The earth takes days to change signs as it orbits around the sun, so you share your sun sign with everyone born in that month-long time span. But there's a whole lot more to your astrological make-up, including a complete zodiac birth chart maps where ALL of the planets, as well as the sun and moon, were in the sky at the exact moment of your birth. This creates a much more detailed picture of your personality, strengths and destiny in life. Due to the change of the earth's axis and the movement of solar system and stars, the current positions of zodiac signs are different with that of 2000 years ago. Since the earth's axis swings in a circle of years, the ecliptic position also changes in the sky. As a result, the time of the Sun arriving at a constellation would delay about one month every 2000 years.
In addition to the twelve zodiac signs, the current ecliptic also spans the thirteenth constellation Ophiuchus which is located between Scorpio and Sagittarius. If you think you are under the Aquarius sign, you might be a Piscean while the original Scorpian might be a Sagittarian. In 1982, the international astronomical conference modified the constellation range and approved Ophiuchus as the thirteenth onstellation. These are your birthday signs that tell who you are by birth and what characteristics you possess from the time you were born.
By understanding zodiac sign meaning, you may know about your personality traits and explore the strengths and weaknesses. It is believed that astrology signs of zodiac can help you to know how your life partner is and what is your zodiac compatibility with him/her. The zodiac sign symbols each cover roughly the equivalent of a month's time. But unlike our calendar months, time for zodiac signs is calculated differently. This is because Western astrologists calculate the first sign based off the Northern hemisphere's vernal equinox , which happens around March 21st every year. From there, the zodiac signs dates were set based off the dates of the sun's passage through the respective constellations during Ancient Greek times.
Astrology dates back to a period of time when the vast majority of people couldn't read and write. Stories were most commonly passed down by oral tradition, and eventually drawn with symbols. As astrology developed, every zodiac sign, planet, aspect and more, was given a symbol.
And although illiteracy is a lot less common in developed worlds now, using symbols is still an extremely helpful shortcut to remembering the 12 zodiac signs and their meaning. Do you know a powerful and interesting fact about zodiac signs based on months? While checking your zodiac according to month, you should always check if you are born at the edge of zodiac sign date change. This is because if your birth date falls three days before and after the change in zodiac sign and their dates, then you may be said to have been born on "Zodiac Cusp".
As per Western astrology, people born under these zodiac dates have one zodiac sign but qualities of two zodiac sign birth dates. After your star/sun sign, your moon sign is worth knowing about. Your moon sign can be a big reason why you act and are different to other people who share your sun sign. Each of these occupies a sector of the sky which makes up 30° of the ecliptic, starting at the vernal equinox – one of the intersections of the ecliptic with the celestial equator. The order of these astrological signs is Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces.
If your birthday falls within one of those date ranges, that's your zodiac sign. If you're wondering what your zodiac sign is, see where your birthday falls in the 12 zodiac sign dates below. If you happened to be born on a day when the sun switches from one sign to another — called a cusp — you'll need your birth time to pinpoint your sun sign. Zodiac signs are determined by the position of the Sun in the astrology signs of the zodiac. The Sun moves from one sign to the next in approximately one month.
Thus, in every month of the Gregorian Calendar, you may find two zodiac signs. Here is the zodiac dates chart that helps you to know what is your zodiac sign based on your date and month of birth. Unlike Western zodiac signs, which are traditionally designated based on your birth month, Chinese zodiac signs are specific to the year of your birth. The Chinese zodiac , is a repeating 12-year cycle where each year is represented by an animal and its qualities.
Learn below how to determine your Chinese zodiac sign, which can help inform your feng shui options, give context to your personality traits, and more. Are you new to astrology and after an overview of horoscopes and star signs? Well, look no further because we've got the low-down on everything you need to know about your star sign, from star sign dates to symbols and the celebrities who you share a sign with.
All that said, please enjoy this chart for zodiac sign dates, symbols and meanings. For example, Aries is governed by fire and the planet Mars – whereas Aquarius is governed by the element of air, and is ruled by the planet Uranus. And btw, that's why "cusp signs," a.k.a. zodiac signs that straddlele two different signs, don't really exist.
"Technically, a planet cannot be stationed in two signs at once," explains astrologer Sanasjia Clervoix. If you feel that you better embody the signs before or even after your sun sign, try getting your full birth chart read to understand where else these energies might exist in your chart, Clervoix suggests. You probably know your zodiac sign, but do you know the horoscope dates? The date range for each zodiac sign is typically four weeks, beginning in one month and then ending in the next. We share personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, and challenges with others who share our zodiac sign. Each set of horoscope dates has a corresponding zodiac symbol , which can offer more insight on your specific sign's purpose and journey.
