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Astrology Rising Sign Definitions
for the Natal (Birth) Chart
Ascendant Definitions
(aka Rising Sign)
The Ascendant is the starting point for interpreting an astrological chart and is extremely important, second only to the Sun Sign. The Ascendant shows how other people see you. It is your true personality, regardless of your sun sign. The date and time you were born is used to calculate which sign is on your first house cusp.
*Aries on 1st House Cusp
Life is best viewed as a challenge. Your expression is active, spontaneous and assertive, and you seek autonomy and freedom of expression. You have a strong urge to satisfy yourself first and foremost and are typically preoccupied with taking charge, being first and getting your own way. Your naturally competitive temperament inevitably provokes some unpleasant consequences when your methods become aggressive. You can be casually impatient with others or more deliberately rude and antagonistic. Quite often this uncooperativeness leads to unpopularity and subsequent loneliness. This may suit you just fine, preferring to go it alone and doing things by yourself. Learning to cope with frustration and adjusting to opposition will be a major challenge to your exuberant energy.
*Taurus on 1st House Cusp
Structure, stability and reliability will become the cornerstones of your life. Your mode of self-expression is sensual and practical. The lessons of self-possession rather than material acquisition, of spiritual values as well as material ones, will be important to learn. It is important that you do not become resistant to change, growth and innovation. You tend to form habits that are extremely difficult to break and stubbornly cling to prejudices. You tend to rely too much on tradition and ideology. You are naturally law-abiding. You are prone to self-doubt and discouragement because you lack the genuine confidence of faith derived from intuitive knowledge and experience. Because of this, you surround yourself with what is tangible, often becoming suspiciously possessive and jealously covetous in your zeal to preserve your comfort and security. Ordinarily, your disposition is relaxed, sometimes lazy; gentle, unless provoked; hospitable, but sometimes bossy and matronizing; somewhat slow-witted perhaps, yet dependable, persistent and patient. Your challenge is to recognize those intangible things in life that are truly of lasting value and deserving of your steadfast and faithful allegiance.
*Gemini on 1st House Cusp
Life is met with curiosity. Communication will become vital in your life, and you will develop a strong desire for knowledge and expression. You are frequently spread too thin, becoming shallow and superficial. You try to be too many things to too many people, making promises that can't be kept. This unfortunate tendency perpetuates indecision and deceit. The very nature that makes you witty, clever, alertly inquisitive, talkative and skillful can also make you hesitant, noncommittal, indiscreet, equivocating and undependable, especially under pressure from too many choices, distractions and interests. Or from too much input from others. You tend to solicit an inordinate amount of advice. The result is often confusion, uncertainty and self-distrust. You are likely to be cheerful, unemotional and reasonable, despite being somewhat prone to fashioning false explanations to excuse your behavior and circumstances.
*Cancer on 1st House Cusp
Caring for others provides your key for self-expression. Life can also be met with strong internalized emotions and a tenacious regard for family and tradition. Your challenge is to broaden sympathy. You are warmly receptive and sympathetic toward people and ideas familiar to you, but cold toward those that are not. You are likely to remain deeply attached to early emotional and environmental influences. Because of this you are constantly concerned for your own safety and security. Timid and shy, especially in youth, you can be nonetheless protectively assertive on behalf of those you love and need. Easily hurt feelings that react to real and imagined slights and introspective nature also cause you to become moody and withdrawn. Consequently, you lapse into fatigue and lethargy, becoming physically and psychologically unresponsive to immediate circumstances and surroundings. You can be alternately playful and excited in childlike fashion or childishly selfish, cranky and pouting. Typically unassertive, you require some strong emotional incentive to get started, but once aroused you compensate with fierce tenacity. You must retain healthy respect for yesterday without succumbing to nostalgia and overemotional sentimentality, learning to dismiss the past when necessary to focus on the present.
