I may have overplayed my hand with regard to Southern Hemisphere Signs.

The characteristics of the Zodiac Constellations evolved through the experience of Northern Hemisphere seasons, and it seems to me the most glaring deficiency of sidereal astronomy to simply allocate to the Constellations their Signs.

I have attempted to undermine this practice by highlighting its arbitrariness. Northern Hemisphere conventions must be questioned for the Southern Hemisphere, whether tropical or sidereal.

To this end, I have divided the zodiac in two ways. The western hemisphere locates the conflict between Northern Hemisphere sidereal and tropical astrology, and the eastern hemisphere mirrors the conflict upside down. The hemisphere above the horizon, symbolizing what we are conscious of, is given to the siderealists, and tropical astrology rules beneath.

An incongruity reveals itself in the chart below, which I am pondering. Stay tuned.

Perhaps it serves a basic human need to try to make the world a better place, but it is difficult to find an unequivocal example of success. Kant’s categorical imperative as a guide to action is more sanction than injunction, but we invite the charge of apathy if we are not actively campaigning for some good cause.

It is the Moon’s job to illuminate despair and ground anxiety, but while oppression has continued unrelieved in West Papua, and no solution to the transport problems of the western suburbs of Melbourne is forthcoming, secret trade negotiations are just one more reminder of the powerlessness of the citizen of a democracy.

On top of that, it seems likely that it will rain at the Full Moon.

Antagonism, control, sanctimony, carelessness and pessimism sum it up neatly.

I believe I have now dug my deepest well. I hope you can see your reflection in it.

Imagine the poles of the celestial equator and the ecliptic as two cogs in a huge steam engine, the former fixed and the other revolving around it 3 minutes 56 seconds more quickly than once a day. Imagine a great piston attached to a crank on the ecliptic wheel axle driven in reciprocal motion on a track fixed to the horizon.

That is the visible sector of the Zodiac.

And your chronotypes for the week:

and this one.

Several points spring to mind when I look at the location of the MC in relation to the zodiac.Knowing where North is reveals instantly where the stars are at their highest altitude. The intimate relations between my geography, my sky and my life are confirmed.

However, if I don’t know where North is, and despite the fact that I am very familiar with the constellations and how the relative positions of their main stars change as their imaginary shapes roll across the sky, I find it very difficult to orientate myself to true North.

If getting accurate bearings is my aim, I find true South and project the meridian back over my head. The highest zodiac constellation is not due North. It gives me a rough idea, which I can adjust if enough time elapses to indicate which stars are ascending and which are descending.

If I am simply in a forest of stars which I am identifying, the Ascendant and Descendant are the East and West, and North is near enough to halfway between the two.

The point is that the symbolism of the transit of stars, planets or signs can be derived mathematically—and how exciting it must have been to assist at the birth of coordinate geometry, the measurement of time and the practice of geodetics—but not from immediate experience.

For my purpose, which is primarily to encourage you to experience the night sky for yourself, the MC, which according to my understanding of convention represents the direction of your mission in life, can primarily be symbolised by the highest visible or imaginable sector of the zodiac, and only secondarily related to the theoretical moment of its transit.

Here is where it is, I say, and it is welling or subsiding, possibly ascending in the social quadrant or descending in the personal. Perhaps the quadrants should be established in the same way, for it is also problematic to directly establish the cardinal directions by observing the Sun’s transit.

At the end of the day, as it were, I am happy to disturb convention, and to raise questions which resonate with direct experience and reconnect geometry and observation. In this case, your navel-gazing might be enhanced by allowing the question, how will the orientation of your Medium Zodiaci to culmination influence the resolution of the opposition of your Ascendant and Descendant, in view of its square with both?

There is a real feeling of sensitivity, of expectancy, almost apprehension, as though we have prepared for something we don’t know, but it’s momentous, and suddenly we are aware that whatever is coming is bigger than we are.

Some ruminations on the relations between the zodiac and the fixed stars.

All bodies reach their highest altitude as they cross the meridian and unless they are circumpolar—obviously a body never sets if its distance from the celestial pole (90 minus declination) is less than the pole’s altitude (equal to local geographical latitude)—rise and set at the same angle east and west of the meridian. This means, always measuring from the north, that a star or planet sets at azimuth 360° minus its rising azimuth.

On the other hand, the angles of ascendant and descendant always differ by 180° regardless of declination. What’s going on there? All it means really is that half of the celestial background of Earth’s orbit is always above the horizon, but what is interesting is that the arc of the visible zodiac, unlike the arcs from rise to set of everything in it, is independent of north, i.e. the rising constellation at any moment will set the same distance from north, not over where its opposite constellation is now setting.

If you stand under the night sky long enough and often enough you will witness the regular oscillation of the arc of the visible zodiac swinging left and right. When Sagittarius or Gemini is at the meridian the zodiac is symmetrically positioned across the sky from 270° west to 90° east, but halfway through a 60° swing from one side of north to the other. If you stretch your arms east and west when Virgo or Pisces is at the meridian you will have to twist 30° left or right respectively in order to reorientate to the centre of the zodiac. Finally, you will realise that the swing back the other way begins when Virgo or Pisces is at the centre of the zodiac, about an hour and twenty minutes before or after transit and about 20° east or west of the meridian.

If every time you orientate in this way you will experience two norths, a centre of the astrological sky and a point often considerably off centre where the stars are reaching their highest altitude. When that point is to the right you may be aware of an imbalance to the west and imagine an attraction to the east and uplift, and when the stars of zodiac centre are still rising you may feel too much of your focus directed east and be drawn westward towards the downside.

There is a connection here with how I arrange the houses and the resonances of the constellations.

The western hemisphere contains the houses of social interaction and influence by the discrimination of others both conscious and unconscious. When a constellation is in the west, it carries the symbol or sign given it in the northern hemisphere, reminding us that like all structures, schools of ontology and cosmology, including astrology, are the solidified byproduct of once vital energy, and the confirmation of bias. Let the denizens of the old country argue sidereal vs tropical. We have bigger fish to fry.

What? The personal hemisphere of the east is what. This is where we inhabit our environment, nobody else’s, and that is of course impossible, but where we learn in our own way from our mistakes and piss off those who piss us off, a time and place for obsession, self-absorption and self-fulfilling script-writing—where we judge lest we be judged. Here we say the first thing that comes to mind—or nothing at all—and devil take the hindmost.

We affect individuality, but are largely oblivious to the patents on our behaviour. Go within and have another look, is the echo of the western hemisphere here, in order to engage with now and move authentically forward—responsible for your image but not believing a word of it.

If this sounds like the self-indulgent raving of a recluse on a Friday night, there is a reason, and I hope you are as empty of delusion as you demand of others. Fat chance, but hey, who’s to say? It’s difficult to pick somebody out who is on the straight and narrow.

The Moon acknowledges stiff resistance, and it would appear he can expect no assistance from the Bench, who smiles amiably at the ignorant people of the Law.

He tries eloquence to no avail, because the universe seems to all and sundry to need no explanation which hasn’t already been provided by upside-down experts.

He has been here before, looking beyond the Sun, with an obtrusive Earth to reckon with. The Dark Side is down to half-illumination. The Sun made this sound easy.

In football parlance, you would say there is no way he’ll be there in September. How much penetration will he get with a line-up like this?In fairness, nothing is harder than advocacy, as every brave, under-appreciated politician will tell you. Persuading people it’s ok to be wrong might clear the ball from defence, but getting possession in the forward fifty will not happen by argument. That requires the finesse of a whole team enjoying itself.

This one looks like playing the season up the other end.