Monkey's Blog - with a little help from Alice

Equinox, was it?

Well, it was supposed to be the first day of Spring here on the 21st of March.

I was fooled in the morning, as you can see, because the sun was shining and the tulips in our window boxes were actually starting to open - well, most of them, a few are clearly past all revival.

But it's been bitterly cold since, with yet more snow in lots of places. Not to mention the "wind chill" factor!

Alice says that astronomically speaking it is the start of a new season, because this is the Equinox. That means "equal night", when the hours of day and night are equal. It's all to do with the tilt of the earth's axis relative to its orbit round the sun. She found a diagram to make it clearer. I think it does, if you imagine you're looking down on the earth from somewhere over the north pole, with the two extra globes seen from the side, as it were.

Open the image in a new tab to see it properly. Or try this article if you're still puzzled.

Astrologically, Alice points out, we're into the first sign of the Zodiac. That's because the sun appears to be in the 30 degrees of the sky assigned to Aries. [Yes, yes, we know that the actual constellation is no longer in that relative position, but that's not the point!]  

Drawing up a horoscope is a Science, which is why it can now be done by computers, rather than by working out on paper lots of complicated sums based on the Ephemeris (a kind of railway timetable of the planets). It's the interpretation that's an Art. The question of whether it works is based on thousands of years of observed correlations! See also this response to the scoffers and sceptics.
 
How it works is the question for Philosophy.

See a fascinating article on this $64,000 question by the great modern astrologer Robert Hand, and follow the links to his others, if you're curious. We do like to be provocative!