Aries
20 March to 20 April. The ram: a fire sign that starts things, ruled by Mars, the planet the tradition associates with effort, force and the first move. This page is the reference, written plainly, followed by the one thing most sign pages will not tell you.
What the tradition actually says
Western astrology reads an Aries Sun as an identity organised around starting. The person is at their best at the beginning of a thing, when there is something in front of them to push against and nobody has yet said how it should be done. The fire element gives heat and directness; the cardinal modality gives the impulse to initiate, which is why the tradition describes Aries as the pioneer rather than the settler. Mars's rulership adds the willingness to fight for it: not aggression for its own sake, but the readiness to meet resistance head on.
The honest shadow readings in the classical sources are impatience that arrives before the plan does, a temper that flares and is forgotten by its owner sooner than by anyone else, and attention that is high at the start of a thing and thin by the middle of it. A sign page that only lists virtues is a greetings card; the tradition itself is more even-handed than that.
Common misreadings
Aries is not "the selfish sign"; the tradition's word is self-directed, which is a description of where the energy points, not of what the person values. It is not incapable of finishing; the cardinal fire pattern finishes what still feels like a beginning and loses interest in what has become maintenance. And a Sun sign describes what you are consciously building, not the whole person: your Moon, your rising sign and thirty other placements say the rest, which is why we calculate all of them.
The part other sign pages leave out
If you are a Aries Sun in Western astrology, your Sun in the Vedic system is probably in Pisces.
Western astrology anchors its zodiac to the seasons; Vedic astrology anchors its to the stars. The two rulers have drifted about 24.2 degrees apart over two thousand years, so if you were born between 20 March and 13 April, your Vedic Sun sits in Pisces, in one of the lunar mansions Uttara Bhadrapada and Revati. Born 14 April to 20 April, you keep Aries in both systems, in the mansion of Ashwini. Neither ruler is wrong. They are measuring differently, and any product that shows you only one is choosing tidiness over the whole truth.
Those dates are 2026's. The Sun reaches the sidereal boundary at 03:41 UTC on 14 April, so a birth on that day is settled by the hour and the place, and the split moves by about a day every seventy years as the two zodiacs drift apart.
About 60 seconds · every system from one entry · nothing stored unless you keep it
Questions people ask
Is Aries compatible with my sign?
Sun-sign compatibility is the postcard version: two placements out of the eighty a real pair comparison reads. The traditions also disagree with each other about pairs, which we show rather than hide. The honest answer needs both charts, and the free calculator is where it starts.
What is a Aries Moon or rising?
A Aries Moon reads as the emotional pattern (feelings that arrive fast, are said at once and pass quickly), and Aries rising as the first impression of speed and directness, and the frame of the whole chart. Same sign, three different jobs. Your own combination is on your free chart.
Which is right, my Western sign or my Vedic one?
Both. They are two internally consistent rulers laid against the same sky, about 24.2 degrees apart. What matters is knowing which one a reading is using, and what each was designed to do well.
We read charts for pattern and coherence, not prediction. Nothing here tells you what will happen, and nothing here tells you who you are; it shows a structure and leaves the judgement with you.