Aries horoscope

From the Moon. This is the single biggest difference between a Vedic reading and the Western one most people have seen: Jyotish treats the Chandra rashi — the sign the Moon occupied at birth — as primary, and reads the Sun sign as a secondary indicator of vitality and standing. So a daily Aries rashifal is written for people whose Moon is in Mesha, not for people born between Mar 21 – Apr 19. If you know your Moon sign, read that one. If you do not, cast a free Kundli and it will tell you, along with your nakshatra.

Because there are two zodiacs and they no longer line up. Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac, which pins 0° Aries to the spring equinox; Vedic astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, which is fixed to the actual stars. The equinox drifts against the stars by about one degree every 72 years, and the gap has now opened to roughly 24 degrees — that offset is the ayanamsa. So tropical Aries runs Mar 21 – Apr 19 while sidereal Aries runs Apr 14 – May 14, and the Sun's actual entry into Mesha is Mesha Sankranti. Both sets are given on this page: the tropical dates because they are what you recognise, the sidereal ones because they are what the reading is computed from.

Mars. In Jyotish Mars owns Mesha, and its moolatrikona — the stretch where it is most comfortably itself — falls at Mars, 0°–12°. That matters practically: an Aries reading is really a reading of where Mars sits in your chart, which house it occupies, what aspects it, and whether it is currently running a dasha period. The sign sets the terms; the lord decides the outcome.

Three, always. Ashwini (all four padas, ruled by Ketu); Bharani (all four padas, ruled by Venus); Krittika (pada 1, ruled by Sun). The arithmetic is exact rather than approximate: 27 nakshatras of four padas each is 108 padas, and 108 divided among 12 rashis is nine padas per rashi with nothing left over. Krittika is split across the boundary here, so two people can share it and sit in different rashis. Your nakshatra decides your Vimshottari dasha sequence, so it matters more for timing than the rashi does.

Movable signs begin each quarter of the zodiac and correspond to the angular houses. Matters ruled from a chara rashi start quickly and change direction just as readily, and muhurta for travel, launches and anything meant to move is preferred here. Mesha is one of the four chara rashis, along with the three at 90, 180 and 270 degrees from it. In practice this is what an astrologer reads before anything else when choosing a muhurta, because it decides whether a thing started under that sign is likely to move, hold or repeat.