In this series, I’m going to break down each and every rising sign and every house of your chart, based on the rising sign. I’m going to be using whole sign houses, which is a house system where every sign is a separate house.

This isn’t so much of a breakdown, actually, and more of a synthesis. When you look at everything in a chart isolated and dissected, ultimately you’re not going to get much of a narrative about your entire chart. By relating every house back to your rising sign, you can understand your entire chart in a more holistic way.

If you’re not using whole sign houses already, I highly encourage you to apply it to your understanding of your chart. While Placidus is still the most popular house system being used, it’s actually more relevant to electional astrology than using your natal chart to understand your personal drives. Whole sign houses are more relevant when you use astrology to build self understanding.

Aquarius rising, Leo descending: Stranger and stranger

The ascendent is how you see the world and the descendent is how you see yourself when interacting with other people. With Aquarius at the point in the sky where the sun rises, Saturn controls the chart. That can give Aquarius risings a dry and sardonic demeanor. They may be people who don’t know how to respond immediately to displays of affection, especially compliments. Their first reaction, when given a hug, may be “what do I do?” rather than readily hugging back.

Leo descending means that the Sun rules over the way Aquarius risings function within their relationships. This Leo descendent is why Aquarius risings are always great friends to have but also why they cam come across as a little arrogant. When it comes down to it, they want to be there for you and will demonstrate their loyalty to you unceasingly. However, in everyday interactions they can have a bad habit of not listening to anyone but themselves speak which they don’t think others notice (even though they do).

So, besides the fact that Aquarius rising aren’t really listening to you and will just go their own way almost all of the time, most of the time they’re the person who is always at every event but in the corner and just people watching. You might see the Leo descendent in them, thinking that they’re looking very confident even in the middle of the crowd, while they’re actually paralyzed with social anxiety and trying very hard not to show it.

While Aquarius risings actually love attention, they will never, ever, ever ask for it. This is because they truly don’t want to be pinned down by any other person except themselves. If you tell them that they’re charming, they will go out of their way to prove how awkward they are. If you tell them that they’re funny, they will make a point of being serious.

Pisces second house, Virgo eighth house: Professor

The second and eighth houses represent your relationship to the material world. Both are about values. The second house is your values and the eighth house is your social values.

With Pisces on the second house cusp, Aquarius risings have a very high feeling of ideals without actually ever wanting to pin down an of their specific value judgments. They may claim to be people who never judge. Virgo on the eighth house cusp means that their values are made in the moment, by criticizing and rejecting the things in the world that they see and know they don’t like, more than building a value system that is independent.

Aquarius risings can be like that philosophy professor who is always critiquing the institutions they find themselves within but, when asked their opinion, don’t have anything to say without it being a specific reaction to something they see happening in process. It’s not that Aquarius rising doesn’t have a strong opinion—it’s just that they don’t see the point of having one without it also being a specific response.

With money, Aquarius rising always wants to know why they should make the money they make or spend the money they spend. Like water, money may drip out of their hands. They simply don’t know how to hang onto it and don’t want to bother with all that nonsense anyway. They probably don’t even know how much they make. They’re also not going to buy something just because they think it look cool and, because of this, suffer a lack of decorative instinct for their spaces and body. They want their money, income and expenditure, to go towards a cause. Often, the self care routines of Aquarius risings are extremely lacking because their rooms are both messy and sparse. They’re extremely discriminating in regards to what’s materially in their lives and definitely don’t want a lot of stuff to weigh them down, even if they’re not the type to move that much.

Aries third house, Libra ninth house: They said what?

Informational processing is something that every Aquarius rising does extremely fast. It can take them just a little bit of time to read a book, learn a subject, or comprehend the social dynamics of a group. It’s like information just goes through them and then they’re onto the next thing. Aries as the third house means that Aquarius rising’s thoughts are going ten miles a minute. They’re mental sprinters.

Aquarius risings can be incredibly heavy handed when it comes to how they communicate. They say what they mean and they don’t care if anyone takes offense. And the thing is, rarely anyone takes offense because, even if the words that Aquarius rising chooses to make their point clear are not well thought out, their ideas are. They might say outlandish and offensive things but they always know the right context in which to say them. Aquarius rising, with Libra on the ninth house, makes choices in terms of their ideology that aligns to the people they’re surrounded by.

That means that, because Aquarius is so invested in one mode of thought, they’re able to take an outsider’s position and create an original idea within that context. They’re less interested in making whole new fields of study and more interested in challenging what disciplines already exist.

