Guides to Arabian Astrology

Aries is the domicile of Mars, and when Aries rises, Libra, a sign of Venus, becomes the seventh house of marriage: the scheme of rulerships sets Venus's two signs facing Mars's two across the zodiac. Asked for the best star sign for Aries, the old geometry points to Leo and Sagittarius, which behold it by trine; a soulmate was read from the seventh house, its lord and the Lot of Marriage of one particular chart.

By geometry, the good signs for Gemini are above all the two that behold it by trine, Libra and Aquarius, while Sagittarius faces it; if Gemini is your rising sign, Sagittarius is also your seventh house of marriage, ruled by Jupiter. The tradition named no best zodiac sign for Gemini, because it judged a partner from the seventh house of your own chart, not from the Sun's sign.

Cancer is the Moon's own sign and faces Capricorn, a sign of Saturn; when Cancer rises, Capricorn is the seventh house of marriage, so Saturn's condition weighs on the marriage. The tradition named no best astrological sign for Cancer: Scorpio and Pisces behold it by trine, but a partner was read from the seventh house of each person's own chart and its lord, which differ from one Cancer to the next.

Virgo is both the domicile and the exaltation of Mercury, beheld by trine from Taurus and Capricorn; if Virgo rises, the eleventh house of friends is Cancer, the Moon's sign. The tradition named no best star sign for Virgo woman or man, in friendship or in love: Ptolemy judged a friendship by comparing four points in both charts, the Sun, the Moon, the Ascendant and the Lot of Fortune, and Canopy shows all four in your natal chart. Chart compatibility coming soon.

In the tradition friends belong to the eleventh house, the place of hope and good fortune; if Libra is your rising sign, the eleventh is Leo, ruled by the Sun. Gemini and Aquarius behold Libra by trine, the aspect the Arabic authors called friendship, but they meant planets, not people, so even two Libra best friends would find their bond in the eleventh house of each chart rather than in the Sun's sign.

In the tradition Scorpio is ruled by Mars, and its opposite is Taurus, a sign of Venus; if Scorpio is your rising sign, Taurus is your seventh house of marriage and Venus its lord. So the best partner for Scorpio, in the older reading, is judged from the seventh house of your own chart and the condition of Venus, together with the Lot of Marriage, rather than from a list of signs.

Ptolemy judged a man's marriage from the Moon in his chart and a woman's from the Sun, so for a Sagittarius man the Moon's sign and the planets she meets say more than his Sun, while for a Sagittarius woman the Sun itself counts, by its condition and the planets that behold it. By geometry, the good signs for Sagittarius are above all its trines, Aries and Leo, and Gemini, Mercury's sign, faces it and becomes the seventh house whenever Sagittarius rises.

Capricorn is a sign of Saturn, and Cancer, the Moon's own sign, faces it; if Capricorn rises, Cancer is the seventh house of marriage and the Moon its lord, so her condition says a great deal. Taurus and Virgo behold Capricorn by trine as its fellow earth signs, but the tradition judged a partner from the seventh house rather than from the Sun's sign.

The tradition read children from the parent's own chart: the fifth house, its lord and the Lot of Children (Sahm al-Awlād), which Canopy calculates in your natal chart. If Capricorn is a mother's rising sign, her fifth house is Taurus, a sign of Venus; the tradition did not rank a child's Sun sign against the parent's.

Aquarius belongs to Saturn in the tradition, and Leo, the Sun's own sign, faces it; if Aquarius rises, Leo is the seventh house of marriage and the Sun its lord. If you want the best signs for Aquarius by geometry alone, Gemini and Libra behold it by trine, but a soulmate was read from the whole chart: the seventh house, its lord and Venus.

Pisces is Jupiter's sign in the tradition, watery and mutable, beheld by trine from Cancer and Scorpio and faced by Virgo, a sign of Mercury; if Pisces rises, Virgo is the seventh house of marriage and Mercury its lord. That is geometry, not a perfect match Pisces can count on: the tradition read a partner from the seventh house and its lord, and a Pisces best friend from the eleventh, which falls in Capricorn when Pisces rises.

