Pisces

Meaning

Pisces is the twelfth and last sign of the zodiac, from 330° to 360°, the end of northern winter just before the March equinox. It is water in its mutable form, ruled by Jupiter in traditional astrology and by Neptune in modern astrology, and astrologers read it as the sign of compassion and imagination: feeling with others, sensing what lies beyond words, letting edges soften.

A planet in Pisces tends to take in its surroundings like water takes the shape of its vessel. It adapts, intuits and imagines, and it often understands before it can explain. Its gifts are empathy, gentleness, faith, artistic and spiritual depth, and a readiness to forgive that few signs share.

Its difficulties come from the same openness: boundaries that blur, other people’s moods taken on as one’s own, a pull towards escape when life feels harsh, decisions left to drift. The opposite sign, Virgo, sorts and orders what Pisces would rather let flow; the pair is read as the axis of analysis and surrender, of service in the details and service of the whole.

Tradition exalts Venus here, at 27°: love at its most selfless. Mercury is both in its detriment and in its fall, the only planet doubly debilitated in one sign, as it is doubly dignified in the opposite sign, Virgo: in Pisces, reasoning is asked to give way to intuition.

In practice

• The Sun in Pisces, from 18 or 19 February to 20 or 21 March (the day shifts from year to year): a sense of self found through imagination, care and a feeling of belonging to something larger.
• The Moon in Pisces: deep, porous feelings; comfort comes from quiet, music, water and some protected time alone.
• Pisces rising, on the Ascendant: a gentle, receptive first impression. Traditional astrologers take Jupiter as the chart ruler, modern ones Neptune, and many read both.
• Jupiter in Pisces is in its domicile: generous, devout, wide of heart. Venus in Pisces, exalted, loves tenderly and without conditions. Mercury in Pisces thinks in images and impressions and gains by writing things down.
• Pisces on a house cusp: that area of life is lived intuitively and flexibly, with real generosity and limits that may need tending.

Across traditions

• Jyotish calls the sign Meena, the fish, gives it to Jupiter rather than to Neptune, exalts Venus there and also places Mercury’s fall there; measured from the stars, it begins about 24° further on, and the Sun enters it around 14 March.
• Human Design places five gates wholly in Pisces, 55, 37, 63, 22 and 36, with the edges of gates 30 and 25.
• The Chinese calendar opens Pisces with Yǔshuǐ, “rain water”, and sets Jīngzhé, “awakening of insects”, at 15° Pisces, where the month of the Rabbit (mǎo) begins.

Origin and history

Babylonian astronomers called this part of the sky the Tails, joining two older figures, the Swallow and the goddess Anunitum. The Greeks saw two fishes, Ichthyes, tied by a cord, and told how Aphrodite and Eros escaped the monster Typhon through the waters of the Euphrates, carried by two fish or changed into them, as the versions differ. In the old doctrine of planetary houses, Pisces is Jupiter’s night house and Sagittarius its day house.

Neptune was found in 1846, and modern astrologers came to give it Pisces, while traditional astrologers keep Jupiter. By the boundaries astronomers published in 1930, the March equinox point has stood among the stars of Pisces since the 1st century BC, which is why popular astrology speaks of an “Age of Pisces”; the Sun now crosses the constellation from about 12 March to 19 April.

How Ulune calculates it

A body is in Pisces from 330° up to 360° of tropical longitude, measured from the March equinox point. Ulune names both rulers. The sign’s reading and the house readings give Neptune, and the house table adds Jupiter as traditional ruler; for Pisces rising, the chart ruler is Jupiter, with Neptune shown beside it in the table and on the wheel. The dignity table counts Jupiter’s domicile and Venus’s exaltation, at 27° by tradition, and a Mercury in Pisces carries both its detriment and its fall in the score. The triplicity rulers are Venus by day, Mars by night and the Moon participating, after Dorotheus; the terms run Venus to 12°, Jupiter to 16°, Mercury to 19°, Mars to 28° and Saturn to 30°, and the faces are Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. The readings’ decans are those of Pisces, Cancer and Scorpio, ruled by Neptune, the Moon and Pluto.

Correspondences