Many people, even those who know very little about astrology, appear to have knowledge of their Sun (star) sign and their Ascendant (rising) sign. Great emphasis is placed on these two snippets of information and as an astrologer, you are expected to smile knowingly and then burst forth into a rendition of astrological psycho babble, when presented with this information. I have addressed the star sign misconception in one of my previous articles; we now turn our attention to the rising sign. 

Here we encounter another major difference between our astrology and modern astrology. Signs do not do anything; they simply describe the planets that are posited in them. They are adjectives while the planets are nouns, and the aspects are verbs. These 12 adjectives each have a set of characteristics, but they do not have the fully-fledged and inflated personalities allotted to them in modern astrology. They will be masculine or feminine, barren or fertile, mute or voiced and humane or bestial, and some are even maimed. Each sign is categorised by an element and by a mode or quality, which further adds to its characteristics.

Your sign on the Ascendant (house 1) of your birth chart therefore tells us no more about you than anything else does in the chart and it is most certainly does not provide a checklist for behavioural characteristics or profound psychological assessments. To assess the person as a whole in the nativity, including their physical body, we need to investigate the planet that rules the sign on the cusp, not the sign itself. Each of the 12 signs is ruled by one of the 7 planets and the condition of that ruling planet in the chart will provide us with deep insight into the person. Combine this with the condition of the luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, which also represent the person, together with the other astrological threads provided by the nativity, and the astrologer is then able to delve into the behaviour, nature and psyche of the person. Anything less is fairground astrology and should be viewed as such.