ESOTERIC ASTROLOGY

PISCES 2012

Labor of Hercules
Capture of the Red Cattle of Geryon

Go to dark (island) Erytheia where Great Illusion is enthroned, King Geryon monster of 3 heads, 3 bodies, 6 hands who unlawfully holds Herd of Red Cattle; [ saving all] return them to Sacred City; invokes Helios fire in the Sun and Golden Chalice appears; kills 2-headed dog Orthrus, spares shepherd Eurytion, kills Geryon arriving in dust with Flaming Arrow; drives cattle from island in Chalice (or over Alps to Italy), pins Eryx, kills Alcyoneus w. his own rock; arrives, offers Red Cattle to Athena.

Motto: I leave my Father's home and turning back, I save.
(Pisces takes from all the signs)

Pisces and Ignorance
Pisces and the Principle of Ignorance

It is interesting that esoteric (tantric) Buddhism assigns the afflictive emotion / defilement of Ignorance or Sloth to the central of the Five Dhyani Buddhas, Vairocana. In a sense, it places the Socratic method at the center of the Mind (“the sumtotal of manas”) and intellectual inquiry governing the five subplanes of the mental plane subject to Form (and instinct). Recognizing one’s Ignorance is the doorway into the personal subconscious and the collective Unconscious. It initiates the work of Pluto in those strongly influenced by Pisces. Venus is exalted in Pisces, and while “Pisces takes from all signs,” it is the realignment and reintegration with its opposite sign Virgo that produces illumination and revelation with the help of the Ray Five ‘Factor of Analysis’ working to unite soul with personality, and later to recognize the unity of the life aspect with consciousness.

Pisces Ignorance (as a principle) is peculiarly connected on a collective social level with Neptune and the cosmic kama-manasic (Astral) plane. I hope this becomes clear later in the essay. Since Neptune (ruling the Vth Hierarchy on the verge of liberation) rules the vast and all-pervasive, it is largely invisible.

Aquarius and Pisces are two signs in which human Ignorance becomes highly visible — in Aquarius by contrast of the extant with the possible (quite often in a bureaucratic cubicle or professional clique), and in Pisces by either being or feeling incarcerated by form and circumstance. Both can be said to have the motto “Serve or Suffer” on their escutcheons. This applies perhaps less pointedly to the ten remaining signs. (See Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, 2011.)

Pisces and Enslavement

Slavery was a persistent engine in the US economy until the Emancipation Proclamation and radical Reconstruction. Then Andrew Johnson and those presidents who followed (perhaps excepting Teddy Roosevelt’s intentions) went along with “slavery by another name” which persisted until 1942 — convict leasing in the South to provide corporations and businesses with disposable “work-to-death” labor, while shooting down trade unionists on the streets in the rest of the country. Still more recently, Prescott Bush (1895-1972), the father of Mr. George H.W. Bush (1989-93), made part of his income collaborating with the Nazis and solidifying his predatory relationship to Jewish slave-workers in the Silesian coal mines, until Congress had his financial assets seized in 1942. It’s sort of ironic, if not funny, that the present Republican platform has nothing to do with the nature of republics or republican philosophy, but with restoring a new Plantation Democracy (perhaps neo-Feudalism is too tepid?). Now 99% ‘whitey’ can provide the disposable labor for Corporate Persons (golems?) Do they have a clue?

But slavery is much closer at hand. There are the basic Piscean (R6) and Aquarian (R7) groups under which all humanity can be loosely classified. There are those (Piscean) primitive masses conditioned and enslaved by the unexamined “Past,” who believe in the external authority of a parental anthropomorphized God (for which predatory elites and mob bosses are happy substitutes) — over themselves as mechanomorphic human units in a social, political, or corporate machine. Their lives are only complicated by crisis-dictated decisions made “through the rear-view mirror.” Then there are (Aquarian) persons and individuals with some degree of self-consciousness and personality integration who see God as manifesting throughout His Creation and through the souls of each individual — the source of conscience and the wellspring of individual self-discipline, self-possession, and living ethics. They perceive their circumstances in the more vivid light of their own spirits and souls, free from delusional churchianistic and feudal bureaucratic-state farragos and members….

