getting started with fixed stars

the beginning of a fixed star series

ICYMI:

I have availability for astrology consults! You can book right on my website. Did you know I have a fixed star focused reading called The Glittering Dark? 👀

Heads up (though probably no surprise if you’ve been around these parts for awhile): this post is long. Because of the length, I recommend reading it in the Substack app or in a browser rather in email.

We’re doing it: fixed stars for beginners

Photo of the Big Dipper by Robbie Down on Unsplash

I’ve heard from a lot of you that you’re interested in the fixed stars but find them very overwhelming or intimidating. Astrology is already a lot as is, and I don’t just mean for beginners. There’s so much to learn no matter how long you’ve been into this thing. That’s part of its charm but you’re not alone for finding it dizzying.

I want to say: you don’t need to add the fixed stars to have really rich, effective astrology. Really.

But the stars are up there, undeniably, and they are doing things. They are stitched into every moment, into every chart.

The stars remind me of fairy tales in which the protagonist obtains a magical object that grants them incredible powers but there’s also really important fine print that they end up forgetting about and then we’re off to the races with our plot. The stars can tell us which magical objects we are holding, and what the catch is.

The stars are embedded in your life already, even if you haven’t met them yet. In all my fixed star readings, people tell me that getting to know their stars is like walking in a dream they’ve had before. It’s new and odd but also so, so familiar.

Stars change every planet they touch and they change us too.

The stars are alluring. Their tantalizing nature makes people quite eager and then they try to learn everything about all the stars all at once (not possible). The stars are intimidating. They are huge and powerful and mysterious. When you combine the eager-urgency and the intimidation, it’s easy to understand why learning about the stars feels like too much.

With this in mind, I wanted to create a series that would slow things down and take the pressure off so you could, if you wanted, get to know the stars in your chart yourself.

Of course, a fixed star reading is a great way to begin. It’s so helpful to have a guide. If you want that, come see me! I love giving fixed star readings and would be thrilled to give even more of them. You can also get a reading and take advantage of this series. I recommend it.

But I don’t want you to feel like the only way to start is a reading. You should get to explore it on your own, should you wish to do so.

This series is for astro enthusiasts (so, most of you, hello!) and not aimed at advanced practitioners looking to include fixed stars in their client practice. This means I’m going to try to skip jargon where I can and simplify, without sacrificing the star-juice.

This is not about getting every little technical detail. It’s not about “getting it right.” There is no one way to work with the stars. I’ll be sharing what works for me and my clients.

My hope is, through this series, you’ll have what you need to begin exploring the heavens beyond the planets.

Here’s the plan for this post.

1. A very brief description of what even are “the fixed stars”

2. How the fixed stars “end up” in the birth chart

3. How to find your fixed stars via conjunction

   1. Some ways to think about fixed star conjunctions

   2. A fixed star degree list I made just for you

   3. A walkthrough with a goofy example chart (it’s my Baldur’s Gate character)

4. A trick for making interpretation less overwhelming at the start

5. What’s next?

Here we go.

What are the fixed stars?

You see them in the dark, your neck craned. Spires, spikes, lights. Blue fires, white fires. Sharp tongues, strange eyes. Lanterns, keyholes, wormholes. White glinting needles sticking out of black-blue fabric. Invisible lines you draw with your eyes in recognition — “oh, there’s— oh, that’s—” You point. You remember. You are stirred. You are pulled.

If you are a stargazer, you have hung out with the fixed stars already, probably many, many times. I promise they have been hanging out with you.

Every constellation is made out of fixed stars.

Fixed stars are stars. That’s it.

Astrologers call stars “fixed” to distinguish them from the “wandering” stars, which is another way of referring to the planets. Compared to the planets who transit the heavens, the stars appear pinned in place.

Moving in relation

And yet, the fixed stars move. Famously. It is an ancient and living practice to use the stars to track the seasons, to track time. Stars rise in the east and set in the west. They will vanish for months from view and then emerge anew on the horizon.

