Blog

The Sabian Symbols: A Picture for Every Degree

The Sabian Symbols are 360 short symbolic images, one for each degree of the zodiac, channelled in 1925 by clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler and astrologer Marc Edmund Jones, and later reworked by Dane Rudhyar.

6 min read·Jun 22

The Star of Bethlehem: Astrology's Most Famous Sky Sign

The Star of Bethlehem is the celestial sign that, in the Gospel of Matthew, led the Magi to the birth of Jesus. The Magi were astrologer-priests from the East, making it the most famous astrological event in Western culture.

6 min read·Jun 22

William Lilly and Christian Astrology

William Lilly (1602 to 1681), the English Merlin, wrote Christian Astrology in 1647, the first major astrology textbook printed in English and the book that codified horary practice.

6 min read·Jun 22

Al-Sufi and the Book of Fixed Stars Explained

How the Persian astronomer al-Sufi preserved and corrected the catalogue of bright fixed stars that classical astrology still reads.

7 min read·Jun 21

Eclipses in 2026: All Four Dates and What They Mean

2026 brings four eclipses in two pairs, including a rare total solar eclipse over Spain on August 12. Here are all four dates, their zodiac positions, and how astrology reads them.

Mars Retrograde 2027 in Virgo and Leo: Dates and Meaning

Mars turns retrograde from January 10 to April 1, 2027, moving back from Virgo into Leo. A traditional window to review how you use energy and anger, and to refine rather than launch.

7 min read·Jun 21

Why the Days of the Week Are Named After Planets

The seven days of the week are named after the seven classical planets, and the order comes from an old astrological idea called planetary hours. Here is how Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon ended up running your calendar.

Precession of the Equinoxes and the Great Year

Precession of the equinoxes is the slow wobble of Earth's axis that completes one circle in about 25,772 years, the Great Year. It moves the equinox point westward and is the reason the tropical and sidereal zodiacs drift apart.

The Astrolabe: Computing the Heavens by Hand

The astrolabe is an analog computer that flattens the sphere of the sky onto a disc. For more than a thousand years it told the time, located the stars, and found the rising degree to cast a horoscope, exactly what AstroAk now does by computer.

The Antikythera Mechanism: The Ancient Computer of the Heavens

The Antikythera Mechanism is an ancient Greek geared device, recovered from a shipwreck in 1901 and dated to roughly the 2nd century BCE, that modeled the Sun, Moon, and zodiac. It is the oldest known analog computer.

As Above, So Below: Hermes and the Emerald Tablet

As above, so below is astrology's core axiom of correspondence: the heavens and the human world mirror one another, traced to the Hermetic Emerald Tablet.

Health

Avicenna and Astrological Medicine: The Canon and the Stars

Avicenna's Canon of Medicine ruled the sickroom for six centuries and refined the doctrine of temperament. Here is how his medicine met, and quietly limited, astrology.

7 min read·Jun 20

Guido Bonatti: the Medieval Master Who Systematised Astrology

Guido Bonatti, the famed 13th-century astrologer of Forli, wrote the encyclopedic Liber Astronomiae that organised the whole art.

7 min read·Jun 20

Jupiter in Leo 2026-2027: A Year to Shine, Create and Lead

Jupiter enters Leo on June 29, 2026 and stays until about July 2027. This bold, warm-hearted transit favors creativity, romance, leadership and stepping confidently into the spotlight.

The Music of the Spheres: The Idea Behind Every Aspect

The Music of the Spheres is the ancient idea that the moving planets produce an inaudible harmony built from whole-number ratios. It is the philosophical root of the aspects astrology still reads today.

Venus Retrograde 2026 in Scorpio and Libra: Love and Money

Venus turns retrograde from October 3 to November 14, 2026, moving back from Scorpio into Libra. A traditional window to reassess love, money, and self-worth, not to launch something brand new.

7 min read·Jun 20

Castor and Pollux: The Twin Fixed Stars in Astrology

Castor and Pollux are the head-stars of Gemini: Castor carries Mercury's nature, Pollux Mars's, now near 20 to 23 degrees tropical Cancer, read only by tight conjunction.

Chart Shapes in Astrology: Reading the Whole Pattern

A chart shape reads how all ten planets are distributed around the wheel as one pattern. Learn Marc Edmund Jones's seven modern forms, Splash to Splay, described not predicted.

Chart Shapes: The Seven Jones Patterns

Before you read a single aspect, the overall shape of a birth chart tells a story. Explore the seven Jones patterns and what each says about how a person's energy is organized.

7 min read·Jun 19

Chiron in Aries 2018 to 2027: Healing the Self

Chiron has been in Aries since 2018 and makes its final exit on April 14, 2027. Here is what the wounded healer in the sign of the self has meant, and how the chapter closes.

7 min read·Jun 19

Ptolemy and the Tetrabiblos: The Book That Shaped Western Astrology

The Tetrabiblos, written by Claudius Ptolemy in Alexandria around the second century CE, is the foundational systematic treatise of Western astrology and the work that gave the tradition its natural-philosophy footing.

Saturn Retrograde 2026 in Aries: Dates, Meaning and What to Review

Saturn turns retrograde from July 26 to December 10, 2026, in Aries. A four and a half month window to review structures, responsibilities and long-term commitments before you push forward again.

The Thema Mundi: Astrology's Chart of the World

The Thema Mundi, Latin for chart of the world, is a symbolic teaching chart from Hellenistic astrology that places Cancer on the Ascendant and each classical planet in its own home sign to explain the logic of the whole system.