Just a few days after the Sun’s conjunction to Nessus today, it will be leaving Aquarius for Pisces on Monday, Feb. 18, at 7:01 am EST. When the Sun arrives in a new sign, it can kind of feel like a shift in the wind’s direction, or like changing the station on your inner radio: there’s still music, but in a different style. In this case, we’ll be shifting from all the recent inner-shadow focus toward a more external creative focus.
One of the hallmarks of Pisces is a very rich, fertile inner life. But that also translates into expression in the wider world. This year, the Sun will be getting an unusual amount of help in translating the intuitive, passionate, visionary energy of Pisces in concrete, tangible ways. There are several planets in Pisces right now: Neptune, Chiron, Mars and Mercury (plus several minor planets and asteroids). All of these planets are working to express Pisces themes through the respective facets of our lives that they represent.
Between all those planets in Pisces, plus the several aspects the Sun will be making to planets in other signs as it travels through, there is a clear message: put your energy where your mouth is. Or more simply: take action. Taking action, however, requires a certain amount of faith in yourself.
Not only does Pisces represent creativity and passion, but it also represents faith. We’re not talking about religion per se, but rather an innate faith — the kind our souls carry as we incarnate on Earth. That is, the kind that can get warped, squashed, masked over or forgotten about as kids, before we even have a chance to realize it’s there in the first place.
Because of this, activity in Pisces can also call our attention to a crisis of faith — in particular, the struggle to identify our passions, or to identify with our innate creativity as being a legitimate, worthwhile, active part of ourselves.
This means that taking creative action can feel nearly impossible if you feel blocked in knowing what you’re truly passionate about (this happens to many people), or you’re out of practice with your art. Inertia is powerful, and you can either hope for something external to push you in the direction you want to go, or you can start finding small ways to experiment and take simple steps.
The external push can be effective, but it also tends to be disruptive, scary and something too many people end up reacting against instead of acting with.
If you really don’t know where to start, try making the commitment to work through a book like The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a way to begin recognizing and addressing whatever resistance stands between you and your innate creative spark. Best of all, it includes lots of ways to “play” and experiment in tangible ways out in the world. The Artist’s Way is not simply a thought exercise, though writing down thoughts is part of it. The point is to stop reading about doing, or wondering what you want to do, and actually start doing.
If you’ve been totally engrossed in all the Nessus-themed shadow excavation and soul inquiry these last couple weeks, have you thought about translating it into some kind of art? Can you start a photo project documenting your secrets and fears and baggage? If you’ve been painting out your demons, is it time to show them in a coffee shop or gallery? Can you dare yourself to show up at the local open mic and read that poem or sing that song you’ve been writing?
Amanda: Your article hit home on so many levels, it’s just amazing, especially the crisis of faith, inertia, and the legitimacy of our innate creativity. Will definitely check into the book. I thank you so much. And much gratitude for replies from Lizzy, Maria, and Strawberry as well!!
hi maria — comments are totally allowed on the book review! there were some glitches in saving that post, and they were accidentally turned off by word press. i’ll fix that now and copy that portion of your comment there for you.
so sorry about that!
Amanda–Hooray for a different breeze. The Nessus work has certainly been fruitful, and the extra push from the cosmos has made the work powerful, but it’s refreshing to be able to emerge from that, and into creativity, no less!
Maria–I get your feeling of being on strike, and in service to all this Nessus work, I wanted to let you know that your post about your work & the fertility paper resonated with me like a lightning bolt a few days after you posted. I was searching through the generational patterns, looking for what had been weighing on me, and having the exact kind of deaf-to-myself inner dialogue–“this is about pain, and resentment, and social pressures, and freedom to be whatever I want, why does the word ‘babies’ keep coming up?” Then, I head your voice in my head, “it’s ABOUT babies, silly!” Most of the day and half a box of kleenex later, I felt like I had a better grasp on my own experience, and a great deal less resentment. So, of course I want you to follow your bliss, and also know that your voice will be heard wherever you choose to raise it, my friend. Namaste.
Thank you for this–it addresses just what I’m missing right now, that ability to keep creating and putting it out there. I’ve been on strike, and don’t know if I’ll ever come back. Some are telling me the solution is as simple as getting some rest, but I don’t know when that will happen either. But thru that haze, I can say that anyone experiencing the faith crisis referenced here might also profit from taking some small action toward better health–it’s tied in with being able to create, all myths to the contrary.
I wish comments were allowed on the book review, so I’ll just leave this here: Yes! the myths about the end of World War II are coming out just as surely and painfully as other myths–church sex abuse, etc.–looks like pluto at work to me. Also, we’re still hurting from the debacle caused by basing housing markets on wacky mathematical models, so we’re in for no big shock when action based on environmental predictive models starts killing us. Sad thing is, fault is not in our models but in ourselves–fear and greed guide the action; modeling and other information is just put to their service as justification and rationalization.
Thank you for today’s wonderful, inspiring piece, dear Amanda – and the gorgeous photo. I know Julia Cameron’s book well, and highly recommend it. Thing is – after all the work I’ve done on unblocking creativity, I’ve become an expert, and I’m now really good at getting others to unblock theirs, but not mine. But maybe that’s where my calling lies. Love this, “…you can start finding small ways to experiment and take simple steps”.