Pisces Symbol: Meaning, History, and What It Actually Represents

The Pisces symbol — ♓ — is two fish, tied at the tail, swimming in opposite directions. If you've ever seen it on a horoscope page or on someone's wrist as a tattoo and thought "two fish, fine, but why are they tied together, and why facing away", you weren't being slow. The geometry is the meaning. Whoever drew the first version of this glyph was compressing an entire idea into a single shape, and the shape, once decoded, still does most of the explaining a thousand years later.

This is a short guide to the Pisces symbol: where the two-fish image comes from, why the glyph looks the way it does, the Unicode code-point if you want to type it, what it tends to mean as a tattoo, and what it does on a real natal chart. No mystical fog. Just the glyph and what it carries.

In short. The Pisces symbol is ♓ — two fish bound at the tail, facing opposite directions. Pisces is the twelfth and final sign of the zodiac signs, running roughly 19 February – 20 March, the mutable-water sign. Its glyph compresses the archetype's defining tension into one shape: two pulls held together by a single cord. In Unicode, the Pisces symbol is U+2653. Its mythological origin is the story of Aphrodite and Eros escaping the monster Typhon.

tea + a folded newspaper, looking outside.

What the Pisces symbol actually looks like (and what the shape encodes)

The Pisces symbol shows two fish, bound at the tail by a thin cord, with their heads pointing in opposite directions. That arrangement is a compact visual diagram of mutable water, the astrological category Pisces belongs to: the sign of fluid, shifting forms held together by a quiet inner thread.

The two fish facing opposite ways encode the tension anyone who has read about pisces symbolism will recognise: idealism alongside escape, intuition alongside overwhelm, compassion alongside self-erasure. The cord that ties them keeps the two pulls from becoming two different people. The symbol for Pisces isn't drawn arbitrarily — every line carries something, and the binding cord does most of the structural work.

If you've ever looked at the glyph and thought "this looks like a stylised number eight with a stick through the middle", you weren't wrong. That stick is the cord. Without it, you'd have two free fish drifting apart, a different sign entirely. With it, you have Pisces: two directions held in one body, neither denied, neither chosen as the only true one. The pisces symbol isn't decorative; it's a compressed astronomical-mythological diagram, and once you can read it, you can read it on any horoscope page, necklace pendant, or tattoo design.

In short. Two fish, two directions, one cord. The Pisces symbol is the archetype's tension drawn as a shape.

Where the Pisces symbol comes from: the Aphrodite and Eros myth

The Pisces symbol comes from a Graeco-Roman myth in which Aphrodite and her son Eros escape a monster by turning themselves into fish, bound together by a cord so they wouldn't lose each other. The story is recorded most fully in Ovid's Fasti (Book II) and Hyginus's Fabulae 197 — Roman sources from the first century AD that compile older Greek constellation myths.

In the standard version, the giant Typhon attacks the gods on the banks of the Euphrates river. Aphrodite — Venus to the Romans — leaps into the water with Eros (Cupid) and they take fish form to slip away, tying themselves together by the tail so the current cannot separate them. Athena later places the two fish in the sky as a memorial. That's where the constellation, and the symbol for pisces, are said to come from. The "cord" in the glyph isn't decorative, it's the literal binding by which the two figures stayed together while the river carried them.

There's an older layer worth knowing. The mythological version is the Greek-Roman one, but the constellation Pisces itself is older: a pair of fish in the same patch of sky is recorded in Babylonian star catalogues, the "Mul.Apin" texts, around 1000 BC — well before Ovid wrote. The Greeks adopted and explained an image already in the sky, which is why pisces symbolism has the layered feel it does.

The Pisces symbol in Unicode (and how to type it)

The Pisces symbol is encoded in Unicode as U+2653, glyph ♓, in the Miscellaneous Symbols block; it was added in Unicode 1.1, released in 1993. The Pisces symbols you see across platforms — emoji keyboard, system font, Windows panel — all resolve to this single code-point. Every zodiac sign has its own code-point in the same block, from Aries U+2648 through Pisces U+2653; they are characters, not emoji, so they render in any system font without the colour-cartoon styling of an emoji.

You can copy and paste ♓ into a bio, Discord username, tattoo design template, or message. On iPhone, the zodiac symbols live in the symbols section of the emoji keyboard. On macOS, Edit → Emoji & Symbols (Ctrl+Cmd+Space) and search "Pisces". On Windows, Win+. opens the emoji panel with the zodiac glyphs at the bottom. ♓ is the canonical version — every other rendering is a stylisation of this shape.

What the Pisces symbol does on a real natal chart

On a real natal chart, the Pisces symbol can appear next to any of the ten planets astrologers track, and what the glyph means depends entirely on which planet it sits beside. A chart contains ten placements (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) plus a Rising sign; each comes with a sign next to it, and the pisces zodiac sign symbol can be in front of any of them.

half-pint of ale, reading paper menu.

