Aries-Ascendant people are accident-prone. Because you are impulsive and quick to rush in headlong, you usually don’t look where you are going. You tend to trip and fall, bump into things, cut yourself. Often your face and head are more prone to injury than other parts of your body.
As a person with Aries rising, you are likely to have a flashing smile, piercing eyes that move quickly from object to object, gold or reddish coloring in the skin or hair, a muscular body, and an agile quick movement to your step.
The planet Mars, which rules Aries, is very prominent in your chart. The influence of Mars bestows great willpower, stamina, an aggressive sex drive, and a need for achievement and recognition. It also brings on strain, tension, conflict, selfishness, a quick temper, and accidents with fire and sharp instruments.
TAURUS ASCENDANT
THERE IS A STEADFASTNESS, a basic calm about a Taurus Ascendant. If you have Taurus rising you tend to be placid and easygoing. You also have charming social manners and a strong artistic bent, for the sign of Taurus is ruled by Venus, planet of love and esthetics. You want to create beauty and harmony in your life, and many Taurus Ascendants have a flair for writing, decorating, or composing music.
Taurus-Rising people don’t push their opinions on others. On the other hand, once you make up your mind (after due deliberation), you rarely change it. You hold on to your opinions and can be very stubborn and obstinate. You are also quite set in your ways, though this is not always apparent at first. It’s the little clues that give you away: you may eat the same breakfast day in and day out; if you are fond of a particular color (possibly in the blue or rose family, which are Taurean colors), you may use it repeatedly in your clothes and throughout your house. Doing things the same way you’ve always done them gives you a sense of stability, and this is a fundamental need.
Taurus-Rising people have a reputation for laziness that is not entirely deserved. It is true that you love creature comforts, elegance, luxury, physical ease, and lots of leisure. However, you can and do work very hard, especially if motivated by the promise of money or by the approval of someone you love. Determined, persistent, and strong-willed, you possess endless patience to see a thing through, to make it a success.
Taurus is the sign of wealth and material possessions, both of which are extremely important to you. You have a tendency to brood about your future security: Will there be enough to keep from starving? Are you going to be able to pay the rent next year? The fears and worries do not require a basis in reality. In fact, though you may have to struggle for money when you are young, Taurus-Rising people tend to accumulate wealth as the years roll by. Owning things can sometimes become a mania; you covet possessions and once you own something you guard it jealously and are heartbroken should you lose it. You never resign yourself to the fact that things break, tear, wear out, get lost, and are stolen.
In relationships, as well, you tend to be jealous and possessive, although you are adept at hiding this. One of your weak points is your vanity, and you rarely forgive anyone who ridicules you. Having to cope with rivalry is hard for you. You may try to pretend the prize is not worthy of your talents.
As a person with Taurus rising, you tend to have an unusually good-looking face, large round eyes, and clear skin. Often your neck is short and thick, and your body gives the impression of weight and sturdiness. Becoming overweight is a problem, especially in later years.
The planet Venus, which rules Taurus, is very prominent in your horoscope. The influence of Venus bestows grace; charm; a love of pleasure, art, and adornment; and social awareness. It also encourages overindulgence, superficiality, jealousy, and conceit.
GEMINI ASCENDANT
THE FIRST IMPRESSION others receive of you is of someone in constant motion: your hands gesticulate, your eyes dart here and there, your body does not sit still in a chair. Restlessness underlies your personality; it is the symptom of your yearning for something that is just beyond your reach. You need change and variety and are often discontent with your present lot. Gemini is the sign of duality and this is evident in the lives of Gemini Ascendants. You can be happy and unhappy at the same time, satisfied yet dissatisfied. Of course, this can be said of many people, but in your case you are discontent for a specific reason: You feel you have not lived up to your potential. You sense that there is an experience just over the horizon that will make you feel truly fulfilled, and you resent the strictures that you may think keep you from venturing out to find it.
A striking characteristic of Gemini-Rising people is their ability to use words to say exactly what is meant. To you, clarity is a tribute that words pay to ideas. You are well informed, witty, mentally quick. Gemini-Rising people tend to move into positions of prominence not by force of will but by their facile way of handling people. You adore having an audience. Many of you become actors and writers and are successful in the entertainment industry, TV, journalism, and the literary world.
As a Gemini-Rising person you have an excitable nature that is quick to react to any stimulus, to come up with an answer to any question—and also to get upset easily. You throw yourself into a project with verve and enthusiasm, then worry and fret (usually quite audibly) about this thing going wrong or that person not liking you, about how long everything is taking. However, you have a marvelous mercurial quality, and your high spirits and interest are quickly revived. You go out of your way to keep busy, if not at your vocation then at your avocation. You love puzzles, games, books, and the computer—anything that will amuse and occupy the mind.
There is a basic coolness to the Gemini-Rising personality. Even though you love to be with people and appear to have charming warmth, yours is a mental rather than emotional outlook. You deal with feelings and relationships exactly as you do with facts and figures—as things that can be analyzed. There is also a tendency to be egotistical, for fundamentally you know that you know better than others.
You like to encounter many different situations and people. You travel, change residences and occupations, and often marry more than once. Blessed with a natural sense of drama, you know how to heighten and brighten any experience.
