As I have said elsewhere, I believe you can choose or identify your own sign and that you are not confined to birthdays, times, and places. Nowhere does this work better than in fiction. How do you identify these archetypes? Look at the symbols and the tropes that accompany them.

Let's look at the building blocks of each sign and some ways they have changed and are changing. Each sign has a history of collective cultural construction based on myth (stories) and connect-the-dot constellations, as well as on astute observations of human nature.

The kinds of characters that appear again and again in stories have coalesced into some pretty consistent archetypes, but as these characters appear in more modern stories, video games, and graphic novels, the collective view of them changes again.

Historically Associated Gods, Goddesses, Planets, and Celestial Bodies

First, let’s stay woke (I said what I said) to the fact that simply using the words ”rule” and “ruler” when we talk about associated planets and gods is from an era of kings and queens. In truth, these are “symbolic associations,” but that’s too long and awkward to say every time.

The Problem of Venus

Let’s face the other main problem head on. Only one planet was named after a woman, and the woman they chose was Venus: beautiful, sexy, and a traditional Trad Wife, “Good Mother” of blonde cherubs. Venus the god was actually more complex than that, but not much.

The Problem of Scorpio, Aquarius, and Pisces

Naming planets has not been up to women and when it was, they played the game by rules set by men. Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old English schoolgirl, named Pluto in 1930.

It was the perfect opportunity to choose a female. She could have chosen Trivia (Hecate) if she was so fascinated by the underworld. It’s likely she wasn’t reading Shakespeare’s play MacBeth at 11 and even if she if did, Hecate seemed to her to be more of a wicked witch, and not the grand scary master of death Pluto appeared to be.

An astrologer made the argument for Pluto to rule Scorpio and many astrologers followed. This also happened when Uranus and Neptune were discovered and named.

Shifting Interpretations of the Zodiac

So now some astrologers use the original planet “rulers” and some the new. These choices and the pop culture that followed shifted our views on the ruling signs and their characters in stories.

Now we see Scorpio as Dark Goth and we see Pisces as soft and weak with her head under the ocean. Aquarius “rules” electricity or is a woo woo New Age, post-nuclear, airhead sign.

I think about Aquarian Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling and I chuckle. Luna is a wise and powerful witch with unique super powers hiding under the “airhead” appearance and moniker Aquarius has picked up along the way. Perfect.

Rowling has said the actor playing Luna (Evanna Lynch) made the character better than she wrote it, proving the collaborative nature of archetype building. The fact that Lynch is an activist is, for me, Aquarius icing on the cake.

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Rome vs The World

We could also mourn the fact that astrology, like a lot of our institutions and political ideas, having traveled through many cultures, got stuck in the Roman calendar and the Roman pantheon.

But even sticking with Rome, left to me, Justitia, the Roman Goddess of Justice, would rule Libra; the hot planet now named Venus would be Mars (and still rule Aries); and the planet now named Mars would be wise Minerva. Also, Pluto would be named Trivia (Hecate) and would still rule Scorpio.

But I do love having Venus in the mix, and I do love its association with Taurus—maybe the asteroid now named Athena could be Venus.

The World Music of Astrology

Why are we relegated to using the Roman pantheon anyway? There are some super cool Japanese, Tibetan, Mayan, African, Celtic, and Nordic gods and goddesses I’d like to bring into this game. Why can’t the Yoruba God of the Hunt, Orisha Oshosi, rule Sagittarius? Kannon, the Japanese goddess of mercy and service, could rule Virgo.

We don’t do all that because, honestly, did you follow the changes I suggested? I can’t even remember it off the top of my head. The names of planets and pop astrology designed by the men of the ruling classes (and their wives, daughters, and random female astronomers) of the West is too engrained in our psyches at this point.

All we can do for now is shift the point of view and include new influences when we learn each sign so we understand the personality type the signs represent in a deeper way.

Jung, Campbell, and successors shifted the model to psychology & world myth.

Modern astrologers, influenced by psychologist Carl Jung, scholar Joseph Campbell, and their successors, do play this game. In proving that astrology is universal myth and fits psychological models, they brought in more influences.

While I love them for the main ideas they brought, these men were unhelpful in many others. Jung and Campbell were white males in Roman and Greek centered cultures. Campbell famously said women do not need a hero’s journey. That is easily disproved by the love female fans have for that journey in stories.

We’ll need female scholars of color to be as famous as Jung and Campbell if we want to make real change in the zeitgeist of astrology and myth in the psychological world.

The point here is that modern astrologers, including Jung, started with the traditional pantheon and brought in others to make a point. For now, I’ll do that too.

Maybe I’ll make my own zodiac later for fun. For now, we have what we have, and let’s learn it. Then we can play around.

Some signs began with a single association; as planets were discovered and named, they added another, and consequently, the archetype evolved.

The Example of Vulcan

If we had discovered that there was a planet hiding behind another in the orbits of existing planets, as we suspected for a while, you know it would have been named Vulcan and ruled Virgo. This actually helps make the point that the arts, personality types, and astrology have been intertwined all along.

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RULING PLANETS

These are the associations most astrologers use today.

Signs with a single ruler (and no shared planet):

• Aries: Mars

• Cancer: Moon (Moon goddesses)

• Leo: Sun (Sun gods)

• Sagittarius: Jupiter

• Capricorn: Saturn

Signs with two rulers:

• Scorpio: Mars + Pluto

• Aquarius: Saturn + Uranus

• Pisces: Jupiter + Neptune

Planets that still rule two signs:

• Mercury (Gemini, Virgo)

• Venus (Taurus, Libra)

⭐Learn more about the history of astrology itself (not the archetypes or signs) and how it evolved in this article about Planetary Science in the Oxford Encyclopedias.

We know the symbols and metaphors that build the archetype have changed and continue to change. It’s the themes, lessons, values, and personality types that stay true to human nature across the centuries.

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ELEMENTS: Fire, Air, Earth, Water

The elements of fire (heat, light), air (sky, wind), earth (stone, metal, earthquakes), and water (rain, wood, flood) are recognized worldwide and are associated with distinct emotional and personified characteristics.

FIRE SIGNS: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius

Passion, Energy, Enthusiasm

AIR SIGNS: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius

Intellect, Speech, Communication

EARTH SIGNS: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn

Building, Maintaining, Completing

WATER SIGNS: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces

Social, Emotion, Intuition

MODALITIES: Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable

The modalities of the signs are a way to describe similar modes of expression between pairs of opposite signs on the wheel

Cardinal Signs

Aries & Libra (male), Cancer & Capricorn (female) are Cardinal Signs. The key attribute is initiation. They represent the idea-generation and leadership start-up phase of the creative process.

Fixed Signs

Taurus & Scorpio (female), Leo & Aquarius (male)are Fixed Signs. The key attribute is tenacity. The Fixed Signs represent the building phase of the creative process and craftsmanship.

Mutable Signs

Gemini & Sagittarius (male), Virgo & Pisces (female) are Mutable Signs. The key attribute is adaptability. The mutable signs represent the revision (transformation) phase of the creative process and the distribution or communication of the resulting work.

When indigenous people from places like the Americas, Asia (and Australia and New Zealand) incorporated European astrology into their own religions and mysticism, and vice versa, those associations with the natural elements evolved. For instance, Virgo’s association with “Mother” Earth, plants, and growing things expanded.

CONSTELLATIONS

Sounds like a simple combination so far (Jupiter+fire+mutable = Sagittarius), but as the associated characteristics of these building blocks evolved through interactions with myriad cultures and were debated and integrated by astrologers, astronomers, storytellers, and philosophers across the centuries, a unique picture of each sign emerged.

Connect-the-Dots

When I describe the core building blocks of each archetype, I am not starting with Babylonians, Hellenistic Greeks, or Egyptian men on a hillside at night drinking and connecting the dots of constellations. Well, I am, but only for the purposes of humor.

We have no idea how they made those decisions, when, or even if the Babylonian seed drill was the inspiration for the original Aries constellation, before the ram became the symbol. That is entirely my conjecture, as far as I know.

I saw a picture of a seed drill, looked at the constellation, and knew the (wealthy) Babylonian astrologers called it “The Hired Man” because it signaled the time to hire people to plant and care for animals.

That idea wasn’t warrior-energy enough for the testosterone-worshiping Greeks and Romans, and the Greeks had this cool story about a golden ram, so…

What we know for sure is that the first sign of the zodiac and the Northern Hemisphere birth of the year in spring were one and the same. Male procreation is the enduring theme of Aries, not eggs and seeds.

Animal Totems, Basic Symbols, and Enduring Meaning

That is what I will focus on most: basic symbols and enduring meaning. It is the ram, not the seed drill, that most influenced that archetype. Archetypes shift across time. It’s about time for another shift, but these things happen slowly.

