If you are someone who checks out horoscopes regularly, knowing your rising sign is crucial to getting an accurate and well rounded reading.
Your rising sign determines your instinctual response to life, your body and appearance, how you are perceived by those around you, and it determines the house placements for the rest of your birth chart.
Woah, all of that can be set up by just the placement of the sign on the eastern horizon when you were born? Shockingly, yes. Let me explain:
Your rising sign will tell you how you are wired to respond to life.
We can know what to expect from specific animals, because of who they are. For example, when getting too close to a bird, we trust that it will fly away. That is the instinctual response for a bird.
Rising signs are similar in that they tell you how a person is wired to instinctually respond to life. This is what their reflex response is, both physically and emotionally. It tells you how you tend to respond, without forethought, to experiences and especially to new experiences. You approach life via your rising sign without forethought…kind of like breathing or blinking.
The way that you tend to protect yourself (from both danger and discomfort), and the way that other people perceive you (your M.O. or first impression) will be determined by the sign on this first house.
It is for this reason that this part of the chart is called the RISING sign. It is what is “rising” into your consciousness.
It is an outward directed energy so you can also think of this sign as your identity, how you meet the world, or as your “outer” personality.
Your rising sign determines your appearance and what ailments you will be prone to.
Your rising sign in your chart is connected to your first house, which has to do with your body and your physical composition. In short, your external self. So, the sign on the first house in your birth chart will tell you not only what you will look like, but also which body parts will be prominent, and where you will tend to be ailed.
This happens because we tend to not have strong awareness of our first house energies. The result is that we are less able to efficiently emotionally process issues related to this sign, which means that those emotions become stored in our cells, and show up in the body.
Also, because this first house represents our body, when another planet is moving through that house or making strong aspects to it, that energy will be affected in our bodies and in the way that we choose to show up in the world.
Many people find themselves changing their hair or appearance relative to their first house transits!
I’ve created a handy chart here that will tell you which body part is correlated with each rising sign.
Zodiac Signs & Corresponding Body Parts
| Aries | Head, brain |
| Taurus | neck, throat |
| Gemini | lungs, arms, fingers |
| Cancer | stomach, breasts |
| Leo | heart, spine |
| Virgo | intestines, pancreas |
| Libra | kidneys, endocrine system |
| Scorpio | genitals, reproductive system |
| Sagittarius | hips, thighs, circulation |
| Capricorn | knees, skeleton, teeth |
| Aquarius | nervous system |
| Pisces | feet, lymphatic system |
You can also check out the articles below related to each rising sign to know the specifics of the appearance of each rising sign, as well as the relationships, sign symbols and soul growth of each rising sign.
Your rising sign sets up the rest of the house divisions in your birth chart.
The zodiac wheel begins at the first house, where the edge of your rising sign is which is called the “cusp” of the first house. Moving forward, there will be 11 other sections (houses), going around the 360 degrees of the zodiac wheel until the end of the 12th house.
The 12th house ends where the 1st house begins.
When someone is having their birth chart pulled up, having their exact birth time is critical because the rising sign is determined by the time of birth. The zodiac wheel moves approximately 1 degree every 2 minutes. This explains why someone can be born on the same day as another person, and yet have a very different chart, personality and physical composition!
Each of the houses is very important because it speaks to an area of life and of the psyche, and which energies will be associated with each of those areas.
Because of this, you can see that the sign that is on the cusp of the first house will determine the placement of every other house in your chart!
This means that because of your rising sign, you will also have a specific trajectory in terms of relationships (7th house), career (10th house), faith/ religion (9th house) etc.
In my own life, I have a powerful anecdotal example:
I am a twin, and my twin brother was born 56 minutes before me. Because of this, the zodiac wheel is rotated in between our births which means that we have different rising signs.
As an astrologer, I can note the differences in our physical compositions and temperaments, and I can even see how our physical issues have manifested differently just due to that difference in ascendant signs!
Conclusion
It turns out that your rising sign DOES matter, like, a lot, because it tells you about your instinctual responses, determines your body and appearance, and really sets up the rest of your chart (ie. life).
I actually have an astrologer friend who became convinced of the legitimacy of astrology through studying rising signs, and comparing it to the appearances of everyone he knew.
There are so many astrological rabbit holes to fall into! Rising signs is definitely just one of them.
Now that you’ve looked into your ascendant sign (another term for rising sign), perhaps you are interested in looking at the rest of your chart? Seeing what wisdom the Universe has cached away for you in the skies?
If so, I am a professional evolutionary astrologer and it would be my most sincere pleasure to assist and support you in your astrology journey. You can get in touch with me at Info@ThatZoiLife.com to learn more about that and book your reading.
Until next time,
Still climbing,
XX,
-Celeste
Related Reading:
What your rising and ascendant sign means in astrology
Aries bad traits: The negative side of the Aries zodiac sign
Opposite zodiac sign compatibility (Aquarius- Leo sister signs)
What your Leo moon sign means in astrology
Modalities in astrology: Are you cardinal, fixed or mutable?
Aja Celeste is a mom to 6 beautiful children and a twin mom! She is also creator and writer of That Zoi Life and a professionally trained Evolutionary Astrologer who has been doing astrology for 7 years. She is also a health care assistant, has a Bachelor of Ministry Degree, and is passionate about supporting people in conscious parenting. She also does Psychosomatics using Recall Healing.
Please contact her at [info@ThatZoiLife.com] if you would like to find out more about working with her.