How does each sign of the zodiac perceive and process the world around them, and what motivates them to act the way they do? In episode #006 of The Stellium Astrology Podcast I talk about Fire Signs and look at a few subscriber charts
Below are the highlights, links and episode transcript so if you aren’t able to listen, you can read the podcast instead.
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Episode Links
➡️ View The Best Astrology Books for Beginners here
➡️ Check out episodes on The Elements
➡️ Check out episodes on The Modes
➡️ Check out episodes on all Zodiac Signs
➡️ Check out episodes on The Planets
➡️ Check out episodes on The Houses
➡️ Read What is a Stellium?
Recommended Books
➡️ Astrology, Psychology and the Four Elements by Stephen Arroyo
The Elements: Fire Signs
The Fire Signs are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius
Dividing the horoscope wheel by three and connecting the points where the circle is intersected gives an equilateral triangle. Signs of the same element sit at the points of the triangle and are 120° (four signs) apart. The fire signs are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius.
Episode Transcript
Welcome back to The Stellium Astrology Podcast, I’m Stefanie James, and today I’m talking to you about Fire signs because I wanted to get into the elements. The elements are the building blocks of astrology, along with the modes, which I’ll be talking about in future episodes.
But for today, I wanted to talk about Fire, which is the element of the first sign of the Zodiac (Aries). So, just to really give you a picture of how the elements are laid out on the Zodiac wheel, if you draw a circle on a piece of paper and divide the circle into equal parts by three so you’ve got an equilateral triangle, then the fire signs will be exactly at the tips of the points of the corners of the equilateral triangle that you’ve drawn, placing them 120° apart.
So if you think about signs that are connected by elements – The fire signs are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. Aries is the first sign, Leo is the fifth sign and Sagittarius is the ninth sign of the Zodiac. Now, if you want to think about the earth elements, you literally move the triangle along one sign, and each tip of the triangle will be pointing at the earth elements.
And then again for the air signs and then also for the water signs, but we’ll come back to fire, for now.
And with this 120° distance between each of the elements, there does tend to be an ease and flowing of energy (if you want to use that word) it’s a nice sense of ease and a natural aptitude or compatibility with one another. So if you do have planets plotted in your chart, that happened to be dotted about in fire signs, then there will be a higher presence of the fire element in your chart.
What Drives Fire Signs?
So really what the elements do, is that they’re a kind of basic perception and processing of stimuli in your environment so it breaks down to our impulses and our urges and our needs, in how we interact with our environment.
And for fire the impulse is to instigate and to create something, to get something started, to do something meaningful. And if it’s already happening, if it’s already been instigated, then it’s to discern the meaning behind it and where it starts and where it finishes. So essentially fire signs really make something happen.
How Does Fire Behave?
And for me to really get into the elements, I like to really imagine myself in that element or close to that element. So for me, a fire sign to really embody this sense of fire is to think about the heat. So think about the way that it rises and fire tends to be, to symbolize cleansing. We talk about the Phoenix rising from the ashes, but the rise from the ashes, it has to burn first.
So, fire can destroy – but it has a sense of renewal. And a great way to think about that is in the summertime, sometimes farmers want to renew the soil to put the real nutritional value back into the soil, ready for it to be a good place to start growing new crops. And so they burn the existing crops and the ash nourishes the ground. So that’s a great way to imagine that sense of destroying, but also renewing.
Sun’s Out Guns Out
And like I said, fire burns, it’s hot – but it can draw us out. If you think about when there’s lovely hot days (especially in the UK) as soon as the sun comes out, everybody’s at the beach! It’s just that they really want to just bathe in that heat. And if you don’t live near the sea, if you don’t live near anywhere that’s particularly a sunbathing spot, people will be out just having barbecues in their back gardens.
There’s a real solar, fiery consistent presence in our lives. But fire isn’t just about the sun, it’s that essence that we’re working with. So yes, it’s hot! It draws us out and fire is quite direct as well.
Too Hot to Handle
But it can be too hot! When it gets really hot, it can be overwhelming. It can get out of control if not monitored. If you think about a building burning, you can’t just spray water anywhere. You have to spray it at the base of the flames to dull the fire because the fire can just – if it gets hot enough – it literally can travel anywhere and it can get out of control very quickly. So fire can be excessive. So if you do have a strong fire presence in your chart, you may recognize that you can be excessive at times.
