Pisces
Mythological Research, Dissolution of Duality, Fishy Mathematics and a Song
This is quite a long piece of writing, so feel free to read sections at a time (the audio voiceover is 43 minutes). I have divided the post with headers to help splitting the post into smaller parts.
During the month of March, when the so-called Pisces season started, I felt a strong connection to these soulful fishes, floating in the depths of the unconscious, united with everything. While in that state, I felt averse to conceptualize around this zodiac sign or to embark on research involving musty old tomes or musty old websites. I simply wanted to float in the waters, to feel and to be.
During that month, I found it easier to express myself through music than in writing, and in some of the songs I worked on I can see the influence of this watery energy. One of the songs is even titled “Fishes”, originally intended as a normal-length 3-minute pop song, but now, as I was working on it, somehow flowing out into the form of a 11-minute journey. I still plan to edit that 3-minute version at some point, but maybe this longer version wanted to exist so that I could use it as a background soundtrack to this piece of writing. I am sharing the song at the bottom of this post if you feel like listening to it. The lyrics will probably distract from the reading so I recommend listening to the song after reading. But of course, if you’re more interested in the song than the text feel free to listen first ;)
Now I am starting to feel called back to shore from all that floating, and feel that I want to show some attention to the fish, and to this mythologial research project, by looking deeper into the myth of Pisces.
As the last sign of the zodiac, Pisces is often described as a representation for some kind of a dissolution, the return to the watery abyss of creation before the cycle of existing in a material form begins again. In a way, this state can be likened to the embryo floating in the womb before being born, or to the soul existing in a state of union with the universe before entering existence in a separate, material shape. Pisces can be seen as a symbol for this state of feeling inbetween - existing as a physical being, separated from others through our material form, while simultaneously sensing that there is something vaster or deeper beyond the purely physical.1 Maybe this is also the reason that Pisces is the sign most associated with faith.
This contradictory experience is what the design of the Pisces symbol visualizes: it shows two fish conjoined, but swimming in opposite directions, almost like they are reflections of each other, or perhaps the two conflicting sides within a person. In essence, Pisces is a representation for the paradoxical sensation of feeling that you are separate and connected at the same time.
With that, let’s look at some of the stories that have been imagined in connection to the Pisces constellation. Maybe they can add some nuance to this idea, or take it into other directions.
Pisces in Greek Mythology
In Greek mythology, Pisces represents the fish into which Aphrodite (or Venus) and her son Eros (or Cupid in the Roman variant) transformed to escape Typhon, a serpentine giant and “father of all monsters”, that Gaia had sent to attack the Gods. So, to escape this earthly monster, Aphrodite and Eros turned into a fish, sometimes described as a shark. In a variation of this myth, they do not turn into fish themselves, but are carried by the fish, Pisces, out of danger. In a variation of this myth, they do not turn into fish themselves, but are carried by the fish, Pisces, out of danger.
Something I find fascinating about this myth is how it is Gaia, the personification of the Earth itself, that is attacking the Gods (but through the monstrous Typhon). And the fish, a being of the waters, is the way that the Gods escaped from this attack. Through the transformation or escape that the Fish aided the Gods with, its role as a threshold guardian between the earthly and the spiritual realms is further emphasized. And in this myth, the fish is a saviour of the spiritual from the earthly.
In another myth, the Pisces constellation was created by Aphrodite as a way of showing her gratitude to a fish. This is a birth myth of Aphrodite, who was inside of an egg that fell into the river. The fish rolled the egg to safety, to the shore, and doves sat on it until it hatched. Out of the egg came Aphrodite, and as a thanks to the fish that had rolled the egg to the shore, she put the fish up in the night sky.
This myth has some similarities and differences to the earlier one. A similarity is that a fish is again in the role of a saviour, saving Aphrodite from harm. A difference to the other myth is that Aphrodite’s son is not present in this myth. But I think the biggest difference is that there is no “actively aggressive action” from Gaia taking place, though one can argue that the waters of the river are also connected to the Earth, Gaia, that they flow through, but maybe this is a but far-fetched.
In this myth, the fish is taking the role of a guardian of new life, aiding the Goddess of Love and Beauty in coming to shore, and being born. Again the fish in the role of a kind of threshold guardian, only this time guarding the Goddess in her yet unborn, embryonic, egg shape, in this inbetween place, so that she can come to be born and exist. And this time, the fish isn’t saving the Goddess from the earthly realm, but guiding her entrance into it, onto the shore from the waters.
