By Jeffrey Armstrong

The Greek Blunder!

It is worth repeating that though I am pointing out a mistake which has entered into Tropical Astrology, it is with great respect for anyone who is pursuing our relationship with the cosmos. If you study history, you will see how easy it is for knowledge to get buried or repressed. Just like in our daily life we struggle to remember our purpose and vision amidst so many competing forces, so great wisdom can get lost in the transformative pressures of time. In this discussion of Astrology what is at stake is our link with the Stars. Astrology means: “astro-star and logos or logic.” Just as we have a relationship with the Earth that is sacred and has a purpose, so we have a relationship with the stars that is important, sacred and essential to our well being. Recently, in the rush of modern scientific knowledge, the importance of these sacred relationships has been ignored for the sake of gaining strictly material knowledge. Now and forever that new knowledge needs to be integrated into an emotional and meaningful relationship to the Earth and the Cosmos.

Imagine you were madly in love with someone and had just made love. If you said: “What did you just experience during our lovemaking?” and they replied with a scientific analysis of the experience, “My temperature rose to 99 degrees, my shin, became flushed, my blood pressure was 80 over 120 and my pulse became quite rapid, etc., etc.” Would that report explain what you were really experiencing? Is the emotional content and mystical experience of immense love and devotion less important than the facts of what was taking place? On the other hand, if your lover was so ignorant of the physical that they were incompetent to even touch you, that would also be a problem.

If you will, think of Astrology as existing in the balance between two extremes. Any mystical or religious experience can be valid just because it is true for you in the depths of your heart. There is no use in arguing or using facts to prove its reality. It is a special kind of perception and love which does not rest upon facts relating to matter. On the other hand, empirical science at its best is only concerned with the provable facts pertaining to the laws of matter. These two experiences do not need to be in competition, though all to often they have been. Astrology is somewhere between the two forms of experience. It uses Astronomy to have an accurate picture of the heavens at the moment of birth and then uses that map to discuss the relationship of the individual to the cosmos and Earth during that birth.

You could say that first the Astrologer is a scientist erecting a correct image of a physical event, the stars and planets positions at the time of birth. Then using that image as a tool, the Astrologer as an artist, tries to see pre-existing patterns of destiny which are connected to the person. This of course is where the strictly scientific person gets frustrated. They are not yet comfortable making a level shift of that kind. But to the Astrologer, Eastern or Western, the Universe is alive, conscious and fully capable of communicating both emotion and meaning. Unfortunately, the Tropical Astrologers have drifted away from using the actual positions of the stars by over 23 degrees now, which is the subject that we are discussing. But that does not invalidate their intuitive and emotional relationship to the cosmos or the gifts of intuition and insight which they may be given and share with their clients. I would say to them they are out of balance on the side of correct relation to the stars and on some levels that will effect their accuracy. It is after all Astrology, so it is best to use the actual positions of the stars as the ancient Astrologers intended.

As for Astronomers, they are like the lover who has loads of information about the symptoms of love but are missing the emotions. If they gave up their fear of the emotional, it would seem as interesting to explore as the outer world of facts. The two are mysteriously connected, as any experienced lover knows. The real excitement would be to explore the connections between their extensive database of facts and the subtleties of human behavior and the patterns of weather, epidemics, culture etc. Now having said that, I would like to explore how Astrology came into Western culture from the Greeks and how the error of deviating from the stars came in with the translation of Greek culture and knowledge. The knowledge of this error has only really surfaced within the last 40 years, and especially the last 25 with the wave of knowledge coming to the West from India. Most of us were taught in school that culture, as we know it started from the Greek period in history. There is some truth to that view but in recent years we have gained a lot of previously lost knowledge of which of the older cultures contributed to the Greeks. From 500 BC to 300 BC the Greek culture was in a tremendous state of growth. It was a melting pot for influences from Egypt, India, Babylon, Africa, China, and many others. Socrates lived and taught his famous student Plato who in turn was teacher to the great Aristotle who in turn was to teach Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered Babylon in 331 BC and brought many books on ancient Astronomy and Astrology from there to Greece. He built the city of Alexandria, which became a major center of learning. He even went as far as Northern India and made significant connections with the Indian culture.

There were many talented Greek Astronomers during this period. One, named Erasthones, was the head librarian at Alexandria. He measured the size of the Earth and was accurate within 400 miles. Another, named Aristarchus, worked out a correct map of the solar system which proved that the Sun and not the Earth was at its center. This shows just how easily such knowledge can be lost, for great thinkers who followed him still thought the Earth was the center of the solar system until the time of Copernicus.

