(click here for the post I wrote on the Earth and Air elements).

Fire and water are elemental opposites in astrology. Fire is pure, transparent, familiar, open, hot. Water is murky, hidden, unknown, segregate, cool.

Fire is easily attainable. The oceans have yet to be explored thoroughly.

Fire ignites passionately, releasing all it has to give into the cosmos, unadulterated. Water seems collected on the outside, but it is turbulent and complicated below its surface.  

Fire is intimidating and scorching, but its burning can be halted by even the smallest amount of water. There’s a subtleness and softness to water that calms the harshness of fire. Yet, water sees fire as a haven, a light place it can reach its drenched arms towards when things become too heavy and saturated.

The fire signs are unassuming in demeanor. Things are straightforward with the fire signs, a tell-it-like-it-is sort of energy. Water signs are calculating and brooding; there’s always an omen, something mysterious, a prophecy to take from every situation in life.

I see Aries as the go-getter, Leo as the creative and Sagittarius as the optimist, while Cancer is the homebody, Scorpio is the silent aggressor, and Pisces is the dreamer. The fire signs have this outward assertiveness that the water signs lack, but the water signs have a way about introspection that fire signs might struggle with.

Although these elements appear to be opposites in description, they each have something they can offer to each other. It is a push-and-pull relationship that is ever so apparent in astrology, and that I think really captures the human condition well; we contain multitudes. We may want opposing things at the same time. We may have conflicting thoughts, wants and needs. But both are necessary.