*Leo on 1st House Cusp
Life is best viewed as a grand creative project. The image that you project is powerful, warm, sunny and enthusiastic. You have the challenge of choosing between vanity and pride. Your need for esteem may be satisfied in one of two ways; through self-esteem derived from personal talent and creativity, self-confidence and strength, or by the esteem granted from others which requires recognition, prestige or fame. The former builds genuine pride; the latter incites vanity. Properly earned and derived from oneself, authentic self-esteem does not rely upon approval nor promote vainglory and self-aggrandizement. Your purpose is to be and not merely seem to be. You are susceptible to the strain of over enthusiasm and over stimulation of the self. You tend to exhibit a liking for pomp and showmanship, which when spiritually motivated expresses a more profound appreciation for ceremony and ritual. You epitomize leadership and individuality.
*Virgo on 1st House Cusp
Order and precision are your preferred modes of self-expression. You will develop a strong critical nature and a desire for perfection. Often, considerable attention to physical health and hygiene is necessary to motivate the efficiency and precision of sensory powers. You are likely to be modest, dutifully considerate, and unassuming. Docile or weak-willed behavior is evident. Your test is to discern humility. Service is essential to your success, but it is important that weakness of will does not allow service to become subservience or confuse humility with humiliation at the expense of one's own individual purpose in life. You are systematic, fond of routine, thoughtful, meticulous, economical and efficient, but apt to become prissy, prudish, and overly squeamish. You may have difficulty gaining acceptance and popularity. You are methodical and analytical in your approach, but a bit shortsighted.
*Libra on 1st House Cusp
Your approach to life is fair and balanced taking into consideration the thoughts and feelings of others. Harmony is very important to you. You cannot stand injustice, dissension, or strife. You may spend your life attempting to create the peaceful and beautiful existence you so desperately need. You are constantly readjusting to align yourself to the forces around you to achieve an inner sense of balance. You are likely to have good judgment, be peaceful, diplomatic, fair and tactful. Your disposition is courteously polite, with artistic inclinations. Your features are refined, with delicate countenance, and perhaps a dimple or two. The texture of your skin is likely to be velvety smooth and the disposition is usually as pleasant as the appearance is lovely. Men with this placement are particularly handsome and charming. The manner of dress is always neat and clean. You will rarely find a Libra rising whose appearance is sloppy, even when you are totally relaxed and off guard. You are prone to procrastination, indecision, insincerity and being wishy-washy, compromising your values, ideas and beliefs for the sake of peace or popularity.
*Scorpio on 1st House Cusp
Life is viewed as a battle in which triumph and defeat often feature. Intensity is a key mode of your self-expression. You are able to make yourself and others suffer greatly due to your emotional passions. You run the risk of developing a persecution complex, since you have a tendency toward self-pity. Psychologically you need to correctly distinguish between admiration and envy, privacy and secrecy, discipline and oppression, restraint and stagnancy, desire and lust, justice and vengeance, emotional independence and emotional isolation. Once making the positive choice, you must learn to release the natural emotions of love, anger, etc., in constructive, creative ways. Self-regulation must also replace the possessiveness to regulate others. You are emotionally intense, producing a reserved and very reassuring or solemn presence that often appears quite unapproachable. You are capable of exceptionally vindictive, domineering and manipulative behavior. You can become ferociously indignant in retaliation.
*Sagittarius on 1st House Cusp
Life is met with enthusiasm and idealism. It is best viewed as a continual adventure with many exciting lessons. You are tolerant and understanding. You can be particularly rash, tactless, boorish and waywardly irresponsible in youth. Unbridled enthusiasm also makes you rather accident prone. When seasoned by experience and maturity, you become more wisely disciplined and philosophical, remaining nonetheless adventuresome and cocky, but without the impetuosity and smart aleck demeanor of youth. You are fun-loving, generous, cheerfully frank, outgoing and buoyant, although never as carefree and confident as you seem, becoming secretly prone to worry about the future.
