Pisces

The sign at a glance

Place in the zodiac

12

Persian month

Esfand

Element

Water

Quality

Mutable

The element and the quality are the classical groupings: every fourth sign shares an element, and every third shares a quality.

Pisces among the borj

Borj is the Persian word for a sign of the zodiac, and the borj are the twelve signs as the Persian astronomical tradition received and transmitted them. When the solar year was divided into twelve parts, each part took the name of the sign the sun passed through during it. Sign and month became one word, and the zodiac stopped being only a matter for astronomers and became the ordinary way of saying which part of the year you meant.

Pisces closes that order. It is the twelfth borj, the one that ends the list and, with it, the year — the stretch of late winter that runs up to the equinox, after which the count begins again at the first sign. Its Persian name, حوت, is the fish, and the sign is drawn in the tradition as a pair of fishes.

In Iran the months of the modern calendar carry Persian names rather than the borj names, and the borj survive alongside them in astrological and older astronomical usage. In Afghanistan the borj names are still the month names of the Solar Hijri calendar in everyday use, and the final month there is حوت. The months are the same months; only the naming differs.

What the tradition associates with this borj

The tradition places this borj among the watery signs, and reads it through water that has no fixed edge: rivers reaching the sea, rain at the end of winter, thaw. From that reading the tradition draws its associations of receptiveness, sympathy and a strong imaginative life — a quality of taking in the surroundings rather than pressing against them. Where the earlier watery signs are described as holding and remembering, this one is described in the tradition as dissolving and letting go.

In Persian astrological writing this borj is given to the lordship of Jupiter, مشتری, the planet the tradition names as the greater benefic and connects with generosity, breadth of mind, and matters of learning and faith. Read together, the tradition finds in this borj a mildness that is not weakness, a wide sympathy, and an inclination toward what is inward, contemplative, or artistic.

The tradition also makes something of its position at the very end of the round. It describes this borj as a place of endings and of gathering-up, where the qualities of the eleven signs before it are said to be present in mixed and softened form, and where the year settles before it turns over. Along with that the tradition records a certain unfixedness here — a readiness to be moved and to change shape — and it treats that pliancy as belonging to the sign's nature rather than as a fault in it.

These are readings the tradition carries, recorded and retold over centuries. They describe the sign, not any person born in its month.

The sign and the month

The Persian year begins at the vernal equinox, at the moment the sun crosses into the first sign, and the months were cut along the zodiac from there. So in this calendar the sign does not float free of the month and the month does not merely approximate the sign: the borj is the month. That is the arrangement this page follows, at the resolution the calendar itself works at — whole days and whole months, with no degrees, no decans and no hour of birth involved.

This borj is one of the mutable signs. In the classical scheme every season has a sign that opens it, a sign that sits settled in its middle, and a sign that closes it and hands the season on; this one is the closing sign, the end of winter passing the year over to the spring that begins the next round.

Because the year starts at an astronomical event rather than on a fixed Gregorian date, the equinox does not fall at the same Gregorian moment every year, and the whole calendar shifts with it. The Gregorian date on which this month — and therefore this sign — begins moves accordingly, landing on more than one date across a long run of years. A printed table that gives one fixed Gregorian range for the sign is a rounding of that movement, and for some years it names the wrong day. Where this page and such a table disagree, the disagreement is the table's approximation showing, not an error here: the dates on this page are computed from the calendar year by year.

Why a printed table disagrees

What Esfand, the month itself, is called in Iran and in Afghanistan

When Pisces began

The Persian year starts at the spring equinox, so each month starts on whichever Gregorian day the equinox falls on. That is why these dates move.

Across the 101 years below, Pisces began on 3 different Gregorian dates. A printed table prints one of them.

From 1951-02-20 to 2051-03-20.

1. February 19

   20 yearsEnded March 19 or March 20.

   1997, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2017, 2021, 2025, 2029, 2030, 2033, 2034, 2037, 2038, 2041, 2042, 2045, 2046, 2049, 2050

2. February 20

   78 yearsEnded March 19, March 20, or March 21.

   1951, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2026, 2027, 2028, 2031, 2032, 2035, 2036, 2039, 2040, 2043, 2044, 2047, 2048, 2051

3. February 21

   3 yearsEnded March 20.

   1952, 1956, 1960