Sometimes life is so meta or, given the name of the next Sabian Symbol, I’m willing to delude myself in this. At Pisces 16° the image is: In The Quiet of His Study A Creative Individual Experiences A Flow Of Inspiration, the keynote of which is reliance upon one’s inner source of inspiration or guidance. It seems, having entered the second half of Pisces—only fifteen blague entries remain for this first year—we are finally getting to a themetic place I would have inspected given this Pisces sign of introspection. Pisces is all about the triple goddess (in triplicate) the nine Muses whose mother Mnemosyne stands as a major female archeytpe of the sign, as do her many daughters. Though Pisces rules the feet, in opposite-facing Fish paradox, we also find it concerns the workings and issues of the brain. Many a Pisces woman, for instance, has had brain issues, from Liza to Sharon Stone to Elizabeth Taylor to Sandy Duncan. Mneumosyne is the goddess of memory, the fog of which seems to envelop the Pisces female, especially.

(You know I just thought of something. Where as yesterday was such a male experience with the officers and soldiers, ruled by Sagittarius in a twelve-fold sequence, and today we encounter the “flow of inspiration” which is Muse-given and female in nature—I will have to look back to check this—but it might be that the odd-numbered Sabian Symbols are male orientated while the even-ones a female-related. I will recherche—French, for research which would imply, one has already searched….to research would mean to go back, as into memory. Meta, meta, meta—meanwhile I like the notion, all things being equal.)

Mneumosyne, from whose name we get the word mneumonic, presided over an eponymous pool (how Pisces) in the underworld whose powers were antithetical to that of the Lethe spring also in the realm of Hades. One drank from the Lethe to forget one’s past lives before reincarnation; whilst drinking from the Mneumosyne would allow you to remember past lives. Let’s just say that all the bases were covered in ancient theology and none of the concepts we grapple with today are new. If only all of us had the power of Mneumosyne, we might realize that hers is a collective, just as it is a personal, realm. Incidently, she slept with Zeus for nine consecutive nights which is why she gave birth to nine daughters, never a son. Do we need more illustration of the inner world inspiration being considered that of the feminine? I think we do not. It is the proverbial she who inspires. I’m going to miss writing about these symbols.

Describing an inspired time of creative output we do use the word flow which is endemic to the water realm, Pisces, the Fish, being a creature who goes with the stream. Yet we cannot discount the fact that the flow will not happen to everyone. The figure in this image is “a creative individual”; I believe everyone can be thus, but not everyone is. Being creative or putting ourselves in a place, set apart, to be creative is meeting the muse half way. The source of inspiration might be coming from above or beyond (very Pisces) but it is also in and around the creator, “every genius merely record[ing] an answer to the needs of his time.” I don’t know if it was a well-worn path of understanding when these symbols first emerged: what we know commonly know, as the act of creation, happening through us rathery than by us. Still, we credit the individual for the song they wrote or the part they played in a movie, focusing as much if not more on how much they physically weigh and what they’re wearing on the red carpet of an awards ceremony where they might be honored for that creation. It’s so difficult to live in so self-conscious a world. And I dare say it would be difficult not to think about the accolades that might be heaped upon you, in this day and age, while in the process of creation which requires courting a muse. But having made the acquaintance of at least one daughter of Mneumosyne, and I think she would speak for all of them, these goddesses not only don’t care about red-carpet accolades, they eschew them as vilely fatuous.

This symbol is ruled by Capricorn in a twelve-fold sequence and my mind immediately goes to J.D. Salinger who courted his muses privately and created work that he either destroyed or, as we know, will now be released this year in 2016. He has disallowed any of his work to be made into films or theater pieces (for as long as his will will hold out). David Bowie, Capricorn, was similarly post-humous in his thinking, and pretty much always, never creating works designed to win. To keep the relationship pure with this muse or that one must sacrifice the notion of fame or fortune, even if one has already experienced it. For, accolades are empty and awards, hollow. The only reward comes from the doing; and the best process of doing is that flow referred to in the image; and what the flow is is: the match of one’s skill with a slightly challenging project that might be championed by the muse-personification of inspiration in the doing.

Dane Rudhyar shimes in here to say that the watchword of this image is Faith in one’s Subjective Strength. Capricorn’s cardinal-earth power is synonomous with Faith. The creative has Faith that in his creation of a state of quiet solitude and concentration (planet Saturn’s power of retreat and restriction and self-preservation) which will provide the correct atmosphere for inspiration. We cannot be inspired if we are constatly putting out fires or exposed to the noisy goings on of our daily lives or society at large. We most enter our study, real or metaphoric. Nowadays, it might entail putting on some noise-cancelling headphones to sit at the local cafe or at a shared table at our WeWork space, but it is still possible to create that retreat and reservoir of energy and resource from whence our inspiration might rear her lovely head.

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