You can see this on a small scale if you watch a constellation over the course of one night. It doesn’t stay put.

The difference is, unlike planets, stars don’t move out of joint with each other. No single star dashes ahead like the Moon speeds across the heavens while Saturn trudges along. The stars hold their spatial relationships, their intimacies and distances. That’s why they make such reliable shapes¹ and the planets do not. The stars make up a net of light, a single mantle. They slide as one sparkling dark canopy above our heads.

You can play around with the website Stellarium if you want to see this sliding across the heavens thing in action. It’s less wondrous than the real thing but faster than taking careful, nightly notes, and I think it’ll help to have the visual. You can open it up and use the time toggle in the lower right to speed up time and watch everything move.

A photo I took around my birthday in 2024

How are fixed stars in birth charts?

In most cases, the fixed stars link up with a planet in your chart. This is why you’ll hear things like, “I have my Moon conjunct Regulus” or “My Venus is in paran with Castor.” It’s not usually a star just floating without a planetary partner.² You can think about it like each of your planets is in cahoots with a star (or two, or three, or—).

There are two types of planet-star relationships that I pay attention to in my interpretations: parans and conjunctions. I’m going to teach you about both in this series for sure but we’re going to start with fixed star conjunctions for this post.

Fixed star conjunctions

What’s a conjunction?

In astrology, a conjunction occurs when two or more celestial bodies or points (like lots or angles) are occupying the same space. Definitions vary for how close is close enough but an exact conjunction is when the two (or more) in question are at the same degree of the same zodiac sign.

conjunction [n.]
“a joining or meeting of individuals or distinct things,” originally of planets or stars “meeting” in the same part of the sky, from Old French conjonction “union, joining, sexual intercourse”³

Typically, astrologers will include conjunctions when listing traditional aspects even though technically, conjunctions aren’t an aspect. Aspects (like oppositions and trines) are about witnessing from a distance. Aspects describe a relationship between two or more planets who are not in the same place but can “see” each other from their separate vantage points.

Conjunctions are not about witnessing; they are about proximity. When two planets form an exact conjunction, they appear to be on top of each other. They are blending and in doing so, they may harmonize or tussle, but they are locked into each other’s worlds. Conjunctions unite, merge, meld.

For the next post in this series, I’m going to write a little love letter to conjunctions to help with interpreting fixed star conjunctions. Expect more soon. But I think this amount of info about conjunctions lets us move to the next section.

“Invisible belt of sensitivity”

All of this cosmic melding and meeting happens on the “invisible belt of sensitivity”⁴, which is my new favorite name for the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the track the Sun travels through the heavens from our perspective on Earth. The planets, more or less, travel this track too and it is where they hook up for conjunctions.

When planets hook up with fixed stars, it’s stranger. Some stars hang out near the ecliptic but many of them don’t. The invisible belt of sensitivity is pretty thin compared to the entire sky. I’m going to show you what I mean.

Projections, holograms, light-touchers

The image below is a Stellarium illustration of the Moon conjunct fixed star Alphecca (I’ve written about this constellation here). The red line in the image is the ecliptic. Look at the Moon. The Moon is not close to Alphecca. But they are meeting up all the same.

The day before, the Moon was conjunct the fixed star Spica, which I also have labeled. Because Spica is pretty close to the ecliptic, it’s more visually satisfying. Still, they are both conjunctions.

Astrologers solved this issue with math and the magicians among them resolved it by seeing the technique bear out in practice over centuries. Astrologers project a star’s location onto the ecliptic as if it was sitting on it. It’s as if the ecliptic is a screen upon which stellar light is projected. It’s sensitive! It picks things up! The ecliptic becomes a necklace of holographic stars across which the planets move. You can see how this works by drawing a line from Alphecca to the ecliptic. You land pretty close to where the Moon is.

When you think about a planet conjoining a fixed star, you can think of it like the planet, the wandering one, is visiting a realm of specific starlight. Alphecca sends Alpheccan rays to the belt of sensitivity, and the Moon, in this case, is touched by these rays, wrapped up in them while she is on Alphecca’s part of the track. There she prays at an Alpheccan temple, holographic though the temple may be. The Moon drinks up Alphecca’s wine and honey. The Moon is embedded with this perfumed, dancing star, and will not get free of it until she moves to the next star realm.

