Of the 3 water signs, one is Cardinal, one is Fixed and one is Mutable.  When a zodiac sign is Cardinal, that means it sends its elemental energy in a directed way.  If it’s Fixed, then it consolidates and contains its elemental energy while the Mutable signs disperse and diffuse their elemental energy.  What does this mean for the 3 water signs, Cancer (Cardinal), Scorpio (Fixed) and Pisces (Mutable)?  Looking at physical symbols for the water signs is an excellent way to understand them and their relationship to each other.

Cancer, The Mountain Spring
Cancer, the Cardinal Water sign is the first to appear in the zodiacal order.  It represents directed water.  This means moving water, symbolized by a mountain spring, born out of the earth, the freshest of waters and the Water sign with the most drive.  Cancer’s Cardinality carries fresh water to ecosystems that need it, nurturing and growing life.

Cancer combines Water’s fluidity with Cardinal motivation, drive and leadership.  Cancer is the water sign with energy and direction.  Cancer has focus in a way the other two do not.  Think of a busy mother (this is, after all, the mother archetype) involved in her energetic nesting activity or think of a fierce mama bear, defending her cubs.  Think of a mother duck, lining up her chicks and leading them to water for the first time.  This sign has force, motivation and purpose to it.

Scorpio, The Lake
Scorpio is the second Water sign and it’s Fixed.  Imagine that Cancer’s mountain spring has flowed downhill and gathered momentum until it’s become a rushing river.  Now imagine all the force of that river dammed into a lake and you have Scorpio.  Another way to think of Scorpio is to look at a glass of water.  It looks placid and still but actually, the contained liquid is exerting a tremendous amount of force on all sides of the glass.  If there’s a crack in the glass anywhere, the water will find it and press through.  That’s Scorpio.

Scorpio combines the fluidity of Water with Fixed strength, solidity and continuity.  Scorpio has amazing staying power, sometimes obsessively so—in fact, Scorpio has the capacity to use obsession and compulsion to one’s own advantage.  And Scorpio’s tremendous sensitivity, though often experienced as a problem, is actually an advantage because it is the root of Scorpio’s ability to find weaknesses in the enemy or in the problem that can be used to overcome it.

Pisces, The Vast Ocean
All waters eventually lead to the sea. Pisces, the Mutable Water sign, combines fluid Water with flexible, ever-changing Mutability.  Mutable Water is best symbolized by the vast oceans, filled with eddies, currents and tides.  The ocean is ever-changing and always moving, but never moving in a given direction.  In the ocean, change is the constant.  And so it is with Pisces.

Pisces is the only water sign that doesn’t need a shell to protect itself.  Cancer hides in its Crab shell while Scorpio hides behind a cool exterior (occasionally coming out to sting with its Scorpion tail), but Pisces can defend itself while remaining soft.  This is because Pisces is adept at shapeshifting and mimicry.  How can you attack something when you don’t know what it is?  Pisces meets confrontation indirectly (as do all the water signs) and preserves itself by slipperiness and evasion.  Pisces is the ultimate moving target.

Which of these do you resonate with most?  Are you an energetic, bubbling spring, flowing downhill, gathering force as you go?  Or are you a still-waters-run-deep lake, sensitive to all that touches your surface?  Or are you the huge, ever-shifting ocean—permeable and connected to everything, remaining soft and open to experience?

Neptune types* have the tendency to be chameleons, to “match energies” with others, or become what others expect or want them to be.  This enables them to blend in anywhere they want to.  A Piscean can be the life of the party or fade into the woodwork, as they choose, and may appear very differently to others from one meeting to another.

What makes a child of Neptune this way?  Pisceans are impressionable and, being water, will reflect or show the shape of whomever they are around.  When a Piscean is young, this trait can be out of control, so that the Piscean has very little sense of himself as an individual.  When he is with others, he is discovering the parts of himself that match the people he is around.  When he is alone, he may not be sure who he is at all.

As a Piscean matures, she will find that her choice of companions is crucial to her identity cohesion and self-esteem.  If she’s smart, she’ll choose companions that are good for her, that bring her a truer sense of herself, rather than pulling her in too many conflicting directions.  This is inherently a challenge for a Pisces, since she feels like she could be anyone.  As she ages further, she will discover that she really is someone unto herself, and she finds the solid core of herself to identify with, be and express.  But this takes time.  It starts coming together really well only after age 40.  And if by then too many escapist habits are in place, it may never happen at all.

Neptune is a profound god to bow to and requires much of his children.  His teachings take time and experience to unfold.  Neptune’s natives need time to mature and are late bloomers.  This is normal and natural for them.  Their peak will be in midlife.