The basic question for Aquarius and Pisces is whether one believes in individual soul and identity, a “highly-individualized group-consciousness,” or does one believe in role-playing for a “parental” 'god' and/or political and bureaucratic 'machine' to enable one to brand oneself with high-end illusions or luxury products and live in blissful ignorant comfort, pleasure-seeking while Nature is raped of her resources and planetary homeostasis is destroyed? Does one buy into exoteric psychological “stages of development” and arbitrary definitions of adulthood or maturity by getting a job and “playing along,” getting a nice car and clothes and accessories for "self-respect," purchasing a house and “playing house,” getting married and “playing the role” (without reflection or redefinition) and extracting some kind of satisfaction from another human being, or displaying all the traditional markers (necessarily local and parochial for people without background or intrepidity) as an excuse for success, prestige, "winning," and nothing else to do?

An Interesting Question

What does the individual’s mind return to habitually when not summoned or preoccupied by quotidian survival and management issues – housing, clothing, job, food, sanity, life, sustainability? Everyone constructs their “world” in some sort of approximation to their own perception of actuality. Is it proactive, or simply passive, preoccupied, prescheduled, and taken for granted? Does one memorize all one can of all the countless significant thinkers on the planet, all the philosophers, scientists and forerunners, and how their contributions and points of view mesh? Do we believe in re-inventing the wheel, or do we recognize the Evolution of God’s Creation all around us and recognize the work of all those who worked for the welfare of Humanity as a whole — and put their work and insights to use?

As in esoteric astrology, the point of memorization of vast structures of information and interpretive narrative is not to memorize information for narrative ‘sound bytes’ in counseling, but to grasp (over time) the superstructure of the particular school of astrology one has chosen in order to maneuver in, through, and around that system. This is the mentally polarized approach to an esoteric science. Else one relies on psychism, intuition, and a kind of mental inhibition, an unselfconscious projection of one’s own limited views, concerns, and preoccupations.

All assertions of what the world is in actuality is mirrored in one’s construction of all the information and capacity for apprehension at one’s disposal, whether narrative or visualized. This is the ‘network of thought’ composed of memory, conceptualizations, categorizations, insights, and inspirations at hand. Does one return to one’s life narrative, one’s instinctive and artificially conditioned and constructed worries, and the arbitrary demands made by others? If one returns to the “world” or “universe,” is it focused on humanity, or nation, or energy relations? This is a question of what one returns to besides the exigencies of human animal life on earth and the concerns with intelligent materialism (without love – the definition of ‘evil’), or the network of relations, right relations, and the nature of personal and social norms. Is one addicted to the news and biographies of economic, governmental, military, etc. actors on the historic stage and accounts of their bureaucracies and their never-ending snafus and bottom-line social politics? Or does one attempt to sort out the authentic leaders in their fields?

Does one disdain these ‘lower’ social strata in favor of reformers, innovators, and forerunners? Does one return to one’s service as a sort of nonjudgmental missionary work and strive to continuously grasp the Whole? Are one’s preoccupations faith-based, or do they involve intelligent or intellectual inquiry, meditative or esoteric insight?

Pisces and the Esoteric Astrologer

Ignorance (and its recognition) is at the core of Esoteric Astrology, just as it is in all the sciences and fields of human inquiry and endeavor. First there is the ignorance determined by the quality of one’s “mechanism of response” as it is gradually refined throughout our life, but almost imperceptibly in terms of form (human brain evolution). This latter is just beginning to become a field of technical inquiry in the past few centuries; mainly due to the accumulation of the relevant technology of scientific instrumentation.

Next there is the quotient and nature of willful ignorance of both astrologer and ‘client,’ due in great part to their habitual (soul or especially personality) focuses, which incapacitate both in terms of understanding 'environment' and then in analyzing causality – phenomenal and psychological. Interdependent causality still seems to be an alien concept among the majority of academics and the public at large.

There is also the willful ignorance that takes phenomena and conditions in the world and society for granted, as a kind of concrete “thing” associated with a verbal identifier – magical, or simplistic ‘mechanomorphic’ thinking.

Just as Jupiter’s positive qualities ruling Pisces were noted above, there exists the standard daily grind of environal circumstance and qualities associated with passively conditioning or actively fostering psychological growth — whether faith-based, intelligently and reflectively examined, or visionary.

Results are sometimes attained purely on an astral (kama-manasic) level by the emotions and associated psychic energy –Desire– but only if it is strong enough, integrated within its context, and intelligently aroused and timed. This method ensuing in truly positive outcomes is rare, and the results quite often accidental. Because of the force applied, they are certainly subject to Karma, the boomerang or blowback effect.

