Mike,

In my first post I wrote:

The actual crossing of the celestial equator at the beginning of Aries is the full rebirth (in the Northern Hemisphere ?the birthplace of Western astrology), just as in crossing over the horizon the Sun is reborn into a new day.

The astrology that we practice and discuss here was developed in the Northern Hemisphere. That orientation is packed into the symbolic system we use. What is specific to the Northern Hemisphere serves as a universal symbolic language. If we try to account for the Southern Hemisphere we will drive ourselves crazy and not get anywhere. In this case, what works for one doesn't work for the other.

We can choose to start our year with the Sun's entry into Capricorn because the Sun is as far south as it gets (for the entire planet) and for the next 6 months is climbing higher and becoming stronger in the Northern Hemisphere. Then it turns around at its ingress into Cancer and heads south, becoming weaker and giving the north less heat. Great ? it sounds like a year has grown and faded away. The trouble is that for the 6 months from the beginning of Capricorn the Sun is fading and getting weaker in the Southern Hemisphere ? so their year's beginning is at the pinnacle of the Sun's strength and the first 6 months of the year is a time of solar weakening.

The artificial civic calendar isn't of much use. Somewhere at some time someone decided that January 1st would be the beginning of the year. That's not even the date of the Sun's entry into Capricorn. The civic year used to begin in March, if I remember correctly.

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As Yuzuru pointed out the proof is in the predictive pudding [Tacky, but I couldn't resist ]. However, I don't think it's safe to describe the philosophical underpinnings of our astrology as merely providing indications of what 'should' work. To treat the philosophical basis in such a dismissive manner leads to the astrological grab bag that modern astrology is so vigorously criticized for.

yuzuru wrote:Hi, Andrew: as philosophy only get us so far, I would say that you should go to the good old prediction and see what really works, instead of what should work.

My break-through in predictive astrology actually from the interpretation a Capricorn Ingress chart, Dec.22 1987. In this chart the Moon was Void of course in Capricorn on the ascendant. From this I predicted for a newspaper that Norway's world record holding speed skater (born in Cancer) could fall in his attempt to win the Gold medal in the 10.000 metres event in the Winter Olympics 1988. It happened! Considering that the Moon was VOC the eintire Norwegian Winter Olympic team delivered their worst result ever!! But on the bright side, another Norwegian, a real outsider (Moon VOC), made the ski-jump of his life and won the silver medal for Norway. In December 1987 Oslo had one of it's wettest December months in history. The Munch painting called 'The Vampire' (Capricorn) was stolen, and as far as the Moon VOC was concerned, those who really won were the music group Disimillies, a band assembled of disabled members and who received recognition and applaus from both a national and international audience.

http://www.astronor.com/cp87eng.htm

Although I here demonstrate the significance of a Capricorn ingress , it doesn't actually answer the question and I think there is some good points being made in the thread.

Considering that the Moon was VOC the eintire Norwegian Winter Olympic team delivered their worst result ever!

Considering that, in the ingress chart, the moon is VOC for the entire world, I am not sure how this work. