It is safe to assume that, so far as these latitudes are
concerned, Pisces is the hardest sign to write about as an
ascendant.

One would not expect the twelfth sign rising to bring
prominence or indeed in most cases the desire to be
prominent.

Insofar as it did so it would probably be in limited
circles. Thus William Lilly eminent name in our "golden
succession" but for the most part only known outside the
astrological world because of his having been the target of
others' satire.

Probably the world of mediums would provide some good
cases. But this again is an enclosed sphere of its own.

Add to this that in the latitude of London Pisces rises
and then flies way to Aries in about 53 minutes, as against
Scorpio with about two and a half hours on the ascendant, so
that a number of Pisces-rising folk that one will find in
collections like Notable Nativities will necessarily be
small.

When Pisces rising becomes famous t is, unhappily, apt to
end rather ignominiously, like President Warren G. Harding:
"Government investigations...revealed an extent of political
immorality in Washington such as had no parallel in recent
times," says the Brittanica; but of Harding himself it says
"his nature was kindly and genial; and there was general
confidence in his honesty and devotion to his duties; he was
regarded as easy going." This is quite a good picture of
many Pisceans.

Another example, Lord Rosebury, who ended broken in health
and suffering terribly from that Neptunian ailment,
insomnia.

John Aubrey, the antiquary, was described as "a shiftless
person, roving and maggoty-headed, and sometimes little
better than crazed. And being exceedingly credulous," etc.

Here again a picture of many natives of the Fishes.

"Kindly, genial man, easy-going, credulous"...those
adjectives all seem apt. Harding, too, illustrates the
tendency of Pisceans to get themselves involved in muddles
for which they are not directly responsible.

Sometimes they get caught between two fires, as it were.

The Kaiser's mother, a native of the sign, was said to be
German in Britain and British in Germany and so to have
pleased neither country. William Lilly appears to have
found himself at times siding with the Royalists and then
again with the Parliament. However, he ended his days in
comfort. One likes to think of him attending once a week in
Kingston Market and prescribing herbal remedies for the
poor, free of charge.

One would like to imagine Pisces as rarely cruel and
oftentimes eminently kind and generous. More of this
hereafter! Certainly it is not infrequently thriftless, and
when in difficulties a parasitic element may arise.

If you want a good portrait of our sign in modern
literature, turn to Wells' Mr. Polly.

To begin with, the name is Piscean, for it suggests a
parrot, and this loquacious bird is certainly Piscean.
Natives of the sign often look like parrots. Then he starts
as a drapers assistant, which is true to type. He has his
Jovian stroke of luck and inherits some money. He fails in
business on his own and devises a plot to disappear from
insolvency and a wife who is a ghastly caricature of Virgo.
He ends his days as a general handyman in an inn by the
river. HIs simple kindly nature is all Piscean.

Then, of course, there is the immortal Micawber whose
quick changes from despair..."no man is without a friend who
has a razor"...to the heights of hopefulness illustrate the
duality of the sign.

Moreover, he is very good at giving excellent advice to
others but neglecting it himself, and that is characteristic
of both Jovian signs.

In the "Principles" I have given the following occupations
for Pisces:

"Trades connected with cloth and wool, grocery, footwear
sale and manufacture, the sea, plumbing, the drama, hotels,
inns, liquor, painting, welfare work, charities,
nursing"...a fairly long list.

But I should have added the Church.

Both Jovian signs love sermonizing. Many of our prominent
preachers have been Welshmen; and as this country is under
Gemini Pisces is the natural occupant of the 10th cusp.

Dickens gives us the abominable Chadband, with his "flabby
paw" and his habit of addressing rhetorical questions to
which he himself gave the answer. Herein the two signs of
Jupiter differ: Sagittarius likes an argument; Pisces wants
to do the talking.

Mind you, I am still speaking of the sign rising, and, as
I have observed before in this series of addresses, most
signs do not appear at their best when ascending. The first
house is naturally Arietic and certain signs...chiefly
perhaps the negatives...so not agree very well with this
mode of expression. Possibly Pisces rising finds itself
being hustled. Lilly himself does not flatter his own sign:
"an idle, effeminate, sickly sign, or representing a man of
no action."

It is said that an easy life makes for degeneracy. I
don't know if this is true. The Australian aborigines have
a hard time of it, if any have, but it has not made them
progressive. At any rate certain signs seem to thrive on
being born with silver spoons in their mouths. Perhaps the
best Pisceans are those who get comfortable church livings
on which the do indeed live comfortably and preach
comfortable, unexciting sermons, without minding much if the
congregation is comfortably asleep in comfortable pews.

In the old days it was argued in this Lodge that England
was ruled by Pisces.

This is too big a problem to tackle here, but a glance at
the matter does afford some support for this view.

You may recall I have always said that Uranus, in 28
Sagittarius in the 1066 map, was very important to us; and I
suggest it may have been close to the 1066 midheaven.
Remember that so careful a student as J. Martin Harvey has
asserted that he can find no worthwhile evidence whatever
that William I was crowned at noon.

Consider how prominent this area has been in the maps of
our monarchs.

To take recent ones: Victoria, Neptune 28 Sagittarius;
Edward VII, asc. 28; George V, Jupiter 26; George VI, Sun
22; Prince Charles, Jupiter 29:54; Elizabeth I Jupiter at 21
Sagittarius.

Note Sir Winston Churchill with Venus at 22 Sagittarius.

I propose as a thesis for examination, as ascendant of
about 22 Pisces.

I suppose the worst blow Britain has ever received was the
American Declaration of Independence. Neptune was then in
22:27 Virgo.

All through the Napoleonic Wars Pluto was around 21
Pisces.

On August 5, 1914, Venus and Mars were conjoined in 24
Virgo.

On September 3, 1939, Neptune was in 22:35 Virgo.

Battle of Waterloo: Mars in 24 Pisces.

Of course William's coronation could hardly be the figure
for Great Britain, and one cannot sweep the 1801 horoscope
aside. Nevertheless, the transits to the 1066 chart, as
proposed, do seem fairly impressive and sufficient to
warrant further study.

The the West of the British Isles is strongly Piscean most
astrologers would probably admit.

One of the keys to Pisces seems to be its relation to what
has been called Nature's hunger for new forms. Over against
this, according to the arcane teaching, there is a principle
of identity which keeps things what they are, through all
changes, of that I may say I am still the same man as I was
fifty years ago, though I may have "changed out of all
knowledge," as the saying is. This is related to the
Italian goddess, Vesta, whose flame burnt perpetually on her
altar in Rome, tended by the Vestal Virgins.

But Pisces is ever changing Proteus who seeks to elude the
pursuer by changing into all sorts of shapes. So it is
difficult to capture Pisces in our mind.

So too the typical Pisces loves the sea that is never long
the same, and, I suspect, clouds have the same fascination
for him. He may gaze in wonderment at the shadows of clouds
racing over the mountain side, but the mountains themselves
do not attract him.

Above all, he is attracted to acting. Nowadays, I am
told, the producers go in for "type-casting" or selecting
for a part some one who is naturally like that sort of
character. But the old barn-stormers would have scorned the
notion; they would maintain that a competent actor should be
able to take Hamlet one night and Falstaff the next with
equal facility, primed with a certain amount of alcoholic
refreshment.

For alcohol transforms people and transformation is a most
Piscean word.

Naturally the sign has kinship with things that are
shapeless or change shape or adopt their shape from
something else, as liquids and gases do when placed in
containers.

But if they have no such containers, psychologically, they
tend to drift or run away and lose their Vestalian identity.
Hence, in extreme cases, the Piscean may fall into insanity,
usually, one supposes, of a pleasant daydream kind. In mild
forms one gets unpunctuality as a typical fault, vexatious
to others but so natural to Pisces that the irate are soon
disarmed by his bland smile. Similarly he will make an
appointment for one place but turn up at another.

He is often rather vague about money, too. He is a great
borrower. Please read Charles Lamb's essay "The Two Races
of Men"...that is, the borrowers and the be-borrowed.

"What a careless even deportment hath your borrower! What
rosy gills! What a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he
manifest, taking no more thought than lilies! What contempt
for money, accounting it (yours and mine especially) no
better than dross! What a liberal confounding of those
pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum!" And so forth and so
on.

Charles Lamb was born with the Sun in Aquarius, but one
must really assert that he must have had Pisces rising, or
perhaps Mercury and Venus there. His essays so often have
Piscean subjects.

Pisces, not Aquarius, is your true born Communist, in the
real sense of the word.

And of course there is the other side of the coin...there
always is.

For how many charitable institutions and private
benefactions is this sign responsible?

I suppose the Rockefeller family is most famous for the
wise use of great wealth, and the original "J.D." had the
Sun in Cancer in close trine to Uranus in Pisces, denoting
the setting up of a family tradition.

So let us give, as the second Piscean keyword, charity.

It is not uncommon to hear Libra and Pisces dubbed as
wishy-washy signs. For my part I boldly assert that, as the
world now is, we could do with more of their easy good
nature and kindly tolerance.

We recall that in the Middle Ages the monasteries were
also the hotels and hospitals of the people, so now we come
to the paradox of Pisces...that it is usually so socially
inclined, and yet it rules the various monastic
brotherhoods, including, presumably, those vowed to silence.

Why?

Well, it is obvious from what has been said...and I hope
accepted by you...that generally Pisces needs a good Saturn,
lest is dissolves altogether into vagueness and
formlessness. So we may take it that those natives of the
sign who are wise enough to perceive this join the various
Orders...significant word...where discipline will be applied
to them and they will live an ordered life and do useful
work.

But what about the anchorite who lives alone in the
desert?

I should say one would have to examine the inner motive in
each case for adopting this way of life. But in general I
am inclined to rule out Pisces here and look rather for a
Scorpio element at work.

As out third keyword I suggest love-of-nature, strong in
the last two signs.

Incidentally this rather confirms the Piscean rulership of
England. For our poets abound in nature-lore. Indeed it
has sometimes seemed to me that to be an English poet one
has to be a good botanist and ornithologist. I have not
noticed anything like this in such foreign poetry as I can
claim acquaintance with.

From this love of Nature two other Piscean traits emerge:
a love of natural science and artistic ability, in
particular music and painting.

In the field of Art the sign puts us all heavily in its
debt.

I do not find Pisces strongly tenanted in the poets.
Perhaps it dislikes the rigid discipline of rime and metre;
perhaps, for some reason, this value is usually introduced
through Neptune.

However, Edgar Allan Poe, whom one would certainly expect
to have plenty of the 12th sign, does not disappoint us.
Born January 19, 1809, he had the Moon, Venus and Jupiter in
it, close together, and the Sun was at the very end of
Aquarius, ascendant unknown.

From Barbault's manual on Pisces I venture to cull the
following: Each case he examines in detail and to his most
interesting writings I refer all who can read French.

J.S. Bach...Mercury, Venus, Neptune.

Aristide Briand...Moon, Mercury, Venus and M.C., Sun
conjunction Neptune. M. Barbault quotes him as saying, "Why
did Joan of Arc go to all that trouble to expel the English?
We should have assimilated them, and then what a race we
should have produced!"

The Pisces love of blending forms!

His whole policy was directed to the "United States of
Europe."

Charles the VII of France whom his biographer
characterised as the "Mysterious"...was a mass of
contradictions.

Victor Hugo...Sun, Mercury, Venus in Pisces. Neptune near
ascendant. Note Les Miserables and The Toilers of the
Deep.

Latude, who passed 39 years in various forms of
incarceration under Louis XV, in part due to his own erratic
behaviour. He never committed any serious crime, but
apparently had a trick of arousing suspicion. Mercury,
Venus, Mars and Jupiter in Pisces. It seems he had quite a
gift for making the best of his restricted conditions!

Next, Michelangelo, born about 2 in the morning, March 6,
1475, at Caprese, in Tuscany.

Positions: Sun 24 Pisces, Moon 3 Pisces, Mercury 29
Aquarius, Venus 25 Aries, Mars 18 Pisces, Jupiter 3
Aquarius, Saturn 18 Cancer, Uranus 14 Scorpio, Neptune 21
Scorpio.

Ascendant is Capricorn, but the degree is only suggested.

We must not talk of Pisces as just a good-natured silly
sort of person when it has produced this supremely great
sculptor, painter, architect and poet. Not to mention, in
our own times, Albert Einstein. Sun in Pisces is very
different from Pisces Ascending.

In Michelangelo's natus we see at once a most prominent
and potent grand trine...Mars-Sun in Pisces, Saturn in
Cancer, Uranus-Neptune in Scorpio near the midheaven.

It has been suggested that the grand trine puts people in
the hands of others and it is said that Michelangelo never
completed any of his works without interference, save only
the paintings of the Sistine Chapel. For one thing, he
worked for popes, who were apt to die at any time,
especially in the Middle Ages.