“Only cosmic and solar lords”/entities “formulate thought” or, properly speaking, THINK. This excludes the personality (VIth CH lunar lords). The personality is a heap of interdependent causes, of talents, virtues and vices, of fragmentary and arbitrarily collected memories. In most of the world over 50% of the population is not integrated on the level of personality, going day to day with a kit bag of semi-conscious traditions, attitudes, and chat. This percentage is certainly true of the U.S. The blessing is that the impact of this group is basically negligible (except during elections!).

Unfortunately this is not true of the next group of integrated personalities — ambitious, self-interested and persuasive — prior to the status of Probationer. If the esoteric astrologer cannot distinguish among these “groups” or social sets, he is lost, if not deluding himself and others by daring to step beyond speculative discussion. Fortunately these social realms are generally relegated to the orthodox astrologer, though it helps if the esoteric astrologer has some degree of ‘depth-perception’ of the ‘low notes.’

Pisces and Jupiter

Jupiter may be the “personality” ruler of Pisces, but then, Pisces is an exceptional sign. Pluto stands deep in the background, in Ignorance as a Principle and in the Unconscious, supervising at first the elimination of outworn mental forms, but later the intelligent utilization of Ignorance and what is Unconscious through spiritual service of an unusually advanced and invisible nature. It takes the instinctive insight into public mass consciousness found with a well-positioned Moon and magnifies it a hundredfold through full self-consciousness and then group-consciousness. Jupiter operates quite differently in Pisces, Sagittarius, and Aquarius.

Jupiter in Sagittarius learns that good judgment cannot exist without Direction and Purpose; that achievement cannot exist without persistently cultivating one-pointed focus of the mind on the project and program at hand ‒ brooding about how optimally to focus the mind. It learns from the social and experiential panorama which opens up with an unremitting forward focus on the “plains of earth.” This one-pointed purpose and direction leads to Understanding, right speech, and right guidance of oneself and others.

Jupiter in Aquarius cannot exercise good judgment without seeing the whole picture – planetary environmental, team-related, collective zeitgeist aware, or the bureaucratic 100K-page manual (99% of which is irrelevant to any given situation). Jupiter in Aquarius can give a wide view of social peer-group conditioning in many strata, and learns to take responsibility for improvement of intergenerational relations and outcomes. This breadth leads to a greater responsiveness to high impression ‒ spiritual or worldly ‒ and the ability to sustain a persevering re-dedication to ‘serving’ “delightful but difficult” Humanity.

Jupiter in Pisces cannot begin to exercise clear judgment without first letting go (or at least loosening the reins) of all one’s narratives, dreams, and constructions to allow the space for something completely unconditioned to arise in their place, or in a finer guise. There is an element of blind faith involved here, but it opens on to a continuously wider Vision that enables maneuverability without friction, fatigue, and the sense of confinement.

Only Jupiter’s expansiveness, inclusivity, dreaming big dreams, and the benevolent inclination to Serve save the Pisces native from himself and his suffering. Service is like sex or fine music, it takes you out of your ‘little ego’ while you are engaged in refining it. Service is the best means of assessing the immediate Work arena, the social sets involved, and intelligent optimal methods of forwarding the Plan with purpose. Epictetus and his philosophy are relevant and useful here, particularly for strong Pisces placements.

Jupiter’s full psychological “feeling” is something very different from transient (or lasting) “emotions.” It is distinct from sensitivity to (or confusion by) one’s environment. It has to do with the larger environment and its phenomena, and generates feelings of empathy and compassion which drive an individual to Service as an Ethic, due to the recognition that we are all parts of a larger picture in a glimpse of the Whole, and an integrated set of forms (interdependently causal) that benefit all and each other if working cooperatively together. In other words, this Fullness (Purna) facilitates Pisces’ recognition of his capacity to sustain and discharge spiritual responsibility. Jupiter’s full psychological feeling is both intelligently impersonal, detached, and largely passionate.

