#ascendant problems

Introduction

In 2009/10 I began learning about astrology through a classmate who has since (and recently) begun an Instagram account dedicated to quippy and well-designed posts on the topic. Proud of her Aquarius sun sign, she quickly determined by sun sign, deemed it quite appropriate, and inquired after my birth time to calculate the ascendant:

AQUARIUS. This was the result from the first website she used to calculate the sign, as a look of joy and agreement crossed her face. She began a lively report on about the virtues of Aquarius. Meanwhile, responding quite fittingly to the Virgo personality type, I consulted another online calculator to verify the first finding:

PISCES. My classmate faltered, she brow furrowed, and she blurted “hmmm...” before shaking her head once, the rest of her body ceasing its suspension and returning to its energetic and bouncy motion, albeit more restrained. She looked over my shoulder at the list of traits this calculator suggested fit the Pisces ascendant and I could almost hear the gears grinding in her head before she decided that, sure, it fit me.

Pisces seemed to prevail after numerous confirmations from other online sources (though I found this process irritating because many distinctive websites use the same astrological generator for their free natal charts). And more or less in the years since then I have accepted myself as a Virgo sun-Pisces ascendant and attributed the sense of unsettlement that began in the quirk of my classmate’s brow to the oppositional relationship between these signs. I supposed that the Virgo in me rationalises those behaviours which seem Piscean to the outsider.

Background

Now, with the sun just having been in Aquarius and 8/9 years out from my first self-education in astrology, the initial crisis has returned. Am I really a Pisces ascendant? Or maybe there’s something wrong with those calculators?

Here are a couple sources of error which confound my acceptance of the results:

the calculators don’t specify whether they account for daylight savings time--if not I would need to enter my birth time an hour earlier to account for this, which makes me solidly Aquarian

maybe my birth time was recorded wrong--if I had been born 15 minutes before the recorded time then I would be an Aquarius

following the rule of the ascendant changing every two hours from sunrise/6 AM would classify me as an Aquarius (in both cases, as sunrise was 6:42 AM on my birth date)--however if this rule is adapted to a 5 AM starting point to deal with DST then I’m a Pisces as the calculators show

I just don’t identify with Pisces all that much...and to me that’s so much a part of the psychology/sociology of astrology is identification; when I learned that Jupiter would be the planetary ruler of my chart based on the Pisces ascendant some things clicked into place, but that action seemed to jostle some other items out of place!

Currently

I tried to attack this thicket with a couple of approaches which I will identify as the methodical (objective) and the intuitive (subjective), respectively. For the methodical approach, I shared some descriptions of the two different ascendant signs with several individuals who are either friends or family and asked them to report to what extent they thought the description suited me. In the brief surveys I administered I kept the names of the signs hidden from the participants. Though I admit my sample size was hardly representative, the result heavily favoured the Aquarius description.

The intuitive approach consisted of my comparing two natal charts: the one I have accepted for years and the nearest Aquarius ascendant chart. I identified which houses and planetary house placements changed between the charts and found descriptions for the two options via a trusted source who focuses especially on positions of planets amongst the signs and houses. While I couldn’t try to make this approach “double-blind” or some variation of participant ignorance to ensure efficacy, I attempted to be as pure of consciousness as possible. I tried to be completely honest with myself.

In this, too, I felt the Aquarian chart resonated so much more. Most of the options elicited a strong reaction or identification within, and in one I experienced some minor ambivalence. So it seems that both myself and others actually pick up on this Aquarian energy more strongly! I mean, I’m a sociology graduate student and I have a bachelor’s degree in anthropology--how much more stereotypically Aquarian (and Virgoan) could you get?!

But when I attempted the ‘purest’ form of determination, hand-calculating the ascendant, things went awry. First of all, it’s quite impossible to do this on your own with the meagre online guides for the calculation of local sidereal time, etc., and then I completely hit a roadblock because I didn’t have access to a book on the 20th-century American ephemeris. That option having been stamped out, I looked to the astronomical software Stellarium, which allows the user to input the date, time and location they wish and then to observe the position of the stars at that moment. This was like a nail in the coffin of the Aquarian ascendant: Aquarius was fully visible at the eastern horizon at the moment of my birth, and just one star from Pisces had broken through.

Looking Ahead

I’ve gotten in touch with my previous classmate who seems to have only deepened her knowledge of astrology since high school. She and I are going to chat a bit about this crisis. I’m planning to use some tarot cards and a handy-dandy pendulum to see if that sheds some metaphysical light on the situation. 

Hopefully, I can reach a place free from this tension. I suppose I believe this tension is coming for a reason. Beyond the symbols and accoutrements of astrological identity-making, there’s a deeper sense of unsettlement which I can accept as mine: the search for the person to be. The Aquarian/Pisces crisis has made me aware of the degree to which I assign significance to archetypes and roles, and the corresponding need for conviction in that position. I want to strive to fulfil a role, but I cannot accept it if I am not convicted of it.