An example of this would be the painter who brings representative painting back or the computer scientist who wants to make poetry generating code. While each of these figures are working with their mediums in ways that challenge what practitioners of their disciplines are habitually inclined towards, they’re still working within that discipline. They’re not making a whole new one up.

Scorpio tenth house, Taurus fourth house: Stubborn

The tenth and fourth houses of an Aquarius rising are ruled by Venus and Mars. Together, they talk about your position to the world. Look to your Venus and Mars for more info.

As we mentioned before, Aquarius rising is someone who definitely doesn’t want to be known. With Scorpio on the top of their chart, they pretty much want other people to think of a void when it comes to them. They don’t want people to think of them at all and, if they do, they want it to be a carefully controlled image.

As much as Aquarius risings are known for their inventiveness and weirdness, the Taurus on the fourth house means that they’re actually people who tend to do the exact same things each and every day, to live in the same place without moving forever, and eat the same foods without thinking about it at all over and over again. For Aquarius risings to feel like they can be inventive, they have to leave a lot of their life to routine so that they just don’t have to think that much about it all the time.

If you suggest a new place to eat or play, Aquarius rising’s first instinct will probably to find something wrong with it because they tend to think that they know what they like and are set in their ways. If you suggest that they try something new on the menu, even as they’re lost in imagining the future of humanity, they may not try it because they like to stick to the things that they know will be easy on their stomachs. In terms of food, Aquarius risings can be very sensitive.

Aquarius risings also tend to be known for the same things over and over, going to the same hangouts over and over again. Once they get situated in a certain place, they don’t like to move again because they’re sprawled completely out. They have their books tossed around them, their feet up, and they don’t even notice it if other people are stumbling around them.

If you’re trying to get your Aquarius rising to change their minds about something, the Scorpio and Taurus angles make it almost impossible to do so. The only people who will ever be able to change an Aquarius rising’s mind is themselves and they tend to enjoy making their disagreements with you loud and clear.

Sagittarius eleventh house, Gemini fifth house: Ideological networks

Like we said before, Aquarius risings have a way with information. The Gemini on their fifth house means that they’re masters at creating new ideas. They’re incredibly fluent with words.

The Gemini on the fifth house also means that, in terms of creativity, Aquarius is creating for the brain and less so for the heart. These people are conceptual artists. Their works of art tend to be funny, satirical, or smart rather than hitting the heartstrings. They live for impressing people with their knowledge and not their emotions.

Sagittarius on the eleventh house means that Aquarius rising simply cannot be in community with those who are politically incompatible with themselves. Community, for Aquarius rising, is a politically active field and they prefer to side with people who they can see eye to eye with over people in their vicinity. This is why it’s so easy for Aquarius risings to find their closest friends through the internet and not necessarily in their own neighborhoods, schools, or churches. They might even feel closer to people who they meet online than anyone they know in the real world.

Capricorn twelfth house, Cancer sixth house: Unwillingly Temperamental

A moon ruled sixth house means that Aquarius rising cares the most about their work. That, and that they can be a little bit fragile in body. This can be another reason why Aquarius rising typically likes to eat the same, strangely specific foods over and over. They know what works for their system and they’re hesitant to change it, lest they get a stomachache. If you offer them that’s not something they normally eat, their whole system can get out of whack.

The Capricorn on the twelfth is an inner pessimism. While Aquarius rising likes to think about the future, their visions of just what kind of future is at play is often bleak. Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, is also the least political planet. This means that, underneath it all, Aquarius just doesn’t know how to do things like smooze, mingle, and network.

With Capricorn where it is, Aquarius rising can have some hidden issues dealing with authority, particularly with how much authority they’re able to give themselves. The Cancer on the sixth works extremely hard to please. Because this placement means that Aquarius rising tries their best to use their time, work commitments or otherwise, for things that they truly care about, this can also mean that they are much more sensitive to whether managers appreciate their work than they seem.

Similar to the Taurus fourth house, the Cancer on the sixth house means that Aquarius rising isn’t really looking for too much change in their life routine. They tend to get stuck in places of employment, making it into their home and never, ever leaving. It suits them to do work at home, where they don’t have to dress to impress or even wear pants.

Work can also be a place where Aquarius risings deal with insecurity. To really process emotions, they have to turn the whole thing into a topic. If they’re learning how to deal with anger, for example, maybe they’ll make an art project that they can put some time in from the process. There isn’t really a big boundary between work and personal life for Aquarius rising.