Part Two

The First of the 3 Groups of the Zodiacal Signs: the 4 Female Signs

Now, after several basic concepts have been established in the first part, we slowly can start with going into the actual signs of the Zodiac. As already mentioned, contrary to the split-into-4 babylonian approach to the 12 zodiacal signs referring to the classical ‚four-elements-doctrine‘, from the Hebrew point of view these 12 spiritual qualities of the Zodiac are seen as grouped into THREE general divisions: 3 ‚male‘ signs, 4 ‚female‘ signs and 5 ‚fruit‘ or ‚child‘ signs, according to the numbers 3, 4 and 5, which in the Ancient Hebrew mindset are associated in their ‚absolute value‘ with these three concepts of a ‚thesis‘, an ‚antithesis‘, and then the ’synthesis‘ of them both.

These three groups though are described typically not in this exact order 3-4-5, but in the order of 4-3-5. This is the case, because from our human point of view, from out of this world of duality, out of this dark ’night side‘ of the cosmic day we are living in, we firstly are confronted with the physical world of nature all around us, with the concrete, appearing reality, which seems to be governed by causal laws and is coming from some point in the past, aiming for some point in the future, with this always changing so-called ’now‘, as our ‚present time‘, constantly fleeing from us. It is the world of development, where even the eternal principles of ‚Being‘ are living themselves out merely as an adventureous ‚Becoming‘. It is thus the ‚female‘ world, speaking in the symbolic language of the Ancients, which we are confronted with in the first place. Only with time and experience we see, that there is indeed another reality than this mere ‚horizontal‘ one of the measurable outer world: the ‚vertical‘ dimension, which we have inside us as the ‚hidden‘, the ’non-appearing‘ reality, which nevertheless is of undeniable influence on the outer world of appearance – at least the influence through our own physical actions, which are based on our respective inner reality, we cannot deny. In this moment we reach as an individual consciously the ‚male‘ side of the world, which is seemingly in constant contradiction, or at least in frequent conflict with the hard-physical ‚female‘ side of the outer world, the seemingly ’stronger‘ one.

And only, where these two worlds can unite within the individual’s perception of life, the third dimension of reality is experienced: the ‚fruit‘, coming out of that, what seemed to be an opposition, but which now proved to be indeed a complementarity: a duality that needs both its extemes, with each of those extremes being in need of its complement ‚on the other side‘.

The 4 female, 3 male and 5 fruit signs are traditionally imagined as ordered in a ‚triangle‘, and by this the shape of their inner connections in the spiritual realm is expressed; which is a different connection than their connection as a ‚circle of star pictures on the sky‘ of the material realm (how the babylonian Astrology primarily looks at them). In so far, the triangle illustrating the ‚Pythagorean Theorem‘ is indeed the very ‚Triangle of Human Reality‘.

This ‚Triangle‘ could be summarized as follows: You are beginning ’naturally forced‘ by firstly following the horizontal line of the ‚female signs‘, and within those you go from the more transcendent, ‚mythical‘, to the more concrete, more immanent. Then while going this causally ‚forced‘, natural path of life, you begin (from an individually determined point on) consciously to ‚go upwards‘, too, up the vertical line of the ‚male signs‘. In this dimension of experience you start from a first discovery of the heavenly origins of the earthly, then you are passing the insight into the present and future of Mankind (and of yourself), and by this you come finally more and more to an insight into the whole (spiritual) potential and destination of the earthly realm down here. And then – if both directions, horizontal and vertical, are perceived and realized as something ‚belonging together‘ all along – you ultimately enter the dimension of the ‚fruit signs‘, too. Here you now have to let converge the two other dimensions, the male and female, vertical and horizontal, on both their respective ‚other ends‘, too. With this ambition you are then going ‚back‘ on this ’new path‘, the ‚diagonal one‘, namely down on the ‚hypothenusis‘ of the fruit signs, and by this, merging together again the abstract and concrete, the vertical and the horizontal, the transcendent and immanent aspects of reality, to realize the fruit INSIDE this concrete world down here. So with this ‚impregnation‘ by the male principle ‚this world down here‘ becomes the ‚womb‘, in which ‚the fruit ripes‘, and from which this fruit finally is born as the ‚Child (of God)‘ into this world.

This look on reality is the reason for certain figures of speech in the ancient literature. For example, when a person never looks for the invisible side of the world, but only takes for ‚real‘, what he/she can touch with his/her hands or at least measure with the ’scientific instruments‘ of his/her time … then this person (no matter whether that person is a male or a female) is called ‚a widow‘, because the person would be like ‚a woman, who has lost her husband‘, an appearing being, which has lost its ‚inner secret‘ (or the connection with it); and now she is only ‚a hollow appearance‘, without any deeper life inside. Contrarily, a person, who ONLY lives in the so-called ’spiritual realms‘, a fanatic mystic, fleeing and detesting the world … such a person would be called ‚a man, who never knew a woman in his life‘ (again, no matter whether that person is a male or a female); he is like ‚a mere idea‘, without realization. We could speak of the ‚widow‘ being essentially a ‚dead corpse‘, a body without any spirit inside enlivening it; and of the ‚unmarried man‘ as a ‚ghost‘, a mere spirit without a body expressing the spiritual in the appearance. From both of these pitiful examples no one can possibly expect any actual ‚fruit‘, as long as they remain ‚alone‘ in this sense.