We don’t have to shift back to a female starting lineup for spring. We can just let female characters be Aries, and every Aries trans or female character in a beloved story helps make the archetype less gendered.

Oh, yeah, if you got this far. I’m all for WOKE astrology and writing. Feel free to unsubscribe if you can’t be open-minded about that.

I will cite a few sources for each inspiration for the archetype in the articles dedicated to them, but I will not provide academic analysis. Again, we all know the ram metaphor well. I’ll include links if you want to follow up. That is not my focus. I don’t think all that’s crucial to storytellers today.

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Why Every Association Cannot Be Identified and Described Here

There are many cultural influences on the zodiac’s archetypes from across Asia, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. It’s practically impossible to determine the full extent of the influences on every philosopher, storyteller, astrologer, and astronomer who served as a collector and shaper of these disparate cultural elements that originally defined the archetypes of each sign.

The complexity of origin was only compounded as the archetype’s development continued through history. For example, it expanded and evolved again following contact with indigenous cultures of the Americas, as those stories, arts, and gods were incorporated into the minds of philosophers, storytellers, and astrologers who have discussed and written about astrology since the 1400s. The synthesis and feedback loop of cultures has continued to inform the archetypes and storytelling.

Religion, mysticism, and metaphysics have a dynamic relationship with astrology, and all contribute to contemporary storytelling.

We cannot know—nor need to know—how everything connects to everything else. We only know that it does.

⭐RELATED POSTS: Archetypes vs. Tropes vs. Stereotypes

👉🏼COMING SOON: Astrology. Karma, and the Moral Path of Gaming Characters (Lawful Good, Chaotic Good . . .) s

These archetypes have evolved as they have traveled across many continents and through time, absorbing millions of stories into their DNA. Their well-structured combinations cover all the themes you can imagine and every character.

NOTES

• You can access a table of contents on a desktop by hovering over and then clicking the stack of lines in the left margin of the screen.

• Hey Grammar Police! You should know I have just given up and now use “they” for individuals. English has always lacked a gender-neutral term, and I am tired of saying him, him, him, or keeping track of how many times I use “her” and when and if it furthers a stereotype. I plan to write a post titled “My Fucking Style Guide.”

ASTROLOGY ARCHETYPES

One-third of your audience believes in astrology as science, but, as archetypes/personality types, it is embedded in your audience as a whole. You can’t find anyone who doesn’t know what their sign is supposed to be and what it is supposed to mean about them.

I just saw an interview with the actors of Fallout on Amazon Prime. When asked what sign their characters are, they all answered immediately. They chose the signs I considered their moon or rising signs as their sun signs. THAT’S interesting! However, the point is that they responded without thinking. It is built into us.

While most people do not know the archetypes as intimately as friends or family, we are all acquainted with them, and a better understanding of archetypes (AND sun, moon, and rising signs) can make stories easier to interpret and writing richer.

Start by learning these ancient archetypes and their lessons, and you won’t end up with small stories and forgettable characters. You won’t end up sabotaging yourself by subverting expectations in such a way that large parts of your audience abandon you (unless you consciously take the risk).

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TROPES, STEREOTYPES, & ARCHETYPES EXPLAINED

Many writers, and screenwriters, in particular, often focus on tropes—both writing them and subverting them. However, tropes are a subcategory, not a core category, and subverting them should be undertaken to create memorable, unique characters. But know the rules first because your audience has expectations you need to thoroughly understand.

There are many books on tropes and lists of tropes for writers. There are hundreds and hundreds of character and plot tropes.

Tropes provide a framework and a way to fill in the blanks when writers are stuck, which is all well and good, but they also describe a very narrow set of behaviors that can easily become formulaic and predictable.

In building a memorable and meaningful story, the archetypes and character arcs are the blueprints and lumber, and the tropes are the checklists, hammers, levels, screwdrivers, and nailguns.

Okay, give me a better analogy.

Tropes are important; they are the smaller tools that build the story. They describe a character’s role in the story. He’s a rogue, and he’s a lovable one. He is in the story to shake things up or to learn his lesson.

Tropes, stereotypes, and archetypes are shorthand for recurring characters, relationships, and plot devices that storytellers use, enabling audiences to recognize them immediately.

A trope is a type of person, not a character. It’s almost, but not quite, a stereotype. Tropes become stereotypes when over-simplified and limited. Stereotypes limit a type of person to a particular class, “race,” or gender role. The limits are the key to the stereotype. A woman can never be a lovable rogue, or called a rogue at all.

No, “rogue” is too nice a word to use, too “boys will be boys,” to use for a charming woman who plays around. You know what those women are called and what happens to them in stories. I don’t have to say it.

In fact, while “woke” means a lot of things in modern culture, I think the vast majority of people use it when stereotypes in stories are flipped or subverted. Finally, people who hate those all-female or all African-American productions of Shakespeare have a word to use as a weapon.

I have noticed another phenomenon lately: when writers change the archetype used in a book to a different archetype in an adaptation, audiences rebel and call it “woke.” This is fascinating. Subverting a stereotype IS woke. Subverting an archetype is just changing the archetype. It is a dangerous thing to do, and another reason writers should understand the archetypes.

Some audience members call it "woke" because they have no other term to express their dissatisfaction. I’ll provide an example when I discuss Rings of Power (Amazon Prime), changing Galadriel from Aquarius to Leo later in this article.

Half the signs are designated as “male” (fire and air) and half as “female” (earth and water). There is no problem when we talk about the signs, values, lessons, and themes. All the signs have equal beauty and worth then. Each element has equal power and strength.

There are some problems with male Aries starting the cycle of signs. I’ll talk about that in the article about Aries in April. However, the culmination of the spiritual journey is in female Pisces, so in many ways it balances out.

But, I am talking about characters here. That’s where it becomes problematic. The sexism is built in. Because the archetype has developed across cultures and religions worldwide, the vast majority of the tropes and stereotypes that resulted are based on gender. We’ll have to talk about how that sexism becomes specific within each archetype.

For now, let’s get back to tropes.

Examples: Quests, McGuffins, Relationship Tropes

Within the larger archetypal QUEST story structure, there might be an enemies-to-friends trope, a road trip trope, or a McGuffin, or all three. The archetypes, however, go deeper.

Reminder: A McGuffin is a symbolic object that turns out to be either less important than the characters (or audience) thought or not essential to the main story.

Pulp Fiction

Do you remember what they were looking for in Pulp Fiction? I vaguely remember a glowing suitcase. In any event, it wasn’t something crucial to the themes, characters, or story arc — it was a plot device to keep things moving. It was a trope — a holy grail.

What were the bigger archetypes involved? That was all embedded in character and the choices they made. Could they find redemption? Did they want to find it?

Each astrological archetype has that decision-tree arc embedded in it, too. What kind of choices does a person who fits this archetype often make, and how does each personality grow and evolve into making better choices? What’s a “better” choice anyway?

Fallout

In Fallout Season 1 (Amazon Prime, 2024—), there is a collection of McGuffin tropes. The main characters were each looking for certain people, then one man’s head, and now, in season 2, the enemies-to-friends (we assume) pair is looking for Hank MacLean and Cooper Howard’s family. We think they will bond. We believe they will learn from each other.

Enemies to Friends Trope: Okay, sure, you cut off my finger and then sold me to an organ harvesting company, but we have a common goal now, so...

Father-Daughter Trope: There is an obvious connection here. The Ghoul is looking for his daughter. Lucy is a daughter looking for her father.

Road Trip Trope: Traveling companions bickering over their world views. How will this trip and the McGuffin they seek change them?

But what's the ARCHETYPAL internal battle arc here?

We wonder if Lucy will lose herself and her hope and idealism in the darkness and the battle to survive, the way The Ghoul has lost himself, or will she bring him back to himself, to Cooper Howard?

That’s the power of the deeper archetype than the tropes that signal its existence.

The essential story is not found in the tropes! What exactly is their common goal? We all know these characters will find something or someone much bigger than all that.

The Stakes

We already know that Finding Truth and the fight for Freedom from Tyranny (The Sagittarius Archetype) are the universal stakes that make this story so compelling.

Then there are the deepest personal stakes we all face when we are confronted with true enemies and unexpected and challenging circumstances in real life.

How can I hold onto who I am and not become someone I would dislike? How can I hold onto my values and life philosophy in the face of tremendous stress? Where and what do I need to change?

RELATED POST: FALLOUT Season 1 | The Four ♐♐️♐️♐️ Horsemen of the Apocalypse on Amazon Prime

I’m going to continue using Sagittarius as the example. Sagittarius is often written to be the hunter, or outlaw, or the reluctant hero, or the former freedom-fighting soldier, or the cowboy who either has a heart of gold or the most cynical mind possible. Those are tropes based on the archetype.

