Sidereal vs Tropical Zodiac
By the time I finally attended a live astrology workshop with a teacher, I had already read numerous books on the subject and had been dabbling for many years. One thing that vividly sticks out was her teaching us that the birth chart is like a photo of the sky at the moment we took our first breath. She used the analogy of the delivery nurse, stating if that nurse ran outside and looked to the sky, the ascendant sign, or rising sign would be the sign on the eastern horizon, thus rising.
Now this class and all the books I had read at this point were Tropical astrology, I was not yet aware of the Sidereal system. Since I have always been connected to nature and the earth and the stars, I’m one of the few astrologers that actually did look to the sky, to stargaze and observe as the ancients did. When I looked to the sky to observe the stars and planets, and compared it to the current astrological chart on my astrology app, what I was seeing was not a “photo” of the current sky as the teacher long ago taught. It didn’t match. The more I skygazed, the more I realized how much it didn’t match.
Other things didn’t match, things I was learning and told by other astrologers didn’t quite sync up and never hit home. I was studying astrology, and ended up doing so many mental gymnastics to make my chart fit into some semblance of what I was learning. It’s not cookbook astrology! So when I would learn something that matched my Tropical chart that didn’t apply, I was mentally calculating and understanding why it was not true. Well, this ended up changing the way I did the readings, I weighted the planets differently than how I was being taught and learning. It was when I was introduced to Shamanic astrology where both systems started coming together. Learning this system, the signs were disconnected from the constellations, but still uses the Tropical system. I began pulling both Tropical and Sidereal charts to look at where the plants were in the sky, but still was doing Tropical astrology. Honestly, I’m not sure why I continued to use Tropical, except to be complacent. As that’s what the majority of people know and use, so I continued to do so. Well I no longer can nor will.
I have studied and learned things about my chart using a completely different system that brought me to my knees and I cried. No astrology reading or teaching to this point in my life has been so spot on. I felt seen! And mind you, this was merely from reading a paragraph in a book! I am excited and nervous to have my Asterian reading coming up soon.
My astrological path is pivoting as I begin to study the most ancient astrological form documented, Asterian Astrology. Once every 26,000 years the Tropical system aligns with the Sideral system. What does that even mean? It means that the Vernal Equinox at 00 Aries actually aligns with the stars in the sky at 00 Aries. That happened about 2000 years ago. The vernal equinox of 2025 the Sun was in the early degrees of the Fish constellation - Pisces.Tropical astrology is astrology of the seasons, not the stars, as any Tropical astrologer will say. It is used to make calendars. What feels correct and true to me is to look up to the sky and connect with the planetary energies. The planets are focal points, all the constellations are in the sky. We have all the signs in our chart, but where the planets are, is that cosmic energy being focused like a laser beam onto us and influencing us.
