Zodiac sign dates

The ranges are the conventional tropical ones, the dates almanacs have printed for generations. They are approximate at the edges, and the reasons are worth knowing if your birthday sits near one.

The twelve signs and their dates

Each sign belongs to an element (fire, earth, air or water) and a modality (cardinal, fixed or mutable), and each has a ruling planet. Scorpio, Aquarius and Pisces carry two rulers: the traditional one, used for centuries, and a modern one assigned after Pluto, Uranus and Neptune were discovered. Our primer on elements and modalities explains how those families work, and each sign's name above opens its own page in the zodiac signs guide.

Why the dates move a little from year to year

The signs are not fixed to calendar dates. They are fixed to the Sun's position, measured from the March equinox, and the calendar only approximates that.

A calendar year has 365 days, and the Sun takes nearly six hours longer to come back round to the equinox. So each year it reaches the start of a sign about six hours later by the clock than the year before, until a leap day pulls the calendar back into line. Over each four-year cycle, the change of sign creeps toward the next calendar day and then jumps back. This is why two lists can disagree by a day about where Leo starts, and why neither is careless.

There is a second reason, and it matters if you were born in the Philippines. The Sun enters a sign at one instant, the same instant everywhere on Earth, but every table has to be worked out for some time zone. Manila runs eight hours ahead of Greenwich. A change that happens on a late evening in London has already crossed into the next day in Manila, so a table prepared for another part of the world can be a day out for a Philippine birthday.

None of this changes the answer for most people. Only a birthday within about a day of a changeover is affected, and everyone else can read their sign straight off the tables here.

Born on the cusp

If your birthday falls beside a changeover, you may have been told you were born on the cusp and belong to both signs. A chart does not work that way. At any moment the Sun stands in exactly one sign, so you have one Sun sign, even if you were born on the very day it moved.

What a table cannot tell you is which side of the line you landed on. For the last day of one sign and the first day of the next, the answer depends on the year you were born. On the day of the change itself it depends on the hour as well, because the Sun crossed at one moment during that day. A free birth chart works from your actual date and place, and your birth time if you know it, so it settles the question instead of estimating it.

It is still fair to notice something of the neighbouring sign in someone born near a boundary. When that is real, it usually comes from other placements. Mercury and Venus never travel far from the Sun, so either one can sit in the sign next door and bring some of that sign's manner with it.

Tropical and sidereal zodiacs

The dates on this page belong to the tropical zodiac, which most Western astrology uses and which Charm and Soul uses for every chart and reading. It begins Aries at the March equinox, so the signs stay tied to the turning points of the year. The sidereal zodiac, used in Vedic astrology, measures the signs against the background stars instead. Because the Earth's axis wobbles very slowly, the equinox has drifted backward against those stars over the centuries, and the two systems now sit a little more than three weeks apart. That is why a sidereal chart often gives a different Sun sign for the same birthday. Neither system has moved your birthday; they measure from different starting points. The same drift sits behind the story of a thirteenth sign, which comes from the constellations rather than from either zodiac.

What your Sun sign tells you, and what it leaves out

Your Sun sign describes the centre of a chart: how you tend to spend your energy, what you are growing toward, the part of you that feels most like yourself on a good day. It is a real placement and a useful one.

It is also one placement among many. The Moon changes sign every two or three days and describes what you feel and need in private. The Rising sign depends on the time and place of birth and describes how you meet the world. The houses show which areas of life each planet works in. None of these can be read from a birthday alone, which is why two people with the same Sun sign can be so unlike each other. Our primer on Sun, Moon and Rising walks through the other two pillars.

Zodiac signs by month

Every month holds the end of one sign and the start of the next, because the signs begin in the second half of a calendar month. Each section below gives the changeover in a sentence, the two signs involved and every day of the month with its sign. If your birthday sits right beside a changeover, read the section on cusps above before you settle on an answer.

Beyond the Sun sign

A birthday tells you which sign the Sun was in. It cannot show where the Moon was, which sign was rising, or which houses your planets fall in. To see those, cast your free birth chart. It places the Sun, the Moon and the planets for your date and place, and when you know your birth time it adds the Rising sign and the houses too.