The Ecliptic Signs as Personality Symbols: I
An explanation of the zodiacal signs becomes somewhat technical, and for this I apologize. I will do my best to make this section as accessible as possible. However, the detail cannot be avoided if one wants to understand astrology as a history of science. If one cares not for the astronomical foundations of astrology, I suggest this section be skipped. However the astronomical objection raised against astrology – that the signs have ‘changed’ and are no longer as they were thousands of years ago – is explained and dealt with in this section.
The revolution of the Earth about the Sun produces a mathematical whole, which we temporally call a year and which, in space, transcribes a circle. It is difficult to talk about the zodiacal signs without muddling time and space, because the terms colloquially refer to both. However, if we are being technical, the zodiacal signs are spaces, line segments on a circle of thirty degrees each, not times of year. The rotation of the Earth relative to the Sun produces a convenient mode of dividing that whole into parts, or roughly three hundred and sixty-five parts. For ease’s sake, these three hundred and sixty-five days were rounded, when dealing with the abstract circle, to three hundred and sixty parts. In astronomy and mathematics, each of these three hundred and sixty parts is called a degree. Therefore, the relationship between abstract or imaginary degrees and real, sensory days is not perfect.
A degree is a segment of space, while a day is segment of time. A degree is a slightly larger segment of the circle than the Sun appears to travel in the course of a twenty-four hour day. Again for ease’s sake, rather than counting all the degrees up to three hundred and sixty whenever they were discussing the circle, the circle was divided into twelve imaginary segments. Twelve was chosen arbitrarily for ease, as a divisor of three hundred and sixty, and metaphorically to represent the Moon’s cycle, which occurs twelve to thirteen times in the Earth’s solar journey. Of course, with imaginary lines we can be precise and choose our numbers, whereas with actual lines we cannot. Thus, twelve signs times thirty degrees equals three hundred and sixty degrees, a complete astronomical circle. Thus, through a little abstraction, the heavens are made conceivable, conceptually manageable.
(Interestingly, a more precise numerical system would multiply the Moon’s thirteen cycles per year times a more precise twenty-eight days, which would yield a three hundred and sixty-four degree circle. However, multiplying by three, twelve, and ten is far easier than multiplying by four, thirteen, and seven. Mayan and Celtic astrologers adopted the more numerically cumbersome, but more precise, astrological system.)
To recapitulate, the signs are imaginary territories of space, created by the division of an imaginary circle into twelve segments. Because the precise numbers of the actual cycle of days and months is mathematically difficult, the ancients produced an approximate, abstract mathematical system to track the movement of bodies in space more easily. It is a grand testament to the utility of this system that astronomers and mathematicians use this system to day. By this I mean, modern astronomy and mathematics bears the marks of its astrological origins.
I mention above a somewhat imaginary circle. I say ‘somewhat imaginary’ because the circle is real insofar as there is an actual path in the sky along which the planets appear to move, and imaginary insofar as that same path, in the mind’s eye, is conceived of as a belt or circle surrounding the Earth. Now, modern science tells us that each planet walks its own unique path about the Sun. However, as you probably know, space exists in three dimensions – up and down, right and left, backwards and forwards. And fortunately for our finite minds, the relevant planets all travel their unique paths on one level plane, making the solar system flat like a disk or Frisbee. From Earth, this flat plane along which the planets move appears as a line, for we are on that plane ourselves, much like how a broad, two-dimensional piece of paper appears like a thin line when held horizontally. However, because the circle is laid flat, it is impossible to account for distance, and in astrology, the distance of planets from Earth makes no difference. It is only the location along the imaginary circle, not a planet’s distance from Earth, which makes a difference for interpretation.
As you probably know, the Earth’s axis is tilted twenty three and one half degrees off of this flat plane, so the circle appears as a line or bow twenty three and one half degrees above the horizon. Half of the line extends below the horizon, and when the Sun is on that lower course, we have night or winter: night when daily rotation of the Earth makes the Sun on the ecliptic dip below the horizon, and winter when the annual revolution of the Earth makes the Sun’s more focused rays point at the southern hemisphere.
All of this is quite difficult without a visual aide. On a clear night, I suggest you go outside and pick a constellation, say the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Draco, or Cassiopeia. Mark relative to the trees or buildings where the constellation lies. Go back inside, and return to look in two or three hours. You will see that the location of the constellation has shifted. This is due to the Earth’s rotation. The stars did not move, but you did. If you are in the Northern Hemisphere, use the Big Dipper to find the North Star. The North Star is so called because the Earth’s axis points in that direction. The angle of the North Star above the horizon is equal to your line of longitude – at the equator, the North Star is on the horizon if it is visible at all, and at the North Pole, the North Star is right overhead. This is due to the Earth’s spherical shape. In the Northern Hemisphere, the North Star is always above the horizon, even during the day, but we cannot see it simply because the Sun is so bright.
If you put your back to the North Star, and look in the opposite direction, you will see a variety of constellations. These constellations appear to change over the course of the night, because they are low enough to rise and set like the Sun. But unlike the Sun they are fixed. And more importantly, in three or six months time, you will still be able to go out on a clear night and find the North Star, the Big and Little Dipper, Draco and Cassiopeia. But the other constellations, those to the south, will have entirely changed. This is due to the revolution of the Earth about the Sun. If it were possible to see the stars behind the Sun – i.e., if the Sun were not so bright – the Sun would appear at one time to be a part of one of these constellations, and in a month, a part of another, and return to the first constellation in a year’s time. This is what it means to say the Sun is ‘in’ a particular sign, relative to Earth.
