Everything You Need to Know About the Sagittarius Personality

The Sun normally transits Sagittarius from November 22 to December 21. If your Sun sign is not Sagittarius, you may think that these themes will not relate to you. Sagittarius makes itself felt if your Moon sign is Sagittarius, or your rising sign or even several of the planets are placed there. A strong placement of the planet Jupiter can do it as well. Read on and see if this describes anyone YOU know.

Sagittarius is an optimistic sign and natives of this ninth sign of the zodiac are among the most popular and personable. Sagittarius, along with its complementary sign Gemini, represents the child part of the personality. Psychologically, these refer to traits like playfulness, spontaneity and humor. Even Freud listed play as one of the essential aspects of a balanced life. As little kids, Sagittarians are often a real delight. However, they do not respond well to arbitrary rules. As a mental sign, they respond better to explanations even if they are too young to understand. They need to feel that YOU know and that there is a logical reason for things.


Sagittarius operates in the abstract mental and philosophical realms. Many Sagittarian children are very bright, but the emotional maturity may lag behind the mental gifts. Some Sagittarius folks will have a great deal of trouble dealing with emotions and emotional issues. That is because we are dealing with the idealists of the zodiac in this sign. If that goes into overdrive, they will behave as though everything is just dandy, projecting their version of the ideal situation onto one that is far from it. When it finally crashes around their ears, the whole mess is often past a point of fixing it.

Included below are a couple of real life situations that demonstrate so well what happens when fairness, justice and idealism get in bed together and produce multiple births, too much of a good thing, that is. Yes, fairness and justice are admirable traits. However, we get into irrational thinking when fairness and justice are projected onto every situation that may in reality be grossly unfair to others and ourselves.

One client was married to a woman who was interested in another man. She actually spent time at his house and said she couldn’t decide which one she wanted. She went from one to another and this had gone on for some time. My client was oozing a philosophical attitude and was unselfishly “letting her explore her consciousness” around this scenario. I said, “What are you feeling about this?” He was not even close to accessing that, not until I got through with him. Tolerance has its limits.

Another guy was married with two-year-old twin sons. He had gotten involved with another woman. He was “honest” with his wife about his attraction to the other woman and how much time he was spending with her. He actually told me that he hoped this could be a “win-win” situation all around. I said, “Are you crazy? Everyone is getting hurt here.” You should have seen the incredulous look on his face. He also got it after our little “chat.”

Speaking of relationships, Sagittarians are lone rangers. Yes, that’s right. This is one of the top signs that have the strongest freedom needs. If you want to see the last of your Sagittarius, why not suggest that he or she call you every day at 8: 00 PM and check in? You might be waiting by the phone that never rings!

One of Sagittarius’s Achilles heels in relationships is sticking around trying to make sense out of a crazy partner. This sign has to figure things out, right? I have clients like this tells me they just can’t figure out their partner. That’s because she is crazy, man! What is crazier, just plain crazy or trying to make sense of a crazy person? And don’t think the partner is too crazy to keep playing the crazy game just to keep the Sagittarian hooked into the relationship, trying to “figure it out.”

EXPECTATIONS are major themes and appear in various forms. Families often project high expectations onto kids with Sagittarius as their rising signs. (The rising sign is calculated from the TIME of birth.) To understand this sign pattern, one must understand that ideals are abstract and are never going to be duplicated in the reality of physical life. Therefore, the expectations can never be translated into full expression, leaving people feeling overwhelmed. Even if the personal achievement and performance are high, it never seems quite enough.

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I have clients whose expectations of what they can accomplish are totally unrealistic. They are going to write the great American novel, compose a hit song, make it in the movies, win the election or succeed at some other grand achievement for which they are totally unqualified. Another more typical take on the pattern is a seeming inability to recognize their obvious superior performance on the job. I like to say they don’t know what a “C” is. Even if they did, average performance is not acceptable anyway. If they do receive good performance ratings and praise, they tell me that they have people fooled…so far. In fact, this very pattern can lead to behaviors of holding people somewhat at a distance. If others get too close, the fear is that it may reveal that the Sagittarian is flawed in some way after all.

Another form of unrealistic expectation is to project the idealism onto what one expects the world to be like. Read this quote from one of my clients that sums up the sentiments so typical of this pattern, “People break laws. They don’t behave the way they should. I don’t want the world to be the way it is.” This attitude leads to a great deal of frustration because the individual feels powerless to change the situation.