Maybe you do have points in your life where you decide that you want to cleanse an area and start afresh. There’s a very strong sense of inspiration with fire. But also, if we’re going to break it down a bit more, it’s considered to be very masculine energy: quite yang, and very conscious of itself.
And when I say masculine, I’m not trying to go with gender pronouns here; masculinity in a sense is not necessarily about being male, or the masculine and feminine being male or female. But there’s a sense of action and extroverted nature with masculine energies in the natal chart. So really for fire, like I said before, there’s this drive to establish, to instigate and to find meaning.
The Visionary Flame
There’s this sensing with fire and it’s quite visionary. It likes to instigate, it’s quite independent. A lot of people with strong fire in their charts – particularly fire moons – have a need to be independent. They want to break away and explore and do things their own way. It’s quite extroverted as I think I’ve already said and very inspirational.
The fire signs in my life I find very inspirational people and they have a connection or astuteness that’s very… they just have a sense of something, or they just have an… I think all the signs have an intuition, but intuition is very different for each sign. And I think for the fire signs, they have a kind of, almost like a sense of ‘knowing’, just a connectedness. It just falls into their head.
They tend to be quite inspirational people and they are upbeat and optimistic and joyful and positive and quite buoyant. Heat rises and the fire signs tend to be quite buoyant and quite joyful. I think Sue Tompkins says in her book – that Tigger-like embodiment (of their personality). They’re very Tigger-like.
Don’t Touch the Hair
And my experience of fire signs is that they tend to have great hair generally! If there’s a lot of fire in the chart, usually you’ll see the fire signs do have quite good hair. Obviously there’s other chart factors that might contradict this, but at the moment, if we’re just focusing on an element, there can be a tendency to having this really wonderful flowing mane. Not just specifically, Leo’s – I just find that with a lot of fire signs.
The other thing I’ve noticed about fire signs (or people with strong fire in their chart) is they tend to sleep naked! A lot of them do – not all of them.
But there’s this body thermostat that just runs hot all the time. So sometimes fire signs are drawn to the heat and they enjoy it, but sometimes they are just hot! They’re just really hot.
A good tip if your body does run hot from somebody I know who had strong fire in their chart: they put a bottle of water in the freezer and then at night time in the summer when it’s hot, they wrap some layers of clothes around it, wrap it in a blanket and they hug a frozen bottle of water while they try to get sleep. That’s a great tip for fire signs who do run hot.
A Lack of Fire
If you lack an element there tends to be undervaluing the qualities or having less control over it. So fire signs are generally the signs that have a bit of vava-voom and a little bit of oomph – (they tend to).
If you don’t have much fire in your chart, then there can be a lack of oomph. And there may be a struggle to take up leadership or to feel like you can lead with confidence. Perhaps they don’t feel as inspired and maybe they don’t have a strong sense of confidence in themselves, to an extent. Also perhaps they’re not so visionary as somebody with a stronger fire signature.
Leaning towards more of a pessimistic outlook can be a lack of fire and not being as risk-taking. So the fire signs tend to be known for being quite daring, quite bold and taking risks. Particularly Sagittarius who likes to gamble and just believes in having the best outcome.
With a lack of fire that can manifest as not taking risks. And that can be rightfully so, because they may have taken risks in the past which may not have worked out in their favour.
Consulting the Middle Man
And generally fire signs, in their search for meaning or having a sense or feeling of meaning, somebody that lacks fire can tend to look for a middle-man to or something that connects them to that sense of meaning without being directly connected themselves.
So, somebody who seeks going to the church, or coming to a clairvoyant, or to an astrologer, because they don’t have that natural connection to their higher-self, or they lack that ability to follow their inner-compass as much.
It’s not that they don’t have that connection – it’s just that they don’t feel connected enough to their own sense of divinity or don’t believe they have enough of an influence over their own direction in life so they look for guidance in that area – I know we all do at times! This is just a basic overview of what the element fire represents and what it can look like if it lacks in your chart.
