Hey everyone, this is Adam L. Emboss from Nightlight Astrology. Today we're going to talk about Pisces. We're going to take a deep dive into the evolutionary signatures of the sign of Pisces. What it means when we're going through a Pisces season, not just in terms of what happens, but why it happens. This is something that astrologers have been talking about for a very long time, but has been illuminated, I think, by several schools of astrology recently. Jeffrey Wolf Green, Stephen Forrest, the evolutionary schools of astrology.
I think I've done a really nice job talking about why does a soul need a certain kind of karmic experience? Why does a soul need to experience things, for example, that are coming through the filter of Pisces? We've done this recently with our clips in Virgo, with our clips in Aquarius, with the Saturn Neptune conjunction in the Aries. I sort of tried to plumb the depths of the evolutionary perspective on these signs and give us some deeper sense of the reason behind it. I'm doing a lot of that work lately. It feels like maybe it's Saturn Neptune in the air, but I've been enjoying it. I hope that you will too.
One of the reasons this comes to my mind right now that this is so important is I was sitting here going like, God, if it didn't feel like we were just about done with Pisces. We've had Saturn in Pisces for two and a half years. Neptune there for God, 14 years. Now as soon as it feels like these two major slow moving planets are exiting the sign, nope, you get a Mercury retrograde in that sign. You get to stay there for a long time, debilitated north node still moving through that sign. Hey, Mars is going to enter that sign right now. Is the host of the Saturn Neptune dynamic? Something in me said, you know what? It might be a good time while we still have, I guess, one almost like, what do they call it? An encore.
Pisces went the band went off stage and we're all like, no, please come back. We need more Pisces experience. Let's pause and ask ours. This serves a couple of purposes. One, it can help us with Mars. It can help us with the ongoing Mercury retrograde. It's kind of final phases. It can help us with the final moments of the north node there. It can also help us reflect on Saturn and Neptune having left and been there for a long time. So it feels like a good time to reflect on the deeper meaning of Pisces. Why do we have these kinds of experiences? What are they doing for the soul?
And I'm going to draw on as I have been the work of Jeffrey Wolf Green, Stephen Forest. You might be asking yourself the question, like, why is Adam suddenly like throw back to his evolutionary astrology roots? There's actually a reason for it. As you guys know, I'm just finishing a book that I wrote called The Oracle Speaks. And I was so fortunate when I reached out to some astrologer's colleagues to ask if they might read the book and offer a blurb for it. Stephen Forest, who I reached out to, very generously offered to write a forward for my book.
我将参考Jeffrey Wolf Green和Stephen Forest的作品,正如我一直以来所做的。你可能会问自己,为什么亚当突然回到他的进化占星学根源?其实,这是有原因的。正如你们所知道的,我正在完成一本叫《神谕之声》的书。当我联系一些占星学同事,询问他们是否愿意阅读我的书并为其写一段推荐语时,我非常幸运。Stephen Forest不仅答应了,还非常慷慨地为我的书写了序言。
And so he wrote a beautiful, very honoring forward for my new book. I was so, it was just so beautiful. And it meant so much to me because although we're of different schools of astrology, he, just the way he practices his craft as a storyteller, the depth and spiritual focus he brings to astrology, have always been one of the, you know, one of like an elder, something like that, like a role model, someone that I really look up to as an astrologer. And so of course, it has had me reflecting on my evolutionary roots and respending time with some of his books, some of Jeffrey Wolfgreens' work.
Another friend of my name, Ari Mochow Wolf, has been reading my book as well when we've been kind of conversing. So I've just been in a bit of an evolutionary headspace thinking about these things. Anyway, just a little background in case people are wondering like, why are we, the other thing I will say very honestly is that all of these evolutionary perspectives on the signs are in a way they're not out of line with the history of astrology and the meanings of the signs. In fact, I think there are very faithful representation of them.
I may not use the North and South node techniques or the Pluto and Pluto polarity point techniques of evolutionary astrology. But I don't think that they're missing when it comes to their school, the school's ability to talk about the signs on a level of evolutionary significance that I still deeply resonate with, even though I'm a Hellenistic astrologer. Anyway, all that being said before we get into it today, remember to like and subscribe. Those are long intro. And you can find transcripts of any of these daily talks on the website, knightastrology.com.
A couple of brief promotions for the day. Just want to make you aware of some things that are happening here. So head to the events page and you're going to go to the immersive retreat. Thankfully, everything is intact for our Mexico retreat after some drama that was taking place in Mexico. We kind of had our eye monitoring the situation and have been in contact with the retreat center and their staff and they've been just lovely and telling us what's been happening on the ground. But everything's safe and stable there as of the time I'm making this again after some unrest. So we're going to continue with our retreat. You know, it's interesting because not to overly romanticize it, but in the ancient world, a pilgrimage to go see an oracle could be a very treacherous long-term journey. Something about the events that happened recently made me realize that just having a little something at stake in making a journey like this to study the art of divination and to essentially go on a retreat that's about connecting with an oracle.
It suddenly took on a lot deeper meaning for me. You know, obviously we'll keep our eye on things that are being changed and we'll keep that in mind too. But just so you know, the retreat's open, we still have some spots available, it's taking place in June, so check that out. And then let's see, go to our daily meditation group. If you want to come meditate with us every morning, it's free. 9.30 a.m. Central, money through Saturdays, 11.30 a.m. Central on Sundays, free meditation guys. It's a great way to start your day and a way to marry your study of astrology to a spiritual practice. The other thing is we have, where am I? Life talks. So the last thing I need to promote are the talk coming up on March 12th is on the first house. That's going to be a deep exploration of the topic of Dharma.
