Sun in Capricorn (December 22, 2018 to January 20, 2019)

(Photo by summitpost.org user gimpilator)

You can also find this prediction on my astrology Tumblr!

December 22nd (or 21st, depending on your time zone) marks the 2018 winter solstice, when the Sun enters Capricorn. As the last sign in the Gregorian calendar and the last cardinal sign in the zodiac, this sign is the beginning of the end. We may find ourselves reviewing how we did this year or talking about everything we’ll do differently the next as everything wraps up. We’ve had some time to recover from that summer of retrogrades, and quite a few planets will spend time in their favorite domains this season.

Mercury in Sagittarius and Mars in Pisces will be making a mild square with each other as we enter 2019, so be careful not to let your impulses run your words and actions if you’re around relatives. It’s a great time to dream big and set those New Year’s resolutions, but make sure to sketch out a plan so you don’t bite off more than you can chew. This shouldn’t be too hard as the Sun (our egos) and Mercury (our communications) will be dancing around in disciplined Saturn’s home for the next month.

On January 2nd the Sun will join Saturn at 11 degrees Capricorn, the closest they’ll be all season. Mars will also enter his home in Aries on the 2nd, so there will be ambition in the air to inspire your plans. Just be careful not to bowl everyone over along the way. It might be intimidating if you feel like you’ve fallen off track with your goals, but remember that you’ve got the whole year ahead of you!

The atmosphere of discipline will only increase as Mercury also enters Capricorn on January 6th. Your progress might be slower than usual, especially if you’re travelling. With all this Capricorn energy in the air it’s a good time to get your affairs in order, though we may find ourselves sacrificing speed for accuracy. Give yourself a break and remember that slow and steady will win the race.

Venus will exit her home in Libra on the 8th to enter carefree Sagittarius, so if romance is on your mind you may find a bohemian or philosophical approach to your advantage. She’ll begin entering conjunction territory with Jupiter towards the later half of January, so the romantic soul-searching will continue into Aquarius season. Just beware that this spirit of wanderlust may cause hearts to wander as well.

Jupiter and Saturn will continue trekking through their homes in Sagittarius and Capricorn, respectively, for the entirety of this Capricorn season. Saturn will have quite a few visitors in his home this January, so be prepared to deal with a lot of rules. As we near Aquarius season Mars will begin forming a trine with Jupiter, so it’s a great time to show people you appreciate them with actions rather than words.

 

The Planets: Rulers or Gods?

***Note: this article is cross-posted from my astrology Tumblr***

(Image: Altar of the Twelve Gods in Abii, with zodiac symbols displayed on the outer edge)

While reading Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs (following the advice of a higher-up at work like the Capricorn climber that I am), I came across an interesting theory about the sign Virgo. Goodman frequently mentions that Virgo’s “true ruler” is the yet-undiscovered planet Vulcan, a stormy planet associated with volcanoes and lightning. As I’ve been skeptical lately about non-traditional sign rulers, I wondered were there similar prophesies about Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune? If so, is there yet another planet out there to rule Libra, eliminating all double rulerships from the Zodiac? And so I went out to search about alternate planetary rulership schemes.

Some preliminary Google research told me that indeed there is an astrological concept of Vulcan, a hypothetical planet whose orbit is supposed to fall inside that of Mercury (toasty!). However, I got more information about its associations with Taurus than with Virgo, and as is the case with many esoteric websites, I had a hard time finding the original writings about it.

What I did find during this search was a brilliant article by Ken Gillman comparing planetary rulership with the dominion of the 12 Olympian gods. Essentially, the 12 months of the Greek calendar, and later the Roman calendar, were each ruled by a deity. However, as the Sun usually leaves one sign and enters another during a month, there would be two zodiac signs associated with each month, so each sign was under the dominion of two deities. For example, Leo, which the Sun enters in July and exits in August, fell under the rulership of both Jupiter, ruler of July, and that of Ceres, ruler of August. Scorpio was associated with both Mars, god of war, and Diana, goddess of the moon and the hunt. Some of the Olympian deity associations line up our current planetary associations, while others do not.

(Gillman posits that perhaps the Olympian Jupiter was associated with Leo due to his position as king of the gods, while astrologers found the Sun to be the most important planet. Combine this with theories that planets are assigned rulership based on how quickly they travel and we get a very complicated game of musical chairs where some deities fall off the board altogether.)

This begs the question of planetary deities versus mythological ones. The 12 signs are each associated with two Olympian deities in ancient calendars, but they are individually ruled by only 7 planets and luminaries, only 4 of which are named for Olympian gods. Obviously, the Olympian deities which rule times of year are not interchangeable the planets who travel across the sky, even for ancient Greek and Roman astrologers. It makes you wonder if we should be making this distinction in our interpretations as well. Might we be confusing ourselves by leaning to heavily on mythological stories rather than astrological evidence for certain planets?

Gillman brings up the debate about the newly discovered planets Neptune, Uranus and Pluto. How much are we getting wrong about these planets by associating them too heavily with their mythological counterparts rather than their effects on the world? And how can we begin to posit on their domicile when we understand so little about traditional rulership? It seems there will always be some debate as to the natures of the planets, how and why they behave the way they do in certain positions. What do you think?

 

Critiquing NASA: What is tropical astrology?

