Why is the archetype of Pisces connected both with spirituality and with substance abuse, gluttony, overindulgence? In his book In the Dark Places of Wisdom, Peter Kingsley writes:
Not all who have a strong influence of the Pisces archetype will be spiritual. One also needs to take into account the evolutionary stage of the soul, a topic that may warrant its own blog post. But regardless of evolution, the person will likely seek some kind of ultimate meaning and, even in a spiritual evolutionary state, will frequently try to fill the void actively, with anything they can get their hands on. And yet, writes Kingsley, when a person's yearning for the divine is great enough, "something very strange happens. When you want that and refuse to settle for anything else, it comes to you." (p. 34). Perhaps this is why Pisces can be both the restless, raging sea and the calm pond simultaneously, the churning of the ocean as well as the utterly still center of the churning. The more we seek for it, the more we lose ourselves; but when we finally stop seeking, we are found.
What isn't there, in front of our eyes, is usually more real than what is. We can see that at every level of existence.
Even when we're finally where we want to be - with the person we love, with the things we struggled for - our eyes are still on the horizon. [...] What's missing is more powerful than what's there in front of our eyes. We all know that. The only trouble is that the missingness is to hard to bear, so we invent things to miss in our desperation. They are only temporary substitutes. The world fills us with substitute after substitute and tries to convince us that nothing is missing. But nothing has the power to fill the hollowness we feel inside, so we have to keep replacing and modifying the things we invent as our emptiness throws its shadow over our life.
You can see the same thing quite often with people who never knew their father. [...] And you can see it with people who love the divine, or God - who miss what doesn't even exist for anyone else. [...] People who love the divine go around with holes in their hearts, and inside the hole is the universe. [...] the more we feel that nothingness inside us, the more we feel the need to fill the void. (p. 33-35)
Not all who have a strong influence of the Pisces archetype will be spiritual. One also needs to take into account the evolutionary stage of the soul, a topic that may warrant its own blog post. But regardless of evolution, the person will likely seek some kind of ultimate meaning and, even in a spiritual evolutionary state, will frequently try to fill the void actively, with anything they can get their hands on. And yet, writes Kingsley, when a person's yearning for the divine is great enough, "something very strange happens. When you want that and refuse to settle for anything else, it comes to you." (p. 34). Perhaps this is why Pisces can be both the restless, raging sea and the calm pond simultaneously, the churning of the ocean as well as the utterly still center of the churning. The more we seek for it, the more we lose ourselves; but when we finally stop seeking, we are found.
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