So there are some interesting connections here, between these fishes and the qualities assigned to the Pisces zodiac symbol, such as Pisces being a threshold guardian between the eathly and the spiritual.
Christ & Pisces
When I was in high school, I attended Religion classes. I grew up in Finland, where Christianity, in the form of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, is the largest religion, so Religion class naturally equalled classes about Christianity, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland in particular. It is still the largest religion in Finland, though the percentage has been dropping form 98,1% registered Lutherans in 1900 to 65,2% in 2022. I was baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran, but chose to leave it during the soul-searching years of my twenties, when I was overtaken by a sorrow over the realization of the old, animistic ways of my ancestry having been overwritten by Christianity.2
These days, I hold a more open, nuanced view and can see how different religions can bring different pathways to the same source, and show different aspects of it. But I am still averse to any kind of dogma where one pathway is prescribed as the only way, and I enjoy having my own personal connection, without any need for mediators, to God/spirit/source, whatever you want to name it.
I do still value having taken those Religion (Christianity) classes, and what I learned from them. There can be much to learn even in (particularly in) places where tensions arise. One story that I remember from my classes, that is relevant to this piece of writing, was a story about earlier times when Christians were persecuted in the Roman Empire. As a way of recognizing when another Christian person was in their midst, the Christian could create a secret symbol, a little arch in the sand, with their foot. If the other person was also Christian, they would know what this discreet signal meant, and would complete the arch with another arch below the first, resulting in the symbol of a fish: a symbol for Christianity.
As I was undertaking my research on Pisces, I remembered this little detail from my Religion (Christianity) classes, and took note of it, because in my research I found that there are many parallells between Christ, Christianity and Pisces, that I wasn’t aware of before.
The story of the birth of Christ is said to be a result of the spring equinox entering into Pisces. With Christ’s birth coinciding with this date, many Christian symbols for Christ use the astrological symbol for Pisces, and the figure of Christ is prescribed with many of the personality traits of a Pisces, so much so, that Jesus is considered an archetype of the Piscean. Moreover, many of Christ’s apostles were fishermen, Jesus summoned them with the words “I will make you Fisher’s of Men”, early Christians called themselves "little fishes", and a code word for Jesus was the Greek word for fish, ichthys.
Christ’s birth also holds parallells to the beginning of the age of Pisces, which is said to have begun 1 AD, and is still ongoing and will end around AD 2150 (if you subscribe to this idea…who knows?) Because of these parallells, some say that the age of Pisces stands for the rise of Christianity, but also of the Roman Empire and Islam. Overall, the age of Pisces can be seen as a symbol for the age of religion, while the upcoming age of Aquarius will question (and is already questioning) these faith-based systems with its focus on science. Whether you subscribe to this idea or not, it can provide an additional perspective to use, an interesting lens through which to view the world.
But let’s get back to Jesus again for a moment. In portrayals of Jesus as a hero-figure meant to inspire rule-abiding followers of an organized religion, it is often forgotten that Jesus was a rebel in his time, going against the way that faith was expressed. More than simply “fishing for followers”, I believe that he was trying to show a way, an example of someone connecting to their personal principles, looking inwards, looking for a deeply personal connection to God/Source/Spirit, through the recognition of the God/Source/Spirit in oneself. Jesus is often described as the son of God, the child of God, but I believe it would be more correct to say that Jesus is a child of God. And everyone has a similar direct connection to God simply through being alive, as separate (yet connected) expressions of life, and of God (or source or spirit, if those words feel more comfortable for you to use. I know they do for me, because of my own tensions with religious dogmatic talk using God as a punishing stick.)
It is in this that I feel Jesus most representing “Piscean energy”. It is a deeply personal expression of faith. The faith that a person holds and feels in themself. It is a seeking for union with all, through the authentic experience of the Self as just another expression of Soul (a sentence that at first may appear as a paradox). It is through this recognition of the soul inherent in a person’s own being that the recognition of soul in others is made possible.
These last statements are just something that feels true to me. But it doesn’t mean it has to feel true to you. I am living a life where I feel a need to have a deep and personal connection to whatever it is that I call soul, or source, but everyone has their own lives, and their own approaches. Feel free to share your own view and experience in the comments.
Further Meanings Attached to the Fish
This section simply collects a few different meanings attached to the fish, based on the information found in my mythology and symbology books (see references 2, 5 and 6.) I wanted to include these here to allow for a vaster range of meanings to be made visible.
