Virgo is the zodiac sign that represents the start of the harvest season in many parts of the northern hemisphere. That’s why Virgo is represented by a virgin holding a bushel of wheat.

Right now, the south node of the Moon has transited Virgo for around a year now. We feel it the most in September, during the start of harvest season. The north node of the Moon transits Pisces which is 180º away from Virgo. That one, we feel the most in March when the Sun is in Pisces for what is commonly called Pisces season.

Typically speaking, the transiting south node is supposed to bring some degree of loss. Sometimes, it’s a release. Sometimes, the south node acts destructively. Whatever the south node transits, it decreases in amount.

The north node of the Moon is supposed to bring an increase to whatever it transits. Again, that can be good or bad. Growth and expansion isn’t always a good thing.

On their own, the lunar nodes do not really do anything because they are not planets. They are points and they must act through planets in order to do things. As luck happens to have it, the south node is currently conjunct Venus and the north node in Pisces is currently copresent with Saturn. That means that we should see an decrease in Venusian activities, particularly ones that have to do with Virgo, grains, and harvest. That means that we should see an increase in Saturnian activities, particularly ones that have to do with Pisces—the seas, prisons, and chemical addiction.

What do the eclipses in Virgo and Pisces have to do with you? Well, that probably depends on where you live and how.

Right now, the United States is going through a huge agricultural crisis. Farmers, who planted their seeds back in March during the lunar eclipse in Virgo, are now harvesting a huge amount of soybeans on account of this year’s very good growing season. However, they are running into great difficulty finding a buyer due to the US trade war with China. Scott Bessent, who owns a couple of soybean farms himself, has not been able to negotiate a deal. That, paired with immigrants being too scared to work and higher tariffs on machinery, farmers are paying a huge toll. Farms are declaring bankruptcy left and right and demanding a bailout from Trump.

Instead of buying American soybeans, China has purchased soybeans from Brazil and Argentina. This puts more rainforest at danger to make way for monocrops. This increase of industrial scale agriculture amps up state violence directed at the people who use their lives to defend forests from development.

If you’re not a farmer, you might not have even noticed that soybeans have fallen in price. That’s because the price of your groceries keeps going up due to everything being more expensive now.

South node transiting Venus in Virgo—harvest season is not feeling particularly abundant this year. Instead, you feel squeezed. Smaller. You spend your time trying to figure out what to do with less. You learn to reuse and to repair.

While all of this is happening, the United States has been extremely aggressive in the Caribbean. Trump has been talking about creating a department of shipbuilding and he has been killing people by bombing fishing boats illegally. While Trump says that he is bombing drug dealers, eye witnesses say that the people who he has killed are fishermen.

Murdering people out in the sea as a way to amp up pro-police and pro-military propaganda against drug use is not great. Criminalizing drug use and stigmatizing people who use drugs has always exasperated addiction. I don’t have any statistics on this but I feel like this year alone, I hear about a lot more people overdosing around me. And that’s been hard.

Of course, prison construction has also increased. Pisces rules prisons and other places of isolation. We’re seeing ICE get funded twenty times what they used to get and all of these new detention centers in isolated places come up. There’s been a lot of talk about Monsanto chemicals, which were manufactured for war, in the midwestern soil causing cancer rates that are very high. Chemicals of all kinds are also ruled by Pisces. So is religion and spirituality. We’re seeing a resurgence of conservative leaning organized religion especially after Charlie Kirk’s death and a revival of what people have been calling the spirituality to alt-right pipeline.

In astrology, Saturn in Pisces can signify conflict across maritime borders. Saturn is also construction and Pisces is incarceration. Saturn is organization and Pisces is religion. The north node paired with Saturn increases what’s already been happening for quite some while now.

North node in Pisces—an increase in persecution. Fear. Also, confusion and overdosing.

When you have a persecution complex, you see everything as a threat. When you see everything as a threat, you use chemicals to kill plants that you call weeds. You villainize people and isolate them. You pay more attention to the construct of contamination rather than the very important question of what gives you sustenance. And right now with the south node in Virgo and the very real problem of getting food to people? We need to be paying attention to what gives us nutrition. The south node usually shows us what we neglect.

I think that for me, what’s helpful to keep in mind when it comes to Virgo and Pisces in any shape and form is to remember that life can’t be sacrificed. Life is a movement—not an object that can or needs to be kept pure. Both Virgo and Pisces speak to martyrdom. You have the critical thinking skills that you need to evaluate your sacrifices and your desires.

One of the reasons why the immigrant to organized religion pipeline remains so well and alive is because harmful religious spaces are very good at taking people’s real experiences of state violence and replacing those memories with an abstract fantasy of being persecuted for your beliefs. That reinforces people’s isolation by making us more socially paranoid and less socially curious.

This year brings a good but destructive harvest. Question what is feeding you right now and take care of your fears by evaluating the stories about persecution and sacrifice that your society tries to market to you. Refuse to fantasize or speculate about hypotheticals. Instead, remember that your fear is a contextual survival skill.