Linda Goodman's Sun Signs

by Linda Goodman

  You’ve seen those congratulation cards for new mothers, with pictures of dimpled, pink and white painted babies, fragile and gauzy, flying around over the verse. The artist used your Pisces babe as a model. This could make you think you can lead your Neptune child by the toe, or that after you’ve scrubbed that shiny stardust out of his ears, you can mold him into any shape you like. Why not, when he’s such a gentle, delicate little lump of clay? Think again. He’ll get his own way, just as surely as the yelling, red-faced Aries baby, the demanding, regal Leo baby or the stubborn, tough little Taurus baby. The only difference is that he’ll get it by charming you to death, and drowning you in oceans of sweet smiles and winning ways.

  As soon as the ink is dry on the birth certificate, turn in the name of your little Pisces boy for the lead in the first future production of Peter Pan or the girl for Alice in Wonderland. Peter Pan and Alice will be the Neptune children’s favorite roles, and they won’t need a stage to act the parts superbly. They’ll still be starring in them when they’re eighty. Parents who breathe the age-old prayer, “I wish baby never had to grow up,” will get their wish if baby was born under the sign of the fish. The years won’t leave any lasting impression: there will always be a childish, dreamy, magical quality of make-believe hanging like a mist over the Pisces. It will drench him in mystery and unreality forever-and-three-days.

  By the time he’s old enough to crawl into the jam pot and hide, this strange child of yours will show a preference for living in a world of fancy. He’ll enjoy diversions that are far removed from everyday patterns and routines. When he’s in the high chair, he’ll eat like an angel, if you pretend you’re a queen or a clown while you’re feeding him. Wear a lampshade, dripping with all your old, sparkling necklaces, or a mop for a wig; smear lipstick and chalk on your face. His imagination will supply the rest. When he’s a little older, he’ll play happily on the front porch while you do the washing, if you hang up a few balloons, put some music on, toss around his stuffed animals, give him some popcorn and tell him he’s at the circus.

  When he’s old enough to start to school and begin to have those peculiar dreams at night, you’ll be tying his shoes one ordinary spring morning and get a shock. “Guess who I saw last night?” he’ll remark confidentially. You’ll mumble a polite rejoinder—now where on earth is his green sweater? Oh, there it is—on the teddy bear he dressed up yesterday, when he was pretending it was his best friend.

  “Who did you see?”

  He’ll answer casually, “Grandma Stratton. We talked for a long time, then she had to go. She said to tell you to be sure to water her geraniums and send Uncle Clarence the money.”

  Since Grandmother Stratton died before he was born, this could unnerve you a little, on an empty stomach, before coffee. But it’s nothing to the prickly sensation you’ll get after breakfast, when he’s in school and the mailman delivers a letter from your Uncle Clarence from whom you haven’t heard in five years, asking for a loan to start a new business.

  The wisest parents have difficulty arranging a schedule that will stick with a Pisces offspring. Schedules and routines are his natural enemies, and he’ll do everything in his fertile imagination to avoid them. Babies who live upside down—sleep all day and stay awake all night—are often Neptune infants. He wants to eat when he’s hungry, sleep when he’s tired and play when something attracts his fancy, whenever that might be. Trying to get him to eat, sleep or play at any other time is quite a task. Actually, it’s rather a sensible attitude, but the times he gets hungry, tired or playful may vary considerably from day to day and night to night. You might as well adjust your schedule to his. He’ll seldom throw tantrums, scream or balk to get you to come around to his way, but he’ll gradually win you over by evasive, elusive tactics, and confuse you into capitulation. You may even get charmed yourself, by the sheer freedom of it. Not feeling guilty when you chat with neighbors over coffee during the feeding hour, playing a fascinating game of “Princess and Frog” in the still magic hours of dawn—or sharing a bowl of vegetable soup and a cup of hot chocolate with him in the middle of a dreary, gray winter afternoon can become strangely attractive. He might even teach you there’s no reason to let that silly clock be a cruel, infallible dictator over your life. It’s only a ticking hunk of metal.