Pisces in relation to Scorpio through Pluto-Mars

Pisces through Jupiter rules the “benevolent process of reincarnation” for the soul. Mars personality does not reincarnate as a soul, but as a human animal of some degree (or lack) of personality integration, attached and returning to a collective group soul, as is the case with the animal kingdom in nature. Its goal in Gemini and Pisces is union with the soul and consequent evolution and redemption. It is the soul that reincarnates as an individualized unit and maintains continuity of consciousness as an individual soul — in consciousness first, and in form (brain) later. The soul (Yogacara’s manomayavijñana) evolves continuity of consciousness through its connection with the (Buddhist) Alayavijñana, or womb/store consciousness. Animal man and the human (lunar) personality experiences continuity of consciousness only through contact with the human animal group soul, through a semi-genetic subconscious-Unconscious code, its clarity depending upon integration of the personality vehicles. As Gurdjieff pointed out, which of the elementals governed by the lunar pitri eventually takes on the role of “major domo”? This involves Ray constitution. This is the role of Pluto on the personality level, and explains all of the mythological Underworld realms where the dead and the ancestors reside. It also explains why Pisces types often attract the ‘lower note’ and gross circumstances at total variance with their sensitive and/or refined characters.

Scorpio, ruling the IVth CH (Creative Hierarchy) of human monadic units through Mercury, provides some insight through the triangle of Mars-Earth-Mercury governing Kundalini asleep (Mars), awakening (Earth) and integrated (Mercury caduceus). During the 4th initiation when soul is being introduced to triad/monad (engineered through Mercury), at some point the fires are raised up the spine and the Three Fires are integrated etherically, outside the gross physical body at first, and at a later stage permeate the body, transforming the relationship of soul and personality. This perhaps involves the work of bringing conscious individualization to the human animal’s ‘lunar lord’ or personality-evolution aspect of the IVth CH, realized and achieved through the VIth and Vth CHs. This is another way to look at Pisces-Gemini — joined, severing, stand-alone, and uniting soul and personality.

This awakening of the fires of matter can be natural and basically ‘unconscious’ in the sense of taking place gradually, and being experienced in consciousness through ‘spiritual experiences’ and phenomena (Ray 2 disciples), or it may be abrupt and apparently devastating as an indeferrable physical experience of the rising of the ‘serpent fire’ at the base of the spine through all the chakras and up through the head centers into the chakras (7 head centers) of the soul vehicle on its own plane (and then subsiding and descending back ‘down’ into the physical mechanism). This natural process (at a certain stage) is ‘experienced’ in different ways by the interpreting consciousness and brain, in symbolic (visual) and narrative ‘language.’ But eventually sutratma and sushumna are merged as a potentially higher, yet still physical, correspondence to the Antahkarana.

In Scorpio it can be said that the human soul on its own plane (Vth CH and Venus) truly experiences individualization, and the human personality (VIth CH Mars) is totally transformed by the energetic integration (yogic) process, perhaps performing a unique individualization service for the incarnating (VIth CH) human soul in its capacity as manasaputra or causal body. The human triad/monad (as IVth CH Mercury monad proper) has finally begun to achieve consciousness as a soul and monad on its own plane, and has begun to initiate the more obscure process of the “individualized monad” in consciousness as well as in monadic states of awareness above and beyond consciousness. This monadic individualization is necessary before and during ‘conscious’ integration into the vehicles of the Lesser Heavenly Man — the cosmic Heavenly Man in His capacity of taking incarnation and initiation in the Three Worlds through Humanity as a Unit.

The above discloses somewhat the significance of Scorpio and the role of Mars in the life of the disciple or initiate. It is crucial for the esoteric astrologer to recognize that a Sign's three Planetary rulers work in at least two directions. The focus is 'up' for the mystical aspiring stage. The focus is 'down' for the advanced student finding skilled ways of subjugating the lower vehicles. Ultimately, both directions are adopted in the work of Synthesis. Pluto-Mars, the lowest personality rulers of Scorpio, introduce themselves when head and base centers are coordinated.
“Leo [the consciousness principle] seeks release in Scorpio.” “Scorpio stages the release of Leo.”
Otherwise Mars is relegated to its ongoing work of the evolution and refinement of instinct in the context of mass conscious groups and collectivities. During the Piscean Age this took place primarily through the spilling of blood on all the battlefields of the mini-states in the world for material and territorial interests. Here we look 'down' into the past and into a less philosophical understanding of the principle of Ignorance in Humanity — the choice of War over Vision (Pisces-Virgo).

The World and Humanity are still attempting to ‘wake up.’ Unfortunately, the Aquarian promise and its tendencies to improvement and reform through science are still being blocked by revanchist Piscean Neo-Feudal interests in the form of corporate ‘persons’ or golems and their courtiers, the mercenary PACs, compromised representatives, and purchased media.

