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Are there actually 13 indicators within the zodiac now? Can we all have to get our astrological charts redone?
Calm down — it is nonetheless solely 12. However you’ll be able to solid a therapeutic spell with Ophiuchus, the so-called “thirteenth signal”, which is definitely a constellation that represents Asclepius, the God of medicine.
Setting the zodiac straight
The story that there are immediately 13 indicators, somewhat than 12, is a type of viral half-truths the Web breeds. Someway a university astronomy trainer’s routine reply to an area newspaper reporter’s routine query about astrology received picked up and quickly re-circulated, then breathlessly reported by the nationwide media as if it have been breaking information.
Bother is, asking an orthodox astronomer for the info about astrology is like asking a fundamentalist Christian for the info about Wicca. Skilled to view Nature “objectively” as one thing altogether separate from Man, most astronomers aggressively reject the interconnected, participatory, “as-without-so-within” universe that astrology reveals. The declare that there ought to be 13 indicators as a result of there are literally 13 constellations alongside the ecliptic (the Solar’s obvious annual path by the sky) is a timeworn tactic astronomers use to assault astrology.
The reality is, nevertheless, that there are solely 12 indicators as a result of the “tropical” zodiac most astrologers use — the identical zodiac you see within the newspaper sun-sign columns — relies on the seasons, not the celebs. The Solar all the time enters the signal Aries on the spring equinox, round March 21; three months and three indicators later, it all the time enters the signal Most cancers on the summer season solstice, round June 21; and so forth, season by season, across the wheel of the yr. A genuinely neutral scientist ought to acknowledge this 12-fold cycle as a pure harmonic resonance of the Earth’s orbit, strengthened by the Moon’s roughly 12 lunations per yr — in different phrases, a standing-wave in space-time.
Within the tropical zodiac, it does not matter what stars the Solar seems to go in entrance of because it enters Aries or every other signal, and it does not matter if these stars seem to alter place over 1000’s of years (as they do, because of a phenomenon referred to as the “precession of the equinoxes”). The astrological meanings of the indicators are based mostly on pure components which have every part to do with the seasons, the Moon, the Solar, and the opposite planets orbiting alongside us in our native photo voltaic system — however that don’t have anything to do with the far-off stars, or with these artifical stellar groupings referred to as constellations, which coincided with the indicators again when the Greeks devised them however have been steadily slipping aside from their zodiacal namesakes ever since.
Stars, Moon, and magic
That stated, nevertheless, there’s a place in astrology for varied “sidereal” zodiacs, or indicators which can be based mostly on stars and constellations somewhat than seasons. While you examine how astrologers in India or historical and medieval Europe historically have used such zodiacs, you discover that they tended to emphasise the Moon’s passage in entrance of explicit stars and constellations rather more than the Solar’s. Hindu astrology is sidereal as a result of it’s basically based mostly on 27 or 28 “nakshatras,” or “mansions of the Moon” as they’re picturesquely referred to as within the West. These relate to the Moon’s 27.3-day orbit across the Earth (to not be confused with the 29.5-day cycle from new moon to new moon that’s the origin of our 12 calendar months), and so they play a extra important position in sensible Hindu astrology than the 12-sign zodiac.
Within the West and, to an extent, in India, these zodiacs of the Moon and stars are, naturally sufficient, strongly related to magic and spells. (See “The Franklin’s Story” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales for one colourful medieval instance.)
Asclepius Ophiuchus, the Serpent-bearing healer
As a Witch, I can vouch for a goodly magical use for the “thirteenth signal”. Ophiuchus, which suggests “the Serpent-bearer,” is a illustration of Asclepius, the traditional Greek and Roman God of Therapeutic. He holds a serpent as a result of He would typically seem within the type of a serpent to sick folks in a dream; and to at the present time, His serpent-entwined workers, or “caduceus,” is the usual image for medicine. Historically, newly graduated docs swear the Hippocratic oath earlier than Asclepius.
Girl Ardour’s and my experiments have proven that in case you have a troublesome medical drawback and need to obtain a dream through which Asclepius involves you and both diagnoses your ailment or heals it outright — a apply the ancients referred to as “dream incubation” — a very good time to hope to Him is whereas the Moon is passing in entrance of Ophiuchus. This could be when the Moon is at or between 7 and 26 levels of Sagittarius within the typical, tropical zodiac (seek the advice of any astrological calendar).
We have discovered this spell to be simply as efficient and useful because it was when the Greeks first portrayed the God of physicians within the sky. This can be the one Physician Who nonetheless makes home calls! Full directions for the spell, together with a standard invocation to Asclepius you’ll be able to recite, are given in our The Goodly Spellbook: Olde Spells for Trendy Issues.
