Twelfth: Pisces

If you haven’t already, I urge you to read the article explaining how the zodiac may be seen as a collection of twelve psychological types and thus gain context.

The final stage in the zodiacal path is reached in Pisces, when the Day Force that has been growing since Capricorn is poised to equal and then overtake the Night Force at the spring equinox. In Aquarius, the individuality at times surfaces unexpectedly but always within a social framework, perhaps in the context of cultural or ancestral traditions outside the powerful State, although enjoying its comforts and using its tools.

The individuality in Pisces has grown to be sufficiently strong to realize that neither the State nor traditions can provide security, for society is dying by the weight of its own crystalized structures. And yet, also realizes his limited self-power to confront such wounded dinosaur. Here comes the basic challenge of Pisces, whether to look back to the past for better times, when somehow society seemed to provide security, or have courage and faith in the future (I will say more on that later), which is symbolized, of course, by the next cycle beginning in Aries.

Neptune’s Message

Thus, Pisces is a time for total disintegration amid turbulent storms. It offers a “new world” to those with vision and heart while destroying all who stubbornly resist change. Traditionally, the time before the spring equinox is a time of fasting and repentance. The individual consciously identifies himself with the death of all established structures, pointedly symbolized by the Ash Wednesday ritual in Catholicism. He must surrender voluntarily to the body-less chrysalis so that the butterfly may be. Pisces refers to the mythical Flood that cleansed humanity for rebirth.

We must accept the dissolution of societal structures under the power of Neptune, ruler of Pisces. We cannot cling to past stability or glory since society is crumbling, we must instead learn to rely on the development of Day Force power while witnessing the Night Force structures dissipate around us.

Polarity with Virgo

The opposing sign, Virgo, has to deal with the results of having liberated the individuality’s energies in Leo. It is time to take care of the children and fix the mistakes present in our creative work. Our health may have suffered from passionate excesses, our patrimony dilapidated by useless speculations. The individual in Virgo must rectify his emotional attitude and improve his behavior. Therefore, he needs to rely on self-criticism, constant study, hygiene, and discipline imposed by a “teacher”. As such needs become fulfilled, the Virgoan will gain a new perspective toward human relationships, learning to be more of service and patient; and will also develop a mental “witness” to listen and reflect on his most basic personality impulses. Should he (or she) fail to learn, a chronic illness may develop to perhaps force an open approach to human relationships. In the end, Virgo must prepare to become a “social individual” in Libra.

In Pisces we have the polar opposite, for the social individual must now learn to leave behind the comfortable, and perhaps tragic, dependence on social structures. He (or she) must learn to be alone and trust his inner Voice, being ready to “pay the bill” and face the unknown with a child-like faith. It is time to return to nature, leaving behind the lovely Aquarian illusion of a civilized life in order to experience life from a higher realm. Pisces asks us to erase what we have learned and forego our ideals and possessions.

Mentally Letting Go

In Virgo, the proud individuality learns to be an apprentice and to serve a teacher. In Pisces, the social individual, who depends on the machines and formulas accumulated by centuries of cultural evolution to go about on his daily routine, realizes that social progress and intellectual knowledge will not provide meaning. It is pointless to serve a social ideal in a life-or-death situation. Pisces must learn to serve God, serve that which cannot be moved to any type of revolution and yet is the cause and reason of most revolutions. Such is the work of Pisces.

Pisces must learn transcendence, self-improvement, the destruction of false illusions and sense of security, a breaking with social ties to embark on the great adventure of being in total faith and honesty. In Pisces, man confronts himself and that Absolute Being he calls God. He may avoid such confrontation, perhaps by going to the decadent cities and joining those seeking refuge in religions that offer superficial solace and are doomed to perish, or following social “saviors”. However, in the end they will only be mulch for the spring germination. The critical mind of Virgo and Pisces gets rid of the crystallized past in search of clarity and simplicity where to actualize a new way of living. It is the mind that tells us what to forget, regenerate or transcend.

