When many people are asked the famous question, “what’s your sign?” the question is meant with either starry-eyed excitement or an eye roll. The excited response is usually issued by someone who deeply resonates with their zodiac sign, while the latter response is usually given by someone who doesn’t associate with their zodiac sign at all.
If you’re the latter one, I empathize: after all, the last thing you want is to discover you are a Leo and then learn that Leos are obsessed with their physical appearance and like expensive things. Or maybe you’re like me, a Scorpio, who constantly receives physical recoils from others when you reveal your sign to others.
Unfortunately, there is plenty of information about astrology out there that is often twisted to become disempowering. What we read about other signs on magazines seems to glorify certain signs while nailing others to the cross (I hear you, Geminis and Scorpios!).
You also likely think astrology is a “fake pseudoscience” that people may use to excuse their poor behavior. I can certainly agree that there are many people out there who skim the surface of astrology and use their sign to validate toxic behavior, but when you dive further into astrology, there is often further insight into one’s personality than just their sun sign. For instance, you actually have not one, but three major signs that influence your personality. While people may resonate with their sun sign, others may likely identify themselves through the tendencies of their other two signs.
These three signs are known as “the 3 signs,” or “the 3 big signs.” We’ll break down each one so that you can figure out what your signs are.
Your Sun Sign
Your sun sign is the most commonly known sign that you likely already know. All you need is your birth date to determine your sun sign.
Your sun sign represents your ego: it’s all about your goals, actions, desires, and also how you may identify yourself. Let’s use Aries for this example: Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and represents ambitiousness, drive, bravery, and success. Someone with an Aries sun is likely to have personality tendencies that gravitate towards the superficial Aries traits: they are likely to be willing to try new things, may have a short-fused temper, may be competitive, or even have a wild side. Those with an Aries sun may give off the vibe of a natural-born leader, or may even push others into following them.
However, those traits can be modified and either subdued or amplified based on the combination of their other 2 signs.
Your Moon Sign
Where our sun sign dictates the part of our personality that represents our ego and conscious minds, our moon sign rules the other half of our mind: our subconscious minds, intuition, emotions, and deeper feelings. In astrology, the moon is responsible for our emotions, and just like how the moon reflects light from the sun of others, our moon signs represent our unconscious reactions towards the ego of others.
Your moon sign composes the inner workings of your soul and is the true self that you may not always show others off the bat. Your moon sign may be more subtle and only identifiable by yourself and your closest loved ones, so it may not be a side of yourself that you show publicly.
Where an Aries sun may be more outward about expressing their fiery energy, someone with their moon in Aries may display the same energy in a modified way: they may not be loud or boisterous the way an Aries sun might be, but they could be an “undercover wild child” or tap into undiscovered bravery during the darkest hour, which may surprise others. Additionally, Aries moon may feel most emotionally safe when they are taking the reigns of their lives instead of others having power over them.
Your Rising Sign
Our rising signs – or ascendant – determine the persona that we face the world with, and is the “shell” of our personality. Some people may associate more with their rising sign if they have a tendency to act accordingly to their surroundings since our rising sign also determines how we interact and communicate with others. This is the sign that people may often mistake you for, as this is the kind of energy they see on a superficial level.
It can even be responsible for the way we dress or present ourselves to the world from a physical perspective.
You may think that someone with an Aries sun would be likely to command a room, but that’s not always the case – sometimes, this type of Aries trait would be more likely to show up if Aries is their rising sign. Since the rising sign shows more of the way that you communicate with others or the way that you show yourself to the world, someone with an Aries rising would be more likely to be confident enough to verbally convince others that they are a leader, where an Aries sun ego would lead them to believe that they already are a leader.
How to figure out your moon and rising signs
Discovering your moon and rising signs used to be a tedious process, but with software development and new technology, there are many ways you can do this. All you need is your birth date, time, and location. The moon stays in a sign for about 2 1/2 days, so you may not always need the exact birth time to find your moon sign; however, the birth time needs to be exact in order to calculate your rising sign, as it changes every 2 hours. Refer to your birth certificate as it is likely to have your exact time of birth.
If you have a Droid or iPhone, you can download the Co-Star app and enter your birth information to get your sun, moon and rising signs, as well as the rest of your planets (similarly, you can also log onto the Co-Star desktop website and get a full birth chart). Cafe Astrology is also an excellent website for generating your moon and rising signs (calculate your moon sign here and your rising sign here). There are many more websites where you can generate your entire birth chart, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ll list only the above two sources.
The big 3 signs work together to shape your personality, but there is even more to your astrological blueprint to those 3 signs as well. You can access the rest of this information by using a birth chart, where you can get for free at astro-charts.com. Now that you know that there is more to you than your sun sign alone, do you feel you resonate more with your moon or rising signs?
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