"Oh no, he isn't grown up," Wendy assured her confidently,
"and he is just my size." She meant that he was her size in
both mind and body; she didn't know how she knew it, she
just knew it.
Gently floating around in the sometimes serene and placid, sometimes choppy and churning, atmosphere of the Bronx in New York, is the dearest, nicest,spunkiest, wisest, and most patient girl Fish in this or any other ocean. Her name is Pauline Hoffenberg Goodman.
Any Pisces female who imitates petite Pauline's winsome ways can count on charming her boy Fish into the net of romance without the slightest trouble.Pauline is the epitome of Piscean grace, humor, and feminine glamour - and the astrological counsel given to lady Pisceans within these pages reflects her personal, unerring instinct for delicately weaving those subtle Neptune nuances which make the Pisces woman the secret ideal of every male Fish in the world.Besides all that, she's a delicious and delectable cook. What more could a male Piscean dreamer ask? Poetry? Pauline is also poetic . . . and as pretty as a pink geranium.
Actually, every Pisces girl possesses a satisfactory share of Pauline Hoffenberg Goodman's qualities, traits, and talents - so it's no wonder the Pisces man who's in love with a Neptune lady feels he's finally managed to swim past all the dangerous, dangling hooks of the aggressive females who are trying to land him . . . into the cool, clear waters of the kind of love he's been searching for ever since he was hatched near the beautiful waterfall of tears he subconsciously recalls.He remembers thinking, as a tiny tadpole, that teardrops are lovely things, crystal-prismed and rainbow-hued, when the Sun shines through them.Then he grew up, and one bright, miracled, many-faceted morning, he realized,with a ripple of joy, the answer to his tender tadpole riddle. Suddenly, he knew that love was the sunbeam which could shine through the tears of his silent sadness . . . and transmute them into sparkling spectrums of light.
The waterfall memories of the girl Fish are exactly like his. She too recalls the wistfulness of her own genesis moments, when there was a dream too lovely to describe, gently wafting over her heart like a mist... faintly promising a tomorrow as free and faerie-like as yesterday's forgotten Eden. All her life she's wondered, secretly and silently, if that dream was real... or only an imaginary fragment of happiness and serenity. She's quietly and patiently waited for it to reappear, to manifest from the mist of memory . . . and the times when she's been disappointed - just when she thought it was about to envelop her heart again - are countless.
Then she looked into his eyes - and wonder of wonders? She saw her dream reflected there, as in the still pool of a pine-scented green wood . . . smiling back at her in beautiful recognition. She saw herself in his eyes. Just as he saw himself in hers.
It would be divine if we could sign off right here, with the wonted faerie tale ending of "they-lived-happily-ever-after." But that's not allowed. One must first pass through the Black Forest and fight off all those lurking dragons,witches, ugly toads, and Incredible Hulks who loom and lurk in the lagoons,
waiting to capture these Pisces lovers, then separate them and drop them down into the terrible well of loneliness - KERPLUNK!
I do so hate to switch from the poetic to the prosaic (as does every Fish ever born, in every way), but we must move along to the more mundane matters of Neptune compatibility before we enjoy the rewards of solving the tender tadpole riddle.
As with other doubled-up 1-1 Sun Sign Pattern lovers, two people ruled by the same planet (in this instance, of course, Neptune) must face the certain increase and intensification of both the positive and the negative aspects of their own personalities. With the Pisces-Pisces couple, the positive qualities they share and therefore will find easy to multiply together are: gentleness, sensitivity, imagination, creativity, compassion, perception - and a great deal of cleverness and wit - plus the good sense not to stand in each other's light... or shadow.
The negative Piscean weeds they'll have to prune (perhaps even stomp on)lest they choke and strangle the lovely flowers of their romance are: too much daydreaming, idleness, laziness, confusion, untidiness and chaos, procrastination,fears, phobias, and various forms of neurosis, the temptation to tell fibs and the odd habit they might drift into of playing doormat to each other.
