Sun Sign Cusps

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EarthAirNFire

Active member
Hopefully this is the right place to post this, and also that it is not redundant of an earlier thread. I looked but didn't see anything...
There is a trend among my family and friends to be born on the 21st/22nd of a month, which we all know tends to correspond to the cusp of a new sun sign. I'd like to invite everyone to weigh in with any experience or insights you might have as to the effects of being born "between signs" so to speak.
For instance, I was born on May 21; chart generators place me at 1 degree Gemini. If I were born less than 24 hours earlier I'd be a Taurus. While I do mostly identify with the typical Gem-sun traits, there are also definite Taurean undertones to my conscious personality. I enjoy mental pursuits and exchange of ideas, and have a wide variety of interests (Gem), but I am not particularly outgoing and I definitely enjoy indulging the senses with food, drink, and music (Taur).
I suspect this is an area where (as Arroyo seems to be fond of pointing out) our highly automated and computerized society tends to fail; the signs and houses are not cut and dry boxes but rather vibrations that rise, peak, fall, and trough.
Thoughts?
 
K

katydid

Well-known member
EarthAirNFire said:
Hopefully this is the right place to post this, and also that it is not redundant of an earlier thread. I looked but didn't see anything...
There is a trend among my family and friends to be born on the 21st/22nd of a month, which we all know tends to correspond to the cusp of a new sun sign. I'd like to invite everyone to weigh in with any experience or insights you might have as to the effects of being born "between signs" so to speak.
For instance, I was born on May 21; chart generators place me at 1 degree Gemini. If I were born less than 24 hours earlier I'd be a Taurus. While I do mostly identify with the typical Gem-sun traits, there are also definite Taurean undertones to my conscious personality. I enjoy mental pursuits and exchange of ideas, and have a wide variety of interests (Gem), but I am not particularly outgoing and I definitely enjoy indulging the senses with food, drink, and music (Taur).
I suspect this is an area where (as Arroyo seems to be fond of pointing out) our highly automated and computerized society tends to fail; the signs and houses are not cut and dry boxes but rather vibrations that rise, peak, fall, and trough.
Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Good idea for a thread. My family fits this subject very well.

I am a cusp person and so are both our kids. Husband is not.

My daughter has same birthday as you, May 21st. She has a 1 degree Gemini Sun but has late Taurus Mercury/Venus. So like you, she has elements of both signs. She is quick, very verbal and witty, full of creative ideas. But is also solid, grounded and likes her creature comforts.

My son has his Sun @ 29 Aries.
I have the Sun @ Zero Scorpio 32minutes.

So the three of us all have the dual sign, cusp experience going on. :whistling:


I really feel the 'division' of being both Libra and Scorpio. I have Neptune @22 Libra, Spica is @ 23 Libra50----then my Sun @ Zero Scorpio.

I have always felt the Sun/Neptune conjunction. But it is in two different signs so it is less like a conjunction because of that.
 
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EarthAirNFire

Active member
katydid said:
Good idea for a thread. My family fits this subject very well.

I am a cusp person and so are both our kids. Husband is not.

My daughter has same birthday as you, May 21st. She has a 1 degree Gemini Sun but has late Taurus Mercury/Venus. So like you, she has elements of both signs. She is quick, very verbal and witty, full of creative ideas. But is also solid, grounded and likes her creature comforts.

My son has his Sun @ 29 Aries.
I have the Sun @ Zero Scorpio 32minutes.

So the three of us all have the dual sign, cusp experience going on. :whistling:


I really feel the 'division' of being both Libra and Scorpio. I have Neptune @22 Libra, Spica is @ 23 Libra50----then my Sun @ Zero Scorpio.

I have always felt the Sun/Neptune conjunction. But it is in two different signs so it is less like a conjunction because of that.
Click to expand...

Interesting, my daughter is 28 Libra sun and 02 Scorpio Mercury, and definitely alternates between verbal/social and private/brooding. Any insights you have on being a Librio (haha) especially pertaining to relationship with parents would be appreciated.
 
