Our theme for the month of March is “light.”

It was dark outside when I was born. When I was born, it was the spring equinox side of the winter solstice and the days were getting longer, but we had a few more weeks and a time change before 8:05 pm would beat the sunset (even for being so close to the border between the Eastern and Central time zones). From the perspective of Earth, the Sun was in the same section of the sky as the sign Pisces. The exact dates vary slightly from year to year, but because the Earth makes a consistent circuit around the Sun once each year, it’s fairly easy with a birth date to estimate the location of the Sun in relation to the twelve zodiac signs.

From the perspective of the Earth, the Moon was in the same section of the sky as the sign Capricorn, and Libra was on the eastern horizon from the perspective of my birth location (Holland, Michigan).

In the tropical zodiac (used by most western astrologers, calculating based on solar years rather than sidereal years), each of the twelves signs takes up 30 degrees of celestial longitude around the Earth that generally corresponds to the twelve constellations to which they refer. Because of the changes in the Earth’s rotation on its own axis (axial precession), the constellations no longer correspond so closely to this equal division of their signs. Different lineages of astrologers have different ways of compensating for this change in alignment.

This all gets extremely complicated very quickly, which is likely why most people only know their Sun sign, or their big three: Sun, Moon, and rising/ascendant. Since astrology is at least four thousand years old, most folks who practiced it in premodern times had to be well trained in mathematics and astronomy (of course, before the Enlightenment and its accompanying siloing of various scholarly disciplines, there would have been no distinctions made between astrology and astronomy) in order to calculate a birth chart. Ancient astrologer-astronomers were prized members of local royal courts, as they could advise monarchs as to the weaknesses of rival powers and when to engage in armed conflict.

Indeed, in the NRSVUE translation of Jesus’ birth account in Matthew 2, the alternate translation given for ‘magi’ is ‘astrologers,’ and the alternate translation given for ‘we observed his star in the east’ is ‘we observed his star at its rising.’ This seems to indicate the role that these foreign astrologer-diplomats play in the story, notifying Herod of an astronomical event that his own court astrologers had yet to notice or interpret as they had.

When Herod responds by asking for an exact time of the star’s appearance and sends the astrologers to find this rival king, it seems rather likely that he is looking for information with which to put together a birth chart, the better to have a handle on the strengths and weaknesses of this new threat. Based on these bits of information provided in the Matthew 2 text, astrophysicist Michael J. Molnar proposed a birth chart for Jesus with a birth date of 17 April in 6 BCE. According to this birth chart, Jesus’ big three consists entirely of Aries placements. That’s a lot of fire energy in one person.

Then again, I have zero fire sign placements. I also know very little of the intricacies of astronomy or astrology, but it has been fun to learn more about how peoples past and present have calculated their calendars based on solar or sidereal years and so forth. (For example, did you know that the rule for leap years under the Gregorian calendar is actually more complicated than merely ‘once every four years’? However, for those of us not living for hundreds of years, the extra rules that the Gregorian reform introduced to the Julian calendar don’t really matter.)

I turned thirty a week ago. The Sun had returned to the placement in Pisces, the last sign in the zodiac. I felt myself slightly out of kilter with it being a leap year and anticipating the spring equinox as some small consolation for that horrible thing that happened to our clocks a couple days ago. All the ways we measure and account for time have their strange effects on us, don’t they?

And with that final key piece of birth information, you too can calculate my natal chart in the hopes of discovering my strengths, weaknesses, and seasons of return in real-time.

Jack Kamps

Jack Kamps (’16) has been paid to do many things, such as teach preschoolers, pastor youths, schlep things in warehouses, bake pastries, design curriculum, serve coffee, maintain gardens, and fix computers. Jack is currently a student at Princeton Theological Seminary—though they tend to spend more time working at a few local farms, plotting a future cheesecake business with their spouse, and listening to/talking about the latest Material Girls episode than doing their homework.