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

What is a Virgo really like?

Virgo is the sixth sign of the zodiac: an earth sign, a mutable sign, ruled by Mercury. The Sun is in Virgo from August 23 or 24 to September 21, 22 or 23. What any one Virgo is really like depends on the rest of the chart: the Moon, the rising sign, Venus and Mars.

Virgo 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. Virgo is the sixth slice, and the Sun crosses it from August 23 to September 22. 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

Virgo is a earth sign and a mutable sign. Ptolemy grouped the signs in triangles of three, 120° apart; Virgo's triangle is Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn, the one later astrologers called earth. The modes come from the seasons: mutable signs fall in the last month of a season, when it is already changing. ²

A ruling planet is the planet a sign is said to belong to, its "house" in Ptolemy's word. Tradition gives Virgo to Mercury. 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?

Virgo in the old books

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

Virgo, in the old books, is Mercury's earthy house and another of Ptolemy's bicorporeal signs, though even his editor notes the Maiden is drawn as one figure, not two. The portrait is the harvest: careful, useful, modest, good with detail and better with a list. Traditionally a Virgo notices what everyone else walked past. ²

The old writers' warning is the critic. A Virgo is said to hold itself to standards nobody could meet and to hand them out to others, kindly, with notes. The mutable mode, they say, is the part that adjusts, and Virgo adjusts by improving things, whether or not anyone asked.

That's the sign by itself, the same for every Virgo born. A bold Leo Moon or a fiery Mars can turn the quietest Maiden into the loudest person at the table.

Where Virgo 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
AncientBabylonian eraLate Babylonian astronomical texts name this sign Šerʾu. Its brightest star, the one later called Spica, has its own entry in the same records. ⁴
Ancient410 BCEThe earliest known horoscopes, from Babylon and Nippur, date to this year. ³
Classicalc. 275 BCEAratus's Phaenomena calls the Maiden Dike, Justice, who lived among people until they grew wicked and then left the earth for the sky. She carries an ear of corn, the star Spica. ⁵
ClassicalRoman eraPseudo-Hyginus (2.25) repeats the story of Justice, and adds that some writers took the Maiden for Erigone, daughter of Icarius. ^5,6
Classical29 BCEVirgil's Georgics flatters the young Octavian, the future Augustus, by asking whether he'll take his place as a new star in the gap between Erigone, the Maiden, and the Claws. ⁷
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. ^8,2
Classical2nd century CEPtolemy gives Virgo to Mercury. His map of the world ties it to Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Assyria, and to Hellas, Achaia and Crete. ^2,9
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. ¹⁰
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. ¹¹
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. ¹¹
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. ¹²
1960s1968Linda Goodman's Sun Signs is published: a whole book built on the twelve sun signs. ¹³
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. ¹⁴
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. ¹⁵

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 Virgo's Venus is always in one of five signs: Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra or Scorpio.
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 Virgo 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.