Songs of the Zodiac: Pisces

Pisces is said to be the most misunderstood, secretive, and most complex of the signs. The dichotomy in the sign’s nature is clearly represented by its zodiacal glyph, which shows two fish swimming in opposite directions. Longing to explore the endless depths of the ocean, secret caverns, and dive for hidden treasure, this fish is a total underwater creature. Desiring to be completely submerged by water, unafraid to delve into the greater territories of the human soul. The Ocean is said to be a prolific symbol of the unconscious, and a Piscean will delight in retreating into the innermost self, the psyche, and the insensible just to explore those fascinating depths.

Attuned to the deep undercurrents of the collective psyche, bound up in chaos and blurred reality, the Pisces need to protect themselves from exploitation. The individual born under this sign is ultra-sensitive, compassionate, kind, and they tend to give indiscriminately. On the surface, they represent a delicate vulnerability and fragility. Pisceans have an otherworldly quality and truly empathetic nature and are easily touched by the feelings and plights of others. In Pisces, there are no boundaries and no superiority amongst people; they are more concerned with universal truth, wholeness, and unity.

World-weariness is perhaps an appropriate description for Pisces. By the time one has got to the end of the zodiac, one has seen it all. There is a quality of sadness in Pisces, which is possibly one of the chief motivations toward the search for transcendent meaning which is so powerful in this sign. It is as though Pisces carries within it the expereinces of the previous eleven signs, and has lost the capacity to get attached to any one path or object in life. This melancholy quality is innate, although it is not melancholy in a Capricorn way – it is more a quest for a higher or deeper reality which can make sense of the apparent  transience of earthly life. It is this sadness, and an innate empathy with all suffering life, which creates a fund of compassion for Pisces. Dynamics of the Unconscious: Seminars in Psychological Astrology Volume 2

Famous for their escapist tendencies, Pisces tends to slip away from the harsher realities of life. Some Pisceans will tend to drift through life and can be vague and dreamy; they will ignore or “tune out” problems in the hope that they will go away. The body is often experienced as a prison; they regularly fall into illness and depression, instability, and delusions. The tendency towards alcoholism and addiction, a condition usually linked to the fishes and its ruler Neptune, is really an expression of their powerful, unconscious longing to go back home. The notion of savior, martyr, and redeemer all belong to the motif of Pisces.

Pisces completes the phase of the four social signs and dissolves all boundaries that existed. The sign is also known for its instincts and flood of emotional and imaginative in-pouring and out-pouring. Art, music, poetry, and the imagination all express the ‘hidden’ watery depths and the treasure lost and buried at the bottom of the sea. Creative outlets help to heal some of that ‘homesick’ feeling which they are so often afflicted with. In true chameleon fashion, a Pisces is as changeable as the sea and they often flow with the current and take inspiration from it.

Pisces’ Songs