The Age of Pisces: Spiritual Redemption

We are coming to the end of the Age of Pisces, which began around 1 AD. Each astrological age lasts around 2,160 years, so while we are indeed on the “cusp” of the coming Age of Aquarius, we have about 150 years of Piscean influence yet to contend with.

Since we are at the climax, it makes sense to reflect on our track record over the past 2,000 years and see what this Age of Pisces has been about – in particular, in terms of our collective spiritual growth and what we can still redeem from it.

Pisces is the sign of “poets and dreamers.” Its strong connection with the realm of imagination means it is also associated with suffering, delusion and self-sacrifice, mystery, secrets, illusion, self-delusion and escapism.

Alice Bailey, in Esoteric Astrology, also refers to this time as an Age of Glamour. We are so easily fooled by glamour; anything glamorous dazzles and enthralls us. As a society, we are willing to pay anything for a dream and neglect what is real. The movie industry captures the mood of our time, and this is illustrated by how much we are willing to pay celebrities to look good, while we are content that practical workers who contribute something real and tangible in the world, including teachers, nurses and health workers, can barely pay their mortgages.

This is the Age of Pisces in a nutshell: trying to make a dream real, while ignoring the underlying practical reality. It is an age of denial and fantasy. We are so hooked on glamour that we have completely lost sight of the underlying reality, which is why we don’t experience the degree of spiritual connectedness that our ancient ancestors did. Being held in a hypnotic trance by glamour actually prevents us from connecting with what is real.

“You live in illusion and the appearance of things.
There is a reality, but you do not know this.
When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing,
and being nothing you are everything. That is all.”

 – Kalu Rinpoche

As we collectively journey through this cusp of Ages from Pisces to Aquarius, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to tell fact from fantasy, and this gets us into big trouble! This is where we need the discernment of Pisces’ opposite sign: Virgo¹. Just as the qualities of Aquarius’ opposite sign Leo will awaken us to the higher potential of the Aquarian Age, so it will be through embracing Virgoan energy and qualities that we will collectively awaken and break free from the powerful grip of Piscean daydreaming and “get real” to the higher Piscean potential of our spiritual reality.

The discernment of Virgo leads us away from a lower Piscean consciousness of imaginary (fantasized) spiritual ideals, and brings us closer to a real awareness of spiritual truth. It is not through denying reality that we will come to recognize the truth of our Being, but through accepting and analyzing our reality, in a very deep Virgoan way.

While Pisces is dazzled by image, Virgo challenges us to go deeper and find substance. We come to know for ourselves, in spiritual terms, what is real and what isn’t. Once illusion and delusions have dissolved, the higher Piscean consciousness knows itself to be “at one” with all that is, as a result of very real, substantial direct experience.

As we close out this Age of Pisces, we are living with the consequences of clinging to fantasized ideals, while failing to look deeper into the truth of our being: our spiritual reality. A look back over the last 2,000 years of war, strife, terror, violence and torture, and we can easily see why this Piscean Age is one of suffering. This daydream is really a nightmare that we need to wake up from.

“The 20th century witnessed the greatest suffering, with the greatest number of lives lost at the hands of other humans, in the entire history of the species.”

– Gregg Braden, Fractal Time

This fact reveals the depth of our collective delusion: we think of ourselves as the most advanced of all societies, and yet this is the harsh reality of our legacy. This seems so removed from enlightenment that one may be forgiven for having doubts if we are even spiritually evolving at all. Individuals with a strong Pisces influence are all too aware of the suffering in the world, and may turn to all manner of escapism, food, alcohol, drugs, movies, games – you name it, we’ll try anything to avoid having to face reality. On one level it is actually understandable, the degree of suffering in this world is overwhelming; yet it is all the result of an obsession with, and inability to free ourselves from, the power of our own imagination.

The key to the “mind’s true liberation” (the promise of the coming Aquarian Age) lies in understanding the deeper mysteries of Pisces, including what suffering and self-sacrifice are really about, from a spiritual perspective. But how? This is where the discernment, deep analysis and healing energy of Virgo is needed.

We are evolving in consciousness and we are actually just a quantum leap away from having the consciousness to comprehend the higher vibration, the true spiritual aspect, of Pisces. The 12 zodiac signs are actually 12 Divine intelligences, or “intelligent energies.” Their influence upon us depends also upon our degree of openness and consciousness.

