Aries

In astrological tradition

In astrology, Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and is traditionally associated with beginnings, drive, and a bold, pioneering temperament. These meanings are symbolic and interpretive rather than scientifically established.

Element and modality

Aries is a fire sign and a cardinal sign, a combination astrologers traditionally read as energetic and initiating. Its traditional ruling planet is Mars.

Where the figure came from

The figure is Mesopotamian before it is Greek. In Babylonian star lists the region was MUL.LÚ.ḪUN.GÁ, 'the Hired Man' or agrarian labourer, associated with the god Dumuzi. The ram identification came later; by the time Greek astronomy inherited the zodiac the constellation was firmly a ram, and it acquired the story of Chrysomallos, the golden-fleeced ram that carried Phrixus to safety and whose fleece Jason later sought.

The constellation, and how it differs from the sign

Aries the constellation is inconspicuous. Its brightest star, Hamal, is only about magnitude 2, and the figure is essentially three stars in a short arc — a striking contrast with the prominence the sign carries in astrological tradition. The IAU boundaries drawn in 1930 give it a modest span of ecliptic, so the Sun crosses it in roughly three weeks rather than the sign's exact thirty days.

The distinction matters and is easy to lose. The sign is one of twelve exactly equal 30-degree divisions of the ecliptic, measured from the March equinox in the Western tropical system. The constellation is an IAU sky region with irregular boundaries fixed in 1930, and the twelve zodiacal ones differ enormously in the span of ecliptic they cover. Precession has separated the two by roughly one sign over the past two thousand years.

The First Point of Aries

Around two thousand years ago the March equinox — the moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading north — lay in the constellation Aries. Astronomy named that point the First Point of Aries and made it the zero of the equatorial coordinate system, and the name has stuck.

Precession has since carried the equinox westward out of Aries and into Pisces, where it now sits, and it will move on into Aquarius. So the First Point of Aries is no longer in Aries. This is the same drift that separates the tropical sign from the constellation, visible in a piece of technical vocabulary astronomers still use every day.