The Ascendant is one point on the astral chart that appears to the east in the moment of birth. The Ascendant symbolizes the way we approach life.

Thus, the Ascendant can be associated with the awakening of our consciousness, just as the sun wakes us in the morning, dispelling the darkness of the night with its rays of light. According to the sign of the Zodiac representing the ascendant, we tend to use their characteristics to mold our personality and make a kind of mask between our true nature, symbolized by the Sun, and the outside world. In many cases, others recognize us more by the qualities of the sign of Ascendant than by the characteristics of the solar sign.

In consequence, the Ascendant can be, first, an image that we project to the outside, or a shield, but also like a door that opens toward our true being and allows to flow through this channel a large part of ourselves.

The ascendant sign marks the external behavior or the way their daily reactions are. Sometimes, there is a certain contradiction between the internal being shaped by the position of the sun, and the external behaviors, which are indicated by the sign in the ascendant.

The oldest astrological documents are of the year 700 BC, which comes from the Babylonian and Chaldeans. For Egyptians, the astrological knowledge was part of their religion. The oldest sample of the drafting of an astral birth chart comes from the Egyptian Pharaoh Nectanebo in the year 358 BC. Some of the most famous people who were dedicated to the study of astrology are: Hippocrates (460 – 359 BC), father of today’s medicine, who used the astrological system for his diagnoses in medicine, Aristotle (384 – 322 BC), Manilus (48 BC – 20 AD), who wrote five books on the movement of celestial bodies and on the properties of the zodiacal signs, Francis Bacon (1546 – 1626); Galileo Galilei (1546 – 1601), who built the first telescope of history and confirmed the controversial theory of Copernicus which states that the Earth was not the center of the universe; Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), who was convinced that the events could be predicted by astrology.

Astrology fell in a time of darkness during 1600 to 1800 due to numerous factors that contributed to its discredit. Astronomy was transformed into a science sharpening its separation from astrology. The Catholic Church and parliaments openly proclaimed that astrology was a superstitious practice. It was subjected to trial by accusing astrologers of heretics and condemning them to remain in prison or were sentenced to death even if people of the stature of John Dryden and Isaac Newton were ruling in its favor.

In the early nineteenth century, astrology experienced a revival under the auspices of Frederic Leo (better known as Alan Leo). Astrology acquired a new image which praises the human nature and it stressed that a man can have control over his destiny or be at the mercy of it. Alan Leo astrology took away the value of superstition and witchcraft that surrounded it and raised its art-science status to be more ethical.