  The Pisces child will require a healthy amount of attention and appreciation. He’ll have to be noticed and encouraged, because he’s uncertain about his abilities. Give him as many bushels of it as he needs. He’ll also require his moments of privacy. When he goes into one of his mysterious moods of withdrawal, let him be. His mind is a million light years away, and you can’t follow. He’ll return in plenty of time for his vegetable soup and hot chocolate. Only by now, he’ll have changed his lunch hour to mid-evening. If he tells you he was out flying on a saucer with a man from Mars, believe him. It just might be so.

  Teachers are always confused when they try to put this odd-shaped peg into a round or square educational hole. He may not fit into either. You’ll probably have heaps of struggles between his unique methods of learning and the school’s stale routines. He’ll simply refuse to conform to a pattern not his own. Don’t blame him too much. The educational system has yet to catch up with Neptune’s wisdom. Many Pisces boys and girls are artistic, and most of them love music and dancing. Typical Neptunian youngsters are light on their feet, regardless of their weight. The little girl often longs to be a ballerina; the little boy usually chooses heroes like Beethoven, Michelangelo, the astronauts or Saint Anthony over scientists, presidents and generals. They love all kinds of books and English may be a favorite subject, since Pisces is a good storyteller. They love words, and poetry often enchants them. Neptunians may find math hard to understand at first, but they’ll have an uncanny grasp of the abstract theories behind algebra and geometry later on.

  There may be a lack of responsibility, which can be frustrating. Pisces children follow their own rules. They’re sensitive and easily stabbed to the quick by harshness. Tears may be frequent. These youngsters ordinarily prefer the company of adults to playing with other children. Even at a tender age, they have a deep wisdom and sympathetic understanding of situations over their heads. A child of Neptune is often accused of lying, yet they aren’t lies to him. There’s no malicious or cowardly intent. His young mind swims in fluid imagination which whispers a thousand secrets, so utterly delightful and filled with such sheer beauty, he can’t help trying to make them live in the cold, real world. The fact that these lovely dreams soon die in the sterile, arid soil of a materialistic society is heartbreaking. He needs your deepest pity, or he’ll retreat into silent, moody despair.

  The Piscean child hears songs of the sea he can never describe. The cold, ugly, naked truth is too brutal for him to bear. He must dress it up occasionally or try to warm it and color it with Neptune shades of romance. It’s not fair to call it lying. Instead, encourage him to gather all his clouds and moonbeams and weave them into poems, plays or paintings. Soon enough, he’ll learn to adapt to the normal world of brutality, selfishness, cruelty and greed. Why thrust him into it rudely? He may have trouble learning to conform to social and scholastic demands that stifle his individuality. But his parents and teachers can learn from him the value of compassion, understanding, beauty, tolerance, imagination and gentleness. It all depends on the kind of diploma you want from life.

  Someday, either the Piscean philosophy of freedom of expression or the conformist concept will win. My money is on Pisces. Of course, your friendly, warm-hearted little Neptunian must be taught that people expect him to adjust eventually to their crazy-quilt, upside-down concepts in order to survive. But if he’s shoved too hard by stern, negative adults, he’ll lose his way back to the other side of the looking-glass. Don’t steal his key. He needs to slip over there now and then, to refresh himself with the true wisdom of the Red Queen and the White Knight. Then he can better cope with the real world of war, poverty, disease, hypocritical ethics and ingratitude.
Your little fish needs a cloak of protection against the cold winds to come. Knit it yourself with bright, gay sturdy yarn. Try to understand his Neptune ways. Guide him tenderly, wisely, and when he’s tall enough, he may someday suddenly reach out and catch one of his silver stars to bring home to you. Then you’ll be glad you didn’t laugh at his dreams. Better clear off a spot on the mantle right now.

  The PISCES Boss

  “You are old,” said the youth; “one would hardly suppose

  That your eye was as steady as ever;

  Yet you balance an eel on the end of your nose—

  What made you so awfully clever?”