Because of the vast number of eggs they lay, fish are linked with life and fertility. The fish is also a symbol for the phallus.
Mummified fish have been found in excavations of ancient Egypt, and there existed a fish cult in the city of Oxyrhynchus, where the mormyrus fish was worshipped. It was believed that it had swallowed the phallus of Osiris, god of the dead, when his brother Set hacked his body to pieces.
In addition to the connections between the fish and Aphrodite/Venus and Poseidon/Neptune, the fish was also sacred to Frigga, the Norse goddess of fertility.
In Sumero-Semitic rites the fish was sacrificed to Ishtar, Adapa, Ea and Thammuz.
In Hindu mythology the fish is one of the mounts of Vishnu as savior of the world when he cae as a fish to aid Manu.
In China, fish are symbols of abundance and good luck.
In the Arabic alphabet, the letter “n” is pronounced “nun”, which is also the Arabic word for fish, and the fish is a symbol for eternal life in the Qur'an.
In Hebrew tradition the fish represent the true and faithful.
A myth of the origin of society, often encountered among South American Indians, tells of the creation of separate groups of people, usually from fish. In their separateness, the groups existed in an asocial and infertile state. Social life, and thereby fertility, could emerge only through the coming together of these groups.
In a myth of the Triyó people, the origin of horticulture came with the aid of a fish that a man, Paraparawa, had caught in the river. The fish turned into a woman, Waraku, who, together with her father (who took the shape of an alligator), brought bananas, yams, sweet potatoes and yuca from the river. The fish-woman taught the man how to plant them in the earth, how to tend them and how to prepare them for food.
In Buddhist belief the fish symbolizes tha footprint of Buddha, indicating freedom from desires and attachments.
Meeting the Fish in an Active Imagining
In an attempt to directly connect to the energy of Pisces/the Fish, instead of (or in addition to) only reading others’ descriptions about it, I embarked on an active imagining. In my imagination, I invited the Fish to come to me if there was something it wanted to tell me, so that I could in my turn share its message onwards to whoever happens to read this.
Below is a description of what appeared for me during the imagining.
I am in a space. It feels like some kind of a depth. I don’t know if it is the ocean, outer space, or a kind of inbetween dimension. Maybe it is the space between and inside and around everything. No details are visible. The space feels thicker than air. It feels fluid, but also deeper and thicker than water. I gaze into the depths in front of me. It looks dark, but I can feel it sparkling with life. Like outer space, scattered with stars. Only, these stars are not visible, or far away. They are invisible, but they are all around me. Everywhere.
From the depths in front of me, I can see a Fish slowly emerge. It is swimming towards me, in a strangely joyful and jumping manner. Moving up and down, almost like it is on a roller coaster. When it is right in front of me, it stops and looks at me curiously, with smiling and open eyes. There is an innocence to it, a childish energy. It is a pure soul. But also an ancient, endless soul. A bright but mild light is emanating from it.
I sense something below us. Another prescence. When I look down, I see that a large, Dark Fish is right below me and the Light Fish. In contrast to the bright, childlike fish, this Dark Fish is not smiling. It seems very serious. And very old. It is moving so slowly that at first I think it is still. But it is moving, slowly swimming back and forth in the depths. It does not seem to want to engage with me. It stays down, hidden in the dark depths.
I can sense a relation between the Dark Fish and the Light Fish. It almost feels like the old fish is roaming there below us because it wants to guard the “child-fish”. At first, I consider the possibility that the Dark Fish is a grandparent to the Light Fish. But I quickly discard this idea. I can sense that their connection is more intertwined than that. It is more like they are reflections of each other. They represent the expression of opposites that enables the dissolution of duality. The Light Fish explains further:
How else can duality be dissolved than by holding both sides?
It is like a mathematical formula: the plus and minus of the same value
always results in
zero.
The numbers themselves don’t matter, you can try them all,
but they all end up in zero.
-5 + 5 = 0
+ 10 - 10 = 0
-3 + 3 = 0
The zero represents the nothing and everything.
And so, I am the + Fish. And below us is the - Fish.
I am the life, yearning to be lived. I am the soul that is seeking expression
by journeying away from the source.
And below us is the unlife, that is still, with the source. It is the soul that does not need any separate expression, because it is already in
the shadow of all expression.