Subscriber Charts
Lucy
Lucy has 5 planets in fire including a 1st house Aries Stellium and unconventional Uranus on the Midheaven in Sagittarius.
➡️ Read What is a Stellium?
So I am going to look at a couple of charts for people who have sent them into me. And one person I wanted to talk about was Lucy W who was born in Truro. And she has got one, two, three, four, five planets in fire!
She has her sun and moon in fire in Aries, and she has Mercury and Venus in fire as well (in Aries). And she also has Uranus in Sagittarius on the Midheaven (MC). So Uranus in Sagittarius, isn’t such a big deal because Uranus is such a slow moving planet. I believe it takes about seven years to transit each zodiac sign, approximately.
And because it’s so slow moving, it’s a generational planet, but because it’s on the Midheaven, which is a very fast moving calculated point in the chart (it’s the highest point). The Midheaven and the Ascendent (Asc) tend to move a degree roughly every four minutes.
Basically that makes that (having Uranus on the MC) much more poignant in her chart. So to have fire on the Midheaven and to have Uranus there – Uranus is already quite an independent and quite unpredictable unconventional planet to be in a fire sign – It gives it that sense of having to do things their own way. It’s quite impulsive and it’s quite instigative, and it really does want to seek out something original and unique.
And it’s very self-sufficient, in a sense. So having this chart, this strong Aries presence in the chart and this strong fiery presence in the chart, it has a sense of from a very early age (because it involves her moon and all of her personal planets), Lucy will have probably been quite headstrong, wanting to do things her own way.
And it may be difficult for parents with children that have strong fire, because they can be quite independent from a young age and wanting to break away. But actually there is a sense of really being able to rely upon themselves to get things done, and quite inspired, and having that sense, like I said, there is that real sense of being able to get things, bring things into fruition or to get things started. So fire is quite a productive, confident, element to have present in the chart. Lucy, you’ve got a strong fire presence. You may relate to some of the things I’ve talked about.
Carolina
Carolina has 4 planets in fire in her Sagittarius stellium (which includes her sun out-of-sign in Scorpio), straddling the 2nd and 3rd houses.
And we’ve got Carolina as well, and let’s go to Carolina’s chart and have a quick look. So Carolina – one of my subscribers – has got a stellium in Sagittarius. She has Neptune, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus all in Sagittarius.
And she also has – just out of sign – her sun in Scorpio. So she doesn’t have her sun, or moon or ascendant in fire, but she does have a lot of fire in her chart. She has four planets including Neptune (another one of those generational planets that moves really, really slowly, approximately 14 years per sign). That being in conjunction with her sun, brings her sun into the stellium.
➡️ Read What is a Stellium?
So even though her sun is in a water sign (and it definitely will be processed through water) she still has a strong fire presence in her chart. So there’s a sense of struggle or conflict because the sun in water in conjunction with Neptune watery outer-planet happens to be in a fire sign and connected to three other planets in fire as well. So there is a real sense of wanting to go deep with Scorpio, but actually this fire also wants to let go of stuff that is deep and dark and drags you down, to an extent.
So Carolina, we may look at your chart a little bit later because you do have a stellium just like Lucy does, in fire. And that’s an interesting one to look at.
Angelique
Angelique has planets in each of the fire signs.
Another subscriber, Angelique in Croydon, has got her moon in Leo, and she has Jupiter, Venus and Saturn all in Aries. And she has Chiron (which is an astroid) and Pluto sitting in Sagittarius. So she’s got planets in each of the fire signs – she’s got a bit of each of the fire elements. So actually Angelique, you have quite a lot going on there in fire signs. So you’d probably quite relate to some of this.
We’d normally associate drama with Leo, but there is a drama with each of the fire signs and with Leo, perhaps it’s actual drama. And they do enjoy where there isn’t drama, creating some, and really getting into play and pretending to be other people to an extent (that’s kind of what acting is).
But with Aries, there’s the drama of the competition. And when you think about sports, there’s this competitive element that really fires up this drama within you. And with Sagittarius, there’s the drama of the world stage. So it could be the drama of politics, or it could be the drama of what’s going on in the world with international competition, like the Olympics, for example.
