Human consciousness which seeks the transcendent, or
attempts to make itself transcendental, eventually must ask a critical
question: which forms of activity are really valuable for human consciousness,
and which are, or constitute, mere escapism? William Wordsworth’s The Prelude,
to me, can only be a minor masterpiece, for the simple reason that Wordsworth’s
chiasmus with the natural, natural objects, natural forms, which constitutes
the narrative-thematic backbone of the book, is a kind of crack cocaine for
him, getting him high without leading his consciousness to a more truth
consonant place. William Wordsworth was born with Mercury in Pisces, and it
works. Pisces and truth consonance is variable— evolved Pisces energy can
arrive rather easily at the grandest, most cosmic truths, which coalesce for it
out of thin air; while pedestrian Pisces energy slips and slides around telling
the truth, out of feelings of humiliation and embarrassment, and also looking (as
Wordsworth in The Prelude is constantly looking) to escape. Wordsworth goes so
far out of his textual way to remain in one of his underwater moods, within the
charmed circle of the natural and against the charmed circle of the human, that
the whole book passes without the Prelude Protagonist having had more than a
brief, cursory interaction with another individual human being. Wordsworth’s
asides to Coleridge are also anodyne, and Wordsworth does not inform us of what
Coleridge might have to say back to him. The major quality of Keats’ Odal Cycle
asserts itself over The Prelude because the primeval genius of Music, in its
purest form, and created by an individual human being, allows Keats’ to
transcend without seeming unduly like an escapist.
Underwater moods can become stagnant— this is one of the
pitfalls of Neptune in Pisces. When
Wordsworth’s underwater moods stagnate in The Prelude, the reader can feel him
gasping for air, and willing to falsely reassure himself. The entire endeavor
of English Romanticism, by the way, not only insists on the transcendental
impulse issuing from individuals, it does so in such a way which, rightly or
wrongly, projects individuality onto the reader, as though what they are seeing
and hearing is something they, or anyone, can relate to. This is false: most
readers of the English Romantics read for the wrong reasons, and without the
individual, individualized purity of intention which can lend gracefulness and
insight to a reading. Reading the Romantics while Neptune is transiting Pisces
is a way of letting language place us underwater, whether the murkiness of
Wordsworth or the limpid clarity of Keats; and, if we are willing to take a
rather icy plunge, to connect what we are reading, in all its transcendent
bliss, to what we know, in 2015, of the charmed circle of the human, and what
the limitations of the human race really are. The distinction, in the archetype
Pisces, between high and low art (kinds of water) is also huge: high and low
art can perform roughly the same tricks for human consciousness, only high art
can take brain matter, not just heart and emotion matter, and make it fluid.
That’s the problem with low art/pop culture crap: it works around emotions, and
ambiance. It makes you feel, but, for higher IQs, does not provide fodder for
heightened thought. Heightened thought, transcendent cognition, what you will,
is the most powerful ocean in human consciousness, and the only one capable of
pushing the human race forward, individual by individual; and the lethargy,
recumbence, and stagnation which tend to manifest during Piscean epochs can be
balanced by subtle shifts of perception towards a truer, more correctly
shimmering level of multiple truths, subtly shifting within themselves,
underwater and on dry land.
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