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Pisces: the art of illusion
Pisces is normally thought of as about endings,
since it is the twelfth sign of the zodiac and is so confusing that
it is shadowed by the coming brightness of the Spring Equinox. However,
in that shadow swims the one who knows well that to bend is better
than to break, or to be broken. A fish without firm spine is a fish
that never tangles a line.
Slip away, find the current that escapes, stay in the dim cool and
allow the forces to wash over you, cleanse you, pass by and leave
you – not stranded on a beach, but far out alone in the fathomless
wonder of the sea.
Pisces is ruled by Neptune, and under his domain come dreams and
delusions and anything that drugs those pressed hard by rigid earthy
reality. The Triton-wielder stirs up storms to assist sailors toward
death. This is the reason for storms. Anyone who resists and tries
to build bigger ships only condemns more to death – like the
Titanic, which kills me every time I am forced to watch it once
again ignore good taste, which would mean it stays under the water
and stops ghosting ghouls of actors.
Pisces is the twelfth house, euphemistically called the house of
“transformation”. For anyone past the stage of evolution
known as the “fish” stage that means trouble. And since
all humans borne of the womb are past that stage, then it is a house
no one wants to tenant. No wonder we try to escape it with drugs
– alcohol, heroin – or avoid it by any New Age dodge
on the market (“Instant Transcendent C-Elasticity! Come buy
my book and you are guaranteed immortality….and I a huge bank
account!”) Jesus, after all, only attained his role as Christ
by getting executed rather horribly, and who wants to imitate that
for heaven’s sake? The fact that Jesus Christ had his comeuppance
at the beginning of the Piscine Age only goes to show that one can
go too far finding out how well astronomy and historical events
at times corresponds to astrology.
No one wants to be born a Pisces, but some are forced to suffer
it. Those with planets in the twelfth, or Pisces ascending, wear
suffering in the afflicted area like a hair shirt. They are “masochists”,
a nice way to say “a pain in the butt”. However, the
true Pisces takes on the burdens, emotional and physical, of those
around, and allows them to sink deep down until they vanish in the
redeeming depth of death and are resurrected as gentle spirits ascending.
This is no joke. I wish it were. But I have a planet in the twelfth
and it tangles me in the weeds all the time. Only silence and solitude
lead to serenity. Suffering out loud isn’t allowed. The path
to salvation, it would seem, is invisible. Anything seen is a cheap
imitation. So if you meet the Buddha on the road (as a man I knew
once wrote) kill him. You would be doing him a favour. Why?
Pisces is “Now you see her, now you don't”. Magician,
silver-lined lover, dreamer of wondrous castles in the air, she
flits into your heart and out again with only a ripple to show her
passing. All she asks of you is a touch, a sharing of emotion, then
she is gone: it is not enough for you, but more than enough for
her, and she is back behind her shimmering weeds hidden in the depths
of her murky pond.
You sit there puzzled, wondering what happened. But there is no
explaining, no sifting of meaning, no words, for nothing did occur
and even the memory is fading to leave only the memory of regret,
the memory of the whisper of her passage through your life. And
all she wishes is for you to remember, since that is all she does.
Memory, the webbing of interconnections so fragile and yet gradually
working their way deep, deep into unconscious ways of the working
of the world.
She is water in the sun, a gleam gone the moment you arrive. You
dip your head into her and emerge refreshed, renewed, and you go
on. She is lessened by your passage, your muddy boots churn up her
clarity and she moans but you are gone, and she shivers as she drips
cold, cold down again, into dark again. But ever after you recall
that hike, and wonder if you go again, will she remember you? Only
your muddy boots and the taste of your lips, and maybe if you come
by again you will hear her moan, and start to learn her language
in your dreams.
To reach the illusion that is Pisces you must journey far down in
the water world of Neptune, wearing nothing for protection from
the immersion in that other reality, only approached through the
door of drugs and dreams, fasting and dancing. But the music you
learn there will make all other music trivial. The words you learn
there will make language sing. The dance you rise on like smoke
will bring you to new comprehensions of light, of motion, of magic.
Then quiet laughter will be yours and not the god's, not the vibrating
cold fish, not the chattering stream. Joy will become part of your
own lightness, your own mystery, your own tears that flow when you
return to the earth with a splash on the shore.
Onto the stream bank you fall, and roll over, bones and skin heavy
again on your soul, wondering if there really was a separating moment,
a journey beyond, a dream. The stream flows past, cold, remote,
clear, something you will never be. A fish jumps just beyond reach,
then slithers below. A cloud covers the sun and throws shadow across
the bank where you rest. Your aches ease, your heart starts to forget
the music you heard. But your yearning is still there, yearning
for what you almost understood.
It's time to catch that fish for supper. Take and eat all of it,
so that you have strength to live until vision comes again, to hear
the music again, when your dreams and the clouds and the stream
make it just the right time for another ascent beyond visibility.
If Pisces be the soul of love, swim on.
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