Pisces and Capricorn compatibility is a top search, and most pages answer it with a score out of ten. We asked other questions. How many US couples are Pisces and Capricorn at all? What do the old books say ties these two signs? And did real marriages favor the pair?
The answers are plain. About 1 random US couple in 81 is Pisces and Capricorn. That makes it the rarest of the twelve pairs that sit two signs apart. The old books tie the pair through the two planets of love. Venus has its seat of honor in Pisces, and Mars has its seat of honor in Capricorn. We counted how many couples carry both. The answer is 1 in 34.
This guide shows how we got each number, so you can check it. Read it as a lens, not a forecast. Astrology is not a science, and no study has shown that a sign predicts how a couple will do.
The short answer, in six lines
| Question | What we found. |
|---|---|
| How common is a Pisces and Capricorn couple? | About 1 random US couple in 81, or 1.23 percent. |
| How far apart are the signs? | Two signs, or 60 degrees: a sextile. |
| Where does it rank among sextile pairs? | Last of twelve, the rarest sextile in US births. |
| What ties the two signs in the old books? | Venus is honored in Pisces, and Mars is honored in Capricorn. |
| How many couples carry both honors? | About 1 in 34: a Pisces with Venus in Pisces and a Capricorn with Mars in Capricorn. |
| Did real marriages favor the pair? | No: a gap of 0.09 percent, well inside chance. |
How many couples are Pisces and Capricorn?
Your Sun sign is the slice of the sky the Sun stood in when you were born. Each slice is 30 degrees wide. Capricorn season runs from about December 21 to January 19. Pisces season runs from about February 19 to March 20. The exact hour moves a little each year. Our zodiac signs guide checks each date against the real sky.
The twelve signs are not the same size in births. We counted 62.2 million US births, day by day, from 2000 to 2014. Here is what the two signs got.
| Source of the births | Share born Pisces | Share born Capricorn | Chance a random couple is Pisces and Capricorn. |
|---|---|---|---|
| US births 2000 to 2014, 62.2 million, by exact date | 8.04 percent | 7.63 percent | 1.23 percent, or 1 in 81. |
| US births 1994 to 2003, 39.7 million, a second file | 8.09 percent | 7.60 percent | 1.23 percent, or 1 in 81. |
| If all twelve signs were equal | 8.33 percent | 8.33 percent | 1.39 percent, or 1 in 72. |
Why multiply by two? A couple can be a Pisces woman with a Capricorn man, or the other way round. Both count. So the chance is two times the Pisces share times the Capricorn share.
Capricorn is the rarest Sun sign in US births. Pisces sits ninth of twelve. Put the last sign with a sign near the bottom, and the pair lands near the bottom too. Of the 66 pairs of two different signs, this one ranks 64th. Only Sagittarius and Capricorn, and Capricorn and Aquarius, are rarer.
The rarest of the twelve sextiles
Signs two apart form a sextile, an angle of 60 degrees. There are twelve such pairs on the wheel. Here is how the ends of that list compare.
| Sextile pair | Share of random US couples. |
|---|---|
| Cancer and Virgo, the most common | 1.58 percent, or 1 in 63. |
| Sagittarius and Aquarius | 1.26 percent, or 1 in 79. |
| Scorpio and Capricorn | 1.25 percent, or 1 in 80. |
| Pisces and Capricorn, the rarest | 1.23 percent, or 1 in 81. |
A Cancer and Virgo couple is about 29 percent more common than a Pisces and Capricorn one. The gap comes from the calendar, not the sky. Our Capricorn sign guide explains why the sign is the rarest. The Sun crosses it fastest, and births dip over the winter holidays.
Two signs apart: the sextile
Count from Capricorn along the wheel. Aquarius comes first, and Pisces comes next. So the two signs sit two apart, or 60 degrees by sign.
Ptolemy, the Greek writer of the second century, lists four aspects in his book, the Tetrabiblos. They are the opposition, the trine, the square and the sextile. In Book 1, chapter 13, he calls the trine and the sextile “harmonious.” His reason is simple. Both link signs of the same kind, “either entirely of feminine or entirely of masculine signs.” Pisces and Capricorn are both feminine signs in his scheme. So the sextile fits his rule.
