Pisces and Aries compatibility starts at the one spot where the zodiac wheel ends and starts again. Pisces is the last sign. Aries is the first. The Sun leaves one and enters the other on the first day of spring. That day, it crosses the sky’s equator, the line above Earth’s own equator.
That seam makes this pair a mirror. Each degree of Pisces has a twin degree in Aries. The twins sit the same distance from the first day of spring. We measured what that means. In New York, Pisces and Aries each take 1 hour 11 minutes to rise. They are the two fastest signs of the twelve, and they tie to the second.
We add two more counts. About 1 random US couple in 76 is a Pisces and an Aries. And about 1 such couple in 15 has Suns that sit on exact twin degrees, within 1 degree. Read all of it as a lens, not a forecast.
The short version
| Question | What we found. |
|---|---|
| How common is the pair in the US? | About 1 random couple in 76, the 51st most common of 66 mixed pairs. |
| What angle links the signs? | They sit side by side, one sign or 30 degrees apart. |
| How fast do they rise in New York? | Each takes 1 hour 11 minutes, the fastest of all twelve signs. |
| How many couples sit on twin degrees? | About 1 Pisces and Aries couple in 15, within 1 degree. |
| What did Ptolemy say? | By whole signs, no tie. By degrees, one sign leads and one follows. |
| How did the pair do in the 2001 census? | 0.46 percent above chance, inside the noise. |
| Where does Venus sit for them? | In about 3 cases in 10, in the partner’s Sun sign. |
First, what no one can promise
Astrology is not a science. No study has shown that a Sun sign predicts whether a couple will last. So this page gives the pair no score. It uses the old symbols as a way to talk about two styles of life.
Your Sun sign is the slice of sky the Sun stood in when you were born. Each slice is 30 degrees wide. Pisces runs from about February 19 to March 20. Aries runs from about March 20 to April 19. The exact hour shifts a little each year, as our guide to the zodiac signs shows.
So a Pisces and an Aries are born, at most, about two months apart in the calendar. The first day of spring always falls between their birthdays, once the years are set aside.
How common is a Pisces and Aries couple?
The signs are not the same size in the birth count. We use one reference for all our pair pages. It holds 62.2 million US births from 2000 to 2014, counted day by day. In that count, 8.15 percent of babies are Aries. Pisces holds 8.04 percent.
Now pair two people at random. The couple can be a Pisces woman with an Aries man, or the reverse. Both count. So the chance is two times 8.15 percent times 8.04 percent. That gives 1.31 percent, or about 1 couple in 76.
| Pair of signs | Chance for a random US couple. |
|---|---|
| Leo and Virgo, the most common mixed pair | About 1 in 62. |
| Leo and Pisces, the most common Pisces pair | About 1 in 69. |
| What an even split would give | 1 in 72. |
| Pisces and Aries | About 1 in 76. |
| Capricorn and Aquarius, the rarest mixed pair | About 1 in 83. |
So Pisces and Aries rank 51st of the 66 mixed pairs. Neither sign is rare. Both sit a little below the even share of 8.33 percent. The pair lands between our Pisces and Scorpio compatibility page, also about 1 in 76, and the Pisces and Sagittarius pair, about 1 in 78.
Side by side: a pair with no classic aspect
Place the twelve signs on a wheel. Aries sits right after Pisces. An aspect is a set angle between two points in the sky. Signs next door are 30 degrees apart. Modern astrologers call that angle a semi-sextile, or half a sextile. It is not one of the four classic aspects. The old books count only the opposition, the trine, the square and the sextile.
The two signs share nothing in the old scheme of types. Pisces is water. Aries is fire. Pisces is mutable, meaning it closes a season. Aries is cardinal, meaning it opens one. Pisces is a feminine sign and Aries a masculine one, in the old sense of the words, which simply means they alternate around the wheel.
