Picture a star just clearing the eastern horizon. What you notice is not where it has stopped — it has not stopped — but that it is climbing. Ascendant holds that moment of climbing. Everything else the word does is that same climb pointed at something else: at one exact instant of it (the astrological ascendant), or at a party, a company or a reputation moving up past the things around it.
Latin ascendere, from ad- ('up to') plus scandere ('to climb'), gives the present participle ascendens, 'climbing'. The modern core is that participle, unchanged.
拉丁文 ascendere 是 ad-（往…去）加 scandere（攀登），意思是往上爬。ascendēns 是它的現在分詞，「正在往上爬的」。今天這個字的核心就是那個分詞，幾乎原封不動。
Wiktionary etymology supplied in this packet: 'from Latin ascendentem ... present participle of ascendō, adscendō ... from ad- + scandō'.
From the picture
星盤上正在升起的那一點
占星把「正在升起」這個持續的動作，釘在一個瞬間上：你出生的那一刻，東方正在升起來的是哪一格。動作沒有變，只是被定格了。
noun · C1
In astrology, the ascendant is the point of the sky rising in the east at the exact moment someone is born, and the sign of the zodiac at that point; astrologers say it shapes the person's character and life.
上升星座（上升點）
力量與名聲往上走
把往上爬的東西從星星換成人、政黨、公司或一種風格。爬的是勢力和名聲，不是高度。這是理解上的連結，重點在兩邊共用同一個「正在往上」的畫面。
adjective · C1
Becoming more powerful, more successful or more widely liked, so that it is moving up past the others around it.
正在崛起的
adjective · C2
Moving upward; rising. This plain physical use appears mainly in older writing and in a few技術 fields: of a star or planet climbing the sky, of the point coming up over the eastern horizon, and of a part of a plant or body that slopes upward.
（字面）正在上升的