THE ZODIACAL MOVEMENT – PISCES

WATER

PISCES

NEPTUNE

JUPITER

PISCES –  DISSOLUTION AND RECONNECTION

With Pisces, ruled by Neptune, we enter the realm of dreaming and the expansion of spirit: all-encompassing consciousness as the foundation for univeral love. 

Across the axis, Virgo, ruled by Mercury, gives this limitless sea a clear shape and an earthly anchor. In this space, the boundless empathy of the fish is refined into practical devotion, grounding the infinite into daily care, discernment, and deliberate action.

EARTH

VIRGO

MERCURY

VIRGO – REFINEMENT AND MATURATION

THE OCEANIC TETHER, THE TWO DIRECTIONS AND THE KNOT OF LOVE

When we look at the realm of Pisces we can see the expansive, shadowed waters of the Celestial Sea. Sitting right between Aquarius and Aries, Pisces serves as the ultimate transcendence point between the visionary collective and the self-existing impulse

While it is one of the largest constellations of the zodiac, its stars reflect a faint, subtle light, requiring a patient eye to trace its massive, right-angled V-shape across the dark night. This sector of the sky is intimately woven into a dense tapestry of mythic memory and ancient geography: directly to the north hovers the great autumn square of Pegasus and the chained figure of Andromeda, while directly beneath the feet of the lower fish lurks the gaping maw of Cetus, the colossal sea monster. It is easiest to look for on autumn evenings in the Northern Hemisphere.

The very architecture of Pisces in the heavens tells a story of divergence and connection. It is not a pair of identical creatures, but two distinct forces swimming in opposite directions:

• The Western Fish: Rests horizontally along the celestial equator, swimming westward toward the humanitarian waters of Aquarius, fully immersed in the collective currents of the material world.
• The Northern Fish: Swims vertically upward toward the north, fighting the current to ascend toward the heights of Andromeda, seeking the celestial realm of spirit and liberation.

The Myths of the Two Fish

The transformation of Aphrodite (Venus), the goddess of divine love, and Eros (Cupid), the personification of human desire, into fish is a dramatic tale of survival, devotion, and shifting forms. In moments of acute peril, the myth splits into two beautiful narratives:

In the version recorded by Hyginus, Aphrodite and her son Eros arrive at the Euphrates river. When the monstrous, hundred-headed fire dragon Typhon launches a catastrophic assault on Mount Olympus, the gods flee in panic, scattering across the earth and shifting into animal disguises to cloak their presence. Aphrodite and Eros find themselves trapped on the reedy banks of the Euphrates as the roaring shadow of the monster closes in. They leap into the river, take the form of fish and escape.

Ovid tells the escape differently. Aphrodite is holding her son as they flee Typhon; two fish swim beneath them and carry them through the water. In this version, the fish are the rescuers commemorated in the stars, existing as separate beings from the goddess and her child.

A third account, also attributed to Hyginus, begins with a remarkable egg falling into the Euphrates. Fish roll it onto the bank, doves warm it, and the goddess later identified with the Syrian Aphrodite emerges. This story associates the fish with her arrival rather than her flight from Typhon. Across these myths, the fish take part in different vital moments: an escape, a rescue, and an arrival into life.

By placing their image among the stars, the cosmos immortalized the ultimate nature of love: a force that can navigate the deepest emotional waters and the greatest terrors by remaining inextricably tied to its source.

Alrescha and the Bond Between the Fish

Holding these two disparate paths together is a long, literal chain of stars known as The Cord (Linum). The tails of both fish are tied to this cosmic lifeline, which snakes across the sky until it meets at the deepest vertex of the V-shape.

At this precise point sits Alrescha, the alpha star of the constellation, whose ancient Arabic name translates fittingly as the Knot or the Cord. Terrified that the chaotic, swirling currents of the river would separate Aphrodite and Eros in the dark, they bound their tails together with this silken thread.

As I see it, Alrescha represents the unyielding gravity that prevents the two forces from tearing away from one another. It suggests companionship, attachment, a shared origin, and the delicate tension of taking entirely different paths while remaining deeply connected.

Long before the Greek imagination populated this region, the stargazers of Mesopotamia recognized these stars as a liminal threshold. In Babylonian astronomy, this area held two entirely separate figures: a great river fish associated with the sky-goddess Anunitum, and Šinunutu, the “Great Swallow,” a constellation whose arrival heralded the exact turning point of the seasons and the first breath of spring. Over centuries, these two distinct entities- one maritime, one avian – were woven together by the Greeks, transforming the ancient swallow and the river fish into the bound, dual architecture of the Fishes we know today.

Pisces represents the absolute dissolution of boundaries, where the raw transparency of intimacy met in Leo and Virgo dissolves into universal empathy: How do we navigate the pull of our earthly responsibilities while simultaneously answering the vertical call of our spiritual evolution?

In the Phaenomena, the Greek poet Aratus describes the fish with their tails joined by lines that meet at a star. He also tells his reader to use Andromeda’s left shoulder to find the northern fish.

BEYOND THE VISIBLE FISH

Deep in the direction of Pisces lies Messier 74, the Phantom Galaxy, about 32 million light-years from Earth. It is difficult to see through a small telescope. In Hubble’s images, its spiral arms and regions of new star formation emerge in detail. The eye works to find the faint fish; a telescope reveals an entire galaxy beyond them.

Pisces also contains NGC 520, a pair of interacting galaxies. Their distorted shape records an encounter that began hundreds of millions of years ago. These distant objects belong to the same area of our sky as the ancient figure, although they lie far beyond its visible stars.

The Labor of Pisces

In Bailey’s sequence, Pisces receives the twelfth and final labour: the capture of Geryon’s red cattle. That story has its own journey across vast waters, leaving us with its own questions about gathering, synthesizing, and bringing living beings home.

Pisces and the Threshold of Spring

Pisces therefore holds a striking threshold in our story. The astronomical point of the equinox stands against the stars of Pisces, while the tropical zodiac begins a new cycle in Aries. The two systems describe the sky differently. Placed alongside one another, they let us witness the passage from the final sign to the very first: the necessary end of one evolutionary journey, and the beautiful opening of another:

Specifically the movement of Gate 25 reveals that Pisces provides the fertile, organic substance and total dissolution out of which Aries can birth the pure, untamed will to exist. Here, at the ultimate crossroads of love and evolution, the silver cord of the cosmic fish ignites the vertical elevator of human enlightenment – The Cross of Cosmos and Spine anchoring the cyclical turning points of the year directly into the architecture of The Vessel of Love.