A semi-sextile by sign is not always one by degree. Two Suns in these signs can sit anywhere from 0 to 60 degrees apart. A chart reader counts an aspect only when the angle is close. The room they allow is called the orb. For any two signs one apart, about 19 percent of couples fall within 3 degrees of 30. About 36 percent fall within 6 degrees, and about 56 percent within 10. The shape of the wheel sets those shares, not the signs.
One more case is special to neighbors. A Pisces born at the very end of the sign and an Aries born at the very start can have Suns only a few degrees apart. About 3.6 percent of Pisces and Aries couples have Suns within 8 degrees of each other. Many readers would call that a meeting of the Suns, even though the signs differ.
Two readings of Ptolemy, two answers
Claudius Ptolemy wrote the Tetrabiblos in Alexandria, around 150 AD. It shaped astrology for the next 1,500 years. In Book 1, chapters 13 to 16, he lists the ties that link two signs. First come the four aspects. Then come two more ties, built from the length of the day and the time a sign takes to rise.
The whole sign reading: no tie at all
In chapter 16, Ptolemy names the signs with none of those ties. He calls them disjunct, or alien. They are one or five signs apart. Signs one apart, he says, are turned away from each other. Later writers call this state aversion.
His tie of leading and following, which he calls commanding and obeying, pairs signs that sit the same distance from the first day of spring or of fall. Read by whole signs, the list is Taurus with Pisces, Gemini with Aquarius, Cancer with Capricorn, Leo with Sagittarius and Virgo with Scorpio. Aries and Libra stand outside the list, as the note of his translator, Frank Robbins, points out. They are the starting posts. So by whole signs, Pisces and Aries have no tie.
The degree reading: a leader and a follower
Ptolemy’s own words speak of parts of the zodiac the same distance from the spring point. Read by degrees, that rule does link Pisces and Aries. Take 10 degrees of Aries. It sits 10 degrees after the spring point. Now take 20 degrees of Pisces. It sits 10 degrees before. Those two points rise in the same time and sit the same distance from the sky’s equator, one north and one south.
Ptolemy says the northern point leads. The Sun makes the day longer than the night there. So by degrees, Aries leads and Pisces follows. Both readings exist in the old books. We print both, and we do not pick one.
What Lilly called it
William Lilly wrote Christian Astrology in London in 1647. He calls a point mirrored across the spring point a contra-antiscion. The Pisces and Aries twins are pairs of this kind. On page 92 he says that such points are of the nature of a square or an opposition. So in his reading, the mirror is a hidden tension, not a gift.
The measure: the two fastest signs, tied to the second
Here is the number behind the mirror. As Earth turns, each sign climbs over the eastern horizon in turn. The sign on the horizon at your birth is your rising sign. The signs do not all take the same time to rise, because Earth’s axis is tilted.
We worked out the time for each sign at four US cities. The signs near the spring point cross the horizon at a slant, so they rise fast. The signs near the fall point stand up straight, so they rise slowly.
| City | Pisces takes | Aries takes | Slowest signs take. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miami | 1 hour 29 minutes | 1 hour 29 minutes | About 2 hours 18 minutes, for Leo and Scorpio. |
| Los Angeles | 1 hour 20 minutes | 1 hour 20 minutes | About 2 hours 26 minutes, for Leo and Scorpio. |
| New York | 1 hour 11 minutes | 1 hour 11 minutes | About 2 hours 33 minutes, for Leo and Scorpio. |
| Seattle | 1 hour 0 minutes | 1 hour 0 minutes | About 2 hours 43 minutes, for the four middle signs. |
In every city, Pisces and Aries tie, and they are the fastest pair. In New York, a Leo rising sign lasts more than twice as long as an Aries one. The further north the city, the wider the gap.
The tie holds degree by degree, too. The first 10 degrees of Aries rise in exactly the same time as the last 10 degrees of Pisces. That is Ptolemy’s reason for the leading and following tie. The two parts rise in equal times.