But we can also think of Sagittarius as the archetype that encompasses the bigger motivations and lessons of those characters.

Hans Solo, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, George Lucas, 1977

CHARACTER: Han Solo

ARCHETYPE: Sagittarius

TROPES: Reluctant hero, lovable rogue, freedom fighter.

In my post on Sagittarius, I talk about the common story types within that archetype. For all the signs, the story is always based on what astrologers and Jungian psychologists would call The Soul’s Journey, and that is directly connected to the character arc.

For Han Solo in Star Wars, the archetypal arc was to choose love and a worthy cause bigger than himself over personal freedom. That’s what matters.

The rest are just tropes.

RELATED POST: The Sagittarius Archetype | Mutable Fire

CHARACTER ARCS

There is an astrological, philosophical idea that a soul is born in Aries, then reborn in Taurus, and so on, around and around the wheel until perfected. It’s not really linear like that, but that’s the basic idea. It is a universal character arc.

In addition, each sign has a partner: One sign above the horizon line and the other below the horizon line. Those partners share related lessons, so integrating them is the task of the soul.

Maybe you can believe that and maybe not, but the effect it has had on our stories is profound.

Let’s look at two characters millions of people know.

The Lord of the Rings (Sam & Frodo)

Sam & Frodo as Tropes

On the trope level, in the story of Sam and Frodo, we find the idea that forced proximity (trope) and the fact that they have common enemies (trope) are what build these relative strangers (the master and servant trope) into lifelong friends who are like brothers (trope). There are other tropes there, but you get the idea.

Tropes, then, are smaller, but important ideas that build characterization, plot, and relationships.

Sam & Frodo as Archetypes

Within the larger archetypes, we see the steadfast, stubborn, unbreakable devotion and dedication of Sam the Taurus—an archetype that both grows within him as he begins to love Frodo and is revealed by the story's circumstances.

We also have the kindness, mercy, empathy, and determined sacrifice of Frodo the Pisces (archetype), whose goal is to hold himself together long enough to save the entire world. (Yes, Nerds, I know. Frodo and Bilbo have the same birthday. I told you, I don’t care about that.😎Bilbo is a Sagittarius, Frodo is a Pisces.)

That archetypal love/friendship story between Frodo and Sam, and what they accomplish together, is the big picture that drives our emotional connection and our abiding love for these memorable characters.

What Sam and Frodo show us is moral beauty in the face of impossible odds. They not only maintain who they are but also find themselves.

In the hands of great writers, what the characters learn and become are found within the story’s archetypes, and the key that elevates it to something universal.

Writers who do not get hung up on trope-based writing and turn to the archetypes are the writers who create something lasting.

CARL JUNG, Astrology, and Today’s Archetypes

Before I get started on Jung, let me say that my aim at In Our Stars is not to support OR debunk astrology as a science.

It’s simply to use these highly developed archetypes to help us write and understand fiction.

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The influential psychologist Carl Jung put together a list of what he called archetypes.

The word “trope” wasn’t in common usage and certainly not among psychologists, so his list of “archetypes” is really a list of higher-level tropes. He just called them archetypes. Jung was strongly influenced by astrology in the trope list he developed. Jung's characterization of them as archetypes has made the two terms synonymous in the popular lexicon.

Jung’s list: caregiver, creator, explorer, hero, innocent, jester, lover, magician, orphan, ruler, rebel, sage

You can get more specific with tropes by combining them.

Examples include the hero-fool or jester (Forest Gump), the innocent ruler (Tommen Baratheon), and the hero-orphan-magician (Harry Potter), to name three among the millions of characters who embody these tropes.

You may notice that Jung identified twelve “archetypes,” but they don’t correspond to the twelve signs. As Sam and Frodo (and Pippin, Merry, and Eowyn) demonstrate, any archetype can produce a hero, however unlikely.

You could put hero, explorer, and jester under Sagittarius, for instance, but lots of other signs are known to be heroic types, and funny too. So there is no real alignment.

Some tropes are products of the dance of archetypes and other tropes. Many derive from the modern era, such as the antihero. Some were excluded from Jung’s analysis of myths and folktales.

It’s the character arc they go through that is the root of the story, and that is based on archetypes.

The journey through the planetary houses […] signifies the overcoming of a psychic obstacle, or of an autonomous complex, suitably represented by a planetary god or demon. —Carl Jung, C.W. Vol.14: Mysterium Coniunctionis

Jung compelled everyone to take a position on astrology, pro or con.

Jung reintroduced astrological archetypes into common discussions of storytelling, while simultaneously ensuring they would never be discussed in serious literary or psychological academia.

The Roman Catholic church had already turned away from its original beliefs in astrology and demonized these pagan beliefs of ordinary people as distracting from a belief in monotheism.

In reverse order, though, astrologers began to incorporate Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Taoist, and Egyptian cosmology into discussions of astrology. The archetypes kept developing.

Science, as we know it today, came along in the Enlightenment and brushed away all of that. They said, What? Your birthday determines your personality and life path? That’s not provable or real! Bah Humbug to ALL of it!

Take a Stand? What’s the Either/Or Choice?

Because Jung continued to stand by scientific empiricism — even though, to be fair, empiricism is philosophy — he and his church, other psychologists, and astronomers reacting to him helped solidify the idea that everyone must take a position on astrology: pro or con.

Two Unprovable Claims

To make that harder, Jung made two conflicting claims about astrology, confusing himself (and us).

ONE: Astrology is a symbolic, poetic language.

The first claim is that astrology is a symbolic, poetic language that can manifest in dreams and art and evoke intuition. It is part of the collective unconscious — hence it’s a set of universal story motifs and archetypal in nature.

TWO: Astrological signs for individuals are determined by math and birthdays.

Jung also believed in a mystical underpinning to synchronicity, so he used astronomy, mathematics, and the resulting Gregorian calendar birthdates to choose the signs ascribed to individuals in his “Analytic Psychology” practice.

He conducted research comparing charts of married couples to identify astrological and seasonal associations, in an attempt to demonstrate the scientific nature of astrology.

He found some statistically improbable sun-moon conjunctions and oppositions among those couples. These are coincidences that don’t prove the case, but they keep Jung and many others today from completely abandoning the claim that astrology is a science.

It [the chart] represents, in essence, a system of original and fundamental qualities in a person’s character, and can therefore be regarded as an equivalent of the individual psyche. - Carl Jung, 1955

Jung said it was the science of antiquity, even though no modern empirical scientist would say that astrology is valid, reliable, or accurate when put to the repeatable test.

For Jung, basing it on anecdotal observation and experience was enough to call it science. This also fits Jung’s view of the Soul’s Journey.

So, is astrology hogwash, symbolic physics, astronomy, psychology, or art?

Yes?

Because Jung used actual astronomy and math drawn charts, you, as Jung’s patient, could not conclude you were a Sagittarius based on your self-analysis, intuition, and the tropes you play out in life— not even based on your dreams, which Jung did regard as important.

If you dreamed you were a centaur seeking truth and freedom, Jung would look for where Sagittarius fell in your chart. He would not decide you were a Sagittarius at heart. To me, this was a real shame.

So Jung further marginalized himself (and astrology) by claiming that astrology is both science and poetry. That made it so we can’t talk about astrology anymore, even in the arts, without being pressed into taking a position: Do you believe in astrology or not? Is it real?

It would be frivolous of me to try to conceal from the reader that such reflections are not only exceedingly unpopular but even come perilously close to those turbid fantasies which becloud the minds of world-reformers and other interpreters of “signs and portends.” But I must take this risk, even if it means putting my hard-won reputation for truthfulness, reliability, and capacity for scientific judgment in jeopardy. - Carl Jung. 1958

RELATED POST: Calendar Shenanigans: The sun sign isn’t where it used to be . . .

I wish Jung had taken that extra step to the thought that, yes, we can fit ourselves into these signs and combinations of signs, but that birthdays do not determine that. Maybe his own character arc would have led him there if he had lived longer.

Today’s Jungian psychologists have a mix of beliefs. Many believe in the birthdate-based chart, and some don’t, as you might expect.

Final Q & A with Jung

What Jung observed in his study of the system for constructing an astrological chart was how complete a picture of a personality and their life lessons it provided.

It was so detailed and awe-inspiring that it made him believe in it. I’d like to ask him this, though . . .

• Could that astrological chart serve as a visual language to describe a well-developed fictional character better than a live one?

• Could astrology have been a myth-making and storytelling character-building and theme-building technique all along, even when people could not see it out of the original context?

Now, if someone asks your birthday, you know right away why they are asking, and you immediately sort them into a box: Us or Them. Don’t you? What if that choice is a false dichotomy, no matter how common?

