A full super Blue Moon in the mutable, mystical, poppy-spiked backwaters of Pisces is on the rise my babies.
Peaking on August 30th at 9:36 PM EST, this lunation is doubling down on rarity and intensity as it is both a supermoon and a Blue Moon, I.E. the second full moon in a single month.
In addition to being the largest and brightest moon of 2023, we shan’t be this close to or this dazzled by a supermoon for the next two years and we won’t see another Blue supermoon until 2032.
Eyes up, tits out, let’s celebrate.
Supermoon meaning
Supermoon is a sexier shorthand for what astrologers call a perigean full moon wherein the full moon appears brighter, bolder and better due to being at its closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit
Supermoons exceed the disk size of the average moon (shakes fist, there are no average moons!) by roughly 8% and can appear 16% brighter. This is an exceptionally close supermoon (a cool 222,000 odd miles from Earth), and we won’t have a closer full supermoon until November 5, 2025.
As full moons rise they bring to the surface issues, emotions, intestinal parasites, menses and other stickiness that demand to be dealt with. Full moons are about fruition and closure. The very shape of the shine is a metaphor for how we culminate, close circles and/or end cycles. A supermoon, due to its proximity, heightens these effects; more revealing, more feeling folks.
Meaning of a full supermoon in Pisces
These effects are further amplified by the moon falling into the mutable waters of Pisces, the last sign in the zodiac. The fish rules the twelfth house of culminations and dissolution, dreams, delusions, the unconscious mind, self-sabotage, ghosts and institutions. In this sense, Neptune ruled Pisces energy is in itself something of a full moon. Pisces represents the last stop on the motorcycle ride of the meat skeleton, blurring the line between being and non-being, life and the great beyond.
Astrology 101: Your guide to the star
- The 12 zodiac signs
- What are the astrology houses
- Here’s what each planet represents
- Sun, moon and rising signs: Get to know your Big 3
Pisces is the last stop on the motorcycle ride of the meat skeleton, blurring the line between being and nonbeing, life and the great beyond.
This full supermoon in Pisces invokes themes of dreams vs. delusions and encourages us to release what limits us and to accept the hard truth of reality versus any candied fantasy, safety net or sugar plum projection. Our intuition is heightened during this lunation and married with the instincts of Virgo, what we feel and know can no longer be denied. Look out for strong symbols or messaging in your dreams and visitations or psychic signs from friends, elders and ancestors who have crossed over.
Full moons are always potent times for reflection and release but never has the need been more pronounced nor the time nigh. Remember folks, you can’t spell embracing without bracing and while the truth can hurt and cutting loose can cut us deep, both practices pave the path of forward momentum and personal evolution. Pisces rules the feet and Virgo is mutable earth, making a barefoot walk through any wilderness or your own front yard a beautiful way to observe and invoke the power of this moon.
While the moon is in Pisces the sun will be shining in the opposite sign, exacting, cleanliness is next to godliness, eat bark and be naked Virgo. The Virgo/Pisces axis represents the oppositional/complimentary forces of structure and surrender, physical form and spiritual essence, the tangible and the intangible, what can be seen vs. what must be felt.
“If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.”
Leonard Cohen
This axis is embodied by Virgo sun/Pisces moon earth priest, amphetamine poet and world-class ladies man Mr. Leonard Cohen. Cohen lived to ride and write the line between the sacred and the ordinary, the mundane and the transcendental, convinced either could become the other by looking closer. He writes in the poem “Good Advice For Someone Like Me,” (the most Virgo title of all time), “If you don’t become the ocean, you’ll be seasick every day.”Here, acceptance and surrender become synonymous and the practical becomes the poetic.
Retrograde six pack
Under this full moon, a gut punch of six planets; Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto are all in retrograde. Retrogrades get a bad rap but in truth offer us the chance to reflect, reassess and reconfigure the stages we set for the opera of life.
Under this axis, especially with the influence of Venus’s retrograde in Leo and Mercury’s backspin in Virgo, there is an emphasis on relationships, communication, work and worth, reciprocity and release. Be bolstered by the knowledge that clarity is compassion, stillness is an invitation and the self is your sanctuary.
Blue Moon; myth and meaning
By modern definition, when two full moons fall in a single month the second full moon is called a Blue Moon or a calendrical Blue Moon. A seasonal Blue Moon is defined as the third of four full moons in a single season. A Blue Moon isn’t actually blue in color, though on very rare occasions, it can appear that way due to atmospheric conditions created by large-scale forest fires and/or major volcanic eruptions.
The term “blue moon” is commonly attributed to a pair of 16th-century friars who published a scathing pamphlet criticizing the Roman church. The two argued that the common man tended to blithely believe the clergy’s every word; even suggestions or statements as ludicrous as “the moon is blue” or “the moon is a ball of cheese.” Over time the term lost its derogatory top notes and came to be associated with the rare and the uncommon if not the altogether absurd.
Fun fact; Billie Holiday, who popularized the ballad, “Blue Moon,” had a stellium in Pisces with her Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter all falling in the sign of the opposing fins.
The term ‘blue moon’ is a result of modern misinformation
But how did we make the jump between a religious criticism and the second full moon in a calendar month? One explanation, provided by The Farmer’s Almanac, connects blue with the Old English belewe, meaning “to betray.” As the Almanac argues, “Perhaps..the moon was ‘belewe’ because it betrayed the usual perception of one full Moon per month.” Unlike other monthly or seasonal moon names; I.E. Buck, Strawberry, Harvest etc., the Blue Moon is not restricted to a certain time of year or astrological season, as its author Phillip Hiscock describes, “a movable feast.”
A Blue Moon is a movable feast.
Phillip Hiscock
Hiscock went hard in the paint about the origin of the term in an article for “Sky & Telescope Magazine.” His deep geek research revealed that our custom of naming the second full moon in a month “blue” was based on a misinterpretation of info printed in the “Maine Farmers Almanac.” The OG text defined a Blue Moon as what we now call a seasonal Blue Moon, the third of four full moons in a single season. Somewhere along the line that meaning mutated to include the second of two moons in a single month. Thus, the term Blue Moon, unlike other monthly moon names, is rooted more in modern myth-making than the folklore of yore.
In 1988 in the merry month of May, a second full moon was set to rise and it was heralded by a deluge of radio coverage calling the lunation a “Blue Moon.” The term stuck and spread, and as evident in this article, we are still falling under its light and misinformed spell to this very day. The more you know, folks.
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a “girls guide” to strip clubs and the “weirdest” foods available abroad.
