by Sarah Penello
Featured paining Elaine de Kooning, Bacchus 3.
To me, Pisces is the whole ocean. It is balmy and inviting turquoise shallows, filled with whimsical looking tropical fish. It’s the blind and invisible monsters lurking in the pitch black of the deepest seas. It is tsunamis and squalls and sun showers upon white sand. It’s marshy estuaries and gentle salt water lagoons. It’s the massive, desolate glaciers on the surface of the world, and the boiling waters that surround volcanic vents two miles below.
The Ocean can kill you, easily, but it can also cleanse you, feed you, and make you feel new. The Ocean is earth’s womb, her amniotic fluid where all life was born. In Ayurvedic tradition, when one submerges oneself in the Ocean, for a brief moment, all of the doshas of the body are brought back into perfect balance.
Pisces, the final sign of the zodiac, carries all the lessons of the previous astrological calendar. This one came on suddenly, like a storm at sea, causing many of us to feel unmoored. As the Pisces new moon approaches, we are coming up on a year of quarantine in the United States. Since the Sun was last in Pisces, we have all confronted our traumas, our weaknesses, our shame. On a personal and a collective level.
Once, my friend Darius and I were walking along the beach after a storm, when we came upon an enormous out of place bridge, upside down by the dunes. Darius remembered it as one that had been washed out during Hurricane Sandy.
“The ocean took her, now she’s back!”
Pisces season can be like that. Things we thought were long lost, or washed away forever, were actually just waiting for us at the bottom of the sea. The cacophonous storm of Pisces turns out our oceans, and let us know all of what lurks in our depths. But it also is here to remind us of our infinite capacities for movement and change. Pisces season says:
“Be not afraid of your shadowy depths!”
Don’t be afraid of the parts of you that you think are dark or ugly. Don’t be afraid to fully experience yourself. Don’t be afraid to look at death, in all its many forms. Don’t be afraid to grieve.
I had a hard time getting started with this write-up. I had all of the feelings about Pisces, but none of the words.
How Piscean.
With this playlist, I wanted to find songs that spanned the depths of emotion in a way that conjured connection and communion. Of acknowledgment of the complexity of being alive, and gratitude for experiencing every last bit of it. Even the scary parts, and the ones that hurt. And of devotion to the creation.
There are three songs honoring Yemaya, La Diosa del Mar of Yoruba tradition, and her daughter Oshun, Mami de las Aguas Dulces. Besides that, each song is by an artist with their Sun in Pisces. It just makes so much sense that Nina Simone, The High Priestess of Soul, is a Pisces, and Erykah Badu, and Rihanna. Of course Vivaldi, who sought to convey the emotions of the seasons through his compositions, is a Pisces too. The Pisces Sun musicians on this list are so different from one another, but they have a common thread of emotional depth and vulnerability. I shared the list with my best friend Zjolie, and she called it “Refreshingly not happy.”
Some parts of us may look scary, like toothsome deep sea creatures who have never seen the light, but they are part of us and they are worthy of love.
May this playlist hold you through all the waves of your emotions, this Pisces season. May your salty tears cleanse you, and remind you of the Ocean’s loving embrace. May acknowledging all of the parts of your own deep oceans bring you back into balance, and remind you of your infinite strength and capacity.
Blessings!
About the author
Sarah Penello is an artist, author, facilitator, priestess and witch. She is a life-long student of the healing arts and plant medicine, a chef, a forager, and is amazing at spotting well camouflaged animals in the landscape. She is a certified Ayurvedic practitioner and a Reiki Master, with nearly 10 years of experience.
In 2018, she co-founded The Church of the Cosmic Cunt, a mutable art collective that has hosted over 300 events, including parties, art shows, classes, ceremonies and workshops. She is devoted to reclaiming the sacred in the profane, cultivating pleasure and beauty in the places where we have been wounded, and living in a way that honors the sovereignty of all beings.
In her art practice and kitchen witchery, this manifests as working creatively with the materials that present themselves- finding ways to be sustainably lavish and luxurious. You can shop her wildcrafted plant products and botanically dyed garments at https://www.etsy.com/shop/sasquatchbotanica .