Two Unconscious

Dane Rudhyar writes that all social illusions, exaggerated idealism, eccentric notions, revolutionary clichés, scientific materialism, and other civilized monstrosities that may have surged in the Aquarian phase, must vanish. Man takes off his social rags and in a state of undress faces his inner God, his Christ within. However, Rudhyar points out, the diminishing Night Force complicates the undressing, for the social rags are not only negative but subjective as well. What was social is now psychic, social dreams turn into psychic ghosts and social frustrations into subconscious complexes.

In such negative and subjective aspect, Pisces represents the psychic realm corresponding to Freud’s subconscious or Jung’s personal unconscious, which is the product of all the personal failures to function correctly with our environment, from our family to society: Cancer to Capricorn. Subconscious complexes are the result of crystalized fears that impede the flow of psychic energy such that its power has become, if not destructive, at least distorted. In Pisces, these complexes must be confronted through understanding, a directed introspection such as that with a qualified therapist, or any of the various techniques imparted by oriental gurus.

Often the failures are not only personal in nature but may be due to the familial, religious and cultural past that, from the moment of birth, appear as obstacles to the child’s natural and spontaneous flow of energy, regardless of whether they are inevitable or even constructive. Man must not only confront his personal unconscious but the collective unconscious of his race and culture.

Illusion of Passivity

All life comes from the sea, which is symbolized by Pisces and its ruler, Neptune. Pisces is the realm where metamorphosis occurs, the eternal chrysalis, but also the world of ecstasy, of receptivity to God, the sacrifice of the martyr. However, Pisces is not just a sign of social or mystical receptivity and its subtle implication of passivity. Undersea currents are often stronger than the mightiest rivers, and the battle occurring in the depths of Pisces is fought with the sword. Many generals and heroes have been born under the sign of Pisces. They knew how to remain unmovable in battle while developing their energies; they knew how to remain inflexible, with themselves and others.

As Rudhyar reminds us, nothing can be more devastating than a tsunami or a hurricane, both being products of the sea.

The Dark Side

There is always a sense of finality in Pisces, obviously for good reason, but there is also expectation. Even the less kind have an air of mystery. Hidden transitions abound in every corner of their beings. Fog and subterfuge are, if not present, a short step away. It is often observed a degree of isolation, as if the problems were too important or the themes too absolute to intervene at a level of individuality. There is a feeling of being subject to an eternal ebb and flow against which everything seems useless or temporary. Continuing to perceive reality this way will cause the personality to develop a fatal type of introversion that slowly empties his consciousness of any living contents. Men then return to the ghostly contents of the unconscious, perhaps like the Roman stoics who lived in noble solitude while their world (and empire) was falling apart.

Compassion

At its highest spiritual level, Pisces is pure compassion, the great person who, after assimilating the totality of experience of his race, lives in plenitude. A plenitude that reflects all of society while providing maximum meaning to it. The individual then faces a choice: solitary bliss or compassion. The first alternative is the objective of “spiritual egoism” that believes in an “individual salvation”. The compassionate individual, however, realizes the futility of a personal salvation. Nobody can raise to a significant level without dragging at least some of the past from which he or she came. A human being will only be “saved” when all of humanity reaches that point.

As Rudhyar often remarked, isolationism is the only sin that cannot be forgiven, for he who forgets the steps of the staircase used to reach the apex leaves an imprint that nothing and nobody can erase but himself.

Reality, as defined in Wholeness, is holistic and experienced by organic wholes. He who approaches reality in such a way cannot help but consider himself (or herself) a member of an Absolute Whole, regardless of the level of organic wholeness integrated in his person; one doesn’t need to be an illuminated being to realize this.

Gift of Courage

However, to “assimilate the totality of experience of his race” (as I wrote earlier), Pisces must witness social destruction all around and, despite unspeakable horrors, steadfastly remain compassionate and, based on purity and excellence, reach to the unassuming few with open arms. To Pisces, Spirit offers the power to overcome such total disintegration and the pressures of memories, regrets or resentments (i.e., the past); the power to emerge into the New Day symbolized by Aries. Spirit offers as his Gift the bestowal of courage.

