The Signs

What a sign is

A sign is a quality of energy, a way of doing things rather than a tribe you were born into. Each of the ten planets in your chart sits in a sign and takes on its manner. Your Sun in Leo, your Moon in Pisces and your Mercury in Virgo are three parts of you wearing three different coats.

Every sign is built from an element, fire, earth, air or water, and a mode, cardinal, fixed or mutable. The Elements and Modes page explains both, and I would read it first, because once you know a sign is cardinal fire or fixed water you have already grasped half of what it does.

The twelve in order

Aries starts the year with fire and nerve, the sign that takes the first step. Taurus makes it real, patient and sensual, the builder who stays. Gemini carries the news, quick, curious and never bored. Cancer feels it all and brings it home, the nurturer who leads through care.

Leo shines, warm, proud and generous, the heart of the zodiac. Virgo refines, careful, practical and quietly devoted to getting it right. Libra weighs, the sign of partnership, fairness and the beautiful middle. Scorpio goes deep, intense, private and unafraid of the dark.

Sagittarius aims far, the explorer and the teacher, always looking over the next hill. Capricorn climbs, disciplined, patient and built for the long haul. Aquarius thinks differently, the reformer who belongs to everyone and no one. Pisces dissolves the edges, the dreamer and the mystic, the last sign and the one that holds all the others.

Each sign has its own page covering its nature, its strengths and its shadow, how it loves and works, what it looks like as a Moon sign and a Rising sign, where it falls in the year, and its card in the tarot.

Your Sun sign and the rest of you

Your Sun sign is the sign the Sun was in on the day you were born. It describes the core of you and it is the right place to start. It is also one placement out of ten, and I have met plenty of people who do not feel like their Sun sign at all because the Moon or the Rising sign is running the show.

The Moon sign is how you feel and what you need to be safe. The Rising sign is how you come across in the first five minutes. Put the three together and a person starts to appear. The Birth Chart page walks through how they fit.

Born on the boundary

The Sun changes sign on a different day each year, by a day or so either way, and the exact moment depends on where in the world you were born. If your birthday falls within a day of the dates on a sign page, do not take the page's word for it. Look at your actual chart. There is no such thing as being a bit of both.

Tropical and sidereal

These pages use the tropical zodiac, which starts Aries at the March equinox and ties the signs to the seasons. Vedic astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, tied to the stars, with boundaries about 24 degrees earlier, so many people have a different Sun sign there. Neither is wrong. The Vedic Astrology section, when it opens, will give you the sidereal view.

How to use these pages

Read your Sun sign first. Then your Moon sign, and your Rising sign if you know your birth time well enough to trust it. Then read the sign of anyone you are trying to understand, and notice how much of the friction between you is two different elements doing what they do. In my experience that last exercise does more good than any amount of advice.

You will learn more from your own chart than from anything I could write about anyone else's.

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.

Related pages
The Animals

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