Welcome to Pisces season, when everything is in its right place, which is to say nothing is where it should be. The events unfolding on Earth seem to know this, and while most humans I know are struggling generally (as is our eternal condition), right now is an especially chaotic and uncertain time, at least per the stars.
This isn’t just on Pisces—it’s chaos season whenever we’re in a mutable sign, and Geminis, Virgos, and Sagittarians already know this well. Mutability is the mode that best lends itself to disorder, and these periods always mark the most volatile shifts in weather. They are always straddling two worlds, clearing away the present and making room for the future. They are the translators, the agents of change, the connective tissue that allows the world to move. Their ability to metabolize so much instability would make other signs throw up.
Spring into winter is perhaps the most existentially nauseating seasonal changeover. It’s the only time of year that, symbolically, moves counterclockwise from death into birth. It sits right at that uncomfortable intersection, forcing a confrontation between two states of being that cannot reconcile. It’s philosophically harrowing, and, even worse, it’s really hard to know what jacket to wear outside.
To properly celebrate and digest the entropic nature of this season, I’ve described each sign according to the Chaos tranche of the Alignment Chart. This is you at your Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, and, of course, Chaotic Evil. Remember that these are exaggerated, funhouse reflections of real qualities, so don’t get too bent out of shape as I bend your sign completely out of shape…
Aries
Chaotic Good: The invention of fire, the wheel, therapy, and every other wild discovery that has ever *truly* served humankind. Aries is superhero energy incarnate, and you are at your most chaotic good when you’re actually standing up for people who need it. Self-love that translates into a love of others. Mat talk. Mariah Carey. Mariah Carey.
Chaotic Neutral: Adults going absolutely bananas for Disney World. When you wear footie pajamas. Saying “adulting” when you’re doing basic, normal things like going to Costco or waking up before noon. You’re not hurting anyone with your aesthetics of innocence, so have at it.
Chaotic Evil: The heel turn of any wrestler. A supervillain. You rams like to be the hero, but you’re never the martyr. It’s always about serving your ego alongside a greater goal, and when the two are in conflict, it’s you looking out for number one in a way that can shock your nearest and dearest. Spiteful, below-the-belt insults. Tantrums where you destroy personal and potentially irreplaceable property. The exact moment before you realize you’re not just angry, but tired, hungry, and maybe a little scared.
Taurus
Chaotic Good: When Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice withstands the most devastating character attacks from Lady Catherine de Bourgh, enduring not only her personal derision, but the dashed prospect of marriage to Mr. Darcy. She keeps her wits, humor, and her dignity in the face of total societal failure as if she knows the ending to the story—but she doesn’t! Frankly, it’s complete madness to be so steadfast and measured in the face of miserable, bitter news, but that is your Taurean superpower. Run with it, bulls.
Chaotic Neutral: If you decided when you were 12 that v-necks aren’t your thing, you will never even look at a v-neck again. Maybe it’s not v-necks, but strawberries or saying “Best” to sign off emails or writing in all lowercase, even in texts. These may be extreme reactions, but it’s your brand to guard.
Chaotic Evil: You will remain stubbornly loyal to your friends even when they are guilty of downright evil crimes. If you create a company, you will hoard voting power. Tyranny with an Instagram aesthetic.
Gemini
Chaotic Good: All birds. Journalism as the Fourth Estate. Journalism as gossip. Your preternatural ability to narrate the human experience as it’s happening. Bon mots. Being a polymath. Intimacy as a superpower. Losing nothing in translation—or at least as little as possible. Contradicting yourself and getting away with it and giving other people permission to get away with it, too. The best minds of any generation.
Chaotic Neutral: Arriving late to the airport on purpose because if you end up waiting, then they win. (This is arguably close to evil.)
Chaotic Evil: The man who occupies our highest office. Climate change itself. Playing devil’s advocate so well you become Satan’s internal counsel. Gorgeous, empty rhetoric. The Riddler. Both sides-ism. When you have no idea that the real reason you’re flirting unseriously with people you know love you while setting relationships you hold dear on fire is because you’re deep in mourning for all the facets of your personality that cannot simultaneously coexist, and so you’re itching to distract yourself from the dull and painful grief hanging in the center of your heart. The black swan in the movie Black Swan.
Cancer
Chaotic Good: You are uninterested in shortcuts to glory. Rather, you are happy to make slow, steady progress in a world that is obsessed with rapid growth. Meryl Streep. While you understand material realities inherently—your economic sense is uncanny and almost supernatural—you cannot be bought. Your hugs can heal childhood traumas. Maybe the best possible kind of leader.
