Pisces Sign

Mythology

In mythology, Poseidon is the ruling God of the sea. The Trident is one of his famous symbols, for the Romans the symbol is the God Neptune. The Trident can cause earthquakes, there are other sea Gods such as: the Elders of the sea, the Sea Nymphs (Martin Rodan, 1982) and the Monsters. The elders of the sea are wise, calm and have the gift of prophecy. Their daughters are the nymphs, they are half-woman and half-fish. The nymphs are quiet, peaceful and hiding in the depths of the sea. There are also the Sirens, they’re half-women half-birds, seducing the sailors with their wonderful singing, pulling them into the sea and drowning them to the depths. One can’t resist their mysterious calling. Only Odysseus and Orpheus were saved from them: Odysseus attached himself to the flagpole and blocked his ears, and Orpheus, the mythological artist who was blessed with a beautiful voice, more than them, kept them silent.

Staring at Don Juan, drinking tea with a Tibetan monk

Pisces sign and his astrology ruler Neptune represent the meaning of eternity: motifs of unity, chaos and dissolving involved with dreams and illusion. This meaning is unclear, it involves with situations of confusion and empathy. Pain and sacrifice involve with longing. No wonder this sign is related to slippery elements and situations like – water, music, mysticism and madness. Pisces represents the circularity and eternity of the zodiac players, is a reminder of the “Auroboros”, the alchemist snake swallowing its tail. Fish have no beginning or end. The fish is both Alpha and omega, therefore we can’t think of it in terms of linear or temporal time. As fish, the separation, language, and criticism are replaced with empathy, dreams and creativity. Like Carlos Castaneda describes in his books: Ichtlan travel (1971), Don Juan’s Doctrine (1972) and a separate reality (1971), Pisces is the small grain at the corner of the eye, when trying to focus a glance at it, it slips away. It can be seen only with an unintended look forward, without any concentration or effort. The Pisces motifs are like that: passive, silent and staring. As an astrological archetype, Pisces has a well based meaning by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (6th century before the common Era), when he wrote in Tao Te Ching about the “Wu Wei” which means: no action, missing positive motifs, being like a block of wood, flowing on the surface of the water, avoiding unnecessary movements and basically letting life flow spontaneously. These characters are called in the Chinese language “Daza Ran”, or literally “Just like itself.” The Tao is a Pisces sign because when a wise Chinese is silent, his thoughts are heard over thousands of miles away. The Tao which is expressed verbally isn’t the eternal Tao which was written in Tao Te Ching. Pisces is the stopping of the ruling, mind and senses, it’s been replaced with the dimension of mystical experience. The basis of Buddhism is also connected to astrological Pisces. It is directed against the exclusivity of the conception mind of Pisces-Gemini as the only source of acknowledging reality. The Hindu Pisces Buddhist wants to take the reality out of the from its verbal concept which we fixed it in. This process which Pisces is purified from judgment, because judgment is interrupting the direct unity experience, is related to the Pisces dimension in the connection between humans and the world. Pisces gives up separation and objectivity, doesn’t judge and criticize, his forgiveness replaces the criticism of Capricorn. Pisces wants Nirvana-Enlightenment. To him, logic hides the infinity. There is no linearity like in Tao, no history but circularity lacking time, no meaning and no ideologies. The absence of external transcendent God, cancels the need for accepting history as linear, purposeful and astrological identified with Capricorn. Pisces claims for illusion, first of all that the real world can’t be seen as in terms of words and concepts of the consciousness. Words must be conceded and replaced with silence as a form of liberation. Alan Watts (The Zen way, 1954) claims that the words are a form of illusion, the experience “slips like water from a sieve”. The real Pisces consciousness is a Wou Shin Taoist Buddhist, it’s the absence of consciousness, Empty from thought or action. The lack of purpose for Pisces sign means liberation and freedom. Reality, for him, is fata morgana, an illusion of consciousness built from the duality of Gemini – words and concepts that rely on the basic separation of a human from the world. Pisces knows that language means movement, a confirmation of an external world (and apparently a confirmation of the external God). Pisces knows that one that doesn’t hurry, doesn’t miss anything. The emptiness of Pisces is expressed, for example, in the meeting between the western professor with the Tibetan monk. “The cup of tea that the Zen monk is suggesting the professor, who comes to the monastery and asks countless questions, is overflowing … “. “Why don’t you stop?”, Asks the professor, the monk replies: “that’s how you are in the West, so complete and full that there’s no room left for anything…”. This is the emptiness and importance of the erasure of Pisces.