The zodiacal signs are understood as a constant influence on the Earth, which herself is pictured exactly in the center of the circle of the 12 signs. But this influence in itself (without the planets moving through them, bringing the dynamics into this grand harmony) is only like a set of mere consonants of a language; it stays relatively ’silent‘, being only ’noises‘, no tone is there, or even a melody. It is the planets first, which, as the ‚vowels‘ of this language, are making the signs actually audible as sounds – and finally even as ‚words‘, carrying down to Earth actual meaning and sense.

Before we now finally begin with explaining (or rather ‚meditating on‘) the single zodiacal signs of the so-called ‚female‘ character, it will be useful to have another short detour from our main topic. Namely to have a look on the Hebrew alphabeth, on the 22 Hebrew letters as a system of numbers and word-pictures. Because several times we will have to refer to these Hebrew letters, when looking into the zodiacal signs and their meaning on the background of the hebrew and biblical worldview.

1. Aleph; 1 ‚(head of a) bull‘

2. Beth; 2 ‚house; temple‘

3. Gimel; 3 ‚camel; weaning; giving/granting‘

4. Daleth; 4 ‚door; opening of a tent‘

5. Heh; 5 ‚window; revelation‘

6. Waw; 6 ’nail; peg (of a tent)‘

7. Zayin; 7 ‚weapon; arrow; paddle of a boat‘

8. Cheth; 8 ‚to haul out, to tear out; fear, shocked‘

9. Teth; 9 ‚womb; basket; potter’s clay‘

10. Yod; 10 ‚(acting) hand; arm‘

11. Khaph; 20 ‚(receiving) hand(ful)‘

12. Lamed; 30 ‚learning; teaching; oxen’s staff (to control animals)‘

13. Mem; 40 ‚water‘

14. Nun; 50 ‚(a certain kind of) fish; sperm; seed‘

15. Samekh; 60 ‚curled up (water-) snake‘

16. Ayin; 70 ‚eye; source/spring/well‘

17. Phe; 80 ‚mouth; command‘

18. Tzade; 90 ‚(fish)hook; just(ice)‘

19. Quph; 100 ‚monkey/ape; eye of a needle‘

20. Resh; 200 ‚(human) head; principle‘

21. Shin; 300 ‚tooth; flame of fire; to consume‘

22. Thaw; 400 ‚cross; sign; covenant‘

Besides these basic values of the letters and the meanings of their names and symbols (originally mostly referring to the ancient picture symbols of the modern letters, too), there are a plenty of additional aspects to the letters, which here cannot be explained any further (like for instance the actual shape of the Hebrew character of the letter; or the sound of the letter, sometimes depending on its position in a word). Only it shall be said that. concerning additional number values, there are especially the ‚Ath-Bash-values‘ of the letters (that means, the value of the A[leph],1, changed with that of the Th[aw], 400, that of the B[eth], 2, changed with that of the Sh[in], 300, and so on; so for the third letter Gimel this Ath-Bash-value would be the 200), the ‚full values‘ of the letters (that is the letters of the fully spelled name of a letter counted together in their values; for example the Gimel is spelled G-M-L, so its ‚full value‘ is 3+40+30=73); and the ‚great values‘ of the letters (for Gimel that would be Gimel Mem Lamed, so G-M-L and M-M and L-M-D, so 73+80+74 = 227); and combinations of these values like the ‚complete value‘ (’normal‘ value plus ‚Ath-Bash‘ value; for Gimel that is 203). But most of these numbers and values are not important for the following introductory explanations of Hebrew Astrology anyways.

A last point to be mentioned here concerning the Hebrew Alphabeth and its letters is: Since the last sign of the 22 is the Thaw with the value 400 (so the principle of the 4, the Female, the concrete, worldly, earthly and appearing material dimension ‚in the Hundreds‘), there is the quite ‚logical‘ expectation, that there might be a mystical ’23^rd sign‘ as representing the value 500 (that would be ‚the 5, that is: the Fruit in the hundreds‘, also said to be the ‚circumference of the Tree of Life‘ and the ‚distance between Heaven and Earth‘), which cannot be articulated or written in THIS world, because it transcends this world already in itself in every regard.

Now: The four ‚Female Signs‘ of the Zodiac are basically of the character of the ’symbolic number 4′, which is the number of the ‚female principle‘ (see for example the ‚4 elements‘, ‚4 directions of the wind and 4 corners of the Earth‘, nowadays ‚4 spacetime dimensions‘, etc.), the number of the ‚female side of human reality‘: the ‚horizontal‘ happenings in their timely development, ‚cause-and-effect‘, all that is time-and-space-bound, concrete, material, visible, appearing, and by this ‚revealing‘, too; it is the natural, the logical and the strictly causally ordered, governed by ’natural laws‘.

While describing the signs, the focus will be on the more ‚constructive‘ aspects of them. But of course there is always the possibility, too, to experience the influence of a sign in its destructive form. Typically this happens, when the true nature of the sign influencing a situation or an individual is misunderstood. This danger of misunderstanding the potential of the spirit around us, will be mentioned only in one short paragraph in the end of the description of each sign. With the constructive aspects of every sign as the base, this respective danger of each will be easily understood, without putting this danger itself too much into focus.