It is easy to romanticize the ending of the cycles with the power of hindsight and a collection of (often selective) memories, especially with the glamour of Neptune who “air brushes” reality. Pisces is also the sign of psychism and a passive approach to the unconscious, of mystic rapture to the unknown beyond. These transcendent but elusive traits are secondary results, not basic attributes, of the Pisces individual who is extremely sensitive to the problems inherent in periods of transition and renewal.

Sword of Detachment

The Piscean type is burdened with assessing the harvest of the cycle and so he feels at home carefully reviewing the achievements and failures of the ending cycle, returning again and again to the past. In some cases, he seeks understanding or atonement, in others he looks to the ending cycle longingly, unable to disentangle himself from the recollections of past pleasures or pain.

At the end, the cycle has produced the remains of what has been lived but also the seed of new tomorrows. The seed must be liberated and that requires that the individual wield the heavy sword of severance from the past and its subconscious ghosts; a sword that cuts away all obsolete, useless attachments and memories. Spirit brings the sword and the courage to wield it fearlessly.

Faith in a Future Spring

The message of Pisces, and of Christianity, is a message of liberation. Whereas the Buddha’s theme was liberation of the mind, Jesus showed us a liberation of the ego and the will. That said, freedom cannot be a Spiritual Gift, it must be won. A teacher can offer the sword but only the individual can use it to set himself free. He does this by transforming his past into manure and seed. The seed must be retained, but only the seed, the spiritual harvest. All else must be cut away and surrendered.

The Pisces individual’s great need is the capacity to endure and remain whole under the impact of the cyclic dissolution of all things. No man can endure such process of disintegration unless he has courage and faith. Courage toward the past and faith in the future. Faith requires vision, a vision that may not be fully conscious. The mind may not be able to formulate it in words or patterns but a vision must exist that will allow faith to be oblivious of the perils and hardships encountered when trying to reach the goal.

Writes Rudhyar: “To live according to the rhythm of the spirit is indeed to live every moment as if, in it, the end of a cycle was being metamorphosed into a birth of futurity; it is to live in a perpetual act of germination”. Many men refuse to “germinate” and cling to their mental structures, their prestige and their sensuous or intellectual possessions. They withstand, with a fanaticism born of fear, the great tides of progress. They too at times display great courage, for it takes courage to go against evolution, opposing the will of God. A blind, desperate and tragic courage.

The true courage, Gift of the Spirit, is always willing to exchange the lesser for the greater, the pattern which excludes for that which includes more, and yesterday for tomorrow. True courage is born of trust and, with it, darkness recedes and spring arises. Man rises. Man is creative. Man is whole and Peace is known.

Final Sabian Symbol

Every cycle has three phases that are especially creative: its beginning (alpha), middle (mu), and end (omega). In the case of the zodiac, these correspond to Aries 1°, Libra 1° and Pisces 30°, respectively. Thus, I want to end this page with the Sabian symbol for the final degree of Pisces and of the zodiac.

Pisces 30° has the image: “A majestic rock formation resembling a face is idealized by a boy who takes it as his ideal of greatness, and as he grows up, begins to look like it”, further explained as the power of clearly visualized ideals to mold the life of the visualizer. Its (final) keyword is: Archetypalization.

In what amounts to an allegory to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Great Stone Face”, the symbol shows the capacity of self-transformation latent in man. Such power can be developed through visualization. In a biological sense, it is the power inherent in all seeds to produce and guide the growth of a future plant. A most fitting symbol for the final phase of a cyclic process, for within the end of a cycle, the seed of a new one exists in potency. Unless, of course, the entire cycle was a failure.

Epilogue

Pisces confronts us with how we approach endings. Do we take the wisdom of the past while leaving it behind for an uncertain tomorrow, or do we stay focused on the past, either yearning for the memories or regretting them? But it also invites us to live the process of transformation and even metamorphosis prior to entering a new stage of our lives. Living as Pisces is living in the moment of transformation, constantly evolving.

Always Love. 🌹🙏💖