George Berkeley, Zelig and Chauncey Gardiner

The Irish philosopher and bishop, George Berkeley, was a Pisces (12.3.1685) and represents the sign in a philosophical way. His essay – “The Principles of Human consciousness” (1710) – begins with criticism about language and words. Berkeley believed that material is God’s rival, the only reality is spiritual rather than material. Language doesn’t represent the external reality. Berkeley, as a philosophical Pisces idealist, thought we are victims of illusion and dreams. His famous saying: “being present – being perceived” (mentally or consciously), is indeed a conscious saying, and thus he preceded the consciousness over the material world. Berkeley also preferred to meditate and give up the words and thoughts in favor of a silent relaxation. The mystic Pisces aims to decrease his personality to nothing, to the point of emptiness that liberates from boundaries and guilt, from an exclusive identity of a false “me” that is so painful for the soul. Therefore, Pisces is a loss of identity which allows multiple faces and identities to be expressed. This idea is clearly “folded” inside the character of ‘Zelig’ in Woody Allen’s movie (1983). Zelig is a satire regarding the life of an American-Jewish in his twenties. Zelig was nicknamed the “Chameleon man” because he adapted to the life around him (similar to the fish water which is filling the tank where they are in). Pisces is like a Chinese man surrounded with Chinese people, like Hitler in a Nazi environment and like the Pope in a Catholic place. He adopts the characteristics of those who are nearby, in a Pisces way. It’s also an empathy of Pisces that derives from the lack of separation – the empathy cancels the sense of the separate “me”, the external objective, so that the internal merges with the environment. Another Pisces is Chauncy Gardiner, a gardener character who played ‘Peter Sellers’ in the Movie “Being There” (1979). Sellers is a silent gardener who becomes a US presidential candidate because of an advertisement campaign. He isn’t committed to any clear political path. He is a nobody who “swallows in” the voters yearnings. Unlike his competitors, he has no past, his image is very clear, he lacks identity and doesn’t recognize the complexity of life. Everything is simple to him: “the garden grows after everything dried”, … the simplicity of Pisces wins because of the ignorant Gardner which becomes the favorite American Capitalism. His only identity is the one that exists in the opinion of the public. Chauncy is a Pisces because he lives in the garden, walks between the plants outside of space and time, flows in the general flow of life undisturbed. His only ambition is to stare at the television screen. But the magical space created by his silence and stares is filled with interest people who take advantage of his Pisces Neptune naivety.

