(Untitled)

[tclefey]

I am pondering the magickal implications that the sun no longer travels through the signs as we think it does. The course has changed so much since Ptolemy wrote it down that sun in Scorpio only lasts 6 days and it travels through a thirteenth constellation in December. If you go strictly by that, the calender is so changed, I would no longer be a

Comments

[diamonddustshoe]

This topic comes up every few years and always yields the same reports. This time it just happened to get bigger press. Just about every astrologer I have read on this topic says Western Astrology ignores this movement, that the points are fixed, and we shouldn't worry about it. On a more personal note, it just doesn't feel natural to me.

"Ophiuchus," indeed. It's portrayed as dark, and not something I would want to associate with. I am definitely the bluntly honest fun loving sort for which Sagittarius is known.

Some friends of mine and I were joking that perhaps the only real use for it is in a bar setting:
"What's your sign, babe?"
"Ophiuchus."
"Of mucus?"
"OH FYOO CUSS."
"A few kids! Oh. Nevermind."

[peskipiksi]

[tclefey]

I've always considered adding astrology to magick as getting far too complicated. I was part of the "keep it simple stupid" school of magick. It has just been recently that I've been trying to get into astrology(as in the last few months). Now I wonder if I should even bother.

[ianphanes]

To expand on what peskipiksi wrote

[nacho_cheese]

I don't work with astrology too closely, so I'm only going by what I've read around. :) Basically, though, peskipiksi and ianphanes are right, and to expand a bit on Western astrology, its use comes from ancient Babylonians who wanted 12 signs, one for each month of the year. Therefore, if the sun had passed through different zodiacs, they wouldn't have been included anyway, in order to keep it all fairly regulated.

Western astrology is more firmly based on the seasons and its changes; Aries is fixed to one, and Libra is fixed to another. As astrology, at least tropically speaking, is geocentric, it makes the most sense to Westerners, who typically don't check star alignments and so forth like those who use sidereal (Eastern) astrology.

It really depends on which one you've followed all along, and after doing some research, if you decide you fall more closely to one than the other, then by all means, follow it. It's all a pretty personal decision, anyway. :)

[lughnie]

I believe Vedic astrology takes this into account (aka Jyotisha) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyotisa .

[ianphanes]

As I wrote above:
Even in Indian sidereal astrology, which does move the signs with the precession of the equinoxes, the constellations only kinda mostly match the signs, as the signs are all exactly thirty degrees, and the constellations vary greatly.

Also, there is really nothing Vedic about Indian astrology. As the Wikipedia page you linked above says:
The documented history of Jyotisha begins with the interaction of Indian and Hellenistic cultures in the Indo-Greek period.

[lughnie]

Yep, I saw that. Yet again my human fallibility is showing. ;)