Modern
- Where
- Britain and the United States above all, then internationally
- When
- roughly 1890 to the present
- What survives
- Published books, periodicals and newspaper columns, all datable to the year.
49 entries
3 of these entries carry an evidence grade, from a contemporary document or dated object (A) to a modern reconstruction (E).
- "Vedic Astrology": the Term
A modern label for the Indian astrological tradition, and what the textual record does and does not support about the antiquity it claims.
- Aquarius
Aquarius's Babylonian name is a status title, not a description of pouring water; the water comes from the god's picture, not from the name itself.
- Aries
Aries opens the tropical zodiac at the March equinox itself; its Babylonian figure was a hired farmhand, not a ram.
- Aspects
The angular figures a chart draws between bodies, the reason the tradition allows exactly these, and why the orbs around them are convention.
- Cancer
The narrowest of the twelve like-named constellations, and the one whose divine counterpart may have been an empty shrine rather than an animal.
- Capricorn
A goat with a fish's tail is not a natural animal, and it is the one zodiacal hybrid that survived Babylon to the present essentially unchanged.
- Cross-Quarter Days
Three defensible answers to when a cross-quarter day falls: the fixed calendar date, the solar-longitude midpoint, and the temporal midpoint of the season.
- Eighth House
Named Beginning of Death in Hellenistic Greek and the sign of death by Dorotheus, an exact agreement across two independent lines of transmission.
- Eleventh House
The House of the Good Daemon in Ptolemy's own words, ranked third-best by Dorotheus, and Jupiter's joy since Firmicus and still in Lilly.
- Fifth House
Called Good Fortune in Hellenistic Greek and the house of the child by Dorotheus, who ranked it fourth of the twelve places by strength.
- First House
The place of the Ascendant itself, the Horoskopos that gave the word horoscope its name, and the one house nearly every named source ranks first.
- Fourth House
The lower midheaven and cardine of the earth, ranked sixth-best by Dorotheus, though Ptolemy's own method for parents never names it.
- Gemini
The Ptolemaic bounds of Gemini split the transmission: Lilly's row, which most software ships as Ptolemaic, disagrees with every Greek edition.
- Greek Loanwords in Sanskrit Astrology
Sanskrit horoscopic vocabulary carries Greek technical terms, and what that does and does not establish about how the two traditions met.
- Heliacal Risings
Before calendars were reliable, the year was told by which stars were visible at dawn. The mechanism, the texts that use it, and why the dates drift.
- House Division
Seven house systems divide seven different objects into twelve, which is why a chart tool that offers all seven never agrees with itself.
- Jupiter
The brightest true planet after Venus, completing the ecliptic in under twelve years, roughly a sign a year, the arithmetic behind its period-marking use.
- Leo
The Sun's sole domicile, and home to Regulus, one of the four bright stars near the ecliptic.
- Libra
The only sign figured as an object: a Babylonian balance, a Greek claw, and a Roman restoration credited to Julius Caesar.
- Mars
The reddest of the five true planets, with the widest brightness swing and the largest retrograde loop of the seven, both from its varying distance.
- Mercury
Mercury never strays far from the Sun and is visible only near dawn or dusk; it is also the one planet exalted in the sign it already rules.
- Moon
The fastest of the seven, covering about 13 degrees a day, which makes it the body most sensitive to an error in birth date or time zone.
- Ninth House
Named God for the Sun in Hellenistic Greek, and the Sun's own joy from Firmicus through Lilly, thirteen centuries and one language apart.
- Pisces
Zero degrees of tropical Aries currently falls inside the constellation Pisces: the concrete case behind the whole tropical-versus-sidereal question.
- Precession of the Equinoxes
The slow westward slide of the equinox against the stars: the rate, who first measured it, and why it separates the seasonal frame from the stellar one.
- Sagittarius
The composite Mesopotamian god Pabilsag was carried into Greek astrology as a plain archer: the clearest case of simplification among the twelve signs.
- Saturn
The outermost classical planet: its Greek and Babylonian names, its dignities, the sect rule that governs it, and where the modern Saturn return came from.
- Scorpio
Of the thirteen constellations the ecliptic crosses, Scorpius is the narrowest by far, and its missing claws are doing duty as Libra's scales.
- Second House
The house of livelihood and movable goods, named the Gate of Hades in Hellenistic Greek, a name Ptolemy records but does not himself use.
- Sect
The division of a chart by whether the Sun stood above or below the horizon at birth, and the largest doctrinal gap in twentieth-century astrology.
- Seventh House
The Occident, built on the Descendant, called the sign of marriage by Dorotheus and one of the few places Ptolemy's own prose names directly.
- Sixth House
Called Bad Fortune in Hellenistic Greek, ranked among the two weakest of the twelve places by Dorotheus, and given as Mars's joy since Firmicus.
- Solstices and Equinoxes
Four instants, not four dates. What they are, why the calendar date moves between years, and what pre-Christian Europe is recorded as having marked.
- Sun
The Sun rules one sign, holds no bounds, and is the only body whose sign depends on date alone, which is why a newspaper column could use it.
- Taurus
Taurus is a straight translation of the Babylonian Bull of Heaven, but its real distinction is the Pleiades and Hyades within it.
- Tenth House
The Midheaven itself, ranked second-best of the twelve places by Dorotheus and, for Ptolemy, one of his few directly named technical terms.
- Testing Astrology
What the empirical tests of astrology show, why the most-cited result is not the strongest one, and what a test like this cannot settle.
- The angles
The four points where the ecliptic crosses the horizon and the meridian, how fast they move, and the latitudes at which they stop existing.
- The Barnum Effect
An identical, mostly flattering personality sketch reads as a precise account of one person: the 1949 demonstration, its real numbers, and why.
- The Chinese Lunisolar Calendar
Months set by conjunction, a solar year cut twenty-four ways, the leap-month rule, and the change from equal time to equal solar longitude.
- The Relative Age Effect
Children born just after a school cutoff are nearly a year older than classmates, and it shows in test scores, sport selection, and later life.
- The Sun-Sign Column
The twelve-paragraph newspaper horoscope is a commercial format of the 1930s, produced by a printing constraint, and it has no premodern precedent at all.
- The Yavanajātaka and its Dating
A Sanskrit astrological text long dated to the second and third centuries CE on readings its manuscripts do not contain, and the correction that followed.
- Third House
Named Goddess for the Moon in Hellenistic Greek and called her joy by Dorotheus, though Ptolemy's own method for siblings never mentions it.
- Three Reference Frames
The tropical zodiac, the sidereal zodiac and the IAU constellation boundaries divide the sky for three different purposes, and answer three questions.
- Twelfth House
The House of the Bad Daemon, a place Ptolemy names only to say it should be disregarded, ranked worst of the twelve by Dorotheus and Saturn's own joy.
- Venus
Venus was two names, a morning star and an evening star, before the recognition that they were one body collapsed the naming into one.
- Virgo
The sixth sign was a furrow before it was a virgin, and the name of its brightest star still carries the ear of grain the Babylonian figure held.
- William Lilly
The most consequential transmitter in modern astrological software, whose tables most programs ship under somebody else's name.