Till Human Voices Wake Us
THE PISCES NEW MOON
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 2:35 pm PST
The Moon and Sun Conjoined at 2.42 degrees Pisces
Many years ago now, when I was in college, I unwittingly irked my speech communications professor big time by selecting T. S. Eliot's poem "Prufrock" as one of the pieces to read for the final exam in his class.
The course was the Oral Interpretation of Literature and each of us were required to present a complete poem plus selections from a novel in order to pass the class. "Oral interpretation" is not reciting, nor is it entirely acting either. It's a kind of quasi-theatrical cross between the two.
So when it was my turn to "stand and deliver," I announced the poem's title and author — "The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S Eliot" — and immediately from the back of the room came a loud groan from my instructor, along with this pointed question-cum-statement, barked out in his characteristic gruff tone:
"Why do you young people like that poem so much! It's about old age and decay!"
By this time, I had gotten pretty used to his confrontational teaching style and rough manner, but still it wasn't easy to push forward and read the poem after such a "nice" setup. Nevertheless, I managed to gather myself up, straighten my dunce cap a bit, and begin:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
So why on Earth did I like this strange poem? What was it that drew me? My instructor's question was a good one, even if his timing and manners were not. But the fact was I hadn't really thought about it too deeply, why I liked it. It was a speech class, after all, not a literature class. My task was to perform, not explain. But why did I like it? Why did I choose that particular poem?
I loved Eliot's imagery, the distinctive way in which he could turn a phrase, draw comparisons that were unusual and original, and of course Prufrock's crazy internal dialog was interesting. But I remember standing there in the front of the class stunned after being hit by that curve ball and all I managed to shrug out was: "I don't know, I just like it." Which produced another groan from the back of the room.
I realize it was primarily a rhetorical question, but if I had been an astrologer then, perhaps I could have answered my instructor with: "Well what else do you expect from the Neptune-in-Scorpio generation? We find inspiration in despair, bleakness, noir. Anyone brave enough to own up to the sootier side of life, our own dark, obsessive thoughts, deep insecurities, inevitable aging and mortality. What most people turn their pretty heads away from, is just the ticket for us.
In T.S. Eliot's natal chart, both Neptune and Pluto are conjoined in the writer's sign of Gemini, a similar signature to Neptune in Scorpio, which explains the draw and resonance for me. We speak the same Neptune, and in Eliot's chart it is strong. Neptune and Pluto are both connected via an intellectual air element trine to Eliot's natal Libra Sun, which falls in Neptune's Twelfth house. His natal Venus also falls in the Twelfth and in Libra, strong in the sign it rules, and conjoins Mercury. Both Mercury and Venus are conjunct the Libra Ascendant, with Mercury on the First house side of the line.
The Twelfth house Venus is the overall chart ruler, making this Neptunian house of primary importance. The Sun falling here too renders this natal house central to Eliot's life, and along with Venus here too, the creative life in particular. Uranus, planet of originality is also in the Twelfth house falling between the Sun and Venus, and trines Eliot's Gemini Moon (the soul of a writer), and this "writer's Moon" is the planetary ruler of his Cancer North Node (which represents soul growth, life purpose and potential), falling in this sensitive, water sign of the crab. The North Node is conjunct Eliot's 29-degree Cancer Midheaven, which in turn sextiles Eliot's Neptune. Pretty much all the "roads" in Eliot's watery chart lead back to Neptune.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Associated with the transcendant, the creative imagination, Neptune functions like a powerful undertow and irresistible siren. Neptune describes what feeds the eternal, intangible part of ourselves that is always seeking that return trip home, home to that state of cosmic bliss that is always just out of mortal reach. Neptune energy is not of this world. 
Since Pluto's demotion to "dwarf" a few years ago, Neptune, orbiting way beyond the bounds of Saturn, now enjoys the status of our furthest-out planet. And that does seem as it should be, doesn't it?
When we are asked why we like our particular "Neptunian cookies" it is often very hard (even for poets) to adequately explain. From time to time there are fleeting moments of clarity, mirages that dissolve just as quickly as they appear. With Neptune most things are powerfully compelling, but vague, confusing and fleeting. We know we want it, love it, need it, admire it, even if we can't quite put it into words. Neptune fluently speaks the symbolic language of the soul. Images, sensations and feelings take precedence; but the picture we see is sometimes a distortion, and therein lies the dirty trick with Neptune.
With Neptune, we can reach the heights of creative inspiration — if we do not lose our way that is, disappear into the fog of self-delusion, addiction, escapism; which, with Neptune, siren of the sea, is always a possibility.
