Do you know what is your astrologic «sign»?
It is probably your first knowledge about astrology.
Astrology you are used to, astrology of weekly horoscopes in popular magazines, in newspapers and electronic media, is called tropic astrology and is astronomically unfounded.
You probably discovered that your astrologic sign denotes Sun location on day of your birth and remembered the physical and psychic characteristics of your «astrologic sign». Unfortunately, that is mostly not true.
Weekly predictions you read and heard are not correct. In our time planetary locations in tropic astrology are almost 24° incorrect, which implies that only people born on the last days of governance of sign of tropic astrology have the Sun really in this Zodiacal sign. The Sun of all others is in the previous sign.
Sidereal astrology calculates planetary and other elements positions in horoscope astronomically correct and provides better results.
On West tropic astrology is almost omnipresent, sidereal locations are used by Indian astrology (Jyotish) and lunar Chinese astrology. Undoubtedly, wrong ideas cannot survive for long and in spite of chronic imposing of tropic astrology on West, there is growing number of astrologers who abandon it.
How is it possible that this kind of aberration happened?
The answer is the precession of the equinox.
The Earth encircles the Sun for 354 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds. From Earth it seems that Sun in the same period encircled the ecliptic. It is tropic year. But if at the end of tropic year we look at the Earth location comparing to fixed stars (for example fix star Spica), it seems that Earth is 50,26 celestial longitude west from original position. Earth needs 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes and 9,5 seconds to return on the same position, comparing to fix stars. It is called sidereal year. It is 20 minutes longer than tropic year; time difference corresponds to 50,26 seconds of celestial longitude. So spring equinox (the place where ecliptic crosses celestial equator) every year moves backwards to Zodiac for 50,26 seconds. This constant retardation of spring equinox is called precession of the equinox. It needs approximately 26 000 years for precession to make one circle. Tropic and sidereal locations of planets were the same 285 B.C.
Western tropic astrology doesn't consider change of locations of constellations. Greeks 300 B.C. determined spring and autumn equinox on the Sun trajectory around the Earth and solar calendar. Tropic astrology is based on the alleged Sun trajectory around the Earth; according to it 0° of Aries is location of Sun during the spring equinox. For sidereal astrology 0° of Aries is really 0° of constellation of Aries. Astronomer Dr. Percy Seymour thinks that Egyptians knew precession of equinox 4000 B.C. and it was part of their religion. It is certain that the first Babylon horoscopes were made in sidereal Zodiac. Nowadays astrologers on West mostly don't consider precession of the equinox. In XX century it was Cyril Fagan, Irish astrologer, who promoted sidereal astrology in West.
More information about sidereal astrology:
www.nostredame.com/side_eng.htm
www.spiritualguides.net/Astrology/judgeHoroscope.htm
http://beka1250.tripod.com/aquariangurlzastrology/id7.html