♓ next to your Sun is the chapter most sun-sign columns describe, the core you're growing into, expressed as mutable-water themes: porous, imaginative, often pulled in two directions. ♓ next to your Moon is quieter: the inner weather, how you grieve, what you need to feel safe. ♓ next to Mercury is how you think and write, often less in straight lines than in associations. ♓ on your Rising sign is the first impression you didn't choose to make: Pisces Rising often reads as soft-edged, hard-to-pin-down, the person it takes a while to "get".

The pisces symbol on a horoscope page tells you the archetype; the same symbol next to a specific planet on your chart tells you which chapter of you that archetype describes.

You can see exactly where the Pisces symbol sits on your chart, and which other nine signs sit on yours, by calculating a full natal chart at WowAstro; it takes a couple of minutes with your date, time and place. The "Rising sign" is the one most people have never looked up, and it often explains why they don't feel like the sun-sign description.

The Pisces symbol as a tattoo: what it tends to mean

A Pisces tattoo of the ♓ glyph tends to mean one of three honest things to the person wearing it — an identity-marker for their Pisces Sun, a personal symbol of holding two sides of themselves together (the two-fish-one-cord image), or a quiet compassion-marker. Very often it means a combination of all three at once.

phone face-down beside him, watching pigeons.

The pisces zodiac tattoo is one of the more popular sun-sign tattoos in the UK, alongside Scorpio and Leo. The glyph reads cleanly at small scale, the two fish hold the eye even at the size of a coin — and the mutable-water archetype contains the kind of contradictions people often want to mark on themselves. Most tattoo artists report the same brief from clients getting pisces tattoos of the symbol: "I want the glyph, sometimes with the date the Sun moved into Pisces that year, occasionally with the constellation drawn around it as a small dotted shape".

There's no single "correct" pisces tattoo meaning. If the glyph speaks to you, the honest reading is the one that already feels true; the symbol carries paired meanings without forcing one.

Questions readers ask

What does the Pisces symbol ♓ mean?

The Pisces symbol means two fish bound at the tail and facing opposite directions, an image that compresses the archetype of mutable water, two pulls held together by a single cord. Astrologically, the glyph encodes paired qualities the sign is known for: idealism alongside escape, intuition alongside overwhelm, compassion alongside self-erasure. The cord between the fish is the structural piece; the part that keeps the two pulls from becoming two different people.

What is the Pisces zodiac sign symbol in Unicode?

The Pisces zodiac sign symbol is encoded in Unicode as U+2653 (♓), in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, added in Unicode 1.1 in 1993. It's a character, not an emoji, so it renders cleanly in any system font without the coloured-cartoon styling emoji carry. You can copy and paste ♓ into any bio, message, username or design template. On iPhone, the glyph lives in the symbols section of the emoji keyboard; on macOS, Edit → Emoji & Symbols and search "Pisces"; on Windows, Win+. opens the emoji panel. All twelve zodiac signs sit in the same block, Aries U+2648 through Pisces U+2653.

Where does the Pisces symbol come from?

The Pisces symbol comes from a Graeco-Roman myth in which Aphrodite and Eros escape the monster Typhon by leaping into the Euphrates river as fish, bound together by a cord so the current wouldn't separate them. Athena later places the two fish in the sky as a memorial. The fullest surviving versions are in Ovid's Fasti (Book II) and Hyginus's Fabulae 197, both Roman sources from the first century AD. The constellation itself is older — a pair of fish in that patch of sky is recorded in Babylonian Mul.Apin catalogues around 1000 BC.

What does a Pisces tattoo of the symbol mean?

A Pisces tattoo of the ♓ symbol tends to mean an identity-marker for the wearer's Pisces Sun, a personal symbol of holding two sides of themselves together, or a quiet compassion-marker — often all three at once. The glyph reads cleanly at small scale, which is part of why pisces tattoos of the symbol are popular in the UK alongside Scorpio and Leo. Common variants add the date the Sun moved into Pisces in the wearer's birth year, or a dotted constellation outline around the glyph.

A note on what this is. Astrology, as we use it at WowAstro, is a tool for self-reflection and self-understanding, not a method for predicting events, health, or financial outcomes. Read the Pisces symbol as a description of a recognisable shape and the archetype behind it — take what's useful, leave the rest.

About this article: WowAstro readings combine traditional astrological methodology (Swiss Ephemeris calculations, Hellenistic and modern psychological frameworks) with AI-assisted writing reviewed by Oksana Miatova before publication. For entertainment and self-reflection only — not medical, legal, or financial advice. Full editorial policy at /editorial-standards.

Written by Oksana Miatova, astrologer and writer at WowAstro. Charts calculated using the Swiss Ephemeris, the same astronomical data working astrologers use. For the full picture of where the Pisces symbol sits on your chart, see your natal chart explained.