What that means and why the first house is anything but just like a superficial persona. So if you can't attend that talk live, then you get the recording. Oh, and you know what I almost forgot, I'm sorry, today's a long intro. The other thing to remember is that if you're in Minneapolis, we have an event happening this Friday night, a time to connect and heal and share and meditate in Minneapolis here at the New City Center, a great fine collective, 6 to 8.30 p.m. Friday night. Come out and join us. It's free. Just RSVP and let us know you're coming. Hope to see you guys there and have a nice meditation and sharing session. Yeah, I think we need a little time like this if you're local here around the Twin Cities has been a lot this winter.
So anyway, okay, that's it. All right, now let's turn our attention to the real time clock and sort out this Piscian Marsh. It's like a super, super puddle. So the reason, again, that I'm bringing this to our attention is in case you thought Pisci's life in the realm of Pisci's was over, you are sorely mistaken. We have Mars just entering Pisci's, North node is in Pisci's, Sun is in Pisci's, Mercury Retrograde taking place in Pisci's, Venus is culminating in her exaltation in Pisci's. Now this is coming on the heels of a lunar eclipse in Virgo yesterday and Pisci's is also the polarity point. The ruler of the eclipse is the Mercury Retrograde in Pisci's. So even though Saturn and Neptune got out, it feels like, oh, wow, that house has had a lot of attention for a long time. The band has come back on stage one last jam session.
So again, the very basic purpose of today's talk is to explore some of the deeper evolutionary meanings of the sign of Pisci's. What we mean by that very simply is what does this sign tell us about not just what happens but why it happens for the soul, for its evolutionary journey across many lifetimes. Now you kind of have to believe in that kind of stuff to really resonate with the evolutionary perspective. An evolutionary perspective is not new. It's been around for thousands of years. The belief that the soul is transmigrating in an evolutionary enlightenment kind of journey. Yeah, that's a part of astrology always has been. I don't think there's anything in this talk, even though a lot of it is drawn from the work of Jeffrey Wolf Green, Stephen Forest, and those schools that deviates very much at all from the meaning of the sign of Pisci's, from the dawn of Hellenistic astrology even.
那么,今天演讲的基本目的是探讨双鱼座深层次的进化意义。简单来说,这个星座告诉我们不仅是事情如何发生,还有为什么会发生,特别是对于灵魂在多次生命中的进化旅程的影响。当然,你得相信这样的事情才能真正与进化的观点产生共鸣。进化的观点并不新鲜,已经流传了几千年了,人们相信灵魂在一种启蒙的进化旅程中不断转世。这一直是占星术的一部分。尽管我们今天的讨论大量借鉴了 Jeffrey Wolf Green、Stephen Forrest 和他们的学派的研究,但从古希腊占星术开始,这些讨论并没有偏离双鱼座的意义。
That does not necessarily mean the techniques are the same. Again, as I was saying earlier, the modern school of evolutionary astrology has specific uses of the nodes of the moon that aren't identical to Hellenistic. Use of Pluto and Pluto polarity point, not identical. But this content today is, I think, universal. I don't have any issues with these takes on the sign of Pisci's, which I first learned as an evolutionary astrologer and only confirmed and understood more deeply when I started studying ancient dignities and why Venus was exalted here, why Jupiter's Feminine rulership was here, and so on. So anyway, let's get into it. What we're really talking about is why do we need these kinds of experiences? What was Saturn and Neptune and Pisci's really about?
Think about the whole sign house in your birth chart if you need to connect this to a more practical sphere of your life. But as we now are faced with at least another month plus of Pisci's experience before the node change sign, we have the north node and Pisci's all the way to August. So what is this about? Well, from the evolutionary perspective, there are a number of things that I have on my list to talk about today. First of all, remember, when we talked about Virgo, we talked about Virgo sort of becoming an adult, like the initiation of moving from youth into adulthood and being like, I need to be a responsible member of a society. Oh, I didn't knew I was going to do it, but I didn't. But you have to be a responsible member of the S word and you have to show up with skills and abilities.
And measure yourself, you're worth in some ways in terms of how responsible contributor you are to the world and so forth. So we talked about Virgo at length. The opposite side of that, the very last sign of the zodiac, is very much about the dissolution of the identity that you forged in the world. We're talking about a sign at the end of a cycle, another ending cycle, by the way. So don't think when we talk about Pisces, I don't want people to mistake what I'm saying for there being some kind of literal linear progression through the signs. Pisces is more enlightened than Aries because it's the last sign. It is a recurring, never-ending, eternal cycle like Yin and Yang in the circle, okay?
But from the standpoint of a kind of developmental story through the zodiac that we tell as a metaphor, we're at the point of the dissolution of the whole cycle and the restarting of a new cycle. So that's a signature in Pisces that often relates to the surrender of identity, the surrender of worldly conditions that we've become identified with, the surrender of a sense of anything in this world being final. And instead, there's a deep awareness in the sign of Pisces that everything is impermanent. Everything is in flux and there is this higher purpose to life which is God realization, enlightenment, spiritual evolution, whatever you want to call it.
