Little Almanac
Where the Western astrological tradition came from, how Europe kept its seasonal calendars, and what the evidence for each is. Every claim carries a source, and the sky and the chart are computed in the browser.
Encyclopedia
77 entries and 123 sources on the history of the tradition and of the seasonal year, each claim cited, the evidence graded, and the gaps in it named.
- Essential dignity3
- Invented and reconstructed tradition11
- Planetary doctrine9
- Popular astrology5
- Primary texts17
- Reference frames12
- The ritual year18
- The twelve houses15
- The twelve signs13
Start with Three Reference Frames, Testing Astrology, The Wheel of the Year, Precession of the Equinoxes, The Sun-Sign Column or Heliacal Risings.
Why three frames
A birth chart can be measured against the seasons (the tropical zodiac), against the fixed stars (the sidereal zodiac), or against the constellation the body is literally in front of (the IAU boundaries, drawn up in 1930 for astronomical cataloguing). These give different answers because they are measuring different things, and none of them is a mistake.
A popular claim holds that a thirteenth sign proves everyone's sign is wrong. It compares the third of those frames to the first. That comparison is a category error, and it can be shown to be one without taking any position on whether astrology works.
Two rules
It makes no predictions: a placement here is a coordinate, and what a tradition made of one is quoted from a named source. And it keeps nothing: the chart is computed in the browser, the page's content security policy bars it from opening a connection anywhere, and there is no account, no database and no server to hold anything.