Spring Equinox: Sun enters Aries

Approaching spring 2020: recent snow dust on hills in southern Scotland

With all travel plans cancelled (or I should say postponed) it's time I think, to focus on more local landscapes. And, rummaging through old journals and folders, there's still many places I haven't written about, pieces of unfinished writing that need to be worked on. And there's other topics too.

Many years ago in the 1990s when I was a jobbing astrologer, giving consultations, talks and workshops, I was asked to write sun sign descriptions for a feminist magazine Harpies & Quines that had just started up. (Quine is Doric – spoken in north east Scotland – for girl or young woman; boy or young man is loon). I intended to write descriptions for all the signs, but that was another project doomed to incompletion.

But as we are approaching the spring equinox, March 21, which is the start of the zodiac year, when the Sun enters the sign of Aries, I thought I’d reproduce what I wrote about the first two signs, Aries and Taurus.
 

And to accompany them, images of the gorgeous marble mosaics which can be found on the floor of the Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome. There’s one for each zodiac sign. 

Aries

 

Taurus

The basilica itself was was constructed in the 16th century. There is also a solar meridian line (built later by the astronomer Francesco Bianchini in 1702). 

It marks the solar noon, at which point the sunlight comes through a hole in the church wall, onto the meridian line. I don’t know if that was also when the zodiac signs were included on the floor, but it seems likely. 

Meridian line

Sunlight near the meridian line

Many thanks to Paolo who led us to this discovery many years ago and who took all these photographs for me.