Which astrology sign should I really use?

[SophCamera]

As you probably know, we've been wrong about astrology signs for a while, and there's actually another one because the Babylonians decided to ignore one because they already had a 12 month calendar. Well, with this real extra one, my sign is Pisces, which fits me perfectly. The perfect element, the perfect personality description, its just perfect. Before this extra sign, mine was Aries, which doesn't fit me at all. Well, most people don't seem to use this new sign, as well as wouldn't it also shift the meaning and just give mine a different name? Or are the signs not actually connected to the real people?

 

[Osamenor]

There's no such thing as an extra sign. People who say there is are confusing signs with constellations. They're not the same thing.

An astrological sign is a 30 degree section of the sky, measured from the ecliptic (the sun's path around the earth, or rather, what looks to us like the sun's path around the earth. The ecliptic actually reflects earth's orbit around the sun). Each of those sections is associated with a constellation that, at the time the signs were named, actually was in that section of sky for the most part.

Thanks to the wobble of the earth's axis, the constellations no longer align perfectly with their namesake signs. But the astrological signs are still the same. They don't change just because a constellation moves. Neither does the existence of another constellation create another sign. Since a sign is, by definition, 30 degrees, and the ecliptic is, like all circles, an exact 360 degrees, there can never be any more or any less than twelve signs. It's impossible to divide 360 by 30 and get anything else.

What I'm describing here is tropical astrology, which is what Western astrology is. Vedic astrology is a bit different, and does match the signs more closely with the constellations (that's called sidereal astrology), but even there, only the original zodiac is considered. Vedic astrology also has 30 degree signs, which, again, makes it mathematically impossible for there to be any number other than twelve.

So if you were born in the last week and a half of March or first three weeks of April, your sun sign is Aries. Nothing changes that. You may have a Pisces sun in Vedic astrology, because everything in a Vedic chart is 23-24 degrees earlier than in a Western one, but that has nothing to do with additional constellations, and sun sign is not considered the determinator of personality in Vedic astrology.

However, cookbook descriptions of sun sign traits rarely fit actual people with those signs. Your personality is shaped by your whole chart. Your Aries sun is modified by its house placement and the aspects it makes, and what you think of as your personality, and what others see as your personality, is typically a much closer match to your rising sign than your sun sign. Where Aries comes in for you is that there's some sort of Aries message in your core personal growth. Maybe you thrive on personal challenges. Maybe you are, in some sense, a pioneer, someone who tries new things first. Maybe you have a social activist bent--that's a very common theme for Aries. You might manifest Aries in a quiet way instead of a loud, noticeable way, but it's there one way or another.

 

[Gemini888]

As a joke I often tell myself, 12 is the perfect astrological number. It's the Hanged Man in Tarot, with several characteristic of Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac. It can be divided to 3 (4 signs) and 4 (3 houses) and 2 (6 personal and interpersonal signs) and 6 (2 hemispheres). A 13th sign would destroy this perfection.

 

[greybeard]

Exactly.

The astrological chart, and astrology itself, is a man-made representation of reality, not reality itself.

The constellations are also man-made constructs and have no reality of themselves. So to claim that "reality" demands that we include Ophiucus as a sign only displays our lack of understanding.

There are 360 degrees in a circle because there are 365 days in a year. 360 is a handy number; 365 is not.

Planets do not make us angry or sad, rich or poor. They do not influence us in the astrological sense. "Influence" is a linguistic convenience.

To say that "Aries does not fit me," again shows lack of understanding, rooted in lack of experience.

Long years of experience show that astrology accurately depicts whatever came into being at the moment for which the chart was erected; it doesn't just work some of the time, but consistently.

So I propose to you that your Aries not fitting is due to lack of understanding (of astrology and of human nature) more than to any deficiency in astrology.

 

[Osamenor]

There are 360 degrees in a circle because there are 365 days in a year. 360 is a handy number; 365 is not.

And because it's a law of mathematics. Every shape is 360 degrees, except half shapes (half circles and triangles), which are 180 degrees. If it's not a round shape (circle or oval), it has angles. The measurements of the angles in a triangle always add up to 180 degrees, because a triangle is half of a quadrangle (square, rectangle, parallelogram, or trapezoid), which makes the triangle analogous to half a circle and quadrangles (plus all other angular shapes) analogous to a circle. In all shapes with more than three angles, the angles' measurements add up to 360. They're just circles bent into sharper edges.

