Pisces: connection + boundaries
The meaning of Pisces combines the mutable mode of adaptation and responsiveness with the sensitive and emotive properties of water. Pisces navigates the spectrum of boundaries, moving from boundlessness that leaves us with nothing to connect to and boundaries that create healthy and sustainable connection. It describes how vulnerable we become to losing ourselves to substances, experiences, and relationships without boundaries. On the other hand, it represents the boundaries that endorse healthy connection and inspire a love solid enough to hold onto.
Pisces is the zodiac symbolized by two fish swimming in opposite directions. This image reminds us that two things can be true at once, drawing on the mysticism and the vast unknown associated with Pisces.
Pisces navigates the spectrum of boundaries, moving from boundlessness that leaves us with nothing to connect to and boundaries that create healthy and sustainable connection. It describes how vulnerable we become to losing ourselves to substances, experiences, and relationships without boundaries. On the other hand it represents the boundaries that endorse healthy connection and inspire a love solid enough to hold onto.
It is the mutable, meaning flexible and changeable, water sign and the last archetype in the zodiac marking the death and rebirth of cycles. In many traditions and certainly Tropical Astrology, water signifies emotional and intuitive powers. Combine the mutable mode of adaptation and responsiveness with the sensitive and emotive properties of water and we have the highly intuitive, creative escape artist that is the sign of Pisces.
Pisces is poetry, the lyrical reality, the liminal space where dreams materialize and riddles are the best questions to ask. This archetype is as much blessed as it is cursed by porosity, a lack of boundaries that leave this narrative plenty of opportunities for martyrdom and sacrifice. Perhaps the most ‘spiritual’ of the signs, Pisces offers lessons in allegory and symbolism. It is best described in metaphor if we hope to capture the mythical siren that is Pisces.
The nature of Pisces is mystical, dreamy, and highly changeable which can lead us down tangential paths when trying to capture the meaning of this elusive archetype. I often find myself struggling to put the Piscean archetype into words, instead becoming distracted or losing my train of thought as the phantasm of this archetype blurs definitions. Pisces is associated with illusion and delusion and often teaches lessons of faith by demonstrating what is not real and what cannot be proven, requiring us to discern for ourselves the meaning and pathway that inspires us.
The ancient ruler of the sign of Pisces was Jupiter. This affinity describes the faith-based lessons of Pisces through the expansion and ascendance articulated by Jupiter. In 1846 the planet Neptune was discovered and then identified as the ruler of this aquatic sign. This era was marked by a number of archetypally relevant discoveries including significant developments in pharmaceuticals and photography. Both pharmaceuticals and photography are fraught with complex layers of illusion and delusion. Both fields hold mysterious narratives such as ghosts captured on film during the early days of photography that were actually the photographer passing through the image while the very low sensitivity of the film required the subject to stand still for a while to allow the image to develop on film. This would create a blurry image of the “ghost” while the subjects believed they had been visited by a deceased ancestor while holding very still for the portrait. The use of photography in court can also offer some concerns for deception as so much faith is put in what we see when in reality, much can be manipulated or mutated to create an illusion our eyes can easily believe. Meanwhile, pharmaceuticals and the industry that has manipulated and contorted the art of pharmacology and herbalism has created a complex narrative of illusion in response to diagnoses of delusions. Pharmaceutical treatment of mental health produced innumerable opportunities for distortions of reality which mirrors the fantastical and hallucinogenic properties of Pisces seamlessly. Corresponding with the chemical sensitivity, the emotional manipulation, and the discrepancies in perception of reality the Pisces archetype and natives navigate narratives of addiction, escapism, and the vast subconscious.
The connection between Pisces and mental health goes deeper than pharmacology as it reflects the unseen, the emotional, and the subconscious areas that are explored and ideally integrated in mental health practices. The porosity of this archetype makes lessons of boundaries a key theme in the Pisces narrative. Whether they are boundaries of abstinence or discernment, limited access to resources or relational, boundaries are the balm to the sacrificial nature of Pisces.
Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–1486)
The planet Venus is exalted in Pisces, an alignment best articulated by the enlightenment of compassion, the highest form of love. The love Venus brings to a Piscean landscape has the opportunity to spread with the boundlessness of the kind of love we associate with spiritual leaders like the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. It is the ideal love, without restriction or regulation. It is the fantastical love of fairy tales and our wildest dreams. The sensitive and flexible environment that is Pisces, provides the perfect context for the subconscious to come to the surface and intuition to be explored. This same context can induce the urge to escape and dissociate. Where feelings are expressed with vulnerability and fantasy can be articulated without shame, that is where love thrives, where Venus flourishes.
Venus’s exaltation in Pisces also ties together the connection to Neptune. The Greek counterpart to Venus, [the origin of Roman Venus appears to be missing] Aphrodite, was born of the sea, Neptune’s domain.
The Aquarius Archetype: Understanding The Water Bearer
It is not, as Descartes would have us believe, “I think therefore I am.” But instead, it is I feel therefore I am.
Why is Aquarius the water bearer but an air sign?
Does understanding this peculiarity illuminate how we understand the Aquarian archetype? Let’s find out.
I was pondering this matter in preparation for Aquarius season and in honor of my husband who is born right at the very beginning of Aquarius season. Suddenly something clicked when I considered Mark Solms’ latest discoveries in neuropsychology. I highly recommend watching the linked video but the abridged version is, neuroscience has long considered the cerebral cortex to be the seat of our consciousness, however, new evidence suggests it is the brain stem, the emotional and primal locus in our brain, that is the seat of our consciousness.
It is not, as Descartes would have us believe “I think therefore I am.” But instead, it is I feel therefore I am.
Consciousness and what it is, where it is, and how we define it, is a great debate, one that has been discussed since the forums of ancient times.
Since modern science has long considered consciousness to reside in the cerebral cortex, the distinctly human part of the brain, it could be argued that this line of thinking has contributed to the human propensity for exceptionalism and even elitism. This line of thinking has been used to perpetuate eugenics and other racist theories along with distancing human beings from the rest of the animal species that occupy our Earthly habitats. In my undergraduate thesis, I posit that it is in part this exceptionalism and the language that has developed around this construct that has cost especially white folks, particularly those in America, their sustainable relationship with the environment. In an effort to distinguish white folks and whiteness from the Other and from animals, religious and political voices promoted exceptionalism and distinction from the Earth and the natural world. Today it has proven to be a convoluted challenge for white folks and many Americans to take responsibility for their impact on the environment and practices of sustainability.
In this vain, I often ask, how conscientious is the animal that destroys its own habitat?
So what if we consider Solms’ findings? What if we assume his discovery of consciousness as residing in the brain stem is correct? First, we must recognize that many many other species share this part of the brain, and next, we must consider the nature of the impulses that emanate from our brain stem. It is an emotional, instinctive core, and dare I say, an intuitive center. Suddenly it is not our intellectualism that proves our consciousness but our emotionality, our intuitive nature that confirms our consciousness. “Raw feelings are the fundamental form of consciousness,” says Solms, later explaining that this is a survival tactic. The ability to feel allows us to react appropriately to danger. If we were unable to feel suffocation, we would fail to at least attempt to remove ourselves from a burning building, for example. We do not intentionally process the notion that we are gasping for air, we feel the urgency and need to escape danger and return to the kind of breathing that requires none of our attention.
Consciousness is often associated with presence and awareness. With this and Solms’ findings in mind, I agree that feelings and our emotional experiences are our most conscious states.
It is a presence described by our responsiveness to the current moment.
Now let’s consider the elements of water and air along with their archetypes. Water represents an emotional, intuitive, and feeling archetype. Air is a cognitive, intellectual, and communicative archetype. Aquarius is an air sign, and the zodiac that is archetypally associated with systems of ideas, higher consciousness, and collective communications. For Aquarius to be a water bearer but an air sign, is, as we have established, somewhat curious if not mystifying.
So what if we consider Aquarius the water bearer, the archetype of intellectual innovation, systemic psychology, and collective understanding, the structure by which consciousness, Solms’ emotionally defined consciousness, can be contained? Without a vessel, consciousness is another ingredient in the primordial soup. But with the vessel of the Aquarian, the emotional consciousness can be carried, contained, and sustained. It is not at all that the Aquarian is an emotional archetype but instead that it is the one that offers a container for emotionality, thus giving space and form to our collective consciousness.