At its purest expression, Piscean energy opens us up to a real experience of our own Divinity: one-ness with all that is through an individual experience of the Divine. At its lowest interpretation, filtered through a “foggy, confused” human mind, it stimulates imagination, paranoia, and leads us into fearful imaginary realms with the painful repercussions of illusory thinking. Make no mistake, I am not suggesting that we are imagining our pain. Sadly, our pain and suffering are very, very real.

The important spiritual lesson of Pisces is that our suffering is real, even though the cause may be an illusion (a mistake, or a lie).

For example, you walk into a room and see a poisonous snake in your bed. You experience the very real physiological effects of terror. You are shaking, your mouth is dry, meanwhile your hands are dripping with sweat, and your heart is racing so fast you might just have a heart attack or a stroke. All of this is very, very real. The suffering is real. Then you put the light on, and realize there never was a snake, it was a cord that had fallen off the curtains. Of course you feel relief now, but at the time your suffering was very real – so real it could have killed you – and yet it was all based on an illusion and not on an accurate perception of reality.

The Age of Pisces has been one of suffering through fear and terror. Real fear and real terror, based on illusion. The spiritual message of Pisces is that when we fail to perceive our reality correctly, fear and terror result. The solution is to return to wholeness, using the discernment of Virgo to perceive the whole of our reality, as it actually is. On a deeper spiritual level, Virgo knows that all matter is spirit in physical form. As we continue living through the cusp of Ages, we’d be wise to remember it.

With our minds as ‘fogged’ as they are by ignorance, delusion and illusion, it is little wonder that our current idea of self-sacrifice is itself a mis-conception. Self-sacrifice does not mean we are either a ‘victim’ or ‘martyr’ who has to continually neglect our own needs to defer to the whims of others. This is a false understanding so typical of this Age of Pisces.

To deepen our understanding we need to use the discernment of Pisces’ opposite sign Virgo¹ to bring order to the confusion and chaos of Pisces. Virgo discernment would have us analyze: what is Self-sacrifice? Is our understanding correct?

If we look deeply in analysis we discover that the word sacrifice comes from ‘sacrify’ – to make sacred. What does it mean to make something sacred? It means to spiritualize something: bring Spirit, Divinity, or God into it. To allow that which is holy (or whole) to prevail. The true path of self- sacrifice, which is the higher vibration of Pisces, means recognition of our sacred self:  our ‘Higher Self’ or Soul. To really come to know this truth for ourselves, we need to analyze the nature of our Self: by going deeply into our inner journey, until we recognize our own Soul.

“Who would you be without your story?”

 – Byron Katie       

When we let go of the false self that we project from ego-personality, we realize the true path of Pisces: oneness with ‘all that is’. This is a process of recognizing that which already is: when we let go of fantasy, on all levels, we begin to see the underlying reality. The truth is that we are already sacred, and it is our own mental ‘fantasies’, our strong attachment to mental concepts, which keep us from recognizing that fact. Our strong attachment to our ego-identity (who we think we are) blinds us to the reality of who we really are. The difference is one of believing in something we have never experienced, versus really knowing the truth for ourselves.

“Belief is always shaky, afraid, because
deep down you are aware
that you don’t know:
it may be right, it may not be.”

                                                                                            – OSHO

The role Virgo plays in this process is vital, because the higher Virgo vibration, infuses physical matter with Divine Love. Think of the Virgo herbalist who pours loving energy into her herb garden. Eileen Caddy, co-founder of the Findhorn Spiritual Community in Scotland (and a Virgo Soul) would often speak of ‘flowing love radiances’ into her work and garden. For a Virgo Soul, Love is not an abstract mental concept but a very real physical energy that is to be poured into the physical realm to promote healing.

“We are all flow-ers of energy.”

                                                                      – Anya Sophia Mann

Knowing how to flow our energy in beneficial ways is a skill that comes with deep awareness of our underlying true nature as Divine energy Beings. This knowing comes from lifetimes of Spiritual practice, leading to grounded, practical, spiritual experience, and not from the imagination. Virgo invites us into deeper, practical, spiritual practices such as Yoga, to deepen our inner knowing.

