It enters the Northern Hemisphere and peaks there at June 21st (the Summer Solstice) which is why summer occurs around June in the North. Note that around March 21st or at the Vernal equinox every year, the Sun's path cross the ecliptic and starts heading northward. Our Earth's equator is the equatorial plane. Note that the Sun's path is brown in the image above, as it travels along the celestial plane or 'ecliptic'. What is the Vernal Equinox? It can occur as early as March 19th or as late as March 21st, and is the period of the year when the path of the Sun passes over the Earth's equator. The 'energy' of the that time of the year is Aries. It's irrelevant what the constellation in the sky is. In Tropical astrology, if you are born on the Vernal Equinox, you are a 0° Aries Sun. It's called Tropical rather than Sidereal.

There is another school of thinking which defines modern astrology and bases the energy of the signs on 'the time of year' rather than the positions of the stars. They are the positions of your Sun, other planets, and asteroids in their true constellation regions in the sky. So we know what Sidereal Chart calculations are now. Ok so star positions are slowly shifting - but why do we continue to antiquated positions? The true position of the planets are effectively the Sidereal calculations. It approximately 25 degrees back (so if your Sun is 22° Scorpio, the true position of your Sun was 27° Libra). The stars today are in a different position in the sky. This means that the rotational axis of the earth has shifted today since astrology was first in use, and continued to be in use over the many centuries. It’s already been more than 2,000 years since the Babylonians defined some of the first constellations we still use today! But astrology has been present for a very long time. The full rotation of the axis of the earth itself takes 26,000 years. What is that? Here's an image that demonstrates it perfectly: The earth's rotational axis itself is slowly changing.īy slow, we mean very slow. Likely, early people were very connected to the movements of the stars.Īt 700 B.C., people did not even know the effect of the precession. In the Neo-Babylonian period, around 700 B.C., when the first roots of modern astrology were sprouting - people did actually look to the sky to chart constellations and their positions. From a broad perspective, the issue is that calculating actual star positions in the sky is not very easy. They might be surprised to learn that it more likely was in the constellation of Cancer. That's natural right? When someone says they are a Leo, they assume the Sun was in the constellation of Leo at the time of their birth. When you first entertained astrology, you probably assumed the 'signs' corresponded with actual constellations.

Degree on astrology chart