The Aquarius ascendant
Aquarius was coming up over the eastern horizon when you were born. The old books call it the sign of the water bearer: a kindly, fearless eye, a loyal heart and a patience that rarely acts in haste.
Your rising sign is the sign that was coming up on the eastern horizon at the minute and place you were born. Astrologers read it as the way you meet the world: the first impression, the manner, and in the older books the look of the body too.
With Aquarius there, the chart starts in a fixed air sign ruled by Saturn. Leo, its opposite, sits on the seventh house, the house of partners.
After Max and Augusta Foss Heindel, The Message of the Stars, 1918
These are types, written a century ago. Planets close to the ascendant, and where Saturn stands, change the picture, and pure types are rare.
After the Heindels, chapters V and XIX
Aquarians are deeply loyal to their friends, so they attract many, keep them for life and gain a great deal from them. The love nature is strong, though it shows less openly than in Leo, the opposite sign, whose warmth Aquarius reflects.
Saturn rules this sign as it rules Capricorn, and brings the same retiring nature and a leaning towards melancholy, along with real persistence. Whatever money comes, comes from steady, patient effort. Aquarians are deliberate and long-suffering, rarely act in a hurry, and so seldom regret what they do.
The exception is when someone plays on their sympathies and quiets their reason, for then they are easily taken advantage of. The Heindels saw the pure type as the finest in humanity and also very rare, since planets near the ascendant change it. The Sun here adds hope and life and lifts the melancholy.
The Heindels read the rising sign as the shape of the mind, first by the sign itself and then by the group it belongs to.
Its own mind
Aquarius rising gives a good intellect and a friendly, sympathetic, humane disposition. These people are also original and fiercely independent: they follow their own course whatever others say, at times even against their own better judgement, just to show they are free.
Its group
Like all the fixed signs on the angles, it gives a thoughtful mind that works slowly and steadily and needs time to come to a decision.
It depends on where you were born, because signs take different lengths of time to rise. In London Aquarius takes about 1 hour 9 minutes of every day to rise, less than the two-hour average, so it is rarer there. In Sydney it takes about 2 hours 25 minutes, more than the two-hour average, so it is a little more common there.
No. Being an Aquarius usually means the Sun was in Aquarius, which happens from late January to late February. Aquarius rises every day of the year for a few hours, so a person born in any month can have it.
Saturn in traditional astrology, and Uranus in modern astrology. The ruler of the rising sign is called the chart ruler, and where it stands in your chart colours the whole reading.