The Building Blocks of the Zodiac Personalities
The arc of history bends toward story. Could we make astrology more "woke?" Can we change the gods that "rule"? From the traditional character blueprints and tropes to karma and video games . . .
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 charcters 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.
My goal here is to teach some basic astrology so readers can understand how astrologers put together a picture of a personality type for each sign and how those personality types show up in our stories today. But I also hope you will join me in questioning it a bit. Comment on the “right” way to interpret all this at your own risk.
Basic Symbolic Building Blocks
1. Historically Associated Gods, Goddesses, Planets, and Celestial Bodies
This area is obviously the most complex, and different interpreters will bring in different influences. My biggest pet peeves have to do with the naming of planets and asteroids, not using asteroids as rulers, and the sexism built into all this.
Only one planet was named after a woman, and the woman they chose was Venus: beautiful, sexy, and a traditional “Good Mother” of blonde cherubs.
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.
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. The zodiac label you are given differs when using the Judeo-Christian and Indian (Vedic) calendars.
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.
Yet, honestly, 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.
The point is, modern astrologers, influenced by psychologist Carl Jung, scholar Joseph Campbell, and their successors, do play this game. They start with the traditional pantheon and bring 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. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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
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
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
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.
⭐SEE ALL POSTS on the Archetypes
4. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Philosophers, storytellers, and astrologers were not (and are not) passive recipients of information but active interpreters, adding their own cultural lens, philosophical views, and personal biases to the incoming ideas.
Religion, mysticism, and metaphysics have a dynamic relationship with astrology, and all contribute to contemporary storytelling.
Comics, graphic novels, and video games introduce an additional dimension by labeling characters specifically according to moral inclinations. It’s not really about their personality traits; it’s more about predicting how they will act.
⭐RELATED POST: WHY Learn Archetype Astrology? (Even if You Don’t Believe In It.) A: Do you want to design a game? Write a screenplay? Understand why certain characters do what they do?
Gaming Character Tropes & Examples & the Moral Path
Lawful Good: Teachers, paladins, knights, idealistic superheroes
Chaotic Good: Rebels, freedom fighters, and tricksters who think it's good for everyone if they shake things up.
Lawful Neutral: Characters willing to bend the rules when necessary to achieve the collective good.
Chaotic Neutral: Mercenaries, opportunists, lone wolves, and other characters who do what they need to do to benefit themselves.
Neutral Well, it depends.
Villain Types: Tyrants, Cynics, Schemers, Anarchists
A Libra villain wants their own laws to dominate in perfect order and calls that “justice.” A Sagittarius villain is cynical. No one else is ethical, so why should I be?
Many people confuse tropes and archetypes, but each of the above gaming categories can fit into the bigger categories of each zodiac sign. You can have a Sagittarius who is lawful good, or chaotic good, or a cynical villain who has become a lone wolf. The freedom and truth aspects of that archetype can bend in any direction.
Karma
Many people think of karma as “What goes around, comes around” and believe that’s true in a religious sense. Christians believe the consequences will come one way, and those who believe in reincarnation believe it comes in another way. I will not address it in those terms, although I will discuss the broader context of the twelve signs as a pathway from one lesson to the next and from one character arc to the next.
If anything, I’ll approach it in a manner similar to the Roman Stoics, who also influenced the philosophy of astrology.
The moral actions of each sign fit into a deeper understanding of karma. Karma in the astrological sense is not destiny or poetic justice as many people use the term. It’s the consequences of your actions and the lessons you learn from them.
All our thoughts and actions, and their consequences, form a complex tapestry that we can never unravel, and we cannot point to this or that as the cause or consequence. We can’t do it for ourselves, so we certainly shouldn’t try do it for others—except inside our stories.
Philosophy
Philosophy and psychology are my focus here. If writers sit around in a writer’s room drawing from the Myers-Briggs personality tests or astrological karma, that is the conversation I am diving into. Everything is connected somehow to everything else.
Astrology is the name given to a series of diverse practices based in the idea that the stars, planets, and other celestial phenomena possess significance and meaning for events on Earth.
It assumes a link between Earth and sky in which all existence, spiritual, psychological, and physical, is interconnected. Most premodern cultures practiced a form of astrology.
A particularly complex variety of it evolved in Mesopotamia in the first and second millennia BCE from where it was imported into the Hellenistic world from the early 4th century bce onward. There it became attached to three philosophical schools, those pioneered by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, all of which shared the assumption that the cosmos is a single, living, integrated whole. -Nicholas Campion (bold and italics mine)
It’s Complicated
Like the interconnected threads of karma, the process of astrological archetypal evolution is so complex and dynamic that, as storytellers, we can learn and absorb as much knowledge as possible, then respond intuitively in the end.
Such is the creative process. It’s good to have lots of tools in your toolbox. This continuous change ensures that each archetype is a living, evolving entity.
We cannot know—nor need to know—how everything connects to everything else. We only know that it does.