The first female sign is Taurus. It is the ‚bull‘; in Hebrew called ’shor‘ (which precisely means ‚a single bull‘, but sometimes used for both sexes of cows). Taurus is the 2^nd sign of the zodiacal circle, how it is visible on the night sky and counted through the months of the year, beginning with the spring month of Aries (around March/April in the modern Roman sun calendar).

In this sign the world, how we (as ’self-conscious humanity‘, so to speak) perceive her, was created. But the world was not created in the BEGINNING of Taurus, but only around after the first third of the roughly 2150 years every age is lasting. That’s why it is said: one part of this ‚heavenly bull‘ always ‚remains hidden outside this world‘.

At this point it should be made clear with a few sentences that ‚time‘ and ‚ages‘ in the Bible are to be understood in a more general, ‚absolute‘, less concrete sense, than the time periods of our modern calendars. The word ‚year‘ (or ‚day‘) in the Bible refers not always to the exact same period of time, but the actual ‚lenght‘ of such a period is depending on the overall relation of the described happening to other happenings and developments in the biblical story, as well as it is depending on its relation to ETERNAL principles. An example may make this more clear: never in the Bible there is a notion of something happening ‚xyz years after the beginning of the world/after creation‘ (although it would be easy to calculate this by examining the detailed notions of the life ages of the descendants of Adam for example), in contrary there are only ‚relative‘ notions of points and periods in time, like ‚in the xyz^th year of the king Abc‘ or ‚480 years after the captivity in Egypt‘, etc. And to give a very simple example for the difference between ‚relative‘ and ‚absolute‘ periods of time: The (absolute) ‚days‘ of the creation ‚week‘ in the first chapter of Genesis, of course, cannot be defined in lenght by the sun and its appearence and its visible movement on the earthly sky (like we nowadays define that [relative] time period called ‚one day‘), since the sun, with the moon and the other stars, are only created on the ‚fourth day‘ … So the ‚days‘ of creation week obviously mean an ‚absolute‘ period of time, a principal ’stage‘, if you will.

This seemingly strange understanding of time in the Bible is necessary, because periods of time in the Bible are not (only) counted from their reality in THIS world (as ‚historical‘ facts of developments), but from their ‚absolute‘ reality, expressing an ETERNAL fact of existence, not only a circumstance happening somewhere inside a theoretically infinite line of time. That means, that the 5777 years since creation (till the year of 2017 a. D. of modern calendars) only are an exact number, ‚if several discontinuities of time are taken into account‘, how it is explained.

One major characteristic of Taurus now is the ‚breaking through from somewhere hidden into the visible‘, just like our world is created somewhere within the age of Taurus, but is appearing already as something whole, in the middle of that age, like ‚out of the nothing‘ (or out of another level of reality). This aspect of Taurus is compared to the Aleph, the first Hebrew letter, which is not really pronouncable as long as it stands alone, but only when it comes along combined with a vowel (representing a planet). Taurus, as the beginning of anything, is a ’sudden birth‘ out of incomprehensible power, not describable in itself, only in relation to its accompanying effects.

That is, in a Taurus-oriented human being this ‚Taurus-layer‘ brings something into this world from out of ‚the other side‘, and namely brings this ’something‘ with a harsh, sometimes even with a brutal strenght of impact, which can make the fellow human beings feel insecure about it, as well as it can unsettle the Taurus-oriented human being itself by its inexplicable roughness of appearance.

Although a ‚female‘ sign, thus a sign of the more causal side of reality, in Taurus especially that part of causality appears, which is calculateable, predictable ONLY in statistical approaches, for the so-called ‚general cases‘ – but which is nonetheless very surprising and erratic in the concrete, special, unique situation. Here the ‚hidden part of the bull‘ is showing up as ‚the unexplainable‘ in a human beings life and in life in this world in general.

In this field of ‚erratic dangers‘ (and the fear of such) belong for instance all kinds of ‚accidents‘ in personal life, be it a fire in the basement, a lightning striking the apple tree in the garden, or a sudden heart attack hitting a grandfather while playing football with his grandson. These kinds of accidents induced by Taurus are symbolically found in the Bible as ‚an ox that pushes‘; see therefore the precise ‚commandments’/recommendations (Exodus 21, 28ff), how to tread an ox that has hurt or killed a human, and what to do about the owner of such an ox, under which circumstances, and so on. Although we will never be able to prevent all such kind of accidents, we DO shall try to avoid at least as much as possible of them by keeping certain precautions (to give some profane examples: to have fire extinguishers at home, to turn off the water supply when leaving the house for longer periods, being careful what to eat as a diabetic, etc.). Although of course: the ‚coincidences‘ of life, that ‚hidden part of the bull‘, do not only appear as ‚badluck‘, but as ‚goodluck‘, too. And often both at the same time, if a situation is goodluck to one person, but badluck to another (for instance: because someone’s taxi cab is late at the airport, you get his seat instead of him, and maybe even as a low-priced ‚last minute‘ booking …).