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david starling

Well-known member
EarthAirNFire said:
Hopefully this is the right place to post this, and also that it is not redundant of an earlier thread. I looked but didn't see anything...
There is a trend among my family and friends to be born on the 21st/22nd of a month, which we all know tends to correspond to the cusp of a new sun sign. I'd like to invite everyone to weigh in with any experience or insights you might have as to the effects of being born "between signs" so to speak.
For instance, I was born on May 21; chart generators place me at 1 degree Gemini. If I were born less than 24 hours earlier I'd be a Taurus. While I do mostly identify with the typical Gem-sun traits, there are also definite Taurean undertones to my conscious personality. I enjoy mental pursuits and exchange of ideas, and have a wide variety of interests (Gem), but I am not particularly outgoing and I definitely enjoy indulging the senses with food, drink, and music (Taur).
I suspect this is an area where (as Arroyo seems to be fond of pointing out) our highly automated and computerized society tends to fail; the signs and houses are not cut and dry boxes but rather vibrations that rise, peak, fall, and trough.
Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Seems like the rest of your Chart would likely incline you one way or another. Also, some Element combinations are more comfortable than others, like Earth/Air. But Taurus is EXTREMELY Fixed, and Gemini Mutable--does that cause any dissonance? What about Merc and Venus--wouldn't they be a major factor in your case?
 
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CapAquaPis

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
The mystical and spiritual 29' degree before the sun cusps or makes a transit to a new sign, and the ambiguous 0' (more a combination) and 1' degrees (far into the new sign). My half-sister is a winter solstice baby: Dec 21st, she said she's 29' Sag not 0' Cap, year was 1970 between leap years 1968 and 1972. Many people born on the 29' degree of any sign, esp Cancer (and similarly for Gemini and Leo), have the "millionaire" degree. It happens my half-sister's mother was a millionaire and when she died 11 years ago, she inherited the family fortune. However, my true node is 29' Leo opposite my 8th-Sun/Moon Aquarius (Feb 15, 198) and what does it mean to have anything in any 29' ?
 
waybread

waybread

Well-known member
You are NEVER born "between" two signs. Your sun will always be in one sign or another, even if it is at 29 degrees of one sign, or zero degrees of another. Which illustrates why accurate birth times are important.

But the chances are good that if you "feel like" both signs, that you have planets in the other sign.

Also, look at the planet ruling the sign on the sun's house cusp. Unless you use whole sign houses, you may have a different sign and ruling planet on the cusp than your sun's sign. For example, if you are born a sun-Gemini but Taurus is on your sun's house cusp, then Venus has a lot to say about how your sun functions. Particularly so if your Venus is in Taurus. (Venus never moves more than 45 degrees from the sun.)

I'll give you an example. My daughter was born right at the autumn equinox. Her sun is at 29 Virgo. But it's in the 12th house and she has Libra rising. Obviously, she's going to exhibit Libra traits.

Another example. My mother was born with her sun at 0 Scorpio. She had Libra traits, for sure: a domiciled Venus in Libra. (Any domiciled planet is extra strong.) But particularly as she aged, her personality was visible as increasingly Scorpionic.
 
sibylline

sibylline

Well-known member
To each their own I guess, but I don't go by the Sun sign cusp theory. I have several planets in early degrees, and later degrees, and they're pretty typical of their sign. As long as I've studied astrology and as well as I know myself, if they were a mix of two signs, I would have known by now. One of my best friends has Leo Moon about 45 minutes away from Virgo and she is quintessential Leo; there is not a hint of Virgo in her personality, and her mother is Leo Ascendant. Before she got her birth certificate it was easy to rule out all times after 3 AM because they would have the Virgo Moon, which I was certain she was not. My father is Cancer Sun 1.5 days away from Leo and with his Moon and Mercury also in Cancer, he is another one who could never be anything but that sign.

I tend to agree with looking at the whole chart if you notice adjacent sign traits in yourself or other people.
 
AppLeo

AppLeo

Well-known member
The signs, in my opinion, are just imaginary boarders or guidelines to help us label or sort people into certain traits. In reality, the signs are blended together where no one really falls 100% into their sign.

Like for a random analogy, the hole cusp idea sounds like a graph with plotted points on it. The points halfway would be cusps. 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 But in reality, I like to think of the zodiac as a continuous curved line on a graph. There is an infinite amount of points that can fall on the line. There can be 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.31, 1.32, 1.33, 1.4, 1.5..... blah blah.

You aren't really a Taurus or a Gemini. You're just in the middle of them, so you naturally contain both of those signs, or you're not either of them because you aren't really a Taurus or a Gemini. For all the cusps, I've wondered if we should also give them zodiac signs – 15 degrees away from the cusp in both directions would make up the new sign.

So for Taurus and Gemini... Taurus = Bull. Gemini = Twins. Combine them and you get something different... like Two Oxen. So the last 15 degrees of Taurus and the beginning degrees of Gemini would make up this new sign of Two Oxen. The Two Oxen would be called – I don't know – dioxus LOL.

