ASTROLOGY OF THE 13 SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC
Ophiuchus:
The New Sign of the Zodiac Circle
by Vassilis Kanatas
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Vasilis A Kanatas
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Prologue
Introduction
Part
1 Western Astrology
Chapter
1: Fundamentals of Uranography and Astrology
Chapter
2: The Nature of the Problem
Chapter
3: How Western Astrologers Work
Chapter
4: The Rejection of Western Astrology
Part
2 The Astrology of the Thirteen Signs of the Zodiac
Chapter
5: Assumptions and Theoretical Foundations
Chapter
6: The Sun, Our Life
Chapter
7: The Moon, the New Ascendant
Chapter
8: The Elevated Contemporary Roles of the Planets
Chapter
9: Ophiuchus and the new Zodiac
Chapter
10: The Aspects of the Planets
Chapter
11: A New Variable in Astrology:
Sunspots
Chapter
12: Construction of a Horoscope under the Thirteen Signs of the
Zodiac
Chapter
13: Characteristics of the Signs of the Zodiac
Chapter
14: A First Critique of the Astrologers
Chapter
15: Walter Berg's Thirteen Signs of the
Zodiac
Epilogue
Bibliography
Appendix
I:
Astrological
Chart of the Zodiac Circle for the Year 2012
Appendix
II:
Tables
showing the Dates for the
13 Constellations of the Zodiac from 1930 to 2020
A physicist with an interest in Astronomy may notice objects in the night sky not easily “visible” to the average person. Almost every time he observes the maps of the skies, he finds the horoscopes of Western Astrology amusing because they almost always place the planets in the wrong positions. On March 14th 2011, for example, the planet Mars is placed in the Constellation of Pisces, when it is actually in Aquarius. I know this well as a physicist and amateur Astronomer because at night I can scan the starry sky and see for myself that the planet Mars (on March 14th 2011) is in Aquarius, contrary to the convictions of Western Astrology.
The same inaccuracy with regard to position applies not only to the other planets of our solar system, but also to the Sun and the Moon. By extension then, the constellations of the zodiac are also in positions different from those assigned to them by Western Astrology, and indeed a new zodiac constellation, Ophiuchus, has been identified in the path of the Sun on the ecliptic.
I used to be firmly opposed to Astrology, mainly because it annoyed me that everything it had to say was outdated; it used a faulty coordinate system and, most of all, it ran completely contrary to science. Astronomy, which should be the basic reference point for Astrology, has been forgotten by Western Astrologers and the subject matter of their work has tended to become a new religion.
In this book, we will create new foundations for Astrology using the discoveries of Astronomy, and examine some interesting new astrological concepts. For example, of particular interest is Percy Seymour’s theory regarding the influence of the planets on our lives, and this is developed in brief in the first chapter of the second part of the book. We will also take a look at the circle of the zodiac, putting aside our reservations and preconceived ideas. We will see that it is possible to put astrological prediction on a new footing. We will look at the truth of the New Zodiac.
Certainly most of you will have seen the predictions of traditional Astrology fall short. Most of them will say ten different things in order to get one right. You are not as they describe you, for the simple reason that they are using the wrong zodiac sign, the wrong planets and the wrong ascendant. Try it and you will see how different and how much closer to the truth the Astrology of the 13 Signs of the Zodiac is. At last, you will discover your true zodiac sign and your real horoscope. Above all, you will realize that your zodiac sign is demonstrably the right one based on scientific interpretation.
Follow us into a new scientific approach. On our journey we will attempt to give Astrology a firm foundation in Astronomy, and to redefine its much misunderstood principles.
Vasilis A. Kanatas
Astrology has been tightly bound to Astronomy since ancient times. Many ancient peoples were concerned with these sciences, but the Greeks were the first to organize, systematize and reveal them.
One could argue that the talent of the ancient Greeks lay precisely in their ability to create the foundations and to systematize knowledge to the extent that it could withstand the passing of the centuries, and today almost everyone would accept these discoveries as theirs. So, our ancient ancestors invented or systematized heroic epic poetry, sport and the Olympic Games, theater, democracy, mathematics, geography, Astronomy, rhetoric, philosophy and many other disciplines and ideas.
