The Zodiac is a clock for poets, a multidimensional map of time built out of stories and their components: impressions, decisions, relationships, exposition, action and denouement. There is music, there is play, there is effort and result. Everything connected to the passage of time is here. Astrologers are horologists. We tinker with the clock. We take apart the stories there and use what we find to make new ones. This is a way to build the future.
The signs, the numbers on the clock, are locations in time, and these locations encompass various sequential processes, including stages of growth and decline; qualities of light or weather; forms of deities, ancestors and descendents; and the imprints of events. These processes comprise the substance of time in the same way that all beings on Earth comprise Earth, each performing their function within the system.
Although not every object we study in astrology has a physical corollary in the heavens, astrologers have mapped the web of time roughly as it appears to their senses from their place on Earth and following the Sun, humanity’s representative, as it moves around the ecliptic. Astrology is not an unbiased representation of time; it is an earthly and human one. It is specific to place, climate, culture and history. I like to approach the practice of astrology grounded in my present circumstances. We can enter the clock from where we are.
The ecliptic is the circle that binds the map of time, a 2-dimensional representation of the Sun’s path around the Earth. It’s worth noting that this map is not intended to represent the actual positions of the planets in space. An astrological chart is a snapshot of time’s ever-shifting terrain and the imprint that it leaves on matter. All things that begin here on Earth, including human lives, carry the imprint of the substance of time at the moment of their emergence through the length of their life here, and in what they leave behind.
The Sun creates the rhythm of our days and seasons. It has the closest relationship to Earth of any of the planets or luminaries. The moon is one step removed from the Sun. This remove, like their relationship, is defined by the processes of circling and reflection. Together, they weave the first layer upon the web, upon which each successive planet by distance from the Sun weaves another.
Each planet is a hand on the clock, experiencing its own journey through the Zodiac at its own pace. Like the signs, the orbits of the planets are not discrete. Planets relate to each other across the ecliptic, creating discharges of energy. These are called aspects, which sometimes flash by quickly and sometimes illuminate particular dynamics between signs for years at a time. The quality of illumination is determined by the relationship between the signs in question, and the most visible expressions of those signs are shaped by the nature of the planets forming the aspect and their relationships to the signs they occupy. You can see that analyzing this clock involves considering complex layers of interlocking factors. For simplicity’s sake, I will focus on the signs here.
The Zodiac is a sequence but it is not linear, or even strictly cyclical. The signs are neither static nor discrete; each is occurring constantly in its place in the sequence, ever giving way to and emerging from each other in a particular order as well as relating across the circle via aspects. The signs are processes, not qualities; verbs, not adjectives or nouns. While we can comprehend the signs as archetypes and meet them in their absolute forms in Spirit, in Matter they are never experienced independently of each other.
The progression of the signs is distorted when planets go retrograde, disrupting linear time by introducing chaos and choice. Choices (our own and others’) have far-reaching consequences which are beyond our control, and retrograde seasons can be times when significant choices present themselves to be made. Because time on Earth is co-created among all beings in interdependence, all of our choices upon all of the scales upon which we experience the Zodiac (meaning the various lengths of time that each planet takes to traverse the entire ecliptic) are constantly impacting each other in infinitely complicated ways that reach backwards and forwards through time, drawing lines of connection and causality that we may or may not ever be aware of.
Any explanation of the whole progression of the signs in one dimension, as one story, is going to be missing key elements. This story can only be a foundation upon which to weave more and more stories. But we begin here to get a sense of the whole picture, because, again, the signs are not discrete. We know them best by observing the ways that they relate to each other.
So, although Aries is sign number one, I will begin telling this story with Pisces, because if Aries is emergence, Pisces is what Aries is emerging from. Pisces is fertile nothingness, nonbeing, the state of absolute dissolution. For whatever reason, out of this condition tends to emerge something new— Aries. Not the thing that is emerging, but the emergence itself.
Emergence is an act of differentiation from the void, and thus everything that emerges emerges by and for itself in that moment. However, everything that emerges also emerges into the web of relationship through mutual nourishment. This is Taurus. Taurus is the way that nutrients are carried from body to body through consumption, the satisfaction of desire. In Taurus, we understand desire as the force that fuels the continuous movement of sustenance through matter and thereby the process of life and death. We also understand interdependence, that no individual can exist independently of the entire web of life.
With this relationship comes duality, Gemini. The other is like us, but is not us. We are connected, but distinct. There is curiosity here, playfulness and the awareness of love as a fundamental quality of coexistence in this state. As Gemini develops so does relationship, eventually evolving through a freeform exploration of possibilities into Cancerian depth and loyalty, or refusal and rejection.
