Sidereal or tropical? , Astrodispatch – Astrology on the Web

Vedic astrologers use the same zodiac sign as western astrologers… but with a 24 degree shift!

You can be born in Aries in Western, and Pisces in Vedic. I have heard a video by a Vedic astrologer about Pisces sign…whatever he says is the same as Pisces which I know as a western astrologer. So, there is a real contradiction.

In western astrology we call our zodiac “tropical”. For us, Aries begins with the spring equinox around March 21. You live in the Southern Hemisphere, Aries also begins at that time, but for you it is autumn.

What matters is that the tropical zodiac is based on seasons—not because of the seasons, but because of the equinoxes and solstices.

Even our prehistoric ancestors, without any idea of ​​the Earth being round, were able to observe that day and night alternately become longer and shorter.

If you see the horizon every morning and every evening all year round, as you do when you have no internet connection, no TV, no radio, no books, no electricity and local storytellers Have been eaten by a giraffe, or maybe a tiger, you keep looking and you can see that the sun doesn’t rise and always sets in the same place.

In the Northern Hemisphere, in autumn, the Sun does not rise exactly in the east, but a little further south every day, and it sets not exactly in the west, but also a little further south every day. At the winter solstice, the shortest days, the points where the sun rises and sets are as close to each other as they ever will be. After the winter solstice, everyday the sun rises and sets a little further north. The equinox is when day and night are equal in length. The Sun rises and sets a little further north on the horizon every day until the summer solstice – this point will apparently remain stationary for three days or so before the motion reverses.

The equinox and solstice were times of celebration. When Christianity took power, people would have gone to both Christian and pagan ceremonies. Church people decided to celebrate Christian ceremonies on the same date as the pagan ones to prevent this from happening. Thus, we have Christmas on the winter solstice – in fact just a few days after that, when it becomes possible to see that the rising and setting points are now moving in the other direction. Solstice is a kind of constant time.

Christians celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox.

I mention this to emphasize the importance of the solstices and equinoxes as part of human life.

They are astrological events: they are special moments of connection between the Earth and the Sun. To me, this alone is a powerful argument in favor of the tropical zodiac. The seasons are defined by the equinox and solstice. Each season is divided into three equal parts, so we get twelve zodiac signs or a month each.

More than 2000 years ago, at the vernal equinox, the constellation Aries can be seen on the eastern horizon just before the rise of the Sun. I say “just before” because once the sun rises, you can’t see the stars anymore, but you can guess they’re still there. According to Robert Hand, we do not know whether the Babylonians knew about the precession of the equinoxes. Given that the Earth is spinning on its axis – like a spinning top but more slowly – we don’t get the same constellation at the time of the equinox.

It was Pisces since the time of Jesus-Christ, but now, we are at the beginning of the Age of Aquarius. Our zodiac signs are no longer aligned with the constellations, but we don’t care. Only in his name.

I was listening to Chris Brennan describe the history of astrology on his podcast, and I learned that the Babylonians had standardized the zodiac to include twelve signs of exactly thirty degrees each by the fifth century BCE. It is worth considering. The constellations are of unequal size. In some cases, they overlap. When the zodiac was standardized, it broke away from the irregular reality of the constellations.

When people argue that the nakshatra rashi – the zodiac used by Vedic astrologers – is correct because it takes into account the actual positions of the constellations, they are wrong: the constellation zodiac is also the sum of twelve equal signs of 30 degrees each. And this is not the reality of the stars. Even though the current positions of the constellations align better with their namesake signs in the constellations than in the tropics, the constellations are of unequal size and sometimes overlap. The sidereal sign does not reflect this reality. The sidereal sign is defined thanks to the fixed star Spica. When the Sun opposes it, it is the beginning of the constellation. (I should really say “one of the sidereal signs is defined thanks to Spica, there are other systems)

Considering how important the solstices and equinoxes are as celestial events, and the fact that the zodiac was standardized by the Babylonians in the fifth century BCE—and therefore separated from the constellations—I came to the conclusion that the tropics The amount was right.

I have found a video of Vic Dikara. He mentions passages from major Vedic texts that define the beginning of the zodiac at the equinox. Vik Dikara is a Vedic astrologer who uses the tropical zodiac. It definitely confirms my opinion.

Yet, how does the entire Vedic system using the sidereal sign work?

I am thinking of various possible answers. I’m not happy with answers like “choose the one that works for you”. I’d like to understand what’s going on if possible!

Robert Hand, when asked about the problem of Vedic versus Western and Sidereal versus Tropical, answered with another question:

“Which language is correct? French or German?”

Robert is a top scholar but I am not satisfied with his answer. You cannot say that 2+2 = 4 in one language, that 2+2 = 5 is true in another language, because it is another language. If the description of Pisces by a Vedic astrologer is the same as what a Western astrologer would say, but this description applies to someone who is actually Aries in the Western… it doesn’t work.

It is possible to say that perhaps the description of Pisces applies to the Western Aries man but “on another level”. I’m not happy with that either. If an Aries Sun can identify as a Pisces Sun on another level, then every one of us can identify with any random sign, and with any random birth chart for that matter.

So, if Vedic works, I think it’s because they have other techniques than zodiac determination. For example, he placed great emphasis on the Chandra Bhavan, the constellations; The house placement and aspects in Vedic remain the same as in western… so they have enough authority over it.

Or maybe there is another explanation.

But before that, I have to talk about another problem with the tropical zodiac. Aries is the beginning of spring … in the Northern Hemisphere, but not at the equator, where day and night are always of the same length, and not in the Southern Hemisphere where the seasons are reversed. In the Southern Hemisphere, Aries begins with the onset of autumn.

It’s annoying if we define the signs in terms of the seasons: Aries is a burst of energy as we can see it in spring, or Leo is a manifestation of mid-summer… In the Southern Hemisphere, Leo time is winter time. Is.

Therefore, to deal with this problem we have to stop looking for causes in the world of the senses. Astrology only makes sense in the context of a spiritual worldview. What comes first are not the constellations we can see in the night sky, nor the seasons as they pass through the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

What comes first is the universal soul, or collective psyche, whatever you name it. In fact, the soul or the mind also does not come first, but the soul comes. The soul creates the soul and the soul produces organic life, something like that.

We find a great expression of the symbols of the zodiac in the correct order, in the form of the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere, but this is just an expression, not a cause. The original zodiac, with its perfectly balanced geometry, is in the collective psyche, or in the spiritual world, or perhaps in something like the world of Plato’s ideas. I don’t see how it could work otherwise.

So, back to the question of sidereal astrology. If the causes are related to the world of the psyche, the universal soul or the collective psyche, why can’t the sidereal sign work for those who belong to a culture that has a sidereal sign in the collective mind? Maybe it can be real because it is created as a collective idea? Then it will work for the children born from that wheel. Perhaps? I leave a big question mark here.

Then the only problem we would have would be knowing which culture we belong to, or are probably used to…? I leave a question mark here, but I am of the opinion that Tropical is the correct system.

I am a modern western astrologer.

encourage!

Jean-Marc Pearson