You know you're a Libra. Do you know which Libra you are?

What is a Libra really like?

Libra is the seventh sign of the zodiac: an air sign, a cardinal sign, ruled by Venus. The Sun is in Libra from September 22, 23 or 24 to October 22 or 23. What any one Libra is really like depends on the rest of the chart: the Moon, the rising sign, Venus and Mars.

Libra is one of twelve. What is the zodiac, and where did the twelve signs come from?

What it is

Your sun sign is the slice of the zodiac the Sun was standing in on your birthday. The zodiac here is a measuring tape, not a picture: the Sun's yearly path cut into twelve equal slices of 30°, counted from the spring equinox. Libra is the seventh slice, and the Sun crosses it from September 23 to October 23. ¹

It isn't the constellation. When the Babylonians matched twelve star patterns to twelve equal slices, the dates and the stars lined up. Earth's axis has wobbled since, so on the same dates the Sun now stands in front of different stars, and astronomers count thirteen constellations on its path, not twelve. Western astrology keeps its slices tied to the seasons, not to the stars. ¹

Libra is a air sign and a cardinal sign. Ptolemy grouped the signs in triangles of three, 120° apart; Libra's triangle is Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, the one later astrologers called air. The modes come from the seasons: cardinal signs fall in the first month of a season, when it turns. ²

A ruling planet is the planet a sign is said to belong to, its "house" in Ptolemy's word. Tradition gives Libra to Venus. ²

A sun sign is one placement out of many. The Moon, the rising sign and every planet sit in signs of their own, which is why two people with the same sun sign can seem to have very little in common.

This is the short version for one sign. How the zodiac was built, and its whole history, is on the master page: What is the zodiac, and where did the twelve signs come from?

Libra in the old books

The traditional portrait of the sign, the same for everyone born under it.

Libra, in the old books, is Venus's airy house and the second of Ptolemy's equinoctial signs: the autumn balance point, when day and night run equal. The portrait takes the scales literally. Traditionally a Libra is fair-minded, gracious, sociable, good company and a better host, with a strong feeling for how things look and how people are treated. ²

The old writers' complaint is the dithering. A Libra is said to weigh every side for so long that dinner goes cold, and to keep the peace at the cost of saying what it wants. The cardinal mode gets less credit than it deserves here: Libra opens autumn, and it's usually the one who quietly organised the evening.

That's the Sun alone, the same for every Libra. A blunt Mars or a fixed Moon can make the most diplomatic Libra very sure of its own mind.

Where Libra comes from

Era by era, with sources. More in the Reading Room.

Ancientc. 1000–450 BCEBabylonian astronomers built the zodiac out of eighteen reference star groups over about a thousand years; by around 450 BCE it had settled into twelve equal zones along the path of the Moon and planets. ³
Ancient410 BCEThe earliest known horoscopes, from Babylon and Nippur, date to this year. ³
Classicalc. 275 BCEAratus's Phaenomena has no Scales. These stars are the Claws, belonging to the Scorpion next door, and he calls them dim. ⁴
Classical1st century BCEThe Balance comes into general use as the sign's name in the first century BCE, replacing the Scorpion's Claws, according to F. E. Robbins's notes to Ptolemy. Ptolemy himself still uses both names. ²
Classical29 BCEVirgil's Georgics imagines the Scorpion drawing in its claws to make room for the young Octavian as a new star, between the Maiden and the Claws. ⁵
Classical2nd century CEPtolemy, working in Alexandria, writes the Tetrabiblos. It gives each sign a ruling planet, groups the signs in triangles of three and sets out the angles between signs that astrologers still use. ^6,2
Classical2nd century CEPtolemy calls Libra equinoctial, since it begins at the autumn equinox, and gives it to Venus. His map of the world ties it to Bactriana and Serica, and to the Thebaid in Egypt. ^2,7
Medieval12th centuryThe Persian astrologer Abu Ma'shar (died 886) is read in Latin across Europe; the University of Edinburgh holds a 12th-century Latin copy of his introduction to astrology. ⁸
1800s1890The first number of Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine goes on sale in July 1890. Annual subscribers get a free horoscope with a short reading: astrology by post, for ordinary readers. ⁹
1910s1917Alan Leo is fined for fortune-telling at the Mansion House on 16 July 1917. He dies that August, working on a system of astrology without predictions. ⁹
1930s1930–1937R. H. Naylor's horoscope for the newborn Princess Margaret runs in the Sunday Express on 24 August 1930 and becomes a regular column. By 1937 it is organised by the twelve sun signs, and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic follow. ¹⁰
1960s1968Linda Goodman's Sun Signs is published: a whole book built on the twelve sun signs. ¹¹
1980s–90s1980–1999Computers take over the arithmetic. Astrodienst in Zürich, whose founder had been writing astrology software since 1979, starts selling colour birth charts in 1980, goes online in 1996 and adds free daily horoscopes in 1999. ¹²
2010s2016NASA publishes a short explainer: the Sun crosses thirteen constellations, the Babylonians picked twelve to fit a twelve-month calendar, and "we didn’t change any zodiac signs". ¹
Today2024A Pew Research Center survey finds that 30% of US adults consult astrology, tarot or a fortune teller at least once a year, mostly for fun, with whole astrology cultures on TikTok and other platforms. ¹³

Worked out, not guessed

Calculated facts only, worked out the same way the machine does it.

Venus never gets more than about 47° from the Sun, so a Libra's Venus is always in one of five signs: Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio or Sagittarius.
The Moon changes sign every two and a half days. Without a birth time and place, most birthdays could belong to either of two Moon signs. (91.1% of birthdays from 1950 to 2029, once every time zone on Earth is allowed for.)

Every Libra reads this page. Only your card knows you.

Your card is worked out from the day, the minute and the place you were born: your birth chart, your love chart, your numbers and the sky you arrived under. This is what it covers.