These two assuredly do have a sizable number of dragons, polliwogs, witches, and such to fight off as they tremble through the dark forest, don't they?Never mind. They have all sorts of magic to use to banish the goblins who threaten their happiness. And as everyone knows (or should know), even the most TERRIBLE trolls and trogs (not frogs, they're nice - trogs) are terrified of magic.
The private anxieties of Pisces are also doubled (even quadrupled, considering that there are "four" Fish between the two of them) when these lovers plunge into an emotional relationship. If one of them has a strong Moon Sign or Ascendent, preferably in the Earth Element, he or she can be a veritable anchor of stability for the other. (A Water Element Moon Sign or Ascendent is lovely for harmony, but we're talking about protective stability.) Without such support from their mutual Luminaries and Ascendents at birth, these two face the danger of either fretting themselves into fantasies of fears - or gliding casually through a love affair or a marriage which is too fragile to be lasting.
There are Pisceans who are afraid of their own shadows. There are others (called "Whales") who fear neither man nor beast. At least, they claim they don't. It's always good to remember that what Pisces says is not necessarily what Pisces means, at all times. Some Fish fear themselves, rather than outside circumstances or people, never pushing ahead, and therefore missing opportunities for anything they really want to do. Then too, there are the playful, perceptive,and absolutely brilliant Dolphin types.
The peculiarly sympathetic nature of the Pisces woman and the Pisces man can cause them to be ultrasensitive to sense impressions, which are sometimes misleading. If the birth chart of one of them contains more planets in Earth than that of the other, the more "earthy" Piscean might accuse the less practical one of refusing to face facts, of viewing things through such pastel-tinted glasses that dangers are not recognized because every potentially serious situation seems to be bathed in a luminous veil of beauty, which is but a seductive illusion.This is actually the germ for all Neptune fears and phobias - the memory of having such a golden haze fade into a shrouded grey cloud of fog too many times. Yet, one of the two Pisceans in the relationship may cling to the "illusion,"knowing it's more real than what appears to be the truth - and surprisingly often, through sheer persistence of faith, even proving it's so. When that happens, it's called a miracle. It's no accident that so many of the saints were born under the sign of the Fish.
It's possible that either he or she is a Fish swimming in the wrong direction,behaving as though life itself is a dream, and that's a bit too much Neptunian make-believe for the other. Or, one of them could be the Whale-type Piscean,who scoffs at the esoteric, ignores all spiritual truth, is loud, talky,pushy, and aggressive. When these Whale Pisceans behave in such a manner, diametrically opposed to his or her natural Sun Sign qualities, as I've stated elsewhere in this book, it's symptomatic of some form of neurosis of the heart, mind, or soul. A bashful Ram, an impulsive Bull, a careless and carefree Crab - like a brash,markedly extroverted Whale - are all inwardly unhappy people denying their own essences.
By the way, when you remove the letter "c" for Christ, from the word "essence,"what you have left is the word "Essene" - the name of the metaphysical sect of people who taught Jesus, the man, up in the mountains, during his "lost years" (eighteen of them), during which there's no mention of his activities in the scriptures. These are the kind of word games Pisces people like to play.Gliding gently back to the subject, for a Capricorn to be staid and stable is natural for a Piscean, it is not. Each sign must do what comes naturally, in general,to achieve harmony in each incarnation, by learning well the lessons of the sign he or she was born under.
Either the male or female half of this Neptune team might be a domineering Whale or an embittered Fish, who has seen too much of life's ugliness, and has retreated into romantic promiscuity or cutting speech to hide a broken heart, stemming from a crushed faith. If so, the stronger Piscean will need to handle the other with much compassion. It takes unending patience to rescue such a Whale - or Fish who is floundering in his or her murky waters of disillusionment,and swimming upstream, against the true current of Pisces experience.
A Pisces woman is well qualified to snare a male Fish in a net of love, and keep him there. She'll intuitively sense that he doesn't like probing into his private thoughts. A bossy mate would never to able to hold this man, and the girl Fish, if she's a typical Piscean female, is submissive without being masochistic.She's intelligent, even wise, yet still vulnerable enough to appeal to the sense of masculine protectiveness within him he so needs to have nurtured. Conversely,she needs a mate who is tender enough to handle her own extrasensitive feelings with consideration, and no one can do that better than a Pisces man.