I was giving a talk on the eclipse and why eclipse is exist and I said, Franchant philosophers, everything was happening under this broad umbrella of the soul evolving. Everything like me taking Hilda on a walk is a local experience that's happening in time space in a particular body in a particular lifetime. It has its own relative truth and subjective core and its reasons for existing in a matrix of related events that are here in local but they're all kind of camped under this bigger umbrella of spiritual evolution. Now that's a very clear idea in ancient philosophy.
But if you think about that ultimate banner of spiritual evolution, in many ways the sign of Pisces can represent that in terms of the zodiac, we're talking about a Jupiter-ruled sign. Jupiter was the planet of purpose and meaning. What is the meaning of life? It's God realization from this standpoint. It's enlightenment. It's the process of the soul liberating itself from falsehoods or illusions. So this sign has to do with the identification of my will with thine, right? Not my will but thine. But there's a paradoxical way in which that can be very empowering.
We learn to flow with the Tao in this sign because we align our will with something bigger. We align our ego with something bigger. So it's not killing the ego in this sign. Some people think about death of the ego but it's merging with surrendering with becoming more deeply identified with on the level of will and identity, the transcendent. And that is a kind of like a depersonalization. It's not annihilating who you are as an individual but it's expanding who you are to something beyond separate self. And this is kind of a culminating space from the evolutionary perspective.
Now again, don't take that literally. It doesn't mean if you have a bunch of Pisces energy that you're better than Sally. So anyway, okay, so part two. What does it mean? What does it actually mean to surrender, dissolve, relinquish the ego? Some people have ideas about this that are really punitive. Like the ego is bad. And well, the ego just means I. That's what the word means. It means I. So it's a subjective center of identity. Well, the idea, if it's very basic and I'm sure most of you know this. So I'm probably just preaching to the choir. It's like in this lifetime, my subjective center of consciousness in this body with this personality and this temperament and the life circumstances I have is not ultimate or final. It was something different in a previous lifetime. It will be something different in a future lifetime.
All we mean by ego desentering or as ego as the ultimate organizing principle is that the idea that that is the concrete absolute center of reality is loosened. It's it's hold as a kind of illusion. An illusion of permanence and fixity is being loosened. That doesn't mean the ego stops existing. It means it's decentralized. It means its power to be an ultimate, absolute organizing principle is seen through as an illusion. I think a lot of people listening to this know exactly what I'm talking about. We've all probably a reason we're into astrology is because we've had an experience that this ego in this body is temporary, sacred, beautiful, not like something that needs to be chucked out or killed, you know, but not ultimate.
So this is a sign though that continues and perpetuates the decentralization. And it's deep, it's deep, deep, deep, right? It is if you think, oh, I'm not, I'm my ego's de-centered. Is it, but is it? You know, that's just like for myself, that's why I sit on this couch every day. And if you join me for morning meditations, like this couch is the part is the part of my day that is dedicated to handing the ultimate organizing principle back over to God, to divinity, to the goddess, to hire self, whatever, whatever we call it, meditation is one way. There's many, right? That we have of saying no, my ego exists, but it's actually a servant to a higher organizing principle that's actually at work in my life.
That's a deep, that's an ongoing act of ego death, but you know, death is so extreme. It's like, why does this, this language sounds like it's like a fucking game of thrones episode. You know, like, I'm gonna kill the king. He's a false lord. Well, I mean, you know, if you've got a really huge ego, then, you know, like, maybe, but, and we've all had moments where our ego's just like, wow, you're a tyrant. But mostly this sign just has to do with that gradual, it's like water, gradually washing away the edges of hard rocks, the idea that we hold that is so common because it's scary. It's scary to be alive.
We need something that gives us a center or a sense of stability. I, self is one such idea, but it's actually a servant in a temporary mortal ecological body and framework of a higher self, a higher purpose, a higher organizing principle. And Pisces is the sign whose work it is to continually make us aware of that and try to gently nudge us in that direction. Actually, the infinite is organizing, you know. So, but what happens as this de-centering is taking place in our life is that you may lose touch with former ambitions. There may be a certain kind of disillusionment around worldly definitions of success, a spiritual kind of longing for that higher intelligence that may actually need to disrupt some ordinary sphere of life where more mundane organizing principles have held power.
And in an overwhelming sense at times like this isn't really who I am, that grows in strength because this sign is trying to actively help us surrender to this higher power. This is by the way, why when we go looking for this higher power, it's very easy to misidentify the higher power. When we don't know where to find it or we don't know what it is, the longing can take us in the direction of addiction or illusion or intoxication or idealism, romanticism, projections, fantasies. All of those things are just sort of like misdirections of the right impulse to seek something bigger as a container and organizing principle for the experience of being alive in a kind of vulnerable state.
So this is why we have a sign that also teaches us compassion because if you can see that this is the case, as I just said, then you can see that people are doing their best to try to find this. Sometimes we think it'll save us by an ideology or a religion or a love relationship or alcohol or whatever. And when we put everything into something thinking, this is the higher thing. It's often outside of ourselves. Often those things can become illusory like intoxicants. This is why a Jupiter-ruled sign in Pisces, just like Sagittarius, can become very dogmatic. You wouldn't think of Pisces in people as being dogmatic, but to whatever extent we've externalized this sense of higher organizing stability, sanity, authority, guidance direction into a relationship or into the bottle or into whatever it is, is often the extent to which we will eventually have to be stripped of that illusion later and stripped of some sense of maybe dogma or fanaticism or addictive, compulsive attachment.
