Pisces

Pisces is the twelfth and last sign of the zodiac, a mutable water sign and one of the two houses of Jupiter. This year the Sun is in Pisces from 18 February to 20 March 2026. Two planets have a special standing here in the old books: Venus has her exaltation in Pisces and Mercury his fall.

Jupiter’s house, and a sign in between

Ptolemy gives Cancer and Leo to the Moon and the Sun, then hands the remaining signs to the planets two at a time, starting with Saturn in the signs opposite. Jupiter, he writes, “has a favourable temperament” and “occupies the next two signs, Sagittarius and Pisces”. He calls these two signs “airy and fruitful”, and gives as the reason “their trinal distance from the houses of the luminaries”. Our data files Pisces under water, so “airy” here is Ptolemy’s word for Jupiter’s signs and not the element used on this site.

Pisces is what Ptolemy calls a bicorporeal sign, the kind modern astrology calls mutable. He does not list these signs by name, so placing Pisces among them is our reading, backed by our data. Of the group he says they “severally follow the fixed signs” and, being placed “between the fixed and the tropical signs”, they “participate in the constitutional properties of both”. For Pisces the neighbours are Aquarius and Aries; treating those as the two he means is our reading, since he calls Aries equinoctial and not tropical.

Our data lists Jupiter as the traditional ruler of Pisces and Neptune as the modern one. The passages quoted on this page speak only of Jupiter.

Venus raised, Mercury lowered

Ptolemy explains the exaltation of Venus by moisture. “Venus is of a moist nature, and becomes chiefly moist when in Pisces”, he writes, and under this sign “a dampness begins to be perceptible in the atmosphere”. The weather is that of his own latitudes: on our reading the Sun is in Pisces at winter’s end in the northern hemisphere, since Aries follows at the vernal equinox.

Mercury gets the reverse. Ptolemy calls him “of a nature opposite to that of Venus” and “more dry”, and says he “receives his fall in Pisces”. Virgo, the sign opposite Pisces, holds the mirror image: there he places Mercury’s exaltation and the fall of Venus.

The Pisces character, as the old books give it

William Lilly’s line puts the sign “of the Watry Triplicity” and calls it “the house of Jupiter, and exaltation of Venus”. He is listing qualities for judging a chart, not describing people.

Alan Leo, in the nineteenth century, does describe people, and he does not flatter them. “A considerable amount of the personal Pisces character appears to arise from a lack of decision, and being very receptive to all the conditions that are around them, they find it very difficult to become fully individualised, and therefore are usually a bundle of inconsistencies tied with the cord of discontent.”

On imagination he writes: “They are very changeable and imaginative, or probably, what is more correct, fanciful; and love to live in a world of romance.”

His kinder sentence comes with a condition attached: “They are emotional and secretive, patient and meditative, kind and generous, imitative, receptive, and peaceful when living up to the best of their nature.” He also writes that they “are sometimes rather fastidious and too fond of detail; but are, however, very hospitable, and seek to do all in their power to make those dependent on them comfortable and happy”.

A water sign among three

Ptolemy’s fourth triplicity is “formed by Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces”. He does not name it for an element; Lilly’s “Watry Triplicity” does that. Because its signs are feminine, Ptolemy lets the Moon and Venus govern it “together with Mars”, who enters through his house, Scorpio. So Venus meets Pisces twice in his scheme, once by exaltation and once by triplicity.

In our data these three are the water signs, and they head the list of matches below: Cancer first, Scorpio second, and Pisces with itself third. Virgo, the opposite sign, stands sixth of the twelve, and Aries, the sign that follows Pisces, is last. The method behind the order is on how we score.