His other ties do not reach this pair. He pairs some signs as “commanding” and “obeying,” by equal distance from the start of Aries or Libra. There, Capricorn obeys Cancer and Pisces obeys Taurus. He pairs other signs that “behold” each other, since the Sun gives them days of equal length. There, Pisces pairs with Scorpio, and Capricorn has no partner in whole signs. William Lilly counts these mirror pairs by degree instead. Then Pisces mirrors Libra, and Capricorn mirrors Sagittarius. Either way, the sextile is the only link by angle.
Is every Pisces and Capricorn pair a true sextile?
By sign, yes. By degree, no. A Capricorn Sun at 0 degrees and a Pisces Sun at 29 degrees sit 89 degrees apart. That is a square in size. A Capricorn Sun at 29 degrees and a Pisces Sun at 0 degrees sit 31 degrees apart.
Modern astrologers allow a margin, called an orb, around each angle. We weighted real US birth dates and got the same shares as for our other sign pairs. About 19 percent of couples fall within 3 degrees of 60. About 36 percent fall within 6 degrees, 46 percent within 8, and 56 percent within 10. For a close sextile, the two birthdays need to fall about two months apart. A January 5 birthday and a March 5 birthday come close.
Where Venus and Mars are honored
In the old books, each planet has a home sign it rules. Each also has a seat of honor, called its exaltation. That is a sign where the planet is a guest of high rank. The sign across from it is the fall, where the planet is weakest.
Ptolemy gives a reason for each seat of honor, in Book 1, chapter 19. For Mars, the fiery planet, he says it “becomes all the more so in Capricorn because in it he is farthest south.” For Venus, he says she “is moist by nature.” She gains power “all the more in Pisces, where the beginning of the moist spring is indicated.” So Mars is honored in Capricorn, and Venus is honored in Pisces. William Lilly repeats both in Christian Astrology in 1647. He puts the peak of Venus at 27 degrees of Pisces, and the peak of Mars at 28 degrees of Capricorn.
This is what sets the pair apart. Astrologers read Venus as the planet of love and pleasure, and Mars as the planet of drive and desire. No other two signs split the seats of honor of Venus and Mars between them.
Venus and Mars hold a rank in both signs
The tie runs deeper. Ptolemy gives each group of three signs of one element a set of lords, in Book 1, chapter 18. He hands the earth signs, Capricorn among them, to Venus by day and the Moon by night. He hands the water signs, Pisces among them, to Mars. Venus and the Moon share that water group with him.
| Planet | Its rank in Pisces | Its rank in Capricorn. |
|---|---|---|
| Venus | Seat of honor, and a co-lord of the water signs by day | Lord of the earth signs by day. |
| Mars | Main lord of the water signs | Seat of honor. |
| Jupiter | Home sign, the ruler | Fall, its weakest place. |
| Saturn | No major rank | Home sign, the ruler. |
So both planets of love hold a rank in both signs. Each one is honored in one sign and helps lead the other sign’s element.
How many couples carry both honors?
An old table is one thing. A real chart is another. So we asked a plain question. Among people born with the Sun in Pisces, how many also have Venus in Pisces? Among Capricorns, how many have Mars in Capricorn?
We counted over 800 years, from 1600 to 2400. Short windows skew these shares, since Venus and Mars run on long cycles against the Sun. We weighted each sign by the time the Sun spends there.
| Placement | Share of Pisces Suns | Share of Capricorn Suns. |
|---|---|---|
| Venus in Pisces, its seat of honor | 23.60 percent | 9.71 percent. |
| Mars in Capricorn, its seat of honor | 10.53 percent | 12.30 percent. |
| At least one of the two | 31.73 percent | 20.67 percent. |
| Everyone, all signs and all dates, for scale | 14.70 percent | 14.70 percent. |
Nearly one Pisces in four has Venus in its seat of honor. Our Pisces sign guide makes the same point: the rank is three times more common among Pisces than among everyone else.
Why the Sun sign moves the odds
Venus orbits inside Earth’s path. From here, it never strays more than about 47 degrees from the Sun. So a Pisces Sun pins Venus into a handful of signs near Pisces. That is why 23.60 percent of Pisces have Venus in Pisces, while only 8.32 percent of all charts do.
