ascendant

The ascendant (Asc, Asc or As) or rising sign is the astrological sign on the eastern horizon when the person was born. It signifies a person's physical appearance, and awakening consciousness. Because the ascendant is specific to a particular time and place, to astrologers it signifies the individual environment and conditioning that a person receives during their upbringing, and also the circumstances of their childhood. For this reason, astrologers consider that the ascendant is also concerned with how a person has learned to present themself to the world, especially in public and in impersonal situations. History Although Babylonian astronomers observed the actual rising times of the signs, there is no specific mention of the ascendant in the texts that have survived on clay tablets. By the 3rd century BCE, Egyptians looked at the rising of specific asterisms to identify the ascending sign and get an approximate time of night, and that is reflected in the name subsequently given by the Greeks to the ascendant: horoskopos, or "hour marker." in the sense of "ascendant," and , "observation of the ascendant," was used in the Greek manuscript of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos. First documented mention of an ascendent contained in the works by Balbilus.