Starving for the Space of the Imaginal

Make a promise to yourself in the new year to commit to the open-ended space of your imagination.

THE THREE WATER SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC are associated with the world of the imaginal and the imagination. In Plato’s dialogue Timaeus, he speaks of that out of which all things have generated: the nurse, the receptacle “that we may liken to a mother” or a womb “that partakes of the intelligible [but] is yet most incomprehensible.”

Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich comments:

“In these delightful lines Plato still speaks of the image-pregnant stuff of the dreams and imagination … as one who still has the experience of in precategorical, ‘founded’ space.”

This describes quite well the nascent, creative realm of the three water signs.

This is a peculiar realm, this world that Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces access. The imaginal imparts to the water triad qualities like intuitive prescience, sometimes maddening irrationality (“I dunno, it just doesn’t feel right to me, I can’t explain why.”) Also visions and unfounded insights.

All are reinforced with the conviction that the imaginary realm is more s…