  Sample conversation in an office about a typical Pisces executive:

  “What’s the name of that new boss the firm hired last week?”

  “You mean the one who took her coffee break with us yesterday?”

  “No. The one who left this morning.”

  With only slight exaggeration, that’s about the normal length of time the average Piscean will remain in an executive position. There are a limited number of streams for Pisces bosses, and we’ll concentrate on those. In most corporate and industrial areas, the Neptunian chief is as rare as a bathing suit at the North Pole. The great majority of Neptune’s children prefer to swim alone—unconfined—as writers, salesmen, creative artists, consultants, actors, wandering minstrels or soldiers-of-fortune.

  However, there are a few areas where she can apply her talents and make herself an indispensable boss. She has top qualifications for radio stations, TV networks, advertising and public relations outfits. Running any of these operations, she’ll go around happily dispensing creative ideas from his superabundant fountain of imagination. Pisces sees no reason to blurt out the plain and often brutal truth, as certain other Sun signs do. Unlike Gemini, Sagittarius and Scorpio, the fish prefers not to tell it like it is. She would rather tell people what she thinks will have the best effect on them in the long run, or what they want to hear. It’s not because she’s dishonest. She’s learned through bitter experience that society does not want to hear the cold and naked truth. Besides, she feels the soul requires the added dressing of ritual and beauty painted over sound facts. Madison Avenue loves her.

  She’s a superlative director of stage and screen, also a capable producer (if she has a good company manager). She can run a dance studio like a dream. Whether she’s involved in a some kind of detective work or criminal research, her uncanny psychic ability to penetrate mystery leads him straight to the top of the heap. Lots of travel agencies have Pisces executives, and they’re usually tremendously successful. She’s often found as the head of a charitable organization. Many fish happily lead orchestras or bands, and keep rehearsals running smoothly, not to mention producing great music. They’re unexcelled as executive managers of country clubs or hotels (if there’s a good bookkeeper around). They can run a progressive publishing company, magazine or newspaper competently, even brilliantly. You’ll often find the fish heading up a service business of some kind, and this sign is certainly in home waters as the director of a camp, or in an official capacity in a church or synagogue. But that’s just about it, except for teachers and professors and a few administrators in medical or law schools. Pisceans aren’t cut out to be bosses, in the strict sense of the word.

  With her sensitive nature, Pisces was born to serve humankind, not to accumulate power or build huge empires. She can be a capable and competent financial advisor and a shrewd trader, but she’ll almost never take over as the head of a brokerage or bond house. Too much responsibility. However, thanks to her quick, clever mind and her sometimes uncanny grasp of figures, the fish can have a lot of fun juggling the points of fluctuating shares, thought it will be more like a game than actual work.

  If your boss was born in March, she may be the type to behave like a crosspatch when she’s irritated by something. She has a gift of words, and when she’s being brusque, it’s a caustic brusqueness that can scald a little, but she’ll seldom be aggressively domineering or truly mean and petty. One minute she may shock you with her unconventional ideas, then she’ll do a rather slippery turnabout and appear to be a conformist. You’ll eventually catch on that she’s neither a great liberal nor a cautious conservative. On different occasions, she takes either view, to find out what your ideas are. She can be, in other words, a mite tricky. When she finds your ideas and your conversation interesting, your Pisces boss will listen with flattering concentration, silently and sincerely, maybe even offer you a glass of sherry to create a relaxed atmosphere. If she finds what you say boring, her mind will wander. She’ll probably daydream about far-off people and places while you’re talking, carefully keeping a fixed smile on her face. Since every one of them is a born actor, you’ll think she’s being attentive, but after a certain period, she’ll get tired of her mental wanderings, notice that you’re babbling away, and suddenly interrupt. Then she’ll do the talking and you’ll do the listening, sometimes for hours—and hours—and hours.