Music, surrealism and craziness

The soul of Pisces is falling to space without a bottom. In other words, the mental state of Pisces is to fall always and permanently, without falling on solid ground. This is a fall to the infinite … Einstein (14.3), who was a Pisces, claimed that a person who falls free, doesn’t feel the force of gravity. In free falling we are on ground zero. Release from gravity is release from time, that’s how the physical Pisces translates it to us. The famous philosopher, Schopenhauer (22.2.1778), argued that “we are lost in a bottomless space the moment we want to get to know ourselves …”. Schopenhauer thoughts about music were: “so easy to understand but still difficult to explain”, because it produces All the hidden sensations of our being, but it’s not part of reality, and far from the pain inherent in it . Schopenhauer was the first among the great Western philosophers to deal with the philosophical doctrines of the East. He insisted in his Pisces point of view, that our separation from each other is an illusion. Music is the universal language of Pisces because it’s understood immediately and to everyone, without the need for a single word. Its effect on the listener is immediate. Music releases us from the world of appearances and it can exist without this world. Pisces is the “liquid melting clock” of Salvador Dali, he is representing the surrealism and the painting of Monk (1862-1944)- “the scream’. The scream, more than anything, is a representation of the pure, self-sustaining Pisces subjective, which is blocked to the noisy environment. Perhaps, the continuation of this famous Pisces image is like the question of Pink Floyd in the film – “The Wall”: “Is there anyone out there?”. The noisy environment is the technological world of communication, the cellular disorder. Monk’s scream is a Pisces, which represents a fracture in communication and the media which we are all part of it, as part of the mass society. There are No ears to Monk’s Pisces character on the bridge. He doesn’t hear or participate in the game of “the out there”. Pisces is the “Pantasillea” in Calvino’s book – “invisible cities”. A city that doesn’t exist, but was only an alagory, you can’t get out of it because it has no outside. The city is the suburbs of itself … It’s a Pisces allegory of a situation without an out, without objectivity, and as much as you try, you can’t get away or outside of it to the world. It’s confusing and makes it impossible to distinguish between inside and outside. The codes to orientation are lost within a sleepy, dreamlike sensitivity. The way to madness from surrealism is very short. The characters: the fool, the clown, the Trixter , all are Pisces figures. As early as 1494, Sebastian Brant wrote about the “Ship of fools”, the ship which we all sail in. Hieronymus Bosh painted it, and Erasmus from Roterdam wrote about the madness and foolishness. Don Quixote is also a Neptune man who’s living a life of madness. The Pisces King Lear is going crazy in Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare believed that the dream is a significant component of reality, reality which isn’t accessible by logic. It’s accessible by art that will interpret the dream. The Surrealists felt they had much in common with Lewis Carroll, who wrote the Pisces magical masterpiece: “Alice in Wonderland”. The book contradicts the Virgo’s logic (the polarity to Pisces in the zodiac) in a special way. Instead of a cup of tea with the Tibetan monk, Alice is invited to a typical English tea party, the party who never ends … the time becomes a Pisces eternity for the participants. Alice loses her identity when she can’t answer the caterpillar’s question: “Who are you?…”. “I can’t explain myself because I’m not myself,” she replies. The caterpillar (a symbol of change of identity in the ordinary world) sits on top of a mushroom and smokes a hookah while Alice, desperately, tries to explain to him how empty her self being is. As for the Cheshire cat, which faded from his tail and leaves us only with his smile… Represents the Pisces sign because he’s the only one in the story who admits he is crazy, which makes him the only sane one. Thus, Yossarian, in Joseph Heller’s famous book – “Catch 22” (1961), talks with the military psychiatrist and says he is insane, and therefore, should be released from the army’s flights. The catch is, of course, he is the one which claims to be crazy, which makes him normal. Alice see’s the emptiness, the Pisces emptiness. In the book: “Through the Looking Glass”, the white king asks Alice: “Look who’s going in there?”, “No one”, answers Alice. “I wish I had such eyes”, remarked the King …, “to be able to see no one! And from such a distance!”, Alice succeeds to see the emptiness, the nothing.

