Wednesday, February 18, 2009





Understanding Pisces or Pisceans is never easy. Although I have had numerous friends and two mothers-in law with this sun sign, it is still challenging to define them exactly. Since we in the northeast are now entering once again into the time of Pisces, I thought to share an experiential viewpoint of the twin fishes.

Before meeting my most excellent wife, I was a very lonely man. I believe that this specific time period was towards the end of winter in 2003. The skies were gloomy as I sat sulking. As I looked back at my life, it all seemed quite painful and meaningless. I stood alone upon the cliffs overlooking Lake Champlain at Oakledge Park in Burlington. I was cold and twilight was beginning to settle. I felt exhausted and did not feel life; I felt death. As I sat quietly in the stillness involved in this negative vibe, I suddenly started to hear cracking and dripping. Wow! Winter was around BUT the lake was starting to defreeze and the dripping became louder and louder until I realized that all around me was water flowing and moving. Soon I had escaped my prior feelings of no movement and no life. This I believe is at least one of the powers of Pisces. It is all about water flowing and morphing and flooding and dripping and if we realize that the planet is mostly water, well then, water is no small deal. It would appear that water ultimately controls all.

As I write this month’s astro piece, I am also pondering the huge belly of my pregnant wife. The twins in there are floating in water and though they are not supposed to be Pisceans according to the delivery predictions, I can’t help but feel that they are Piscean symbols nonetheless attached to cords and swimming inside a living fish tank.

Anyone reading about astrology will inevitably get to the entries about Pisces saying that they are old souls and the Buddhist in me acknowledges that perhaps if they are really old souls, they just might not be coming back after this lifetime at all. Perhaps they are off to Nirvana upon the end of this life. This being said, then, let it be known that to nail down a Piscean is just silly and a waste of time. It is a nebulous and undulating creature that has many artistic, psychic, and healing abilities. These natives tend to have liquid eyes that stand out even from their rising sign characteristics. Keep gazing into those eyes and you will see a whole aquarium in there! Perhaps the first celled creatures that came out of the primordial ooze were Piscean – liquid made flesh! Other physical characteristics that stand out in Pisces individuals seem to be a kind of porpoise quality in the body or a flipper-like quality in the arms. I am not saying that they all can or like to swim, but can you imagine them suddenly morphing back into a mermaid or into Poseidon? I realize that this is a stretch, but give it a try next time you are having an intense conversation with a twin fish.

Pisces tends to absorb all like an emotional sponge and needs real solitude to recover. Though the same can be said about Cancerians to a degree, I feel that the Cancerian recovery from stress is markedly different. The Cancerian will simply need to eat some home cooking-style comfort food (OK – a lot of it) and more or less upon the conclusion of the meal be recovered. Not so for the Piscean. They are going to need much more time and much more solitude to extract themselves from everything and everyone that has globed onto them. This is what happens when a liquid creature comes onto land – all kinds of things stick to it suddenly and it is painful to them. They need to stay well lubed like a tadpole.

The other typical connection with Pisces is of course the planet Neptune, which in astro terms always bespeaks illusion and nebulousness. This could take the form of pursuing many relationships and marriages such as in the case of Elizabeth Taylor, Piscean par excellence or the multitude of conflicting images and stories we have of America’s first president, George Washington. It is noteworthy that one of the most enduring images of him is his crossing of the Potomac River on the bow of that little skiff. Old George even connects to a Piscean image with the myth of him pleading guilty upon the chopping down of the cherry tree. This image has been portrayed many times and often there is an illusionary quality to it.

Please see the image for this month, which is so Piscean! It is the book cover to author evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish”. I got the chance to read it before it hit the shelves of the major book stores through a friend of mine. Though I am no scientist, I understand that a major premise of the book is that we are all carrying vestigial fish elements in our skeletal structures. Perhaps in a fashion, we are all Piscean. You go Tiktaalik roseae!