[transcript]
SOFT HISTORICAL INTRO
So the ascendant is not only a focal point in a chart but it is arguably the most important placement in a natal chart in regards to personhood, life trajectory, and predictive work especially--as well as if you’re trying to use any other types of charts like harmonics, or anything like that. In modern times and even for some in earlier history, birth times have not been very religiously recorded and so the average person may not know their rising sign or may have it wrong altogether because they are relying on the faulty memory of their mothers essentially rather than some sort of certificate made by people who are a little more aware of what time it was.
But this trend doesn’t decrease the importance of the ascendant. The ascendant is as important as it’s ever been! That’s why I think this lack of knowing your ascendant and lack of ability to rectify a chart really makes people probably think astrology is more B.S. than they otherwise would think. We now refer to ourselves as our star signs in modern day but it’s likely that earlier people were referred to according to their ascendant sign placement. That was because the ascendant was considered our “soul incarnation [in part], bodies and life” and it reflected the personhood, character, and overall life of the native. Astrologer Demetra George has written of it as being “perhaps the most sensitive and personal factor in the chart...it is what makes a child unique from any other child born on that day.”
That did not discount the importance of any other planets either, especially the sun and moon. As George points out in the same work, “Ancient astrologers looked upon the Sun, the Moon, and the Ascendant as the “places of life.” You can construct the basic framework of the life purpose considering just these three factors. Everything else adds detail to the essential theme that is established by these places.” Even esoteric astrologers have linked the life purpose, focus, and the soul’s purpose to exist in coming here to this planet to the ascendant.
ASCENDANT AND SELFHOOD
How it Works: The ascendant works by creating the entirety of “places” and a great deal of the particulars and concepts of who you are, when you are that, what has and will happen to you, and what transits are the most impactful. So let’s take an example: how does a Gemini ascendant communicate and vocalize? We would automatically think of Gemini suns as behaving or vocalizing or doing things a certain way--we might add a sprinkle of Mercury. But just by taking the ascendant, we can understand that they communicate and they vocalize in a very familiar way, maybe even boastful way. Why? Cancer is on the 2nd and Leo is on the third. Mercury will also play a part and augment this template; as will planets in the chart. But we have a general understanding of what a Gemini (aka a Gemini ascendant) will be because of this layout: how they will perform, how they will act, and what will happen to them. The ascendant also creates the archetype for the signs that get augmented via whatever planet is coming through them but that is a concept for a video all on its own and not for this video but maybe I’ll do that in the future to explain what I mean about that.
The ascendant filters all other energies through it and is never something we can turn off. It’s the literal outlook, perspective, and personality we bring to all else in the chart.
OVERSIMPLIFICATION--THE REASON YOU MAY NOT “FEEL LIKE” YOUR ASCENDANT
Erroneous Characteristization: The biggest reason is the erroneous characterization. So a trend in astrology today is to completely oversimplify and cut sign energies and bend and twist them until they don’t represent the whole of what they used to. There’s a lot of even trading attributes from one sign to another that don’t reflect their ancient understandings either. So someone (let’s use an example and this is a big example) someone who an Aries ascendant may not feel like one because a modern interpretation of Aries demonizes and bastardizes the sign into being...essentially a character from the movie the Croods; into being a brute, an absent minded...chaser of trophies, violent. None of these are necessarily the case for Aries energy, especially not on the ascendant and common depictions will talk about them as I have described. So the amount of sign disenfranchisement--which is an article series that will be up on my blog in due time after the monopoly series gets done--but a lot of that that happens these days will have people very estranged to not only their ascendant but some of their other planets as well. However, since the sun is where we find ego and mercury is how we think we’re right about things and also because the moon...cries to be protected, these three planets we typically will defend our alliances with more than even our ascendant especially if there’s no planets on the ascendant. It does not require our ego, our protection, or our intellectual superiority.
Misapplied Solar Stereotypes: Another problem especially in western astrology is the attribution of sun charged sign energy applied to other placements, house overlays, and yes the ascendant. This is actually backwards to how things should be applied, but...here we are. So of course a sagittarius ascendant, for example, may not identify with being the sun archetypes which swing between being a calm guru person, super open minded, or someone who must constantly travel (but they still might travel), someone who is reckless, a party animal, bad with money--those things. So a Sag ascendant won’t ever probably correlate with those things unless they have other energies in their chart which make them that way. But as we see the Sag ascendant has Aquarius on the 3rd house of our mental ideas and understandings so a lot more pushing boundaries. Sagittarius ascendants are probably a lot boundary pushers in a somewhat very stubborn, very radical way; they have Aries in the 5th of intelligence so also a very staunch, maybe aggressive evangelical or hardcore type of belief system or expression whether it be atheist or even religious. Then we can even see that they have capricorn on the 2nd house of income and assets so they are probably a lot more shrewd with their money matters than quite a few rising signs. This is Sag energy--Sag ascendant energy. So in this way, taking that solar charged Sag energy--Sag sun energy--is twisting this archetype through a solar demonstration. Twisting this archetype through this solar demonstration would of course have those solar parts of that interpretation be inapplicable to the Sag ascendant person. And that’s what we do a lot in Western astrology. We take a sun charged, moon charged--no, it’s always sun charged actually; we do that even to moon signs. And we try to put them on other things and wonder why people can’t identify with their sign archetype apart from the sun.
Heavy aspects to ascendant: One last reason (or the last few), one would be a lot of things going on on the ascendant. So a last reason why someone may not identify as their ascendant is because there are a lot of planets on the ascendant. Anything on the ascendant becomes very personal. The ascendant is a very personal placement so anything else on the ascendant in tandem there will also become very personal and will augment the very core of the personality as well as drive, outlook, and really the course for life. [But this can strengthen it too].
Also if there are a lot of aspects to the ascendant. These planets that are aspecting the ascendant and what the ascendant has to go through, the themes of the aspects (if there’s a lot of oppositions or inconjunctions or something like that). Those themes of what those aspects represent will also augment the literal being here that the ascendant represents.
Stelliums: Also--never discount the stellium (so that’s 4 or more planets in one sign, including a social planet). Anyone with a stellium will greatly feel that energy despite their ascendant and will not just identify but have a lot of their life comings and goings, life purposes really tied up there. Because the more planets you have in a sign, that also means the more house lords--the entire lords of these houses in your chart--are funneled not just through that house where the sign is but through that sign. So it really does mean that sign is going to play an important part in and have a pervasive effect in all of those aspects of your life that I talked about. So that’s how stelliums are heavy. Now to be clear, it does not overpower your ascendant. It does not gain higher importance in that way but it does sort of square off, I suppose, and have bordering equal strength in your life.
Also, never discount people simply not liking what is clearly their personality so much so that they will fight against it tooth and nail and reject identifying with it. Some people don’t like a sign or a placement for whatever reason and they wish they did not have it to the point where they can literally act it out in their lives and they will be in flat-out denial that that is how they act or that is where it comes from because of their personal preference. Or they can even try to sabotage that nature in them. They can try to every day sabotage specifically the thing that they instinctively or even consciously feel like choosing to do because they do not want to be that and they will do whatever it takes to refuse to see their behavior--or refuse allow their behavior to conform to that.
CLOSING
So that’s it for explaining how the ascendant IS YOU. I have links to some of the resources, especially the history I mentioned below in the description. If you’re interested in any of the articles I mentioned, I also left the link to my website snobeeastrology in the description as well. You can find this video up on there and a transcript of the video too.
Goodbye for now.
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