Particularly important in the development of Western horoscopic astrology was the astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy, whose work Tetrabiblos laid the basis of the Western astrological tradition. Under the Greeks, and Ptolemy in particular, the planets, Houses, and signs of the zodiac were rationalized and their function set down in a way that has changed little to the present day. Ptolemy lived in the 2nd century AD, three centuries after the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus around 130 BC.
Despite the "aqua" in its name, Aquarius is actually the last air sign of the zodiac. Aquarius is represented by the water bearer, the mystical healer who bestows water, or life, upon the land. Accordingly, Aquarius is the most humanitarian astrological sign. The sun sign is the cosmic launching pad for both amateur and professional astrologers. Your sun sign is determined by your date of birth and represents your core personality, sense of self, basic preferences, and ways in which you move through the world. This astrological placement sheds light on your intrinsic gifts, as well as your blind spots.
Joys, wishes, flaws, and fears are what make a sun sign special and unique. When combined with the other planets in your chart, it creates the distinctive profile that serves as your astrological fingerprint. In Western astrology, your star sign dates are calculated we use what's called the Tropical Zodiac, which is based on the seasons.
It is calculated by the path of the Sun against the sky, called the ecliptic, as it travels through an imaginary 360-degree circle known as the zodiac. Astrologists believe your zodiac sign reveals a lot about your personality and temperament, as well as how you express yourself. Even though astrology can trace its roots back over a few millennia, astrology symbols aren't considered a scientific field today.
Still, you can't escape the presence of astrology signs in our culture. From the monthly horoscope readings in your favorite magazine, to references on television and in music, zodiac symbols are everywhere. Therefore, when trying to figure out your sign, your birthday can easily guide you to it, unless you were born on the day the sun switched signs. This would mean you were born "on the cusp." But contrary to popular belief, your sense of self doesn't respond to two zodiac signs!
Since the sun can only occupy one zodiac sign at a time, this means that your sun sign is defined by the minute you were born. Below, are a list of the zodiac sign cusp dates in case you're curious. What's more, the dates of the 'star signs' were assigned over 2,000 years ago, when the zodiac was first devised. As such, the zodiac signs no longer correspond to constellations of stars that appear in night sky. In short, we each have our own individualized "astrological DNA," which features a unique combo of signs spread across the sky.
Here, an overview of each zodiac sign's meaning, including characteristics of each sign you'll want to bear in mind as you explore your birth chart. The list below gives the constellations of the zodiac, with the dates of the Sun's passage through them in the era when their boundaries were fixed. The history of the symbols is unknown; they seem to appear first in Greek manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. Many people are familiar with the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals, which are actually part of the Four Pillars system of astrology. The most simplistic take on the Chinese zodiac assigns an animal to a birth year, but what most people don't know is that there is actually a zodiac animal sign connected to your month, day, and hour of birth.
This is why the system is called the Four Pillars—you have four pillars connected to your natal birth information. By calculating your four animal energies , you'll learn more about various characteristics and personality archetypes that can be interpreted to reveal your destiny. One difference … astrological signs of the tropical zodiac remain fixed relative to seasonal markers, such as the equinox and solstice points on the sky's dome. Meanwhile, the constellations of the zodiac slowly but surely shift eastward relative to the equinox and solstice points, over the long course of time, due to a motion of Earth called precession. In Western and Asian astrology, the emphasis is on space, and the movement of the Sun, Moon and planets in the sky through each of the zodiac signs.
From the viewpoint of earth, the Sun appears to move along a circular orbit across the celestial sphere, this circular orbit is called the ecliptic. The zodiac refers to the thin band along the ecliptic composed of the zodiac signs and constellations. Your zodiac sign, also known as your Sun sign, is based on a range of dates that lasts about a month. If you were born with this date range, you are a member of this zodiac sign. In astrological terms, this sign would only be meaningfully significant if Tropical astrology was still tied to the position of the constellations.
It is not, and your zodiac sign, also known as your sun sign is one among the twelve most everyone knows. The "zodiac" is an imaginary band of the sky that extends about 8° each way on the elliptic, or, on the sun's path through Earth's sky over the course of a year. Each sign takes up about 30° of latitude in the sky and correlates to a constellation.