It is not surprising then that, in the 2nd century B.C. in Hellenistic Alexandria on the continent of Africa, the greater part of what we now know as Western Astrology became flesh and bone. In the centuries to follow, other elements supplemented and enriched the theory without in any way changing the primary characteristics of Hellenistic astrological theory.
Nevertheless, the belief still prevails among Astrologers today that Astrology based on natal horoscopes was born in Mesopotamia.
Know Thyself, painting by the artist Avgeris Kanatas depicting the spread of Greek ideas around the world
In our historical overview, we will outline the course of Western (Tropical) Astrology to the present day.
First of all, we must distinguish between Astrology based on horoscopes and the informal astrological predictions made by many ancient peoples. The Incas, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Celtic people of the British Isles, the Native North American Indians and others all examined the dome of the sky above and made some kind of predictions about the future. Usually, the priests or shamans of these peoples read the omens of the Gods and portents of things to come in the stars. This is known as omen-based Astrology.
According to Van der Waerden (“History of the Zodiac), the Astrology of Mesopotamia has 3 phases:
a. The age of omens (up to 630 B.C.)
b. The age of the 12 points of the zodiac in which the passage of Jupiter was predominantly important. Jupiter passes through 1 point of the zodiac each year because it takes 12 years to complete a full circle on the ecliptic (630– 450 B.C.)
c. The age of Astrology based on horoscopes (450 B.C. to the present).
The main arguments supporting the Mesopotamian origin of horoscopic Astrology are:
1. The omens of the 2nd millennium B.C. The best-known omen-based prophecy was found written on a clay tablet, and it predicted that: "if a child is born in the 12th month, he will live long and have many children".
2. The Assyrian tablets with details of eclipses of the sun and the positions of the planets.
3. The predictions of eclipses that were made from the time of the Chaldeans (a Mesopotamian people). From 2000 B.C., Chaldean Astronomers had noticed a relationship between the phases of the Moon and eclipses, and had observed that the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon were repeated close to the same position at a periodic interval of 18 years and 11⅓ days. This periodic cycle is known as the Saros, or the Saros cycle.
4. The first known horoscope in cuneiform script, which dates back to 410 B.C., and the last known of 69 B.C. (according to Enn Kasak, the horoscope predicts the future and character of a child based on the position of the planets).
5. The horoscope of 410 B.C., which describes the night sky on 29th April of that year, says that: “Nisannu, night of the 14th … son of Šumu-usur, Šumu-iddina, descendant […], was born. At that time the Moon was below the pincers of Scorpio, Jupiter in Pisces, Venus in Taurus, Saturn in Cancer, Mars in Gemini. Mercury had set and was not visible. (Things) will be propitious for you.” (Rochberg 1998:56)
Based on the above, we can conclude that the people of Mesopotamia did indeed possess a well developed knowledge of Astronomy and Astrology. However, they made predictions which were more in line with omen-based Astrology. They did not have a systematized horoscopic system. It is therefore clear that the respected mathematician Van der Waerden made an assumption which was not supported by the evidence. This assumption received wide acceptance from the astrological community but contributed nothing to the scientific foundation on which his position was based.
If horoscopic Astrology had existed in Mesopotamia then it is certain that Eudoxus of Cnidus (408 – 355 B.C.) would have referred to it in his work Phaenomena. He traveled to Egypt and spent a considerable amount of time there studying celestial phenomena with Egyptian priests. In 525 B.C., Egypt was occupied by the Persians, which brought the two schools of Astronomy in contact with each other.
Aratus of Soli
(305 – 240 B.C.), in his poems Phaenomena
and Diosemeia
(Forecasts), further developed the knowledge of Eudoxus regarding the
constellations and the Zodiac.
He
lived in Soli, Cilicia, and not even he gives us to understand
through his work that the peoples of Mesopotamia practiced horoscopic
Astrology.
In
the poems of Aratus, the 48 ancient Zodiac constellations, as well as
many celestial bodies, are precisely described for the first time. In
a section of the poem entitled Diosemeia,
he makes predictions of an astrological nature which are not based on
horoscopic Astrology:
look at the edges of the Moon
.......
if she is slender and clear about the third day
she heralds clear skies
if slender and ruddy we will have winds
...