  She may be well-traveled, and if she isn’t, she’ll soon make up for lost time. Like the Sagittarian and Geminian boss, the Pisces executive will keep a packed suitcase behind the couch in her office. If not, she should. Why don’t you suggest it to her? She’ll probably think it’s a splendid idea. Besides, the knowledge that the bag is zipped and ready to take off can give her strange comfort on dreary rainy days, or in the dead of a slushy, bitter winter when she feels like jumping off the penthouse roof with boredom. She’ll have his depressed moods and they will be real humdingers. Better stay away from her at those times, hum cheerful melodies while you’re working, and make sure she has her hot toddy, laced with the best bourbon.

  Be nice to her spouses—I mean her spouse. (It’s a natural mistake. Along with your Gemini and Sagittarius boss, the Pisces boss is more apt to undergo multiple double-ring ceremonies than other bosses.) Her husband is probably a nice, sensible, practical man. If he were as imaginative and original as his wife, they’d likely both drown together in an ocean of misty dreams and fancies.

  The Piscean executive is somewhat partial to the creative thinkers in the firm. If you tend more toward caution than imaginative strategy, you may not get as many glasses of sherry or as many comradely smiles, but you probably won’t get fired. She may enjoy the others more, but she needs you. She leans on your practical approach and your organizational ability. The favored, highly inventive, employee of a Pisces boss is often shocked right out of his sparkling ideas when the firm has an economy drive and the fish gently lets the ax fall on him, and keeps the steady, reliable, rather stodgy worker on the payroll. The Pisces will wave farewell sadly, but she is a shrewd judge of human nature, including her own. Although she enjoys the company and the progressive contributions of the imaginative employees, her own brand of creativity works more smoothly when it’s backed up by the careful planning and office discipline of the old gray heads of wisdom, even if they’re young, blonde or brunette heads. Discretion and conservatism aren’t her greatest assets, and she’s clearly aware of her deficiencies. She can always find another daring, enthusiastic dreamer when business picks up, but when the profits dip a little, she can’t afford to be without the workers whose noses are worn down by the grindstone. Meanwhile, she figures she’ll take care of the daring, enthusiastic dreams department herself until things get better and she can put some more compatible blue-sky people on the payroll. Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule, but it won’t hurt to let your Pisces boss know that you can be serious and sensational at the same time.

  You’ve probably already learned that she’s installed a Capricorn or Taurus as a middleman to deal with employees who seek raises. She knows better than to let you appeal to her personally. The Neptune nature is so constituted that she finds it almost impossible to say no to a fellow human being who has a sincere need, or even just a sincere desire. She learns early to insulate herself as best he can.

  Remember, she lives in two different worlds. Suc
h a division of nature can cause a confused personality, but it can just as easily cause brilliance. Her thoughts may be as abstract and deep as Piscean Einstein’s, who once said, “God doesn’t throw dice.” Einstein meant that the law of mathematical probability isn’t necessarily sacrosanct. Your Neptune boss feels the same way about accepted business procedures, and time usually proves her first instincts are right, no matter how visionary they may sound when she expresses them. She’s a mystic at heart, a secret believer in the unseen and the supernatural, though she may be a little bashful about it. She won’t practice Voodoo at her desk or meditate in the lotus position at the water cooler, because she fears ridicule if people discover the undercurrent of her psychic vibrations. But they find out anyway, for all her clever playing of the role of tough realist.

  Remember that time your heart was broken by a boyfriend who flew the coop and took your engagement ring and all your dreams with him? Your Pisces boss casually invited you to dinner, filled your sad head with the nicest compliments, and then hurried you to the theater. Afterwards, she took you backstage, introduced you to the leading players, and then treated everyone to a late supper. With all that food and wine and glittering conversation, she took your mind right off your fickle fiancé. Though sometimes she was frosty deliberately, so it wouldn’t look obvious, for weeks afterwards, she found little ways to cheer you up until the ache stopped aching. You hadn’t told a soul in the office about the breakup. Now, how did she know you needed help over that black period? The gypsy who read her fortune one day by the lines in her hand could have told you. She noticed right away that she has a rare mark on her palm—which means she’s a compassionate genius. There aren’t very many of them around. That’s why she’s a rare fish.