Their physical union will seldom be unduly passionate and demanding, but then, not everyone needs wild jungle thrills every night. This doesn't mean they'll lead a sterile sexual life. In fact, the sexual experience between two Pisceans can be deeply intimate, in the true sense of intimacy. They can escape into their man-woman love from the dark, dreary, mundane drabness of the material world around them, as Nature fish escape from the stale inlets and bays into the cool, green ocean, sparkling in the sunlight, soothing the shore with soft,splashing waves in the moonlight. Sex between these two can be exactly like that - clean, fresh, free - and continually flowing with the mystical poetry of romance. The knights of the medieval days and their ladies fair must have known similar physical expression of their love.
If a Pisces woman notices that the male Fish is somehow dissatisfied and unhappy with his work, despondent around the house, and appears to be increasingly secretive, withdrawn, and cool... she might try listening more carefully to his song of lonely. If she tries, she's the one woman who can explain the lyrics to him, since Pisceans are very seldom self-analytical, for all their intuitive sense of the feelings of others. He was born under the vibrations of Neptune,and so he instinctively knows that man is a spirit - he has a soul - and this is what he longs to recapture, his soul! His secret dream is to stride mountains,swim rivers, climb trees, run through the grass in the rain - barefoot,without shoes to live his nights and days unburdened by possessions, unrestricted by society's hypocritical dictates. Like Francesco de Bernardone, of Assisi,the Pisces man is at heart a spiritual beggar, yearning privately to follow the bright song of the meadowlark, wherever it may take him. But the modern-day
materialistic world permits him neither to confess nor to express his inner longings.
Unless he finds a way to aggressively pursue his real goal, the male Fish can drown in frustration, sometimes sadly turning, in quiet desperation, to the release of disappointment, through the escape of aimless wandering . . . . alcohol,or drugs. He needs a woman who can understand, who won't bind him by the chains of her fears - or condemn him for the passion of his spirit.
As for the girl Fish, her changing moods and periodic teardrops, her long spells of silence . . . nearly always mean that she, too, wishes they could leave behind them the confining aquarium of their existence and swim into wider vistas of wonder and excitement... to rest awhile on calm and peaceful lakes of placidity . . . then travel on to beckoning mysteries beyond the faraway horizons. As patient as she is, the Pisces woman gets weary of reading about the adventures of others who dare to drop responsibility and chase the wilder winds out yonder . . . so weary that, after a while, like the Gaelic "Kathleen," even her voice is"sad when ere it speaks."
All she seeks is a light touch on her hand, some sign, some answering light in the eyes of her Pisces lover or husband that says he does - oh! yes, he does know how wistfully, yet urgently, she wants to trade security for freedom. Then they can leave together, never mind whether or not it's time for a vacation.Neptune's insistent alarm clock is ringing, telling them both it is time to follow their dreams - now or never.
That's when they should run right out and buy a couple of tickets for Ireland,Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, or Tibet. Money? All they need is enough cash for the transportation. Food and shelter will be provided in all sorts of mysterious and unexpected ways by Providence, as surely as with the birds in the sky and the lilies of the field. This Neptune-haunted man and woman know that better than anyone, but they tend to forget it from time to time, when they allow concern for the morrow to take over and smother them. For, when a Pisces man or woman is working at something he or she enjoys, the channels for material security are thrown wide open - like a window to the future.
When they allow themselves to live and love freely, two Fish can become Dolphins, playing happily and wisely together in perfect peace and contentment.And there will be less chance that the fishermen of the cold, hard world,who dangle their sharp hooks in the water to catch the Fish unaware, will be successful. One can warn the other to avoid the tempting bait.
But if they fall into stale habit patterns, allowing all their golden chances to pass them b y . . . after a time, they'll begin to deceive each other, to avoid the energy and commitment of emotional confrontation, retreating further and further into themselves. Do you know what that is? It's lazy. And it's a most unhappy ending to a story of enchantment. Why let the trogs and trolls win? That's no way to solve the tender tadpole riddle . . . or learn the lyrics to the love songs of the frogs.