So it's all the water signs in Indian astrology are associated with Moksha, which means liberation from karma. So this is a sign that's about pointing us toward source and away from illusions that pose. But the compassion is key because the things that pose are usually coming from the right space, they're just misapplications of the desire for something higher to guide and direct our lives. That romantic longing, in other words, rightly directed is a romantic longing for the soul, for God, for divinity, for the heart, which can easily extend into the world and easily extend into relationships and to the living of a life, but not if we put the cart before the horse.
So now one of Jeffrey Wolf's green central metaphors that he uses to describe the sign of Pisces in its evolutionary necessity is the plunge into the infinite. So the soul occasionally has to remember that it is a part of something boundless and infinitely real and new, which is why I was mentioning Eclipse's, for example, and I was talking about how Eclipse's have to disrupt a part of us that has found something comfortable that's like, oh, this is an operative truth or set of conditions that makes me feel happy and secure and stable. But if it gets stagnant and prevents us from continuing to stay open to and move in the ever-evolving infinite field of love and truth, then something will disrupt the status quo of that system, ecologically, comically.
Pisces is very similar in terms of its disruptiveness. This is the, you know, in modern astrology, this is, I think, one of the interesting and not so bad reason. I mean, obviously, as a traditional astrology, I don't like conflating signs of houses, but you can understand why the 12th house would be conflated with Pisces in this perspective. The evolutionary demand in this sign is one of faith that you, that something has come in to take away your sense of control or certainty or understanding. And so it's a test of faith that in what feels like the muddledness or overwhelm or mist or fog, all things that we also end up associating with Neptune, right?
That there is some feeling of your way through the darkness, the overwhelm. There is always a moment in the evolutionary process of the soul where birth canal, going through a birth canal means going through constrictive, contractive, dark places where you can't see where you're going and you don't understand, you don't have the big picture. And Pisces bizarrely is a sign that often implies this very contractive sense of confusion or loss of direction or overwhelm and it can feel like you're trapped and without bearing and without direction. And that that's a really interesting thing because typically the Jupiter ruled signs because Jupiter and Saturn are natural opposites in the language of ancient astrology, the Jupiter ruled signs have a subtle implicit battle with Saturn, Sagittarius 2, but it told for totally different reasons.
That's because the language of ancient astrology, if you study the dignities, you're going to see that like anytime you're dealing with a Jupiter ruled place or a Jupiter ruled thing, it has built into it the contractive opposite of Saturn. So the point is that the contraction of Pisces that's present here in a Jupiter ruled sign that tends to be more about faith and buoyancy and direction is loss of faith, is darkness, is confusion, is overwhelm, is a crisis of direction or guidance, right? But these are mystical openings, these are mystical passages that tend to be redemptive because they are in the end a Jupiter Venus ruled sign that tend to lead to things that save or uplift or redeem or guide us through the contracted period.
This is a sign that's on the precipice of the moment of birth. So that birth canal in Pisces is not quite like the deep dark winter of Saturn and you know like Capricorn or something like that or Scorpio going into the darkness. Those signs are more about the loss, the death, the mortality, the endings, the limits. is a sign that is really about the process of moving up, out and through contractive space into expansion. Now for most of us what we don't realize is that our ego is actually kind of a dark restrictive place because it's very limited in its capacity to see ultimate reality. Most of us end up de-centering the ego and putting it into the role of a beautiful friend, a beautiful servant like when I think of myself, when I think of Adam, I'm like, well, what a what a chap. You know, like, I'm my own friend, but I know what my role is in this lifetime.
I really do not that I perform it well. My ego doesn't try to take over. It does all the time, but my role, Adam, is to serve, to serve this bigger thing that's happening for all souls, but also for my soul. That's why I sit. That's why I provide free meditation every day. That's why I do this. That's why I love this because I know that this higher truth is where my real happiness resides is where my real heart resides. You know? So when we go through de-centering experiences of the ego, they can be they can be really heavy because at first it almost feels like we're being told there's something wrong with us or there's something to feel shame about or there's a feeling of like this is why the sign is often talked about.
Liz Green talks about it frequently as a sign that brings up the juxtaposition between sinners and saints or salvation and damnation. When you're discovering that your ego living with the illusion that it is the ultimate organizing stable, sane center of your life and when you're when that starts being shown to you as untrue and this bigger context appears sometimes the very first thing to do the very the ego's very first reaction is to think there was something wrong with me. There's something bad about me and that's where all of the heavy stuff about ego death comes in it's it's not graduated from a paradigm of shame and guilt and damnation and sin and original sin and all these bad trips that aren't really true.
Liz Green 经常谈到这一点,认为这是一个揭示罪人与圣人或救赎与诅咒之间对比的标志。当你意识到自己的自我一直生活在一种将自己视为生活中唯一稳定且理智的中心错觉中时,而当这种错觉被揭穿,一个更大背景浮现的时候,自我的第一个反应往往是认为"我有问题,我有缺陷"。这就是所谓的自我死亡背后沉重的内容所在,它没有从耻辱、内疚、诅咒、罪恶和原罪这些其实并不真实的观念中解放出来。
Anyway, so we have identity implosions, mystical openings, psychological confusions, periods of deep existential uncertainty all actually very saturnian but this sign does tend to deliver us from them that's the kind of process that the sign points to very different than being led into contractive spaces out of expansive spaces you know it's like it's different when fall comes and the abundance is dropped and it's more about emptying a cup. This sign is actually about filling your cup but it kind of goes through a process of being empty too that's what can be so confusing about this sign is so sort of like angsty but anyway the crises are not punishments their initiations into a larger field of consciousness into a higher organizing principle that your ego can actually find its sanctification in its reason for existing it's total special beautifulness you know.
