Mystical systems
Age of Aries
Direct answer
Age of Aries: The Age of Aries is the astrological age in which the spring equinox sun stood among the stars of the Ram, commonly dated from about 2000 BCE to the start of the common era.
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At a glance
- Also called
- arian age, age of the ram
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Age of Pisces, Age of Aquarius, Precession of the Equinoxes, Aries
The Age of Aries is the astrological age in which the spring equinox sun stood among the stars of the Ram, commonly dated from about 2000 BCE to the start of the common era.
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When was the Age of Aries?
An astrological age is the stretch of roughly two thousand years during which the spring equinox, drifting backward through the zodiac by precession, lies in one constellation. The Age of Aries follows the Age of Taurus and comes before the Age of Pisces. Because the constellations have no agreed borders, its dates vary by centuries from one writer to the next.
Those who read history by the ages point to ram and lamb imagery in these centuries: the ram-headed Amun in Egypt, the ram caught in the thicket in the story of Abraham, the ram's horn trumpet, and Moses condemning the golden calf as the old age of the Bull passed. Historians note that such animals are common in every period, and that nobody living in those centuries could have known which age they were in, since precession had not yet been described and the twelve equal signs were not fixed until about the fifth century BCE.
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What sets Age of Aries apart
Among the ages this is the only one that ended just as astronomy became able to notice it. Greek astronomers set the start of their zodiac at the equinox while it lay in Aries, and that choice froze into the tropical zodiac astrologers still use, so that the sign Aries begins at the equinox to this day although the stars of the Ram have drifted on. The age therefore left a real mark on the sky's bookkeeping, whatever is thought of its mark on history.
- Common dating: about 2000 or 2150 BCE to about year 1
- Length of an age: roughly 2,150 years, one twelfth of the precessional cycle
- Follows and precedes: after the Age of Taurus, before the Age of Pisces
- Symbols claimed: the ram of Amun, the ram for Isaac, the ram horn trumpet
- Lasting trace: the equinox is still named the first point of Aries
Often mistaken for something else: The sign Aries is a fixed twelfth of the zodiac beginning at the spring equinox; the Age of Aries is a span of centuries when that equinox lay among the Ram's stars.
The story behind Age of Aries
The spring equinox point is still called the first point of Aries, a name kept from Greek astronomy of the last centuries BCE, when the equinox did lie in that sign. Hipparchus described precession in the second century BCE. The notion that each sign's turn at the equinox stamps an age of history is far later: it was developed by writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and became common in astrology in the twentieth.
Why Age of Aries matters
Age of Aries is the test case for reading history by astrological ages, because its supposed symbols lie within reach of written records.
How to read Age of Aries
Astrologers frame the centuries before the common era with it; critics take it as the place to ask whether the symbols were picked after the fact.
Age of Aries in practice: an example
A reader noticing rams on Egyptian temple avenues might ask whether they mark an age of the sky or simply a herding people's sacred animal.
Where readings of Age of Aries go wrong
The boundaries are a convention and the symbol lists are selective, so the scheme describes a pattern without proving a cause.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- age of aries meaning, age of aries dates, arian age, astrological age of aries, age of the ram
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
When was the Age of Aries?
Most schemes place it from about 2000 or 2150 BCE to about year 1. Others shift it by several centuries, since the result depends on where the border between the star groups of Aries and Pisces is drawn.
What symbols are linked with the Age of Aries?
Rams and lambs: the god Amun shown with a ram's head, the ram offered in place of Isaac, the ram's horn trumpet and the Passover lamb. Supporters add the rise of iron and of warrior states, matching Mars, the sign's ruler.
Did ancient people know they lived in the Age of Aries?
There is no evidence that they did. Precession was first described by Hipparchus in the second century BCE, near the end of the supposed age, and no ancient text divides history into ages by the equinox.