What if someone asked, “What sign do you identify with the most?” There would be a pause while you tried to figure that one out. “What sign would you like to be?”

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Subverting Tropes and Archetypes is Dangerous. Be careful.

Subverting tropes is fun and creative, but large sections of your audience will resist, so you must be careful.

Must romantic comedy follow a formula?

I’m thinking of the backlash against the movie My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), starring Julia Roberts as the protagonist — or was she the antagonist?

I recommend this film. It’s a great story, but it’s more of a dramedy than it seems or was billed to be. It’s actually about the deepest aspects of the Libra archetype: partnership, justice, putting others first, etc.

Be careful with how you subvert expectations, because you might make the audience dislike the character (and its writer).

Spoiler: Bottom line: they did not follow up on the friends-to-lovers trope, and audiences reacted with displeasure.

ASIDE: I prefer to use older films in my examples whenever possible, in the hope that more people will have seen them. 70% of the surveyed population reports having seen The Lord of the Rings trilogy, so I often use that. Julia Roberts is popular, so I am hopeful you have seen this movie. If not, watch it, and you’ll see what I mean about it breaking out of the tropes and the Libra themes involved.

Is Galadriel an Aquarius or not?

I am also thinking about how the writers handled the character of Galadriel in the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime. (2022-)

You will have a problem with your audience when they have already decided who the character is, and you write her as a completely different archetype in the prequel.

The 8000-year-old, end-of-the-third-age Galadriel, as portrayed in The Lord of the Rings books and Peter Jackson's films, is emblematic of the highly evolved Aquarian Water-Bearer archetype — a cool, clear, community-minded, and ethereal visionary. Her power is spiritual and atomic.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime. (2022-) made second-age Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) into a hot-headed, young, egotistical Leo warrior who is also a visionary, but her power is mainly elven physical prowess and high-elf intelligence.

Okay, hang in there a minute with me on this. This actually makes a lot of sense in a character arc that spans thousands of years. Leo and Aquarius’ life lessons are linked, and one leads to the other. It also completely aligns with Jung’s analysis that, to learn our lessons, we must integrate perceived conflicts or oppositions within our nature. Leo and Aquarius are opposite on the wheel.

However, if you don’t have deep enough knowledge of these archetypes, you will write them unskillfully — and they did.

In Rings of Power, season 1, Galadriel the Leo was obsessed with her identity as a warrior, and she was focused on only one performance goal: find and kill Sauron. She didn’t direct people to do things; she commanded them with a queenly and imperious manner.

She was even (apparently) directed not to look at the people she was ordering about and pontificating to about her fiery personal obsession.

To try to make us like her, they added a fairly minor “Save the Cat” moment where she goes back to help a fellow elf who got too cold, but this wasn’t enough, and the effort fell flat. It didn’t help her fellow elves like her much either. They mutinied.

If the writers had thought through the archetype arc from one sign to the other a little more, large sections of the audience wouldn’t have seen a self-centered brat with a sword and decided not to like her or care what happens to her. Audiences would have liked her enough to give the writers more time to show her arc before judging it.

Only just under 40% of the audience finished season one, and 60% of the remaining audience didn’t move on to season two, which is a real shame because it was much more focused, and the acting, scene writing, and directing are chef’s kiss in many places.

There were other reasons for the audience loss as well. We should give these shows the episodes needed to tell the story (in season one, only six were needed). Still, almost all the fans I have seen online at some point mention unlikable or unrecognizable Galadriel.

For fans who finished season 2, they will have seen Galadriel getting closer to her Aquarius phase. Most of those who stayed understood how she got from A to B instinctively anyway.

However, breaking out of the archetype audiences expected to see in order to create a character arc that started in a very different place wasn’t as well planned out as the writers believed, and for many fans, it didn’t work at all.

Why do we need to know about archetypes and tropes?

Writing is hard. (No kidding, genius.) No, seriously. It’s not just that having a starter archetype or trope makes it easier; it also makes a character more understandable to an audience. It’s shorthand. That becomes the artistry of it.

I’m not saying that Rings of Power isn’t a good show overall or that subverting expectations shouldn’t be done.

The better the character fits the archetype and the more specificity added by the writer, the more memorable the character will be to audiences.

There is much more to learn about these archetypes than the popular culture interpretations of their signs. Learning more in-depth astrology can help writers, directors, and actors create more memorable and relatable stories and help audiences enjoy them more, too.

The Big Three

In the behavioral sciences, we think about what is genetic, like basic temperament, and what is learned. That’s where twin studies come in. It’s considered pretty close to 50% genetic and 50% learned.

In astrology, three signs matter above all others for a character: the sun, moon, and rising signs. Some parts genetic, some learned.

There are always categories in personality tests. For many tests, where you fit is only marginally reliable since some people change a lot in a lifetime.

THE SUN SIGN

The core temperament is the SUN SIGN. This is our cognition, our basic ways of processing the world. Most of that is genetic. Our families and friends know this person, sometimes better than we do.

If a character in a book, film, or TV show has most of the Sagittarius traits in abundance and they are strong and enduring throughout the story, think Sagittarius Sun.

For example (see the chart below), the fictional character Cormoron Strike is a Sagittarius, as confirmed by the author.

THE MOON SIGN

The inner world of the MOON SIGN is how we experience and process emotions. Most of this is human nature, of course, plus social experience. This is the inner character monologue or story point of view. No one knows the person we are inside unless we tell them. It’s too easy to misinterpret on the surface.

Does a character have some of the traits of a sign that is not the sun sign, but you only see those characteristics when you get to know them better?

Are those traits most evident in the inner emotional life? Do they mostly surface at emotional or high-intensity moments, or do they drive emotional choices? That is the moon sign.

In the case of Cormoron Strike, that sign is in Pisces and yes, the author chose that. He is perceptive and empathetic. He is motivated to help others find emotional closure. However, he is also prone to self-deception when it comes to his emotions and he can be secretive. We would not have so many books if Strike wasn’t secretive.

RISING SIGN (Ascendant)

The Rising Sign describes how a character presents and expresses themselves to the world, and what traits others may see first about them. It is our set of strategies. It is the mask we wear, but that does not mean it is false. It is our tool for interacting with the world.

In Vedic astrology, it is considered more important than the sun sign, since its math determines where everything else is in the chart. We don’t get to know every character well, so sometimes the rising sign is all we can guess based on the trope or role they play in the story.

Cormoron Strike has a Scorpio Rising, as the character states in Troubled Blood. When creating this example character chart, I chose a time that would make that work and also give him the Sun in the first house, as the character reported. His time was not given.*

Building Personality

You can see the sun, moon, and rising signs in the chart of Cormoron Strike — a character written by J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith — below.

I am not advocating that writers plan out all the signs in advance or decide them in order, or even decide them all. Sometimes only one is important—especially for side characters. As always, some writers plan in detail, and others discover things as they go along. You may suddenly realize your character has some Virgo qualities, and after that, when you are stuck for what would she do here questions, you may find thinking about the signs gives you an answer.

RELATED POST: Archetypes vs. Tropes vs. Stereotypes Knowing pop astrology is definitely not the same thing as understanding the depth of these archetypes.

Instinct and Intellect

Learning about the astrological archetypes is not meant as a way for writers to front-load a birth chart or even a sun sign. You don’t think of a story or a character and immediately draw up a chart for them. Well, you might if you were suddenly inspired, or you think that way.

The process is more likely to be instinctive, generative, and dynamic — a balance between applying a set of rules or characteristics and adding poetry.

The term “imaginal realm” has its immediate provenance in Islamic mysticism, but the idea itself — if truth be told, an archetype more than an idea […] is traditionally understood to be a boundary realm between two worlds, each structured according to its own governing conventions and unfolding according to its own causality. - Cynthia Bourgeault

The two imaginal “worlds” can be described in a spiritual, metaphysical way or simply as a way to enter the world of your story.

In this case, there is a conscious, analytical process in which knowledge of the astrological archetypes resides, and an instinctive way of accessing the inner world, where the archetypes reside in everyone. When you write using this knowledge and also have instinctive access to these archetypes, you reside in the imaginal space.

Enough Abstraction, How Does It Actually Work?

Cooper Howard | The Ghoul

You know you will be writing about tyranny so truth and freedom are core themes. You write “Sagittarius” on your white board.

You could start writing with a setting that screams the Sagittarius archetype, such as the Wild West of America, or Peru, the backcountry of Australia, or the Alaskan wilderness. For humans in that setting, freedom and the clarity of truth become essential. Then you begin developing the characters and plot.

