The zodiac signs in order are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Aries comes first because the Western zodiac is measured from the March equinox, the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, and Aries is the sign the Sun enters at that moment. From there the order simply follows the Sun's path through the year.
The twelve signs in order
- Aries, the Ram: March 21 to April 19. Fire, cardinal.
- Taurus, the Bull: April 20 to May 20. Earth, fixed.
- Gemini, the Twins: May 21 to June 20. Air, mutable.
- Cancer, the Crab: June 21 to July 22. Water, cardinal.
- Leo, the Lion: July 23 to August 22. Fire, fixed.
- Virgo, the Maiden: August 23 to September 22. Earth, mutable.
- Libra, the Scales: September 23 to October 22. Air, cardinal.
- Scorpio, the Scorpion: October 23 to November 21. Water, fixed.
- Sagittarius, the Archer: November 22 to December 21. Fire, mutable.
- Capricorn, the Sea-goat: December 22 to January 19. Earth, cardinal.
- Aquarius, the Water Bearer: January 20 to February 18. Air, fixed.
- Pisces, the Fishes: February 19 to March 20. Water, mutable.
The boundary dates move by a day in some years, so a birthday on the first or last day of a sign is worth checking in a birth chart. Each sign's full profile is on our zodiac signs pages, and our guide to zodiac signs by month shows which two signs share each calendar month.
Why Aries is the first sign
A circle has no natural starting point, so someone had to choose one. The choice that stuck was the spring equinox.
In the second century CE, the astronomer and astrologer Claudius Ptolemy set out the reasoning in his Tetrabiblos. Because the zodiac is a circle, he wrote, it has no natural beginning, so astrologers take the sign that begins at the spring equinox, Aries, as the starting point of them all. He compared spring to the start of life, moist and growing, with the later seasons following like the later stages of a living thing. Western astrology has kept his convention ever since.
The habit is older than Ptolemy. Babylonian astronomers had divided the Sun's path into twelve signs by around the fifth century BCE, and their lists of the twelve put first the Hired Man, the figure the Greeks turned into the Ram. Their year began in spring, in the month of Nisannu. The starting point hadn't always been the same, though: an earlier Babylonian star compendium, known by its opening words as MUL.APIN, began its list of the stars in the Moon's path with the Pleiades, in what we now call Taurus.
The Greek astronomer Hipparchus, working around 130 BCE, defined the spring equinox point that astronomers still call the First Point of Aries. In his day it sat at the western edge of the constellation Aries.
The equinox has moved, the order hasn't
Earth's axis wobbles slowly, like a spinning top, and the equinox point slides backward against the stars by about one degree every 72 years. The March equinox Sun stood in the constellation Aries from roughly 1866 BCE to 68 BCE. It has been in Pisces since, and it's slowly heading for Aquarius, which is where the phrase "the Age of Aquarius" comes from.
Western astrology didn't follow the stars. Its zodiac, called the tropical zodiac, stays anchored to the equinox, so the sign of Aries always begins on the first day of northern spring, whatever constellation sits behind the Sun. Vedic astrology made the other choice and anchors its signs to the stars, which is why its sign dates fall about three and a half weeks later. Both systems still start with Aries, called Mesha in Sanskrit. Our guide to your Vedic zodiac sign covers that system, and our piece on Ophiuchus, the "13th sign" explains why constellations and signs went their separate ways.
Patterns hidden in the order
The sequence isn't arbitrary. Read it slowly and three rhythms appear.
- Elements in fours. Fire, earth, air, water, then again: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer; Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio; Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces.
- Modalities in threes. Cardinal, fixed, mutable, repeated four times, one round for each season. The cardinal signs open a season, the fixed signs hold its middle and the mutable signs hand over to the next.
- Polarity in twos. The signs alternate between the outgoing fire and air signs and the receptive earth and water signs.
Opposite signs sit six places apart, and each pair shares a modality and a polarity: Aries and Libra, Taurus and Scorpio, Gemini and Sagittarius, Cancer and Capricorn, Leo and Aquarius, Virgo and Pisces.
The traditional rulers make a pattern too. The Moon and the Sun rule the neighboring signs Cancer and Leo, and from there the planets fan out in both directions in the old order, fastest to slowest. Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo, Venus rules Taurus and Libra, Mars rules Aries and Scorpio, Jupiter rules Pisces and Sagittarius, and Saturn rules Aquarius and Capricorn, the two signs facing the Moon and the Sun across the wheel. Our guides to elements and modalities and the ruling planets of the signs go further.
Reading the order as a story
Many modern astrologers read the twelve signs as a cycle of growth: Aries the first push of new life, Taurus settling into the body and the senses, Gemini learning to talk, Cancer finding a home, Leo learning to shine, and so on until Pisces, where the edges soften before the circle starts again. It's an interpretive idea rather than an ancient rule, but it's a handy way to remember the sequence. The twelve houses of a birth chart run in the same order, and the first house is often compared to Aries.
Tarot has its own echo of the order. In the Golden Dawn system behind the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and many decks since, each sign is given a card of the Major Arcana, and Aries, the sign that leads the line, belongs to The Emperor, card IV.
Questions readers ask
What is the last sign of the zodiac?
Pisces, the twelfth sign, which runs from February 19 to March 20. It closes the cycle just before the March equinox, when the Sun moves into Aries and the order begins again.
Is the order the same in Vedic astrology?
Yes. The Sanskrit names differ, from Mesha for Aries to Meena for Pisces, but the sequence is the same and it starts with Aries. The dates differ, because the Vedic zodiac is measured from the stars rather than the equinox.
Does the Chinese zodiac follow the same order?
No. It's a separate system of twelve animals, one for each year rather than each month, starting with the Rat. Our guide to the Chinese zodiac animals in order lists them.
Why does the zodiac year start in March and not January?
Because the signs follow the seasons and the calendar doesn't. January 1 is a civic convention, while the March equinox is a fixed point in Earth's orbit, and astrologers since Ptolemy have treated it as the zodiac's new year.
