Why Sidereal Astrology?

Image taken from the Program Placidus 7.0 developed by Rumen Kolev

For so many years I’ve practiced tropical astrology and not questioned more deeply why I didn’t use sidereal astrology. Over time, you learn about the fixed stars and other constellations that exist beyond the zodiac, but they feel like a whole other realm, like something sort of intangible or inconvenient to the tropical zodiac. This is my case for using the sidereal zodiac, how we can look back to our ancient forebearers as the original keepers of the sidereal system, and how the visual approach to astrology can enlighten a heart-centered practice. I’ll also share some other random thoughts and musings I have on sidereal astrology.

Since making the switch last spring, I’ve never had more fun with my astrology practice. It feels alive. It feels like it speaks to me in a way it never did before. The same way I look out on the heavens at night, and in the early morning, the same measurements live in my head through watching transits, reading solar return charts, and horary questions. Watching the planets move through the images visually and anchoring it into my practice with the same approaches I used before has been nothing short of what feels like a huge breakthrough for the many years I’ve spent studying astrology.

I’ve always questioned the different zodiacs, and had experiences where I would look up and question my use of the tropical zodiac. For one time, I was outside in the middle of the night at a large house party, looking up and seeing the Moon crossing right through the heart of the Lion, and thinking to myself, is the Moon really in Virgo right now? Or another time, during the crumbling of a relationship that meant a lot to me, after heated arguments, looking up that night to see Mars in Gemini, standing red, right between the twins, severing them exactly in half that evening, just as I felt cut-off from someone I had cared about so much. “But maybe Mars is just fallen in tropical Cancer?“, I thought. But really- it is both…. We’ll get to the integration of both in just a bit.

In the last year, I realized I’m tired of finding the application of fixed stars and celestial images “inconvenient“ or secondary to my tropical astrology practice. And I did that by simply beginning to only use the sidereal zodiac, with all the traditional methods used by the astrologers of old. This is not novel, as we have had a tradition of Western sidereal astrology spearheaded by the likes of Cyril Fagan in the mid-20th century, along with great minds like Rumen Kolev, Kenneth Bowser, Martin Gansten and so many others who practice it today. It is also without a doubt that such ancient methods of Hellenistic and Egyptian astrologers were situated on the sidereal zodiac as well. More on that to come.

I’m just not interested in the two-dimensional, ecliptical pancake astrology of the 20th century, which arose from our software- and computer-dependent chart-drawing norms. I’m not saying I’m throwing technology out of the window, but what I am resenting is how many of us call ourselves astrologers, “those who interpret and measure the sky” without….looking up to the sky…? Myself included. And I’m NOT saying you can’t call yourself an astrologer if you only do tropical astrology…!!! Period. Of course you are. But shouldn’t it, just make sense that astrologers divine on the visual images the planets move in front of? And on the images that rise and culminate? And to use the ocean of images that exist beyond the 12 monthly circle of animals? To me, it does, and I hope to begin sharing more on just how almost all of the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Hellenistic astrologers used the fixed sidereal zodiac to determine their divinations, their rituals, etc...

Now I want to iterate that I don’t discredit tropical astrology at all. My main point here is to create an argument for why more people should consider using the sidereal zodiac. But let me tell you why I won’t discredit the tropical system.

Now, ditching the tropical zodiacal measurements from my practice is not saying that I discredit it or have left it completely behind. in fact, it’s the opposite! And on top of that, I’ll never discredit the almost decade-long period of time I’ve used the tropical zodiac in hundreds of readings and looking at thousands of charts without it ever feeling like it “failed me“, or that it “didn’t add up“. I’ve just begun to integrate it as a secondary factor of sensitive seasonal and declinational boundaries that indicate where planets rejoice. These boundaries are laid on top of the fixed sidereal zodiac as sensitive points as I said.

For example, the region where the Sun rejoices is close to the vernal equinox point when it rebirths and reenergizes the cosmos to life after the cold winter. The Sun enters the rejoicing place around 5 degrees of the fish, Pisces (the region of tropical Aries), just as contrarily, Saturn enters his rejoicing area around 5 degrees of the Virgin, or Virgo, where the precessed equinoctial point is of the Autumn against the sidereal zodiac (the region of tropical Libra).

We can say the same for the other planets. One may even argue that such exaltations may only exist in the tropical zodiac. While I agree that the declination or seasonal impact they retain is crucial, I also still value Venus in front of the sidereal Fish just as much as the sidereal Waterbearer, where she is tropically in Pisces, her exaltation. All this being said, the tropical and sidereal zodiacs can be used in harmony, where we make divination from images, and intuition and also retain the ability to measure degree-based positions with accuracy for aspectual dynamics, sign subdivisions and harmonics, and all the rest.

When I mention that the tropical or seasonal cross is currently precessing in front of 5 degrees of the double-bodied signs, you may ask. I’ll also point out how I didn’t say the mutable signs. That quality is solely given to the image that precedes the tropical turning points. That means now, the solid-body images of the Bull, Lion, Scorpion, and Waterpourer, are ascribed an additional mutable quality, and the traditional double-bodied images are assigned a new cardinal quality. See how we can overlap the significations of both zodiacs here? Diana K. Rosenberg said once in a lecture, speaking to anyone in the audience with Aries placements as a “soggy Ram”, joking about the mixed qualities of these combinations that exist in our precessional arc.

That makes us ponder though, how such creatures born on Earth under the alignments of our heavens are generated in continually new hybrids. 2000 years ago, we were lucky to bring out those people who had their sidereal placements aligned with the same archetypal tropical regions. Now, with 5 degrees remaining until the tropical cross moves into the solid images and the Equinox moves into the Waterpourer, we still have about a 5-degree overlap range where someone can “still be a Gemini. “ Yes for most of us, this shift is bringing the qualities of the two adjacent signs into union. Many of us have a Twin-Bull Sun, or a Scale-Virgin Moon. However, in a few thousand years, we will return to the great shift, where we might have such chimeras of the Archer-Crab, or Ram-Virgin or Twin-Scorpion type, with the tropical points having been so far removed from the original alignments from where we are but recently slipping off track. If we only look at the tropical zodiac though, we miss all of this.

So… just some quick thoughts and ideas. I’ll be back with more very soon.