From February 18th until March 20th the Sun will be in Pisces. In Pisces we find one of the deepest and most emotional of signs. From the constellation we get the Fishes, one pointing up into the heavens and the divine and the other down to the mundane planes of human life. The Fishes play an integral part in almost every religion, from pagan times and forward to Christianity. Therefore, it is the sign that rules religious and spiritual themes. It is the sign that rules our “souls” or “spirit”. The sea as the primary source, signifies the boundless essence of soulful creativity and the elemental life force from which everything emerges and eventually returns. Fishes, as intrinsic parts of this fertile yet deeply mysterious realm, were regarded as sacred representations of the soul and the spiritual connection that animates society. By the time the Sun reaches the constellation of Pisces, the days are already starting to get longer and as the temperature starts to rise, so does hope and optimism. Underground, the frozen earth begins to thaw and the dormant planet life begins to stir. As a mutable sign, it’s a time of change and of the changes of season, this is the one that is most pronounced. As the last sign in the zodiac, it embodies the essence of all the signs that went before it, as it must assimilate the energy of the whole year, in order to begin the New Year. To venture into the Piscean realm is to lose track of which way is up, down, forward or back. It is to abandon our cherished root assumptions and shatter the fragile omnipotence of reality. To those of us who cling to the world of form, it can be a disorienting, confusing experience. Its ruler, Neptune bids us surrender our entire grounding and sense of what is real. One has no control over the Neptune experience because there is nothing to control. However, the Neptune experience is a chance to go back to the godhead, back to our spiritual source. It is a time to reorient our alignment with the Universe, to stretch beyond our physical existence and embrace our meta-physical nature. Pisces is significant, because it brings us to the wellspring of our being. It brings us back to the source; to the root of all that we are and all that we can be. Pisces renders us empty that we may be galvanized once more by the thrust of Life. Closure is rarely easy, however, the unresolved issues of the past have a way of coming back to haunt us. Only by participating in this closure process can we mindfully and openly distill that which is real and transferable into the next cycle, from that which is not. That distillation is the essence of the Piscean role in the cyclical drama. Pisces impels us to dissolve the attachments that bind us to the apparitions in our lives and surrender to Spirit which forms the raw material that will seed the next cycle. In this sense, Pisces may be the most important part of the zodiacal progression. Archetypally, Pisces ends one cycle and brings us to the brink of a new one that starts again in Aries. In order to embrace something new, we must empty ourselves of all that forms a barrier between us and that “something new.” This means letting go of the old way of doing and perceiving things. It means sacrificing our security and attachment to what has become familiar and comfortable, so that we may prepare the way for new growth. And we must surrender to this process or risk carrying over attachments from the old cycle that will contaminate the new one. If we resist the closure process of Pisces, we may not retain the rewards we have harvested.