And so the Sun’s gold road sings like a harp string, vibrating with the stars and their stories, and the planets must visit each one as they move along. In this way, the entire sky gets to the planets, and through the planets, the entire sky reaches you, right where you read this.

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So what about your stars?

To figure out your fixed star conjunctions, you need to know two things:

1. the degrees of the planets in your birth chart

2. the projected degrees of the fixed stars

Then compare the two lists. If you get a planet-star match within 3 degrees,⁵ then you have a conjunction. I’m going to walk you through this but first, we need to talk star degree lists.

Fixed star projected degree lists

Most fixed star projected degree lists I have seen online are too short or too long.

The shorter lists prioritize stars that are the brightest and/or have been used in astrological magic extensively. That’s fine! But I’ve had people reach out to me saying they “don’t have any fixed stars.” That’s just not true! But if you look at a list of only 15-30 stars, yeah, you might not have those! I wouldn’t limit yourself to those smaller sets.

I like to see longer lists personally, and you should take a look if you’re curious. However, the reason why I wouldn’t go for the hundreds-long star lists is because after you identify your stars by conjunction, eventually you’re going to want to know what they mean. We don’t have interpretations for every fixed star that has a name.

Moreover, if you’re taking a relational approach to the fixed stars and want to say hello to them as beings, it’s possible you’ll be reaching out to a star that hasn’t hung out with humans much. Better to stick, at least at first, with the ones about which we have some records.

Most astrologers I know working with fixed stars use Bernadette Brady’s work as a jumping off point. The majority of astrologers who have posts about specific fixed stars are most likely to be talking about the stars Brady covers in her books. You are going to be way less frustrated as you go looking for good resources if you stick to these stars, at least initially. I haven’t wandered too far from this list myself after years of working in the field.⁶

I have wished that I could send people a projected degree list just of this set and then realized, oh, I can just make one. So I did! You can check it out here. You can bookmark it and reference it whenever you want.⁷

I also made the list an image so I could put it in this post.

A note: not every planet in your chart will conjoin a fixed star in this list. That’s totally fine. If you’re worried about a planet getting left out, remember there’s also parans.

Walkthrough with Talva

To show you how this works, I thought I’d use an example chart and why not use a silly one. I started playing the video game Baldur’s Gate and have the chart for when I created my character. Her name is Talva. Because I know some of you will ask (and I adore you), she’s a Half-Elf Rogue who leaves enemies for dead — but not before picking their pockets.

This is her chart.

When I am gathering fixed star conjunction info, I go around the wheel in zodiacal order, starting with Aries, and write down each of the 7 traditional planets (The Sun ☉, The Moon ☾, Mercury ☿, Venus ♀, Mars ♂, Jupiter ♃, and Saturn ♄) and the angles (the AS, IC, DS, MC points) as I go.

Talva doesn’t have any traditional planets or angles until we get to Gemini so I’ll start there.

I’m not fussing with the “minutes” (see how her AS is 10°♍︎35’? I’m not worrying about that 35’, just writing down 10°; keeping it simple).

• MC: Gemini 7°

• Jupiter Gemini 11°

• Mars Cancer 26°

• Moon Leo 21°

• AC: Virgo 10°

• IC: Sagittarius 7°

• Mercury Capricorn 11°

• Sun Capricorn 26°

• DS: Pisces 10°

• Venus Pisces 13°

• Saturn Pisces 15°

So I have Talva’s planet and angle degrees list. Then I scan the fixed star projected degree list and match them up to see if there’s a fixed star within 3° of the planet or angle. I am going to write out the constellation too, for reasons you’ll see after.

There weren’t any stars close to her Moon, Sun, or DS, so I’m leaving them out.

