Aquarius

The sign at a glance

Place in the zodiac

11

Persian month

Bahman

Element

Air

Quality

Fixed

The element and the quality are the classical groupings: every fourth sign shares an element, and every third shares a quality.

Where Aquarius sits among the borj

The borj are the twelve signs of the zodiac as they were carried into the Persian solar calendar. Rather than keeping the signs beside the months as a separate scheme, the calendar cut its months along them, so each sign gave its name to a month of the year. Aquarius stands eleventh in that order, near the close of the cycle, in the deep of winter and within sight of spring.

In Persian the sign is called Dalv, the bucket or pail — the vessel drawn up from a well and poured out. The image is older than the Persian usage and travelled with the sign; the water carrier and the bucket are two ways of naming the same figure. The Afghan Solar Hijri calendar still uses these names for its months in everyday writing, so the eleventh month there is simply Dalv, and the sign and the month are one word.

In this product the same identity holds: the sign is the month. Its classical element is air and its classical quality is fixed, and both come from counting positions around the circle from the first sign rather than from any separate list.

What the tradition associates with this borj

In the tradition, Aquarius belongs to the airy signs, and the qualities gathered under air are those of mind and exchange: thought, speech, the carrying of ideas between people. The tradition reads this borj in particular as air that has settled into a steady form — it is counted among the signs the tradition calls fixed, and steadiness is part of what it is said to mean here.

The bucket gives the tradition its central image, and much of the reading follows from it. Water drawn from a well is water made available; the tradition associates this borj with gathering something and then giving it out, with generosity of a practical kind, and with what is held in common rather than kept. Older Persian and Arabic writing on the signs also links Dalv to the older planet of the outer sphere, Saturn, and takes from that association a tone of patience, endurance, and long attention.

From these, the tradition builds the traits it names for the sign: constancy, independence of judgement, an inventive turn of mind, and a humane concern that reaches past the near circle. Where the tradition marks a difficulty, it is the reverse of the same constancy — an attachment to a settled view that can outlast the reasons for it. Persian literary usage also keeps the sign as a figure of speech for the season it names, so that mentioning Dalv can call up late winter, rain, and the melt as readily as it calls up the zodiac.

These are readings the tradition carries, recorded and retold over centuries. They describe the sign, not any person born in its month.

The sign and the month

The Persian year begins at the vernal equinox — at the actual moment of the equinox, not on a date agreed in advance. From that beginning the months follow the zodiac, one after another, so the eleventh month is Aquarius by construction. That is why, here, the sign does not need to be looked up beside the month: it follows the month directly.

Being a fixed sign, in the plain sense of the old term, means this borj sits in the middle of its season rather than opening it or handing it on. Winter is already established when the month begins and still holds when it ends; the sign occupies the settled heart of it. That position is what the classical word is describing.

Because the year starts from an astronomical event and the Gregorian calendar starts from a rule about leap days, the two do not line up the same way twice in a row. The Gregorian date on which this month begins therefore moves from year to year, within a narrow span. A printed table that gives one fixed range for the sign will be right for many years and wrong for others, and the disagreement is the table's approximation rather than a fault in the calculation here. What this page shows is the computed start for each year, grouped by the Gregorian date it fell on.

One limit is worth stating plainly: the boundaries used here are the calendar's own month boundaries. This is not a mapping onto degrees of solar longitude, and a civil birth date carries no hour, so there is nothing here about ascendants, cusps, or divisions within the sign.

Why a printed table disagrees

What Bahman, the month itself, is called in Iran and in Afghanistan

When Aquarius began

The Persian year starts at the spring equinox, so each month starts on whichever Gregorian day the equinox falls on. That is why these dates move.

Across the 101 years below, Aquarius began on 3 different Gregorian dates. A printed table prints one of them.

From 1951-01-21 to 2051-02-19.

1. January 20

   20 yearsEnded February 18.

   1997, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2017, 2021, 2025, 2029, 2030, 2033, 2034, 2037, 2038, 2041, 2042, 2045, 2046, 2049, 2050

2. January 21

   78 yearsEnded February 19.

   1951, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2026, 2027, 2028, 2031, 2032, 2035, 2036, 2039, 2040, 2043, 2044, 2047, 2048, 2051

3. January 22

   3 yearsEnded February 20.

   1952, 1956, 1960