So it can be quite dramatic, very enthusiastic. And it’s interesting when you have a stronger presence in your chart, the stronger presence of elements can contradict sometimes the actual natal placements you have.
But for Angelique, she definitely does have a Leo moon so there is a need for play and for fun, and definitely can be a little bit dramatic and it might not just describe you Angelique, but it may describe actually a little bit like what your mum’s like, because your moon actually tends to be what your mum is, as well.
So you may recognise that your mum might be a bit demonstrative and dramatic at times. And she may also have fabulous hair. And I don’t doubt for a second that you do either! You must have great hair.
Angelique, you’ve got quite a lot of fire going on in your chart, which brings in all of the fire elements, which is quite nice because to an extent there is a balanced expression, even though in Sagittarius, you do only have Pluto, which is the another one of those generational slow moving planets, which can take years and years.
It’s in Capricorn at the moment and it’s going to take… I don’t think it’s leaving Capricorn for, I think it’s going to be there for, oh my gosh. How many years has it been there? 20 years will it be in Capricorn? Anyway, I don’t know, off the top of my head, I can’t think without looking.
(I’ve since had a look and it will leave Capricorn in November 2024 after entering in 2008 and spending 16 years in the mountain goat’s sign!).
So, Angelique, you’ve got loads of fire in your chart and we’ll probably be looking at you again at some point soon.
Allie – Lacks Fire
Allie has only Neptune and Chiron in fire.
And I thought I’d pick out somebody who doesn’t have a lot of fire in their chart, and this another one of my subscribers – Allie B from, Toronto, Canada. Now, Allie, you have given me your chart to have a look at. Now, you do have a couple of placements in fire.
So you’ve got Neptune on the Midheaven in fire. And like I said, the Midheaven is the highest point and so it’s elevated and it’s the career point and where we focus on what we aspire to. And you’ve got Chiron in Aries.
Now, Chiron’s not a planet. So I don’t tend to look too much at Chiron when I’m doing ‘planetary weightings’ ( when I’m looking at how heavily weighted your chart is to an element). But you could say that with this one having Chiron at 29° Aries speaks about that lack of fire actually, in your chart, because there can be almost a lack of confidence or almost like a fear perhaps in actually trying to do something that embodies that fiery quality.
So Allie’s got the sun, Venus and Jupiter in Taurus, and she has the moon and Uranus in water, in Scorpio. That’s quite a fixed see-saw, but we’ll get onto the fixed signs when I do the modes.
But she’s also got Pluto in Libra and she also has Mars and Saturn in Cancer. So you’ve got a lot of water in your chart Allie, and you also have quite a lot of earth, but fire lacks for you. And like I said, you’ve got that Neptune on the Midheaven in Sagittarius. And Neptune, we already touched on it before (I think I spoke about it. I can’t remember whose chart had Neptune in conjunction with the sun in Scorpio – I think it was Carolina actually) but having Neptune anywhere in the chart is not very clear. I know a lot of people who do have Neptune in Sagittarius, because there’s a whole generation of people born with Neptune in Sagittarius.
And if you’ve got sun in Sagittarius and other planetary placements in Sagittarius, there’s a sense of not really being able to identify with it because Neptune can make it very difficult to… it clouds things, it makes things very unclear. It’s quite nebulous.
And having it on the Midheaven in fire, there is a sense of; Neptune is a very compassionate planet and Sagittarius is quite a compassionate sign. So there is a sense of really needing to do something meaningful. And this may be how you express your fire in your chart, because even though you don’t have a lot of it, this is a channel for you to really work on fire and work with people, aspiring to people who have strong fire signatures in their charts. But this Chiron placement in Aries describes a sense of, perhaps a fear of independence and trying to do things and lead in your own way.
There may be with all that Taurus stuff following on from that Chiron, there may be a sense of leaning towards the way things have already been done and Taurus likes to be comfortable. So there’s a sense of falling into the comfort zone and wanting to do things the ‘tried and tested’ way rather than doing things the risk-taking and daring way.
So that’s just touching really on what, the lack in this particular chart as far as fire is concerned, is like. But like I said, there’s a lot of water and earth in that chart. So it could be that this is productive and very connected – there’s a sense of ability to connect on an emotional level.