Here’s her list:

• MC: Gemini 7° — Aldebaran | Constellation: Taurus

• Jupiter Gemini 11° — Aldebaran | Constellation: Taurus

• Mars Cancer 26° — Procyon | Constellation: Canis Minor

• AS: Virgo 10° — Zosma | Constellation: Leo

• IC: Sagittarius 7° — Antares | Constellation: Scorpio

• Mercury Capricorn 11° — Facies | Constellation: Sagittarius

• Venus Pisces 13° — Achernar | Constellation: Eridanus; and Ankaa | Constellation: Phoenix

• Saturn Pisces 15° — Achernar | Constellation: Eridanus; and Ankaa | Constellation: Phoenix

In Talva’s chart, her Venus and Saturn are close to a part of the ecliptic where two stars are really close to each other. There are a handful of places where this happens. Some day, I’d like to write about each of these star pairs (or maybe do a workshop about them?). For now, just know that I don’t choose between them but consider them both.

Once you do this for your chart, you will know your fixed stars conjunctions. Cool! If you get spun around, email me or comment below.

Okay, we have the data but what does it mean?

Constellate

I know you just got your individual fixed star list but hear me out: start by just learning about the constellations. Put the individual star names and the planets they are paired with to the side for now. They aren’t going anywhere. You will come back to them. We will come back to them.

Why start with the constellations? Because individual fixed star interpretations are understood in the context of the larger star-body of which they are a part. If you start with the individual stars, you will end up having to work backwards, rooting the stars back into their constellation in order to understand them. When you’re just getting oriented, constellations are easier and provide a better foundation for moving forward.

I also think it’s simply less overwhelming to say, “I’m an Orion person,” than to say “My Moon is conjunct Betelgeuse and my Venus is conjunct Alnilam” when you are starting. All you need to focus on for right now is who is this Orion guy? Begin at the whole.

When you start to learn about a constellation, follow your curiosity. Worth repeating: this part isn’t about getting something right or getting something wrong. You’re just learning about the constellation in a way that makes sense to you. Don’t be too worried, especially at this point, about messing up. This is personal exploration; we’re not professionalizing.

Starry Evening Pastoral Scene (1934-1943) by Anonymous

You also don’t need to rush it. Let the omens emerge. You can be like, “Oh, huh, after looking up the constellations like Maeg suggested, I keep seeing arrow imagery everywhere. Maybe I’ll start with the Sagittarius constellation that came up in my chart. That’s interesting.” It doesn’t have to be this enormous research project you take on all at once.

Okay, so let’s transition from the fixed star list to the constellation list. If Talva was following this guidance, she could simply her list from:

• MC: Gemini 7° — Aldebaran | Constellation: Taurus

• Jupiter Gemini 11° — Aldebaran | Constellation: Taurus

• Mars Cancer 26° — Procyon | Constellation: Canis Minor

• AS: Virgo 10° — Zosma | Constellation: Leo

• IC: Sagittarius 7° — Antares | Constellation: Scorpio

• Mercury Capricorn 11° — Facies | Constellation: Sagittarius

• Venus Pisces 13° — Achernar | Constellation: Eridanus; and Ankaa | Constellation: Phoenix

• Saturn Pisces 15° — Achernar | Constellation: Eridanus; and Ankaa | Constellation: Phoenix

To just her constellations:

• Taurus

• Canis Minor

• Leo

• Scorpio

• Sagittarius

• Eridanus

• Phoenix

To me, that already feels better. Then you can go even simpler by finding out what these names mean. You probably know Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Sagittarius: the bull, the lion, the scorpion, the centaur. The phoenix is what it says it is. Canis Minor is Latin for “little dog.” Eridanus is a river. You can find this sort of thing on Wikipedia. Easy easy.

That’s still a lot! It’s plenty to start. If that’s still too much, pick one or two in your list that draw your attention. When in doubt, start with a constellation connected to your Moon or Sun because those big lights are really important.

Ideas for getting to know the constellations

Find them in the sky. I use the app Sky Guide but there are others! Look at what other constellations are around them. What does that make you think of? What might it be like for the constellation you’re getting to know to be that close to those other beings?

