Cardinal

Meaning

Cardinal is one of the three modes, or modalities, of the zodiac, with fixed and mutable. The cardinal signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, begin at the equinoxes and the solstices, the four turning points of the year, and astrologers read them as initiative: starting things, setting a direction, meeting change by acting.

Each element begins in its own way. Aries starts by acting, Cancer by protecting, Libra by reaching towards someone else, Capricorn by organising. A chart with many planets in cardinal signs tends to launch, decide and lead; its gift is momentum and the courage to open new ground. Its difficulty is the follow-through: more beginnings than endings, or impatience once the first push is spent.

The four cardinal signs stand at right angles to one another, two pairs of opposites crossed by squares. Planets spread across them, in a T-square or a grand cross, are often read as a strong, restless drive to act, which asks for priorities more than for brakes.

In practice

• A cardinal emphasis in the balance of a chart describes someone at ease with starting and with change, who may leave the upkeep to others.
• A cardinal Sun, Moon or Ascendant brings that quality to identity, to needs or to the first impression.
• 0° of a cardinal sign: some modern astrologers treat the first degree of each cardinal sign as a sensitive point that links a chart to the world at large.
• The angular houses, the 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th, which begin at the four angles, are often compared with the cardinal signs in modern practice.

Across traditions

• Jyotish calls these signs chara, moving, and uses the same grouping in its own techniques.
• The Chinese calendar places the equinoxes and solstices in the middle of its seasons rather than at their start: Chūnfēn, the spring equinox, means “spring’s halfway point”, and spring itself begins some six weeks earlier, at Lìchūn.

Origin and history

Ptolemy called Cancer and Capricorn the solstitial signs, tropika, from the Greek for turning, because the Sun turns back there, and Aries and Libra the equinoctial signs. The same Greek word gave the tropics and the tropical zodiac their names. Latin authors called the four signs movable, and Lilly still writes of moveable signs; the English name cardinal comes from the Latin cardo, a hinge, the hinges of the year.

How Ulune calculates it

The chart’s first page counts the ten planets, from the Sun to Pluto, in cardinal signs, and the table weighs every body, the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant most, the outer planets least, leaving the angles out without a birth time. The calendar marks the Sun’s entry into each cardinal sign as an equinox or a solstice, to the minute. The table flags a body within 1° of 0° Aries, but not of the other three cardinal points.

Correspondences