The twelve signs

How the twelve are built

There are four elements — fire, earth, air and water — and three modalities: cardinal, which begins a season, fixed, which holds the middle of it, and mutable, which hands it on. Four times three is twelve, and every pairing turns up exactly once, going round the year in the same order every time. Each sign is then given a ruling planet, and three of them have a second, modern ruler as well.

Those three parts are where every sign page here starts. Each one then works out what the combination means for that sign in particular: how the tradition reads it as a Sun, a Moon and a rising sign, which planets are exalted or weakened in it, what its symbol and its constellation are, and how it pairs with the sign across the wheel.

The four elements

Fire, the element of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. The tradition reads fire as the element of heat and initiative. It moves first and explains afterwards, it is warmest when it has something to start, and it tends to lose interest in a thing once the starting is over.

Earth, the element of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn. The tradition reads earth as the element of what can be held: work, the body, money, the week as it actually goes. It trusts what it can check, and it builds slowly because it expects to still be standing on what it built.

Air, the element of Gemini, Libra and Aquarius. The tradition reads air as the element of ideas and of the space between people: talk, comparison, the letter and the argument. It understands a thing by putting it into words, and it can mistake the words for the thing.

Water, the element of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces. The tradition reads water as the element of feeling and memory. It takes the shape of whatever it is in, it notices what nobody said out loud, and it keeps what happened long after everybody else has moved on.

The three modalities

Cardinal: Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. A cardinal sign begins a season — the equinoxes and the solstices fall at the start of the four of them — and the tradition gives it the same habit. It starts things, and is less interested in how they end.

Fixed: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. A fixed sign sits in the middle of a season, when the weather has settled into itself. The tradition reads it the same way: steady, loyal, and slow to be moved off a position once it has taken one.

Mutable: Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces. A mutable sign closes a season and hands it on to the next. The tradition reads it as adaptable and restless, good at the change from one thing to another and less comfortable once everything holds still.

Sun, Moon and rising

The sign most people know as their own is the Sun sign, and the date of birth settles it except near the edges. A chart has two more signs that astrology leans on just as hard. The Moon sign changes every two or three days and is read as what a person needs in order to feel steady. The rising sign is the one coming up on the eastern horizon at the minute of birth, changes about every two hours, and is read as manner and first impression. All three, with the rest of the planets and the houses, are in a birth chart.

Signs and the stars

The signs here are measured from the March equinox, not from the stars, so each one is a thirty-degree stretch of the Sun’s year rather than the constellation it is named after. The two lined up about two thousand years ago and have drifted apart since, which is set out on the page about signs and constellations. None of this predicts anything about anybody; a sign is read as describing a character, and most people are more than one.