I listen intently, and try to make sense of what the Fish says, but something about the Dark Fish is bothering me. It is easy to be charmed by the joyful manner of the childlike fish, but the grumpy-looking and slow dark fish at the bottom is making me feel uneasy. I realize this is because I am a creature of life, living my life as an expression, through a material form. I feel a resonance with the bright fish, who is on a similar journey as am I. Or, on the very least, it is a representation of a being on a similar journey. But the dark fish is the antithesis of life, while somehow being just as integral a part of life. And this is too much for my human mind to comprehend.
I realize that the Dark Fish bothers me because it appears as antisocial and distanced. It doesn’t need me to like it. It is not playing part in a kind of existence where there is any need to be liked. It just is. And I realize that the seriousness and grumpiness I attach to it comes from my own human interpretation: actually, the Dark Fish is blank. I am the one who is prescribing a story to its appearance. I am the one who is wondering whether the Dark Fish is depressed, or bored, with that blank expression and slow movement. But the Dark Fish is the expression of the nothing-side. It does not need to be anything else.
I look to the Light Fish again, hoping for it to explain further. And so it does. Although I am expecting some elaborations on the myths I have been researching, the Fish completely sidesteps those. And later on I realize that those myths are nothing but echoes of earlier expressions that were created in attempts to grasp and process these contradictions and incomprehensible truths, and this Fish clearly wants to get to the bottom of things instead.
I/ We came to you as Fish, because that was the shape that you were expecting to see.
The shape that you called for.
But of course we can take many forms, all the forms of all the different expressions and their non-expressions.
And yet, a Fish-shape is very fitting in this instance, because, you too were once roaming the waters.
In human form, in the watery womb
And even earlier, in the waters that were before
Can you remember, back when, the waters was the only existence you knew?
No, of course, it is not something to remember, in this life, in this expression, you are not even supposed to remember
(but you want to)
You can feel it, can’t you? The contradiction deep inside of you.
Sensing your connection to the deep waters, the source
Yet stuck roaming on dry land
The reason you are coming to us with these questions, is because you are longing to get back Home.
Or at least, longing to connect with Home.
Fear not, little one
You will get back
Home
You are already Home
You can feel it, can’t you?
You are Home and Not-Home
+ 1 - 1 = 0
As the Light Fish expresses those last words, I can sense something shifting about it. It appears much older. And now I can clearly see how the Dark Fish and the Light Fish are one and the same. The two sides of the same coin. Or rather, the two lines that make the drawing of the same fish.
I no longer see the Light Fish as a childlike being, I know that it is much older than me. And yet, I don’t know what age my own soul is. Maybe we are all one and the same, at the core. For a moment, the concept of “time” and “age” dissolves, and we are just there, dissolved as one, in the deep waters.
And then it is time for me to go back up to the surface, getting back to taking part in my human life and these activities that I feel called to do: writing down the message of the Fish, and sharing it to other Fishes who are searching for Home.
You can listen to my song, Fishes (the 11-minute version), below:
References
Astrological age in Wikipedia. Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrological_age
Cavendish, Richard (editor). (1980) Mythology: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Orbis Publishing Limited.
Gaia in Wikipedia. Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia
Ichthys in Wikipedia. Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthys
Mercatante, Anthony S. (2009) The Facts On File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, Third Edition. Infobase Publishing.
O’Connel, Mark & Airey, Raje. (2011) The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Signs & Symbols. Hermes House.
About the Pisces Constellation on Stardate.org. Available online:
https://stardate.org/astro-guide/topic/pisces-the-fishPisces (astrology) in Wikipedia. Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisces_(astrology)
Typhon in Wikipedia. Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhon
About The Age of Pisces on Hello Astrology. Available online: https://www.helloastrology.com/pisces/age-of-pisces/
I want to add that I do not mean to devalue the “purely physical”. I believe the physical is also a part of this vaster whole, the physical is not separate from “spiritual”, since this separation is an illusion, the veil we see the world through...(at least in my culture…) but for the purposes of this piece of writing, and to be able to discuss the human experience in clearer terms without these kinds of disclaimers scattered throughout, I do need to acknowledge the experience of separation.
Of course this romantized view of my own perceived ancestry holds its own contradictions, as I am also aware of the forced assimilations of the native Sami people into Finnish culture, something that is still not openly acknowledged in Finland to a degree that I would hope. And yet, at our very deepest roots, I believe we all share some kind of an animistic ancestry, and a deeper connection to the earth. I sometimes wish we could emphasize this deeper, shared root instead of taking part in the usual finger-pointing, and yet, I can also acknowledge the need for a type of retribution and for the oppressed to have their say… Feel free to share your own view on this matter in the comments, if you so wish.
Enjoyed reading this :)