We astrologers look for a strong Saturn placement in the horoscope to counter balance the unrealistic idealism. Saturn is the reality checker of the zodiac. My husband is a homeopathic physician and he gives homeopathic Ignatia for patients caught up in expectations that can never be fully met. It is particularly effective when this pattern involves relationships. (“No man is ever good enough.”) Sagittarius is the sign that refers to the personal belief system and philosophy of life.

It also includes values, goals and ethical considerations. It doesn’t make any difference what the belief system is be it atheistic, organized religion, fanatic cults to ''New Age metaphysics''. No one can pull a belief out of their pockets and set it on the table. However, they or entire nations may nonetheless go to war over these matters. How many hostilities have broken out over religious issues? Religious conflict can exist in the family dynamics as well. Talk to a kid who is the son of a minister or who attended parochial school and now is an astrologer and a Buddhist.

More than one family has become estranged over just such issues.

A search for truth then is tied to the formation of personal beliefs. Sagittarians like to be knowledgeable and regarded as informed and intelligent. They are curious.

This is about the world of the mind so includes the institutions with ivy-covered walls. They are usually candidates for a higher education. They are natural born teachers, but also may be students for life as well. I have some clients with these patterns as the definitive drivers of their charts, and they are students as a career. They may reach age 50 with several degrees and never punched the time clock on the job in their lives.

The personality may go two separate ways. One is into the academic world of teaching, writing, publishing or lecturing. They can be the absent-minded professors whose socks don’t match as they contemplate deep thoughts. Another is the outdoor type and the athlete. I like to notice the baseball pitchers unwinding a tall, lean body for a hurl over the plate. Not what you think; I am only looking at that academically to see if we have a Sagittarius.

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Sagittarians love honesty. Don’t ask their opinions unless you are ready for some blunt truth. They will think they are doing you a favor to tell you some unvarnished reality about yourself. In fact, they are prone to offering it even if you don’t ask. (Yes, you do look fat in that dress.) My son, David, has Sagittarius rising. I was shopping a manuscript around to publishers and received a rejection letter one day. He comforted me by telling me that maybe my book just wasn’t good enough.

The really amazing thing about that is the way the Sagittarians can get away with these less-than-flattering remarks. If the Scorpios said the same thing, we would deck the bastards. They have this sort of childlike innocence and a look of expectant praise for helping you see the light. For all their intelligence, they are probably the likeliest targets to fall for a tall story. They just can’t seem to bring themselves to believe that anyone can REALLY be so bad as to cheat or lie to them. Turn the coin of honesty and integrity over and what do you get? The sociopath, Sagittarians dark side. These are the confidence schemers, the embezzlers and perpetrators of white-collar crime. They are seldom violent. They succeed at their nefarious activities with a silver tongue. They lie as naturally as breathing. Catch their hand in the cookie jar and they will have you believing you are hallucinating without batting an eye.

I did a long research project on neurological problems in the horoscope. I have published articles and lectured in many different cities about it. This refers to symptoms following head injury and other trauma. Sagittarius and the planet, Jupiter, are strong indicators of these problems when afflicted in the chart. It is also one component of bi-polar disorder. Don’t jump to conclusions. These extreme expressions of problems require an entire complex of indicators, a professional consultation and a case history before confirming any such thing.

Sagittarius is associated with long-range vision, prophetic dreams and the like. This is one of their strong suits but it is also true that future orientation can work to a disadvantage. It takes the focus off the here and now reality. Many Sagittarian clients suffer frustration because a situation is not the way RIGHT NOW like it will be in their vision of the future. It is just as much of a mistake to live in the future as it is in the past. In seeing the big picture, one runs the risk of missing the trees for the forest. Sagittarians may do well to team up with their Virgo or Gemini cousins to fill in the details of their plans.

One last thing, Sagittarians have an itchy foot. It is a sign of travel. They like to get around the world. Too much confinement can really get on their nerves. Sometimes the concept of travel is inner directed. This can take the form of studying other cultures by watching documentaries right in the comfort of their own living rooms. If natives of this sign express the flip side from sociopathic, have some grounding as to the realities of life, possess a fairly clear idea of his or her abilities, live in the now and resist the very annoying penchant of constantly preaching about everything, your Sagittarian friends will always entertain you with their great wit and humor, lift your spirits with their optimism and teach you that sometimes visions and dreams of the future really do come true.