Sagittarius

Sagittarius is mutable fire, the sign the Sun enters as the northern year approaches its darkest turn and the horizon still offers a road. The image is the archer, sometimes a centaur: a human aim carried by an animal body, an arrow pointed past the local field. Mutable signs translate and seek. Fire signs seek with heat and conviction. Sagittarius seeks a meaning large enough to travel for.

The weather is wide, candid, and restless in a hopeful way. It wants a doctrine, a foreign country, a teacher, a joke that tells the truth, or a law that can be lived. Classical hot and dry fire shows up here as enthusiasm with a direction. The sign can be blunt. Bluntness is often its honesty. It can also be so in love with the far target that the ground under the horse goes unexamined.

Jupiter is the traditional ruler, and Jupiter also rules Pisces in the older scheme. In Sagittarius, Jupiter is in his fire domicile: faith, law, teaching, and increase expressed as a quest. In Pisces the same planet rules a water sign of compassion and unboundedness. Modern astrology often gives Pisces to Neptune and leaves Sagittarius as Jupiter's sole domicile. This library keeps both traditional domiciles and names the modern one on the planet's own page. Mercury is in detriment in Sagittarius, opposite his domicile in Gemini. The messenger's love of the local fact, the double view, and the unset conclusion fits this weather poorly. Sagittarius wants the arrow to mean something. Mercury can still speak here. He speaks in the service of a larger aim, and he may skip a footnote.

There is no classical exaltation degree assigned to Sagittarius in the standard scheme. The dignity story is Jupiter's domicile and Mercury's detriment. A planet in this sign is in a climate of aim and belief, comfortable or not depending on the planet.

The natural house is the ninth: religion, long journeys, higher learning, law, and the counsel of strangers. It is a cadent house in the traditional ranking of strength, and it is still one of the great topical places. Cadent describes a position that does not angularly command the chart. It does not describe a topic that is trivial. A planet in the sign of Sagittarius brings a seeking, Jupiterian style to whatever house it occupies.

Sun in Sagittarius makes the conscious will hungry for a horizon. The person often assembles an identity out of what they believe and where they have been. Moon in Sagittarius feels by looking forward, and a confined mood can feel like a moral problem, not only a practical one. Jupiter in Sagittarius is the ruler at home. The Ascendant in Sagittarius makes an entrance that is open, sometimes loud, and aimed past the doorway.

Sagittarius squares Virgo and Pisces, and it opposes Gemini. The opposition is the pair of the far meaning and the nearby fact. Trines run to Aries and Leo. Fire feeds fire. The gift is courage of aim. The risk is a belief that outruns the evidence and calls the outrunning faith.

In a reading, ask what the arrow is for, and whether the horse is still on a road. Sagittarius's gift is a meaning a person can walk toward. Its risk is a meaning used to avoid the street they are actually on. For the ruler, read Jupiter. For the opposite messenger, read Mercury and Gemini. For the far road and the law, read the ninth house.