Your Ascendant in Astrology | The Helm

A natal chart is divided into 12 places (sometimes called houses). The first place is called “The Helm,” which is your Ascendant or Rising Sign. The ancients likened the first place to the helm of the ship, from which you navigate your journey of life and the experiences promised of the other 11 places in the natal chart. The first place contains the topics related to you: your character, disposition, how you present yourself to the world, your body, physical characteristics, your constitution, and a general indicator for health, illness, and injury. (Depending on context, the Sun, Moon, and the planet that governs the sign of the first place also give indications for body, health, illness, and injury.)

Your Ascendant was calculated upon the moment of your birth and was determined based on your birth date, birth time, and birth place. The combination of these factors assigned which degree of the zodiac was rising on the eastern horizon when you emerged from your mother’s womb and took your first breath. Your birth at that moment was a proclamation, an announcement of your entrance into the material world, the sublunary sphere. The zodiac sign in the first place at that moment becomes your Ascendant. The degree of the Ascendant in that zodiac sign becomes a senstive area of your natal chart. (There are 30 degrees in each zodiac sign.) When planets transit through the first place, especially near the degree of your Ascendant, the promise of that transit will be experiened more personally.