As a cardinal sign, Cancer has the power to weave between past, present and future (crabs and spiders share an ancestral lineage), in this case through the enactment of love as physical acts of care and attention. In Cancer, the individual experiencing time develops early self-awareness through understanding the specific context into which they emerged, how they are nurtured and how those experiences shape their relationship to interdependence. They seek security, purpose and identity through the formation of intimate, familial and social bonds, and they locate the limits of their emotional selves, making decisions about when and how it is appropriate to connect.
In any amount of security arises a proportional amount of contentment. The sun is high in Leo, and the northern hemisphere (where I live) receives the first harvest. The fixed signs are periods of rest and natural development. At this point the individual in time is engaging in self-exploration through play which leads to the development of a greater self-consciousness, fully differentiated desires, and a more solidified sense of identity. Once the self is more or less known, it will be cultivated through intentional pruning in Virgo. The subject moves into a period of effort, strategically dispersing the energy gathered in Leo to further whatever personal goals or interests they’ve discovered. Virgo involves the development of a new social consciousness, acting with awareness of one’s responsibility within interdependence.
Through devotion to a role, one discovers relationships with others who have roles closely related to one’s own. These are like the wasp and the fig, two elements of a system that are distinct but have a special relationship, a type of symbiosis signified by Libra. They have a unique connection where they each meet the needs of the other in the same way that they meet their own needs. As we explore and deepen these relationships into Scorpio, we go through a process of transformation through the experience of intimacy. This transformation occurs through acts of surrender: to the other, to the needs of the whole, and to time itself. In Libra we crossed the horizon, so we are now on the other side of the looking-glass, so to speak. The processes of the signs from here onward become less focused on the development of the individual out of Pisces and more on their dissolution back into it.
This dissolution could be modeled in expanding concentric circles of influence, a ripple constantly growing outward. In Scorpio, we dissolve into an other, a specific relationship with a person, a type of work, spiritual path, whatever it may be. In Sagittarius the intellect surrenders to an idea, a guiding truth that supersedes all other methods of organization. Perspective is gained from the experience of Scorpio such that a wider view becomes possible, in which wisdom develops. Capricorn, then, is intentional dedication to a particular legacy, the individual’s choice of what they will leave behind, which weaves back into where they came from. There is drive & power to build something out of what was learned in Sagittarius, to materialize those visions and values.
In Aquarius, the individual releases their grip on their work or creation and its ego-value. Releasing opens space for a new kind of freedom, one that transcends & expands upon the more individualistic freedom explored in Aquarius’s opposite, Leo. If Leo is the freedom to be myself, Aquarius is a freedom that is interdependent, which comes with unique benefits and responsibilities. It is only in this freedom that one can joyfully surrender to Pisces, the final releasing of all attachment to form, opening to infinite possibility and making space for something new to emerge from what had been.
This progression is only one dimension of relationship between the signs. The circle is also divided into quadrants, each containing one cardinal sign, one fixed sign, and one mutable sign. Aries, Taurus and Gemini are what I consider the foundational signs, because they express the fundamental process by which subjects emerge and meet each other to form interdependence. Cancer, Leo and Virgo are the personal; they have to do with the discovery of the self and identity. Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius are the interpersonal, and deal with the evolution of the self and relational web through deepening interdependence. Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces are the transpersonal, the process of manifesting and then releasing the legacy of the differentiated subject.
The signs can also be organized into pairs of opposites which mirror and fulfill each other. These axes are complex relational structures that bear a lot of weight. Each modality corresponds to a cross within the wheel, formed by two sets of opposites perpendicular to each other. The cardinal signs are the initiators, times of intentional and groundbreaking action. The fixed signs are times of reckoning and adjustment, when the effects of the preceding cardinal sign’s actions play out, without much additional influence. The mutable signs are times of dissolution, distribution and clearing space for the next season to begin. There is a simultaneous attraction and repulsion between opposites that holds the wheel together and a friction between squares (signs that share a modality but are not opposites) that keeps it in motion.
Within the signs, too, are collectives of interrelated beings. With the hymns, I have listed some who have presented themselves to me, but this is a bare beginning. One dimension of this work moving forward could be a more detailed mapping of the space within each sign, and how the planetary rulers as well as the other gods and spirits involved work together to support the process of each sign, similar to the mapping of an ecosystem. Such a map would be a valuable tool for navigating the web of time; I imagine that those who exist in the time-space of multiple signs might serve as gates leading from one into another.