As a Gemini Ascendant, you tend to have small sharp features, twinkling eyes that are filled with humor, a friendly smile, and graceful arms and hands that you use to great effect. You move with quickness and agility and hold on to your youthful looks well into old age.
The planet Mercury, which rules Gemini, is very prominent in your horoscope. The influence of Mercury bestows a high intellect, acute perceptions, cleverness, adroitness in speaking and writing, and a flair for foreign languages. It also encourages arrogance, sarcasm, snobbishness, cynicism, and disorganization.
CANCER ASCENDANT
IF YOU HAVE CANCER RISING, you are very sensitive to emotional signals from other people. You have extraordinary insight into human motivation. There is a reserve about you that is sometimes difficult to penetrate, but underneath is a warm, affectionate, loving, and giving nature. You are adaptable to different kinds of people even though you are not liable to make instant friendships. It takes a while for you to let someone get really close.
Cancer-Rising people tend to moodiness, and others may not always find you in a receptive frame of mind. Sometimes you can be crabby and impatient and exhibit a snappish temper. You are touchy, and others have to be careful of what they say lest they hurt your feelings. Your sensitivities are so heightened that you sometimes take offense where none was intended.
However, this same sensitivity is what sets you apart from the crowd. You possess great imagination and awareness. Many Cancer Ascendants are extraordinarily gifted as writers, poets, and painters. Because you are so tuned in to the nuances of other people’s motivations, you are able to absorb what others are feeling and thinking. You pick up opinions, thoughts, facts from all around you and, being very clever and practical (as well as visionary), you are able to put all this information to work for you. Cancer Ascendants are also clever with money, pr
udent and cautious, and have a native shrewdness in business. You know how to make wise investments and where to get the best value. Though you usually have to climb the ladder through your own efforts (rather than the efforts of others), you are likely to accumulate material success as the years go by.
You won’t hog the spotlight, but on the other hand you want public recognition for your talents. With Cancer rising, acclaim and applause can be hard to come by, so you tend to have a way of feeling sorry for yourself. You complain that the world does not appreciate you, but your complaint is usually an effort to win reassurance that quite the opposite is true.
As a Cancer Ascendant you have obstacles in your path, especially when young. However, as you surmount each difficulty and succeed (Cancer Rising has great tenacity of purpose), you become stronger and more self-assured.
If you have Cancer rising, you are likely to have a round expressive face, pale luminous eyes, slender arms and legs, and a rolling gait to your walk. Your body may be thickset through the middle, and you are prone toward putting on weight as you get older.
The Moon, which rules Cancer, is very prominent in your horoscope. The influence of the Moon bestows kindness, imagination, sympathy, deep emotion, an ability to cherish and protect, a retentive memory. It also encourages laziness, inconstancy, restlessness, passivity, and untidiness.
LEO ASCENDANT
LEO ASCENDING SIGNIFIES nobility of character, high ideals, and great personal magnetism. If you have Leo rising, you are big-hearted, expansive, benevolent, and kind. You consider it beneath you to stoop to pettiness, carping, stinginess, or narrow-mindedness. Because you are so magnanimous in spirit, you find it hard to believe ill of others. You are the opposite of the Irish as Dr. Samuel Johnson described them: “A fair people; they never speak well of each other.”
Of course the world does not always live up to anyone’s expectations, and Leo Ascendants are puzzled and hurt by meanness and ungenerosity. At such times you simply put on your regal air and make sure the underling knows in what contempt and low esteem he or she is held.
Rising-Leos have a great sense of showmanship. You love to put on lavish displays—whether it is decorating your house with expensive and elegant things or dressing in attention-getting clothes or throwing a splendid dinner party. To less flamboyant types you may appear ostentatious, show-offy, and extravagant. But your showy displays are not only to get attention; you see life in larger-than-life terms and aspire to the highest and the best. This quality draws others to you and, in itself, attracts power and influence.
Leo-Rising people seem surrounded by luck in money, career, and friendship. You are not an especially hard worker but tend to achieve success through the influence and pull of others. Fame and fortune come to you when you aren’t looking for it.
You are efficient at organizing groups of people and inspiring them to give their best. You are happiest in the role of leader. In fact, you feel wounded if your public doesn’t put you in that position. When not given what you feel is your due, you can turn haughty, temperamental, and arrogant. Leo is the sign of pride, and Ascendant natives have this in abundance. You are self-confident and have a resolute faith in yourself.
There is a basic likeableness about you, partly because you give the distinct impression that life is fun. You have a wonderful sense of humor. (Note: Rising-Leos have a particularly soft spot for children and spoil them outrageously.)
As a Leo-Rising person, you tend to have a large, beautifully shaped head, thick shining hair, a dazzling smile with bright, even teeth, and a stately bearing. Many of you are benefited by an inheritance later in your lives. Whatever path you choose to follow, you usually emerge on the sunny side of the hill.
The Sun, which rules Leo, is very prominent in your horoscope. The influence of the Sun bestows enthusiasm, generosity, power, warmth, creative self-expression, passion, and courage. It also encourages egotism, arrogance, snobbism, conceit, pomposity, and condescension.
