Why Don’t I Identify with My Zodiac Sign or Why Your Zodiac Sign Isn’t the Whole Story
[BG] Original Bulgarian Version -> Read here
Many of you have probably wondered why you don’t match your zodiac sign—or, in other words, your Sun sign. Quite likely, this has led more than a few of you to seriously doubt the validity of astrology, and rightly so. Well, I was one of those people too—those who did not identify with their Sun sign (also often referred to simply as the Sun). I very much wanted to match that archetype, but alas—somehow, I recognized myself much more in two, even three others, while this one seemed to be missing inside me. There was no way I wouldn’t start wondering why, and wouldn’t dig around to unravel the mystery. And somehow, I couldn’t quite bring myself to give up on astrology and write it off completely. That’s how I arrived at the next piece of the puzzle—the Ascendant. Some of you may have heard of it. And for those who haven’t, I’ll try to explain briefly, though for that purpose I’ll need to start a little further back.
At the moment we are born and cry for the first time, we come into this world with a diagram known as the natal (birth) chart. It represents a 360° wheel divided into 12 sectors. Each of the planets in the Solar System, including the Sun and the Moon—and yes, Pluto too—is located in one of the 12 signs (each sign spans 30°). But they also fall into one of the twelve sectors. Each of these sectors represents specific areas of life and is called a “house.” Each zodiac sign embodies a certain type of energy. And each planet—certain principles. The moment we cry for the first time is considered our time of birth. We take this time and place it at the beginning of the wheel, on the far left. This is the point we call the Ascendant, or rising sign. It marks the beginning of our life, and from there, the beginning of the first house in our natal chart. We look at which sign is rising at that exact hour and minute, and thus determine our Ascendant, also known as Rising Sign. It is the prism through which everything inside us is refracted; it is the way we perceive the world, the way people perceive us when they meet us for the first time, and to some extent it is also responsible for our appearance. It is precisely in the descriptions of this sign that many of us recognize ourselves far more than in our Sun sign.
And what exactly is the Sun sign itself? Broadly speaking, it is our mission in life—the thing which, if we manage to develop within ourselves, fills us up with a sense of wholeness, of self-realization, of meaning; the thing that makes us feel affirmed, that makes us feel like authorities, the thing we feel most strongly as ourselves. Often the Sun is energy in its embryonic state—a little seed which, if we nourish with the right fertilizer and water as often as necessary, begins to grow strong and to blossom and bear fruit. The widely held belief, however, is that all the characteristics attributed to our Sun sign are ones we are born with, and that there is no need to develop them. But this is not quite true. For some people, it is largely true because of other factors in the natal chart—for example, having two or three more planets in the same sign, or having an Ascendant that matches the Sun, or having the South Node in the same sign—but we’ll look at those another time. For others, however, this is not the case at all.
So many of you may read descriptions of Virgo because your Sun is there and say to yourselves: “Yes, okay—order and organization aren’t a bad thing, it’s good to be of service to others, to have an eye for detail, to be oriented toward caring for physical health, to know about herbs, and so on—but then I read what they say about Aries and I see so much of it in myself, and so much less of this Virgo.” Yes, because perhaps you are an Aries Rising and your Sun falls in the fifth house which is ruled by Leo and you have Leo Mercury and Aries Mars on the Ascendant and you don’t suffer from excessive modesty when it comes to self-expression, you have no problem immediately engaging with people, patience isn’t among your strongest virtues, your focus is more on the big picture and on acting in the moment rather than planning and double-checking everything several times—which, frankly, can often exhaust you. At the same time, however, when something happens that does not come from your own initiative but from outside and threatens to disrupt your emotional balance—when circumstances pressure you to change your reactions, to give up certain comforts, or threaten your material security and your home—your automatic reaction is to begin resisting change and to cling even more stubbornly to your own ways, trying to make the outside reality to adapt to you. Suddenly, the Aries initiative and openness of your Ascendant evaporate. This may be because your Moon is in Taurus in the second house, and for you your home is your fortress, your personal space is inviolable, and you don’t like anyone handling your belongings or disrupting the rhythm you’re accustomed to and which maintains your emotional stability.
Or you may know a Cancer who actually doesn’t want to put down roots in just one place, who loves to travel, and you wonder why they don’t fit the archetype. Perhaps that Cancer simply has the Sun in the ninth house in aspect to Uranus, and for them the meaning of existence is not to live their entire life in one city and one house, but to travel the world and create a mini home community everywhere they go, a hub for unconventional ideas in any place they stay a little longer. The ninth house rules foreign travel, foreign cultures and religions, our philosophy of the world, and so on, while Uranus corresponds to higher intellect, unconventional things, innovative ideas, sudden changes, social activities, and so on.