Biblically, Taurus is described in more detail concerning its quality, by what happens in the first six chapters of the Bible (to be more precise: from Creation until the time, when Noah would be around 250 years old), especially in 4 great story lines: 1. Creation itself (Mankind as the perfect final point of the world’s manifestation); 2. the ‚Fall of Mankind‘ through a sudden and quick ‚loss of everything good, which Mankind had in the beginning‘ (because of the ‚Serpent‘ that introduces ’something new‘); 3. Cain and Able (first/prototypical case of ‚murder‘; the more physical, bodily consciousness ‚killing‘ the spiritual consciousness in every human being very early in life); and 4. the so-called ‚Nephilim‘, the ‚Sons of God mixing with the Daughters of Mankind‘, breeding the ‚Fallen Ones‘ (also called: ‚Famous Ones‘, ‚Heroes‘ or ‚Strongmen‘; which can be described in essence as ‚potentially dangerous, very powerful forces inside this natural world, incorporated into actual beings‘, which are originally generated by the direct and ‚ungodly‘ influence of heavenly realities into this earthly realm; then being the main reason for the necessity of the ‚Great Cleansing‘ by means of the Flood).

The typical danger in the sign of Taurus is to be too scared of that ‚bull-power‘ inside oneself, or, projected onto the surrounding world: a fear of the basically uncontrollable nature of this whole material world and of our own life in here. But the solution to such fear can only be the acceptance of it: Yes, the raging bull IS dreadful, dangerous! But by this unpredictable force in the beginning ALL has been brought into existence, so trust, that that bull has his purpose for you, too. So maybe grab the ‚red rag‘ and dare that ‚bull fight‘ as the ‚Torero‘! On the other hand: sometimes not daring the fight, even avoiding it, can be the better choice, too. And by this you instead would be connecting to the ‚defencelessness‘ of the next sign, the ‚Lamb‘ Aries; the ‚defencelessness‘ as one (often underestimated) potential path to salvation.

The second female sign then, Aries, is the very first sign of the year in the visible zodiacal circle. In Hebrew the sign Aries, the ‚ram‘, is called rather ‚taleh‘ (which means ‚male lamb‘), so here the youth, the meekness is in the focus of the name, not so much the ‚grown up mighty ram with its impressive horns‘.

The ‚Lamb‘ as this very first sign of the Zodiac is perceived as ‚the true foundation of the world‘. You can discover this view of the Lamb as the ‚Foundation of All‘ in the wording ‚Lamb of God‘ as a reference to the Messiah, Jesus in the New Testament, who is seen as being ’slaugthered from before the beginning of the world‘ to guarantee salvation out of that world (Revelation 13, 8) and as the one and only ‚Foundation Stone‘ (Isaiah 28, 16; 1 Corinthians 3, 11; 1 Peter 2, 4-8).

It is especially the famous ’silence of the lamb‘ (specifically facing his slaughterer, too), which is stressed in the Hebrew tradition concerning this zodiacal sign. So it comes, that the ‚Lamb‘ is actually the very first sign, but so ’silent‘, that it can only appear as the second, after Taurus brought the world into being already by its outer-worldly sudden force. With a look on the Hebrew alphabeth it is then said: the sign of the lamb is already ‚before‘ the first letter of the Hebrew alphabeth (which is the Aleph, the ‚[head of a] bull‘), because the 22 letters only describe the ‚female‘, the concrete world of appearance. But the ‚Lamb‘ as the Foundation of All is actually of something more primordial, not of this appearing world, as already the bull is only partly from this world, only perceiveable in combination with ‚the vowels‘, not in itself. The mystical Lamb is even more ‚unspeakable‘ than that.

This Lamb of the Zodiac is like the primeval Unity of the human being and of whole Mankind with the Source: coming into our world of time and space in this sign, bringing with it this unity as something not logically graspable, but still somehow perceiveable, feelable, as a deep ‚longing for the origin‘, for the Source we flow from. By this, the Lamb is a symbol for the Redemption of the individual.

For the further elaboration of this aspect of the zodiacal Lamb as the Redeemer we can read the story of Abraham and Isaac in the Bible (Genesis 22): here the mystery is expressed as ‚the ram in place of the son‘. Because in this story of the ‚Binding of Isaac‘, it is the ‚ram, which is caught by the horns in the bush‘ (Genesis 22, 13), which replaces the son as the actual offering, and which then instead of the son disappears into another ‚world‘ or ‚level of existence‘ – as soon as Abraham actually was WILLING to even sacrifice his ‚own son‘ (= his own future in this world of matter). By the way: the actual term in the Bible for the so-called ‚human sacrifice‘ of Isaac is NOT ‚burnt offering‘, but literally a ‚rising upwards‘. And the symbol of the ‚binding of Isaac‘ is, that it is a ‚binding the four extremities together‘, as a ‚collecting the 4 into the 1‘ (1-4-principle, see first part of this introduction); and then a readiness for ‚cutting the head off‘, that is ‚ending the circulation of the blood through the body‘, as the ambition for ‚breaking the cycle‘ of this infinite time world (‚of the 4‘).

Speaking about the Lamb in the Bible, it is eye-catching that the lamb occurs as the most common sacrifice animal. In the Hebrew tradition an ‚animal‘ always refers to the human body, respectively to certain parts of it. So an ‚animal sacrifice‘ means in the spiritual sense, to bring the own bodily existence into a service of the Eternal, not to remain only in ‚mental gymnastics‘ and ‚theological philosophizing‘, but to actually draw consequences of your belief, reaching deep into your everyday life, that is: into what you daily do with your body, your physical side of existence as a human. The Hebrew word for sacrifice, ‚qurban‘, means actually ‚(something) to approach, to come near‘, implying the conscious approach of the human being towards his Creator, his Source.

