Aries
Aries stands first in the order of the zodiac, and in the Persian solar calendar the sign is also the opening month of the year. This page follows the sign by following that month, which is why its Gregorian starting date does not stay still.
The sign at a glance
- Place in the zodiac
- 1
- Persian month
- Farvardin
- Element
- Fire
- Quality
- Cardinal
The element and the quality are the classical groupings: every fourth sign shares an element, and every third shares a quality.
The first of the twelve borj
Aries comes first in the twelve-sign order of the zodiac, and the counting of the other signs begins from it. Because the Persian solar calendar cut its months along the zodiac, the sign that opens the zodiac also opens the calendar: the first month of the year and the first sign are one and the same span of time.
Borj is the traditional word for a sign of the zodiac in Persian, and the borj names are the zodiac names as Arabic and Persian astronomical writing carried them. The solar calendar took those names for its months directly. They remain the ordinary month names of the Afghan Solar Hijri calendar, used in official and everyday writing there, while in Iran the months carry the older Iranian names and the borj names stay in astronomical and astrological usage. The borj corresponding to Aries is Hamal, whose name means the ram or the young lamb, and it is the borj the year begins in.
What the tradition associates with Hamal
In the tradition, this borj is associated above all with beginnings: the turn of the season, the first growth after the cold, and the impulse that starts a thing rather than the patience that finishes it. Traditional writing places it among the signs of the fire element, and describes that element as warmth, drive and visible energy — the heat that gets something moving.
The readings the tradition carries for this borj speak of courage, forthrightness and a readiness to go first. Older Persian and Arabic texts assign it to Mars among the planets, and take from that assignment a quality of initiative and plain directness. In the same texts the borj is linked with leadership in the simple sense of opening the way, and with an appetite for what is new rather than for what is already established.
The tradition also records the other side of that heat. It notes that the energy it attributes to this borj can move faster than deliberation, and that the readings pair its quickness to begin with the counsel that beginnings still need to be seen through. The pairing is old and it is stated as part of the description, not as a warning attached to it.
These are readings the tradition carries, recorded and retold over centuries. They describe the sign, not any person born in its month.
Sign, month, and moving Gregorian dates
The Persian year begins at the vernal equinox, and its months were laid out along the zodiac from that point. So the sign does not float free of the calendar: here the sign follows the month, and the month's own boundaries decide where the sign starts and ends. The page maps the two onto each other at that level and no finer — there are no degrees, decans or cusps involved, because a civil birth date could not support them.
The classical quality given for this sign is cardinal, and the plain meaning of the term is that it opens its season rather than sitting in the middle of it or handing it on to the next. For this sign that is unusually literal: the month it names is the one the year starts in.
Because the equinox does not fall at the same civil moment each year, the Gregorian date on which this month begins moves. Over a long run of years it lands on more than one Gregorian date, and a printed table that gives a single fixed range will therefore disagree with the calendar for some of them. Where that happens, this page treats the fixed range as the table's approximation of a moving boundary, and follows the computed month instead.
What Farvardin, the month itself, is called in Iran and in Afghanistan
When Aries 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, Aries began on 3 different Gregorian dates. A printed table prints one of them.
From 1950-03-21 to 2050-04-20.
March 20
1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2029, 2032, 2033, 2036, 2037, 2040, 2041, 2044, 2045, 2048, 2049
March 21
1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 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, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2030, 2031, 2034, 2035, 2038, 2039, 2042, 2043, 2046, 2047, 2050
March 22
1951, 1955, 1959
Sources
- Borkowski, The Persian Calendar for 3000 Years — the vernal-equinox anchoring of the Solar Hijri year
- The traditional Persian borj month names, still used as month names in the Afghan Solar Hijri calendar
- The classical triplicity and quadruplicity cycles of the tropical zodiac, counted from Aries