How Your Rising Sign Directs Your Life Purpose

Core drives, planetary guides, and an Ascendent-led astrology of individuation

A painting by German naturalist and geographer Eduard Pechuël-Loesche

Previously on Moon School…

To share more about what’s going on behind the scenes of my moon posts and how I personally understand and work with astrological charts, I’ve been slowly rolling out more in-depth pieces on the foundations of chart reading. I’ve written about where house theory comes from (Reading the Cosmic Clock), and how I appreciate some of the deep natural structures at work here. I also wrote about how the Sun and the Moon are revealing of a specific individuation process underway (Your Life is a (Loving) Argument the Sun and the Moon Are Having). Now I want to get into the Ascendant. Just writing that and capitalizing Ascendant makes me feel like I’m talking about something important and life-changing, something that has the power to get us to rise up out of our wounded, contracted, winter-healing-crouch and take on the world, healed, transcendent. I definitely am.

Ancient astrologers saw the Sun’s house and sign, the Moon’s house and sign, and the Ascendent’s sign, altogether, as the “places of life,” the most important signifiers in a birth chart. Putting them in conversation was believed to give you a basic framework of a life’s purpose. I’ve discussed in the depth the first two factors in this symbolic conversation or argument: the Sun as the soul or divine aspect of the mind, and the Moon as the body constraining that soul and teaching it how it can and cannot manifest its purpose in this physical form. The Ascendent modifies this situation considerably, limiting it and directing in different ways than the Moon. It is said to both reflect the outer personality and illuminate the core need or motivating force of a life that initiates and continually fuels the Sun/Moon journey of becoming. And through its sign and ruler, we can learn more about how and where we might need to express that drive and Soul purpose—what the ultimate destination might be—and what difficulties and blessings that journey will bring.