And one of the most famous and certainly most important sacrifices of the biblical storyline is the so-called ‚Passah-Lamb‘ (Exodus chapter 12): a ‚Lamb in every house‘ as necessity for the redemption of the People of God out of ‚Egypt‘, out of the enslavement by the world of duality. And this redemption is happening expressively NOT out of own power, but it is a surprising, even unexpectable Godly Salvation. It is the ‚moaning and lamenting‘ of the Children of Israel, that ‚moves the Eternal’s heart‘ to make this happen. And it is only possible, where the ‚Lamb‘ is ‚inside the house‘; and the Hebrew word for ‚house‘ is the ‚Bejth‘, written just like the second letter ‚Beth‘ in the Alphabeth, the ‚B‘ with the numeric value of 2. So the ‚Lamb‘ must be present WITHIN (the world of) ‚Duality‘, otherwise the ‚Destroyer‘ will strike the ‚inhabitants of that house‘ (see Exodus 12, 23).

The Lamb thus expresses in his ’silence before the butcher‘ a ‚redemption through devotion‘, the ‚victory of defencelessness‘. That means, that in this sign the essential breakthrough is reached not by force, not by power, not by own effort and struggle – but by the ‚letting go‘ of oneself, by the unshakeable meekness of a ‚rather being slaughtered than being rebellious (against destiny/God)‘-mentality.

And then this Lamb brings a delightful surprise: that after the commitment to the (self-)sacrifice, it becomes clear, that your (and be it ‚only‘ figuratively spoken) ‚being slaughtered‘, this ‚rising upwards‘, does not mean to actually ‚leave this world‘ as a whole, but to gain a full new form of life down here on Earth, only freed now from the never-ending cycle of toil and from the searching for meaning and happiness in purely physical states of being. It is a ’silent peace‘, which maybe never will be understood, or even believed by the surrounding world to be there at all. But it is there.

That’s why it is said concerning the Lamb: ‚When you think you are going to die, the Lamb appears‘ – and by this experience you realize the presence of an ‚either AND or‘-reality, instead of the ’normally expected‘ mere ‚either-or-opposition‘: in the heavenly realm, in the Eternal, there is BOTH together, the ‚disappearing‘ here, ‚rising upwards‘ out of this world of time, but nevertheless ’staying present here‘ (also compare this experience with the Hebrew word for ‚Heaven‘, which was already explained in the first part of this introduction, concerning one of its translations as ‚fire AND water‘ in a ‚contra-intuitive‘, non-earthly kind of harmony).

The typical danger in this sign of the Zodiac is to look at the Lamb in his adult state as ‚the mighty ram with its horns‘. Then a Lamb could feel to be obliged to ‚fight the struggle‘ with own power, instead of being devote to his destiny, in meekness. The Lamb then would be confusing himself with Capricorn, a sign, which indeed sometimes has to fight in its own power. But the ram/lamb should NOT fight, but should be mild and even surrender … to win in the end just by this courage to take even the risk of being slaughtered. The re-connecting with the Taurus-layer in oneself can help here, too: to understand, that there is another part in yourself, that indeed HAS the great power out of ‚the other side‘; but what NOW is needed, as the Lamb (although brought here from that ‚other side‘, too), is rather the original united-ness with the Source, than that primordial power of Taurus. Both signs have their respective purpose, being the two sides of ONE primeval unity, which had to split to be able to appear in this world of duality.

Now the third female sign is Pisces, which is on the 12^th position in the zodiacal circle. Its name means fish (in the plural), in Hebrew ‚dagim‘ (which also means ‚fish‘ in the plural); and typically it is pictured as two fish swimming in opposite directions, more or less mirroring each other.

To approach the deeper meaning of this sign from the Hebrew perspective, it should be firstly established that ‚water‘ always is associated with ‚time‘. For example the Hebrew letter ‚Mem‘, with the numeric value of 40, can also be pronounced and written as ‚mayim‘, which actually means ‚water‘ in Hebrew. And the number 40 (as well as the 400) is very often used in the Bible to describe a ‚large (or even infinite) amount of time‘ (see for example the ’40 years of wandering through the wilderness‘, the ’40 days of disappearance of Moses‘, when he is alone on the mountain with God; and in the New Testament the ’40 days of fasting in the wilderness‘ of the Messiah right after his baptism). This 40-symbolism refers back to the principle of the ‚4 as the highest number in this world of Duality‘, as explained in the first part of this introduction.

So, that ‚time‘, which is meant here with ‚water‘ and with the number 40, is always understood with the focus on the strictly ‚linear character‘ of it, so it is generally the time which is bound on our understanding of 3D-space, the ‚unfree‘ understanding of a flowing time, which ‚takes everything it reaches‘, ‚banning it‘ into the so-called ‚past‘, never ‚giving it back to the present‘ – and with time itself the ‚water‘-symbol can mean the whole WORLD of time with its limiting and structuring laws of nature and society.

Pisces is the most ‚physical‘, immanent sign of the 4 female ones. While Taurus and Aries are somehow ‚transcendent‘ still, more representing certain aspects from the ‚other side‘, which in these signs are present for THIS world, too (and then Aquarius later is already leaving this purely material world of time and space again), the Pisces-quality lies especially in the very earthly acceptance of matter, time and space as such – ‚the fish feels good‘ in his element, the water, the time. But this acceptance of time and space and feeling at home here does not mean, that Pisces is fulfilled in this world alone. In contrary, it is especially the fish out of all beings in the waters, which has a high possibility to get ‚fished out of the water‘, because the ‚fishermen‘ know, that the fish ‚bears the secret‘; the secret, which only can be revealed after being fished out (a famous tale about King Solomon will be told in the following part of this introduction, wherein the theme of ‚a fish bearing the secret‘ is very essential).

With regard to this possibility of ‚a fish being fished out of the waters‘ it is said, that the fish itself is only half of the sign of Pisces, the other half is indeed the fisherman, who strives to fish the fish out of the water, ‚out of time‘ into the ‚realm of eternity‘, where its ‚inner secret‘ can be revealed.

And practically this ‚fishing-out‘ is accomplished with a certain ‚tool‘, namely with a ‚hook‘. And the Hebrew word for ‚hook‘ is the name of the 18^th letter of the Alphabeth, ‚Tzade‘, which is closely related to the word for a ‚Wise One‘ (or more precisely ‚Righteous One‘, or ‚Proven One‘), who is called a ‚Tzadiq‘. A truely ‚Wise One‘ in the Hebrew understanding is therefore someone who ‚fishes you out of the waters‘, brings you to an experience of eternity. And this means, a Wise One can only exist as such ‚on the other side‘, ‚in the inner world‘, because the fisherman can not fish the fish, when he himself is under the water. So no actual human being as a person appearing in this outside world of time and space (… that is: ‚a world of water‘) will be a ‚Wise One‘ him-/herself, but at best, ‚the Wise One inside him or her‘ can help you to find contact to ‚the Wise One inside yourself‘.

On this background it is easily comprehensible, why in the New Testament there are so many examples for the ‚fish and fishing‘.symbolism. Important passages, where Jesus himself refers (with words or deeds) to ‚fish‘ and ‚fishing‘ are for instance: the ‚fish with a coin inside‘ (the ‚hidden secret, only revealed, when on the land‘; see Matthew 17, 27); fishermen as His first disciples, ‚becoming fishers of men‘ (Matthew 4, 19: ‚Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!‘); catching much fish with a great ’net, cast into the sea‘, then ‚taking the good ones and throwing the bad ones away‘, as a parable for the ‚Kingdom of God‘ (the ’net‘) and how it is in effect in ‚this world of time‘ (the ’sea of water‘), rescueing human souls (the ‚fish‘) out of it (Matthew 13, 47-50).

The longing of the fish for ‚being fished out‘ is expressing itself for a human being in this sign of the Zodiac as a tendency to ‚mysticism‘, a desire for ‚the other side‘ of existence. In the right way understood, this ‚being fished out of time‘ though does not mean, to be brought ‚from time-experience to an experience of eternity‘ as a singular event, but the true Mystic would strive to ‚be fished out of the water over and over again‘. He wants to know all the other ‚waters‘, too, and always again wants to be fished out of those, too, as an everlasting journey through all the waters and all the dry lands!

He does not believe anymore that the surface of his sea, which he only sees from down here under the water, is the actual ‚Heaven‘ (although he indeed may get a slight impression of the actual sky above the sea already through this surface of the water); he knows: … the TRUE heaven is a whole new world out of the waters of his sea; but in this outside world, his own sea, too, is an essential part of the landscape! And beside this there are many other waters, rivers, lakes and oceans, even clouds in the skies with amounts of water pouring down every now and then, nourishing the dry areas of this world outside the waters … So in ‚Heaven‘ there is ‚water‘ (= time), too. Not a conincidence that the Hebrew word for Heaven, ‚Sh’mayim‘ (which we already understood as being a combination of ‚fire and water‘), can be translated as ‚there is water‘, too (then pronounced ’sham mayim‘, but spelled still exactly the same).

The typical danger of Pisces is that the human being under its influence feels so comfortable in this ‚world of water‘, that he/she does not want to be fished out of the water at all, and may even ‚be hiding in the depths‘ of time(-and-space-world and -life(style)), to avoid being fished out by the ‚Zadiq‘. This hiding fish however will be experiencing an inner (maybe unconscious) conflict, because actually the fish WANTS to be found, to be fished out, it is part of the fish’s inner destination (and that means on the personal level: one wants to be known and appreciated as a SPIRITUAL being, too, not only as a purely ‚physical appearance‘ and a mere ’social existence‘ out of many).

In such a case this ‚fish‘ maybe must experience for the first time, how ‚the light of the sun shines through the surface of his sea deep into the waters‘, enlightening this world of time a little bit more and by this, directing the attention of the fish ‚to the surface of the water‘, and to what may be beyond that surface, granting such a beautiful light! And maybe the next ‚fisherman’s hook‘, sinking down from up there into this fish’s water world, will be tempting enough – due to ‚that cord on it‘, seemingly leading upwards towards ‚the shining disc of light‘ beyond the surface …

The fourth (and final) female sign is Aquarius, the so-called ‚water carrier‘. In Hebrew this sign is called ‚dli‘, which means just ‚bucket‘ (that is the bucket, by which the ‚water carrier‘ scoops, carries and then pours out the water). It is the 11^th of the signs of the zodiacal circle on the sky.

