I read a fabulous essay on not being a stereotypical Pisces earlier today from Alice Sparkly Cat (aka brilliant author of Postcolonial Astrology). Pisces is a sign with a lot of heart, and a lot of love to give. I think the thing that’s always resonated with me in the description of my own Sun sign is the loving nature at its core. Sometimes it’s a very complicated thing to express. The mutable tendencies of the sign make everything a bit confusing. Belief is the best way through, which is why some say the Piscean motto is “I believe.”

The tarot card said to symbolize Pisces is the Moon, which is something of a head trip when you consider Pisces as a solar placement. Sometimes when I’m doing astrological charts with tarot, I place cards with the following sentence construction: “[Card for planet] in the sign of [card for zodiac sign].” For Sun in Pisces this translates to “Sun in the sign of the Moon.”

The Moon in tarot represents the interior landscape and all its distortions. Nothing is certain, everything is subjective. The domesticated dog considers the wildness of the wolf in this light. Primordial energy. Fear and the ways we resist uncertainty. But also wonderment, being awestruck by the sheer mystery of the universe. Magic makes sense here. Pisces as a sign always has some level of access to this realm, and provides that access to others. Describing this perpetual “availability” of Pisces, Alice Sparkly Kat writes, “When it comes down to it, a Pisces will always give—give more time, more food, more passion, and more heart. A Pisces doesn’t keep track.” Pisces readily holds space for the unknown and thrives in situations requiring adaptability.

Other tarot card associations with Pisces

The Knight of cups is the card most readers are likely to associate with a particular brand of Pisces energy entering your life: someone youthful and outgoing with their love for you. Even when they try to act disaffected, these characters wear their love on their sleeves. There may sometimes even be a performative or artistic element to their actions. The Knight tends to be in an exploratory phase and curious about what the world holds.

The Eight, Nine, and Ten of cups are in what I’ve been calling the “mutable sequence” of the tarot pips. (Fun fact: these are the Eight, Nine, and Ten of hearts in a standard deck, and yes you can do divination with playing cards.) Some readers view the pips as levels of mastery of the suit. And while the numbers and lessons do occur in sequence (the Eight tends to unlock the Nine), the difficulty varies according to the situation. The lessons of Eight, Nine, and Ten are Piscean ideals: the Eight initiates a journey into the unknown and risks feeling something new; the Nine feels genuine appreciation for the richness in your life; and the Ten holds space for the full spectrum of emotional experience. These are the realms we can imagine the Knight traveling through.

Solar Pisces

Let’s not forget about the Sun in all this. The Sun is represented by the Sun card in tarot. Simple! Most astro-tarot associations are not so direct, but the Sun is of course special. In astrology Sol represents your very soul, your core essence and way of being. In tarot the Sun card often represents a moment of free, pure expression. I also like to think of it as the waking conscious mind, a sense of understanding your place in the universe. Sun moments show when you will have your home element at your disposal in terms of power. For me as a Pisces sun, this means water power. It’s something of a subversive Sun in this sense, as it actually tends to dispel heat and scatter light, but it carries an immense gravity all the same and can be a force to be reckoned with.