Well there's a few evolutionary responses to this sign that Jeffrey Wolfgrain talks about one he talks about as surrendering to the ocean and this is something that comes obviously I know he was someone who read a lot of Vedic philosophy think you might have even had a Vedic guru at one point I don't know the whole story but the surrender to the ocean would be the the ego seeing itself as ultimately a temporary part of and servant of the one that does not eliminate individuality does not have to eliminate you know individual beings or diversity but it is a recognition that there is this one thing this one heart this one love that we're all part of and there's a that evolutionary response ideally is to sort of consciously become more identified surrendering of the will finding of the will finding.
Of the way in this oneness that can lead actively in this sign to greater emphasis on devotion meditation contemplation living as a vessel for something larger being more in touch with what inspires guides on a divine or transcendent level the individual having societalized it's self is now recognizing that it's good to be a contributing member of a community but even bigger than that is to be a contributing member of infinity you know and that larger sense has to be coupled with the local sense and this is why conversations about bypassing are almost always very predictable and somewhat ignorant to be honest because the work of being a local contributing member of anything is really only as good as the level of surrender and service that you've found to your spirit soul in other words active civic civil service without spiritual practice is more commonly talked about as the real bypassing.
I mean most traditions say that's actually harder because most people most people find action in the world easier than spiritual practice but you need both is the point and being of service without having a spiritual practice of surrender to this transmigratory multiple lifetime process that your soul is going through identifying with that as the larger reality is actually typically more problematic for people than you know bypassing the material level of commitment or contribution because of being overly involved with spiritual practice so but the point is still that right action in the world positive contributions from a space of dharma which is very burgo needs an equal emphasis on that which is transcendent because this world will pass away all empires will pass away the sun will burn out the earth will die and all of it from the standpoint of eternity will have been a bubble rippling up to the top of a river and popping and it will be as beautiful and simple as that not that is not evidence of meaninglessness that is evidence of a beauty and a simplicity that is so vast and so tremendous that it should inspire with us within us the deepest level of surrender trust and faith.
And also at the bottom of that is also all of the motivation we need in the world to do something useful with this lifetime because why wouldn't we if that's what life is then we have all the impetus in the world to be active on part of beauty and peace because what else is there that's actually worth anything but love and beauty and peace and communion but these are Pisces Virgo dynamics you can feel them as i'm talking about them i hope resistance to dissolution is the other tendency so when the soul resists this higher orientation escapism becomes the substitute and that will often be escapist fan it'll be escapism fantasy romanticism rose color glasses illusions that inflate to compensate for the insecurity of losing the ego fantasy to replace a faith path escapism or intoxication as a substitute for the actual work and commitment to transcendence one may clean cling to like a kind of inflated distorted sense of who they are savior complexes victim narratives addiction avoidance dissociation denial all of these things can come up in this sign as ways of having to avoid the deeper work of surrender and if anyone tells you it isn't a kind of work for most of us it is.
Grace is always at work in the sign of Pisces grace is always at work in the universe which means if we make two steps of effort the universe gives grace by taking us ten steps when we only made two on our own but don't get it twisted let's not cheap in grace here if you don't take even a half a step the universe can't bring you the five if you don't take the two steps it can't bring you the ten we have to make some effort you know an effort is not an indication that there's something bad or wrong about you existing right effort has to do with the recognition that I am a participating member of divinity I'm part of the cast of this light which means I have to take up the burden of learning and growing and evolving I have to put my money where my mouth is walk my talk not because I'm messed up but because this truth is worth sacrificing for that's it right both of these signs Virgo and Pisces have so much to do with willing sacrifice the shadows of course could be martyrdom or self denial or you know subservience or servitude or slavery or intoxication or addiction yes you can get lost in all of that stuff but a little effort is required and then grace carries us.
We show the smallest Iota in fact there's a poem that when I grew up as a kid I really loved my dad used to read it to me it's called the rhyme of the ancient mariner and in this text the mariner goes through this whole ordeal and he's basically he gets cursed by his shipmates and then all these gnarly bad things happen and he's sitting there at the end and he's just like completely screwed and he's on the deck of the ship and everyone on the ship was killed by an angel of death and he's looking out at the dark night of the ocean and like everyone's dead it's really gnarly and and he sees these watersnakes swimming in like the moonlight and starlight and these are like kind of dark underworld creatures but the way the light catches them he just thinks to himself that's beautiful he appreciates he takes a moment to be appreciative even though he's basically fucked.
And then all of a sudden because of that simple act of appreciating beauty in the midst of darkness simple gratitude simple faith everything changes all of the darkness transforms and it's amazing because the whole the whole story of the rhyme of the ancient mariner is in many ways about um the the the the little mattering a lot more than we think the little things so in this sign there's this like oh my god it's too hard but and that's a real thing that we all deal with it's like it's hard to cope it's hard to exist it's hard to evolve it's hard to have faith it's hard to keep going.