(Excerpt from Diosemeia, by Aratus of Soli)
Hipparchus (190 – 120 B.C.) is considered to be the founding father of Astronomy because he discovered the precessional movement and nutation of the earth around its axis. In other words, he discovered the precession of the equinoxes. He even accurately calculated the movement of point “γ” at the intersection of the celestial equator on the ecliptic, at 26,000 years.
From the time of Hipparchus, more than 200 years passed before the appearance of the Hellenistic Astronomers- Astrologers, the most important of which are Claudius Ptolemy, Vettius Valens and Dorotheus of Sidon, and the discovery of the horoscopic system we now know, which is applied by Western Astrology today.
In particular, Claudius Ptolemy (87 – 165 A.D.) broadly outlined the principles of horoscopic Astrology. In the Almagest (or “The Great Mathematical Treatise”), he explains the theory of the epicycle for the movement of the planets, and in the Tetrabiblos (the Quadripartitum or “Four Books”) he explains his astrological theory. An extremely important role in the theoretical training of Claudius Ptolemy was played by the time he spent in the Library of Alexandria, where he had access to most of the known writings of the ancient world.
Claudius Ptolemy already had the scientific achievements and theories of past philosophers and scientists to hand when he was formulating his theory of Astrology. Accordingly, he used:
1. Aristotle’s theory of the origin of the Earth from the four elements: fire, water, air, earth
2. Aristotle’s theory of the origin of the stars and the planets in the “aether” (the substance of the upper air above the earth)
3. The chart of the Constellations
4. The 12 Constellations of the Zodiac
5. Hipparchus’ chart showing approximately 1000 stars
6. Hipparchus’ theory of the precession of the Equinoxes
7. The “Astronomica” of Marcus Manilius (an Ionian Greek with a Latin name).
8. The work of Poseidonius (a Greek philosopher and Astrolonomer, 135 – 50 B.C.).
After Ptolemy, other scholars who concerned themselves with Astrology included Claudius Galenus (128 – 200 A.D.), and Firmicius Maternus (at the beginning of the 4th century A.D.). The Arab scholars Al-Kindi and Abu Masar (8th century A.D.) came into contact with the Hellenistic legacy after the occupation of Egypt, and further developed it. They enriched the theory of the “Lots of Fate” of the Greeks (of which there were seven: the Lots - or Parts - of Necessity, Eros, the Demon, Courage, Nemesis, Victory, and Fortune) and expanded them to 97, and later to 143. Many of their elements, in particular the lot of fortune, are still used today.
The great Arab Astrologer Al-Biruni drew up precise charts and divided Astrology into 5 domains:
1. Meteorology
2. Plants
3. Animals and people
4. Life and prosperity of the individual
5. Actions and occupations of the individual.
During the Middle Ages, the study and practice of Astrology in Europe was difficult, due to the negative stance taken by the Church. For this reason, its further development passed into the hands of Arab scholars.
Any European involvement in the subject was restricted to the translation of the works of the best-known Arab Astrologers. Between 1120 and 1130 A.D., Adelard of Bath translated the charts of Al-Hovarizmi, and in 1140 Herman of Carinthia translated the Great Introduction to the Science of Astrology by Abu Masar. Claudius Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos was also translated, in 1138 by Plato of Tivoli, whilst in Spain Gerard of Cremona translated Ptolemy’s Almagest (the “Great Mathematical Treatise”) from the Arabic.
During the Renaissance, the number of people supporting Astrology grew. The voices of the Catholic Church were tempered and new works made their appearance. Central figures of the age include: Marcilio Fitsino (1463-1494), the physician and mathematician Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576), Tomasso Campanella (1568-1639), the humanist theologian Erasmus (1469-1536), the physician Paracelsus (1493-1541), the mathematician John Dee (1527-1608), and the physician and alchemist Nostradamus (1503-1566).
But the best-known Astronomers- Astrologers of the Renaissance were:
1. William Lilly (1602-1681), who worked intensively on “Horary Astrology”. Before him, the Italian scholar Guido Bonati had studied this in the 13th century.
