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The Aquarius Ascendant

general summary for an Aquarius Ascendant (rising sign)

What the tradition reads

An Aquarius Ascendant is read as a steadiness that keeps its own counsel. Aquarius's classical ruler is Saturn, with Uranus assigned as its modern ruler, and the tradition, following Alan Leo's delineations for the rising sign, describes those with Aquarius rising as literary and artistic by inclination, drawn to scientific or occult research, frank, open and humane, with an inflexible will that carries a project through to the end regardless of obstacles in its way. The manner is friendly rather than showy, a first impression built on quiet geniality and a certain reserve, someone inclined toward solitude without being unfriendly, and forceful in temper without holding a grudge once the moment has passed. The tradition reads this Ascendant as loyal in affection and even tempered in company, buoyant and cheerful more often than not, and notes, as with any rising sign, that the trait is least settled early in the sign and most fully its own late in it. The shadow is a detachment that reads as coolness before anyone has actually been rejected; its ease is a dependable, unhurried friendliness that other people come to rely on without quite noticing when the reliance began.

The story

The Ascendant has carried the technical role of first appearance since Hellenistic astrology first fixed a horoscope to a precise hour, the ecliptic's crossing of the eastern horizon at that moment giving astrologers a point the Sun's monthly sign alone could not supply. Aquarius, the sign that can stand at this door, carries a water bearer older than any Greek telling: the Sumerians and Babylonians had already placed the god Enki, also called Ea, god of wisdom and fresh water, in this stretch of sky, more than a thousand years before the Greeks reinterpreted the figure as Ganymede, a Trojan prince tending his father's flocks on Mount Ida when Zeus, taking the form of a great bird, carried him off to Olympus to serve the gods as cupbearer. The figure Aquarius pictures still pouring out its vessel is, in most tellings, this cupbearer at his eternal task. A rising sign built on a bearer of something necessary, wisdom in the older telling and service in the newer one, poured out for others rather than kept, gives the tradition its picture of Aquarius's own even handed, quietly generous first impression.

Written from

Corpus key ascendant:Aquarius.