Almagest

The library · The signs

Aries

general summary for a strong Aries placement

What the tradition reads

Aries is the cardinal sign of fire, first sign of the zodiac and the sign that opens the tropical year at the spring equinox. Its ruling planet is Mars, and the tradition reads a strong Aries placement as headstrong, courageous initiative: someone who begins things before there is a plan, and lets urgency substitute for patience. Alan Leo's Astrology For All describes those born under the sign as looking always forward, leaders in ideals and pioneers of advanced thought, mentally energetic yet impulsive, and ambitious for great enterprises. The tradition credits Aries with directness and generosity, an outspoken nature that argues readily but rarely holds a grudge once the moment has passed. Aries governs the first house in the natural wheel, the house of self and first appearance, and the sign is read as the zodiac's instinct for beginning: bold, self referential, more comfortable starting a project than finishing one. Its shadow is impatience mistaken for decisiveness and a self centredness the tradition reads as immaturity when it goes unchecked; its gift, once tempered, is the courage that moves first so that others, more cautious, can follow.

The story

Aries' ram is the Chrysomallus of Greek myth, the flying ram with a fleece of gold that rescued Phrixus and his sister Helle, children of the Boeotian king Athamas, when their stepmother plotted against them. The ram carried the children across the sea; Helle fell partway and drowned in the strait later named the Hellespont for her, but Phrixus completed the crossing to Colchis, where he sacrificed the ram in gratitude and left its fleece hanging in a sacred grove, the same Golden Fleece that Jason and the Argonauts later sailed to recover. Zeus is said to have set the ram's image among the stars afterward in honour of its service. Despite Mars ruling the sign in astrology, the ram itself carries no connection to Ares, the Greek god of war whose Roman name gave the planet its own; the sign's traditional fierceness comes instead from Mars's own nature as the planet of action rather than from any trait of the ram it rules. The myth's real subject is rescue completed at a cost, a fitting story for a sign the tradition reads as always first to move and not always first to arrive safely.

Written from

Corpus key sign:Aries.