Lilly designed his horoscopes based on the exact time at which he was posed a question by his client. He would base his answers on the horoscope he had constructed, and often his predictions proved to be right. Clients tended to ask simple questions, such as whether a sick wife would survive the next fortnight, or whether a son would return from war.
Today, Horary Astrology is used occasionally. There are indeed some Astrologers who specialize in these methods.
2. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who was the first to discover the 4 major satellite moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. He also discovered the rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus which led him to conclude that it revolved around the Sun, and that the Sun is the center of our planetary system. This confirmed the theory of Aristarchus of Samos, which was copied by Copernicus. All of this was accomplished using a telescope which he himself invented in 1608 (though others attribute the invention of the telescope to the Dutchman Hans Lipperschey). Apart from being a mathematician and an Astronomer, Galileo was also an Astrologer in the court of the Medici in Florence.
3. The Danish scholar Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) is known for the precise star chart he drew up from the observatory of Uranienborg on the island of Hven. He was a great proponent of Astrology and believed that the planets shape our character.
4. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a colleague of Brahe and a mathematician. By observing the orbit of Mars, he devised his first two laws of motion of the planets.
Johannes Kepler (Portrait by an unknown artist)
I. The
planets move in elliptical orbits around the Sun, which is located at
one of the foci of the Ellipse.
II.
A line
joining the Sun and a planet sweeps out over equal intervals of time
covering equal areas.
These laws, which apply in nature, were revealed in his book Astronomia Nova. In his work Harmonices Mundi (1619), he developed his third law governing the motion of the planets:
III. The square of the orbital period of the planets is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axes of their orbits.
Kepler was closely involved in Astrology and was able to earn a living from it.
5. Isaac Newton (1643-1727) revealed the law of universal gravitation in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687). It is here that the notion of the circumambulation of the planets around the Sun acquires a meaning. Together with the three laws of Kepler, Astronomy finally became established as a science.
Despite this, Newton was also an alchemist and an Astrologer, which was surprising to his contemporaries, scientists such as Edmond Halley.
With their discoveries, Newton and Kepler exposed mysticism and refuted the theory of the motion of the planets proposed by Claudius Ptolemy. Thus, they threw Astrology into oblivion for more than two centuries.
From that time until the present day, very little has been added to astrological theory which is truly worthy of mention.
In this book, those who are familiar with Western Astrology can go straight to the second part, which describes the Astrological Theory of the 13 Signs of the Zodiac. The first part principally describes uranographic coordinate systems, and subsequently the methodology of Western Astrologers, critiquing and analyzing the nature of the problem created by their theoretical foundations.
Part 1
Western Astrology
Chapter 1
Fundamentals of Uranography and Astrology
In order to gain further insight into the concepts of Astrology, first of all we must have an understanding of the position and shape of the celestial sphere and the coordinates we employ to measure the positions of celestial bodies.
The key factor to be taken into account is the shape of the sky above us. We regard it as being spherical, irrespective of the distance between any of the celestial bodies: planets, satellites and galaxies. We therefore assume that our Earth (being nearly spherical) is contained within another sphere and that all stellar objects are located on the latter (see Figure 1-1 on the following page). If the plane defined by the Earth’s Equator is extended outwards, it will intersect the celestial sphere and define another circle: the Celestial Equator. If we imagine the rotational axis of the Earth to extend outwards into space then the point at which this extension will penetrate the celestial sphere is at the tail end of Ursa Minor, beside the star known as the pole star (the North Celestial Pole, shown in the figure).
Figure 1-1: Precession of the equinoxes (point ‘γ’). This diagram shows the location of point γ (Vernal Equinox). The Earth’s axis moves in the same way as the axis of a spinning top, in a cycle which spans a precessional period of 25,920 years. Drawing by V. Kanatas based on NASA images of the Earth and the Sun.
Similar to the Earth’s latitude and longitude are the Declination and Right Ascension in the celestial sphere. However, there is no fixed point of reference in the sky similar to that of Greenwich on Earth. We therefore employ a point on the Celestial Equator called the ‘γ’ point.