The upside of the Piscean impressionability is that Pisceans are naturally expert in establishing rapport.  They do this by intuiting another person’s behavior-, thought- and feeling-patterns and then matching those patterns.  This makes for brilliant therapists and healers, great coaches and teachers and absolutely stunning actors.  Pisces takes mimicry one step further and can actually, for a time, become the person they are imitating.  How do they do it?

A Pisces type will bring to the fore whatever part of himself matches whoever he is talking to and deemphasize parts of himself that don’t match.  In doing so, he can take the form of an ideal person the other is dreaming of.  A Piscean usually doesn’t realize he is doing this and frequently his motivation, at least initially, is enthusiasm for the other person.  Another part of his motivation is to avoid the other person’s judgment and to enjoy and share the pleasurable feeling of merging with another by understanding them from the inside.  This creates rapport and engenders trust in the other person, because the Piscean is willing to walk a mile in their moccasins and in fact may already be doing so without being asked.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the way a Pisces person can lose themselves in others.  Taken too far, this matching and merging creates a false sense of connection.  The connection is false because it is based on a temporary arrangement of personality parts, and will often result in a backlash when the Pisces (belatedly) discovers they feel stretched out of shape and decides they’ve had enough.  Then the Pisces will snap back, sometimes strongly, angrily asserting their selfhood and boundaries, not realizing they at least partially caused the problem.  And sometimes the Piscean withdrawal is gentle, a mere fading away that is not noticed until it is complete.

This causes unexpected casualties.  To a person who has been relating with a Piscean, the whole process can feel as if he is standing on the beach and the Piscean is a large, seemingly gentle wave which flowed up and over them, and is now pulling away.  When the Piscean pulls away, it can leave the other person feeling bereft and tugged strongly off-center.  The Piscean may perceive this and feel sad but also feel that there is nothing they can do about it while still maintaining their own center.

Certainly it is hard to be a Piscean, but that’s no reason to be a victim of your own nature.  Being aware of these tendencies is half the battle.  The other half is to be responsible in how you handle your connections with other people.  Go into each situation knowing that you’re a chameleon and be ready to show more of yourself, not just the parts you think others will like, approve of and resonate with.  It is uncomfortable to hold to your center against the tide of other people’s disapproval and disappointment, but it is a skill necessary for building identity and becoming a coherent self.

Choose companions you want to become more like and allow your friendships to shape you into the person you want to be.  Along the way you will learn to be that person, and to be relaxed, unapologetic and unafraid about it.  You will never lose your ability to gain rapport with others, but the day will come when you no longer do it unconsciously or compulsively, but do it out of choice from a calm, centered self.  On that day, instead of being a little boat tossed on the ocean, you will at last be the ocean, with all its power and vast beauty.
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* Neptune types are people who feel Piscean because they have Neptune, Pisces’ ruler, placed strongly in their chart.  You don’t have to be an actual Pisces (sun sign) to feel like one.

Pisceans, how about a special birthday present?
Your birthday is your own personal New Year’s Day.
Having an astrology reading at this time can help you clarify
and pursue your life’s most cherished dreams in the coming year.
Contact Jamie at pandora@pandoraastrology.com
to schedule a reading or put one on your wishlist.

Few things explain the dualities and contradictions inherent in the Pisces nature like the story of the Two Fish.

Tale of the Two Fish
Once upon a time, there were two fish.  Perhaps they were brothers, perhaps they were even twins, but for whatever reason, these fish were linked.  There was a cord running from the mouth of one fish to the mouth of the other.  Neither could go far without his brother accompanying him.

One of these fish was visionary.  He spent his days gazing upstream into the realms of future possibility.  Occasionally he spotted beautiful castles that he wanted to occupy, communities of fish he wanted to join, and dreamed of himself as central and chief among the forces of good in the future.  One day he became so inspired that he took off and began swimming upstream, against the strong current.

The other fish was lazy.  He liked comfort and he indulged the dreaming of the first fish as long as it felt good, but had no interest in doing the work necessary to actually build that beautiful castle or go out and meet those interesting fish or become even the tiniest bit of his potential.  He preferred to stick his head deep into the mud, seeking food and avoiding the light of day.

The activity and struggle of the first fish was disturbing to the second fish.  “What on earth are you doing?” asked Fish Two.  “I’ve seen something tremendous,” said Fish One, “and I must swim towards it.”  “But it’s so much work!” said Fish Two, “I’d rather stay here.  Fantasy was better than reality.”  The two could not agree and that would have been fine, except that they were linked, like two parts of a single person.

The fish needed a resolution to this problem, so they swam to visit the Wise Old Sturgeon.  “Ah yes,” he said, “I have seen this before.  Can’t get anything done and can’t rest either, can you?  I know what you need.”  He then whispered Piscean secrets into their ears.

