Spirits of the
Zodiac
This month: Aquarius
A rabbit or a pitcher?
There are many intellectual
approaches to the subject of Astrology, and many mysteries still surround it. I have been
working on ways of interpreting the signs of the Zodiac. What do they really mean?
The Earth, like all planets in our Solar System, travels around the Sun. The path of travel around the Sun is the ecliptic plane,
also called the Zodiac. While it is the Sun that is fixed, from the geocentric
perspective, it appears that the Sun is moving around the Earth. Hence language
has evolved to place the Sun in various positions along the 360 degrees of the Zodiac.
So emblazoned on
the human psyche, the zodiacal archetypes have held fast.
The Zodiac comes from Greek and Latin words meaning “circle of animals”. The 360 degree circle around the Sun divides into twelve equal zones of celestial
longitude in Chaldean astronomy. The Zodiacal path is a convenience, an ancient positioning device. How does one enter
the circle? There are many possible starting points--the South declination point at 0 Capricorn, the
Cross-Quarter Day of Samhain at 15 Scorpio, or the the Sidereal Zodiac with its starting point against a fixed constellation and
its varied ayanamsa, 25-30 degrees earlier than Tropical, are some.
In Western Tropical Astrology, the starting
point is tied to the seasons; the beginning is the Vernal Equinox (0 degrees of Aries).
Though not all animals, the Spirits of the Zodiac
speak through the celestial coordinate system where the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun) serves as latitude, and the
apparent position on the Sun at Vernal Equinox is the starting point for longitude.
From Aries to Pisces, the Sun apparently travels, giving us season and
angular light, and a natural rhythm that is astounding.
Although
astrology is far more complex than the simple Sun sign placement, the Zodiacal path is where the movement of all the planets
occurs. It is along this path that we can grasp the shifting relationships of this movement,
day to day, month to month, season to season.