Alternatively, you begin with a plot about the bad guys. Perhaps capitalism and government is now thoroughly married together. Then if freedom and truth were thoroughly thwarted (say that 3 times fast) and it was ALL about winning, you might kill everyone else off, so in the modern world, that means nuclear winter. BIG cockroaches, everyone know that. How would we survive? How would humanity mutate, if they did?

OR You begin by drafting a character.

In that nuclear winter, wild, wild west, you imagine a cowboy who values truth and freedom. “Cowgirl” feels too complicated and ambitious to tackle so you decide on “Cowboy.” That makes you think about Sagittarius, so you make him a former soldier willing to die for freedom. The archetype is solidifying.

SAGITTARIUS Sun AND Rising | He is what he appears to be.

Knowing the archetype, you make him a straight-shooter. He tells the truth, or he says nothing. If he doesn't want to answer your question, he doesn’t. He doesn’t deceptively imply things, and he does not lie to you. If you asked him to be deceptive for the cause of freedom, his choices would make the whole story a lot more interesting,

You want him to be complex, so he is also a cynical bastard because Sagittarius villains and anti-heros are always cynical—they aren’t usually motivated by power or ambition. Okay, so cynicism is an obvious choice for a Sagittarius sun sign anti-hero, but is there more beneath it?

You realize, after you have interacted with him on the page for a while, that he is raging inside because when his world fell apart (doesn't it always?), he felt powerless to take care of his family, and in this ex-soldier, that makes him want to take up the fight.

Maybe he had a chance to kill the bad guy, but he isn't a murderer, so he didn’t. But that led to a nuclear apocalypse.

SCORPIO Moon

Now he is on a mission to regain power and get revenge. Power and revenge? Hmm. Now you start thinking about Scorpio.

Is this plot starting to sound familiar?

Okay, now this character of Cooper Howard from Fallout is truly coming to life. He is clearly recognizable as a Sagittarius with Scorpio influences, but he is not a caricature.

We know him, but he can surprise us. We also know what we hope from him: that he will find freedom, truth, and true justice, and that he can stop being the cynical monster he has become. It's an interaction between the audience's questions and expectations for Sagittarius and Scorpio and the writer’s answers.

RELATED POST: FALLOUT Season 1 | The Four ♐♐️♐️♐️ Horsemen of the Apocalypse on Amazon Prime

The Resonant Feedback Loop of Writing with Archetypes in Mind

Once a “thematic match” to a sign is recognized, the writer can lean into that sign’s core values to deepen the character’s motivations and flaws, effectively using astrology to backfill and expand the character’s complexity.

This entire process could be described as a resonant feedback loop, like improvising music. You hear a theme in your mind. Many instruments can play that music. The sign validates the character traits already found, while the writer’s broader knowledge of that sign suggests new, organic directions for the character’s growth.

We know that writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling successfully employed these archetypes. I don’t know when Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith) decided the main character in her mystery series, Cormoron Strike, was a Sagittarius, maybe from the very beginning. She knew he would be a big guy, a former soldier, a hunter, and commitment-phobic. It sounds to me like she knew early on, but she has confirmed his sign.

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You can begin with the story’s overall story themes.

At some point, you may realize it’s lawful justice that matters more than freedom to at least one of your characters, and suddenly, you have shifted to thinking about Libra. Maybe there is another character with Libra tendencies.

That’s how this works; it’s a dance, and things change. Also, signs interact. It’s interesting to put Sagittarius and Libra together. Once you know the signs, you start thinking. Is my character lawful? Does she want to get the truth out there and let justice take care of itself, or will she deal out justice Wild West fashion? Is her name Lucy?

Everyone has every sign in their chart somewhere. There are 12 houses, one for each sign. When we look at a chart, we look at more than the Big Three.

For instance, in Cormoron’s chart, I note his Virgo midheaven and the trines between Scorpio and Pisces in the chart, and the many conjunctions.

I do not know whether Jo Rowling planned all that out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if choosing one birthdate or year over another was based on such detailed analysis. It makes sense that her character would know his own chart, given the fact that his mother was into both astrology and the tarot.

Rowling has stated that she does not believe in astrology as such, but does think it can be a tool to access intuition, like poetry. Maybe JKR didn’t say that. Maybe her other protagonist, Robin Ellacott, did. That is what Jung said about it, too.

Same. I agree.

Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, “Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!”

Yes, as my swift days near their goal:
‘Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.

-Emily Bronte, “The Old Stoic”

Sagittarius Symbols

We do not put centaurs in too many stories, but we have not abandoned the bow and arrow or the horse. The cowboy hats of the Americas and wide-brim hats in general—meant to keep the rain off when you travel— are now a symbol for Sagittarius. Sagittarius has always been The Wanderer, and the values of courage, freedom, and truth have always been part of the archetype.

The personality traits represented by the Horse in the Chinese zodiac certainly align with Sagittarius. There are thousands of associations, but we know the archetype when we see it, even if cultures do not call it Sagittarius.

If you are unsure about the distinction between archetypes, stereotypes, and tropes, or just want to know how I am using those words, read . . .

RELATED POST: Archetype Astrology? | Archetypes vs Tropes vs Stereotypes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: The Modern Sagittarius | Familiar Faces in Fiction

• Sagittarius Genres and Themes

• Character Tropes & Stereotypes

• Sagittarius Personality Traits

• Dark Sagittarius

• Character Case Studies (Bilbo, Gandalf, Katniss, etc.)

PART 2: ♐Archetype Building Blocks

• Jupiter, Gods, and Centaurs

• Values, Lessons, and Themes

• Hercules & The Killing of the Stymphalian Birds

A more detailed table of contents is available by clicking the lines that appear in the left margin when reading on a desktop.

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PART 1: The Modern Sagittarius | Familiar Faces in Fiction

Sagittarius GENRES and THEMES

Sagittarian story themes focus on self-mastery and fighting cynicism, tyranny, dishonesty, and dishonor. These stories are often about developing the courage to do what is right after figuring out exactly what that might be.

Sagittarius genres tend to be travel and road-trip stories, thrillers, westerns, adventure, science fiction, and fantasy. The settings for Sagittarius stories can have wide-open vistas (and often do) or cramped quarters below a submarine deck. The point is that, in some way, the setting is wild or dangerous — or both.

Of course, there are horror, mystery, and romance that may feature a Sagittarian character, but these genres often incorporate themes from other signs. The usual tropes for a Sagittarius character in a different sign’s theme are to function as a jester, sidekick, or guru. Maybe they just have a big mouth.

In other words, they might get murdered in the first 10 minutes of a Scorpio story because they confronted a murderer with the truth (while they are alone out in the middle of nowhere) and said they plan to bring the killer to justice. Good job, Sagittarius.

Sagittarius CHARACTER TROPES & STEREOTYPES

Until recently, Sagittarius has appeared in most stories as male, but not always. That is how the archetype was designed, first by male astrologers and then by patriarchal warrior societies.

If you want to write an unforgettable Sagittarius character, male or female, you have to look past the way people, who weren’t culturally perceptive enough to know the difference between archetypes and stereotypes, first conceived it.

When I get to the section below on case studies, I’ll talk about Eowyn in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as the iconic female Sagittarius example.

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SAGITTARIUS PERSONALITY TRAITS | Go Big or Go Home

Big & Lucky

Because Jupiter rules Sagittarius, everything about a Sagittarius character will be larger than life. They usually have strong voices, loud, hearty laughs, and are almost always big and tall; the basic point is to make sure they don’t blend into a crowd. If they do, it won’t be for long.

They are often portrayed as immense individuals. Think Brienne of Tarth (A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin), Gandalf (The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien), Hagrid (The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling), or Cormoran Strike (Cormoran Strike series, Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling).

Of course, writers can play with this. Sagittarians Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins are, respectively, very big and very small, but both are big personalities, and their presence is strongly felt throughout the entire story. Sagittarians Brienne of Tarth and Arya Stark follow the same pattern.

Apparently, if you worship Jupiter correctly, you will be luckier than anyone who worships any other god. In stories, a Sagittarius’s luck often starts as catastrophic and becomes ridiculously good—no middle ground.

Katniss Everdeen is the perfect example of that in The Hunger Games. Mat Cauthon, in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series, is another example. Both have disastrous luck at first, but over the course of time, we see that no one could be luckier.

Of course, luck benefits from self-confidence, and Sagittarius has that in spades.

In fact, a writer of the super lucky Sagittarius character has to write fantasy or farce or try to walk the line and stop while it’s still marginally believable.

My favorite example of Jupiter’s luck appears in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Hobbit. Bilbo (Sagittarius) and the Dwarves, for 99% of three movies, avoid broken bones, crushing, falling, being eaten, being shot, and death. Gandalf (also Sagittarius) and Bilbo survive the entire adventure, of course. These characters are SO lucky in this children’s book; it is as big and silly as Tolkien meant it to be.

