Sylvan E Thorncraft © August 2003

     Pisces holds the unifying characteristics of deep wisdom, compassion, and sensitivity.  She is the ocean with flowing currents of intuition and emotion (I imagine).  Her symbol is traditionally the fish.  She is the collective unconscious, deep knowing about the interconnectedness of all things.

     Her card is the Moon (18) which represents the principle of choice between authenticity and dutifulness.  Pisces lends her commitment to evolution and transformation to the process of being one’s genuine self.

     Pisces time is the ebbing place right before the quickening of spring and the increasing light of the Vernal Equinox.  In this slack time there is opportunity to dream and reflect on the deep journey of winter.

     The moon is slipping from balsamic to new.  She is fading to a glowing sliver in the east before being swallowed into the Sun’s radiant dawn.  The fruit is spent, returning to the soil which fed her.  This is the time where seeds are formed , concentrating the whole cycle into a precious jewel that contains all the nourishment and wisdom needed by the next generation.

     As I worked with this sign I felt the pull of the ocean, the fishes.  I thought about Mari, goddess worshiped throughout the Middle East and Egypt, who is the Mother Sea as well as of earth and heavens.  She was the great fish who gave birth to the gods59.  She was illusive, shimmering just out of reach.  That led me to Minne, the mermaid, fish-tailed Aphrodite.  Medieval minstrels, or minnesingers, sang that “She resembles nothing imaginable.  Her name is known, her self, however, ungrasped.  She never comes to a false heart.”* 

     I feel that the gift of Pisces is experienced as one takes the time to turn inward with an open heart and imagine her authentic self.  By holding us in that watery place, the nature of water being love, Pisces reminds us to be compassionate towards our self before returning to share our self and our love with the world.