Note that all four malefics are involved in the grand
trine formation and he was a rough unsociable person. Venus
being peculiarly weak for so great an artist.

Early in life a taunt thrown at a fellow-artist resulted
in a permanent disfigurement and it is for this reason that
one feels Saturn may well have been just setting at birth.

He was very much a family man. Not that he ever married,
but his family were always in his mind. This agrees with
ruler in Cancer.

Late in life he turned to poetry and wrote sonnets to a
young Roman noble; then he formed a strong attachment, of a
purely Platonic kind, to a virtuous widow of high birth,
charm and mental gifts, Vittoria Colonna.

By persuasion he was a Christian Platonist and the fact
that seven bodies are in the second half of the zodiac
testify to his essential otherworldliness.

He was an indefatigable worker up to the end, dying in his
90th year.

It may be a case when the temperament is better described
by the M.C.(Uranus-Neptune in Scorpio) than by the ascendant
and ruler.

M. Barbault next cites the musician Maurice Ravel...Sun,
Moon and Mercury in Pisces; and Renoir...Neptune rising and
Sun, Mercury and Uranus in the Fishes.

He next gives us the King of Rome, Napoleon's only
legitimate child, who was brought up, after his father's
downfall, as an Austrian prince, the Duke of Reichstadt, and
died, age 21, of tuberculosis.

The Sun, just leaving Pisces, is square Saturn, and
Mercury, also in Pisces, is square Neptune.

M. Barbault quotes "Between my cradle and my tomb there
was but a great zero!"

I do not know if these words were spoken of, or by, the
unhappy youth.

Pisces elements afflicted by Saturn...that is a sad
combination.

The next instance is that of Arthur Schopenhauer, the
philosopher of pessimism. He was influenced by Eastern
thought, without understanding its true teaching. To him
life was a great hunger, a ravenous insatiable hunger, for
new forms. It reaches its climax in man, only to realize
then its utter futility and purposelessness. So one must
extinguish all desire to live.

He had Sun, Mercury, Venus and Saturn in the Fishes.

It is curious that, though he was a misanthrope, he
enjoined kindness to animals. Otherwise he was an
ill-conditioned creature, mean-spirited and given to self
pity.

Least of all would one suppose our sign to incline to war.

However, Washington had the Sun in Pisces. It is said
that his chief asset, as a military commander, was a gift
for camouflage and similar expressions of the art of
deception in warfare. But in essence he was true to his
Taurus ascendant, a country gentleman, devoted to
agriculture and the development of his landed estates.

Admiral Tirpitz, much execrated in the popular press
during the First Great War, had Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and
the Sun in Pisces, all in the 1st or 2nd houses. He seems
to have been not only very efficient, but also moderate and
reasonable in his politics, and no lover of "frightfulness."

These names, varied as their titles to celebrity are,
demonstrate what a very talented sign it is and how
versatile. There hardly seems to be any field in which some
one with a strong Piscean element has not shone, and shone
brilliantly.

I suggest that the dominant urge is to escape from the
limitations of ordinary life, the dull and humdrum, into a
more colourful world.

So one may get the drug addict and alcoholic, the
day-dreamer and then upwards to the artist, the scientist
and the mystic, They are really other worldly, and the
great ones have helped others to see their visions. Like
Sagittarius, the sign is an explorer, but on a vaster scale.
The Archer aims at a clear target; the Fishes swim towards
Nirvana and seek to find Reality close at hand.

"The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces
That miss the many-splendoured thing!"
"Turn but a stone"...the stone of Saturn, undoubtedly!

One constantly finds that symbol of Saturn. There was the
stone that was rolled from the sepulchre.

There are also Pisceans who are rolling stones!

One would like to end here, with a picture of Pisces as
being a kindly sign, sometimes silly and sometimes a genius,
but never harsh or cruel.

Unfortunately a glance at my list of Criminals, in
particular murderers, demonstrates another side to this dual sign.

Nor can I see that any prevailing motive runs through these regrettable
cases.

I suppose most crimes are due to one or more of the three Buddhist
Evils...lust, anger and greed. If we consider anger as being usually due
to resentment, then one can understand the sensitive signs being motivated to revenge
injured feelings; and also one can suppose that both Jovian signs like easy money.

