It's the Season of Pisces, that time of year when the Sun transits the last sign of the Zodiac. Pisces is the liminal space where the soul goes to rejuvenate on its archetypal journey -- a resting period of sorts, where consciousness explores transcendent realities in the "primordial waters" of gestation.
This resting period offers a healing reprieve to the Sun (consciousness), on its ever-onward spiraling journey through time and space and archetypes, before it reemerges once again in that first sign of the Zodiac, Aries.
The 12th zodiac sign, Pisces is mutable water and its function is to dissolve the mundane -- and to spiritualize, in a sense-- the emotional landscape.
Pisces has domain over the highly creative nature of the arts, theater, dance, music... anything that casts the nets of illusion and drags us away into the world of imagination.
This resting period offers a healing reprieve to the Sun (consciousness), on its ever-onward spiraling journey through time and space and archetypes, before it reemerges once again in that first sign of the Zodiac, Aries.
The 12th zodiac sign, Pisces is mutable water and its function is to dissolve the mundane -- and to spiritualize, in a sense-- the emotional landscape.
Pisces has domain over the highly creative nature of the arts, theater, dance, music... anything that casts the nets of illusion and drags us away into the world of imagination.
"I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living." ~ Anaïs Nin
This is also the realm of emotions, compassion and empathy. It is the sign of self-sacrifice, karma, healing, retreat and repression. It is the realm of soul-making, dreams, completions, transitions, death and gestation. It deals with institutions, mental health, intoxication through mind-altering substance, alcohol and drugs.
Those born with their Sun in Pisces tend to resonate with the labels "mystics and healers." They are the sensitive souls who radiate compassion and understanding. Pisces is the artist and poet, the actor and guru of the Zodiac.
Pisces often gets lost in its delusions of grandeur and can be a bit of a space-cadet, floundering around in a hippy-dippy-trippy state of mind. It may seem flighty and untethered to reality. It tends to project its desire for peace, love and understanding onto everyone it meets, believing that these people also radiate these characteristics.
The Pisces desire to save the world is so strong that it often gets tangled in its own nets of self-deception. Thus, Pisces can be easily taken for a ride, hurt by the disillusionment when they finally experience a moment of clarity and reclaim their projections. But the pain of disillusion will quickly fade as Pisces intuitively knows this was, somehow, a karmic "soul lesson," and that the resulting compassion was worth every bit of misery.
Pisces has the distinction of being associated to two planetary archetypes, Neptune and its traditional ruler, Jupiter.
Neptune's function as an outer, transcendent planet is to bring the collective together in harmony, but where Neptune is involved, there is often confusion instead of clarity. One has a difficult time anchoring this archetype and often must surrender to its mystery.
In its highest regard, Neptune is idealism, compassion, peace, love and harmony on a grand scale. Neptune IS the imagination and all that it contains. Anything that can be dreamed up, conceived and concocted belongs to this planetary archetype. Neptune is the archetype of the "Imaginal," the dreamy liminal space of creation, gestation, idealism.
But in its lower vibration, it is illusions, delusions, betrayal and falsehoods. It also rules the horrifying realm of nightmares, the inconceivable, the shameful truths that we often try to hide, repress into the deep subconscious, or that we lie about. Because Neptune represents consciousness in the broadest of terms, it reveals to us the shadowy and subjective nature of reality. (By the way, Neptune rules film and photography, because movies and photographs are merely "projections" of reality.) It is chameleon-like, impressionable, embracing mimicry and mirroring and strong Neptunian signatures in a chart can denote an actor, NLP practitioner, hypnotist, or a truth bender of some sort.
Jupiter, on the other hand, is the archetype of expansion, abundance, exploration and spirituality. In Sagittarius (its other ruling sign) Jupiter hunts for wisdom through the Intellect. In Pisces, Jupiter swan-dives into the depths of the Soul, seeking to retrieve lost or forgotten treasures. It is in touch with intuition and psychic knowledge. It senses, feels, knows and believes in the Unseen. People with strong Jupiterian signatures in their charts have an "Otherworldly" sense of confidence and may seem to get all the "lucky breaks."
Pisces is a transcendent sign, associated with the loss of ego to something bigger than oneself. The function of Pisces, as a mutable water sign, is to "merge" the collective into a cohesiveness that transcends mundane limitations. The experience of finding your edges, surrendering to the Beyond and merging with the Unknown. Therefore, Pisces comes with its fair share of boundary lessons.
The symbol of Pisces is two fish swimming side by side, but in opposite directions. Though Piscean urge to merge is strong, there is a message here of union of opposites, coming together, the sum is greater than the parts. This is also symbolic of the self meeting up with the Self. Folks with strong Pisces signatures often spend their lives working through the overarching themes of self vs. SELF, discovering spirituality through the connections they make on the mundane level and the tendency to want to get away from it all, if not just to explore.