November zodiac signs: Scorpio and Sagittarius

Find the date, then the sign. Twenty dates are Scorpio in every year from 1951 to 2030, eight are Sagittarius in every year, and only 21 and 22 November ever change hands. The verdicts are for New York time; the cusp section further down has Los Angeles, London and Sydney.

So two thirds of November is Scorpio, and the Scorpio part spans two decans: the Sun's, from 1 to 3 November, and Venus's, from 11 or 12 November. Late November is all first-decan Sagittarius, the third whose face ruler is Mercury. British dates sit slightly later: in London 23 November itself changed sign during the day in 5 of the 80 years, and the first date that is Sagittarius all day there is 24 November.

Scorpio, in every year and every time zone. 12 November is the usual first day of the third decan of Scorpio, the one the Chaldean order gives to Venus; the Sun reaches 20° Scorpio on 11 or 12 November (UTC), so a birth early on 12 November can still be in the Sun's decan. The same goes for 11 November. Births on 12 November ran at +0.1% against the average US date from 2000 to 2014.

In New York it was Scorpio all day in 60 of the 80 years and became Sagittarius partway through the day in the other 20. Those 20 years follow a pattern you can almost recite: every leap year from 1976 onwards, joined since 2009 by the year after each leap year. In the 2020s it is an even split, 5 of 10.

Move west and 21 November becomes the usual first day of Sagittarius. In Los Angeles the change came during 21 November in 31 of 80 years and in 7 of the 10 years from 2021 to 2030. In London it happened only 7 times, and in Sydney never. This year is a clean example: the Sun enters Sagittarius at 21 November, 11:23 pm in Los Angeles, which is 22 November, 2:23 am in New York, so a baby born at 11:30 pm Pacific on 21 November 2026 is a Sagittarius while a New Yorker born at the same Eastern clock time that night is a Scorpio.

Usually by the end of the day, and in recent years often from midnight. In US Eastern time Sagittarius arrived during 22 November in 60 of 80 years and was already in place at midnight in 20. For the decade 2021 to 2030 those figures are 5 and 5. A New York birth on 22 November before the ingress is a Scorpio; from the ingress on, a Sagittarius. The zodiac sign calculator does the comparison from a date, time and birthplace.

The balance has moved by roughly a day since the 1950s, when every New York Sagittarius began on the 22nd, and the decade table shows it happening. The cause is the long Gregorian drift, which the May zodiac signs page explains; for November the practical upshot is that a table printed in your grandparents' day and one printed now can both be right for their own decades.

Three American time zones are enough to show the spread. In leap years the ingress comes earliest, so 2028 has the earliest of all 80 years at 21 November, 1:54 pm New York time; the latest was 22 November, 9:51 pm in 1951.

Scorpio is the fixed water sign, Mars's sign in Ptolemy's scheme of houses, with Pluto added by modern astrologers. The November Scorpio is the second and third thirds of it. From about 2 November the Sun is in the decan the Chaldean order gives to the Sun, and from about 12 November in Venus's. Astrologers who use decans read this as Scorpio with more warmth and more appetite for company than the Mars-ruled first decan of late October.

On an ordinary weekday that might be the nurse who is calm in exactly the situations that make other people panic; the friend who will tell you the truth about your partner, once, and then never raise it again; the person who quietly reorganises a failing team without asking for credit. It is not a promise of jealousy, revenge or secrets, and it says nothing about who someone will marry. A Scorpio Sun describes where a person puts their attention and how long they keep it there.

Two slower planets give November Scorpios a generation marker. Uranus was in Scorpio from 8 September 1975 until 16 November 1981, so November Scorpios born 1975 to 1980, and those of 1981 up to that date, have Uranus in their sign. Saturn was in Scorpio from 5 October 2012 to 23 December 2014: every November Scorpio of 2012, 2013 and 2014 shares it. The Scorpio dates and the constellation Scorpius page has the October half of the sign.

Ptolemy lists Sagittarius among the four bicorporeal signs (I.11), so called because they sit between a fixed sign and a season-opening one and "share, as it were, at end and beginning, the natural properties of the two states of weather." It is the late-autumn sign that hands over to winter. Jupiter takes it as one of his two houses, the two signs Ptolemy calls "windy and fecund, Sagittarius and Pisces" (I.17).

Every November Sagittarius is in the first decan, whose Chaldean face ruler is Mercury. There is a tension in that, because the traditional rule puts Mercury in detriment in Sagittarius, the sign opposite his own Gemini. The late-November Sagittarius tends to be the one who talks: the lecturer, the opinionated uncle, the person who has read half of five books on a subject and will happily tell you about all of them.

Concrete versions: the friend who books a flight to a city they have never seen and works out the hotel on the train from the airport; the employee who will argue for a principle in a meeting long after it has stopped being useful to them; the student who changes course twice and graduates in something nobody predicted. It does not mean careless, unfaithful or unable to commit. It means a preference for meaning over detail.

Pluto spent the years from 10 November 1995 to 26 January 2008 in Sagittarius, so every late-November Sagittarius born 1995 to 2007 has Pluto in their sign, as do those born in 2008 before 27 November 2008. The Sagittarius dates and Ophiuchus page covers the December half and the Sun's real constellation dates for the rest of the sign.

US birth records show something no zodiac table does: the last week of November is one of the quietest weeks of the American year. Over 2000 to 2014, every date from 22 to 28 November ranked between 344th and 360th of the 366 calendar dates. The quietest was 23 November, with 9,875 births on average, −13.0% against the typical day. US Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November, which is always one of those seven dates.

The days just before the holiday week run high instead: 21 November was the busiest date of the month (47th of the year) and 20 November not far behind (+4.5%). A reasonable reading is that some planned inductions and caesarean births are booked ahead of the holiday rather than during it, though the daily totals cannot prove the reason.

The effect lands almost entirely on Sagittarius. November's always-Scorpio dates average 11,411 births a day; its always-Sagittarius dates average 10,375. Over the year, the Shymea rarity study found Sagittarius the 10th most common of twelve signs in the US (7.95%) against Scorpio's 7th (8.19%). Sagittarius is also a short sign, 29.55 days on average, because the Sun moves faster as Earth nears perihelion in early January. The holiday is not the whole story, though: in Canada, where Thanksgiving is in October, Sagittarius came last of all twelve signs in 2024 (7.67%).

The Sun enters Sagittarius at 22 November, 8:16 am in New York and 22 November, 1:16 pm in London; in Sydney it is already 23 November, 12:16 am, so for an Australian birth the first day of Sagittarius in 2027 is 23 November. Three days later Venus and Mars both cross into Capricorn on the same day, 25 November, 6:59 am and 25 November, 1:38 pm New York time.

The New Moon at 5°39′ Sagittarius falls on the evening of 27 November, 10:24 pm in New York but on 28 November in UTC, a reminder that 'the 28th' in a European almanac can be the 27th on an American calendar. For the year ahead by date, see the Scorpio 2027 horoscope and the Sagittarius 2027 horoscope.

October zodiac signs runs Libra into Scorpio on 22, 23 or 24 October, most often the 23rd. December zodiac signs runs Sagittarius into Capricorn at the solstice and covers the stars of Ophiuchus as the Sun leaves them. The full calendar is on the zodiac signs by date page.