People talk about living a “small life.” When your life suddenly expands, you might find yourself thanking Jupiter or cursing him. You can get a raise or a windfall, but you can also get fat or end up with a thousand things to do.

There is nothing small about a Sagittarius life. It’s like winning a billion dollars. Is it really lucky? How in the world would you manage all that? Wouldn’t you rather win a bit less? It makes a more interesting story, though, right?

Bold & Blunt

Sagittarians hate wandering around a party making small talk, so they’d rather pick a fight, or grab a lampshade and dance on the table, and — like all centaurs everywhere— They’ll drink too much and talk too much.

They will embarrass you and themselves by telling all your secrets, and theirs too.

They have the foot-in-mouth disease of blurting out the truth at inconvenient, uncomfortable moments, probably at the top of their lungs.

Think Hagrid, again.

This is a character who starts their hero’s journey by opening their big mouth, telling off a manager or customer, and getting fired.

This is the best friend who tells someone their coat smells, or they have mascara on the tip of their nose. This is the character who tells their friend (five minutes before the wedding) that it’s a mistake to marry that man. Annoyingly, they are almost always right.

This is the character who suddenly spouts the most uncomfortable truth about another to their face, resulting in both of them standing there in shocked silence.

Dexterity in speech starts in Gemini, but Sagittarius is known for everything from using words to evade commitment to the off-the-cuff, inspirational throw-yourself-into-battle speech. When a Sagittarius character speaks the blunt truth to another in a story, the audience might say aloud, “Facts!” or “She’s not wrong.”

The Lesson

Like Gemini, Sagittarius is supposed to master skilled speech. One of the Gemini and Sagittarius lessons blended together is what might be called “right speech” by the Buddhists.

You say the right thing at the right time to the right person, and you don’t abuse your skills. Truth + kindness. Not so easy to master.

Cheerful, Optimistic, & Easy-Going

“We Cowpokes, we take it as it comes,” says Sagittarian Cooper Howard, and then he repeats it when he is The Ghoul in Fallout (Amazon Prime Video). He means it differently each time, but he is a (mainly) flexible character playing with the cards he is handed.

Howard used to be a very easy-going and optimistic guy before circumstances changed him into the dark Sagittarius/Scorpio villain he is now.

Take Jovial optimism and add the mutability of this sign, and you have someone who gets along with everyone, as long as they don’t push for too much commitment or ask them to do something unethical or betray them.

Most stories are about people learning, changing, adapting to circumstances, and overcoming the lucky or unlucky odds and their own weaknesses. Everyone needs a little mutability, but there is always the risk that people will take advantage of you. Whether you can hold onto your soul when you stop being easy-going is great drama

Hilarity Ensues

Jupiter, being a son of Saturn, was a pretty serious guy, so how did Sagittarius get to be considered the funniest sign? It’s more about Jupiter making the people happy. If you are aligned with Jupiter and have his approval, you will be both lucky and light-hearted. The word jovial comes from the root jov (from Jupiter).

The idea of the good humor of Sagittarius is something that evolved, not just from having the favor of Jupiter, but also from the happiness that results from being an honorable person, having immense good luck, being open-minded about people who are different from you, keeping a positive outlook (aka known as “keeping your sense of humor”), and also from those stories of clever centaurs drinking too much wine and partying like it’s 1201 BCE.

If you are deeply knowledgable about human nature and the absurdities of life, you can’t help but laugh.

Intolerant of Trivia or Foolishness

Foolishness should be differentiated from playfulness here. Sagittarians love to fool around, as long as it’s witty, artful, or meaningful. But show a lack of considered thought or an obsession with meaningless conversation, and you will either wonder where they went or have to recover from being told what a fool you are.

Ethical and Truthful

The thing Sagittarius characters do best, in my opinion, is help give people the courage to speak the truth and face the consequences of that. A main character in a theme that involves calling out fraud, lies, and corruption with radical honesty, or a story where the truth changes history, is usually a Sagittarius.

The Sagittarius hero is an ethical character who stands up — at some point — in a legislature, or board room, church meeting, staff meeting, or in the face of the president or king—and tells the uncomfortable truth.

Putting your life and livelihood on the line because of your principles is a BIG choice, and courage is Sagittarius’s middle name.

These protagonists have no use for half measures, so no white lies for them. They seek and tell the truth and nothing but the truth, even if it hurts. They can’t help themselves.

An Aventurer of the Mind and Body

Many Sagittarian characters start as professors or armchair explorers and then become adventurers. Those armchair-to-action-adventure freedom-loving characters appeal to all of us readers, and writers love to include them.

Sagittarius is the least extroverted of the three fire signs, because of all that BIG smarts. They can’t talk to that many people. They may be a gregarious comedian in public, but unlike Leo and Aries, they don’t have a long list of close friends in their own sphere.

The ninth house rules culture, foreign travel, philosophy, psychology, religion, higher education teaching, and knowledge. You can’t talk to just anyone about topics you have read everything ever written on. While this house does rule higher education, most Sagittarian characters—being fiercely independent—are self-taught.

In Tolkien’s book, The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins was well known for studying all the time. He pored over his books and maps and avoided everyone but Frodo. He loved the elves and wanted to know all about them.

He was a little guy, so he never seriously considered going to see these things or meet the elves until Gandalf practically pushed him out the door. Once on the road, however, he was quite good at adventuring, showing intelligence and bravery at every turn.

In The Lord of the Rings, he retired to Elrond’s house, probably to have someone he could talk to. For him, Rivendell and Elrond’s 6000 years of knowledge was Bilbo living his best life inside a magnificent library. It’s easy to picture Elrond gently shooing him away or distracting him with food after the hundredth question.

Languages

While Sagittarian Gandalf could speak every language in Middle-earth, including Warg, Elrond could read them all. I chose a Sagittarius rising for Elrond. (I say he’s an Aquarius like Galadriel)

Sagittarius loves to travel and learn languages. It seems at odds with the simple cowboy, but the main character cowhands in stories are often Sagittarius. (Yes, I mean cowboy, but I am trying not to use that male label)

There may be many side cowhand characters with different sun signs, but if a cowhand (I wish cowhand didn’t sound silly) suddenly makes a speech in the advanced and challenging language of Navajo — or any language other than their own, really — you have to suspect this character is a Sagittarius. One language is usually not enough to contain a Sagittarius.

A Hermit and Solo Wanderer

Many Sagittarians are solitary, especially at the beginning of their arc. Being alone gives you time to think without noisier minds around you rattling off opinions and talking about things they know nothing about.

Besides, it’s easier to read books when you are alone.

Courageous, Independent, and Defiant

This starts at “Don’t tell me what to do or where to be and when.” It doesn’t end there. As a Sagittarius character evolves, they find themselves in situations where it is hard for most people to stand up and do the right thing, but it’s the right thing to do, so Sagittarians will do it.

In stories, we want to see characters stand up for themselves and others, be free to say and do whatever they want, and avoid negative consequences for this risk-taking, so they often succeed, giving us hope for ourselves in the real world.

Outside fiction, few of those choices go unpunished, which is why it takes real courage. We know what really happens to most whistleblowers, activists, and freedom fighters.

Sagittarius characters who make speeches about freedom and take steps to protect it help us take those steps when it’s our turn because they are the right thing to do. Do the next right thing. That is a motto an evolved Sagittarius can live by. Or maybe do what you want, but be ready to pay for it.

What is courage?

To spread yourself out in the world, you need freedom and independence, and for Sagittarius, those things must be defended at any cost.

An Aries is brave. Bravery is not the same as courage. Aries is fearless.

Real courage is acting when you are full of fear. It is taking action when you are fully aware of all the consequences and even know for sure that you will pay for the choices you make.

A Sagittarius is knowledgeable, so they think much more deeply about the consequences of their actions. An evolved Sagittarius might lose a leg in the fighting, but never their courage.

However, we can go further than that.

In a famous conversation between two Sagittarians in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Gandalf told Bilbo that true courage is knowing when not to take a life. Bilbo remembered this wisdom, and when he had the chance to kill Gollum, Bilbo felt the truth of that and held back. He was terrified of Gollum, but he held back.

His courage inspired Frodo’s courage later, and it changed them both. It gave the ring (greed, malice & cynicism) less of a hold on them, and it changed the course of the future for the better.

Sagittarius is a role model for courage.

A Soldier, a Fighter, A Hunter

Sagittarius characters include freedom fighters, former soldiers, and cowpokes defending their way of life. An evolved Sagittarius fights for the freedom of others, too. Sagittarius is not quiet about why s/he was fighting either. You will be told, and Sagittarius will have built an entire philosophy about it. Look for a character spouting maxims.

