I almost messed up. Seriously. I was scrolling through Pinterest, saw a cool-looking minimalist sketch of the two fish, and thought, “Yeah, that’s my Pisces ink sorted.” I even called a local parlor to book a slot. Total rookie move, I know. But then I had this nagging feeling, like a whisper in the back of my mind telling me to pump the brakes. This wasn’t just some random piece of art; it was a permanent cosmic marker. I had to understand the engine under the hood, not just the paint job.
The Dive: Moving Past Pinterest and Hitting the Books
My first practical step was ditching the generic Google search results. You know, the fluffy articles that talk about ‘creativity’ and ‘sensitivity.’ That’s kid stuff. I pulled out the old, dusty astrology texts I’d collected over the years—the real deep-end stuff about the 12th House, duality, and karma. I had to verify what I was signing up for.
I started with the core symbol: the two fish. Most folks think they’re just swimming away from each other. That’s partly right, but the crucial bit is the cord connecting them. I had to physically map out what that cord represents. In my notes, I logged it as “The tether of fate.” One fish is swimming toward the spiritual realm (Neptune), and the other is swimming toward the material world (Jupiter, the traditional ruler). This whole internal battle is the hidden meaning. If you just draw two loose fish, you’ve lost the whole damn story.
- I spent three straight nights only looking at ancient Greek and Roman depictions of the sea and water, ignoring everything modern.
- I cataloged the essential elemental symbols: Water (obviously), but also the nebulous, misty quality related to Neptune—not sharp waves, but blurring fog.
- I recorded a specific connection to the feet (Pisces rules the feet) and decided the placement had to be somewhere low, grounding the whole thing. I zeroed in on the ankle, not the shoulder.
I knew I couldn’t just have fish; I needed the ruling planets in there without being cheesy. Neptune is too often shown as a trident—totally played out. Jupiter? A literal thunderbolt? Get outta here. I had to translate those massive, abstract energies into subtle ink lines. I started sketching a simple line drawing, making the lines for the Neptune fish almost disappear at the edges, representing illusion and the veil. The Jupiter fish lines had to be solid and expansive. It was an exercise in turning philosophy into geometry.
The Accidental Revelation: Why This Log Exists
Look, I know this sounds like a crazy amount of work just for a tattoo. Why this sudden, intense focus? Let me tell you how I got here, because it explains the intensity of the entire practice session.
I was knee-deep in a job I hated, running operations for a start-up that was all flash and zero substance. I was pushing 80 hours a week, and I hadn’t seen the sun in months. My life was completely unbalanced. One Monday morning, I walked in, looked at my desk, and just walked straight back out. No two weeks’ notice. No email. Nothing. I completely ghosted them. I drove home, sat down, and realized I had absolutely no plan, no income, and a looming mortgage payment. I felt utterly adrift.
Then the calls started. My former boss, frantic emails, even the HR person trying to ‘check on my well-being’ (read: make sure I didn’t steal a laptop). I slammed my phone into a drawer and left it there for four days. The sudden silence was deafening. I was completely unmoored, just like that loose Pisces fish swimming away from reality.
That isolation, that pure, terrifying loss of identity, that’s when I picked up the astrology books. The tattoo practice wasn’t about the ink; it was a desperate attempt to re-anchor myself. I channeled all my anxiety and fear into researching the 12th House, the house of self-undoing and isolation. I logged every discovery about Pisces’ self-sacrificing nature. My practice was my therapy. The ink idea gave me a project, a concrete goal, when everything else in my life was dissolving. I had to prove to myself that I could build something stable, even if it was just a sketch of two fish.
The Final Product Practice: A Map of Recovery
My final design, which I now have ready for the artist, incorporates a few things I hadn’t originally planned. I added a single, small dot of concentrated pigment at the center where the cord ties the fish together—it’s my zero point, the moment I quit that job and started over. I used an extremely fine needle concept (0.3mm lines) because Pisces is about subtlety, not shouting. The practice taught me that the meaning must be inherent in the execution, not just the symbol.
My advice? Before you get that ink, stop everything. Get quiet. Don’t look at social media. Go deep on what the sign really means to you, not what some meme tells you. Commit to the research. It turns a cool piece of body art into a personal karmic map. My design isn’t just Pisces; it’s a blueprint of my mental breakdown and subsequent recovery. And that’s a story worth carrying forever.