The sun, moon, constellations and other planets are all visible in the zodiac. However, most of the time when people think of a zodiac, they think of either the constellations or their symbols. Look more carefully at the list of real star sign dates and you'll see that the Sun spends a vastly different time within the boundaries of each zodiacal constellation. For example, it's in and out of Scorpio in just a week while it spends a whopping 45 days in Virgo. There is no such thing as being born on the cusp, even if in some horoscopes you are a Leo and others a Virgo. You are given two options because the star sign dates change slightly every year depending on when the Spring Equinox, or the first day of Spring, is.
It's easy to distinguish because it looks like the head of a bull with large horns protruding from each side. When most people think of a bull, they think of a strong, sturdy, and sometimes immovable animal. And if this doesn't describe the Taurus personality perfectly, we're not really sure what does. Stubbornness, persistence, and hard work are all associated with both Taurus and a bull, as both move at a slow pace and persevere despite the odds. Neither the animal nor the zodiac sign is likely to win any races, but they both know that they'll cross the finish line eventually. The Sun's placement upon the vernal equinox, which occurs annually around 21 March, defines the starting point for measurement, the first degree of which is historically known as the "first point of Aries".
The subsequent 30° of the ecliptic is nominally designated the zodiac sign Taurus, and so on through the twelve signs of the zodiac so that each occupies 1/12th (30°) of the zodiac's great circle. Zodiac signs have never been used to determine the boundaries of astronomical constellations that lie in the vicinity of the zodiac, which are, and always have been, irregular in their size and shape. The ecliptic intersects with 13 constellations of Ptolemy's Almagest, as well as of the more precisely delineated IAU designated constellations.
In addition to the twelve constellations after which the twelve zodiac signs are named, the ecliptic also intersects Ophiuchus, the bottom part of which interjects between Scorpio and Sagittarius. This happened in a 1995 report of the BBC Nine O'Clock News and various reports in 2011 and 2016. Around the end of the 5th century BC, Babylonian astronomers divided the ecliptic into 12 equal "signs", by analogy to 12 schematic months of 30 days each. Each sign contained 30° of celestial longitude, thus creating the first known celestial coordinate system. According to calculations by modern astrophysics, the zodiac was introduced between 409 and 398 BC and probably within a very few years of 401 BC. Find your zodiac sign according to birth month with the help of this extended zodiac dates list.
The list includes all the twelve zodiac sign months and dates and zodiac signs falling in every month of the year. This chart includes all the 12 zodiac signs and their months and dates according to Western astrology. It's symbolized by two fish swimming in opposite directions, representing the constant division of Pisces' attention between fantasy and reality. As the final sign, Pisces has absorbed every lesson — the joys and the pain, the hopes and the fears — learned by all of the other signs. The end of autumn is approaching, the time of those born under the sign of Ophiuchus. If we return to the true astronomical roots of the signs of the zodiac, we will see that there are 13 signs, not 12 as the modern horoscope tells us.
Reclaiming the forgotten Ophiuchus invites each of us to discover our correct astrological sign and contemplate the spectacular zodiacal constellations that dominate the nights at this time of year. Nine Star Ki is yet another astrological system that utilizes your birthdate to determine details about your personality and strengths. According to Nine Star Ki theory, a person is assigned three stars when they're born and these stars provide you with characteristics, just like the symbols in other astrological systems do. To the average person, calculating your Nine Star Ki number can be fairly complicated, so there are several online calculators you can use to determine yours. For this example, I was determined to use a formula to look up a zodiac sign in an existing table that lists each zodiac sign along with a symbol, start, and end dates. First, the start and end dates are not actual dates, but are instead "date fragments." Second, because the zodiac signs start in March and cross over a year boundary, they are not listed in chronological order.
If they were real dates in chronological order, we could use a standard INDEX and MATCH formula set up for an approximate match on the start date only. Instead, we need to configure MATCH with Boolean logic to look and locate dates that fall between two dates. In addition, we need to assemble the date fragments into actual dates, using the year from the given birthdate. Chinese people believe that a person's horoscope, personality, and love compatibility are closely associated with his/her Chinese zodiac sign, determined by his/her birth year. I hope you find this chart of zodiac sign dates and attributes useful in your continued contemplation of astrology. Strong and assertive fire sign, it's fitting that Aries' zodiac symbol is the Ram.
The horns of a ram signify their physical strength, and their fearlessness and willingness to fight for what they want. Like a ram, Aries are competitive, enthusiastic, and energetic. This animal and zodiac sign commit to moving forward despite the obstacles in their way.
As the first set of horoscope dates in the zodiac, Aries is the leader. It's important that Aries represents a powerful symbol of strength. Aries are no stranger to powering ahead and forging their own place in the world.