By the ‚Bucket‘ the ‚water‘ (which we know by now as being a symbol for the ‚time‘) gets controllable, manageable to a certain degree. That means, in this sign – although still in this world of time, space and matter – the human being is getting more and more ‚free‘ from the force and pressure of this worldly bounds. The time is still present of course, but it plays not the active part any more, it gets ‚passive‘, is being handled by the ‚Bucket‘. And the symbol of the ‚Man pouring out the waters‘ does not mean, that this is a singular act and then ‚there is no more time‘ … no, this ‚pouring out‘ happens again and again, the ‚Man‘ (representing every human beings INNER existence) indeed feels joy in handling time in this active way.

In Judaism there is a tradition to celebrate the last of the biblical Feasts (‚Sukkoth‘, also known as the ‚Feast of the Tabernacles‘) with a ceremony, whereby water gets scooped out of a source and poured out again in great joy (see also Isaiah 12, 3). This last Feast of the yearly cycle represents (in one of its meanings) the final ‚coming together‘ of Heaven and Earth as the ‚Holy Wedding‘ in the end of times, when the difference, the opposition between Heaven and Earth, between Eternity and Time, is finally revealed to be illusionary, that in Heaven BOTH is present in harmony together, not as a contradiction.

By the way: one of the Hebrew words for ’salvation, rescue‘ is ‚dlia‘, derived from the word for ‚bucket‘, so ‚rescueing‘ someone is understood as ‚bucketing‘, scooping someone out of the waters …

‚Freedom from time and space‘ means not, that there are no more time and space at all. Only, time and space are not taken too seriously anymore, they are accepted as limiting and structuring principles, which have a senseful purpose. Not as a ‚cage‘, but as the walls of a house you live in: you know, you can leave it, if you want, but inside you have your security from certain ‚dangers‘, or rather ‚challenges‘, of the outside. And it would be stupid to tear down the walls, only to ‚feel more free‘ … therefore you have all the doors and windows of the house; you only have to remember them and use them, when you feel this desire for the outside world, without wanting to leave your house for good yet. Like ‚time‘ separating the happenings in this world from each other, ’space‘ in this world may be separating the beings from each other – but at the same time it is CONNECTING everything in its common realm, making it possible to ‚meet each other‘.

Freedom from time and space means indirectly also ‚freedom from the law (of nature), and, in a more biblical, spiritual sense, ‚freedom from the commandments of the Bible, of the Thorah‘, too (from this perspective the Letter to the Romans by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament can be understood in its true depths; see Romans chapters 7+8). And again, not in the sense, that there is NO MORE law, but in the sense, that living according to the ‚law‘ (= to the recommendations) sets you free from the limitations which would come upon you, where you go against the law and in consequence suffer the necessary corrections of your behaviour through an outer force, enpowered by the law you broke. So it is actually this ‚outer force‘ of the law, what you get liberated from in the sign of the water carrier, of the ‚bucket‘: the water, the TIME, in which the consequences of the law and its trespassing are experienced, becomes ‚manageable‘ by means of that bucket. Instead of an ‚outer force‘, it becomes an inner, volontary force inside you, that corrects you deliberately – and by this you gain an ability to ‚make some exceptions to the law‘ for yourself, where it serves the deeper meaning of the whole. These exceptions you cannot force upon anyone else, but for your own behaviour you can always choose to follow them, as long as they are in harmony with your own inner experience of ‚the law‘.

Especially the ‚inner time‘ is then no longer bound so closely to the outwardly. That means, experiencing joy for instance can endure easily inside yourself even in times, when ‚outside‘ there is no more reason for joy. And this outer situation is looked at now as something merely ’structuring‘, too, like the walls of your house are: they are structuring the potential of your individual destiny, which you live out within this framework according to your own will – it is only the ‚raw material‘ to be formed by yourself.

Like the size and type of the canvas and the colours and the kind of the paint is structuring the potential for a new painting by a ‚poor‘ painter, who can’t efford his own stuff and so just ‚takes what he gets‘ from friends and by-walkers, donating him the material for his art. But maybe … he even decides himself to be that ‚poor‘, because especially out of this seemingly ‚coincidental‘ factor to his art, he gains his creativity?!

The typical danger of this sign is, not accepting itself as one of the ‚female‘, earthly signs. A human being heavily influenced by Aquarius sometimes wants to be only ‚transcendent‘ and spiritual, not accepting, that there will always be ‚more water‘ to fill in the bucket and pour it out again, that he/she will never ‚have poured out ALL of the water‘, never will get completely away from time and space and the natural laws, as long as he/she lives in this physical body. If this human being tries to flee this reality, there is a tendency to ‚lose earth contact‘ more and more – and from some point on this would mean, to become indeed ‚insane‘ in the perception of this world. The solution here is only, to connect with the ‚Pisces-layer‘ in yourself: learn from the fish the joy of swimming through the waters, as well as being fished out of them! Then you will find the joy in the endless filling and emptying your bucket, too …

As a final topic for this chapter concerning the four female signs, it shall be looked at the general epochs of ‚our‘ history here in time and space, and how they fit in the scheme of the four female signs.

As already said, the creation of this world (of time and space, as we collectively perceive and experience it as ’self-conscious Mankind‘) happens in the middle of Taurus as something ’sudden‘, directly bringing into being highly developed cultures like Ancient Egypt, and similar on the other continents, too (see for example the many pyramidal buildings all over the Earth).