A reluctant warrior isn’t always a Sagittarius, but a Sagittarius is often a reluctant warrior. Why is this hero reluctant? Because Sagittarius doesn’t usually fight for the adrenaline rush like Aries, or the glory, like Leo. There must be a BIGGER reason, too.

The Sagittarius archetype is the last of the fire signs and the most evolved as a warrior. Sagittarius fights for a cause. They may have fun fighting, but they never fight for fun. Like Sagittarian Robin Hood, Sagittarians need a cause to fight for.

Sagittarian characters tend to be former soldiers because they value freedom too much to remain in the military for long. If your character has been in the military for decades, look at fixed signs Leo and Scorpio first. Fiery Aries is the maverick most likely to get kicked out.

Sagittarian Cormoran Strike in the mystery series by Robert Galbraith (Jo Rowling) and Cooper Howard/The Ghoul in the TV show Fallout are both former soldiers and (mostly) independent (private detective, bounty hunter) and hunters (of humans). Many people can be considered hunters. A detective hunts for bad guys, a journalist might hunt for a good story or the whole truth.

Another Sagittarian and reluctant skillful warrior off hunting in the woods— and one with her bow and arrow—is Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Katniss does not want to fight; she does not want to be the face of the resistance, yet she does what is needed.

You Animal, You!

It certainly takes athletic ability to ride a horse, turn, and hit your target while moving. The Centaur is half horse, half human, and Sagittarius has a bit of the agile, wild animal about them.

They love all animals, and in every story with a strong Sagittarius character, look for the animals. When a character is set up with a dog companion or is a horse-whisperer, it awakens my Sagittarius radar.

Wild animals almost always make an appearance in a Sagittarius story. The animal can be the object of a hunt, a danger to the community, or just so big that it could unintentionally kill you. Again, we are back to thinking about the character of Hagrid.

If a character is a hunter, we should also think of Sagittarius. Gods carrying bows and arrows, like Artemis and Diana, were both hunters and protectors of animals.

Sagittarians can also be quite sexually promiscuous in stories. A Sagittarian who does not tell the truth to their partners and uses people for sex is a feature of both its immature characters and villains. Taming themselves can be their biggest challenge.

DARK SAGITTARIUS: THE VILLAINS

The Sagittarian villain is never quite as vicious as a Mars-inspired Aries or Scorpio can be, but that doesn’t mean a Sagittarius villain isn’t angry, violent, and cruel.

A character who is particularly cruel to underdogs and animals, who seeks to destroy the freedom and independence of others while keeping those things for himself or herself, can easily be a Sagittarius gone bad.

The Sagittarius will be sarcastic, sardonic, and clever. S/he will present riddles for you to solve that you can’t possibly solve. S/he is a master of the mind game.

However, this description covers many types of villains, so keep in mind that the distinguishing motivation of the Sagittarius villain will not be ambition, greed, jealousy, revenge, despair, or the desire for attention or perfect order that motivates other villains.

The Sagittarius villain is motivated by cynicism and fiery rage. Characters like Psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris), Anarchist The Joker (DC Comics), Former Teacher Aunt Lydia (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood), and former actor Cooper Howard/The Ghoul (Fallout Amazon Prime) fit this description.

The Sagittarius villain will often be a former educated idealist who has succumbed to the darkest cynicism imaginable and is now playing an entirely selfish game.

RELATED POST: FALLOUT ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐| The Four ♐Horsemen of the Apocalypse

CHARACTER CASE STUDIES (Eowyn, Gandalf)

I have already mentioned more than half a dozen Sagittarian characters. Among them, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the most complex and probably warrants a longer post of her own. So that will come later.

Meanwhile, I think I will stay with the well-known Eowyn and Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings.

EOWYN ♐of Rohan

I was inspired to write more about her, so you can find that case study as a separate post.

Gandalf ♐The BIG Iconic Sagittarian

There is no better character in all of literature to use as the iconic Sagittarius than Gandalf the Grey.

There are other Sagittarians in J.R.R. Tolkien’s adventure stories: Eowyn and Bilbo come to mind, but Gandalf is the Jupiter of the story. He is a big presence in every way, and Ian McKellen was the perfect casting choice in the movies.

Tolkien’s close friend C.S. Lewis was a Sagittarius by birth and deeply interested in medieval astrology. I cannot imagine they did not discuss it.

C.S. Lewis would make his students laugh by saying, "Those born under Jupiter are apt to be loud-voiced and red-faced. It is obvious under which planet I was born!"

In the books, Gandalf was a Maiar, a larger-than-life demigod or archangel. He was sent as an Ishtar — a leader sent by the gods to inspire the “free peoples of Middle-earth” to fight for their freedom.

Mutable Fire

“I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you.”

-Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

We know Gandalf loves his fireworks, but if you look closely at that story, you will see that Gandalf has more than a passing relationship with the element of fire.

In the world of Tolkien, the “flame of Anor” is the power of creation and inspiration. Gandalf was also given Narya, the elven ring of fire, first carried by the elf lord Cirdan, to amplify Gandalf’s powers.

Read More About It

Secret Fire: The Spiritual Vision of J.R.R.Tolkien. I could only find a collectible

paperback version of this. Try your local used bookstore!

The Arrow & The Staff

Saittarius is said to be “one-pointed” and direct. Gandalf’s staff takes the place of the bow and arrow. Gandalf himself is usually straightforward — like an arrow — and men, elves, trees, horses, and hobbits are both afraid of his tongue and yet, also trust him.

He is physically bigger than all of them. He has a great booming voice when he wishes to snap someone out of an illusion that has them in its grip, and he loves to laugh. He tells Frodo and Bilbo the truth and lets them make their own decisions, and he doesn’t mince words when he thinks someone has been foolish or is wrong.

Never Suffer Fools Gladly

“Fool of a Took! Next time, throw yourself in!”

Have I mentioned people are exhausting? Sometimes Galdalf can’t take any more foolishness. He tells whoever it is his blunt truth and marches away to be alone for a while until he can master himself and come back, and in true mutable fashion, he never holds a grudge against his friends.

One of my favorite movie moments in The Lord of the Rings trilogy comes after Pippin looks into the Palantir. Gandalf starts hollering at him, turns and sees his fixed eyes, and immediately drops the loud lecture to run to cradle him in his arms and break the spell on him. Every time he yells at Pippin, he demonstrates his faith in him by assigning him a task or explaining something to him. This is the evolved Sagittarian character: truthful, blunt, perceptive, and kind.

The Wizard/Philosopher/Scholar

Gandalf also keeps running off on his own, going to research this or that, or talk to someone who might know what is going on.

He is also constantly spouting different languages, philosophy, or poetry when people need encouragement. He always knows the right thing to say and isn’t afraid to discuss the most significant topics, including death.

The Centaur

To complete the Sagittarian archetype, Gandalf rides—but does not own— the king of all horses, Shadowfax. No saddle for Shadowfax. He is a free animal of Middle-earth. To ride Shadowfax, the Wizard and horse must be as one.

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PART 2: ♐Archetype Building Blocks

Jupiter, Gods, and Centaurs

Sagittarius has been associated with several gods and other figures in mythology, representing both the constellation’s dark, beast-like, warlike nature and its scholarly, enlightened side. Here is a selection . . .

• The Babylonian Centaur Pa Bil Sag. This figure had two heads, and one was turned with an arrow pointed at the scorpion behind him, signifying the soul’s journey through Scorpio and into Sagittarius.

• The Babylonian god Nergal, the god of war (also sometimes associated with Scorpio)

• An aspect of the Babylonian god Marduk, specifically called ”the diviner of the divine decision” ruled the region of the sky known as Sagittarius. I like this title because Sagittarius rules the intellect.

• Crotus, the Greek Centaur, invented archery. He was a musician, had a keen mind, and was a lover of the arts (His mother was a Muse)

• The teacher Chiron, the enlightened and kind centaur who valued reason and knowledge

And, of course, of all the gods, Sagittarius is most associated with The Sky God, Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the greatest and best.

I have already covered Jupiter thoroughly in the personality traits and Gandalf case study, but here I note that this planet is observed by every culture, and all of them assigned gods to it.

Because of its size and steady light, the planet is usually associated with wisdom, optimism, intellect, insight, clarity of thought, and good fortune. So, too, by extension, is Sagittarius.

Big Picture: Values, Lessons, and Themes

Q. How hard is it to have the personal freedom we all desire and still be responsive to others we love, while standing up for the freedom of all of us?

Q. How hard is it to consistently apply critical thinking to our knowledge and opinions so that we stand up for truth and not mislead ourselves or others with what we desire to be true, but is not, in fact, true? What is truth, and how can we honor it?