This fact has a plain use. Fast rising signs are rare rising signs. In New York, only about 5 percent of each day has Pisces rising, and the same for Aries. So a Pisces and Aries couple where both partners also have these signs rising is uncommon, whatever their Sun signs.
How many couples sit on twin degrees?
We took every Pisces and every Aries birth in the US count from 2000 to 2014. For each birth, we found the Sun’s degree, hour by hour. Then we paired every Pisces birth with every Aries birth. We asked what share of those pairs have Suns on twin degrees.
The answer is about 6.6 percent within 1 degree, or 1 couple in 15. Within 2 degrees it is about 13 percent. Within 3 degrees it is 19 percent. A plain sum with no birth data gives almost the same answer, because births spread evenly across these weeks. Out of all random US couples, that is about 1 in 1,150.
Two rulers, each with a stake in the other sign
Each sign has a ruling planet in the old scheme. Mars rules Aries. Jupiter rules Pisces. On the surface, these two have little in common. Mars is hot and sharp. Jupiter is warm and wide.
Ptolemy adds a second layer. In chapter 18 he groups the signs into four triangles by element, and he gives each triangle its own rulers. The fire triangle of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius goes to the Sun by day and to Jupiter by night. The water triangle of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces goes to Mars, with the Moon and Venus as helpers.
Put the two layers side by side. The ruler of Pisces helps run the triangle of Aries. The ruler of Aries helps run the triangle of Pisces. Each partner’s planet has a key to the other’s house. We checked all 66 mixed pairs against Ptolemy’s list. Only three have this crossed tie, when neither ruler also runs its own sign’s triangle. Pisces and Aries is one of them.
| Sign | Ruler | Triangle rulers, by Ptolemy | Tie to the partner. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aries | Mars | Sun by day, Jupiter by night | Jupiter rules Pisces. |
| Pisces | Jupiter | Mars, with Moon and Venus | Mars rules Aries. |
Ptolemy also names the signs where a planet gains strength, called its exaltation. The Sun is exalted in Aries, where the days start to grow longer than the nights. Venus is exalted in Pisces. So the pair holds the Sun’s high point and the high point of Venus side by side.
Venus in the partner’s sign, 3 times in 10
Venus is the planet of love in the old books. It never strays more than about 47 degrees from the Sun. So a person’s Venus sits in their Sun sign or in one of the four signs around it. For neighbors like Pisces and Aries, that means Venus lands in the partner’s Sun sign quite a lot.
We checked every six hours from 1600 to 2400 with the astronomy-engine library. Then we ran it again with a different step, every 217 minutes. The two runs agreed to within 0.02 points.
| Sun sign | Venus in Pisces | Venus in Aries | Venus elsewhere. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pisces | 23.6 percent | 28.8 percent | 47.6 percent, in Capricorn, Aquarius or Taurus. |
| Aries | 29.5 percent | 23.5 percent | 47.0 percent, in Aquarius, Taurus or Gemini. |
Look at the cross. A Pisces has Venus in Aries more than in Pisces. An Aries has Venus in Pisces more than in Aries. Each Venus leans toward the partner’s sign.
The dignities cut both ways. Venus is exalted in Pisces, so an Aries with Venus in Pisces carries the strong form. Venus is in detriment in Aries, the sign opposite her own sign of Libra. So a Pisces with Venus in Aries carries the form the old books call weak. Our page on Pisces and Aries Venus placements follows this pairing at the level of Venus.
Mercury, the planet of speech, shows the same lean. More than a third of Aries natives, about 36.6 percent, have Mercury in Pisces. Only about 14 percent of Pisces natives have Mercury in Aries.
What the largest test of love signs found
The biggest test of love signs we know of was run by David Voas, a British sociologist, in 2007. He used the 2001 census of England and Wales. It held the birth dates of about 10.3 million married couples. A version ran in the Skeptical Inquirer in March 2008.
