The New Moon and Venus in Pisces
On the art of receiving pleasure with a pure heart in a broken world
Tomorrow is the New Moon in Pisces (5:00 am ET on Sunday morning) and Venus slips into this immensely intuitive and imaginative sign, the love planet’s most favored lair, on Monday at 5:50 pm ET. For the next few weeks, it’s Venus’ world —we’re just living in it. Now that we’re just past the anxiety of the Mars-Uranus square, we can sink into the beauty of this New Moon and melt into manifestation.
International Women’s Day fell on Friday (Venus Day) and it got me thinking a lot about what pleasure means for bodies not sanctioned by the ruling class. Living and loving in a body that is considered unruly, uppity, disabled, imperfect, peri-post menopausal or fat, a body with a mouth that speaks out of turn — how does this color the experience of pleasure? When we exist in marginalized bodies that don’t meet the standards set by the white supremacist heteropatriarchy, how do we learn to receive love? To take in what feels good? To know that we deserve to use each of our senses fully and furiously, every moment of the day?
If we are a Kate Britt, a woman in the kitchen (where she belongs, according to the systems listed in the previous paragraph), a Stepfordesque baby-maker/breeder, a person dangling a diamond cross like a trad-wife amulet, speaking in the desperate, overcooked, purple prose of a failed drama student emulating the voiceover of an ASPCA commercial about abandoned dogs (call 1-800-HELP-MAGA to donate) — this question is moot. There is no pleasure here. Kate has accepted her lot in Gilead. She is so happy to be there that she will lie about sex trafficking, creating fake victims to fit the twisted narrative that women are babies who should always be making babies, basking in the Christofascist grift that she hopes will save her career.
Speaking of Christ (the real one, not the made-up MAGA one) Venus in Pisces knows what it means to be a savior. But this is the energy of real love and empathy — not cruelty (the point) masked as protection. Venus in Pisces may seem naive in matters of the heart, as it exists in a flood of endless love that seems to refresh at a magic well. Venus in Pisces truly believes that love heals, and this Venus will never abandon its hope. Venus is exalted in Pisces, which is to say this is where the planet of beauty can be exactly who she is without withholding anything, turning our water into the most exquisite, divinely sexy wine.
This Venus embodies the mermaid archetype. Yet it does not know what it means to come up for air, and therefore it falls again and again and again hopelessly in love, never chastened or made bitter, even if treated badly. For people born with their Venus in Pisces, hope springs eternal when it comes to the healing power of sacred love, so they may seem to act like doormats sometimes — but they are anything but.
I write of this from direct experience, as my natal Venus is in Pisces — and it’s also my chart ruler. Debbi Kempton-Smith, who wrote one of the first astrology books I ever read, Secret’s From A Stargazer’s Notebook, said, “Venus in Pisces is the best placement for anybody whom the Venus in Pisces loves.” We love like Christ, wholly and holy, and the empathy we feel for our beloveds is such a drug that we needn’t get anything in return. We can be camels in a desert of love, able to retain the feeling of a touch or a glance or a kiss for years (decades, centuries, lifetimes) without getting dehydrated. We are sustained by love, because we know love is real, and we will never become cynical about this.
People born with Venus in Pisces are also the sexual healers of the zodiac (cue the Marvin Gaye) and Venus in Pisces season is ideal for sex magic of all sorts, but particularly the kind of magic that uses orgasm as a ritual — visualizing the energy as a white or pink light that flows up through our body, upward through our crown chakra, then through the ether to a lover we would like to magnetize or merge with. (Note: I made a “Pisces Season Sex Jams” playlist that you might want to play with if you indulge in said rituals.)
Receiving is an art, and it needs to be practiced. Pleasure can be understood as a kind of praxis, not something accidental or incidental. Capitalism wants us to think of pleasure this way — as something we don’t necessarily deserve, but something we can work hard for, and then maybe taste for a moment (or a short vacation) until we return to what’s more important — the grind.
In my next book, Sex and Your Stars: A Sexologist’s Guide to the Erotic Energy of the Zodiac, I explore the meaning of Venus, pleasure, and receptivity in deep, delicious detail, and Pisces season affords me an opportunity to share some of these insights with you. You may pre-order a copy of the book here — I’m still honoring a 30 percent discount on all of my readings to anyone who orders the book through at least the end of Pisces season (you can email me your receipt to redeem the discount).
Venus in Pisces reminds us that love and pleasure are always here at our fingertips, on the tips of our tongues, at the edge of our nostrils, in front of our eyes, within hearing distance — an infinite resource. Even if we are not partnered (and want to be) we can still access pleasure and experience love by giving it to ourselves, because we deserve to feel good, even when the world is broken. Venus in Pisces is love that heals and repairs the world.