A PHILOSOPHIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASTROLOGY 133
positions, at least their movement is so slight that centuries elapse without appreciable change in their position, Hence we may use a table of houses our whole life, but we must buy an ephemeris of the planets’ places every year.
Every year on the 21st of March the Sun leaves the Southern Hemisphere, crosses the celestial equator, and enters the Northern degrees of latitude where he remains during the summer. But owing to a vibratory motion of the poles of the earth, called ‘nutation’ by astronomers, the Sun crosses the celestial equator a little earlier (precedes) than it did the year before, and as day and night are of equal length at the point where the Sun crosses the celestial equator or equinoctial, this precedent crossing is called ‘the precession of the equinox.’
If there were no precession of the equinox the Sun would always enter the constellation Aries at the vernal equinox, but on account of this backward motion of one degree in about seventy-two years, the vernal equinox occurs in the first degree of Pisces about 2156 years later. After a similar period of time it recedes to the first degree of Aquarius, and so on through the circle of the twelve signs in about 25,–868 years. At the time when the Sun was in Taurus, the sign of the ‘Bull,’ at the vernal equinox, the ancient Egyptians worshiped the sacred ‘Bull Apis’ and their priests wore the Uræus or Serpent Symbol
