Aries Rashi

Mesha begins things. Ruled by Mangal, it moves before it deliberates, which is both its gift and its recurring bill. People with a strong Mesha placement are direct, physically restless and almost incapable of pretending to agree. They recover from setbacks unusually fast — partly because they do not dwell, partly because they have already started the next thing. The work of a lifetime for Mesha is learning that patience is a form of strength rather than a defeat.

Mesha — known in English as Aries — is the sidereal zodiac sign of the Ram, ruled by Mangal (Mars). It is a fire (agni) rashi of movable (chara) quality: in Vedic astrology that pair describes how a sign begins things, holds them, or adapts to them.

In the sidereal zodiac the Sun passes through Mesha from roughly 14 April to 14 May. Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac, where Aries runs from 21 March – 19 April. The two differ by about 24 degrees — the ayanamsa — which is why your Vedic rashi is usually the sign before your Western one.

Mesha contains Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika (Pada 1). Each rashi spans 30 degrees and holds two and a quarter nakshatras, so the nakshatra locates a planet far more precisely than the rashi alone, and it is the nakshatra that determines your Vimshottari dasha sequence.

In Indian and Nepali practice your rashi is your Chandra rashi — the sign the Moon occupied at your birth, not the Sun. The Moon governs the mind, and it is the Moon's daily transit counted from your rashi that a daily rashifal actually reads.

In traditional matching, Aries tends to find easy ground with Leo, Sagittarius, where the element and the ruling planets agree. Libra asks more work — not incompatibility, but a difference in pace and priority that has to be named rather than assumed. Ashtakoota Gun Milan looks at eight factors and not only the rashi, so treat sign-to-sign compatibility as a first indication rather than a verdict.