Your sun sign and what it tells you

When someone asks you your star sign, what they mean is your sun sign: the stretch of the zodiac the Sun stood in on the day you were born. It is the best-known detail in all of astrology – and the one most often misunderstood.

What the Sun stands for

In the chart the Sun is not one planet among many, but the reference point around which everything else is arranged. The things assigned to it are those that lie at the centre of a person: vitality, will, direction, the need to show oneself, and the question of what a life is meant to amount to.

It describes your moods less – the Moon is in charge of those – than where you are headed when nothing gets in the way. In the classical scheme it rules Leo and is held to be exalted in Aries.

Your sun sign colours this basic force. The same determination looks different in Capricorn from the way it looks in Cancer, although in both cases it is the same Sun at work.

Why the dates fall a little differently each year

Magazines print fixed spans of dates, say 21 March to 20 April. That is not quite right. The Sun does not change sign at midnight but at a particular moment, and that moment shifts by hours from one year to the next – partly because the calendar year and the circuit of the Sun do not match exactly, so leap years have to make up the difference.

For most people this makes no difference. For anyone born on the first or the last day of a sign, it makes all the difference.

Born on the cusp

It is often said that anyone who arrives in the world at a changeover carries traits of both signs. Astronomically that does not hold: at any given minute the Sun stands in exactly one sign, and there is nothing in between.

If someone recognises themselves in both descriptions all the same, there is usually another reason for it. The Moon, the ascendant or several planets may stand in the neighbouring sign and bring its tone with them. Rather than guess, it is worth doing the arithmetic here: with the date, the place and the time of birth, the question is settled in a moment.

Why so many people recognise themselves anyway

If the sun sign is so coarse, why do the descriptions fit so often? Two reasons come together.

The first is honest. The Sun really does describe something central, and a statement about drive and basic direction hits the same nerve in many people of the same sign – even when the rest of their charts looks completely different.

The second is less flattering. Many sign profiles are worded so generally that almost anyone finds themselves in them. Anyone who reads that they are sociable at heart but need some quiet to themselves now and then will nod reliably – whenever they happen to have been born.

A simple test helps: read the description of a sign that is not yours and note how much of it fits you just as well. What is left over afterwards is the usable part.

What the sun sign cannot do

Twelve signs for eight billion people: on the arithmetic, each one takes in several hundred million people who supposedly carry the same profile. That no personal statement can come out of that is plain, and on this point the criticism of newspaper astrology is justified.

A full chart works with a great deal more: with the ascendant, which depends on the place of birth and the minute, with the Moon, with all the planets and with the angles they form with one another. The Sun remains important in it, but it is one factor among a good many.

So take your sun sign as a beginning, not as a result. It shows the basic direction, and that is more than it sounds – only not everything.

You will find an overview of all twelve zodiac signs here, the next step with the ascendant, and how the individual forces work together with the planets.