Imagine it. The room is filled with helium balloons, flowers, and a colorful banner. Everyone is being extra nice and calling the guest of honor the “birthday girl.” The door opens and her friends bring out a fancy cake with sixteen candles and a message that says, “Happy Sweet Sixteen.” She blows out the candles and makes a secret wish. Does she wish for her first car? No. Does she wish for a good score on her SAT?
No. She wishes that the arthritis in her knees would go away so she can bounce her grandbaby on her lap without pain. That’s right… this “sweet sixteen birthday girl” is a leap year baby, chronologically about 64 years old. She only gets to celebrate her birthday on the calendar day she was born every four years! So, how does this affect her astrology? Let’s find out.
What Is the Zodiac Sign for a Leap Year Baby?
Pisces is the zodiac sign for those born on February 29. Leap years make the date ranges for each zodiac sign vary slightly. So, the zodiac sign of a person on either end of the date range can vary, depending on the year he or she was born. However, since February is not on or near this cusp, leap year babies are always Pisces, no matter what year they are born.
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All Pisces are subject to the planetary rule of the planet Neptune. Since leap year babies are born at the end of the first decan, and Pisces is a mutable water sign, they are under an even stronger influence by Planet Neptune. This has a tendency to magnify their Pisces traits. This can be both positive and negative. For example, Pisces tend to be really optimistic people.
Generally, this is considered a positive attribute. However, if Pisces goes overboard in this department, they can veer into not seeing things in a realistic way. For this reason, it can be helpful for leap year babies to have a life partner who keeps them firmly grounded.
All Pisces are known for their intuition. However, leap year babies are thought to have exceptionally strong intuitions, with many almost seeming to read other person’s minds without even saying anything. Leap year babies also tend to have a very high emotional IQ which gets even stronger as they experience life with each passing year.
The only negative side to this, especially since leapers are born in the first decan, is they can sometimes take on too many of the burdens of other people because they are so deeply intuitive and charitable in spirit. Again, having a partner that can help balance this is helpful.
2 Reasons Why Leap Year Babies Should Get a Solar Return Chart
If you’re a leap year baby, you’ve likely had discussions if and when to celebrate your birthday when it’s not leap year. Some leaplings choose to celebrate on February 28 and others choose to celebrate on March 1. Neither of these options feels entirely satisfactory to some leap year babies because it just doesn’t feel like their “real” birthday.
However, you can celebrate the anniversary of the exact position the sun was in when you came into the world with a solar return chart. This is a very useful type of astrology chart. Knowing your solar return is better than a calendar day birthday for anyone, but for leap year babies, it can be even more meaningful because it gives them an annual recurring marker for their life!
It gives them back their “birthday” (more like a highly significant birth moment) that they may have thought they had been missing out on.
A solar return chart is a personal astrological chart that is calculated for the exact moment of a person’s solar return. This chart will vary depending on your exact location at the time of your solar return. In other words, you’ll get a different astrological chart depending on your exact latitude and longitude (GPS position). For example, your rising may be very different just by moving a one-time zone.
If you are willing to travel, you can use this to your advantage by deciding where to be to get a more preferable solar return chart. Since your solar return chart can influence the events in your life for the entire year, it’s worth studying various possibilities. To more accurately interpret the various potential solar return charts on your solar return, it would be best to consult an experienced astrologer.
However, you can compare your solar return charts at different locations for free online. Please note that your natal chart, the exact position of the planets at your moment of birth, never changes, no matter where you go in the world, or even if you are so lucky as to travel into outer space. However, your outer space solar return chart would be different than any location on Planet Earth. Wouldn’t that be exciting! Gives one another reason for space travel.
What Is Leap Year and Why Does Leap Year Exist?
Leap year is a necessity for us to accurately track time and seasons. It takes our planet Earth approximately 365 days to travel around our sun. Note the word “approximately!” It actually takes 365 days, 5 hours, and 48 minutes. If we round this up to the nearest hour, a complete revolution around the sun takes about 365 days and 6 hours.
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Since we have 24 hours in a day, we have to “make up” for this extra quarter day. So, every four years, we add an extra day to our calendar, designated as February 29, or “leap day.” You’ll also notice that 5 hours and 48 minutes is actually a little bit under 6 hours or a quarter of a day.
To account for this smaller discrepancy in our calendar, we skip the leap year at the turn of every century, unless it’s a year divisible by four. Thus, the year 2000 was a leap year but 1900 was not.
What Would Happen If We Never Corrected Our Calendar?
It may seem at first like a quarter day, or a few minutes doesn’t amount to much. However, if you think about how this adds up over time, you’ll begin to understand why we have to correct our calendar with a leap day every 4 years except that we skip three leap days for every 400 years cycle.
If we never corrected for the extra one-quarter day, over the course of a century, our seasons would be off by about 25 days. Over the course of three centuries, our seasons would be off by about 75 days. This means the summer solstice would take place in April in the northern hemisphere, after three centuries, if we did not use leap years to correct our calendar.
This would throw off the timing of when we planted crops when it was time to preserve and store food for the winter when we hunted or foraged for wild foods when we studied the migratory patterns of animals when we conducted religious ceremonies and many other activities. It would also make astrology, horoscopes, and predictions much tougher.
It would be difficult to see the pattern between human traits/behavior and the movement of the celestial bodies if the calendar didn’t stay consistent.
Danica Jackson got her first telescope when she was only nine years old. She's been fascinated with all things celestial ever since. Her studies on history and anthropology give her unique perspectives on astrology and personal growth.
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