You are a Pisces

It's impossible to understand your real motivations, because like the tides of the ocean, they change all the time. Pisces is concerned with a realm that has no boundaries. Nothing less than the source of life itself is the secret you seek. No wonder, if you fail, that your disillusionment and world-weariness can be as great as your aspirations. It's sometimes said this last sign of the zodiac contains a little bit of all the others. And no one is as much of a chameleon as you.

You have a fluidity and complexity which can be alternatively enchanting and infuriating. There are so many people inside you that others wonder when the real Pisces will stand up and be seen. Sometimes you show a strange passivity or inertia when a crisis looms. But making decisions requires choosing one thing over another, and to you all choices contain some truth. Seeing the relativity of truth is a great gift, because it makes you tolerant and forgiving - and, occasionally, incredibly lax.

That calm, wise indifference with which you greet human transgressions not only applies to your own transgressions. You can sit quietly while your lover leaves, your children insult you, your employer heaps abuse on your head, and your landlord throws you out of your house. Pisceans seem to accept misfortune as though they were born to it, expect it, even welcome it. But you know something other signs don't: all that human suffering means little when your eyes and heart are focused on a greater unity.

Pisces is the sign of the mystic. Admittedly, there are Pisceans roaming about who are almost a caricature of the rational, scientific mind. These are the Fishes who are frightened of the chaos of their own depths. But probe more deeply, and unless the defences are incredibly rigid, there is a deep spiritual longing in every Pisces. Including you. That doesn't mean religious in an orthodox way. But you have an intuitive sense of some other reality, something magical and elusive, a transcendent unity which makes ordinary life seem drab and meaningless.

You also have a deep instinctive wisdom about the futility of so many human desires. Intense ambition, powerful passions, covetousness, greed...these ordinary human motives don't usually have much power over you. Deep down, you don't really take them all that seriously. After all, as they say in the East, it's only maya - only illusion. As a water sign, you're deeply sensitive to the secret undercurrents that lie behind the mask of ordinary human behaviour.

It's hard to fool a Pisces. But where others might respond by defending themselves and accruing resentment, you will look, see, feel saddened, and forgive. You often let yourself be taken advantage of, not because you're gullible, but because you feel sorry for all sorts of people. This material world isn't the real one to you; you listen to a different drumbeat.

You move in a world where every thought and action has thousands of associations which ripple out into infinity, and nothing is ever simple and clear. It's hard for you to discriminate, to limit yourself. This can incline you to excess, which can lead to some big problems with things like food, alcohol, drugs or financial extravagance. The compensation for this disturbing lack of boundaries is your boundless imagination. Even heavily defended, hyper-rational Pisceans have this wonderful imaginative faculty hidden away.

The world of the arts, and of intuitive science (including computer science, higher mathematics and physics) is heavily populated by gifted Pisceans. You have a built-in key to the vast and mysterious realm of the unconscious psyche, and it was given to you at birth as a gift. The trouble is, once in those waters, you sometimes find it hard to come back. Coping with mundane reality can be a real problem for Pisceans. Although your intuition may be lightning-quick and your intellect brilliant, you often overlook something simple, like the electricity bill.

You're also an incurable romantic. Some Pisceans have lots of defences to hide this tendency, but romantic you were born and romantic you will remain. And romance isn't just about love affairs. You crave magic, and you get bored more easily than any other sign. The only truly consistent things about you are your allegiance to a higher, deeper reality and your love and longing for change. Never mind the safe job, the conventional social status, the budget which ensures your pension will see you through old age. You'll take hyacinths for the soul any time.