planets in the 'real' sky and the zodiac.

inanna_tarot

Hi all,
Just been doing some more astrology studies (still doing Sue Wards course (its brilliant from a traditional POV) and I just needed to get this visualised properly in my head, so I thought Id check here with you all.

So... the sky is gridded up into Hours (ever 2hours being 30deg of the astrological chart) and the chart then points the position of the planets along the ecliptic (the path of the sun and planets in our sky).
So when we for example when the Sun is at 0 Aries, it is at 0 on the ecliptic.
As the planets move along the ecliptic they move along the Hours and so move into the other signs (for example 22hr is pisces, 20hr is Aquarius etc). These hours are roughly where the constellations are in the sky, however due to Precessional changes they do not fully line up as they once did, so whilst (for example) Venus is in Taurus, it may actually appear in the physical constellation of Aries.

Am I on the right track?

Just trying to get my brain into this to visualise it properly :D
 

Barleywine

Hi all,
Just been doing some more astrology studies (still doing Sue Wards course (its brilliant from a traditional POV) and I just needed to get this visualised properly in my head, so I thought Id check here with you all.

So... the sky is gridded up into Hours (ever 2hours being 30deg of the astrological chart) and the chart then points the position of the planets along the ecliptic (the path of the sun and planets in our sky).
So when we for example when the Sun is at 0 Aries, it is at 0 on the ecliptic.
As the planets move along the ecliptic they move along the Hours and so move into the other signs (for example 22hr is pisces, 20hr is Aquarius etc). These hours are roughly where the constellations are in the sky, however due to Processional changes they do not fully line up as they once did, so whilst (for example) Venus is in Taurus, it may actually appear in the physical constellation of Aries.

Am I on the right track?

Just trying to get my brain into this to visualise it properly :D

Until minderwiz weighs in, this might help. You're talking about the difference between tropical and sidereal astrology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_astrology
 

inanna_tarot

Ah yes! I knew I needed the word Sidereal in there lol.

Thank you :)
I just needed to visualise how the tropical system appears against the real skyline (too much time in the astronomy world and not enough in the astrology world it seems lol, brain gets lost in translation!).
 

Minderwiz

Glad you're enjoying Sue's course!! She is first class when it comes to Horary and the later tradition.

Barleywine is, of course, correct, the difference you're after is that between Sidereal and Tropical Zodiacs. I'd just add one further point, because you mentioned 'the sky'.

Even the Sidereal Zodiacs (there are more than one of them, depending on which ayanamsa you use) don't match the constellations exactly, because they use 30 degree segments, like the Tropical Zodiac does. The constellations are not all 30 degrees in zodiacal longitude and they even overlap in places.

One of the good things about astrological software is that it allows you to switch between the zodiacs and see the same chart using alternative zodiacs.

That being said, the horoscopic chart gives you a good indication of where to look to find one of the planets (usually you'd do this at night LOL). If you have a smartphone or a tablet, there are apps that you can download to give you a view of the sky and the position of planets and stars. I was surprised at just how accurate a horoscope is, even in two dimensions compared to the 'real' thing.
 

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Barleywine

That being said, the horoscopic chart gives you a good indication of where to look to find one of the planets (usually you'd do this at night LOL). If you have a smartphone or a tablet, there are apps that you can download to give you a view of the sky and the position of planets and stars. I was surprised at just how accurate a horoscope is, even in two dimensions compared to the 'real' thing.

I'm kind of old school there, I dig out my ephemeris and figure out what's where. A week or so ago there was a dramatic conjunction of the waxing New Moon and Venus in Aries visible from the northeast US. (Venus wasn't quite "in the horns of the Moon," but close.) Mars was there too but this was in the evening sky so there was too much light to see it (or perhaps it was at a much different declination; my ephemeris doesn't show that and I didn't go look it up).

I recently read an interesting book on the visible night sky. The title is misleading: it isn't a "serlf-help" book, it's an exploration of the science, mythology and historical significance of what we see in the nocturnal sky. It's re-issue title, Planets for Pagans, isn't any better.

http://www.amazon.com/Magical-Tour-...m_sbs_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0TKRZGYNKAN3B6A9FSX2