You know you're a Sagittarius. Do you know which Sagittarius you are?

What is a Sagittarius really like?

Sagittarius is the ninth sign of the zodiac: a fire sign, a mutable sign, ruled by Jupiter. The Sun is in Sagittarius from November 22 or 23 to December 20, 21 or 22. What any one Sagittarius is really like depends on the rest of the chart: the Moon, the rising sign, Venus and Mars.

Sagittarius is one of twelve. What is the zodiac, and where did the twelve signs come from?

What it is

Your sun sign is the slice of the zodiac the Sun was standing in on your birthday. The zodiac here is a measuring tape, not a picture: the Sun's yearly path cut into twelve equal slices of 30°, counted from the spring equinox. Sagittarius is the ninth slice, and the Sun crosses it from November 22 to December 21. ¹

It isn't the constellation. When the Babylonians matched twelve star patterns to twelve equal slices, the dates and the stars lined up. Earth's axis has wobbled since, so on the same dates the Sun now stands in front of different stars, and astronomers count thirteen constellations on its path, not twelve. Western astrology keeps its slices tied to the seasons, not to the stars. ¹

Sagittarius is a fire sign and a mutable sign. Ptolemy grouped the signs in triangles of three, 120° apart; Sagittarius's triangle is Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, the one later astrologers called fire. The modes come from the seasons: mutable signs fall in the last month of a season, when it is already changing. ²

A ruling planet is the planet a sign is said to belong to, its "house" in Ptolemy's word. Tradition gives Sagittarius to Jupiter. ²

A sun sign is one placement out of many. The Moon, the rising sign and every planet sit in signs of their own, which is why two people with the same sun sign can seem to have very little in common.

This is the short version for one sign. How the zodiac was built, and its whole history, is on the master page: What is the zodiac, and where did the twelve signs come from?

Sagittarius in the old books

The traditional portrait of the sign, the same for everyone born under it.

Sagittarius, in the old books, is Jupiter's fiery house and one of Ptolemy's bicorporeal signs, half one thing and half another, as the horse-bodied archer suggests. The portrait is the open road: cheerful, frank, generous, restless, a believer in luck and in the next big idea. ²

The old writers' caution is the arrow that flies before anyone's checked where it lands. A Sagittarian is said to say exactly what it thinks, to promise more than any diary could hold, and to treat a closed door as a personal challenge. The mutable mode is the part that moves on, and the books say it moves on cheerfully.

That's the Sun on its own, the same for every Sagittarius. A careful earth Moon or a Saturn-heavy chart can make the wildest Archer stop and read the map.

Where Sagittarius comes from

Era by era, with sources. More in the Reading Room.

Ancientc. 1000–450 BCEBabylonian astronomers built the zodiac out of eighteen reference star groups over about a thousand years; by around 450 BCE it had settled into twelve equal zones along the path of the Moon and planets. ³
AncientBabylonian eraIn late Babylonian astronomical texts this sign is called Pabilsag, a name already in use in the Neo-Babylonian period. ⁴
Ancient410 BCEThe earliest known horoscopes, from Babylon and Nippur, date to this year. ³
Classicalc. 275 BCEAratus's Phaenomena names these stars the Bow and the one who wields it. ⁵
ClassicalRoman eraPseudo-Hyginus (2.27) makes the Archer Crotus, son of Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses. The Muses asked Jupiter to put him in the sky, and his horse's flanks, Hyginus explains, are because he rode so much. ⁶
Classical2nd century CEPtolemy, working in Alexandria, writes the Tetrabiblos. It gives each sign a ruling planet, groups the signs in triangles of three and sets out the angles between signs that astrologers still use. ^7,2
Classical2nd century CEPtolemy gives Sagittarius to Jupiter and counts it among the bicorporeal signs. His map of the world ties it to Tyrrhenia, Celtica and Spain, and to Arabia Felix. ^2,8
Medieval12th centuryThe Persian astrologer Abu Ma'shar (died 886) is read in Latin across Europe; the University of Edinburgh holds a 12th-century Latin copy of his introduction to astrology. ⁹
1600sc. 1602In Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Agamemnon reports that the dreadful Sagittary is frightening his troops. ¹⁰
1800s1890The first number of Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine goes on sale in July 1890. Annual subscribers get a free horoscope with a short reading: astrology by post, for ordinary readers. ¹¹
1910s1917Alan Leo is fined for fortune-telling at the Mansion House on 16 July 1917. He dies that August, working on a system of astrology without predictions. ¹¹
1930s1930–1937R. H. Naylor's horoscope for the newborn Princess Margaret runs in the Sunday Express on 24 August 1930 and becomes a regular column. By 1937 it is organised by the twelve sun signs, and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic follow. ¹²
1960s1968Linda Goodman's Sun Signs is published: a whole book built on the twelve sun signs. ¹³
1980s–90s1980–1999Computers take over the arithmetic. Astrodienst in Zürich, whose founder had been writing astrology software since 1979, starts selling colour birth charts in 1980, goes online in 1996 and adds free daily horoscopes in 1999. ¹⁴
2010s2016NASA publishes a short explainer: the Sun crosses thirteen constellations, the Babylonians picked twelve to fit a twelve-month calendar, and "we didn’t change any zodiac signs". ¹
Today2024A Pew Research Center survey finds that 30% of US adults consult astrology, tarot or a fortune teller at least once a year, mostly for fun, with whole astrology cultures on TikTok and other platforms. ¹⁵

Worked out, not guessed

Calculated facts only, worked out the same way the machine does it.

Venus never gets more than about 47° from the Sun, so a Sagittarius's Venus is always in one of five signs: Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn or Aquarius.
The Moon changes sign every two and a half days. Without a birth time and place, most birthdays could belong to either of two Moon signs. (91.1% of birthdays from 1950 to 2029, once every time zone on Earth is allowed for.)

Every Sagittarius reads this page. Only your card knows you.

Your card is worked out from the day, the minute and the place you were born: your birth chart, your love chart, your numbers and the sky you arrived under. This is what it covers.