There are a lot of stronger elements where you will probably come into your own, but with fire, like I said, the lack can be maybe a lack of being able to lead, not feeling like they trust their own inspiration or having that inspiration, that creative ability and, lacking confidence to an extent in those kinds of areas and maybe leaning towards caution and pessimism as well.
So a lack of fire, like I said, can present as being not as optimistic. But these are not curses – these are not terrible things. We all have our strengths in different areas. So I thought I would just cover that today.
Celebrity Charts
A few celebrities who have fire placements are Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera – they both have a number of planets in Sagittarius. I seem to be picking up on Sagittarius today, actually! Because I also feel Jimi Hendrix was a good one to look at.
Jimi Hendrix
➡️ View Jimi Hendrix on Astro-Databank
And Jimmy Hendrix has sun, Venus and Mercury all in Sagittarius, and it’s his rising sign as well. And Jimi Hendrix was a really inspired guitarist who really did things differently. There’s a lot of different things that you could look at in the chart, which might describe why he had to do things differently, but we’re looking at the essence of Jimmy’s chart and a really strong fire presence in the chart.
Describes somebody that has to make things happen. It’s very inspirational and has to search for a sense of – for him it was originality in doing things his own way – He definitely broke the mould. So Jimmy Hendrix is a really interesting one.
Christina Aguilera
➡️ View Christina Aguilera on Astro-Databank
But there’s plenty of fiery celebrities out there, Christina, out there doing her thing, Christina Aguilera, I think she’s got Venus, Mercury, sun and Neptune in Sagittarius and her Midheaven so known for being quite an inspired singer herself. I think with Christina the hair I always look at her lovely flowing, fiery Mane and yeah, she’s definitely quite original. The other thing about fire signs is that they inspire enthusiasm, confidence and optimism in other people as well. And they do tend to get noticed a lot more easily as well. The fire signs, they are just very outwardly expressive and quite demonstrative.
Britney Spears
➡️ View Britney Spears on Astro-Databank
So yeah, if you want to look at Christina’s chart Jimi’s chart and… Where’s Brittany’s chart? I don’t know if I’ve still got her one up. No, I don’t think I do any more, but Brittany again has a very similar chart – not a similar chart, but she has similar planets in Sagittarius to Christina. So I just happened to pick three Sagittarians there for some reason – probably because I have Sagittarius on my descendant, and I don’t have a lot of planets in fire either!
(If you’re wondering, I have Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and my descendant in fire, but that’s about it! So, the slower moving planets. Jupiter’s quite a good one to have in fire).
I do admire fire qualities and other people. And I attract that too because it’s on my descendant and my ‘attracting/relationship’ area.
Want to be Featured?
So that’s a little bit about fire and if you’ve enjoyed this I just wanted to invite you to take part. I am using listener charts as well as pointing you towards celebrity charts to have a little look at, and the way to have your chart featured is to fill out the application form that I send to my subscribers. So go to my website, sign up as a subscriber and you can fill out the form and I’ll check in with that and see where you fit in.
And that doesn’t mean I’ll only talk about you once, I might talk about you in a few different episodes because you may fit a few different areas of discussion.
Subscribe on iTunes
And if you’re listening to me on iTunes, it would be really great if you could to subscribe to the podcast, rate it and review it, and I will give you a shoutout for doing so (I’ve got quite a few people I need to shout out and I’m going to give them a little shout out in the next episode).
So thanks for tuning in. If you’ve enjoyed this, if you have a strong fire presence, if you relate to what I’m saying, send me a message, comment – you can even put it down in the reviews underneath. You could even come to my website where I’m going to put a post up and share some of the links that I’ve discussed today and comment over there, but definitely connect with me and let me know what you think!
And if you think you know somebody who’s quite fiery or lacks it, share the episode with them, too!
Take care, bye now.
Episode Links
➡️ View The Best Astrology Books for Beginners here
➡️ Read What is a Stellium
➡️ View Christina Aguilera on Astro-Databank
➡️ View Jimi Hendrix on Astro Databank
➡️ View Britney Spears on Astro-Databank
Recommended Books
➡️ Astrology, Psychology and the Four Elements by Stephen Arroyo