Sunrise Above the Fog, Mendocino county, California 2012
Today's super spectacular New Moon in Pisces conjoins Pisces' very own ruler, Neptune, now particularly strong having just recently entered this sign of its rulership. The New Moon degree also receives a lovely, harmonious sextile (60° aspect) — a cosmic kiss — from optimistic, philosophical Jupiter, Pisces other, "traditional" ruler. These connections alone will deepen and strengthen the "Pisces signal" for the duration of this lunar cycle, making the next month an especially beneficial stretch of time for creative, imaginative projects, as well as any kind of deep spiritual work. Mercury, planet of cognition, the intellect and our ability to connect with life, entered Pisces over a week ago now, and will be here until March 2nd. However, Mercury will soon begin a retrograde cycle (station retrograde is on March 12th) in which he will be transiting from Aries back into Pisces, and thus extending his stay in this visionary sign this year. I do hate to bring it up, but Mercury will enter the degrees upon which he will backtrack soon, on February 26th, just a few days after the New Moon. It is then we begin to notice all of those classic Mercury retrograde snafus: computer, communication, transportation and commerce glitches, which tend to amplify. So it is a good time, once again, to do those computer back-ups. And do not continue to ignore that funny noise the car is making.
The New Moon also receives a supportive trine from Saturn, which stationed retrograde two weeks ago on the day of the Leo Full Moon. The trine from Saturn offers beneficial ballast for this abundant Neptunian energy, powerful influences which tend to pull us away from Saturnian reality, structure and discipline. We need Saturn (in healthy doses) to aid us in the task of more efficiently bringing these tenuous Neptunian intangibles down to earth, to descend the stair gracefully with our inspirational goodies still in hand, and ready to be put to good use. With Saturn's help, we can apply the whisperings of the muse in some effective way and not let them merely slip through our fingers once more, dissolve back into the ether.
Which is, it seems, Prufrock's big Neptunian problem: allowing his life to slip between his fingers. Lost and drifting, he is caught in the fog of his own mind. His rambling, disjointed thoughts bounce off those interior walls and amplify in that vast, inner space in which his consciousness has become trapped. The physical, real world — Saturn's realm — has receded, shrunken like his under-used body, proof of which is the need to roll his trousers:
I grow old... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
In reading some of the literary examinations (see references below) of the poem, it was mentioned that one of the puzzles of the poem is whether or not Prufrock ever leaves his room. Time is confused, reality confused, a woman referred to in the poem is just another object, for Prufrock she exists only in fragments:
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
Her world only intersects his in the slightest, most impersonal way, fleeting, incomplete, fading in and out. It's hard to tell if she is real or imagined — or a ghost of Prufrock's past. She is only eyes and arms, trailing the scent of perfume, on her way elsewhere. It seems an image a baby would hold, primitive early memories. Are these memories of Prufrock's own mother flooding back into his "etherized" consciousness?
Prufrock is not really alive, not fully in this world; and yet, strangely, his aging and inevitable death haunt him. It is the central irony of the poem — the central irony of Neptune squandered. When we indulge the mind too much, the imagination, and seek to escape life, sometimes in frivolous, but also dangerously unhealthy ways. We loose our footing with reality. With Neptune unchecked, untethered, unbalanced, we can, like Prufrock, fall into the recesses of our minds and begin to drift out to sea. And not a friendly, warm sea of inspired creativity, but a siren-filled tempest of fog and submerged rocks ready to take us under. We fall inward, reality becomes inverted. The real begins to feel unreal.
Neptune is the Green Fairy, absinth, a most powerful spirit, its potential may be lofty and great, but it must be handled with absolute care, Saturnian care that is, or we drift too far, like Prufrock, into our own muddled depths.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
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Related Essays
Holy Water — The Sun Enters Pisces (February 18-19, 2012)
References
Here is the complete text for "Prufrock" from the University of Virginia.
Albert Maignan's painting at the beginning of this essay, La Muse Verte — "The Green Muse" (1895) — shows a poet succumbing to the "green fairy," absinthe. From the Musée de Picardie, Amiens. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The painting, The Siren, is by John William Waterhouse, an English painter known for working in the Pre-Raphaelite style.
The photos in this essay were taken by me, in and around Mendocino county California where I live on a ridge that is often above the fog.
Here is an interesting examination of the themes in Prufrock from the English department of the University of Illinois.
And another overview of the poem from Kathleen McCoy's and Judith Harlan's ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM 1785 (New York: HarperCollins, 1992: 265-66)
Notes
"Prufrock" opens with a passage from Dante's Inferno. Including this passage, as the above-referenced literary analysis pointed out, Eliot seems to suggest that Prufrock considers himself one of the "damned" — caught in Purgatory without any hope of return. The translation of the passage is from the Princeton Dante Project
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
"If I but thought that my response were made
to one perhaps returning to the world,
this tongue of flame would cease to flicker.
But since, up from these depths, no one has yet
returned alive, if what I hear is true,
I answer without fear of being shamed."
© 2012 Elaine Kalantarian, all rights reserved