Q. How incredibly difficult is it to USE freedom of speech for the betterment of everyone, including yourself? How difficult is it to always speak the truth, with full awareness of what the actual truth is, and still be kind and responsible? Can anyone do all that at the highest level?

It would probably help to have learned the lessons of Gemini. Now we know what manipulative speech is. We know what misleading speech is. We know what a persuasive speech for the best reasons should sound like.

Characters in stories everywhere struggle with these Sagittarius lessons.

In the first section of this article, I discussed Sagittarian story themes that emphasize mental self-mastery and the struggle against cynicism, tyranny, dishonesty, and dishonor. I am confident you can develop questions like mine that address all those themes.

The Philosophical Big Picture of Astrology

The first six signs (Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo) emphasize humanity's childhood and our individual development. The lessons address ♈Self, ♉Values, ♊Communication, ♋Private Life, ♌Personal Performance, and ♍Service. It’s easy to see how Virgo lessons about service take the “soul” or character into the last six lessons that involve others.

The last six signs (Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces) emphasize the development of the individual in interaction with the world at large. The lessons address ♎Partnership/Justice, ♏Power, ♐Mind/Thinking, ♑Public Life, ♒Community, and ♓Spirituality, and Sacrifice.

Theoretically, a Sagittarius has already visited the depths of Scorpio’s examination of power and control and come up the other side into the light. Now they look around them at the world and see how people misuse that power as a selfish weapon that crushes freedom and truth. They conclude that knowledge is, in fact, power and decide to collect it. What will we be able to learn and do once we have mastered our own minds?

All of these are the questions we address in stories, from the largest epic sagas such as The Hunger Games, Fallout, and The Lord of the Rings to smaller personal struggles with truth and freedom.

Hercules & The Killing of the Stymphalian Birds

Now, let us end with a story that addresses the Sagittarius central theme of mental self-mastery.

This isn’t necessarily a building block of the popular Sagittarius archetype; this is a building block of the Sagittarius philosophical and psychological 9th House stage of the Soul’s Journey.

There is a famous story about the Twelve Labors, or tasks, of the Greek demigod Hercules. This story, among others, strongly influenced all the archetypes as they evolved from the Babylonians through the cultures of the Middle East, India, and Hellenistic Greece to the Romans.

Backstory

Jupiter’s counterpart in Greece was Zeus. Hera was Zeus’s wife. At one point, Zeus pretended to be the husband of a mortal princess he fancied, named Alcmene so that he could have sex with her. Hercules was the result.

Hera wasn’t thrilled. She put a spell on Hercules that made him kill his own wife and children.

I mean, the murders were Hera’s fault, of course. Everybody knew that. You know how women are, I mean, what could poor Hercules do? Everyone knows it’s bad when women have power.

ANYWAY, poor, powerless, the strongest man alive, son of the top god, Hercules wasn’t killed or imprisoned. He went to Apollo, asked to be punished, and was given a to-do list.

His cousin, King Eurystheus, was appointed. He assigned Hercules (Heracles) 12 impossible tasks to atone for his crimes.

Bring me the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West!

Thus begins the hero's journey in video games everywhere.

The influential metaphysical writer Alice Bailey aligned each of Hercules’ tasks with the lessons represented by the zodiac signs. There are, after all, twelve tasks and twelve signs, and each sign represents a stage in the soul’s journey.

We do not know how the signs aligned at the time this myth was shared, and I don’t necessarily agree that Bailey got all the alignments 100% correct.

Still, part of the beauty of using symbols in stories is that they mean different things to different people at different times while still addressing the underlying truth of human nature.

The Mission

This time, Hercules was tasked with driving off predatory birds that lived in a dark marsh on a high plateau in Greece. IN the version I like, that colossal asshole Ares raised the birds, so they were terrorizing travelers and eating people.

According to Alice Bailey, the Stymphalian Birds symbolize the nasty, cynical, chaotic thoughts in your mind.

Since Sagittarius is a fire sign, we are usually referring to out-of-control, angry thoughts aimed in all directions.

It’s you aggressively ruminating at 3 AM about some conflict with a co-worker, your boss, your spouse, or a random person who smashed into your car and isn’t sorry.

It’s you thinking your worst, poisonous thoughts about other people (and yourself) are true, and the only truth about them and you.

Those birds are the ungodly, out-of-control noise in your head.

In Sagittarius, the lesson is to calm the worst, marshy, soul-sucking thoughts and drive off the remaining ugly thoughts and dangerous birds, and leave some space for songbirds, silence, and self-acceptance.

What Happened?

Hercules didn’t understand what these birds were or how to drive them off. They were huge, hideous, and terrifying. They had iron beaks like swords and feathers like spears.

As if that wasn’t enough, they had poisonous poop that spread everywhere in the mind, I mean, marsh.

What really drove everyone mad, however, were the loud, hideous sounds those big birds made. They were chaos incarnate. And they never shut up, ever.

Hercules’ half-sister Athena (Hera wasn’t her mother either—she didn’t have a mother) gave him some giant bronze clackers made by the immortal god and blacksmith Hephaistos.

From the top of a nearby mountain, Hercules used his new tools to make a godly racket, and the birds freaked out and took to the air. As the birds came flying up to attack him, Hercules killed some of them with poison-tipped arrows. The rest flew off screaming and were never heard from again.

Ah, the blessed silence of wide open spaces where a person can breathe.

Read more about this Greek myth here.

I do not think they are mathematically scientific, but I think they have psychological and philosophical truth. They are based on thousands of years of poetic observation of human nature. That is a different kind of science.

Has your sign been part of shaping your identity?

The math here might blow your mind, and you may not like it. Mathematical and birthdate-based astrology is about IDENTITY and challenges to that can really set off emotional repercussions. Remember, I DO believe it is valuable as a well-constructed compass or magnifying glass for an inner journey.

Signs of the Times & Divine Math Theory

Since 2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse, let’s look at the calendar for Sagittarius as an example.

Sagittarius (Dhanus, Kheshet).

• November 22-December 21 — Traditional Western Astrology

• December 18- January 19 — Astronomy

• December 15- January 13 — Vedic Astrology (Indian)

• December to January — Judeo-Christian Astrology (new moon to new moon)

You will notice from the Vedic and Hebrew dates above that they align much better with the current math or astronomy. That’s because they have always been based on the actual and current movement of the Earth, Sun, Moon, and constellations rather than the Roman calendar.

“Astrological signs are determined by the position of the sun relative to certain constellations on a person’s day of birth. The problem is, the positions were determined more than 2,000 years ago. Nowadays, the stars have shifted in the night sky so much that [Roman] horoscope signs are nearly a month off.” — Live Science

Are you still a Sagittarius?

If your birthday is November 22nd to the 24th, you are now a Libra! If your birthday is November 25 to December 17, you are now a Scorpio. Congratulations??!!??

You might be thinking, Nah! I AM a Sagittarius.

Okay by me.

Why not decide which signs suit you best and give yourself The Big Three: Sun, Moon, and Rising signs?

Find out if your sign has changed.

I made images that include all the calendar dates for each sign, like the one for Sagittarius above, OR use a Jewish calendar converter to determine which month you were born in for the Hebrew zodiac.

You can also use a Vedic astrology calculator site to determine your entire birth chart there.

Judeo-Christian Astrology Comes with Warnings

If you use the Hebrew calendar, remember that the Judeo-Christian bible (Deuteronomy 18) says you may not use this knowledge for divination, spells, or decision-making. (Just sayin’)

Apparently, it’s totally okay to use it for self-knowledge or to apply it to fictional characters, which is what I do here at In Our Stars!

I was raised with astrology and had my full chart drawn and read when I was 14, and those ideas had a profound impact on who I thought I was. For example, my sun and moon—in the chart—are conjunct within 1 degree. So I felt special—like I had some superpower—even though I never resonated with the sign they were in, no matter how hard I tried.

About 15 years later, I majored in Behavioral Science in college, and my view of astrology shifted to seeing it as psychology based on archetypes rather than physics and math.

It wasn’t easy to give up my special identity, but I came to that conclusion myself. No one confronted me with it. You may not want to change your ideas about yourself because of this article. If that is the case, you be you! I am just offering some math facts. Do with them what you will. Maybe some of you will find your new sign fits better and be happy. I hope so.

Get the Dates for ALL the Signs

More Anon,

Kate

If you believe in the Divine Math Theory of Astrology or in birthdate astrology, you may find these dates pretty mind-blowing. The Earth has shifted since ancient times.

That has changed the alignments of the constellations and the sun, probably making you a different sign than you thought!

Read more about that in the Calendar Shenanigans explainer.

Or you can join me in thinking about which sign best fits you, regardless of your birthday. I am a Sagittarius, despite being born in the summer. 😎