What happens if your partner is an Aquarius, yet somehow isn’t particularly oriented toward humanitarian causes, but instead tends to look for the darkness in people and situations—somehow not very optimistic, always expecting a threat from every direction, or regularly exposing people’s lies and deceptions? Yes, there are some typical Aquarian qualities, but they resemble much more a serious Scorpio behaving like a detective. Perhaps their Sun in in the eight house of Scorpio and have Scorpio or Pluto in the fifth house, which—among many other things—largely governs the way we embody our Sun in practice.
It’s also possible that you were born with the Sun at 29° of Sagittarius, which means that on your next birthday your Sun sign—which continues to move forward through degrees and signs even after birth—enters Capricorn, and with Mercury, Venus and Mars in Capricorn, you may not be such a cheerful, adventure-seeking, horizon-chasing person at all. You think critically and impartially, you are very observant and analytical, you love order and discipline, and somehow this Sagittarius doesn’t fit your nature at all.
Generally speaking, we begin to unfold the energy of our Sun sign more after the age of 30. And if it is the only planet in that particular sign—which is another reason why we may not identify with the characteristics we read about—it will be more difficult for us to develop it.
And after guiding you through a somewhat tangled labyrinth of reasons why we might not match our zodiac sign, while astrology may actually be working just fine and turn out to be far more nuanced and complex than the familiar archetypes and the newspaper and TV columns that tell us that today Gemini will have three out of five stars at work, but will be unbeatable in love with five out of five stars—and then it turns out things didn’t unfold that way at all—I invite you to look at astrology in a slightly different way. Namely…
Everything is energy. Energy is everywhere around us and everywhere within us. The same is true of astrology and our personal birth chart. It reflects the energy with which we come into this world. Whether and in which direction we develop that energy depends on the circumstances we were born into and on our own will. If our early environment did not support the positive development of the strengths inherent in us, then later in life it is up to us to look inward and search for what we are good at and how we can most productively channel this energy. In any case, when we are at the starting point, we need to be aware that we are embarking on a journey—and it will confront us with various trials, just as it will bring us unexpected positives and valuable lessons. Like any journey, it passes through stages, and each one of them is equally important, because it brings different experiences and, from there, corresponding realizations. For each person, the adventure looks different and lasts for a different length of time. Sometimes we may pause to rest, or something may slow us down or temporarily divert us. Every person who enters our life will play a different role in it—some characters will pass through briefly, others will stay for a long time; some will leave a lasting mark on us, others won’t make much of an impression, and after a few years we may even forget we ever knew them.
But this path is ours—unique, unrepeatable, incomparable—because everyone comes into this world with their own resources and their own energetic imprint. And therefore, there is no way we can all walk the same path, have the same goals, and achieve the same results. Everyone possesses their own cocktail of strengths and weaknesses, and when they use their strengths as a starting point, they can learn how to build systems and mechanisms that help them deal more easily with the things that come harder to them. We cannot expect, for example, a Sun in Capricorn to feel fulfilled if we apply the standards of a Sun in Leo. In all cases, the Sun wants to shine—but depending on the sign, the house, and something else called aspects to it (which we will also talk about another time), it depends on how and in which area of life that Sun will feel most self-realized. A Sun in Leo will want to create art in one form or another, to inspire, to move, to motivate, to ignite an unquenchable fire in others, to bring out the most beautiful and joyful parts of them—and when it manages to bring its creative vision into life, it will shine. A Sun in Capricorn will feel self-realized when it succeeds in creating, in a given field, a stable, time-resistant, well-oiled structure or mechanism that is of common benefit—one in which every element is in its place, knows why it is there, knows how to function, and conscientiously fulfills its role.
With all this, I want to say that astrology expects the least of all for us to be the same—quite the opposite. It gives us the personal map of our lives, a guidebook that helps us orient ourselves better within the labyrinths of our inner worlds, in our place in this world, in who we want to be and what kind of life would satisfy us most. And so my journey with astrology—and correspondingly, my journey inward into myself and outward into the world—began in my teenage years, led me through many videos and books, through a course with a wonderful mentor, and brought me today to the writing of this article, which I am sharing with you. Because of my desire to delve deeply into astrology, I can say that today I know and understand myself much better, and I find myself ever more clearly reflected in my own Sun sign. I began to feel how, with the right care, the seed within me sprouted, the stem grew, leafed out, began to bear fruit, and brought me tears of happiness rather than tears of pain and dissatisfaction.
As a brief example of what a natal chart with planets, signs, houses, and aspects looks like, I’ll give you an example using Rihanna’s horoscope:
