Astrologers who speak of an old soul refer to a soul which has gone through many lives, retaining the wisdom of each. Often they refer to Pisces because life as the fish is either the most difficult obligation a soul can choose -- or a chance to reach perfect fulfillment. While Aries represents birth in the zodiac, Pisces represents death and eternity.
The fish is the twelfth sign, a composite of all that’s gone before, and his nature is a blend of all the other signs, which is quite a lot to cope with. His surprising ability to organize and concentrate on detail which pops up now and then, as well as his gentleness, reflects his inner knowledge of the lessons of Virgo. His judgment is as fair and detached as that of Libra, and his love of pleasure is also purely Libran.
Pisces people have Cancer’s crazy sense of fun, sympathy, and crabbiness. They’re sometimes full of the Sagittarian outspoken frankness and generosity, as fun-loving and outgoing as Leo, yet as devoted to duty as Capricorn, and often just as envious of social distinction.
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There may also be a smattering of the Saturnine melancholy. Perhaps more than just a smattering. The fish can be as moody as a Moon child and as happy as a lion. He likes to tease and analyze in an Aquarian fashion. He’s often overflowing with Aries idealism and enthusiasm, but usually without the Mars drive.
A Pisces person can zip around with Gemini quickness, talk just as fast, and think just as cleverly. He can also be as lazy and peaceful as Taurus. He has the clever wit of Mercury and the soft grace of Venus, and he combines it with the mystic penetration of Scorpio, without the Scorpio’s ruthlessness.
Pisces holds within himself the fondness of debate of all the air signs, the love for nature of all the earth signs, and the flaming aspirations of all the fire signs. But he is neither fixed nor cardinal.
The fish is mutable always; in this respect he is undiluted. The one and only quality that originates with his own sign is his strange power to stand outside himself and see yesterday, today, and tomorrow as one.
The Piscean love of music and art, and his highly developed senses and versatility he owes to other signs, but his deep wisdom and compassion belong only to him, culled from the combined knowledge of every human experience. Is it any wonder that mysterious Pisces is a bit of a puzzle at times?
What the Symbol of the Fish Reveals About Pisces Nature
The two fish in reversed directions symbolize the choice given the Pisces: to swim to the top or to swim to the bottom and never quite reach his goals. Pisces must learn that he is to serve mankind in some way and eschew worldly possessions.
Piscean Einstein, who swam upstream, formulated a whole new world of relative time. Pisceans that swim downstream serve by washing dishes or shoveling snow. The choice is always there because there’s never a lack of unusual talent, but the fish, with eyes that see clearly on both sides, sometimes has difficulty seeing straight ahead.
Pisces often retreats either to the sublime heights of a dedicated professional life or to stimulants, artificial emotions, and false excitement.
It's never easy for either real or human fish to struggle and fight their way upstream. It’s more common, and it takes less effort, to go with the current wherever it takes them. But to swim upstream is the challenge of Pisces-and the only way he ever finds true peace and happiness.
Taking the easy way is a trap for those born under this Sun sign, a glittering bait that entices them, while it hides the dangerous hook-a wasted life.
Pisces Superpowers
Pisceans can literally hypnotize themselves into or out of anything they choose-including fear of cats, mice, heights, subways, elevators, and people.
Humor is one of their secret weapons. Pisceans grin to cover unshed tears. They’re masters of satire, and you may cringe from a bright remark thrown at you so casually that you’re unable to pin down the exact meaning or the intent. Yet, you’ll have a decidedly uncomfortable feeling.
The fish can scatter caustic observations around like flashing lights that wink on and off so fast you can’t keep up with them. He’s an excellent practical joker, great at pulling hilarious lines while he keeps his own elastic face mournful and straight.
He can move gracefully from slapstick to brittle, sophisticated jokes. Sometimes the fun is warm and harmless, sometimes it’s cold and merciless; but it’s always a cover for another emotion the fish wants to hide, seldom spontaneous of itself. Pisces wears his laughs as a mask, and they disguise him well.
There’s a great feeling of pity and a desire to help the sick and weak. Pisces may share compassion for the ill with Virgo, but he takes the extra step to try to understand the hearts of the burdened and the friendless, the failures and the misfits, no matter how weird or how rejected by society.