In the tropical zodiac, which Canopy uses, the Sun is in Aries until about April 19 or 20 and then enters Taurus; the exact day shifts slightly from year to year. Aries is the domicile of Mars and the exaltation of the Sun, and Taurus the domicile of Venus and the exaltation of the Moon. If you were born near the changeover, a chart cast for your birth date, time and place settles it, and Canopy shows that Sun sign together with your Moon and Rising signs.

Libra until about October 22 or 23, then Scorpio, in the tropical zodiac Canopy uses; the exact day shifts a little from year to year. October mirrors April, six months and six signs away: ask what sign in April the Sun holds and the answer is the opposite pair, Aries and then Taurus. The tradition gave the pairing its weight, for the Sun is exalted in Aries and falls in Libra opposite, while Libra is also the domicile of Venus and the exaltation of Saturn, and Scorpio the domicile of Mars.

Every sign has a type, set by its element (fire, earth, air or water) and its mode (cardinal, fixed or mutable). Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn are cardinal, which the older texts call movable; Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius are fixed; and Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces are mutable, or double-bodied. The three signs of each element (fire: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius; earth: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn; air: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius; water: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) form a triplicity, and triplicity is one of the five essential dignities.

From Aries round to Pisces: al-Ḥamal, al-Thawr, al-Jawzāʾ, al-Saraṭān, al-Asad, al-Sunbula, al-Mīzān, al-ʿAqrab, al-Qaws, al-Jady, al-Dalw and al-Ḥūt. Learning zodiac signs by these names keeps their pictures in view, for most are plain creatures, the ram, the bull, the crab, the lion, while Virgo becomes the ear of grain, Libra the scales, Sagittarius the bow and Aquarius the bucket. The guide to Arabic astrology lists each with its meaning and its ruling planet, and Canopy itself can be read in Arabic as well as English and Turkish.

In English Aquarius goes by the Water-Bearer; in Arabic the sign is simply al-Dalw, the bucket, the vessel rather than the one who carries it. The bucket runs on into the lunar mansions: two of them, between late Aquarius and mid-Pisces, are named al-Fargh, the spouts of the bucket, and the last of the twenty-eight, Baṭn al-Ḥūt, is also called al-Rishāʾ, the bucket's rope. Aquarius is a fixed air sign and, in the tradition, a domicile of Saturn.

Libra has none: of the twelve familiar figures it is the only object, the scales, which Arabic calls al-Mīzān, the balance. If you mean the Chinese zodiac, a person's animal sign follows the year of birth rather than the month, so the Chinese calendar assigns Libras animal signs by birth year like everyone else: a Libra born in 1990 is a Horse, one born a year later a Goat. Canopy reads not only the superficial Sun-sign Libra personality traits but the whole person, from temperament and the rising sign to the almuten.

The traditional Chinese zodiac has no Cancer: a person's animal sign follows the year of birth, not the month, so Cancers are born under all twelve animals. Modern Chinese borrows the Western sign as jùxiè zuò, the giant crab, and Arabic named it al-Saraṭān, the crab, the domicile of the Moon and the exaltation of Jupiter. Canopy shows your Sun, Moon and rising signs side by side, so a Cancer Sun is read with the rest of the chart.

The Dragon, and by the element of the year the Fire Dragon, from the Lunar New Year on January 31, 1976, until the next one in February 1977; a birthday earlier in January 1976 still falls in the Rabbit year before it. Arabic astrology keeps its dragon in the sky rather than the calendar: the Moon's nodes, which the astrologers called al-Raʾs and al-Dhanab, the Head and the Tail of the Dragon, and which Canopy shows in your natal chart. Your Sun sign, meanwhile, comes from the day, not the year, and the tropical sign dates barely move from one year to the next.