Another Greek Astronomer, Hipparchus, using the Babylonian and Indian Astronomical information, was able to calculate the Earth’s wobble and thus figure the precession of the Equinoxes. He lived from 130 to 60 BC. This knowledge would also be forgotten in the chaos of history, resulting in the error that was passed on to Tropical Astrology. An example of that tendency for great knowledge to get lost in history took place in 47 BC, when the Roman emperor Julius Caesar was storming the city of Alexandria. He conquered the city but in the process burned the great library to the ground, causing the loss of tremendous knowledge.

The point of all this is how an important Astronomical and Astrological truth could get lost or mixed up in the course of history. The last important Greek Astronomer, who also happened to be an Astrologer, played a part in creating the circumstances of this mistake. Claudius Ptolemy lived in Alexandria in 150 AD. He was the most influential of the Greek Astronomers and wrote a book called The Almagast. In fact, his astronomical opinions prevailed until the 15th century when Copernicus finally proved that the Sun is the center of the solar system. Ptolemy wrote a four volume astrology book known as Tetrabiblos. Now it so happened that during the time of Ptolemy, the Vernal Equinox, or first day of Spring, was still taking place in Aries. So his book, written in Greek of course, states that the first day of Spring occurs in the constellation of Aries, which at that time was true.

Ptolemy had no idea that his book would come forward in history as an Astrological textbook. After his death and the fall of the Roman Empire, European culture remained very stagnant in a time usually called the Dark Ages. However, starting in the 7th century another religion arose and developed a great empire. Founded by Mohammed, Islam spread and developed a great culture. By the 9th century, Baghdad was the new cultural center. Arabic scholars translated many Latin and Greek classics into Arabic. Among these were the Almagast and Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy. After they were translated into Arabic they eventually were translated into English by clerics of the Catholic church. The church fathers were not Astrologers, so when they translated Ptolemy’s astrological classic into English they translated “… on the Vernal Equinox the Sun is in Aries.” By the time Tetrabiblos was translated the first day of Spring had been occurring in the star group Pisces for hundreds of years. But at that time, no one in Europe understood the Astronomy or Astrology to catch the error. This became the biggest blunder in the history of Astrology. Prior to that time all Astrologers in all cultures had used the stars actual positions when creating a horoscope. To further compound this confusion, since the first month or March had coincided with the star group Aries during the Greek time, they named the months Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc. This is the core of the great confusion. Aries is not a month or time of year, it is a group of stars, a constellation.

To better understand this, imagine two great apparent wheels in space around the Earth. The outermost wheel is the circle of the 12 signs of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces. This is the 360 degree circle of the fixed stars as they appear 8 degrees either side of the ecliptic. That wheel moves very slowly due to the Earth’s wobble at the rate of one revolution in 25,870 years. The other wheel is the cycle of the year as the Earth travels once around the Sun. The seasonal wheel is the ecliptic, the Earth’s path around the sun.

Think of the big wheel of the constellations as a star cycle and the year as the seasonal cycle. Those two wheels are not the same. It was only an accident of history that the Greeks called the first month of the year Aries. Aries is actually a group of stars in the star wheel. That Aries group coincides with Spring in the seasonal wheel for 2,160 years out of every 25,870. Once that time is past, it is no longer correct to say that on March 21st the Sun is in Aries. This year on March 21st the Sun is in Pisces, no matter where on Earth you are, and it has nothing to do with any season. In the future, Sun in Aries will occur at Christmas, during Winter in the Northern latitudes, which will be Summer in Australia down South. Remember, it is not the seasons which determine your chart, it is the planets actual position in the circle of the stars!

Hopefully, the Astrological community will look carefully at this error and then return to the original system of star based calculations. You may not be the sign you think you are, and Sidereal Astrology can give you a more accurate chart based on the stars. The seasonal chart of Tropical, Astrology may also have some uses but it should not be confused with the star chart. A more accurate tool for explaining your path of destiny and the nature of your body/mind complex of energies, the Sidereal chart is the blueprint of your body type and leads to a very important connection for your health and well being – your Ayurvedic constitutional body type.

Next time we’ll examine the link between your horoscope and your Ayurvedic body type. Until then Mozel (stars) tov (good), may the stars be good to you.

Jeffrey Armstrong is an author and a teacher of Yoga, Tantra, and AyurVedic Astrology. He has degrees in literature, psychology and comparative religions and offers “The UltiMate Relationship Seminars” for couples and singles, and can be reached at 604-267-6567, or email SGraham&Associates@telus.net