The fish will gently comfort those whom Virgo feels are weak by choice, and therefore undeserving. If you need a dime or a dollar, a large loan, or just a small encouragement that no one else would give, go to Pisces. You’ll get no lectures and no glances of superiority.
He judges no man-thief, murderer, addict, pervert, sinner, saint, hypocrite, or liar. Greed, lust, sloth, and envy will bring no critical wrath if he’s a typical Neptunian. His understanding overflows, along with whatever practical help he’s able to offer.
He senses every vice and virtue, and he knows each pitfall. Many fish, for this reason, don the robes of the priest or monk and spend their lives in prayer or contemplation.
To help is his first instinct. There are Pisces people who are crusty and brusque, but it’s only a fragile shell, worn for protection. The fish soon learns how vulnerable he is.
The world is not yet tuned to the sensitive Piscean wavelength, so to avoid ridicule (as well as to avoid being taken for every last dime he owns), he sometimes feigns indifference. The impositions of those who would trample him force the fish to hide his true spirit.
Since the depth of Neptune’s waters causes him to absorb every pain and joy as if they were his own, it’s little wonder many Pisceans pretend disinterest in hearing sad stories. But remember that they are pretending. If you’ve been rebuffed once, try twice, and the real fish will surface.
Pisces shines in creativity and imagination. Their great elfin humor and Neptunian sense of beauty allow them to create the most delicate, yet eternally lasting prose and works of art.
You’ll frequently find fish who have buried their personal dreams to brighten odd corners of the lives of relatives and friends or to bring the gift of tears and laughter to the public through the stage, at the cost of the privacy Pisces seeks and needs.
Highly intuitive and frequently psychic, Pisces soaks up vibrations like a sponge. When a Pisces tells you to walk instead of drive because they have a “hunch,” you’d better listen.
Pisces Pitfalls
Where’s the liquid? It may be nearby, and the fish is attracted to it.
It can be a love of ice water, the habit of a dozen cups of tea or coffee a day, a hankering for pop, or a yen for something stronger. Like Scorpios and Cancerians, Pisces people are wise to stay miles away from alcohol. Very few Neptunians can have a social cocktail, then leave it alone.
There are some, naturally. But too many Pisceans find enticing relief from trouble in liquor. It lulls them pleasantly with a false sense of security and it’s a dangerous lullaby.
Of course, every Pisces who drinks doesn’t become an alcoholic, but the percentage is higher than expected.
The fish was born with the desire to see the world through rose-colored spectacles. He knows well enough about the seamy side of humanity, but he prefers to live in his own watery, gentle world, where everyone is beautiful and all actions are lovely.
If reality becomes too terrible to face, he often escapes into rosy daydreams with powder puff foundations and not a prayer of coming true. When life dumps him with a splash-a real belly-smacker-into a stagnant river of dismal failure and hopeless conditions, instead of leaping out of the murky danger, he’s more inclined to hide behind his pale green illusions which keep him from making practical decisions.
The rejected Pisces is too inclined to face the ugliness of failure by deepening his false hopes, when a determined switch of course or some new, forceful action might shower him with real, instead of imaginary, success.
Not every March-born person falls into such a typical Neptune trap, but enough of them do to make it a necessary warning. The Pisces writer may be tempted to lounge for years in bars, telling himself he’s gathering material when he’s really just gathering moss and unpaid bills.
The Pisces artist who can’t get the patronage he seeks may stroll through the park, day after day, mumbling into his beard that he’s studying nature as a background for his great masterpiece, while his paint brushes gather dust. Where is the angel who will support him while he splashes canvases with glory?
The Piscean woman, left alone, with just enough fixed income to keep a roof over her head and a little seaweed in the cupboard, will tend to dream away the hours, tenderly remembering yesterday, hazily hoping for tomorrow, and wasting the bright sunlight of today.
Pisces in Career & Finances
If you should happen to see a Pisces behind a teller’s cage or sitting at a bank president’s desk, you’ll be viewing a rare kind of fish. Very few of these people can stand being confined for long in one place.