His raw count showed too many couples with the same sign. He traced most of them to errors on the forms. Some forms had one birthday typed in for both spouses. He removed those errors and built a clean table, his Table 7. It holds about 9.5 million couples.
| Couple | Found in the census | What chance predicts | Gap. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pisces wife, Aries husband | 71,709 couples | About 71,287 couples | About 422 more. |
| Aries wife, Pisces husband | 71,226 couples | About 70,989 couples | About 237 more. |
| Both together | 142,935 couples | About 142,276 couples | About 659 more, or 0.46 percent. |
That puts Pisces and Aries 8th of the 66 mixed pairs. It sounds like a win. It is not. Voas wrote that in a table this big, one cell can drift about 450 couples from chance with no cause at all. Both cells here sit inside that range.
There is a second reason for care. Voas found that his fix for the form errors was not perfect. Signs next to each other still had a small excess. Look at the ranks: of the 12 pairs of next-door signs, 8 sit in the top 12 of the 66. Pisces and Aries are next-door signs. The small plus is a trace of the form errors, not a sign of love.
His verdict covered every cell: the signs had no effect on who married whom, or who stayed married. We agree with him.
Using the symbols without a verdict
If the symbols help you talk, here is what they point to. None of these steps needs a chart.
| Theme | The Pisces side | The Aries side | A step to try. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed | Takes time to feel a choice | Decides in the moment | Agree on a short wait before big choices. |
| Conflict | Pulls back to think | Wants to clear the air now | Name a time to come back to the talk. |
| Limits | Lets lines blur | Draws lines fast | Say one limit out loud each week. |
| Plans | Sees the dream | Starts the work | Let one partner shape it and the other launch it. |
The mirror gives a simple picture. Pisces closes the year. Aries opens it. One side knows how to let go, and the other knows how to begin. Couples who read their pair this way can split the work of an ending and a start. That is a way to talk, not a rule.
For each partner’s own sign, see our pages on the Pisces sign and the Aries sign. For another water pair, our page on Pisces and Libra compatibility shows how a tie through Venus works there.
How we measured
For the birth shares, we used US Social Security birth counts from 2000 to 2014, 62.2 million births, day by day. We checked them against a second count from the National Center for Health Statistics, 1994 to 2003.
For the twin degrees, we gave each day’s births to 24 hourly slots and found the Sun’s degree for each slot with the Swiss Ephemeris. A plain sum with no birth data gave 6.56 percent, against 6.62 percent from the birth data.
For rising times, we used the standard formula for how fast a slice of the zodiac crosses the horizon at a given latitude. We checked it with a second method that finds the moment each degree touches the horizon. The two agreed to a tiny fraction of a second.
For Venus and Mercury, we used the astronomy-engine library from 1600 to 2400, with two different time steps. For the census, we read Voas’s Table 7 and worked out chance for each cell from the row and column totals. For the old rules, we read Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, Book 1, chapters 13 to 19, in the Robbins translation, and William Lilly’s Christian Astrology.
Frequently asked questions
Are Pisces and Aries compatible?
Astrology reads them as next-door signs, water beside fire, with no classic aspect. Ptolemy calls them turned away by whole signs, but links them as leader and follower by degrees. No study has shown that any sign pair lasts longer, so treat it as a lens, not a forecast.
How common is a Pisces and Aries couple?
In US birth data from 2000 to 2014, about 1 random couple in 76 is one Pisces and one Aries. That ranks 51st of the 66 mixed sign pairs.
Why are Pisces and Aries called mirror signs?
They sit on either side of the first day of spring. Each degree of Pisces has a twin in Aries at the same distance from that point. The twins rise in the same time. About 1 Pisces and Aries couple in 15 has Suns on twin degrees, within 1 degree.
Which signs rise fastest in the US?
Pisces and Aries. In New York each takes about 1 hour 11 minutes to rise, against about 2 hours 33 minutes for Leo or Scorpio.
Can a Pisces have Venus in Aries?
Yes, and it happens in about 28.8 percent of Pisces births, more than Venus in Pisces. An Aries has Venus in Pisces in about 29.5 percent of births.
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