Learn about the astronomy of the constellation, if that interests you. My brain isn’t that good at following highly technical astronomy but I have found it’s really helpful for understanding who these beings are.

If the constellation is an animal or an object, it’s helpful to learn about those literal animals and objects.

You can also look at mythology and folklore. Go gingerly here. Hold myth as loosely as you do anything else you find. It’s not a one-to-one thing that the myth associated with the constellation is the constellation, just as Zeus and the planet Jupiter are not identical. I have the most cultural competency in Greek myths, so that’s where I focus, but you may have lineages and deep relationships that lead you to other stories or also whole other constellation shapes than the ones I have listed.

Don’t be afraid to look for the constellations in your daily life. Because astrology has such a long history, it can be tempting to think we can only know about them by looking backward. Do look backwards! Ground yourself in history, for sure. But also the constellations are doing their thing right now and we are still looking at them and living with them. They are in the stories we are telling today. They are in your favorite TV show. They are in your favorite songs.

If you are the sort of astro nerd who looks up the charts of the people in your life or people in history, see if you notice patterns. Do phoenix constellation stars come up in the charts of people who have similarities? Are those similarities related at all to qualities the phoenix possesses? Write it down!

So those are some ideas for getting started. You do not need to do all the things I’ve listed here. They are options. Do what feels accessible and exciting to you.

As you explore, notice how your dreams change. Take note of what comes up over and over in conversations. Gently observe what symbols seem to recur. These may be clues for further consideration or ways the constellations are saying hello. I’m not including magical practices or spirit work in this post because they require their own skill sets, really their own series or at least a beginner’s guide to that type of work, but you may find that you are getting nudges (or plunges) from the other-than-human when you engage with this part of your chart.

If you ever have questions, you can email me and whatever support I can give within the format of an email, I will. And if you’d like to talk about relating to planets or stars (or plants) in-depth, we can explore that together in a reading or within a mentorship container. There I can give guidance based on your specific experience and comfort level.

A few constellation-based information recommendations

• Marcus Manilius was an oddball in astrology who wrote in the 1st century A.D. His poetic style appeals to me and his constellation interpretations ring true in practice, especially if you use your imagination to update it to the present. His book Astronomica is a favorite. I talked about him quite a bit on the podcast Within Orb and how much I love not only his constellation descriptions but also his wacky planetary rulership scheme. Interestingly, Manilius does not discuss individual fixed stars but focuses his attention on constellations.
  If you want to hold off on getting a very old astrology book, the website Constellations of Words includes Manilius’s passages on their star and constellation pages (a warning though: that website is so useful but the sources they pull from vary widely in legitimacy, so read it with a grain of salt).

• Diana K. Rosenberg’s Secrets of the Ancient Sky Volumes 1 & 2 are some of my most beloved books but they are a major investment. These books are not in print and remaining copies are sold via eBay by Rosenberg’s family. Like Manilius, Rosenberg doesn’t talk much about individual fixed stars and focuses on constellations when she does her interpretive work. Rosenberg also prioritizes conjunctions over parans, making her delineations particularly useful when using the conjunction method.

• Bernadette Brady’s books Brady’s Book of Fixed Stars as well as Star and Planet Combinations focus on individual fixed stars so I hesitate to include them at this stage. However, she does cover some information about whole constellations and her work is more accessible than Rosenberg’s is. In fact, you can access a digital copy of Brady’s Book of Fixed Stars online here. I will direct you to Brady’s work (with significant caveats) in more detail when we talk about individual fixed star interpretation, along with many other sources including the work of my peers and teachers.

• If you are like me and feel comfortable with Greek mythology, I have two resources for you. Check out theoi.com. What’s nice about that website is they compile excerpts from primary texts and they have a specific Star Myths page to get your imagination going. For something fun, the podcast Tales of the Night Sky is a treat for hearing dramatic retellings of Greco-Roman myths associated with constellations.