You’ll have better luck if you wander into a spiritual seance, visit an art gallery, walk through a convent or a monastery, attend a concert, or catch a floor show in a nightclub. You might check an Authors League meeting, drop backstage after a play, or try some sunbathing on a yacht.
The chances are you’ll come up with a pretty good catch in any of those streams of life. The more creative and artistic, the more leisurely and esoteric the surroundings, and the more fish you’ll find. The net will be full of colorful, shimmering types if you spread it out at cocktail parties or gala balls.
There’s little worldly ambition in Neptune people. Most of them wouldn’t give a minnow for rank, power, or leadership, and wealth holds little attraction. Few Pisces people accumulate money by the bushel unless they marry it or inherit it. Mind you, they have nothing against cash. They’ll gladly accept any old coins you can’t use. But they’re more aware than most of us of its temporal qualities.
Whoever said, “I don’t want to be a millionaire-I just want to live like one” reflected the Piscean philosophy. The typical Neptune heart is free of greed. There’s a lack of intensity, almost a carelessness about tomorrow.
In a hazy way, he feels money was created to spread around. When a person needs it, the cash should be there. When you don’t need it, you pass it on. It’s a kind of bread-cast-on-the-waters theory.
It works surprisingly often for the fish, but Neptune’s philosophy can bewilder other Sun signs. (But a Virgo, Cancer, Capricorn ascendant, or perhaps an Aquarius or Taurus Moon can spoil all the fun.)
Suitable Careers
The Neptunian chief executive is as rare as a bathing suit at the North Pole. The great majority of Neptune’s children prefer to swim alone-unconfined-as writers, salesmen, creative artists, actors, wandering minstrels, or soldiers of fortune.
However, there are a few areas where he can apply his talents and make himself an indispensable boss. He has top qualifications for radio stations, TV networks, advertising, and public relations outfits. Running any of these operations, he’ll go around happily dispensing creative ideas from his superabundant fountain of imagination.
Pisces sees no reason to blurt out the plain and often brutal truth, as certain other Sun signs do. Unlike Gemini, Sagittarius, and Scorpio, the fish prefers not to tell it like it is. He would rather tell people what he thinks will have the best effect on them in the long run, or what they want to hear.
It’s not because he’s dishonest. He’s learned through bitter experience that society does not want to hear the cold and naked truth. Besides, he feels the soul requires the added dressing of ritual and beauty painted over sound facts. Madison Avenue loves him.
He’s a superlative director of stage and screen, and also a capable producer (if he has a good company manager). He can run a dance studio like a dream. As the head of a detective or research bureau, his uncanny psychic ability to penetrate mystery leads him straight to the top of the heap.
Lots of travel agencies have Pisces executives, and they’re usually tremendously successful. He’s often found as the head of a charitable organization. Many fish happily lead orchestras or bands and keep rehearsals running smoothly, not to mention producing great music. They’re unexcelled as executive managers of country clubs or hotels (if there’s a good bookkeeper around).
They can run a progressive publishing company, magazine, or newspaper competently, even brilliantly. You’ll often find the fish heading up a service business of some kind, and he’s certainly in home waters as the director of a camp, or in an official capacity in a church or synagogue.
But that’s just about it, except for teachers and professors and a few administrators in medical or law schools. Pisceans aren’t cut out to be bosses, in the strict sense of the word.
With his sensitive nature, Pisces was born to serve mankind, not to accumulate power or build huge empires. He can be a capable and competent stockbroker and a shrewd trader, but he’ll almost never take over as the head of a brokerage. T
oo much responsibility. However, thanks to his quick, clever mind and his sometimes uncanny grasp of figures, the fish can have a lot of fun juggling the points of fluctuating shares, though it will be more like a game to him than actual work.
Pisces at Work
The abilities of Pisces at work depend entirely on which pond he swims in. He can be such a miserable misfit in an incompatible occupation or career that he drifts from one place to another until he eventually realizes that he’s better off going it alone with his own dreams for company.
There’s no doubt that the Pisces man or woman is more often found in the world of the arts, but the term can cover more than you might suppose. Pisces is happy adjusting the lights in a theater, hanging canvases in museums, stitching the lace on doll dresses, polishing the brass of musical instruments, or designing the cover of a book.
