vulnerable in this moment and tell you that, yes, I do. I feel like a failure, I feel like a fraud, like I'll never write again Anything I've published in the past. That was a fluke. It will never happen again, because I'm clearly a failure and a fraud.

Speaker 1:

That's Virgo's shadow side. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Of course, intellectually I know that's not true. But again, every sign has its shadow and its bright side, and when we're in shadow, that's when we get that Virgo, I'm a failure if it's not perfect, that kind of thinking. We are to let go of that, okay, and I'm going to talk about how, because it's easy to say to let go of something. The how is a whole different thing sometime. So again, like I said, my natal chart Virgo is fifth house. Where is it in yours?

Speaker 1:

First house, that's a really tough one, you guys, if you've got Virgo rising, that means when you're in that shadow state, it's like if I personally am not perfect, then I'm a failure. Those are the only two options. I'm either perfect or a failure. In the fourth house, if my family isn't perfect, if we're having some kind of family problems or some sort of unfortunate I mean, all families have their problems, right and if that's the case, then I'm a failure as a family member. Our family is ruined because we're not perfect every minute of every day. Seventh house that's primary relationships. So if my relationship doesn't go exactly the way I think it should, if we don't look like the couple on the Pinterest boards and Instagram stories, then we're probably not going to make it. We're probably not real. 10th house is career. 11th house is friend groups. 12th house has a lot to do with psychology and our inner workings, so it can have a lot to do with mental health issues. Okay, so I haven't touched on them all and I can't go into detail about them all, but that's how you apply this to your chart.

Speaker 1:

Where is Virgo? That's where the eclipse is hitting. That's where you need to let go of some of the shadow side of Virgo. Virgo has many wonderful qualities, but, like every sign, it has shadow. But like every sign, it has shadow. So the remedy for the shadow of any sign is in the bright side of the opposite sign. So, opposite Virgo is Pisces, and Pisces is involved in this eclipse because it's a lunar eclipse. That means the eclipse with the moon is happening in Virgo, but the sun is opposite, happening in Pisces. Okay, so what are Piscean qualities? You know, virgo is ruled by Mercury. It's the mind, it's the intellect, right? Pisces is the guru. It's ruled by Jupiter, the planet of expansion, of limitlessness, and that's also what Pisces is about, right, it's the most spiritual sign, it's the most psychic sign.

Speaker 1:

So what do we do? Instead of trying to control every single detail, we learn to trust. We learn to follow our intuition and trust our intuition. We learn to trust whatever that higher energy is. For some of us, it's our creative imagination, right? For you creatives, artists and writers out there, how do you trust that inner magic that happens when your creativity seems to be coming from someplace not your brain, right, it's flowing, it's just coming that, even if it reads, looks, sounds, seems imperfect, that's going to be the thing that resonates. That's going to be the art, the truth, right? And I know I'm not talking to only artists here, so this applies to everyone.

Speaker 1:

What is your spiritual framework? Is it your God, your guru, your sense of the universe, right? What is that bigger energy, your highest self, your inner spirit, whether that is something connected to divinity or whether that is just that belief in a pure and limitless human spirit. This is what we're to rely on, because, while that energy may not look perfect in a Virgo kind of way, you know, pisces is the ocean. The ocean is not concerned with the drops of water, right? The ocean is not about are each of the drops of my water perfectly formed drops? You know, the ocean is not about that. The ocean is flowing and it's going with the tides. It's moving, it's flowing.

Speaker 1:

If you look at those cool underwater photography when they just put a camera there and just let it happen. They don't manipulate anything and you will notice, you know, like the kelp just swaying in such a beautiful and rhythmic and unplanned and perfect way. Right, whatever spirit, spiritual, divine, universal, creative is to you, that's the place. That's the place that we're supposed to learn to trust. It's never pristine. The ocean is not pristine. May I remind you fish poop in the ocean, right, do they not? It is not pristine, but it is perfect.

Speaker 1:

Great works of art. My favorite painter is Van Gogh. You know who? What sold something like one painting in his lifetime and it was to like his brother or something like that. His paintings are not perfect, right, they're not. You know, like paint by the numbers, you know every color, where it's supposed to go, and it looks sort of like a photograph or something. They're messy and moving and flowing and skies don't really look like that, but they exactly look like that, right?

Speaker 1:

Think of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Where did that come from? It didn't come from looking at the sky and getting all the stars in the right place. That's Virgo. It came from feeling the sky and being one with the sky and channeling the sky and accepting that that swirling crazy thing that came out onto that canvas was in fact perfect. Right, it's a different kind of perfection we're looking for and we're being tasked with this eclipse to be brave enough to let go of some of that mercurial Virgo's ruled by mercury, the mind. Let go of some of that mind, thinking, sense, that judgy sense of perfection, and get into the flow of, like, a bigger, universal, true perfection. Learn to trust that energy. That's what we're about with this eclipse. Now, you know I can never let it be just like oh, wasn't that? Like she really got off on that Van Gogh thing? Whoa, kate's feeling her thing today. Right, I am, I am, but it's never, or at least for a long time, in the cosmos. We haven't had an easy sky in a really long time, and I want to tell you that this one also is not easy, as if already an eclipse wasn't enough of kind of big, not easy. Energy Sitting right next to the sun during this eclipse is Saturn.