*Capricorn on 1st House Cusp
Responsibility and reserve often feature as your natural mode of self-expression. Life is met with caution and careful planning. Others may see you as overly serious. To achieve self-control of the physical, worldly and material needs, ambitions and appetites, you must use your inherent talent for organization. You are not so much motivated by luxury, comfort, pleasure or serviceability, as by ambition for status. You yearn for the prestige material success may bring. The worldly worries that torment you are over the loss of rank, respect and reputation, as well as, the fear of going unrewarded. You hate to lose and are afraid to fail. So, you devise and organize conscientious strategies and tactics designed to minimize risk, emphasizing patient perseverance, industry, frugality and personal indifference. Precocious from youth, you possess an earnest, reserved temperament that is pensive, suspicious, frequently pessimistic and brooding. Sincere respect is earned by those who give it. The personality of someone with this rising sign can be the most intriguing of all personalities described by the signs of the zodiac, because of its very depth and complexity. You may appear to be aloof, cool, or remote, yet an elegant quality may conceal an inherent shyness. Capricorn is the most responsible of all the rising signs. The ruler of Capricorn is Saturn, the planet that indicates solidarity, security, caution, and reliability. Capricorn is an earth sign, and is one of the cardinal signs, representing sensitivity. A person with Capricorn on the ascendant can be quite serious and old before your time, for you are not able to take matters lightly. You may even have graying hair early in his life. As a child you appear most self-sufficient and mature, yet there probably was a lack of security. You will carefully conceal any pain you feel so no one will know you are needy in any way. This ascendant describes someone who has assumed the burdens of all those around you early in life. The feeling of rejection can seriously inhibit you throughout your life. The birth process itself, for one with this ascendant, is particularly long and drawn out. It appears that you are reluctant to come into this world at all. During regression sessions, the standard memory for one with Capricorn on the rise, or with Saturn in the first house, is that of dreading entry into the world. The resistance to birth is so strong that many individuals with this ascendant recall a feeling of digging in their heels until fatigue sets in. One of the earliest decisions about survival is that you are only safe when you are in control. You don't trust anyone but yourself and feel that you are alone in the world. You are also born with the sense that you are destined for something important. You want your life to count for something, yet you go about delaying your "destiny" as long as possible. Your fear of failure is extremely strong. Childhood is never easy for one with this rising sign. You came into life feeling as though you are the parent. You feel that you have to take care of your own parents, as you are the strong one, reliable, responsible, and stoic. You are able to bear burdens that no one else is capable of handling.
*Aquarius on 1st House Cusp
Your approach to life is gregarious and unconventional, original and objective. You view life from an intellectual stance. You epitomize individual uniqueness, independence, freedom and responsibility. Your disposition is typically friendly, honest, progressively broad-minded and decently humane. You may however be detached, insensitive and unaffected. Aquarius bestows the widest social consciousness of any sign - a universal perspective. This is the most intuitive of the Air signs, it confers a higher consciousness that is best described as "superrational." It is often because of the sign's extraordinary intelligence and idealism that Aquarians sometimes yield to a complacent pride and pretentiousness which may draw some into lonely isolation. You are capable of cynicism, but unaggressive cynicism that is condescending and disapproving of other people. If you lose your perspective and objectivity you can be flippant and preachy.
*Pisces on 1st House Cusp
You have the ability to act as a mirror to others, and can take on the persona of whomever you idolize. Others will see you as selfless, self-sacrificing and inspiring compassion. Pisces rising necessitates confronting long-forgotten emotional problems and fears lurking in the psyche and arising from the deeper subconscious. Often lacking objectivity and logical analysis, you can be more obsessive than introspective, frequently suffering from phobias and severe emotional malaise. You may be deficient in the self confidence and will power arena. The instinct for self-sacrifice is strong, sometimes too strong. This may make you an easy mark and potential victim. You can be easily misled. Typically, however, you can be gentle, charming and charitable, but also paranoid, evasive and easily depressed.
Definitions above are from Solfire® 4.0 computer program
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