Aries, the ‚Lamb‘; then essentially represents the epoch of the most part of the so-called ‚Old Testament‘ of the Bible, or to be more exact: from around the ‚Great Flood‘ until (almost) ‚Jesus‘: a time of ‚angels visiting humans and other miracles‘ …

And then there is a ‚great shift‘ during this ‚transition‘ from the more ‚mythological, transcendent‘ signs Taurus and Aries to the rather ‚historical, immanent‘ signs Pisces and Aquarius, the shift that is also implied by the odd jump ‚from the 2^nd and 1^st to the 12^th and 11^th sign‘ of the cycle of the Zodiac. This shift happens to be not exactly, but at least approximately around the ‚year zero‘ of our modern calendars; probably around one or two centuries earlier, it is nothing exact to calculate. So we can call this the ’shift from mythological time to historical time of Mankind‘.

The ‚tearing apart of the curtain before the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem‘, which is reported to have happened at the moment of Jesus‘ death on the cross, can be understood as ‚the materially manifest symbol‘ of that great transition from the 2 first to the 2 last signs of the Zodiac in human history (see Matthew 27, 51; Marc 15, 38; Luke 23, 45). And by the way: It is remarkable that, since Jesus, the use of language, the wording of the Bible, is turning much more ‚personal‘, now speaking directly to the individual, not anymore only ‚mythologically‘ to the whole ‚People of God‘ as a group, that is, to Mankind as a whole, like in the so-called ‚Old Testament‘.

The Pisces-era then is the historical development of the last biblically described times of humanity until (almost) now; so it is the time of human history, where we actually have more or less solid facts about the happenings (that means: not having to deal with all too much ‚myths‘ and ‚legends‘, which are mixed into the ‚historical records‘, like in the ancient Egyptian ‚kings‘ lists‘ or in records like the ‚Tibetan Book of Death‘ or the ‚Mahabharata‘ …).

Aquarius now is OUR sign of the epoch since a few decades, in which time and space indeed become more and more ‚irrelevant‘ to a certain degree, ‚manageable‘ easily (first by means of technologies like the telegraph, the telephone, later television and now even internet, first only stationary, today even as ’smart phones‘ and other transportable devices; including things like photographies and videos, too, as possibility to ‚catch‘ moments in time out of the stream of time, making them available throughout space; … and not to forget airplanes, making journeys a matter of a few hours, which 100 years ago were a matter of weeks or months; etc.).

We can see now: The four Female Signs of the Zodiac are representing ‚the Whole World‘ (of time, space and matter; this ‚world of duality‘) in her development through time; from being established for us here ‚out of the nothing‘ (Taurus, the ‚Bull‘), bringing with it something of the Eternal Source and a feeling of Oneness with this Source (Aries, the ‚Lamb‘); but this only follows after the initial ‚breakthrough‘, as the unfolding of an unspeakable ‚Before‘ being remembered, the ‚living out of a giant myth‘ by early Mankind, so to speak … Then there is a drastic shift and that myth comes to an end, ‚history‘ as we know it comes into play; instead of ‚Angels and Devils‘, stories are told now about ‚Roman Emperors and Barbarian Rebels‘, Mankind seems to be feeling very ‚at home‘ in this world of linear time and its more and more explainable laws (Pisces, the ‚Fish‘) … but nowadays these finally ‚accepted‘ time and space become even slowly ‚circumstantial‘ again, to a certain degree at least, Mankind gets more and more in control of ‚the waters‘ (Aquarius, the ‚Bucket‘)…

And maybe we see the four Female Signs as well as representing the individuals stages of life, from natural birth till natural death, from childhood through adolescence and adulthood into a (hopefully) wise age towards the end of one’s years: As a child ‚feeling thrown into this world‘, out of the primordial power of physical generativity, thereby bringing many unexplaineable abilities, as well as weaknesses with oneself (Taurus), growing into a unique character in the years of youth, as close to one’s ideals, longings and hopes, as never again in later times of life (Aries), then at some point ’suddenly‘ being confronted with the ’seriousness‘ of adult life, with ‚paying bills‘ and ’social expectations‘, and during that: looking for the ‚meaning of all that‘ in a place beyond this everyday-waves of monotony (Pisces) … and finally (hopefully) reaching a state of consciousness, where all the boundaries and limitations of life and this world are not only accepted, but even appreciated as the necessary background structure, within which by now a whole great life of many adventures and miracles has already been possible to happen – and by telling the story of your own life (and be it only to yourself) you are ‚writing your story even anew‘ to some degree, ‚changing‘ your past by explaining it deliberately in a new and broader sense (Aquarius), knowing the outcome of it by now, seeing ‚the hand of God in your life‘, when looking actively backwards …

But these 4 stages of the female signs of course are only describing the experience of the individual on the linear, the ‚horizontal‘ level, and they are never EXACTLY distinguishable from each other, have rather flowing transitions into each other and even are going parallel sometimes. Beside this, as only ‚horizontal‘ descriptions, they are in reality always incomplete as a description of an actual persons life. Because there necessarily is the ‚vertical‘ side of experience, too, for every single human being. And this vertical experience is expressed in the ‚Male‘ Signs of the Zodiac, which shall be presented in the following part.