Aries

Aries opens the zodiac. The Sun enters it at the spring equinox, when the days begin to outgrow the nights, and the sign carries that sense of a first push of growth. It inclines toward initiative, frankness and the wish to act before the moment cools. Its gift is the courage to start; its lesson is often the patience to finish, and to notice who else is in the room.

Element, mode and polarity

Aries is a Fire sign and a cardinal one: Fire gives it warmth, enthusiasm and a forward lean, and the cardinal mode makes it the sign that sets things in motion rather than keeping or adapting them. It is a masculine (active, outward) and diurnal sign. Its fellow Fire signs are Leo and Sagittarius; its fellow cardinal signs are Cancer, Libra and Capricorn.

Rulership and dignities

• Domicile: Mars, which the tradition gives Aries as its day house (Scorpio is its night house).
• Exaltation: the Sun, traditionally at 19° Aries.
• Detriment: Venus, whose home sign Libra lies opposite.
• Fall: Saturn, opposite its exaltation in Libra.

Aries has no separate modern ruler; Mars serves both old and new schools.

In a chart

A planet in Aries tends to express itself quickly and plainly: Mercury here inclines to speak first and refine later, the Moon to feel strongly and recover fast, Venus to love openly and impatiently. The house with Aries on its cusp is where a person is likely to take the lead, try things first-hand, and sometimes collide with obstacles. With Aries on the Ascendant, Mars becomes the chart ruler, and the person often meets the world with directness and energy; how that plays out depends heavily on Mars's own condition in the chart.

The tradition

Ptolemy calls Aries one of the two equinoctial signs and the starting point of the zodiac, masculine and diurnal because it begins the circle, and he explains the Sun's exaltation here by the lengthening days and the growing heat. Lilly describes it as masculine, diurnal, moveable, cardinal and equinoctial, "hot and dry, cholerick", the diurnal house of Mars, of the fiery triplicity and of the East. In the body it governs the head and face. Its places are sandy or hilly ground where sheep graze, newly ploughed land, and in a house the ceiling or plaster. Lilly gives its colour as white mixed with red, and among its countries names England, France and Germany. In the triplicity scheme Lilly follows, the Fire signs are ruled by the Sun by day and Jupiter by night.

In the tarot

The Golden Dawn's correspondences, which most English-language decks follow.

Major Arcana: The Emperor

Its three decans: Two of Wands (Mars, 0°–10°), Three of Wands (Sun, 10°–20°), Four of Wands (Venus, 20°–30°)

Suit: Wands (Fire)

Related

• Libra, the opposite sign
• Mars, its ruler
• First House, its natural house
• Fire · Cardinal