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At 00:06 UTC this morning the Sun crossed into Libra and the year turned. The Moon opens the day at fifteen degrees of Aquarius and closes it near twenty eight, at the far end of the sign, ninety percent lit. The two signs involved belong to different families under the oldest classification of the twelve, and the difference between those families is what the classification was built to state.
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Ptolemy, in second century Alexandria, sorts the twelve into three groups of four. Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn he calls tropical or equinoctial, since the Sun’s arrival in each turns a season. Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius he calls solid. Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces he calls bicorporeal, the double bodied signs, each one sitting on the seam between two seasons. The Latin writers later renamed the three movable, fixed and common, and the modern cardinal, fixed and mutable descend from that line.
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The division did real work in judgment. A matter begun under an equinoctial sign was expected to turn over quickly. Under a solid sign it was expected to hold. Under a bicorporeal sign it was expected to double, repeat, or split. None of that was a claim about temperament. It was a claim about duration. The Moon goes void of course at 08:18 UTC today, her last exact aspect in Aquarius behind her and nothing further completing until she enters Pisces at 03:24 UTC tomorrow. Nineteen hours, the longest gap of the week, spent inside the most stationary of the three families.
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