Sagittarius

The sign at a glance

Place in the zodiac

9

Persian month

Azar

Element

Fire

Quality

Mutable

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

The ninth of the twelve borj

Sagittarius stands ninth in the order of the twelve signs, and in the Persian solar calendar it is therefore the ninth month. Its name in Persian is Qaws, the bow — the weapon rather than the archer who holds it, which is the form the name took as the sign passed into Arabic and Persian usage.

The borj are the zodiac signs as the Persian solar calendar received them. Once the year was reckoned from the vernal equinox and divided into twelve parts, each part took the name of the sign it answered to, so that month and sign were spoken as one word. Modern Iranian month names are Persian rather than zodiacal, but the borj names stayed in the language, and in Afghanistan the Solar Hijri calendar still uses them as its ordinary month names — Qaws among them, arriving with the closing weeks of autumn.

What the tradition carries for Qaws

In Persian usage the tradition associates this borj with the bow and the arrow already drawn: aim, distance, and the willingness to send something out past the reach of the hand. The tradition reads it as a sign of setting out — of travel, of inquiry that does not settle for the nearest answer, and of the far target chosen on purpose.

Its classical element is fire, and the tradition describes the fire of this borj as warmth carried outward rather than kept close: generous, hopeful, forthright in speech. The older ordering gives Qaws to Jupiter, Moshtari in Persian, the planet the tradition names the greater benefic and links with expansion, learning, law, and an open hand. From that pairing come the qualities the tradition most often attaches to this borj — breadth of view, candour, a liking for teaching and for being taught, and a preference for the wide horizon over the enclosed room.

The tradition also records the plainness that travels with such candour, and the way an aim fixed on the distant mark can pass over what stands close by. It names this as the shadow of the same reach it praises, in the manner of a tradition that gives each sign both a virtue and its cost.

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

The month, the equinox, and the moving date

The Persian year begins at the vernal equinox, and the months were then cut along the zodiac, one to a sign, counted from that beginning. So in this calendar the sign does not float free of the month. The ninth month is Qaws, and Qaws is the ninth month; the sign follows the month, and what this page maps is the month's own boundary as the calendar keeps it, not a measured position of the sun in degrees.

Qaws is counted among the mutable signs, and in plain language that word describes where it sits in its season: at the end of it. This borj closes autumn and hands the year on to the season that follows.

Because the equinox does not fall on the same Gregorian date each year, the day this month opens shifts. Across a long run of Persian years it falls on more than one Gregorian date, which is why a printed table that gives a single fixed range disagrees with the calendar for some of those years. This product treats that disagreement as the table's approximation of a boundary that moves, and computes the boundary instead.

Why a printed table disagrees

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

When Sagittarius 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, Sagittarius began on 3 different Gregorian dates. A printed table prints one of them.

From 1950-11-22 to 2050-12-21.

1. November 21

   20 yearsEnded December 20.

   1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2029, 2032, 2033, 2036, 2037, 2040, 2041, 2044, 2045, 2048, 2049

2. November 22

   78 yearsEnded December 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

3. November 23

   3 yearsEnded December 22.

   1951, 1955, 1959