Dreams, longing, empathy and victim

The Pisces philosophy claims that it’s impossible to know what’s more real: a state of wakefulness or dreaming. As Chuang Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, said about a man who dreams he is a butterfly, the man woke up and asked himself: “Am I a man who dreamed he is a butterfly? or am I a butterfly dreaming that he is a man who dreamed he is a butterfly?”. In India, the preference is a connection with the supreme, in a state of dreaming, over any revelation connection (Biedermann, “Philosophical Journeys”, 2003). This is because the dream and God take place in the same internal reality which is perceived in Pisces India, a reality which is obvious. This is, then, a great precedence of ramification the interior on the exterior. In Lewis Carroll’s book (“Through the Looking Glass”), Tweedledy tells Alice when she hears the snoring of the old Red King, that he is dreaming of her. If, heaven forbid, the king awoke, Alice would disappear along with the King’s dream. Better, then, for the dream to continue so that Alice would stay there and not fade. The Pisces philosopher argues that it’s impossible to know the answer to the dream’s dilemma, since there’s no objective external fulcrum, that with its support there could be a solution. We can’t know if we are butterflies or humans, but it’s clear that we are dreaming our dreams The Pisces eternalness is creative in a special way and is expressed in Samuel Beckett’s play: “Waiting for Godot”, where the two nomads struggle over the question: “wait for Godot or go to meet him?” (Godot symbolizes God). Beckett’s nomads are in an eternal state of waiting. They live in an infinite time, a kind of Neptune eternity that represents the craving of Pisces and sense of non-fulfillment that exists in the sign in a psychological way. The craving of Pisces was expressed with the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, who gave up his fiancée, Regina Olsen, and thus made his love for her absolute, lasting, untouchable and eternal. By the total giving up of Pisces there is something purifying and clean. The concession and the longing make the temporal, eternal. For Pisces, the time is considered inferior, eternity on the other hand, is considered completely pure, surrounded in the holiness of eternity. The dimensions of the victim and sacrifice, which deeply symbolize Pisces, are expressed in the biblical story of “binding of Isaac”: the sacrifice is a process that cleanses and purifies the one who is sacrificing, since he gave everything dear to him and therefore owes nothing (“your son, your only son, which you love dearly – Isaac”). Sacrificing connects between the dimensions of time and eternity. As time passes, the yearning for the absence of the victim is increasing, the feeling of absence is growing and the linear time only strengthens the meaning of eternity and absence. The Pisces victim connects between eternity and time on a psychological level. Pisces is the sign of empathy to others, a sign of sacrifice. Empathy may be total closeness which tries to solve the deep question of identity within Pisces. Through empathy, the missing identity is acquired and Pisces becomes a person that feels and identifies with himself without separation from one another. In the book of Albert Camus, “The Fall” (1959), describes Clemens feelings when he meets a woman which trips herself into the river. He hears her cry and freezes, He wants to save her but he doesn’t do it. Her cry bothers him and turns him to guilty (Albert Camus and the Absurd philosophy 2000). The Pisces metaphor of water represents unity and the lack of separation, which are a symbol of empathy and totality, which is duplicated here in a Pisces commitment between people. The role of Pisces’s empathy is to extract the human from his self-sacrifice and selfishness and direct him towards other people. All Clemens wants is that the woman would throw herself into the water again, so that he will be given another chance “to save both of them …”. Since rescuing the woman is rescuing himself, Clemens, from non-empathy, from the lack of sacrifice and unreceptiveness. Only by means of others the Pisces human can reveal his human existence. Pisces is actually the redemption by others and allows him to go through the process of Pisces sacrifice. As in Judaism: “Love the others as thyself.”

Famous Pisces

Moses Rabbeinu from the Bible was born on the 7th of Adar Hebrew month (March) and passed away on that date. He was a humble and modest Pisces according to the Bible. He was a tongue-tied who didn’t fulfill his dream of arriving to the Promised Land, he was forced to give up in a Pisces manner, it was said: “you will only look at the promised land, but you will not step in it…”. Even the physical representation of Pisces – feet – appeared in the Bible when Moses was told: “take off your shoes from your feet”. The question of Moses’ identity, which was drawn from the Nile, is a Pisces identity question combined with a Jewish and Egyptian, Hatching the Red sea completes the motif of water in Pisces sign. Another interesting famous Pisces was Albert Einstein (14.3.1879), although he was a physicist, he played the violin and his mother was a pianist. He identified with Schopenhauer’s opinion about music as a kind of pure, eternal and first and foremost value. The essence of Einstein’s philosophy is a Pisces one, in our opinion, because there isn’t a separation between time, space, material and energy. Einstein’s proportion hurts our common sense in a Pisces way, not because it’s wrong, because our common sense doesn’t represent reality, the common sense can’t understand the real universe. Another famous creative Pisces was George Harrison (25.2.1943), a member of the Beatles. His love for music was marked when he sang with his band mates: “while my guitar gently weeps…”. Harrison was attracted to the country of India, he was influenced by the famous Indian musician – Marawi Shankar. Another amazing Pisces is Steve Jobs (24.2.1955), who was adopted as a child (adoption in astrology is a Pisces idea, it derives from the totality of Pisces). Jobs founded “Pixar”, the world’s largest animation studio. Animation is a Pisces profession in an astrological glance, but it wasn’t enough for him, using the iPod, Jobs made the Pisces music accessible to anyone who wanted it. Jobs loved the Buddhism and led his life according to its philosophical principles. And who didn’t hear about the famous Antonio Vivaldi (4.3.1678), who was a violin teacher at an orphanage in Venice (a Pisces town, not only because of its water tunnels, gondolas, masks and the singing gondoliers).