January 27 (effects until Feb 6)
Venus in Pisces conjunct Neptune
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Depending on where you’re standing in the zodiac you may see Pisces as deeply irrational or divinely inspired. This is the paradox of Pisces and gets at the nature of the cosmos and our predicament as time-bound beings in a dialogue with eternity. When Venus is in Pisces, we are able to sense the razor's edge between indescribable beauty and unendurable suffering. We see beauty and tragedy as equal partners in the ecstatic dance of life.
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If Venus in Taurus is the artist's craft–the painting, the sculpture, the mosaic, and Venus in Libra is the art docent defining art's social milieu and value, Venus in Pisces is Art Itself – art as life and life as a work of art. 19th-century writer and bon vivant Oscar Wilde believed that art was more real than life and insisted that nature imitated art. He once compared a sunset to a "very second-rate Turner, a Turner of bad period, with all the painter's worst faults exaggerated and over-emphasized." It's a humorously provocative statement that speaks to the human potential to reach for artistic genius rivaling that of nature itself. Wilde had Neptune in Pisces in the 7th house of relatedness. His view was infused by a personal philosophy dedicated to aesthetics and a willingness for self-sacrifice in the name of "the love that dare not speak its name," for which he suffered greatly.
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Our need to flirt with the gods and daimons in the seeking of artistic ultimacy often comes at a heavy price – forays into genius are sometimes inseparable from madness. The artist becomes the art, the musician the music, the dancer the dance, and in doing so must surrender the self for a chance to express eternity through a work of art. Those who are touched by Genius and able to channel the tidal forces of creativity into something tangible leave the world more beautiful and more bearable than they found it.
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“I only wanted to suggest to you that self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge.

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image: Pierre & Gilles

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