Part Two:
Twelve Phases of Human Experience
PISCES - Page 1 of 3

The last stage of the Sun's zodiacal journey is reached in Pisces as the Day-force, steadily waxing stronger, prepares to balance and overcome the waning Night-force. The Christ-seed, which was activated at the winter solstice in the hidden depths of a world utterly dominated by social behavior and by the concept of the State, has now unfolded to the point where it has to be recognized by a society breaking down under the weight of its crystallizations. The once-powerful Empire is attacked from all sides by waves of destructive energy, by the rip-tide of Barbarian invasions. New blood is flowing into the old ruling classes, utterly transforming them. The proud "isolationists" are swept away when they refuse to link themselves up to the rising crest of the spring-to-be — as wintry icebergs are sent to liquid deaths by the equinoctial storms which rage through the Piscean period.
      Pisces is an era of storms and of wholesale disintegration. But Piscean winds of destiny may impel men of vision and courage to discover many a "new world," as much as they do destroy or suffocate the many who stubbornly resist change. Pisces is an era of often sharp and violent repolarization. It is an era of purgation and cleansing. Tradition has made of the month preceding the vernal equinox a period of fasting and repentance. Beginning with Ash Wednesday, the devotee of the New Life must learn to identify himself willingly with the death of all established structures. He must be willing to face the chrysalis state for the sake of the butterfly-to-be. Pisces is the mythical Deluge and the age of universal dissolution. Man must accept structural dissolution under the insidious power of Neptune, ruler of Pisces. He must cling to no stability or no past greatness. "No-security" is for him the only possible security. He must learn to operate in terms of the waxing Dayforce and to stand un-moved while the structures built by the Night-force are shattered all around him.
      In the opposite Sign, Virgo, the individual, having proudly released in Leo the energies of his personality, is confronted by the results of such releases. His progeny must be cared for. His creative works may show failings and inadequacies. His health may have been impaired by passional excesses; his patrimony may have been squandered through useless speculation. In Virgo, the individual faces this need of repolarizing his emotional attitude as well as of improving his technique of behavior. Self-criticism, study, hygiene and discipleship to a "master of technique" are therefore his needs. By satisfying them he begins to get a new perspective upon human relationships. He learns to serve, to have patience, to listen, to meditate and to criticize the most basic impulses of his personality. If he does not learn willingly, he may be compelled by illness or servitude to open himself to the true life of human relationship and to become in Libra — a "social" being.
      With Pisces we find the winds of destiny turned to the opposite point of the compass. Here it is the "social" man who must learn to give up his comfortable, or even his tragic, reliance upon the structure of society. He must learn to stand alone and to rely only upon his own inner Voice. He must be willing to "close accounts" and face the unknown with simple faith; to re-enter the womb of nature, leaving behind the beautiful mirages of the Aquarian civilized life and bracing himself for life in the wilderness of some greater realm, for long voyages to a new world. He must learn to un-learn and to give up even his set ideals and his possessions. He must learn even, as mystics do, to pierce through the wondrous sphere of the "glory of God" and to search, undaunted, through the darkness of human consciousness for the "poverty of God," that hidden state where there is silence and nothing, yet whence all things that have form and name emanate in the stillness of the supreme Mystery. In Virgo, the proud personality must learn to be an apprentice and to serve a master. But, in Pisces, the social man who relies upon machines and formulas — accumulated through centuries of culture — to perform his daily tasks, faces the realization that his allegiance to social progress and intellect-born learning will not save him. To serve a social ideal will mean nothing in a life-or-death crisis. To serve God, to serve that which no revolution can disturb, yet which is the cause and raison d’κtre of all revolutions — that is the Piscean's duty.
      Transcendence, overcoming, piercing through illusions and false security, severance of social ties, embarking for the great adventure with utter faith and in denuded simplicity of being: all these things are to be learned in Pisces. Man is here face to face with himself, and with that Greater Self which he names: God. He can refuse such a confrontation. He can cling to oppressive and decadent cities. He can bundle up with refugees and moan forever before the Wailing Walls provided by dying religions and bloated social "Saviors." But then, he will be plouged under, as manure for the spring sowings.
      To renounce and to transcend means mental criticism of a sort. Mind, in the Signs preceding the equinoxes (Virgo and Pisces), is the constant critic, cutting away the crystallizations or fallacies of the past and intent upon clearing, the stage for a new kind of living and realization. It is mind telling what should be forgotten, pruned away, regenerated or transcended. In Pisces, the social delusions, the exaggerated idealism, the cranky notions, the revolutionary fetishes, the scientific materialism, the civilized monstrosities which have swarmed through the Aquarian period must be cut away. Man sheds here his social gestures and stands bare before God within — that is, before the Christos, the burden of his future Destiny. Indeed, more than social gestures must be laid aside; for these social factors, now that the Night-force wanes, are turning not only negative but also subjective. The social becomes the psychic. Social dreams are transfigured into psychic phantasms; social frustrations, into subconscious complexes.