And you know but this sign tends to reward pure faithful efforts to surrender to trust to have hope and to move forward despite darkness despite difficulty it rewards you if even if you have been a victim of terrible people or forces it rewards when you forgive and try to move forward even just a little that doesn't mean you have to like people who hurt you but it says deep in your heart you know that people who do stuff like that are suffering and you could take a moment to acknowledge that even as you heal and hurt from hurt and trauma it's little things like that in this sign that show us that we're placing our faith in something bigger.
It's the little things that say I'm suffering but I'm going to choose to have faith despite the fact that my circumstances feel very overwhelming to me and I'm going to stay very humble and faithful this sign can feel so heavy because of the feeling that you're flooded by circumstances that are very overwhelming and sometimes feel very unfair and yet if you fall into addiction avoidance dissociation denial savior victim narratives etc etc etc as ways of coping with or dealing with things there's you go down there's a downward spiral and it gets pretty wild.
Now I say this as someone who also watched my father who has a good amount of Piscy in planets in his chart go down a pretty dark downward spiral because he just had a really hard time not turning his story into a woe is me kind of thing I think it's really hard to talk about this and he's good now but it took him a long time I just think it's really hard to talk about this because victimhood is real it's not an illusion in fact I can't stand those new age narratives that are like yeah you know your victimhood is a total illusion the empowered and all like it's not that simple you know healing is not that simple.
But faith faith heals and and faith can faith is sort of like saying look it is real that bad things have happened it is also equally real that I am having faith in some higher direction or purpose or meaning for my life and that ultimately I am safe held loved nothing is at stake in eternity my life is being guided darkness exists for a reason I don't understand I can trust that healing will come to me I can trust that my life is purposeful I don't have to run or escape or you know fall into a state of letting my complaints and my problems overwhelm me.
But it's a battle in this sign to wrestle light from darkness and ultimately that is why this sign is kind of the ultimate like fall on your knees sign it is hard to fall on our knees because a lot for a lot of us falling on our knees suggests submitting myself to an authority that I'm not sure I can trust and then the authority however is our own higher self it is our own soul it is not just some external figure an old man in the sky surrendering to that is surrendering to the strongest most beautiful heart-centered compassionate forgiving graceful part of who we are as much as it is a part of what is real overall it's a tremendous act of faith in this sign to find that during times where you just feel screwed.
Now there's also a weird way in which this sign points to archetypal identification this is something Liz Green wrote about in her book on Neptune this is something Jeffrey Wolf Green talks about as well but I think most famously Liz Green talked about this because it's a sign that's been associated with Neptune in the modern tape I think it's there even in the traditional take for different reasons I won't get into all of that but the basic idea here is that the sign points to the tendency to get overly identified with things in the collective movements the zeitgeist this can this has a tendency in other words the sign does of getting lost in projections fantasies and collective themes or trends that are sometimes very subtle and hard to see and the over identification with collective storylines tend to be in terms of what will heal or save us in some mundane sense or what is the source of the problem in some mundane sense.
这段话的大意是关于某个星座如何与原型认同相关,Liz Green 在她关于海王星的书中讨论过这个主题,Jeffrey Wolf Green 也有提到过,但最有名的可能是 Liz Green 的讨论。这个星座在现代的解释中经常与海王星联系在一起,它也存在于传统的解释中,只是原因不同。基本的观点是,这个星座倾向于让人过度认同于集体运动或时代精神,有迷失于投射、幻想和集体主题或潮流中的倾向,有些时候这些东西很微妙且难以察觉。过度认同于集体故事线通常与从某种世俗意义上能治愈或拯救我们的东西有关,或是与某种世俗意义上问题的根源有关。
And this is problematic because from the standpoint of the ultimate reality of Pisces it's again it's the it's divinity it's love it's the heart it's the soul that is real and that saves and the problem for everyone and everything that potentially keeps us from that is ignorance and illusion that we think that temporary things that are always fluctuating in their states if we grab hold of one of them will fulfill us that's the basic source of illusion desire fear aversion you know hatred greed jealousy all these things that burn in us the the source of suffering talked about in Buddhism right these are all rooted in hey as I'm having experiences you know what if I have enough money if I have enough popularity if I have enough power if I'm if I get the right relationships you know if I attain these things if I get this kind of mastery if I if I just stay away from this or that we all of these kinds of stories that we have about desires and aversion that guide our sense of what will provide us a safe happy existence.
Those are the illusions those are the basic illusions and the basic truth that saves is you are a heart you are a spirit soul your beingness your very consciousness is the seat of bliss of truth of love etc so Pisces wants us to see the clear problem of suffering and the clear solution just like just like Buddhist describe or yogis describe all these ancient traditions basically describe it in the same way you know but what can happen is that we in the sign of Pisces we can get glommed on to almost like misappropriations of the problem and the solution that exists in temporary settings so let me give you a simple example not untrue but only partially true is the idea that the the problem is technology or the problem is dissociation because of technology or the problem is environmental decay like lack of care for the earth these are all truths right but people tend to say like that's the they get well if I can identify the source of the problem right and it tends to be very collective like the problem for people for humanity is greed or and these are problems so it's not like untrue but we tend to think of it as the whole truth and then we think of the salvation as like well the salvation is I'm going to you know I'm going to join green peace and become an environmental activist.
