Aries

Lilly 1659 opens with a string of technical labels, and each one sorts the sign by a different test. Ptolemy, in Ashmand's 1822 translation, explains the equinoctial label from the sky: when the Sun reaches the first point of this sign, day and night are equal. He also gives the Sun his exaltation here, an old term for a sign where a planet was held to rise in standing, and gives Saturn his fall, which only names the place opposite Saturn's exaltation.

Being first raises a dispute about where the circle starts. Ptolemy counts from the equinox, and the calculator on this site does the same with Tropical reckoning. Alan Leo 1899 warns against confusing the signs with the star groups of the same name, while Heindel 1919 calls the star groups a natural zodiac and the equinox count an intellectual one.

Alan Leo draws people of this sign as restless starters of schemes, headstrong and more ideal than practical. The 1697 English Manilius instead sends them to the wool trades, an assignment that seems to come straight from the animal. Modern popular astrology keeps the starter and forgets the weavers, so the portrait has changed more than the symbol has.