Mars is free to go anywhere. But it is not spread evenly. When Mars is on the far side of the Sun, the two move the same way for months. So Mars bunches up in and near the Sun’s sign. For a Capricorn Sun, Mars sits in Capricorn 12.30 percent of the time. For the sky as a whole, it sits there 7.21 percent of the time.
What that gives for a couple
Two partners’ birth dates are not linked. So we can multiply their shares. Here is what comes out.
| What the couple carries | Share of Pisces and Capricorn couples. |
|---|---|
| The Pisces has Venus in Pisces, and the Capricorn has Mars in Capricorn | 2.90 percent, about 1 couple in 34. |
| The swap: the Pisces has Mars in Capricorn, and the Capricorn has Venus in Pisces | 1.02 percent, about 1 couple in 98. |
| At least one partner carries at least one of the two | 45.8 percent, close to half. |
| The same, for two people picked at random from all signs | 27.2 percent, about 1 couple in 4. |
So in close to half of these couples, someone carries Venus or Mars in its seat of honor. For two random people, it is about one couple in four. The birth dates alone raise the odds. The stars have nothing to do with it: it is the geometry of the Sun, Venus and Mars.
That still leaves most couples without the full match. In 33 couples out of 34, the Venus and Mars tie is not there in both charts. Where each partner’s Venus and Mars really sit says more than the Sun signs do.
The rulers do not agree
Now look at the two rulers. Saturn rules Capricorn. Jupiter rules Pisces. Here the story turns.
Ptolemy makes Capricorn the fall of Jupiter. He says Jupiter “reaches farthest north in Cancer,” so Cancer is its seat of honor, and Capricorn, across the wheel, is its low point. So the ruler of Pisces is at its weakest in Capricorn. Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, holds no major rank in Pisces. It only gets a small slice of degrees there, called terms.
So the pair holds a small paradox. The two lords of the signs are ill at ease. The two planets of love are honored. Astrologers who like a story read it this way. The work of running a life together needs effort. The pull between the two people comes easier.
How many carry their own ruler at home? Our sign pages give the count. About 9.26 percent of Pisces have Jupiter in Pisces. About 10.15 percent of Capricorns have Saturn in Capricorn. Both figures come from whole laps of each planet.
What ten million marriages showed
A birth count tells you how common the pair is. It does not tell you if the pair works. For that, the best test we know is a British one.
In 2007, the sociologist David Voas, then at the University of Manchester, studied the married couples in the 2001 census of England and Wales. That was 10.3 million couples, with the birth date of both partners. He asked a plain thing. Do some sign pairs marry more than chance would predict? Do others marry less?
His answer was no. The one clear excess was couples of the same sign. He traced it to form errors, such as one birthday typed in for both partners. Once he took those out, the table matched chance. His paper is titled “Ten million marriages: a test of astrological love signs.” The Skeptical Inquirer ran a version of it in March 2008.
We pulled the Pisces and Capricorn cells from his cleaned table, Table 7. The expected count is what you would get if people chose partners with no regard to sign.
| Couples in the 2001 census, cleaned | Found | Expected by chance | Gap. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pisces wife, Capricorn husband | 64,408 couples | 64,658 couples | 250 couples under. |
| Capricorn wife, Pisces husband | 64,551 couples | 64,415 couples | 136 couples over. |
| Both ways together | 128,959 couples | 129,073 couples | 0.09 percent under. |
Voas gives the scale. With 9.5 million couples spread over 144 cells, a cell can drift by up to 450 couples by chance alone. Both cells stay well inside that band. The pair ranks 38th of 66 for surplus, right in the middle. The honest reading is simple. Pisces and Capricorn marry each other at about the rate the calendar sets. The honors of Venus and Mars did not show up in the census.
What the pair means as a symbol
With the numbers set out, here is what astrologers read into the pair. Treat it as a way to talk, not a rule.
The two signs differ in element. Pisces is water: in the old texts, cold and wet. Capricorn is earth: cold and dry. They share the cold, and Ptolemy files both as feminine. Stephen Arroyo, in his book on the four elements, links water to feeling and to the bonds between people. He links earth to what is solid, useful and real. On this reading, one partner feels the way forward and the other builds it.
