Everything is ruled by an astrological sign, and that goes for alcohol too! To get to the bottom of this glass of mystery, I turned to Dylan Warren–Davis, a leading expert in the field of herbal astrology and a published author of two books. “Astrology & Health,” is absolutely fascinating and if you’re really into this stuff it’s a must read. Especially chapter 8, “Medical Astrology in Action,” which stunningly illustrates the decumbiture chart of a bee sting. Davis has studied the work of Nicholas Culpeper intensively and understands completely his process of delineating signs to plants. In his medieval-time books, Culpeper identified the signs of the ingredients in alcohol, such as wheat and rice, which belong to the Sun (Leo) and the Moon (Cancer) respectively. But alas, martinis don’t grow on trees and he didn’t feel it necessary to analyze vodka’s astrological sign. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone on earth who gets Culpeper more than Dylan Warren–Davis. Not only was he born twenty miles from Culpeper’s birthplace in Britain, but he shares his rising and sun signs in reverse order. Culpeper was a Scorpio sun with Capricorn rising, and Davies is a Cappie sun with Scorp rising (as am I.) But I’m veering way off course here, so lemme get back on track… Deborah Houlding’s Skyscript is a terrific website filled to the brim with lots of super interesting and hard to find zodiacal tidbits. On it, you can find a series by Davis that discusses Culpeper’s herbs and their planetary rulers. Davis explains in an easy-to-understand way, why certain plants belongs to certain signs. When I asked him to which sign does hard liquor belong, he responded with the following:

Though alcohol is ruled by Mercury/Ether hence ethyl alcohol from the alchemical roots of the name, it does indeed have a Martian hot and drying action, so spirits do all have this property. Distillation is a process that is linked with the sign of Scorpio, the old fashioned retorts are in the shape of the male sexual organ, with the fire of Mars underneath, boiling the liquid which then condenses the vapour into the female receptical of the flask which is often cooled by water Venus. So that is why the spirits are more Martian in nature. But it is still ruled by Mercury, hence the strong correlation between the alcohol and the Central Nervous System.

ILLUSTRATION DEPICTS MEDIEVAL DISTILLATION. NOTE THE FIRE OF MARS (ARIES, SCORPIO) ON THE LEFT AND THE SEXUALITY OF PLUTO (SCORPIO) ON THE RIGHT. (thanks to the informational & congenial cocktail site, Miss. Charming, for the image.)

So the answer is… ALCOHOL is ruled by MERCURY, which makes it both a GEMINI and a VIRGO.