Speaker 1:

Saturn rules boundaries and limitations. Saturn does not like Pisces and Pisces does not like Saturn. They're opposite. Not only that, saturn is what we call combust, meaning invisible. He's too close to the sun, so the sun's rays are so bright that we can't see Saturn On top of his invisibility and he's in a sign where he's not comfortable. Pisces is about no boundaries, saturn rules boundaries. On top of that, the Sun and Saturn don't like each other. The Sun eclipses Saturn. So Saturn, who is mighty and a leader and all of that kind of stuff, he doesn't like being eclipsed. He's kind of like, oh really, really, sun, and the sun's like, yeah, because I'm the sun, I get to do that. The sun is hot, saturn is cold. You know the sun wants to shine brightly, saturn, you know, and just be and just illuminate the world, and Saturn wants to build structures and limitations. They're just truly opposite energies. They do not like each other and so, being together, you know, the sun wins because he makes Saturn invisible, but he's not super happy either and the sun is our visibility.

Speaker 1:

There are going to be some boundaries, some limitations, something in that domain, in that category, that we're not going to be seeing clearly Now. I know this sounds like a contradiction, because I just said we're supposed to get into the ocean, right, we're supposed to be in the spirit. We're not supposed to be thinking about those crazy things like Virgo and details and boundaries, yes, but the final perfection in the Zodiac is a balance between opposing signs. They're an axis, right. We don't actually look at them as like there's Virgo over here and way over there opposite there's Pisces. It is the Virgo-Pisces axis and true I don't want to say perfection because that's so Virgo of me, right, but the true.

Speaker 1:

I think the truest place to be is to be in that place of balance where you know Virgo is not bad. You know we want some Virgo standards and attention to detail when we've got important projects to launch and things like that. There's a time and place for that, absolutely. Virgo is also of service, right, it is the most service-oriented sign in the zodiac. So there's a place for Virgo.

Speaker 1:

You know we don't want to just throw it out, and Pisces can be a little bit loopy-doopy. You know what I'm saying. No, nobody knows what I'm saying, I don't even know what that means, but you know what I mean. It can be like spaced out. It can be like on a drug trip that you never come back from, where you're just all kind of out in the ozone somewhere and floating around with no tether. That's the shadow side of Pisces, right? So having Saturn there introducing the ideas of boundaries, because Saturn still wants to provide that but we can't see them. That's kind of a problem and we're not going to get out of that combust energy until the end of March.

Speaker 1:

I really think we're going to be well past it, you know, like first week of April. But be aware that you may be in your sort of out there, trying to be all Piscean and trusting and spiritual and all of that. You may be stepping on other people's boundaries that you're not seeing and so you might get some blowback on that. You may find that later, when you're seeing more clearly, you have to go back in and tighten some things up. But that's okay, right, that's just the process of revision, whether we're talking an art project or we're talking about a project in our lives. Right, it's like a time when we kind of go back in and revise and maybe see like, well, this might have gotten a little too out there. You know, maybe I want to reign it in a little bit, but just know that, just know that we're not going to be seeing everything exactly clearly. So this eclipse, unlike some that come in and just pow, they're there. The life lesson is like a boulder dropped in the road in front of us and we have to navigate it. This one is going to unfold more slowly and there is going to be some probably going back and revising. Yeah, I think that's the best we can do. That's the best way to think about it right now.

Speaker 1:

Also, be aware and I'm going to go into this more next week, but I do want to give you the heads up that the Venus and Mercury retrograde cycles are also going to play into this eclipse message. So this is another way where this eclipse is going to happen. Then we're going to get some more clarity when Saturn is no longer combust and then wait for it. Both Mercury and Venus are going to retrograde close enough to the hotspots of the eclipse degrees. So think of it like where the eclipse happens, it's happening at 23 degrees, happens it's happening at 23 degrees. It leaves like this energetic hotspot that when other planets start playing in that space, we will see more of the story unfold or we'll get another chapter in the story, something like that, and we are going to very quickly have Mercury and Venus retrograding back into this eclipse story. All right, so I'm going to go into that more next week. Do know if I didn't already say this Mercury goes retrograde on March 15th. Venus is already retrograde, so this stuff is all happening.

Speaker 1:

I think it's safe to say that we will understand and be through in the most acute sense of it. We'll be through the eclipse energy probably in, say, mid-april. That's what I'm thinking at this point, Actually, april, that's what I'm thinking at this point. Actually, I think it's probably safer to say early May, because we're still going to have Venus within one degree of the eclipse hotspot, unlike April 11th, 12th in that area. So for it to all play out and really be clear for us, I'm looking at May.

Speaker 1:

I think astrologers have been saying for a long time we've all been talking about this period and we're in a really intense part of the year. Things get a little better, a little more clear, I think, in the summer and then things heat up again in the fall. We'll get the next eclipse cycle and all of that kind of stuff. But look at this as the eclipse. That is the gift that keeps on giving. All right, I know that that maybe doesn't sound great. I have to say that I'm not that thrilled with it either, but I do think I mean, you know, they're always good, they help to align us with our destiny, so that is, by definition, a good thing. I think this one is going to be maybe a little confusing in the getting there, but ultimately, you know, this is fate, this is karma, this is our destiny calling and it's ultimately good.

Speaker 1:

So, on that, I'm going to thank you for being here, for putting up with my voice. I am so sorry for missing last week, so I do apologize about that and hopefully I'll sound even more normal next time I talk to you. So, thank you, thank you, thank you. Go over and see my sub stack. Do all the stuff. Share the podcast. That helps me a lot. I'd be really grateful. And, yeah, until next week, go out and seize the energies of the stars. This is my wish for you always, and I will see you on the other end. Bye.