With the Full Moon in Pisces, Things Are About To Get Even Weirder

When we talk about a full moon, we often talk of completion, the closing of a cycle. It’s lovely to look up at the big light in the vast darkness and imagine the process by which she gained her shape. Light bathing in her brimming reflection, we’re called to imagine the shape we’ve taken and release whatever we’ve collected that no longer serves. The truth we know is that our moon’s cycles are not linear, just as our lives are not linear. Our moon loops, our moon circles back and attends to what fell by the wayside. Our moon exchanges late night texts with lovers from another life, she starts singing one song and then, like a switch of the channel, finds herself singing another. This month, what we might imagine as the end of summer, is the end of very little else. It seems right, then, that our full moon is in Pisces, a sign that hardly believes in the conventions of time, in letting go of anyone or anything when we’re really all connected no matter what.

Everyone knows that Pisces are a little psychic so it should come as no surprise if this full moon brings psychic visions and the occasional ghost or two. Lucid dreaming, déjà vu, and generally vibing with the unseen is par for the course. And, since our full moon makes aspects to Uranus, not to mention its actual placement under the stars of Aquarius, it’s likely that things are going to get more than just a little weird. Don’t be surprised if you experience people close to you acting wildly out of character. Don’t be surprised if you recover a memory from your childhood (or a past life!) that makes you doubt a core belief you have about yourself. Don’t be surprised if you find out that Niecy Nash now has a wife and they like to sing songs together because love is real, ok? If a full moon is about release, about completion, then our Pisces full moon is as hopeful and powerful as a life raft that gets you near enough to calm water so you can let go and float out on your own.

Speaking of calm water, which Pisces definitely prefer, a full moon sure is a good time to do a little water ritual. Of course, walking into a cool river wearing a diaphanous gown is a dramatic delight, but if you don’t have a river then a bath tub will do. A friend of mine asked me what the moon had to say and I instantly thought of a poem by June Jordan called “Free flight,” in which she writes:

Maybe I need a woman/ a woman be so well you know so wifelike/ so more or less motherly so listening so much/ the universal skin you love to touch and who the/ closer she gets to you the better she looks to me/somebody say yes and make me laugh and tell me she know she/ been there she spit bullets at my enemies she say you/ need to sail around Alaska fuck it all try this new/cerebral tea and take a long bath

Maybe I need a mana man be so well you know so manly so lifelike/ so more or less virile so sure so much the deep/ voice of opinion and the shoulders like a window/ seat and cheeks so closely shaven by a twin-edged razor blade no oily hair and no dandruff besides/somebody say yes and make/ me laugh and tell me he know he been there he spitbullets at my enemies he say you need to sail around/ Alaska f*ck it all and take a long bath

When I sent this poem to her she wasn’t surprised that the full moon sounded exactly like June Jordan which none of us should be since June Jordan was a Cancer, the sign of the moon. June Jordan knew a full moon flowing over a full tub that’s charged with crystals, softened with oils, and rich with salt, is the perfect remedy for an evening outside time, a night between summer and fall. If you’re able to run it, a bath is the perfect place to meditate on what you are and aren’t willing to release emotionally while the salt does its work, releasing aches and pains from your muscles. June Jordan knew that alongside revolution, there’s herbal tea and lovers who want to run a washcloth over your grief. She knew what the moon knew, and what you now know too, connected as we are.