In the Fourth Century before the Common Era, Alexander the Great conquered much of the Eastern Mediterranean lands, and southwestern Asia as far as India. Knowledge is often one of the spoils of war, and the victors tend to be shaped by cultures and beliefs of those they conquer. Indian and Semitic religions had a great impact on Hellenistic philosophy, for example. But for our purposes, the incorporation of Egyptian and Babylonian astrology into Greco-Roman culture is most relevant. The Greeks gave their names to the stars, and incorporated their fledgling astronomy into the astronomical knowledge of the Egyptians and Babylonians. For this reason many of the constellations bear Greek and Latin stories and mythology.
Importantly, the constellations along that somewhat imaginary circle received their names by association with the time of year in which the Sun appeared there. In late winter, the Nile would flood, and thus the constellation behind the Sun was called Aquarius, or the Water Bearer. In fall, when the length of day and night were equal with light becoming shorter, association was made with judgment and law, and the constellation behind the Sun was called Libra, or the Scales. And in early spring, when the days became long and the Semitic race would sacrifice lambs by the thousands, the constellation behind the Sun was called Aries, or the Ram. The symbolism of each of these constellations, as they relate to the corresponding times of year will be discussed at length in the next section.
However, now, a famous and important objection must be raised: the constellation behind the Sun at the spring equinox is no longer Aries, but Aquarius. The relationship between the North Pole and the North Star is incidental, and Earth’s axis did not always point thusly. In fact, Earth’s axis wobbles, on a twenty-six thousand year cycle, and every twenty-one hundred years a different constellation is behind the springtime Sun. Therefore, it seems, astrology is false – or at least wildly incorrect. No longer are those born in early spring under the constellation of Aries, but they are really Aquarians, for the Sun is in Aquarius. So too have all the signs shifted back – first through one sign over the past two thousand years, and now through a second. Astrology, on the basis of this astronomical knowledge, needs to be harshly augmented in order to be fixed, or such a system of symbols and stars should simply be abandoned, because it is broken.
This objection is right in its astronomical assessment, and wrong in the astrological conclusion. That is to say, the astronomical facts do not indicate that astrology is incorrect. For remember, astrology is older than Islam, Christianity, and philosophy for that matter, and philosophy began in the Fifth Century before the Common Era, with Thales of Miletus. In fact, philosophy began with an astronomical event – Thales’s prediction of an eclipse – and his declaration that all the material stuff in the world is water. We can discount his hydrophilia, but must take cultural and historical note of the eclipse. Miletus was a Greek-speaking port city on the coast of Asia Minor, closer to the Babylonians, Semites, and Egyptians who practiced astrology as part of their religion. The bastion of Western knowledge began with Thales’s divorce of scientific knowledge from religious knowledge. It is important to understand philosophy’s birth as one of analysis and division, not necessarily creation. (Later, when Socrates would divorce morality from religion, he would be put to death for impiety – becoming philosophy’s first martyr and cementing the philosophical tradition. For all great traditions are cemented by persecution.)
The ancient astrological peoples, who incorporated astronomy into their religion, were well aware of the twenty-six thousand year cycle, known as the precession of the zodiac. Evidence can be found thereof in Egyptian and Babylonian ruins, for these cultures are so old that these twenty-one hundred year periods are but a brief moment – something at which even Herodotus marveled and respected. Before the Sun would rise in Aries in the Third Century before the Common Era, it would rise in Taurus in the Twenty-Fifth Century before the Common Era. And in Gemini twenty-one hundred years before that. And in Cancer twenty-one hundred years before that. So wobbly in fact is the precession of the zodiac through previous signs, that the ancient Egyptians revered not the zodiacal stars, but Sirius the Dog Star, and kept track of its annual rising above the horizon. But I digress.
What is most important for our discussion, is the following distinction: First, there is the sidereal zodiac, based on the fixed stars, and second there is the seasonal or ecliptic zodiac, based on the relationship between the Earth and the Sun. The relationship between the Earth and the Sun is consistent, taking the same number of days, with solar moments like equinoxes and solstices occurring with great regularity, perfect regularity. However, against the backdrop of the fixed stars, these solar moments shift, with the Sun rising in different signs every twenty-one hundred years. And because, as discussed above, the indicators of astrology are the planets, and not the fixed stars, the fundamental influence of these has not changed. It is the times of year with respect to the seasons, as indicated by the Sun, which gives each zodiac sign its particular significance. And because the Earth has two motions relative to the Sun, all other relationships with the solar system, along the ecliptic, bear the marks of the solar, seasonal zodiac by analogy. Counting from due East as degree zero, the first thirty degrees are Aries, the second thirty degrees called Taurus, the next thirty degrees called Gemini, and so forth. For at the end of the day, we are standing on Earth, and must use Earth’s cardinal directions and the ever-present Sun as our directors.
The precession of the zodiac, the sidereal zodiac, is not cast aside however. Rather, the sidereal constellation for the Sun’s vernal rising marks an epoch or age. In the last century we have moved into the Age of Aquarius. Preceding that, during the time from roughly the Third Century before the Common Era to the Nineteenth Century of our era, was the Age of Pisces. That is to say, the Sun was in the constellation Pisces on the sidereal zodiac every spring. More esoteric astrologers will say that our conception of the unknown god is contingent upon the age or epoch we are in. As will be discussed in the next section, Pisces is a sign of self-sacrifice, martyrdom, compassion, and the ideal. Fitting that during the Age of Pisces, the chief religions were Christianity and Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism. Aquarius is the sign of the aloof individual, the effervescent mob, rebellion, the Occult, and rationality. Time will only tell how the next set of religions will present themselves.