Your Guide to Pisces Season

Illustration: Sunny Wu

By the time Aquarius season comes to an end, your brain is likely getting tired. You’ve been dreaming up solutions to all the world’s problems, imagining a thousand different futures, thinking yourself in circles. It’s exhausting to be a visionary! So when Pisces season finally arrives at the tail end of winter, you can stop overthinking everything and instead remember the power of feeling.

This year, the sun is in Pisces from February 18 to March 19. During this time, it asks us to shift our energies away from the brilliant, detached intellectualism of Aquarius and toward emotion, intuition, and human connection. If Aquarius season was a time to lean into your individuality — even at the risk of alienating those around you — Pisces season is a chance to reconnect, recognizing that even though we’re all unique, we’re also interdependent. The barriers that separate us from each other aren’t as solid as they appear at first glance.

As a water sign, Pisces feels deeply. There’s a bit of a stereotype (which you’re likely familiar with if you’ve spent any time looking at astrology memes) that Pisces cries all the time: Happiness, loneliness, and rage are all equally able to trigger tears. This doesn’t mean that you’ll spend this whole season weeping, but you should expect to become reacquainted with your emotions — even (or especially) if you’re someone who prefers focusing on details and practicalities. Don’t ignore your feelings or think of them as puzzles to solve or obstacles to overcome. All Pisces season really asks is that you experience them.

Pisces is also the most spiritual sign of the zodiac. The final astrological sign in the zodiac, it encourages us to see beyond our narrow individual interests, even beyond our own community’s interests, to focus instead on the universal, even the cosmic. A Pisces’s intuition can be so impressive that it seems supernatural. Don’t expect to become psychic during Pisces season (though, on the other hand, you could be more attuned!), but you’ll likely be drawn by a power you can’t rationally explain — drawn to art, to tarot, your dreams.

This aura of magic and emotion means that Pisces season isn’t always the easiest time for planning, maneuvering, or negotiating matters down here on Earth. Don’t worry if your ambitions recede to the back of your mind for now. To live a truly fulfilling life, you need to have your material needs met, but you also need intimacy, compassion, and connection to something bigger than yourself. This month is a good time to take stock of your life and make sure you’re not focused on your practical needs at the expense of everything else that makes you human. After a long and draining astrological year, your soul could use some care, and Pisces season is the time for it.

Sometimes, all of this openness and vulnerability can end up veering into passivity and a feeling of powerlessness. When you’re receptive to the world’s magic, aware of all the cosmic forces at play in your life, it’s easy to fall into self-pity, to forget that no matter what happens, you do still have control over your own actions. During Pisces season, don’t forget that you can always make decisions, help others in important ways, and choose how to use your gifts.

At its best, Pisces season’s compassion and generosity will inform, not hinder, your movement through the world. Don’t underestimate Pisces’s power: Water sign doesn’t mean watered down. Just look at Rihanna! Pisces season is a reminder that honoring your emotions, your compassion, your belief in something bigger than yourself, doesn’t have to make you silly or weak: It can teach you new ways to face the world and make you stronger than ever.