Aries

Cardinal fire, ruled by Mars

Fire that is also cardinal is fire at the moment it catches. The tradition reads Aries as heat and nerve given the job of starting, so its warmth goes into the first move rather than the long burn: it acts, finds out, and adjusts. Leo, the fixed fire sign, is read as keeping a flame going, and Sagittarius, the mutable one, as carrying it somewhere else; Aries is the spark itself. It is read as candid, quick to anger and quick to be finished with anger, and more interested in a new problem than in the tidy end of an old one.

Its ruler is Mars, the planet of drive and of the willingness to fight, which rules Scorpio as well; in Aries the tradition sees the open, fiery side of Mars. Two more planets have a place here in the old scheme of dignities. The Sun is exalted in Aries, traditionally at 19°, read as confidence at its clearest. Saturn is in its fall, patience and caution sitting badly in a sign built for the first step, and Venus, the ruler of the opposite sign, is in detriment. The three decans go to Mars, the Sun and Venus as Chaldean faces, or to Mars, the Sun and Jupiter when they are counted through the fire signs.

Aries as Sun, Moon and rising sign

The Sun in Aries

With the Sun in Aries, the tradition reads a person whose sense of self is made by doing: they find out who they are by trying things and finding the edge of them. The reading is direct speech, impatience with waiting for permission, a competitive streak often aimed at their own last effort, and a readiness to be the one who goes first into an awkward conversation. The same reading lists the other side as leaving things half-finished once the difficult start has been made.

The Moon in Aries

The Moon describes what a person needs in order to feel steady, and a Moon in Aries is read as needing to act on a feeling rather than sit with it. Upset turns quickly into motion, a walk, a sharp word, a decision, and passes as quickly. Comfort, in this reading, is being allowed some independence and a fair fight, not being fussed over. The Moon crosses Aries in about two and a half days each month, so the date of birth alone does not always settle it.

Aries rising

The rising sign is the one on the eastern horizon at the minute of birth, and Aries rising is read as a brisk, frank manner: someone who meets a room head-on and looks as if they have already decided. It puts Mars in charge of the whole chart. Aries is the natural sign of the first house, the house of the body and the first impression, so here sign and house say the same thing twice. North of the equator Aries is one of the fastest signs to rise, well under an hour at the latitude of London; at southern latitudes such as Sydney’s it takes more than two hours.

The Sun reaches 0° Aries at the March equinox, which has fallen on 20 March by Greenwich time in recent years, and that point is where the tropical zodiac begins. In the northern hemisphere, where the tradition took shape, Aries is the first month of spring, when the days overtake the nights. South of the equator the same weeks open autumn, and the sign’s dates stay the same. The Sun spends about thirty and a half days in Aries.

The ram

The ram is the one with the golden fleece, which in Greek myth carried the boy Phrixus to safety at Colchis, and whose fleece Jason later sailed to fetch. The glyph is drawn as a pair of horns. The story suits the reading: an animal that goes forward with its head down, sent ahead of everyone else.

Aries and Libra across the wheel

Opposite Aries is Libra, another cardinal sign, but of air. The pair is read as the axis of self and other: Aries asks what it wants and goes after it, Libra asks what would be fair to both and waits to hear. The same line runs through the first and seventh houses, the ascendant and the descendant. Planets across it are read as a tension between acting alone and acting in partnership, the two ends needing each other rather than cancelling out.

The sign and the constellation

The sign Aries is the thirty degrees of the Sun’s path after the March equinox. The constellation Aries, a small group whose brightest star is Hamal, has moved on: the equinox slides back against the stars about a degree every seventy-two years, so for almost all of tropical Aries the Sun stands in front of Pisces, and it reaches the stars of the ram only about 19 April, as the sign ends. In the sidereal zodiac of Indian astrology, which follows the stars, the Sun enters Aries about 14 April. The page on signs and constellations sets the three side by side.

Common mix-ups

Astronomers still call the March equinox the first point of Aries, although that point has lain in the constellation Pisces for about two thousand years. Aries starts the zodiac because it starts at the equinox, not because of anything in January. The births to check are those from 19 to 21 March and on 19 or 20 April: the Sun changes sign at a different hour each year, so a birth near either edge needs the year, the time and the place, which is what a birth chart works from. There is no blended cusp sign in between.

What this page claims

This page sets out how Western astrology reads Aries and where each part of that reading comes from. It describes a vocabulary rather than a person, and it predicts nothing about anybody born with the Sun, the Moon or the ascendant in Aries.