What is Your Rising Sign?

If you are familiar with astrology, then you most likely know what your sun sign is: that's the horoscope sign you check when you read the newspaper. The sun sign is where the sun was during the time of your birth. But are you familiar with your rising sign? Your rising sign can have a great affect on your personality and life. Knowing and understanding your rising sign can be extremely useful.

Your rising sign is calculated by the time you were born. The exact time of your birth is extremely helpful to have to find your rising sign. Once you have your time of birth, an astrologer can easily give you your rising sign - they need to look it up on a detailed chart. Our rising signs are found within two-hour intervals for every sun sign each day. Therefore, a Cancer born at 5:32 a.m. would have the rising sign of Cancer. But a Cancer born at 5:32 p.m. would have the rising sign of Capricorn. Just thinking about it - you can see how these two Cancer people would have very different personalities!

So what does your rising sign do? One of the important things that it does is that it gives the world a first impression of you to others. Have you ever met someone for the first time and then you get to know them and they are much different? That is a circumstance where most likely their rising sign and their sun sign are so entirely different - that their first impression personality is very separated from their actual personality.

The important thing to keep in mind is that while the rising sign does make this impression - we all know that first impressions are not always necessarily the best way to judge someone. Perhaps you meet someone who comes across very quiet and it turns out they are very social and friendly. You might misjudge them.

If you embrace your rising sign and enhance these parts of your personality then the impression you give the world is actual. Being aware of the impression that you make is important. Simply knowing that your rising sign is so much different can often be the first step to understanding.

Here are the Rising Signs and their popular traits:

Aries: very sociable, bold and even a bit aggressive, courageous and athletic

Taurus: patient, lover of beauty and art (music and visual arts), sensual

Gemini: sociable, flirtatious, a "social butterfly", impatient

Cancer: nurturing, caring, kind, sometimes a bit moody or depressed

Leo: vibrant, loving to be the center of attention/theatrical, a storyteller/comedian

Virgo: analytical, well-organized, intellectual and less emotional when responding

Libra: charming, unable to make a decision, always trying to see someone's good side

Scorpio: passionate, energetic, strong emotions

Sagittarius: light-hearted, funny, intelligent & intellectual

Capricorn: a real businessperson, old soul, serious

Aquarius: unique, inventor, creative

Pisces: dreamy, soft, compassionate