I’m a day late in celebrating the zodiac sign of Pisces, but better late than never. Right?

Pisces is the 12th sign of the Zodiac and thus represents the end of the human journey through life that starts with Aries. Does that mean every Pisces has absorbed the wisdom of the ages? Not exactly, though there have been some extraordinary people born under this sign, like Michelangelo and Albert Einstein.

Pisceans tend to be creative and intuitive, often artistic, charming, good-natured, compassionate and free-spirited. Not that you won’t occasionally meet a sarcastic, acid-tongued fish. The sign is ruled by Neptune, god of the seas, and as the tides ebb and flow, so does the moods and energy of the Piscean.

The sign’s symbol is that of two fish swimming in opposite directions. Or are they swimming in a circle? Sometimes it can seem that way. Pisceans aren’t generally known for their ambition, but they can be single minded. While it’s all too easy to get distracted by all the pretty coral in the ocean and the sandy beaches and sunlight, salmon are driven to swim upstream to spawn, often against tremendous obstacles.

In her classic book Sun Signs, Linda Goodman says that the fish facing in different directions represents a choice not a dual nature. Pisces will be tempted to swim downstream, after all, it’s easier, but “to swim upstream is the challenge of Pisces — and the only way he ever finds true peace and happiness.”

I don’t know who came up with the slogan “Go with the flow” but it could be the unofficial slogan for the sign of Pisces. As a mutable water sign, Pisces can be pretty hard to pin down. Conventional wisdom says that the best matches for Pisces are the other water signs of Cancer & Scorpio and the earth signs: Taurus, Virgo & Capricorn. I can see how someone born under an earth sign could act as an anchor for a Pisces, but I can also imagine that the Piscean tendency to go with the flow could be a bit difficult for a more practical-minded earth sign to understand.

In looking at a list of famous people born under this sign, I noticed that it seems to include more than the usual number of creative people. Here are some famous Pisceans:

Edward Albee, playwright
Harry Belafonte, singer
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet
Sir Richard Francis Burton, explorer & translater of the Kama Sutra into English*
Frederick Chopin, composer
Grover Cleveland, president
Albert Einstein, mathematician
Georg Handel, composer
Victor Hugo, novelist
Senator Edward Kennedy
James Madison, president
Michelangelo, artist & sculptor
Zero Mostel, comedian
Vaslev Najinsky, ballet dancer
Rudolf Nureyev, ballet dancer
Auguste Renoir, artist
Rimsky-Korsakov, composer
Dinah Shore, singer
Anthony Armstrong-Jones, the Earl of Snowdon, photographer
John Steinbeck, novelist
Elizabeth Taylor, actress
Earl Warren, governor & chief justice of the Supreme Court
George Washington, president

* Richard Burton was the first Western explorer to trace the source of the Nile, so how’s that for a literal example of a Pisces going upstream!

Is there a Pisces in your life?

Linda