VIRGO ASCENDANT
VIRGO ASCENDING INDICATES an analytical outlook. Though the degree of emotionalism depends on other influences in your horoscope, it is generally through the mind that you perceive the world. This is not to say you are cold and insensitive. Indeed, the opposite is true, for Virgo Ascendants have deep and tender emotions and care a great deal about others.
However, it is the process of thinking logically that gives you the deepest satisfaction. You appreciate the finely tuned mechanics of sifting through facts and information, finding the truth of the matter, introducing order and reason into almost any situation. Rising-Virgos are rather fixed in opinion, but not so inflexible that they will not change their minds upon careful review of opposing facts. To you, the cardinal sin is to be ignorant of one’s ignorance.
A fault sometimes is your inability to put things in perspective, a proclivity for getting bogged down in minutiae and losing sight of the big picture. You magnify the importance of a petty detail and then become resentful if others fail to see its significance.
Work is important to you, and you usually accomplish a great deal during your lifetime. Often you are at war within yourself, both wanting things to come easily and needing to achieve solely through your own efforts. Control—both of self and of events—is what makes you feel secure. As it turns out, most Rising-Virgos do gain through their own hard work rather than through the influence of others.
You have a charm and elegance that is difficult to pin down. You are not always easy to know intimately. Your shyness and aloofness (sometimes well disguised by a social veneer) must be penetrated by anyone who wishes to become truly close. Emotionally, it’s hard for you to show your feelings, though a great deal is always going on under the surface.
As children, Rising-Virgos sometimes suffer from poor health. Happily, health improves the older you get. For many of you, a marriage partner brings property or wealth. Later in life Rising-Virgos frequently become property owners, often in a foreign country. Success for you is often linked to dealings in and travel to places far from home.
As a Rising-Virgo person, you tend to have a gentle, oval face, eyes that sweep around a room and take in everything, and a body that gives the impression of frailty but is actually very strong.
The planet Mercury, which rules Virgo, is very prominent in your horoscope. The influence of Mercury bestows a logical mind, acute powers of observation, an intellectual outlook, perception, and a flair for science and writing. It also encourages fussiness, a nervous temperament, sarcasm, fault-finding, and worry.
LIBRA ASCENDANT
LIBRA IS A MOST PLEASING and harmonious Ascendant. If you have Libra rising, you have natural charm, grace, and poise. You are extremely social-minded and take pleasure in being with other people in a convivial atmosphere. Parties, holidays, laughter, fun, and good times are what Libra Ascendants revel in. You have a gay and genial personality and are full of hope for the future. No matter what disappointments today may bring, Rising-Librans fantasize happy tomorrows and look forward to living them.
Of course, you are not this way all the time. One of your problems is that you are easily thrown into despair and depression, especially by downhearted and discouraging people. Libra is the sign of balance, but it doesn’t take much to push Libra Ascendants off balance. Basically, however, your spirits are optimistic and blithe.
You are born with a great sense of fairness, and nothing angers you more than to see injustice go uncorrected. You are deeply upset by cruelty, violence, bloodshed, strife. To you life should be serene and content, but it must, above all, be fair.
Libra Ascendants are refined, neat, and discriminating. You breathe rarefied air. Your aloof quality is sometimes hard for others to figure out, but it will never leave you even though you function so well with other people.
You gravitate toward artistic and creative endeavors, but sometimes your artistic flair lies dormant and unused, for you dislike hard work and prefer to take the easy way out. You don’t have to s
eek the spotlight, however; it shines on you. You don’t struggle to find success; luck often comes to Libra Ascendants through a partner, mate, or close association.
You like travel, new people, new projects. You happily throw yourself into enterprises that promise excitement or diversion. The trouble is you don’t have much perseverance, so a great many things go unfinished. Another difficulty you have is making up your mind. You weigh a decision carefully, vacillating between one course of action and another; when you’ve finally decided you still hesitate. There is a timidity behind all this pondering, a fear of taking risks.
You are unhappy when single and fond of being married. (This does not necessarily mean that you will stay married to the same person.) Somewhere along the way Libra Ascendants are likely to gain wealth and material possessions through a marriage partner. As a rule you don’t have a lot of children, but you take great delight in those you do have.
As a Libra-Rising person, you tend to have a strikingly good-looking face, graceful and symmetrical bone structure, and a radiant smile. Your body is usually curving or round, though not necessarily fat.
The planet Venus, which rules Libra, is very prominent in your horoscope. The influence of Venus bestows beauty, charm, social graces, a romantic nature, an appreciation for art, music, and decoration. It also encourages superficiality, jealousy, laziness, dependence on others, and a weak will.
SCORPIO ASCENDANT
IF YOU WERE BORN WITH Scorpio ascending, you put the whole force of your personality behind everything you do. You are not a halfway person. Rising-Scorpios have an intensity, a dynamism that seethes and roils under the surface. Your willpower and determination are formidable.
Though you are sometimes viewed as a lone wolf, you do have an ability to work with people—actually, to lead people. You are strongly persuasive and zealously pursue your goals, and in addition have the power to make others pursue the same goals.
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