Oh really maybe that's a really great thing to do and it's not based on something that's untrue but the point that Liz green makes so well Jeffrey Wolf green makes as well is that do you see how if people replace this with the basic problem of suffering and the basic solution of spiritual life that they're missing the much larger reality where the impromptu problem of environmental decay and the problem of maybe a misuse of technology the problem of reductive empiricism and objectifying the world those are real problems but sometimes we we rather than seeing them as a manifestation of these more basic universal issues and solutions we treat them as though they're everything this is so common it and so this projection and fantasy that this hey here's a temporary problem that I see in the world and here's what I can see as the answer to that problem have a way of replacing the spiritual process.
哦,真的吗?也许这真的是一件很好的事情,而且不是基于某些不真实的东西。但Liz Green 和 Jeffrey Wolf Green 都很好地指出,如果人们用基本的痛苦问题和精神生活的基本解决方案来替代这些表面问题,他们就会错过一个更大的现实:即环境恶化、技术滥用、还原主义经验主义和物化世界的问题,这些是真实存在的问题。但有时候,我们将这些问题视为一切,而不是看作这些更基本的普遍问题和解决方案的表现。这种情况非常普遍,因此,这种投射和幻想——即“这里是我在世界上看到的一个临时问题,而这里是我认为可以解决这个问题的答案”——有时会取代精神成长的过程。
Now if they include the spiritual process and you're also doing something to you know combat kids melting their brains from using Instagram at too early of an age like that's not bad at all but it is a problem if that quest and mission doesn't take place within this larger container and for whatever reason people in this sign in particular tend to get really heroic about a lot of the things that are only partial truths is that I hope that makes sense because it's a little tricky to talk about because on the one hand it might sound like you're saying that well spiritual things are more important than green piece or something it's that that's not that's not at all what we're saying so hopefully that that was communicated clearly enough it's a tricky thing to explain anyway going on the dreams fantasies and illusions.
of this sign are really important because it's the imaginative faculty that bridges us to spirituality when for example when most of us get into astrology it's because we have noticed signs omens the oracle speaking throughout the fabric of our lives and you've had you've had the ability to do that because you're an imaginative person fantasy is not wrong imagination is not wrong but it's supposed to be a faculty that is always connecting us to and helping us in the process of shifting from ego centered to source centered where the ego is just a contributing cast member in infinity right but the if the imagination is being used as a bridge to the infinite thumbs up and pices fantastic art that facilitates that love and romance that facilitates that of course romance and love with it with another soul can facilitate spiritual awakening art can facilitate dance can facilitate spiritual awakening.
So all of the imagined this is the exultation of Venus right all the imaginative dimensions of pices can awaken this pointing us toward the infinite but when disconnected from that then we're thinking that it's romance that saves it's art that saves but unless it has that higher context alone it becomes quite hollow it becomes quite shallow it becomes the source of illusion rather than revelation it so a lot of the sign has to do with also recognizing where there is a healthy fantasy a healthy romantic impulse a healthy imaginative faculty that just need to be redirected to something that is is serving a higher spiritual end and that's the same exact thing with the green piece right it's like green piece good environmental stewardship good earth having a maybe a problem with humans not treating it right accurate assessment right but how can you also marry that to a transcendental perspective that that same like shift has to also come into do you mistakenly think that you know a painting is going to save your soul it could save your soul but only I guess if you're aware that you have one you know what you get what I mean it's like it's like so there's it's funny because this sign is like so imaginative but there's also like a very mundane level at which imagination and fantasy and art and romance exist in this world disconnected from source.
I will tell you like let me just give you a simple example and again I told this story recently but my mom and dad were you know kind of getting inundated by a hippie counterculture in the 60s when they were teenagers and they talked about how you know they they had strong faith path right they were like hippie Christians and they at times felt like it was art and drugs for the sake of art and drugs so there was something very imaginative very creative that drew them to a lot of the hippie scene but the lack of spiritual context at times made it feel like nothing more than hedonism.
Similarly I was invited at one point to go to Burning Man now I have I know a lot of people have gone to Burning Man over the years friends personal friends you know I've never gone so I'm not in any place to judge and it's not something as vast as Burning Man it's not just one thing but one of the things that I initially had a hard time with in terms of like do I want to go is I was like I don't know you know like a lot of this seems like there's a very deep spiritual core to a lot of the intentions behind why people go and the art that's there and what it speaks to is clearly pointed towards something transcendent but there was enough of the feeling that there might just be a glorification of fantasy art romance happening here disconnected and sort of hedonistic that I felt suspicious.
Now again for those of you who've been to Burning Man and love it and and know the transcendent value of things that happened there I don't mean any offense but I'm just trying to give an illustration of like where I've come up against that edge myself um I remember when I was in high school I was a part of the arts and theater department in my school and I was someone who was studying philosophy and really starting to open myself up to different spiritual like broader spiritual experiences outside the Christian faith and I had a hard time connecting with people in the art community who just wanted to smoke pot and do art and didn't care about anything bigger happening in reality so it's the same thing in this sign where the and again I don't mean for any of this to sound judgmental right because again like I would say some of my best friends have gone to Burning Man and had very spiritual experiences so please don't get me wrong I'm not trying to be judging anything but it's that idea that the energies of Pisces disconnected from source can be about things that are romantic and artistic and fantasy based but being very mundane and actually the source of illusion and distraction.
They don't appear that way because they're sort of beautiful and and centrally gratifying on some level but there's some need to overcome this in this sign so anyway take that as you will it's you know a lot of these things are just like ooh I need to I'm gonna have to take a walk after this this is tricky to explain and I I don't want to be misunderstood as a hater but anyway Pisces also correlates to faith we've talked about that a bunch um but it's not so much about systems of faith I mean any system of faith could could be Piscy in but it's more about the trust and the surrender and the faith that comes through any kind of participation in a religious structure or tradition in other words it's experiential in Pisces it's not it and that's another thing that happens where Pisces the Piscy in path is truly mystical in the sense that you know every institutional religion typically has a kind of controversial mystical sect and the mystical sect is almost always about emphasizing experience over doctrines and institution.
They can coexist they don't have to cancel each other out but the point is that this sign really says like where is the experience so I want to give you an example because this might help so a Saturn was going through Pisces along with Neptune in my 11th house place of community groups friends um I went through a lot of different faith experiences with Neptune in that house you know but most recently with Saturn at the outset of Saturn in Pisces I had left the box the yoga community that I was a part of I had taken a name so some of you knew me from that former name and in that 11th house as Saturn went through I started thinking about what is my responsibility very Saturnian to the larger purpose and arc of the larger field of astrology and how can I show some sense of putting that higher purpose of the entire field ahead of my own interest just as a creator or just as a teacher or just as a professional.
It's a very Pisces 11 house kind of thing right and so some of the things that came out of Saturn in the 11 that you now know and have seen that have come from the work of contemplating these exact spaces in this higher sense of surrendering to something higher in the 11th or Saturn uh bringing on the affordable reading service that provides tiered pricing that gives graduates from our programs and opportunity to practice to earn some money to develop their careers we don't take any money from that and provides flexible price points for people that to me is a kind of Piscy in like what's the higher calling what's the higher purpose where is there some surrender of you know my own self-interest for the sake of the larger field that's a work that we have to do that you know it was it was coming up for me and like this ache like I got to do there's something and more I need to do.
Holding auditions for co-hosts that can help other creators that come through our school start getting experience making content on a social media platform it can get some visibility build their work that was Saturn in the 11th house being like what is my what is my contribution to the larger whole of the field at the very end of this process it was starting to hold space in Minneapolis for free meetups for meditation on the equinoxes and solstices that turn into silent Sundays that turn into daily meditation free right so when when we're thinking about Pisces we're thinking about what is the process of surrendering to something bigger that's trying to come through that we want to be in service to and that interestingly for me one of the things that guided the meditation was for a while was hanging out the Quakers love the Quakers they just sit quietly together and the experience of that is what came through the silent sitting group that we have.
not the doctrine not the dog month not the actual institution of Quakerism but the experience sitting quietly that's what conveyed that's Piscian as well because I had to go through a process what real hard process where I had to differentiate between what was really experientially speaking to me about my involvement with Quakers and what I could provide to the community that was of experiential essence of those experiences that did not come easily right that was a differentiating process between the the container and the essence and this is something that Pisces is having us work on a Jupiter-ruled sign that's talking about faith as lived experience that you surrender to that you let shape and guide so that's been a bit just to reflect a little bit about how Saturn worked through Pisces in my eleventh anyway um one of the reasons that it's so easy to feel like a victim in this sign is because you you can feel like you're the victim of unseen overwhelming forces that's a very strong part of Pisces um the martyr the victim there there can be an easy way of when like overwhelming things happen you think to yourself you can instantly say well I'm going to be the hero or I'm going to save someone from that thing that is like catastrophic and there's there's something really compassionate and sweet and truly martyr like about this sign.
I mean to stand up for someone to sacrifice something of yourself on behalf of someone especially when it feels like overwhelming or unseen forces are bringing catastrophe is like an incredibly noble spiritual thing to do the Bodhisattvas do this for us could Jesus does this for us all you get what I'm saying but also there can be a way in which we try to ecotistically gain glory or power or pride or self-importance by becoming someone's savior or constantly looking for victims to elevate through our heroic effort and the difference can be very subtle often it has to do with how much attention we try to draw to ourselves for the act of giving or caring but also drawing boundaries and saying this is all I have to give that can really come from an authentic place right all of this stuff is really is really hard what we really want in response to overwhelming situations is to call on something within ourselves to trust and surrender at such times and also you know kind of like you get what you give that there's if you want to receive mercy and support you have to make some effort and you also have to develop a practice of thinking how am I in service to this larger unseen force of divinity and the more we do that the more we find that there's this reciprocal dynamic of aid support help flowing in when we're overwhelmed because we've also recognized how to give from a real healthy place when others are overwhelmed and this is like that's why it's difficult because you have to ask the question how do I give and be in service to something bigger than myself from something I can actually give you know something that's that's real it's not just you know a kind of vain heroism.
anyway so when Pisces has been integrated consciously to round out our talk today the ego has become a servant not a tyrant the individual acts in harmony with something that's trans personal compassion naturally arises for ourselves and others service is not just about improvement or heroism but participation and service to a larger process that we're we've gotten in touch with life is lived as experiential faith in and through containers possibly but also doesn't necessarily need them and you know the final realization is very coarse in miracles it's like nothing real can be lost so a lot of the sign is is is deeply uplifting in the way that it takes away burdens that we never really had to carry that weren't really real on some level anyway
I know that this has been a sprawling exploration of a very deep and and mystical space of the zodiac I just hope that it's been useful that you can do something positive with this as we have a little bit more Pisian Pisian activity in front of us hope you're having a good day we'll see you again tomorrow bye