Discernment allows us to tell the difference between belief based on fantasy, or an idea we have heard about, and spiritual truth based on our own experience. There is a difference between imagining we are flowing love (Pisces), and really flowing it (Virgo)! The personality-centered romantic love of the Piscean Age is really about being ‘in love with an idea of love’. It is a fantasy that is far removed from the reality of Love. It is necessary that this brings dis-illusionment otherwise we would never be motivated to seek and find higher Love.

The path of Virgo brings necessary dis-illusionment as it dissolves lower Piscean illusion through deeper analysis. This releases the grip of fantasy, and allows higher Piscean connection to very real, Divine, energy. The highest spiritual message of Virgo teaches us that when we bring our awareness to something, we access the highest Divine qualities of Pisces. This allows us to bring a real loving energy to whatever we place our attention on which, in turn, brings healing:

“When we honor the body with our attention,
we begin to reclaim our feelings, our instincts, our life…
opening the heart begins by opening
to a lifetime’s accumulation of unacknowledged sorrow…”

                                                    – Jack Kornfield

All are paths leading us within, to discover Divine Union and oneness, through experiencing our personal healing journey. Thereby discovering our inner Self:  which is connected, ‘holy’ (whole) and not separate from Divinity. As Aries begins the outward journey as ‘a point of light in the mind of God’**, the journey of Pisces ultimately represents our returning. Our spiritual homecoming. This is the true path of Pisces-Virgo-Pisces.

Sin and Redemption

Spiritual leaders of the Piscean Age have been emphatic that we understand the concepts of sin and redemption, but why? Why are they particularly Piscean themes? The English word Sin was translated from the original Greek word Harmartia which literally means ‘missing the mark’. The more we try to live up to a man-made idea of who we should be (trapped in a glamour-fantasy) the more we miss the point of who we really are underneath. The word redemption means ‘re-claiming’. In theological terms, ‘redemption’ is a metaphor for what is achieved through ‘atonement’ or ‘at-one-ment’. It simply means re-claiming who we really are.

In other words when we let go of the struggle and pretense of trying to be what we’re not (the ‘sin’ or mistaken illusory self), we can get down to the very real business of being who we are (redemption).

Pisces and The Mystery of The Sacred Heart

Through the path of Virgo, we will discover the highest truth of Pisces: the mystery of the Sacred Heart. Once we have discovered, through our own experience, the truth of ourselves as living Souls, we begin to flow our energy differently into the world. Through conscious connection with our ‘Sacred Self’ we activate the Sacred Heart energy. In Esoteric Astrology Pisces is known as the sign of the ‘World Savior’. The deepest mystery of all, is how this comes about. The world is ‘saved’ once our collective Sacred Heart is activated, and the whole of humanity’s hearts beat together as ‘one heart’.

As this Piscean Age comes to completion, we can at one and the same time see the both the results of our missing the point (in terms of increased suffering) and the simultaneous awakening of a collective heart-centered humanity. Author Gregg Braden² has written much about the potential of the human heart to influence the magnetic field of our planet, and affect our climate. He is a great advocate of the Global Coherence Initiative whose aim is to:

“unite people in heart-focused care and intention,
to facilitate the shift in global consciousness from instability and discord to balance, cooperation and enduring peace.”

  – Global Coherence Initiative

We are living the cusp: as the seeds of the new age are being planted, we also are experiencing the fruits of the closing age. It is a time of overlap: yes we’re planting seeds for the Age of Aquarius and we are also reaping the ‘good’ with the ‘bad’ of what we sowed in the Age of Pisces. The choice is ours. Our future depends on our ability to choose where we place our attention, and that requires the discernment and concentration, of Virgo.

We have an amazing opportunity, and given that we still have another 150 years or so, there is still time. We need not ‘miss the mark’. All is not lost. Setting all our mis-takes and mis-perceptions aside, we can still reap a beautiful harvest from this Piscean Age, if we utilize the practical energy and discernment of Virgo to look deeply within and recognize the truth of our own Being.

We still have an opportunity to experience the reality of Divine Union. If this is to come to fruition, we need to get real: use discernment and choose wisely  to focus our energy on our inner experience, our heart-centeredness and our Soul awakening.