Your sign is set by where the Sun was on the day you were born. Aries is March 21 to April 19, Taurus April 20 to May 20, Gemini May 21 to June 20, Cancer June 21 to July 22, Leo July 23 to August 22, Virgo August 23 to September 22, Libra September 23 to October 22, Scorpio October 23 to November 21, Sagittarius November 22 to December 21, Capricorn December 22 to January 19, Aquarius January 20 to February 18, and Pisces February 19 to March 20. The birthday finder at the top of this page does the lookup for you and flags the days where it depends on the year.

One of them, not both. The Sun is in exactly one sign at the moment you are born; a cusp just means you were born close to the day it crosses over. That day moves by up to a day from year to year, so if your birthday is within a day or two of a boundary, your birth year and time settle it. Any free birth chart calculator will tell you in seconds. Plenty of people born on the line relate to both signs anyway, and there is no rule against wearing both.

No. The Sun does pass in front of the constellation Ophiuchus every December, which is where the story comes from. But the signs of Western astrology are not constellations. They are twelve equal slices of the Sun's yearly path, fixed to the seasons and named after the constellations that sat behind them when the system was drawn. Ophiuchus was never one of the twelve slices, and your sign has not changed.

The stars did move, slowly, and your sign did not. The Earth wobbles on its axis over about 26,000 years, so the constellations have drifted roughly one sign westward since the zodiac was set. Western astrology anchors Aries to the spring equinox rather than to the stars, so it is unaffected. Vedic astrology tracks the actual constellations, which is why your Vedic sign is often the one before your Western sign. Both systems are internally consistent; they are just measuring different things.

The sun sign is the one you already know: where the Sun was on your birthday. It is the core. The moon sign is where the Moon was, which changes every two or three days, and is read as your private, emotional side. The rising sign is the sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon at the exact minute and place you were born, and is read as how you come across on first meeting. The moon needs your birth date; the rising needs your birth time and city.

The traditional shorthand works by element. Signs that share an element understand each other without explanation. Fire and Air feed each other, and Earth and Water hold each other. The sign directly opposite yours, six signs away, is the classic mirror: the pairing that either works completely or not at all. None of this is a rule. Every sign on this page has a section listing its people.

The zodiac is the band of sky the Sun travels through in a year, divided into twelve signs. A horoscope was originally a map of the whole sky at one moment, usually a birth; today it also means the daily forecast. A constellation is the actual pattern of stars. Velvet Moon's three Astra collections are named for the three ways a sign can be shown: the Horoscope glyph, the Spirit figure, and the Constellation map.

The glyph is the version everyone recognizes across a room, in two or three strokes. The figure, the ram or the twins or the water bearer, is the older picture the sign was named for, and reads as jewelry first. The constellation is the quietest of the three: the stars themselves, which only people who know will place. Most people know which one sounds like them within a few seconds of seeing all three side by side.