Here is what the Sturgeon said:
Acknowledge that the urge to stagnate is within you.  Greet your lazy side and welcome it.  Give it a nod and a wink.  If you don’t, you will never attain the life you dream of.  Get plenty of rest, relaxation and time for doing nothing in particular.  Now you’ve fed the second fish, which is important, because if you don’t, he will thwart you.

Then, feed the first fish.  Feed him on dreams, fantasies and beautiful imaginative creations.  Let yourself daydream at least a little each day, on purpose.  For what is a Pisces without their dreams?  And in each dream, look for the seed in the center of it that is doable.  Because the first fish demands that you move toward your visions of the ideal and that you participate in them, you must live them out in some way.  If you find that seed and grow it, then your dreams do not have to take you away from the world you share with other people, away into escape.  Instead, you bring your dreams into the world and make it a better place for yourself and everyone.  This is the ultimate way to fill the Pisces soul with satisfaction and happiness.

Pisceans, how about a special birthday present?
Your birthday is your own personal New Year’s Day.
Having an astrology reading at this time can help you clarify
and pursue your life’s most cherished dreams in the coming year.
Contact Jamie at pandora@pandoraastrology.com
to schedule a reading or put one on your wishlist.

Why do Pisces types lose things?  You might as well ask why the sun shines.

Pisceans, you are the dreamers and visionaries of the world.  You feel more at home in the rich and lovely realms of your own imagination than in the physical world we all share.  You may find it frustrating how often this leads you to be distracted and dreamy and not very in touch with the material.  Sometimes you might even resent the sheer solidity of the everyday world, and its unforgiving hardness.  Certainly your dreams are better than the reality we all share, but (fortunately or unfortunately) you need to be able to function in the workaday world in order to bring your dreams into manifestation, so others can experience their benefits too.  It’s annoying and wrong, but there it is.  And how many times does this need to acclimate to the physical world show up in the form of losing your keys?  For some Pisceans, it happens almost daily.  For others, who have gotten a grip on this seemingly-simple problem, it happens less often.

Clever readers who do not lose their keys will be able to benefit from the suggestions below by substituting any easily-lost object, such as one’s car, train of thought or husband (where did I leave him?).

So here, for the benefit of all Pisceans, are a few suggestions as to how to keep hold of important objects.

• Force yourself into the habit of always putting your keys in the same place when you get home.  Every.  Single.  Time.  No.  Kidding.  This will feel incredibly oppressive at first, but will soon become a comforting habit, allowing you to pay attention for the minimum time allowable and then quickly return to whatever fantasy you were involved in.

• Put a small beeper or sound location device on your key ring, so that whenever you lose your keys, you can make them beep.  Here’s the sort of thing I mean.   While you’re at it, microchip your pets also—now there’s something you really don’t want to lose.

• Become emotionally attached.  Put something cute or meaningful on your key-ring.  (For the non-Piscean types out there who may be reading this, it finally explains all those silly key-rings that people use—it’s because it makes them harder to lose.)

• Decorate it in a way you like.  If you enjoy crafts, this is a great time to break out the hot glue gun and the sparkles.  If you are not a crafty person, it’s still easy to put your personal stamp on something with color.  Use your favorite colors, so that the keys please your eye every time you look at them.  When you decorate a thing, you put some of yourself into it in an act of ownership that will bond you to it.  Your pride in the object will make it easier to keep close to you.

• Figure out what this frequently-lost object symbolizes to you and why you might be resisting bonding to it.  Is there some responsibility or obligation attached to it that you feel oppressed by?  Once you’ve dealt with the aspect of it you are trying to evade, it will become much easier to avoid losing the object.  A Piscean in escape mode is a very powerful being, and can sabotage his way out of anything with very little effort.  Pisceans show a mastery of self-sabotage that is exceeded only by some Scorpios.

• Make a grounding cord to your keys.  Pisceans can be quite psychic.  Your imagination is your greatest tool and learning to use it deliberately is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your life.  Take a moment to imagine a thick, strong cord (could be a rope or chain) running from your navel to your key-ring.  Attach the cord strongly to your keys.  Imagine seeing it (notice its color), feeling it as if it’s an extension of your body (in the same way you can feel through the body of your car when you drive it) and hearing when it’s in place and working (a tone, a bell perhaps?).  Every time you lose your keys, try using the cord to find them.  When you do find them, do the cord visualization again, to strengthen it.  Over time, finding your keys will become easier and eventually you won’t lose your keys at all anymore.

  *   *   *

Pisceans, how about a special birthday present?
Your birthday is your own personal New Year’s Day.
Having an astrology reading at this time can help you clarify
and pursue your life’s most cherished dreams in the coming year.
Contact Jamie at pandora@pandoraastrology.com
to schedule a reading or put one on your wishlist.