For now, our focus is to build conscious relationships with the signs themselves, to get to know these temporal landscapes as they naturally present themselves to us. It’s worth noting that because we each have a unique birth chart, each of us will already have a unique relationship to each sign. When I began this project, my intention was to write hymns that could be used by anyone to connect with the signs, but as I went on I realized that the hymns felt more and more explicitly personal. Looking back, of course, even the first hymns I wrote were highly specific to my experience. I invite you to try these on, use what works and discard or rewrite the rest to your heart’s content. I’ll provide some ideas for how to use the hymns, but these should be taken as suggestions only. Let this be a starting point for your own exploration.
To begin, I recommend building an altar to the Zodiac as a whole. You may wish to include imagery of wheels, clocks, webs, orbs, stars, planets, luminaries (Sun/Moon), the colors black and gold and silver, and anything else you feel called to. Kronos and/or Rhea are good allies in this work, as is Hermes. This altar can be a place where you make offerings, read the hymns, and connect with the signs. Choose any planet or luminary and read the hymn that that planet occupies every day for the length of an entire cycle. The Moon is a good low-commitment place to start, and following the Sun for a full year is certain to be quite impactful. You may also consider the planet that rules your birth chart, which will be the ruler of your ascendent. Note that most outer planet cycles are longer than human lifetimes.
As you do this, the signs will reveal themselves to you in everyday occurrences and through other people. Pay attention to synchronicities, weather patterns, global events, and personal life developments. Notice especially the way that the passage of time feels: is it fast or slow, bright or dull, sharp or soft, sprouting, blooming, wilting, beating, flying, weaving, flowing, decaying, ascending, descending? Imagine the signs as physical environments. What do they look like? What sorts of life are present? What happens in this place, and how do you get there?
You may find parallels between myths and stories that are important to you and the stories embedded in the Zodiac. For example, a story that emerged in the writing of the hymns to Virgo through Capricorn mirrors Persephone’s descent into the Underworld and process of becoming Queen. These stories can help you understand the signs and their relationships in new ways, and reveal guideposts that can assist you in navigating time.
We will each have particular relationships with each sign. Some processes will be easier or more difficult for us than others. We can begin to understand the nature of these specificities by looking at how those signs are situated in our birth chart, and we can also build our capacities with the more difficult processes within the zodiac through devoted practice. If you struggle with the expression of any particular sign as it tends to show up in your life or in your chart, make an offering to that sign, read its hymn and ask to be shown how you can improve your relationship to it. If my hymn doesn’t work for you, write your own, specific to your experience. Or try another devotional creative act such as drawing, painting, photography, collage, music, theater, garment-making, filmmaking or any other creative practice that you like. All of the signs contain many different stories, many potentials. As with people, we can experience different sides of them as we build intimacy and trust.
As you build relationships with the signs it is worth remembering that they are all present and active even when no planet is moving through them. We can read the hymn to call on them any time we wish to connect with that energy, but remember that the signs are impacted by the positions of the planets and may show up differently if, for example, they are hosting two planets forming a stressful conjunction than if they are involved in a comfy trine, or if they are currently uninhabited by any planet. That said, the way that we show up matters too, as do the offerings we bring. Uninhabited signs particularly might bring any of the infinite potentials of their expression when called, and so what we see will often mirror ourselves and our approach. As in all encounters with Spirit, approaching with respect and asking directly & specifically for what you want will be most effective.
You can experiment with calling the signs in groups based on their element and modality. Fire signs can support our agency, intention and connection with desire. Earth signs are attuned to the needs of the body and physical plane. Air signs are associated with relationships and communication. Water signs can bring cleansing and healing support to our emotional and intuitive selves. The cardinal signs support actions that will reverberate through time, the fixed signs can be called upon in times of rest & pleasure, and the mutable signs are excellent medicine for times of grief. If you wish to invoke the entire Zodiac in one ritual, I recommend calling on the cardinal cross first (Aries, Libra, Cancer, Capricorn), then the fixed (Taurus, Scorpio, Leo, Aquarius), then the mutable (Gemini, Sagittarius, Virgo, Pisces). In this way they build upon each other rather than emerging & dissolving in turn, creating a supportive scaffold for your work.
With each hymn, I have provided a short list of ruling planets, associated gods, spirits, plants, stones, offerings, etc. These lists are intuitive and should not be taken overly seriously; like everything else in this book, consider it a starting point and add, remove, or edit at will.
Bon voyage!