What the two signs have in common
Facts about the two signs as traditional astrology lists them. The reading below is built from these rows.
| Fact | Sagittarius | Pisces |
|---|---|---|
| Aspect between the signs | Square, 90° | |
| Element | Fire | Water |
| Quality the elements share | None | |
| Modality | Mutable | Mutable |
| Traditional ruler | Jupiter | Jupiter |
| Modern ruler | Jupiter | Neptune |
| How the rulers relate | One planet rules both | |
The aspect between the signs
A square joins two signs of the same modality in different elements. It is the traditional aspect of tension: both want to do the same kind of thing, whether starting, holding or adjusting, and each does it in a way the other finds unnatural.
Elements and modalities
Fire is hot and dry, water cold and moist: they share no quality, and the classical scheme counts them as the most opposed pair of elements. Water can put out fire, and fire can evaporate water.
Both signs adjust: mutable signs close the seasons and carry things over into the next.
The rulers
Jupiter rules both Sagittarius and Pisces. The planet is the same and is expressed through two different temperaments, so the shared drive can look unlike itself from the outside.
Jupiter stands for: expansion, meaning, confidence, excess.
Modern astrology also assigns Neptune to Pisces. The reading here uses the traditional rulers; the modern ones are in the table.
The two signs together
Sagittarius tends to bring openness: frankness, humour and appetite for what is new. It tends to need freedom, and honesty returned in kind.
Pisces tends to bring sympathy: imagination, intuition and a gentle ear. It tends to need gentleness, and clear boundaries it does not have to enforce alone.
Both are ruled by Jupiter and both look for meaning. Sagittarius says it aloud and Pisces feels it; one is blunt where the other is porous.
What tends to come easily
- Strong motivation; each pushes the other to act.
- Each has something the other lacks: warmth on one side, depth on the other.
- Flexible, and change is tolerated.
- A common drive sits underneath the different styles.
What tends to cost something
- Friction is regular, and it usually comes from method rather than from aim.
- The same intensity is felt by one as too much and by the other as too little.
- Direction can be missing, and decisions drift.
- The same need is expressed differently, and each can read the other’s version as a failing.
What two Sun signs cannot say
Two Sun signs are a small part of two charts. The Moon, Venus, Mars, the rising sign and the houses of each person shape how a relationship goes, and so do age, circumstance and choice.
The aspect here is counted between signs, not between degrees. Two people born at the start and at the end of the same sign stand differently from two born at the same degree, and this page cannot tell which applies.
To compare two actual people, the synastry tool takes both birth dates and shows the aspects between the planets.