♒ Aquarius

Aquarius is the outsider of the zodiac: original, principled and future-facing. It thinks for itself, belongs to the group, and reforms the rules.

Aquarius at a glance

• DatesJanuary 20 – February 18
• ElementAir
• ModalityFixed
• Ruling planetSaturn (modern Uranus)
• PolarityPositive
• ArchetypeThe Rebel / The Visionary

Aquarius dates, to the minute

The Sun is in Aquarius from about 20 January to 18 February. The exact moment moves by up to a day from one year to the next, because a year is not a whole number of days. These are the moments the Sun crosses into Aquarius and out again, computed by the same engine that casts every chart on this site.

Times are Universal Time (UTC). Your own clock can put the change on the day before or the day after. Born on one of these days? The Sun sign then depends on the minute, and a chart cast with your birth time settles it.

What Aquarius is like

Aquarius is the sign that asks who decided. Not to be difficult, and often not out loud, but the question is running whether or not anybody else is asking it.

It thinks in systems, and it thinks from a distance, which is where the reputation for coolness comes from. The distance is not indifference. It is the only vantage point from which the shape of the whole thing is visible, and Aquarius would rather see the shape than be comfortable.

And it belongs to the group without being absorbed by it. This sign will give years to a cause and still not do it the way the cause does it, and both halves of that are sincere.

Fixed air. It holds a position, and the position is usually a principle.

In the body, Aquarius is linked to the calves, ankles and circulation.

What it costs

Being the one who sees it from outside is lonely, and the sign is much better at explaining why it is right than at saying it minds.

And the distance can be put to use. Aquarius is capable of being entirely present, genuinely helpful and quietly unreachable, and it can be a long while before anybody notices the last part, Aquarius included.

A principle is a poor substitute for being known, and this sign sometimes hands over one when the other was what was asked for.

Your Sun sign is one placement of ten

The Sun is one placement in ten, and an argument about principle rarely tells you what a person needs.

Your Moon sits in a sign of its own, and so do Mercury, Venus and Mars. An Aquarius Sun with a Cancer Moon argues from principle and goes home and feels it. The chart holds both, and only you know which one was running the day.

Born with the Sun in Aquarius

Twelve of the most looked-up people among the famous charts on this site, each with the Sun in Aquarius at any hour of their birthday:

Each one is a full chart, with the Moon and every planet, so you can see how differently the same Sun sign sits in twelve lives.

Where Aquarius sits in your chart, whatever your sign

Aquarius is in every chart, on one house or another, planet or no planet.

Traditionally it is read as the door built to open the wrong way. Find yours, and ask where doing it the ordinary way has never once occurred to you.

Aquarius on the eastern horizon at the minute you were born makes a Aquarius rising sign, a different placement from a Aquarius Sun and one that needs your birth time: what a rising sign is.

Aquarius season, in the sky

The Sun is in Aquarius from late January to late February. The constellation has almost no bright stars, and the water pouring from the jar is drawn as a stream of faint ones running down towards the mouth of the Southern Fish.

The Age of Aquarius is a different measurement from the sign, and the difference is worth having straight. An age is named for the constellation the equinox point currently stands in, and that point is still in Pisces, sliding backwards at about a degree every seventy-two years. Where it crosses depends on where you draw the line between two constellations, which is why the answers people give are spread over several centuries. The sign arrives every January regardless.

Saturn and Uranus, the sign's rulers

Aquarius has two rulers and they pull in opposite directions, which is the sign. Saturn held it for two thousand years before Uranus was found in 1781, and Saturn is the structure: the rule, the form, the thing built to last.

Uranus is the interruption. It takes 84 years to go round, about seven to a sign. Read your Saturn for what you are willing to build. Read your Uranus for what you are unwilling to accept.

Aquarius compatibility

Aquarius with Aries · Taurus · Gemini · Cancer · Leo · Virgo · Libra · Scorpio · Sagittarius · Capricorn · Aquarius · Pisces.

A pairing of Sun signs is the coarsest version of compatibility. Two whole charts compared planet by planet is where the detail is.

Aquarius also touches

friends, groups, causes, technology, rebellion, ideals, the future, humanity.

A question to sit with

What does it cost to be the one standing slightly outside, and when is that cost worth paying?