That's just what goes through my mind. I'm almost on a cusp; I'm only 2 degrees Leo. So when I imagine myself I imagine myself as a cat with a shell. Cancer is a crab and Leo is a cat so...

cat-shell-oppo-pet-bed-2.jpg


But instead of imagining combining them, you may as well create a completely different zodiac. Aqualeos could be Cancer and Leo put together and it could be a sea lion. :D

california_sea_lion_5_Big.jpg
 
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david starling

Well-known member
I'm a Piquarian, symbolized by a dolphin.:biggrin: (Just spouting off!:lol:) Should mention that's not a Cusp situation, it's a blend of personal Chart indicators (off-thread, but I like the blending idea. It's really AppLeo's fault!):lol:
 
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E

EarthAirNFire

Active member
AppLeo said:
The signs, in my opinion, are just imaginary boarders or guidelines to help us label or sort people into certain traits. In reality, the signs are blended together where no one really falls 100% into their sign.

Like for a random analogy, the hole cusp idea sounds like a graph with plotted points on it. The points halfway would be cusps. 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 But in reality, I like to think of the zodiac as a continuous curved line on a graph. There is an infinite amount of points that can fall on the line. There can be 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.31, 1.32, 1.33, 1.4, 1.5..... blah blah.

You aren't really a Taurus or a Gemini. You're just in the middle of them, so you naturally contain both of those signs, or you're not either of them because you aren't really a Taurus or a Gemini. For all the cusps, I've wondered if we should also give them zodiac signs – 15 degrees away from the cusp in both directions would make up the new sign.

So for Taurus and Gemini... Taurus = Bull. Gemini = Twins. Combine them and you get something different... like Two Oxen. So the last 15 degrees of Taurus and the beginning degrees of Gemini would make up this new sign of Two Oxen. The Two Oxen would be called – I don't know – dioxus LOL.

That's just what goes through my mind. I'm almost on a cusp; I'm only 2 degrees Leo. So when I imagine myself I imagine myself as a cat with a shell. Cancer is a crab and Leo is a cat so...

cat-shell-oppo-pet-bed-2.jpg


But instead of imagining combining them, you may as well create a completely different zodiac. Aqualeos could be Cancer and Leo put together and it could be a sea lion. :D

california_sea_lion_5_Big.jpg
Click to expand...

😂😂😂 I love that approach. So if you had someone who was on the cusp of Scorp and Sag, with Leo rising, you'd have...a manticore??
As far as the whole cusp theory, it looks like I've struck a nerve with some folks. I haven't been studying astrology long, but I've studied enough to know that ones own personal intuition and experience has the final say, which is why some people "choose" to read their chart in Whole Sign or Koch or Placidus based on what makes the most sense in their lives. I have no planets in Taurus or the second house, but there are definite Taurean themes in my personality, and the cusp theory is the only logical explanation. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that there is so much mutable energy in my chart (all my personal planets and ascendant are in mutable signs) that I "absorb" the traits of neighboring signs more than someone with mostly fixed energy?
 
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david starling

Well-known member
EarthAirNFire said:
������ I love that approach. So if you had someone who was on the cusp of Scorp and Sag, with Leo rising, you'd have...a manticore??
As far as the whole cusp theory, it looks like I've struck a nerve with some folks. I haven't been studying astrology long, but I've studied enough to know that ones own personal intuition and experience has the final say, which is why some people "choose" to read their chart in Whole Sign or Koch or Placidus based on what makes the most sense in their lives. I have no planets in Taurus or the second house, but there are definite Taurean themes in my personality, and the cusp theory is the only logical explanation. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that there is so much mutable energy in my chart (all my personal planets and ascendant are in mutable signs) that I "absorb" the traits of neighboring signs more than someone with mostly fixed energy?
Click to expand...

I'm thinking we have choices about how we express and define ourselves: We each have several available "energy-channels". For example, I've chosen Whole-sign because it's the best House description for my own PREFERRED energy-channel. I've also chosen Modern-Tropical for the same reason. But, a Placidus-described channel is available to me, should I choose to use it, as are Traditional-Tropical and Sidereal-described, channels. Why should we criticize one another for preferring one energy-channel over another?
 
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AppLeo

AppLeo

Well-known member
david starling said:
I'm thinking we have choices about how we express and define ourselves: We each have several available "energy-channels". For example, I've chosen Whole-sign because it's the best House description for my own PREFERRED energy-channel. I've also chosen Modern-Tropical for the same reason. But, a Placidus-described channel is available to me, should I choose to use it, as are Traditional-Tropical and Sidereal-described, channels. Why should we criticize one another for preferring one energy-channel over another?
Click to expand...

I totally agree; they're just different forms of astrological interpretation that all have one common goal: to help us understand ourselves.
 
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