Chaotic Neutral: Kristen Bell crying because she was overwhelmed by sloths. Unnameable emotions.
Chaotic Evil: The capacity for cold-blooded murder. (Not that you’re going to do it, but you could…) You see threats everywhere. You cannot be soothed. You know that everyone knows that you would kill them if it came to it, and that pisses you off, too. How dare anyone peer into your soul uninvited? You’re a big fan of science, logic, and expertise—unless they conflict with your own intuition. The mean kind of guilty.
Leo
Chaotic Good: Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers. Jennifer Lopez in real life. You’re a true, real, uncomplicated star. Not a celebrity, not an influencer, not a leader—a star. You make it look easy because, for you, it kind of is. What you can do, no one else can do, and yet you inspire others more than you intimidate them. You are kind. You are able to be pleased. You love to be pleased. You earn everyone’s trust again and again. What is mind-body dualism when you are an integrated creature of warmth and light? Your capacity for hope is a wellspring of virtue.
Chaotic Neutral: Casting yourself as the lead in your company’s role play exercise. No one else wanted the part, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they did.
Chaotic Evil: Megalomaniac overlord. Spencer Pratt hoarding crystals. Anytime a leader has ever knocked over something to punctuate a point is chaotic evil Leo energy. Boring motivational speeches. When you seem like you’re not listening because you’re projecting a rude demeanor, but really you’re listening on a delay so that your reactions (which, of course, are overreactions) are entirely out of sync. The paranoia that every movie is propaganda for the heroes, and the villains are actually the good guys…
Virgo
Chaotic Good: When talent and hard work meet extraordinary opportunity. Slowly becoming the most respected expert in your field. The kind of incremental breakthrough that saves lives. Saving a life. Saving a soul. Being a multi-millionaire and keeping your soul. Actually never forgetting where you came from. Lifting others with you. Giving speeches that people will quote for decades. Earning your reputation as someone who suffers no fools. Not being a fool.
Chaotic Neutral: Beyoncé. Not Beyoncé-Beyoncé, who is inarguably good and perhaps only selectively chaotic, but the pride all Virgos have in claiming Queen Bey as one of their own. Can’t blame you, but it’s extremely neutral.
Chaotic Evil: Must be nice. The sublimated desire to remain in the martyr position out of familiarity and fear of actually doing the work sans drama. (You’re not afraid of the work all by itself). The beatings will continue whether or not morale improves—an attitude you can, at times, inflict upon yourself, which trickles down to others. Virgos often lack perspective, as you can get tangled up in the weeds of any issue. This can lead you to both overestimate and underestimate your enemies. Thinking you have enemies is a root paranoia. Living in filth because you expended all your cleaning supplies on that one stained floor tile. Expecting to be disappointed. Believing that you deserve to be disappointed.
Libra
Chaotic Good: You see beauty in everyone, even your enemies. You don’t see your enemies as enemies; they are friends you’ve yet to make. You simply love justice. You know how to make other people feel comfortable. People smile more around you. You give good quotes. When people need advice, they come to you, even if you’ve never been in their situation. No one understands money as well as you do. Your brain is your heart and your heart is your brain.
Chaotic Neutral: When you finally finish writing one pilot, and now you can’t stop talking about how you like to “play with genre” in your work.
Chaotic Evil: An out-of-touch, billionaire (is there any other kind?) who is fully obsessed with the idea of living forever in a utopia on Mars but cannot pay their staff a normal wage or even make eye contact with them.
Scorpio
Chaotic Good: You are proof that competence, power, and self-possession can coexist with vulnerability. You are not running from your own grief. Your bravery is neither performative nor shallow. Just because you’re unshakeable doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings. The bastards cannot grind you down. You are insurmountable, and yet you’re flesh and bones. It’s almost religious how human you are. You’re actually down to earth, but shrouded in mystery and intrigue. You could command a crowd by lifting a finger. You could do even less, and everyone would still revere you.
Chaotic Neutral: When you take something you like and make it your whole personality because you’re too scared to reveal the depths of your character. Your good taste makes for chic armour.
Chaotic Evil: Scorpios, you have an exaggerated reputation for being evil. You’re a wounded heart (aren’t we all), and all it takes for you to feel safe with someone is having total control over everything they think and do. As long as you have full access to the email, the texts, the backend of their website, their social media accounts, and a good line of communication with their closest relatives, then you can sleep easily by their side. With one eye open. There are snakes everywhere. You want both love and power, but there is no love unless you feel completely empowered. You only have one trust issue—you don’t trust anyone.