The two signs differ in mode too. Capricorn is a cardinal sign, one that opens a season. Cardinal signs are read as keen to start and to lead. Pisces is a mutable sign, one that closes a season. Mutable signs are read as quick to adapt and slow to draw hard lines.
The planets add the color. Liz Greene reads Venus as what we find lovely and Mars as how we go after it. Demetra George and Chris Brennan have brought these old ranks back into modern teaching. In their reading, a planet in its seat of honor is well placed, not a promise. In this pair, the dreamy Venus of Pisces meets the patient, aimed Mars of Capricorn. Robert Hand reads Saturn as form and structure, and Jupiter as growth and faith.
The same symbols name the friction points. A cardinal sign can want a plan now, while a mutable sign wants to keep the doors open. An earth sign can want proof, while a water sign trusts a feeling. When hurt, both partners, on this reading, can go quiet rather than fight. These are themes to talk about, not verdicts on a couple.
Look past the Sun signs
A Sun sign is one point in a chart. For this pair, two other points matter most: Venus and Mars. You now know how the odds shift for each sign. The real test is where they sit in your two charts.
The Venus layer records how each one says yes to closeness, set out in Pisces and Capricorn Venus placements for these signs. Inherited family habits sit with the Moon, and Capricorn and Pisces Moon signs examines them for this combination.
Pisces has a second sextile partner on the other side, Taurus. That pair is tied by Venus alone, as our page on Taurus and Pisces compatibility shows. Our Venus figure for Pisces matches the one on that page.
How we measured
You can redo every number on this page.
For birth shares, we used US births for every date from 2000 to 2014, 62.2 million in all, from the Social Security file compiled by the site FiveThirtyEight. We checked it against the National Center for Health Statistics file for 1994 to 2003. We placed each birth day on the sky using the real hour the Sun enters each sign, in US Central time. A day on the cusp was split by the share of hours on each side. The pair chance is two times the Pisces share times the Capricorn share.
For Venus and Mars, we used the astronomy-engine code library. The first route stepped through time every six hours from 1600 to 2400. At each step we noted the sign of the Sun, Venus and Mars. The second route found every moment the Sun, Venus and Mars changed sign, by halving the time gap until it was under a second. Then it added up the overlaps. Both routes agree to within 0.01 point. The shares for everyone use the same 800 years with no Sun sign filter.
For the couple odds, we multiplied the shares of the two partners, since their birth dates are not linked. For “at least one,” we took one minus the chance that neither partner has either placement.
The marriage counts come from Table 7 of the Voas paper, his cleaned version of census table C0792. Rows are wives and columns are husbands. The expected count for each cell is the row total times the column total, divided by the grand total. The quotes from Ptolemy come from the Tetrabiblos, Book 1, chapters 13 to 19, in the Robbins translation.
The limits are real. Birth shares are not the same as shares of adults who date, and many couples meet across borders. The US figures are a close guide, not a census of couples.
Questions people ask
Are Pisces and Capricorn compatible?
No study has found that Sun signs predict how a couple does. The largest test, 10.3 million marriages in England and Wales, found Pisces and Capricorn couples within the range of chance. As a symbol, the pair joins the seat of honor of Venus with the seat of honor of Mars.
What percentage of couples are Pisces and Capricorn?
About 1.23 percent of random US pairings, or 1 in 81, based on 62.2 million US births from 2000 to 2014. That is the rarest of the twelve sextile pairs. An even split of signs would give 1 in 72.
What aspect do Pisces and Capricorn make?
A sextile, two signs or 60 degrees apart by sign. Ptolemy called it harmonious, since both signs are feminine. By degree, about 36 percent of couples come within 6 degrees of a true sextile.
Why are Venus and Mars important for this pair?
In the old books, Venus is exalted in Pisces and Mars is exalted in Capricorn. About 1 Pisces and Capricorn couple in 34 has both: Venus in Pisces for the Pisces, and Mars in Capricorn for the Capricorn.
Do Pisces and Capricorn share a ruler?
No. Jupiter rules Pisces and Saturn rules Capricorn. Capricorn is the fall of Jupiter, its weakest sign, and Saturn holds no major rank in Pisces.
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