If you feel antsy about individual fixed stars and interpreting the planets and the stars together, I totally hear you, and we’re building to it, I promise! (You can also skip ahead if you want and look up stuff about the individual fixed stars; I’m not in charge, just a guide!)

As you explore, questions like “Who is this constellation? How are they with me in my life?” will yield more interesting, less frustrating paths for you than “What does this constellation or star mean about me?” That last question is totally legitimate and worthwhile, but it’s sort of like a second step. Don’t skip the first.

The steps

Speaking of steps! So you don’t have scroll through all that again, here are the steps we went through:

1. Look at your birth chart. Write down (or type out) where each planet is located by degree, i.e. Mercury at Aries 13°.

2. Compare that list to the fixed star projected degree list I provided. Are there any fixed stars within 3° of any of your planets or angles?

3. Cool, you know your fixed star conjunctions! Simplify that list to just the constellations involved.

4. Now you have your constellation list. Begin to explore these constellations in whatever ways feel appealing to you. It should be fun! Check out the list above for possible resources and ideas for following your curiosity. No need to rush or try to be “right.” You’re doing great.

What’s next?

So much! I’m going to write posts about how you might interpret conjunctions, resources for understanding individual fixed stars, I’ll show you examples (and not only of video game characters), and guide you through the parans method as well. I have a different system for thinking about parans that builds off of Bernadette Brady’s system that I’ll share with you.

I’m also planning to write about constellations and individual fixed stars. I’m particularly excited to explore some of the longstanding fixed star and plant correspondences. Can’t wait!

Betwixt and between this fixed star series, I’ll also be writing about other things as mercurial whim decrees.

As I lose my stomach for social media, I’m going to be writing here more. I typically post once a month or even less, but when I post I write these huge things. This year I’m going to play with more frequent posts of varying sizes. So know that you won’t have to wait that long for individual star interpretation suggestions and resources (and again, feel free to do your own thing! you don’t have to wait!).

Questions for you

What constellations are showing up when you look at your fixed star conjunctions? How was this guide? Was it clear? What questions do you have? How can I help? Is there something you’re hoping this fixed star series will include? Tell me about it in the comments section of this post. I want to hear from you!

And if you’d like to meet with me to go over your stars, come sit with me in a fixed star reading. I’ll be thrilled to walk with you through the firmament.

1. Fixed stars also move because of something called precession. For a beginner’s guide, I didn’t want to get into this in the main body of the post but if you’re curious: the fixed stars do move about 1° every 72 years but they all do, so they keep their shape. This is why the fixed star Regulus has been projected at 29° of Leo for a long time, but has shifted to 0° of Virgo and still the constellation of the Lion to which it belongs looks the same.

2. There are crucial exceptions to this but we’ll get into that in future posts.

3. From https://www.etymonline.com/word/conjunction#etymonline_v_18214 "Origin and meaning of conjunction"

4. Credit goes to artist and astrologer Sander Littel (2005) for this phrase, which I found quoted by Diana Rosenberg in her book on fixed stars Secrets of the Ancient Skies (2012).

5. Astrologers disagree on this, like anything else! Some will say for a fixed star conjunction, the planet and star should be within 1° of each other. I do think the tighter the conjunction, the more potent but I find 3° to ring true for my clients. As ever, test it out yourself!

6. There are some stars that Brady doesn’t cover that I have included in my own work for a while, so I will create a Brady+ list at some point in the future. I was tempted to include at least Algorab (currently projected at Libra 13°) found within the Corvus constellation and Alkaid (currently projected at Virgo 27°) found within the Ursa Major constellation, for example. Even though Brady doesn’t mention them they are part of the 15 Behenian star group and you can find information about these stars in several places.

7. The list I made is for star positions in 2025. For the most specific accuracy, you’d want a list for the year you were born (or for the corresponding year of whatever chart you’re looking at). However, because the fixed stars only move 1° every 72 years and because we’re using a 3° orb to match things up, you will be good with this list. In the future, I will be adding tabs for other years (maybe in 30 year intervals) to the table I made to make the list more robust.