Sagittarius
Chaotic Good: A curious mind unleashed. A recipe for a chaotically delightful Sagittarian is one part philosopher, one part Santa Claus, one part Britney Spears. You’re guileless and open, able to inhabit the heights of human potential. You have the biggest platform, the loudest voice, and the most innocent intentions. You’re not climbing, you’re dancing. You’re a vision board come to life. There’s nothing you’re truly bad at, but you have no ego about it. You don’t think you’re too good for anything, which is why you’re the best of us.
Chaotic Neutral: Honestly, Caroline Calloway.
Chaotic Evil: If you stopped talking, you’d have to listen to yourself, so you don’t. You can take any joke as long as you made it. You don’t care about money, but you’re extremely cheap. The only thing you like about relationships is all the drama. You’re not listening, are you? You can fake it. Everything is sport to you, so you don’t absorb feedback except to sharpen your game. You’re really, really not listening. What you love is a framework you can plug life into, and let narrow-minded, unenlightened people worry about the fine accounting. You don’t own anything, which is why you have very little to give. You’re lucky you’re so charming, or you’d be in jail.
Capricorn
Chaotic Good: Rarely does a Capricorn indulge chaos, but you can be incredibly effective disruptors of a rotten status quo despite your reputation for upholding order. Hannah Gadsby stretching the form of stand-up comedy. Greta Thunburg scolding world leaders on climate change—and refusing her own spotlight. You’re actually a good leader. You can be trusted with power because you don’t seek it for your own sake. You’re the kind of friend whose command of your own personal boundaries makes everyone in your life feel safe. You’re not afraid to be a nobody, which is what makes you so extraordinary.
Chaotic Neutral: Pete Buttigieg’s high school essay about Bernie Sanders. This has nothing to do with politics, but that essay is 100 percent goat-flavored chaos rendered in a neutral palette.
Chaotic Evil: Capitalist criminality. You will call your employees family but sell them out if you can make two percent more revenue. Two percent is a lot, actually. You don’t even enjoy the money you make. Ebenezer Scrooge before the spirits visit him. Good help is so hard to find. Rich but not fancy. Constantly disappointed in everyone because you’re constantly disappointed in yourself. Every interaction, no matter how innocuous or civilized, is a secret battle for survival. You have never taken off your armor, least of all to yourself. You are the enemy you are afraid of. You would eat yourself to save yourself. The reason you lose is that you’d do anything to win.
Aquarius
Chaotic Good: Oprah. You have the ability to build bridges even after generations of bitter enmity. You can find new meaning in old quotes. You’re a genius. You embody the future and move society forward. You are unafraid of a fight because you never worry about looking stupid. You never look stupid. Pick two dissimilar professions; you’re somehow good at both of them. If it’s good enough for everyone else, it’s good enough for you. (And, conversely, what is good enough for you raises the standard of what’s acceptable for everyone.) Equality. You would die defending the rights of people you’ve never met. You love people, and you love space from people. Equally.
Chaotic Neutral: The “Live Laugh Love” poster. Peace signs in every photo. Any consumer product that offers up a flavor of #resistance alongside a huge price tag.
Chaotic Evil: You are lonely, but you refuse to make yourself comprehensible. Your capacity for empathy is… limited. Human beings are collections of data to be analyzed and optimized, and if someone disagrees, that’s more data for the spreadsheet. You’re capable of doing almost anything to another human being, as long as it’s intriguing enough to satisfy your twisted curiosities. You have no idea that you’re selfish.
Pisces
Chaotic Good: Mermaids. The spirit that has ever moved any composer, sculptor, woodworker, jeweler, ballet dancer, conceptual artist, et cetera, to create blissful works that reflect the divine. Nature itself is gorgeous, Piscean chaos. Beauty that doesn’t ask to be admired. The overwhelming vastness of the ocean, and how its shores nourish the development of civilization. Intuition that seems like magic. (Maybe it really is magic.) You could actually heal the world through love.
Chaotic Neutral: You can fall asleep anytime anywhere, and if you need to, you will.
Chaotic Evil: The worst Piscean chaos manifests through toxic cultures. Religions that become cults. Malignant, charismatic leaders. It’s when you really, truly, straight up lie to someone’s face and believe it. You want to change the world, even though the world has been very clear that it does not need you to do that. Or at least not in the way you’re going about it. Your friends agree; it doesn’t matter. You’re resolute. It’s a moral betrayal if someone disagrees with your vision. If your arguments are intellectually dishonest, that’s no concern of yours. You would be able to fly if enough people believed you had wings.
Graphics by Lorenza Centi.
