Signs

What a sign is

A sign is one twelfth of the zodiac: an equal slice of 30°, so that, as Lilly puts it, "every Signe containes in longitude thirty degrees" and the whole circle 360. The twelve run in a fixed order from Aries to Pisces, and every planet, angle and house cusp in a chart stands in one of them, at a particular degree.

If the planet is what acts, the sign describes how it tends to act — its style, temperament and manner. Mars is always drive; Mars in Capricorn tends to drive slowly and strategically, Mars in Gemini quickly and in many directions. Signs are not good or bad, only more or less congenial to a given planet, which is what essential dignity measures.

How a sign is built

Every sign is the meeting point of a small number of qualities, and most of a sign's character can be worked out from them:

• Element — fire, earth, air or water. The three signs of one element form a triplicity and share a temperament: fire's enthusiasm, earth's practicality, air's ideas and connections, water's feeling.
• Modality — cardinal, fixed or mutable (the quadruplicities). Ptolemy tied them to the seasons: the cardinal signs open each season, the fixed signs hold its middle, and the mutable ("bicorporeal" or common) signs bridge one season into the next. In practice: initiating, sustaining, adapting.
• Polarity — the signs alternate masculine and feminine, also called positive and negative, diurnal and nocturnal. Ptolemy gives the reason as day yoked to night: the fire and air signs are masculine, the earth and water signs feminine. Modern writers often prefer "active" and "receptive"; the words describe a direction of energy, not anyone's gender.
• Ruler — the planet that has its domicile in the sign. The ruler is the sign's "lord": whatever falls in Libra answers, in part, to wherever Venus is. See rulership.

No two signs share the same element and modality, which is why each of the twelve is distinct.

Signs and houses

Signs and houses are both twelve-fold, and they are often paired — Aries with the first house, Taurus with the second, and so on. They are not the same thing. The signs divide the Sun's yearly path and are the same for everyone born at the same moment anywhere on Earth; the houses divide the sky as seen from one place, turning once a day. A sign says how; a house says where in life.

Which zodiac

Most Western astrology, and the charts here, use the tropical zodiac, which begins 0° Aries at the March equinox, so the signs follow the seasons. The sidereal zodiac of Vedic astrology anchors the signs to the fixed stars instead; the two now differ by roughly 24°. Neither is wrong — they measure from different starting points — but a planet's sign can change between them.

Related

• Zodiac
• Degree
• Triplicity
• Quadruplicity
• Rulership
• Domicile
• Tropical zodiac
• Houses