BASIC 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 . . .
My goal here is to teach some astrology beyond pop 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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