This lower function of 'awakening' related to the masses (Thomas Hobbes called it Leviathan and Behemoth ‒ Jonah’s Whale) explains its functional position as the horizontal arm of the Fixed Cross with its major conditioning impact on developing nations (over centuries), developing in the sense of their becoming conscious civic (and somewhat democratic) orders as part of the larger extant civilization on the planet (vs. the smaller creative and leading cultural groups). In the U.S. we still have the full range of these governmental and political schools and methods in play simultaneously.

Old Scorpio, the Monster
Pluto ruling the lower end of Scorpio also explains the revolting and continuing behavior of totalitarian self-confident megalomaniacs to kill off students, intellectuals and the professional (middle-class) populations as a starting point to consolidate their primitive and unregenerate power over groups and nations — creating low-consciousness, fear-conditioned and instinct-impelled masses to fill the ranks of their new mercenary militaries (since Reagan, in the U.S.) to expand their territorial tyranny (“interests”). According to the respected Roman historian and philosopher Polybius, Tyranny historically follows Democracy, just as Democracy never arises directly out of a Monarchy (the rule of law and a parliamentary Aristocracy transition).

We are seeing a somewhat tame version of this in the present USA, where the intelligent groups and middle classes are deliberately being paralyzed (media-poisoned and immobilized) for the unknown agendas of only partially known or recognized political and corporate groups. It is too unpleasant to discuss this further at the moment. It speaks for itself, particularly now during the hysterical U.S. election "party-time" with no limits, now extending beyond a year with its horrendously wasted financial resources.

Pisces and Pluto

In the context of ‘Death’ (or more properly speaking, concepts of death), one of Pisces’ jobs is to distinguish between identity (or centeredness) and all the physical, psychic, and mental forms passing by, dying, or transiently disappearing around Identity or pure awareness.

There is nothing like the meditation on ‘death’ or suicide to help one realize they both are more directly related to external conditions and conditioning, than to what one can recognize and identify with as soul or spirit — the center of one’s Being. Because most humans have a strong kama-manasic streak, there is usually an emotional or psychic attachment to world-view presumptions that must be recognized and severed, or shattered by an external shock. Once this barrier and obstacle to contact with the source and depth of one’s Being is weakened, a full recognition of conditioning and its irrelevant expectations can begin to spontaneously dissolve the energetic barrier. Quiet Meditation on the Heart or on the heart center in one’s Soul body above the head can be of help here. (Vajrasattva confession and practice)

Suffering and Pain are another thing. Pain demands an intelligent, sensitive, and detached response, a focus on deep breathing (which performs the dual purpose of redirecting attention, and opening and filling the area of pain with the body’s autonomous self-healing), along with stillness, silence, and dropping all peripheral concerns for the time being. Intense paralyzing pain brings everything to a halt by its own nature. In a way, it is the subconscious body’s way to focus our mind (attention) on Ignorance, the central aspect, or fact of the lower mind demanding Inquiry and internal reconciliation.

Meditation on Suffering demands intense analysis of one’s individual identifiable causes and factors (real or spurious), alternating with a complete letting go with the recognition that Insight and resolution/ reintegration arrive on their own time schedules. The first step is recognizing that death and suffering are inevitable questions given the human condition. So it is sensible and useful to employ them to good use and best advantage. Suffering is often due to dead or outworn attitudes and kama-manasic forms. Thought in its true or essential nature stands outside the realms of fire-by-friction. Nevertheless, mental work can cause strain on the nerves and exhaustion, but only if one is not mindful of pacing, or has not perfected one’s balance of concentration and attachment to solving a problem or project, while maintaining a clear-minded detachment. Strain is the reaction of the lower vehicles.

Perhaps it is useful to reiterate here that recognizing the central fact of one’s Ignorance (Humanity’s ignorance) is the doorway into the personal subconscious and the collective Unconscious. Taoism points out that by speaking of any category, word, or ‘thing,’ its opposite is automatically invoked in consciousness. With recognition of the ‘location’ and ‘factor’ of Ignorance, its opposite may similarly and spontaneously be invoked. It might be said that instinct and intuition finally unite (Cancer) without benefit of intellect. It is here that the Life aspect can illuminate consciousness identified with the Whole, free from the manasic vehicle. “Manas is but the form through which a higher principle is making itself known.” This Pisces knows instinctively, but to understand and ‘use’ it is something else.

Inspiration: Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Astrology, and her 24 books on esoteric studies.
NY: Lucis Publishing Company – website (http://www.lucistrust.org/en/publications_store).