High school geometry comes in handy for understanding astrology.

Now, do we have that law of mathematics because of the 365 day year? Chicken or egg question.

The sun takes 365 plus a fraction days to transit the whole zodiac, because that's how long the earth's orbit takes. However, the earth moves slightly faster or slower at certain times of year, which results in the sun's transit time through a sign varying a bit. The sun's longest transit is through Leo, (reflecting the time of year when earth's orbit is slowest) and shortest transit is through Aquarius (reflecting the time of year when earth's orbit is fastest). On average, the sun moves one degree in the zodiac per day, but because it moves slightly more than one degree a day at certain times and slightly less at certain times, its transit of the zodiac doesn't take an even 360 days. It would if earth's orbit were always the same speed, and the sun really did transit exactly one degree a day.

But the ecliptic is still a circle, and still 360 degrees.

So, really, the laws of geometry describe a natural phenomenon. Maybe the idea of dividing a circle into 360 degrees came about because of the days in the year, but it's not quite that simple.

 

[greybeard]

It really is simple. You have 360 days, then 5 non-days. Ancient middle eastern mathematical systems were base-60. Mesoamerican system is base-20. The degree of the circle & day of the year are one and the same.

And the point is that all of astrology, top to bottom, is an abstraction, a mental construct, based on and representing "reality", but not reality itself.

 

[david starling]

As you probably know, we've been wrong about astrology signs for a while, and there's actually another one because the Babylonians decided to ignore one because they already had a 12 month calendar. Well, with this real extra one, my sign is Pisces, which fits me perfectly. The perfect element, the perfect personality description, its just perfect. Before this extra sign, mine was Aries, which doesn't fit me at all. Well, most people don't seem to use this new sign, as well as wouldn't it also shift the meaning and just give mine a different name? Or are the signs not actually connected to the real people?

Where are your Mercury, Venus and Mars in the tropical Chart?

 

[Osamenor]

It really is simple. You have 360 days, then 5 non-days.

However, the non-days are still part of one of the twelve astrological signs. Many traditional calendars have in between days in the New Year period that don't officially belong to any of the named months, but the sun is still in whichever 30 degree astrological sign it's in at that time of year.

The twelve days of Christmas were once intercalary days. Hence the traditions once attached to those twelve days: the lord of misrule, cross dressing, rowdy behavior. Usual rules don't apply. Act like a child saying, "It's backwards day!"

Twelve days is about what covers the discrepancy between twelve lunar months and one solar year. For perspective, the Muslim year, which is just twelve lunar months with no added days, is 354-355 days long.

But as far as the astrological year is concerned, there are twelve equal signs, and each one covers slightly more time and space than a lunar month. No need to figure out what to do with the extra days in the solar year, because they're accounted for: not divided perfectly evenly among the signs, but close enough to work. There are no days without an astrological sign.

 

[greybeard]

"Which sign should I really use?"

In their essence zodiacs are in nothing different from measuring tapes. They are arbitrary systems of locating celestial positions with respect to the ecliptic or equator, comparable to the systems of Fahrenheit, Celsius and Kelvin for locating heat along a graduated scale. We can call the freezing point of water 273°K., 0°C., or 32°F.; the potential of that degree of heat, whatever you may call it, is that water changes state there.

 

[david starling]

As you probably know, we've been wrong about astrology signs for a while, and there's actually another one because the Babylonians decided to ignore one because they already had a 12 month calendar. Well, with this real extra one, my sign is Pisces, which fits me perfectly. The perfect element, the perfect personality description, its just perfect. Before this extra sign, mine was Aries, which doesn't fit me at all. Well, most people don't seem to use this new sign, as well as wouldn't it also shift the meaning and just give mine a different name? Or are the signs not actually connected to the real people?

You'd have to look at the entire Chart to know the answer to this thread's question. Sun-sign only is highly unreliable.

 

[greybeard]

Use the standard tropical zodiac. It gives reliable results. If you prefer sidereal, use that. It gives reliable results.

You must understand that the constellations and the signs are not the same thing. The system of equal signs is an abstraction, an idealization of the actual sky.

But of course the constellations themselves are abstractions and have no substance in reality. Everything you have discussed is purely imaginary, yet you speak of it as if it were some reality that exists outside of man's mind.