Some of my cases fall under "easy money"...for example in Notable
Nativities we have two highwaymen. There is No. 56, Mercury, Saturn
and Venus in Pisces, and No. 540, Venus in Pisces. The attractions of
easy money would also explain No. 271, who poisoned grandmother,
husband and brother for their insurance money. Moon and Jupiter in Pisces.
I do not know why No. 71 killed his mother; he had Jupiter and Neptune in
Pisces. "Boy Murderer," No. 80, had the Moon in
29 Pisces. Hosford, a poisoner, had the Sun in the Fishes.

Trenkler, who murdered a jeweler and his wife when robbing
their shop, had Venus in this sign.

Hopf, another poisoner for insurance money, had Mercury,
his ruler, in Pisces.

It would seem if one insures one's life it might be wise
not to tell any Pisceans about it if they are likely to
benefit by your demise!

Gerard Dupriez, who murdered both his parents, had Mars in
4 Pisces, exactly on cusp 4!

Traffen the child murderer, had Sun and Venus in Pisces.

R. Buckham, N.N., No. 332, executed for a double murder by
shooting, had Moon in Pisces.

Trailanus Marinengus, described by Gauricus as a criminal
more cruel than Nero, had Venus and Uranus in Pisces.
Curiously enough he had Uranus in the 16th degree, and Nero
himself had that planet in exact opposition...16th of Virgo.
But of course Gauricus knew nothing about Uranus.

I think this is enough in the way of a Piscean Rogues'
Gallery, except that I might mention a farm labourer, a
German, who is supposed to have killed dozens of people in
out-of-the-way places. He had Moon in 29 Pisces, a degree
already mentioned in connection with the Boy Murderer.

According to Adraino Carelli, Tamerlane had the Moon in
this degree, to which he ascribes "an overstressed sense of
self"..."great ambitions, strong desires, fiery passions,"
but also "a deep righteousness," which sounds a little
contradictory.

I don't know whether Tamerlane was any worse than dozens
of other ruffians whose ambitions have afflicted mankind.

Of course, most of these criminals have heavily afflicted
maps, but it surprises me that these afflictions vented
themselves in cruel murders. One would have liked to think
that Pisces is more often victim than perpetrator of crimes.

But Astrology is full of surprises and puzzles.

That's why we love it so much.

How dull it would be if we knew all the answers!

A few words should be added about the alleged exaltation
of Venus in Pisces.

Without denying that this is often an idealistic and
gentle influence, it is not favourable for marriage in the
usual sense, so far as males are concerned, at any rate. I
suspect that it indicates weak sexual impulse and it often
indicates a bachelor or one with little interest in women.
Possibly there is an active imagination and a "dream-bride,"
that I do not know.

For my part I would much rather see Venus in Cancer.

Mars in Pisces appears rather often in astrologers'
nativities. It is on the whole a kindly Mars but not a
strong one. It is apt to be governed too much by the
emotions and to shirk drastic action when this is avoidable
but to be desired. The love of animals is often pronounced.

As it has been said that Saturn in Capricorn is just too
much Saturn, so perhaps Jupiter in Pisces is too much
Jupiter. But it should give success in some of the various
Piscean occupations. Charles II had this positions and he
was a kindly man. Among his more respectable interests was
one in boating, and he must have liked fishing too, since an
attempt was made to assassinate him when pursuing this sport
at Chelsea.

I have already expressed my sympathy for those
with Saturn in Pisces. Millions are born whilst the planet
is in the sign and one cannot suppose they are all doomed to
misfortune. Nevertheless, I believe most of them will
encounter, in some form or other, the essential contrast
between the sign and the planet.

Uranus, Neptune and Pluto remain so long in the same sign
that probably the effects are general rather than
particular, except when there is special prominence in the
map. One would think Uranus is not well placed here,
Neptune is, and Pluto, well, it would be difficult to say.

In the world we are passing through a Plutonian age,
following on the discovery of the planet in 1930. But if we
study the chapter on mundane epochs in my little work
"Political Astrology" we find that a Piscean period ought to
begin about 1980.

The last such age was the 180 years prior to the
establishment of the Roman Empire by Caesar Augustus, a time
of confusion and corruption, military despotism and
plutocracy.

Only the younger of you, dear listeners, will be here to
see whether man makes a better use of his opportunities, or
whether history will repeat itself.

A great deal may depend upon the map for the exact moment
the period begins.

And that we do not know, nor are we likely to know it in 1980.