Aries

Aries at a glance

Symbol

The Ram

Sun in Aries

About 20 March to 19 April (exact times vary by year)

Element

Fire

Modality

Cardinal

Ruled by

Mars

Exaltation

The Sun

Detriment

Venus

Fall

Saturn

Natural house

The 1st house

Opposite sign

Libra

Which stars make up Aries?

Four stars make the ram. Hamal, its brightest, is the light you can find on autumn evenings, just below the little triangle of Triangulum. Since Babylon, people have drawn this short crooked line as the start of the year.

The other three are Sheratan, Mesarthim and 41 Arietis. None of them is especially bright, which is why the ram is easy to miss in a city sky.

Where does Aries come from?

From a Babylonian farm hand. Around 1000 BCE, star lists named these stars the Hired Man, a labourer at the start of the working year. Greek astronomers later saw a ram there instead, the golden ram that carried Phrixus to safety and whose fleece Jason sailed to find.

Around 130 BCE, Hipparchus measured the spring equinox among these stars and discovered that it slowly drifts. Astronomers still call the zero point of the sky the First Point of Aries.

By about 68 BCE, measured with modern constellation boundaries, the equinox had drifted into Pisces. Two centuries later, Ptolemy knew the stars had shifted and chose the equinox anyway, defining Aries as the 30 degrees that begin on the first day of spring. Western astrology has kept that choice ever since.

How does Aries line up with the real sky?

There are three different Aries, and they measure different things. The Earth’s axis wobbles like a slowing spinning top, tracing a full circle about every 25,800 years, and that drags the spring equinox west against the stars by about one degree every 72 years. Astronomers call this precession.

Western astrology stays locked to the seasons, while Vedic astrology follows the stars, and the two are now about 24 degrees apart. None of these is a mistake. Hali uses the tropical zodiac because it follows the seasons the signs were named for.

What are the Aries dates?

The Sun enters Aries at the moment of the March equinox, so the start date moves a little from year to year. We calculated every year from 1950 to 2049. The earliest start was 19 March 2048 at 22:33 UTC, and the latest was 21 March 1951 at 10:25 UTC.

The Sun stays in Aries for an average of 30.5 days before moving into Taurus around 19 or 20 April. If you were born near either edge, your Sun sign depends on the year, the time and your time zone, which is why “cusp” birthdays need a proper birth chart rather than a date table.

What does Aries mean in astrology?

Aries is the sign of beginnings. As the first cardinal sign, it starts the zodiac and the season, and it is about initiative more than follow through.

Its fire is quick and direct. Where Aries shows up in your chart, you tend to want to move first, say the thing plainly and find out by doing. The same energy can read as courage in one moment and impatience in the next, and both come from the same place.

Astrology doesn’t decide your personality, and nobody is “an Aries” through and through. Your Sun sign is one placement among many, and the Aries part of your chart describes a style that shows up in one area of life, not a verdict on who you are.

What does Aries do in a birth chart?

Every chart contains all twelve signs. What changes is which planets sit in Aries and which house it falls in. Here are some common placements.

Sun in Aries. Your sense of purpose grows through acting, starting and testing yourself. You feel most like yourself when something is moving.

Moon in Aries. Feelings arrive fast and leave fast. You tend to need room to react honestly, then move on.

Aries rising. Aries on your Ascendant colours your first impressions and how you meet new situations. Mars becomes your chart ruler, so its sign and house matter more than usual.

Mercury in Aries. You think out loud and decide quickly. Your first idea often comes out before the second has arrived.

Venus in Aries. You tend to like directness in love and value a bit of pursuit. Traditionally Venus is in detriment here, uneasy in Mars’s sign, which usually means a different way of showing affection, not a worse one.

Mars in Aries. Mars is at home in its own sign. Energy tends to be immediate and straightforward, with a strong pull to act on it.

The house that Aries occupies shows where in life this style shows up. Aries on the cusp of your 10th house points to career, for example, and on your 4th house to home and family.

Why is Aries rising so rare?

Because Aries and Pisces rise faster than any other signs in the Northern Hemisphere, and the further north you go, the faster they get. We measured how much of each day has Aries rising at four latitudes.

Place	Latitude	Share of the day	Time Aries takes to rise
Equator	0°	7.7%	about 1 hour 52 minutes
Madrid	40.4°N	5%	about 1 hour 12 minutes
London	51.5°N	3.6%	about 53 minutes
Reykjavík	64.1°N	0.9%	about 13 minutes

If every sign rose for the same time, each would get 8.3% of the day. In London, Aries gets less than half of that, and in Reykjavík about a ninth.

South of the equator the pattern flips, and Virgo and Libra become the rarest rising signs. Find yours with the Rising sign calculator, or compare cities on the rarest Rising sign.

How do rulership, exaltation, detriment and fall work for Aries?

These are traditional ways of describing how comfortable a planet is in a sign. Mars rules Aries, so it works in its own style here.

The Sun is exalted in Aries, which ancient astrologers linked to the returning strength of sunlight in spring. Venus, which rules the opposite sign Libra, is in detriment, and Saturn, exalted in Libra, is in fall. Modern astrologers read these as differences in style rather than good and bad.

Frequently asked questions

What element is Aries?

Fire. The fire signs are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius.

Which signs share Aries’s modality?

The other cardinal signs are Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. Each one begins a season.

Am I an Aries if I was born on 20 March?

It depends on the year, the time and your time zone. In some years the Sun had already entered Aries on 20 March, and in others it hadn’t. The Big Three calculator gives you a definite answer.

What part of the body does Aries rule?

Traditional astrology linked Aries to the head and face. This is a historical association used in medical astrology, not health advice.

What does it mean if I have no planets in Aries?

Nothing is missing. Aries still occupies part of your chart, usually one house, and that area of life takes on some of its style.

How common is Aries?

In US birth records from 1994 to 2014, 8.16% of babies were born under Aries, about 82 in every 1,000. That makes Aries number 7 of 12, where 1 is the most common.

See all 12 signs ranked

When is the Moon next in Aries?

The Moon is next in Aries from Fri 20 Nov 05:52 UTC until Sun 22 Nov 10:09 UTC.

The next new moon in Aries is on Tuesday 6 April 2027.

Where is the Moon today?

Sources and methods

Dates and rising times computed by Hali from planetary positions, 1950 to 2049 for the equinox, Placidus Ascendant sampled every 30 seconds over a full day for rising times. Tropical and sidereal (Lahiri) dates computed by Hali; constellation dates approximate, from IAU boundaries.

Rulership, exaltation, detriment and fall follow Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Book I. Constellation boundaries as defined by the International Astronomical Union (Delporte, 1930).

Carlson, S. (1985), A double blind test of astrology, Nature 318. Dean, G. and Kelly, I. W. (2003), Is astrology relevant to consciousness and psi?, Journal of Consciousness Studies 10.

Our data is free to use under CC BY 4.0.