Introduction

If you keep up with the casual horoscope crowd, you may have heard recently that your zodiac sign has changed thanks to the constellations moving over, or that there’s a 13th sign now. For those who didn’t know any better, the news about changing signs sounded like the foundations of astrology had been shaken. However, nothing has changed for the serious astrology community, because zodiac signs are not calculated from the constellations.

the culprit

This conversation was most recently brought up by a post on NASA’s Tumblr, which is based off a much older webpage on NASA’s Space Place. This older page briefly discusses the zodiac constellations as an introduction to NASA’s Star Finder tool. It explains that the constellations around the earth on the tool do not line up with your zodiac sign, even though they’re represented with the same symbols. The page then proceeds to speculate on ancient Babylonian cosmology and compare modern astrology to fairy tales.

Until January of 2016, there was also a link to find out what your new sign would be, presumably taken down following backlash from the astrology community (though personally I think this tool could be fun and informative if framed properly). The claims about people’s zodiac signs changing also been removed, but the site maintains its underlying misunderstanding of how signs are calculated. Though the zodiac signs share a name with constellations because of the historical relationship between astrology and astronomy, the Sun moves through the zodiac signs based off the seasons, and the stars don’t factor into this at all.

 

tropical and sidereal astrology

Writers of this page assume that modern Western astrology is a sidereal system, that is, that zodiac signs are calculated from the position of constellations in the sky. Western astrology is in fact calculated from a tropical system, that is, one based off of the seasons. Some kinds of astrology utilize the constellations, namely Jyotish, but the sidereal vs. tropical question is a nuanced topic that reaches far beyond the scope of this blog post.

the tropical system

In tropical systems of astrology, a persons Sun sign is calculated from the interaction of the ecliptic and the celestial equator. The ecliptic refers to the path the Sun appears to take around the Earth and forms an ellipse in the plane of the Earth’s orbit. The celestial equator is a giant circle formed when the Earth’s equator is projected out into space.

When the ecliptic meets the celestial equator we have an equinox. The equinoxes correspond to the beginning of spring in one hemisphere and fall in the other, as well as certain to zodiac signs. When Sun is furthest away from the celestial equator, we have a solstice, which corresponds to the beginning of winter or summer. The Sun enters a new sign during each solstice as well.

Because certain zodiac signs line up with the beginning of the four seasons, the tropical system is also called a seasonal system. The term tropical refers to the Sun’s interaction with certain latitudes on earth: during a solstice the Sun appears directly overhead at either the tropic of Capricorn (about 23.5° South) or at the tropic of Cancer (about 23.5° North).

The solstices and equinoxes divide ecliptic into four seasons, and astrologers further divide it into 12 equal signs. With this distinction the Sun passes through 3 signs per season, spending about 30 days in each sign. The signs that line up with a solstice or equinox are called cardinal signs because they guide our division of the ecliptic. These signs are Aries (corresponding to the spring equinox in the Northern hemisphere), Cancer (summer solstice), Libra (fall equinox), and Capricorn (winter solstice).

Not-Actually-fixed stars

As the NASA site will tell you, in ancient times the Sun would appear to rise in front of a particular constellation during a certain time of year. For example, the Sun once reached its zenith in front of the constellation Capricornus during the winter solstice, so for the first ~30 days of winter, the Sun is in Capricorn. However, the fixed stars change positions in the sky over thousands of years thanks to the tilt of the earth’s axis, a phenomenon called precession. This means that the constellations don’t line up with the seasons the way they did when the 12 signs were first determined, which can get a little confusing.

The writers at NASA do get close to realizing Western astrology is a tropical system, as they mention that the 12 zodiac signs lined up with the ancient Babylonian lunar calendar. However, they argue that this association is a scientific oversight on the part of the Babylonians and therefore all astrologers, not even mentioning that the practice has changed significantly over the last few thousand years. They also bring up the fact that the constellations don’t take up an even 30 degrees of the sky each and argue that Ophiuchus the Serpent-Bearer should be a part of the zodiac as well, since his feet rest in the line of the ecliptic.

In other words, these writers understand on some level that the Sun moves through the zodiac signs in accordance with the seasons. And they clearly understand that there’s a difference between astronomy and astrology, starting the page off with “astrology is not science. It’s something else.” But they’re stuck on the fact that the signs were named after constellations thousands of years ago and can’t accept that modern astrology is a seasonal system.

Conclusion

The writers of this NASA page simply don’t understand what a tropical system is. The modern Western zodiac is a calendar that lines up with the solstices and equinoxes. The months of this calendar have similar names to constellations because of the historical relationship between astronomy and astrology, but that’s where the relationship ends. One is a branch of physics, the other a kind of divination.

But the writers of this page don’t leave the distinction at that. They oversimplify astrology’s origins to portray it as nonsense, showing how little they care to do even basic research. I know that some of these simplifications are due to the fact that this website needs to be accessible to children and use simple language. Still, you can distinguish astronomy from astrology without calling one of them “make-believe” and “fantasy stories.”

At the end of the day, the writers of this NASA website grossly misrepresent astrology in their efforts to explain why your zodiac sign doesn’t line up with the constellations. They’re convinced that astrology should correspond exactly with the constellations, never stopping to ask if there’s a reason it aligns with the seasons instead. I’m not saying you have to believe in astrology, but if  you’re not going to do basic research into an area outside your expertise, you shouldn’t talk about it in the first place.