Pisces-Aries Threshold
In the Greco-Arabic elemental model, springtime is associated with moisture and heat. Where I live, I feel the wetness of last winter snows, early spring rains, and the warming of the Earth. The Sun is moving out of a water sign and into a fire sign. Moisture and heat. The Sun’s movement into its sign of exaltation marks the Spring Equinox. We begin the climb toward heat and light.
If Aries is a beginning, then Pisces is a kind of ending. A reasonable question might be what is ending? It’s a transitional moment, which is always full of paradox. Pisces is about death as birth, birth as death. Endings as beginnings, beginnings as endings. Sacrifice as abundance, abundance as sacrifice.
In Mesopotamian astrology, the constellation Pisces was experienced as a fish tied to a swallow by a cord (White, 2008). Fish and bird together told a story of abundance from both land and water. Flowing between them were two rivers — the great Tigris and Euphrates. With Pisces, we can think about how critical waterways are to life. The power of water to fertilize and destroy. Imagine the environments of estuaries, waterways, and the kind of diversity that flourishes there. Abundance not as a lot of one thing but of such exuberant difference. Along with this abundance, there is fear. Imagine the fear of waters rising. Depending on where you live, you may not have to imagine.
In Roman mythology, the Pisces constellation has a different story with a little overlap. Venus and her son Cupid (in Greek, Eros) were running from the Typhon, a monster of incredible violence and chaos. Venus was born out of the sea and knows water well. To escape, she tied herself to her son and they turned into fish to disappear to safety. In some versions, they jump into the Euphrates rather than the ocean, linking this myth to the earlier Mesopotamian imagery (Holley, 2017).
Pisces is a double-bodied sign. It is not one but two fish. Or it is a fish and a swallow. Or it is a love goddess and Eros itself. Pisces is always two bodies tied together by a cord, surrounded by water. I think one reason Jupiter and Venus love to be in Pisces because in Pisces, we are bound to each other. Pisces is a starry terrain of flow, fecundity, and knots. What makes for a fertile life? Others. Relationship is what makes life bearable, possible, and sometimes joyous.
How do we hold fast to the cord between us while continuing to swim? How do we, tied as we are, hold each other up rather than drag each other down? How can I swim in you, like Venus into the Euphrates, while still being me? How can I become a river for you? How can I devote myself to you in joy, in love, in gratitude — giving up independence for interdependence?
For anyone who has experience with co-dependent relationships (raises hand) or who over-gives to others as a way to self-deny, these questions may make you feel queasy. I felt a little queasy writing them. But disregarding the agency and needs of another or yourself is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about not having to go it alone. I’m talking about letting ourselves be touched and changed by others. To let our lives be centered around each other. To let our edges be more like water than like stone, at least some of the time.
Sometimes I worry about astrology. Is astrology helping us connect with each other and our flora, fauna, and celestial kin? Or is it a tool for “self-optimization” masquerading as healing? Do we turn inward so that we can turn outward, or are we still just staring at ourselves hoping to find all the answers (and control) there?
I believe people who are moving toward more self-understanding and self-love tend to be kinder humans, with more capacity to offer their gifts, attention, and care to others. I believe astrology’s mesmerizing cycles can help us rebel against blank homogenous time, which does not serve the Earth and its creatures. I believe astrology can tug on the cord that ties us all together — human and more-than-human. I believe astrology can do these things but I’m not always sure that it does.
The shift from Pisces to Aries has a lot to teach us about how to do astrology (and how to be alive) in a way that honors our specific selves and our devotion to others. Pisces widens the experience of “me” to such a Jupiterianly enormous width that “me” becomes the whole ocean, teeming with all the yous and thems, the whole cosmos is here tied by invisible sacred cords. Then Aries arrives as another start — all martial fire and differentiation — with an axe to cleave one thing from the rest. Bringing warmth and dryness to Pisces’s cold pools, Aries separates and ignites. But I don’t see this as a hard switch. It’s a continuation. The zodiac invites us to individuate and find agency from a place of “us.”
While Aries has that fire and necessary drive forward, Aries is also the sign of the Spring Equinox — a celebration of light, vitality, and spring, but also of balance. There’s a reason why Aries and Libra are a pair. It’s harder to see balance or connection in a sign where Venus is in antithesis but Gavin White describes a Babylonian perspective that I find helpful.
White tells us that Aries was associated with the god Dumuzi, who White depicts as a vegetation god. Vegetation gods carry the force of life itself that must die but also conquers death through regeneration. They are the seasonal cycles and the land. In the Babylonian tradition, and likely others in the same region, during Aries season the king would renew his connection to his responsibilities through sacred marriage. The king would play the role of Dumuzi and marry, as Dumuzi does in the myths, Inanna (a predecessor of Aphrodite/Venus). This ritual marriage would promote “the fertility and fecundity of all nature” (White, 2008).
Aries therefore relates to leadership, responsibility, and power. A sign of Mars, Aries can sever and individuate. Aries initiates us into heat with all the vitality and burning that heat offers. But Aries is also an equinox sign of balance, of two. That part of Pisces carries through and we see it playing out in a king. Yes, the king is separate (Aries) from his people and the land, but he participates in a ritual to offer up that separateness to the goddess. The king is not a sovereign alone but is granted sovereignty in sacred connection to more than himself.
The threshold of Pisces-Aries asks: who else is your individuality for? At what altar do you offer it? What sacred relationships, human and more-than, bring renewal to your life and others?
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References
Coppock, A. (2014). 36 Faces: The History, Astrology and Magic of the Decans. Three Hands Press.
Holley, J. (2017). Pisces In Myth and Psyche. Astrology University.
Rosenberg, D. (2012). Secrets of the Ancient Skies. New York, New York. Ancient Skies Press.
White, G. (2008). Babylonian Star-Lore. New Cross, London: Solaria Publications.
Other Relevant Resources
Ali A. Olomi’s Patreon, particularly his recent “Head on History” episode wherein he describes the Medieval Islamic view of Pisces and its connection to devotional relationship to the Other.
Gray Crawford’s Lecture “Psyche and Eros: The Fall of Venus and Mercury”
