How Your Rising Sign Can Help You Find Your Purpose 

Our Ascendent, or Rising, sign is the sign lying on the left side of the horizontal plane bisecting your astrological chart in half. The planet this sign is associated with is known as your chart ruler. For example, if your Rising sign is in Aries, your chart ruler would be Mars, as Mars is the planet associated with Aries.

Your Ascendant represents your true nature. This is who you are when you’re at your best, and it expresses the energy you came into this world with. Related to the field of western psychology, your Rising is synonymous to superego. This is the part of who you are above the limiting constraints of ego and subconscious programming. Life feels most fulfilling when we’re connected to the energy of our Ascendant, as we’re fully in the flow of expressing our highest self and authentic being.

Wherever we might be making ourselves small, the voice of our Rising whispers back our true nature and capability. Ideally, we are working to bring traits of our ego (Sun) and subconscious (Moon) in alignment with the expression of our Rising. When the three signs are working together in harmony, we feel most in touch with our power without diminishing or repressing any part of who we are or how we view the world.

On occasion, we all fall prey to the strength of what our ego mind is saying. Through awareness of what the qualities of our Rising are, we can work to soften the bond of our ego mind. We also can fall victim to getting lost in emotional wavelengths, causing us to lose sight of who we are as the objective observer of experience.

Ironically, the traits of our Rising often express parts of ourselves we don’t share as frequently with the external world. We forget our innate power and we lose track of how it feels to be connected in the effortless state of authentic being.

Signs we aren’t connected to our Rising include:

• Feeling as though we’re the victim of experience.
• Experiencing burnout in occupation, relationships, community or other domains of life.
• Thinking our life is harder than it needs to be.
• Experiencing a strong sense of defensiveness over who we are, what we do, or how we show up. (Defensiveness is often associated with aspects of our Descendent, or the sign lying directly opposite of our Ascendent on an astrological chart.)
• Being overly dogmatic in belief systems, mindsets, or behavior.
• Poor communication.
• Feeling as though we’re “locked down” or closed off from connection. (The goal is to create boundaries, not walls.)
• Clinging to smallness, stuck-ness, or fearing our own ascension.
• Thinking we’re misunderstood.
• Ping-ponging between emotional wavelengths and ego/external presentation.
• Putting more energy into how our life looks externally (people-pleasing, mind-reading, conforming, etc.) vs. maintaining awareness and valuing how it feels to be in our life experiences and body.
• Having a fear of hard conversations to the point of silencing.

To get back in touch with your Rising, run your astrological chart and look at important qualities or phrases associated with this sign.

Close relationships are often the best mirrors to reflect our authentic nature back to us. Whereas the ego can be a shield and the subconscious can be a platform for hiding in shadows, our Rising expresses who we are when we feel most in touch with ourselves.

Have you ever met someone who feels truly magnetic? There’s something about them that seems effortless. It’s the qualities of our Ascendent other people intuitively pick up on when this happens. Our Ascendant expresses our dharma, who we are and our reason for being that is constant throughout this lifetime. It is this energy we came into this world with and what we are here to show and represent to other people.

Our Ascendent is housed in our first house, the house of the force that carried us into this world. Our first house presents us with identity, personal will, and the ability to enact it. The first house is the moment at which we said “yes” to this lifetime, and is symbolically the start of our hero’s journey. Because this first house expresses the start of a hero’s journey, it contains all of the hopes, ideals, and aspirations we carry with us in every subsequent step. When we fail to remember who we are on the most core level, life can feel inauthentic or lack a sense of meaning. It is up to us to remember who we are and stay on our own life course rather than getting lost in the journey of what it means to be another person.

To get back in touch with your Rising:

• Make a list of personal values.
• Reflect on your childhood self. (What did they value? How did they want to spend their time? What issues were they passionate about?)
• Demonstrate love to your inner child. (Play dress up, engage in expressive movement, get lost in music, etc.)
• Tap in with your intuition and give yourself the gifts you need today. (Do you crave to rest? Who do you want to talk to at this party? What do you want to wear today?)
• Write a personal mission statement.
• Ask a few of your closest friends to describe you in five (or less) words.
• Think about and journal times in which life felt most meaningful or effortless.
• Identify and connect with three archetypes you feel most personally drawn to. (How can you express these characters in your external life? What do they represent to you? How do they relate to the story of your life, career, and where you find meaning/fulfillment?)
• Engage in mindfulness practices.