Just as the soul is symbolically "born" into the innocent thoughtlessness of Aries, it symbolically "dies" - or leaves the painful Earth plane - to enter into the sympathetic humility and mystical awareness of Pisces. In the Piscean Sun Sign stage, evolving man and woman begin to comprehend vaguely the secret of Time as an eternal NOW - able to (in varying degrees) see the Past, Present, and Future as one. This is the soul's third and final excursion into the sensitive Water Element - its fourth and final vibration as a Mutable Communicator - and the last experience under the feminine negative Night Forces.
Ideally, by the time the soul has reached the Pisces stage, it has attained spiritual enlightenment on its long journey through the Mysteries of Love experienced in the preceding eleven Sun Signs. If not, then it must return to certain Sun Sign vibratory experiences on the astrological circle to learn lessons not absorbed because they were too hastily skimmed over in previous incarnated stages. But each such return brings a new vulnerability to that Sun Sign lesson - a new inner urgency to master its positive essence and discard its negative.
Of course, some high or advanced souls, after reaching the Piscean stage, elect of their own choosing to return to Earth to rescue those still in darkness. However, we are discussing here the average Pisces obligation and pattern.
Man and woman, on the Pisces level, have passed at least once through all twelve stages of initiation, and many have been required to fall back and retrace their steps hundreds of times in this experience because Pisces is the most difficult of all the twelve Sun Signs to comprehend and master. Usually, such an accomplishment is not gained the first time around the wheel of life, except by intense desire and will, which is not to say such achievement is impossible - but it is a path, up until now, chosen by very few. This is why astrology teaches that Pisces is "an old soul" - also the reason that not every Pisces man or woman is the epitome of spiritual grace; why some swim in waters dangerously close to the fires of Dante's Inferno. The Fish lives in two worlds, simultaneously experiencing both Heaven and Hell.
With the secret wisdom of the Piscean ruling planet, Neptune, Pisceans knows that sadness and ugliness are not a part of God's plan. They have glimpsed the beauty of truth, and the brilliance of such mystical vision brings an urge to retreat from the negative vibrations of the Earth plane. So Pisces often avoids confrontation and tension through the escape route of drugs, alcohol, daydreams, artistic creation, philosophical theorizing, meditation, or religious retreats.
Pisceans may become teachers, monks, nuns, mystics, artists, musicians, composers, abstract mathematicians, and highly intuitive scientists - or they may choose to swim down into the murky waters of alcoholism and drug addiction, even insanity. It is, indeed, a difficult and complicated vibration for the soul, for this Sun Sign experience is fraught with temptation for the Pisces man or woman.
Because they've been "through it all" on a subconscious level, the Fishes have a natural compassion for the troubles of those around them. The Neptunian soul is intimately familiar with life's vicissitudes, understanding the weakness of human nature, therefore tending to pity, rather than to condemn, man's and woman's failings. This is why these "old souls" so frequently become the recipients of everyone's secrets, trials, worries, and apprehensions. Yet the initial instinct is to turn away from sticky entanglements in all forms. Only when the Fish finds the courage to face his or her own problems with as much spiritual wisdom as is offered to others can the Neptune mysteries be fathomed.
Through this "death initiation" (death of the human ego) the soul grows more forgiving, more gentle, and better able to understand its true relationship to the co-Creators.... as Pisces affirms "I BELIEVE." To realize the full glory and truth of love, the Fish can, if he or she chooses, call on the innocence of Aries, the patience of Taurus, the awareness of Gemini, the perception of Cancer, the nobility of Leo, the discrimination of Virgo, the judgment of Libra, the penetration of Scorpio, the honesty of Sagittarius, the wisdom of Capricorn - and the humanitarianism of Aquarius. But sometimes these many fragments of secret knowledge and talents serve only to confuse Pisces, causing the Fish to then take the easier path of passive nonresistance.
The Pisces positive qualities are humility, compassion, sensitivity, spiritual awareness, psychic comprehension, philosophic insight, and healing potential. Expressed in their negative form they become timidity, apprehension, masochism, idleness, lying, and weakness of will.
To Pisces, love is an unselfish submission of the ego to the desires of the one needed to become Whole. The Fish gains more pleasure from giving than from receiving, more happiness in serving than in being served. Yet enigmatic Neptune tests the Pisces soul with the lure of multiple sexual and romantic experiences - floating from one affair to another.
In such a promiscuous manner - or by becoming a romantic recluse - does the wary Fish escape the dangers of being "hooked" by deep or permanent emotional commitment. But the Pisces man or woman who resists this temptation to avoid love's pain by seeking only love's pleasure is richly rewarded by the mastery of love's final mystery. He or she can then glimpse for the first time on the soul's weary journey the true passion of blending in a trinity of mind, heart, and spirit, resulting in a rare physical ecstasy - the ultimate Piscean fulfillment of Love's long-ago Aries springtime promise of a miracle.