The twelve signs of Babylon, Greece, India and the Islamic world share one root, the twelve 30° divisions of the Sun's path, and traditional Arabian astrology synthesized knowledge from Babylonian, Sabian, Greek and Vedic sources alongside its own. Chinese astrology is a separate system, whose twelve animals belong to years, months, days and double-hours, yet China and Arabia both divided the Moon's circuit into twenty-eight lodges: the Chinese xiù and the Arabic lunar mansions, all twenty-eight of which Canopy follows night by night.

Not as a sign: look for the zodiac signs in sky charts and you will find constellations instead, star patterns of unequal size that lent the signs their names and from which precession has now carried the tropical signs almost a full sign away, as the guide to Arabic astrology explains. Around your birthday the stars that named your sign stand near the Sun, hidden in its glare or low in the evening twilight, and come round to the midnight sky months later. Along the zodiac, the Arabian sky-watchers followed the Moon's path by eye, through the star groups of the lunar mansions, such as al-Thurayyā, the Pleiades, where the Moon lodges night by night.

The zodiac is the belt of twelve signs along the Sun's yearly path, through which the Moon and planets also move. Astrology, as the traditional astrologers practiced it, judges far more than the signs: the planets and their dignities, the houses, the Arabic lots, the lunar mansions, the fixed stars and the planetary hours. Learning the zodiac is the first step, and the guides above take up most of the rest.

Not by the Sun sign alone. In the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy judges profession from the planet appearing as a morning star nearest the Sun and the planet in the Midheaven, names Mercury, Venus and Mars as the planets that give action, and lets the sign holding that planet color the kind of work. Sagittarius is the domicile of Jupiter, so a planet there takes on something of Jupiter's nature, but a Sagittarius Sun does not by itself dictate a career.

Saturn takes about 29.5 years to circle the zodiac, so it comes back to the degree it held at your birth near age 29 or 30 and again near 58 or 59; because it turns retrograde each year, it may cross that degree three times over several months. The name is modern, but Saturn's thirty-year circuit was familiar to the traditional astrologers. Canopy shows Saturn's place in your natal chart and its transit through your whole-sign houses, and with your birth data entered its election search counts a Saturn return against a window.

You can work out the years yourself: the return comes round near the ages of 29, 59 and, in a long life, 88. A Saturn return dates calculator only narrows that to the months, which turn on the exact degree Saturn held at your birth, and Canopy's natal chart shows that degree along with Saturn's sign, house and dignity. How the return sits with you depends less on the month than on Saturn's dignity and on the strength of your other planets, which Canopy's natal chart weighs planet by planet in its dignity analysis.

About twenty-nine and a half years, the longest round of the seven traditional planets, which the old tables of the planets' years round to thirty, Saturn's lesser years. Arabic astrology also used the word for a yearly clock, the revolution (taḥwīl) of the year, a chart cast for the Sun's return to its place at birth. Canopy follows the first kind of revolution, reading Saturn's transit through your whole-sign houses day by day.

Not under that name: the phrase is modern, and books on it today usually treat the first return as a coming of age near thirty. The classical books set Saturn inside the whole art, from its cold and drying nature in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos to Abū Maʿshar's book on the revolutions of the years of nativities, which times a life year by year. Canopy's readings are drawn from classical sources such as al-Bīrūnī's al-Tafhīm and the works of Abū Maʿshar.

No Sun sign owns a lucky year. The traditional astrologers looked for a good year in the individual chart: in Jupiter, the greater benefic, which returns to its place at birth about every twelve years and spends roughly a year in each sign, and so in each house of a whole-sign chart; and in the Lot of Fortune, where the tradition looked for a person's luck. Canopy reads Jupiter's transit through your houses every day and shows when the Moon reaches your Lot of Fortune, and its election search scans a range of up to 183 days for the best windows for the matter in hand.

Look past the Sun sign: two people born with the Sun in Pisces can have very different years, because the tradition reads a year from your own chart, among other things from where Jupiter and Saturn are passing through your houses, counted from your rising sign, and from how strong those planets were at your birth. The same holds for the best years for Leo, or for any sign. With your birth data entered, Canopy's election search counts Jupiter's return to its birth place in a window's favor.