Natal charts
Descendant sign: what it says about the partner you look for
Your Descendant is the point of the zodiac that was setting on the western horizon at the minute you were born. It sits exactly opposite your rising sign (the Ascendant) and marks the start of the seventh house, which Western astrology links with marriage and partnership, so astrologers read its sign as the kind of person you look for in a lasting relationship. Two things about it surprise most people. It needs an exact birth time: if your time is only known to within 15 minutes either way, the sign at the two ends of that half hour differs for about one person in four. And the twelve signs are far from equally common. Among people born in London, a Pisces Descendant turns up three and a half times as often as a Virgo one, and in Sydney the pattern flips. You can look up your Descendant free and without an account in the sexuality birth chart calculator once you add a birth time. If you already have someone in mind, you can check your sexual compatibility by date of birth as a couple, and for that a birth time is optional.
Why your Descendant sign may be a rare one
Each sign takes two hours on average to cross the horizon, since all twelve pass in a day. The average hides a lot. The ecliptic, the Sun's apparent path along which the signs are laid out, meets the celestial equator at an angle, so some stretches of it rise steeply and fast while others rise at a shallow slant and take much longer. In the northern hemisphere Capricorn through Gemini rise quickly and Cancer through Sagittarius slowly. Astrologers call these signs of short and long ascension, and south of the equator the two groups swap.
The Descendant is always the sign opposite the Ascendant. While Virgo rises slowly in the east, Pisces lingers on the western horizon, which is why a Pisces Descendant is common in London and a Virgo one is rare. To measure how uneven this gets, we calculated 100,000 random birth times between 1950 and 2008 for three cities, with houses in the Placidus system, the one our calculator uses.
| Descendant sign | London | New York | Sydney |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aries | 11.7% | 10.4% | 5.5% |
| Taurus | 11.8% | 10.6% | 6.6% |
| Gemini | 10.4% | 9.7% | 7.9% |
| Cancer | 7.3% | 8.2% | 9.6% |
| Leo | 4.7% | 5.7% | 10.6% |
| Virgo | 3.6% | 5.2% | 9.8% |
| Libra | 4.0% | 4.8% | 9.7% |
| Scorpio | 4.7% | 5.8% | 10.1% |
| Sagittarius | 7.3% | 8.1% | 9.7% |
| Capricorn | 10.4% | 10.4% | 8.1% |
| Aquarius | 11.7% | 10.3% | 6.5% |
| Pisces | 12.5% | 10.6% | 5.7% |
On an average day in London the Descendant stays in Pisces for about three hours and in Virgo for 52 minutes. New York, further south, evens things out a little. Sydney turns the table upside down: Leo is its most common Descendant and Aries its rarest.
How rare your Descendant is depends on your latitude and the hour you were born. It says nothing extra about your character or your love life.
How exact does the birth time need to be?
Because the Descendant moves so fast, a birth time rounded to "about seven in the morning" is not enough. For the same London sample we compared the Descendant sign at both ends of a time window around each birth moment.
| If your birth time is known to within | The Descendant sign differs at the two ends of the window for |
|---|---|
| 5 minutes either way | 8.5% of people |
| 15 minutes either way | 25.5% of people |
| an hour either way | 82% of people |
A time from a birth certificate or hospital record is the safest basis. If you only know a range, calculate the chart at both ends of it: when the sign comes out the same, the uncertainty does not matter for your Descendant.
Where the partner reading comes from
The link between the seventh place and marriage is among the oldest in astrology. Vettius Valens, a second-century astrologer, calls the seventh sign from the Ascendant "the Place of Marriage" in his Anthologies, and his list of the twelve places gives the seventh as "the Descendant, marriage, success, an affair with a woman, friendship, travel." Two centuries later the Roman writer Firmicus Maternus tells readers to judge "the quality and number of marriages" from the same place.
Ptolemy, writing in the same century as Valens, took another route. In the Tetrabiblos he judges a man's marriage by the Moon in his chart and a woman's by the Sun, and he expects lasting marriages when the two charts' Sun and Moon stand at harmonious angles to each other. The seventh house plays no part in that chapter.
The idea that the Descendant describes the person you look for is much younger. In Relating (1977) the British astrologer Liz Greene tied the Descendant and seventh-house planets to Jung's anima and animus, and she was explicit that the Descendant, "rather than denoting 'qualities desired in a partner'", points to qualities that belong to you but stay unconscious, which is why you go looking for them in someone else. Howard Sasportas turned this into a working rule in The Twelve Houses (1985): the seventh house shows "the kind of partner to whom we are attracted", and "what we do not 'own' in ourselves, we will invariably attract to us."
Descendant or Venus: which one is your type?
People often mix the two up. In astrological tradition, Venus answers the question of attraction: who catches your eye and what excites you. The Descendant answers a slower question: the kind of person you stay with. The Moon adds a third, the person you feel safe with. A chart can give three different answers. Someone with Venus in Aries may fall for bold, impatient people and still build long relationships with calm, careful ones if the Descendant is in Taurus.
Our calculator shows the three side by side in its "Who suits you" block: "Who you stay with" by the Descendant, "Who you want" by Venus and "Who you feel calm with" by the Moon. For how Venus, Mars, the Moon and Lilith fit together, see what your birth chart says about your sexuality.
The twelve Descendant signs, by element
The descriptions below match the ones in the calculator. The share is for people born in London.
Fire Descendants: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius. You stay with someone who brings energy into the room. With Aries (11.7%) that means a direct, strong-willed person who takes the lead and enjoys an argument. Leo (4.7%) points to a warm, generous partner you are proud to be seen with. Sagittarius (7.3%) describes an open, cheerful companion for travel and big ideas.
Earth Descendants: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn. You stay with someone steady. Taurus (11.8%) describes a calm, sensual person who makes a home and never rushes. Virgo (3.6%) points to an attentive partner who notices details and shows care through practical help. Capricorn (10.4%) describes a serious, mature person with plans and a sense of responsibility.
Air Descendants: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius. You stay with someone you can talk to. Gemini (10.4%) means a curious, quick companion with a sense of humour. Libra (4.0%) points to a charming, tactful partner who treats you as an equal. Aquarius (11.7%) describes an independent, unusual person who is a friend first.
Water Descendants: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. You stay with someone who takes feelings seriously. Cancer (7.3%) describes a caring partner who makes you feel at home. Scorpio (4.7%) points to a deep, intense person with a strong will. Pisces (12.5%) describes a gentle, imaginative partner who understands without many words.
Astrologers rarely stop at the sign. They also look at planets in the seventh house and at the planet that traditionally rules the Descendant's sign, Mars for Aries and Scorpio, Venus for Taurus and Libra, and so on through the zodiac.
Reading it together with your rising sign
The Ascendant and Descendant form one axis, and modern astrologers usually read them as a pair. The rising sign describes how you come across and how you handle the world. The sign opposite describes the qualities you tend to look for in someone else, often the ones you show less yourself. Take a Capricorn Ascendant: reserved, self-reliant, slow to show feelings. The Descendant then falls in Cancer, and astrologers would expect this person to be drawn to warm, openly caring partners.
What the Descendant cannot tell you
The calculation is exact: a date, time and place fix the Descendant to a fraction of a degree. The meanings are a different matter. When astrologers have been tested blind on matching charts to people, they scored at chance level, as in Shawn Carlson's double-blind test published in Nature in 1985 and in the review of more than forty such studies by Geoffrey Dean and Ivan Kelly in 2003.
So the Descendant works best as a prompt to think about the people you choose and why. It does not name a person, a date or a gender, and our calculator never asks for sex or orientation.