Astro Update - Issue #7

Welcome to Llewellyn's February Astro Update e-newsletter. March in Minnesota is unpredictable. Winter may linger, or not. Huge snowfalls may occur, or not. The sun may shine, or not. I can predict that by this time next month we'll have our fill of winter and be ready to say "good bye" to the season, and the foggy, mystic Pisces Sun is going to help us get to that state of mind.

Pisces is one of those hard to understand signs that we define with words like "dreamy," "foggy," "illusion," "dissolution," "psychic," and "prison" - all of which carry negative connotations. In fact, Pisces and its polar opposite Virgo get an unfair amount of negative press for very opposite reasons - of course. Where Virgo is considered nitpicky and vigilant, Pisces is thought to be abstract and vague - hard to understand, difficult to grasp, slippery.

If we get lazy (another Pisces attribute all of us can claim from time to time), and pass on the challenge to look below the surface to learn more about Pisces, we miss a lot. Pisces, like the oceans it symbolizes, is also "abundant," "prosperous," and "flourishing." Pisces is a mutable sign, and it holds a cadent house position (Twelfth House) in the natural horoscope. Cadence means to fall; in music, it's the close of a musical phrase. In astrology, mutable (meaning to change) and cadent apply to the sign and month that close a season, in this case - winter.

Words like abundant, prosperous, and flourish also define the state of being successful, so we can think of success as another quality of Pisces. We frequently see a strong Pisces influence in birth charts of musicians, actors, and artists. Drew Barrymore's Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Midheaven are in Pisces. MC Hammer's Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury are in Pisces, and so are Ron Howard's Sun, Venus, and Mercury. We think people like Barrymore, Hammer, and Howard are inspired, or that maybe their creative muses are really on the ball. But their abundant talents, skills, and inspiration, pulled up like fish from the vastness of Pisces, are what help their careers to flourish.

Where does inspiration come from? I believe inspiration comes from the vast collective unconscious (also associated with Pisces), and each of us has the ability to tap into the collective, just like the successful flourishing stars do.

Perhaps you think your muse is on vacation, or you've noticed that you have no planets in Pisces. Well, you still have Pisces on a house cusp, you have a Twelfth House in your chart, and Neptune (Pisces' ruler) is somewhere in your chart. Look to these places in your own chart for clues as to how you might experience abundance and flourish - or in other words, "where you can be inspired and creative." If you work with your creative energy, your ability to experience more success is as boundless as Pisces.