He or she can spend hours blissfully teaching tots to dance, blowing up balloons for a party, arranging flowers, planning a poster advertising campaign, engrossed in creative writing, or experimenting with unusual hairstyles.
Now and then you’ll find a Piscean engaged in a mechanical occupation relating to mathematics, engineering, or computing, but he will always attack such subjects from an abstract point of view.
Pisces people make excellent teachers, with uncanny insight into the natures of their students and a deep grasp of the subject they teach. They seem to have a special knack for both preparing and merchandising food and drink, either serving it in posh restaurants or supervising the operation with social grace.
No one makes a finer nurse or servant to the sick. They’re right at home with drugs and medicines, too. Unfortunately, however, the Piscean receptivity can cause them to saturate themselves in their surroundings, with occasional adverse effects on their own mental, emotional, and physical health.
If Pisces controls his instinct for instant empathy, he can be a shining light in the field of health. Needless to say, social work is also a Pisces occupation, and you’ll find lots of Neptunes efficiently dispensing welfare to unfortunate humanity.
The fish takes on the color of his surroundings. If a Pisces finds works in a small cubicle with drab furnishings, bare walls, and no windows, he’ll begin to look like the office itself. You’ll look up one day and there he’ll be-an exact imitation of his immediate working world.
His conversation will be drab, his ideas bare and dull. As you stare at this listless, plain, cold, and colorless creature with nondescript clothing and a mousy personality, you’ll wonder what happened to that person who was bright, sunny, and full of fresh imagination, whose conversation was rich and sparkling and who wore vivid, cheerful clothes.
Such a Neptunian transformation is easier to remedy than other problems. Just hang some gay green drapes in his office, cover the floor with soft emerald carpeting, and plunk a vase of happy daisies on his desk.
Pipe in some soft, low music, smile at him once an hour on the hour, and the fish will reappear in his true colors. The Piscean personality is elusive, but it’s amazingly easy to reel it in when you use the right bait.
Pisces Health
Pisceans tend to think they can live forever, and they often act as though they believed it fervently. The fish typically doesn’t take very good care of himself. Chances are he spends most of his excess energy (and he doesn’t have too much to spare) helping relatives in trouble or taking on the burdens of friends.
Their troubles can be emotional or financial, but either can be a serious drain on Piscean health, which is rarely robust, to begin with. The fish must conserve his energy and refrain from succumbing to stimulants or sedatives, fatigue, and other people’s emergencies.
Weakest as infants, seldom sturdy as children (unless there’s a strong Mars influence), Pisces people seem to have slow metabolisms, which is why they often wake up sleepy-eyed and listless.
Poor eating habits can bring troubles with the liver and intestinal functions and digestive troubles. Accidents to, or some abnormalities of the feet, hands, or hips are common, also colds, flu, and pneumonia. The lungs are not strong, and weak toes and ankles may result from March births.
The fish seem to have fallen arches and metatarsal injuries or superbly strong and supple feet. There’s no in-between. They have a hidden inner resistance, however, and one of the challenges of Neptune is to discover this latent strength and call on it.
The Pisces Physique
When you meet Pisces folks, look first at their feet. They’ll be quite noticeably small and dainty (including the men’s), or else they’ll be huge and spread out like a tired washwoman’s. The Pisces hands will also be tiny, fragile, and exquisitely formed-or else big ham bones that look as though they belong behind a plow.
The skin is silky soft; the hair is fine, often wavy, and usually light (though you’ll find a goodly number of brunette fish). Pisces’ eyes are liquid, heavy-lidded, and full of strange lights. Frequently, but not always, they’re slightly protruding, bulbous, and extremely compelling.
Some Piscean eyes are simply beautiful. There’s no other word to describe them. The features are elastic and mobile, and you’ll usually find more dimples than wrinkles.
Few Pisceans are tall; Neptune’s bodies are sometimes awkwardly built, but with their extraordinary grace, it’s seldom discernible. They seem to sort of flow along, instead of walking as if they were swimming across the room or down the street.
Life Lessons for Pisces
Pisces is stronger than he thinks and wiser than he knows, but Neptune guards this secret until he discovers it for himself.
Learn more about Pisces check out our blog: Dive Into The Depths With Pisces - Personality, Career, Love, & More
