Ruler: Jupiter (traditional), Neptune (modern)
Exalted: Venus
Detriment: Mercury
Fall: Mercury
Polarity: Feminine/ Negative
Modality: Mutable
Element: Water
Body Parts: immune system, lymphatic system, feet, invaders such as bacteria, viruses, yeast, fungus, movement across the cells
Nature: moist, cold, passive, receptive, psychic, adjusting, attuning
Pisces represents diffusion..
This post was first published last year…it’s been slightly updated…
The Sun is now in Pisces.
This means that it’s birthday season for this little fishie.
And boy, am I a fishie.
My chart is above and as you can see I have:
- Mercury in Pisces
- The Ascendant in Pisces
- The Sun in Pisces
- The Moon in Pisces
- Chiron is in Pisces
To add to this Piscean cocktail:
- Mercury is in the 12th house
- Neptune trines the Sun and the Moon and connects also into Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto. Yep, it’s a great big watery trine with a kite on the end.
So, who better, I say, to say it as it is than a Piscean….
Pisces has a reputation of being emotional, dependent, addictive, escapist, indecisive, drifting, lazy, depressive, blame shifting, manipulative and fickle.
We are also told that we tend to have a victim mentality, are confused, delusional, overly sympathetic and self destructive. We have no boundaries, no structure and can be self-indulgent. We’re too forgiving and let the same people kick us again and again, we trust too easily, we believe too easily.
Yep, we are all those things, but we are also a little bit of every other sign in the zodiac.
At our best we can be mystical, visionary, intuitive, healing and irresistible…but at our worst, we are definitely all of the above.
Usually, however, we are somewhere in the middle and can exist with reasonable success in society. Some of us have even managed to hold down responsible jobs that have required us to consider details, consequences and make decisions.
In very many situations, many of us still feel a lot like a fish out of water.
I know both sides of the fish very well. At different times and for different reasons I have done bad fish. But what the world sees as the Pisces shadow I don’t always necessarily agree with. I don’t think the emotionalism is a weakness, I don’t think dreaming is a bad thing. I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with trusting people and seeing the best in them. It means we care deeply and intensely, we have visions of things as they can be… and we truly believe that there are no limits to what is possible.
If we can imagine it, we can dream it into life….our imagination is limited only by our boundaries…and they are tenuous indeed.
Pisces is arguably the most vulnerable of all signs. Whilst all three water signs are motivated solely by their emotions, both Cancer and Scorpio have a hard outer shell that shields their emotions from the world. Both will question before trusting, and analyse the data before exposing themselves. Pisces can’t do any of this. Instead we put on whatever mask is required. We have an innate ability to be whoever we need to be, to appear to be part of whatever reality we need to be in, while we live in our own version of it.
Trust me, this does make sense. We can’t afford to let the world see who we really are or what we are feeling. Others can say things that hurt us deeply, but we can laugh it off… on the outside.
Pisces is not as interested in worldly matters and material success as the real world dictates. Other signs have difficulty understanding this.
We are influenced by both the expansionary positivism of our traditional ruler, Jupiter and the illusive glamour of Neptune.
Whilst Pisces has a definite tendency to pessimism and lethargy this is reflective of the relative strength of Jupiter in the chart. A prominent Jupiter will provide optimism and faith… but also a tendency to self-indulgence.
Neptune gives us an amazing imagination and intuition and ability to care for others at the expense of ourselves…but also a tendency to self-sacrifice. Neptune dissolves boundaries, and the ego. If boundaries don’t exist, how can there be consequences? Imagine there’s no country…
This is the world of the fish- two extremes: reality/illusion, empathy/ self sacrifice, waves of success/ dark depths of despair.
Pisces needs to belong to someone. Love, romance, affection, sex- it is all one and the same to us. We don’t do black and white, we need colour, we need to be shown that we are loved, and in response we will love you like you have never been loved before.
Unfortunately, this often means that we don’t notice (at first) when you treat us badly or ignore us or exploit us. This is largely because of our non-existent boundaries- sometimes we really truly don’t know where you end and we begin. As such, we assume that you feel about us the way we do about you. Why wouldn’t you?
Pisces is loyal and devoted, but can drift into an alternative relationship if she feels that her needs are not being met. This is often not a deliberate decision, but rather something that just happens- and usually without any awareness of the consequences.
In fact, Pisces is able to be in love with more than one person at one time- without knowing why, but loving both deeply and completely for different reasons. This isn’t to say that Pisces is fickle or unfaithful- it isn’t that simple, or that complex.
Pisces can also stay in a relationship that is rapidly decaying simply because she feels sorry (in some way) for her partner. A tendency to co-dependency is another Neptunian trait.
The ideal partner for Pisces will allow us to dream, allow us to feel, give us the level of security we need to feel good about ourselves, yet provide us with enough support to engage with the real world.
The cruelest thing anyone can do to Pisces is to take away her dreams and tell her that she can’t feel.
In the right environment, Pisces can work miracles. Without boundaries, the sky really is the limit. If Pisces can learn to trust herself, value herself and listen to her intuition, dreams really can come true.
Want to know more about Pisces?
Check out these posts…
Green Fairies, Big Bad Woolufs and Pisces in Houses 1-5
Magic Carpet Rides and a Little Dickens. Pisces in Houses 6-9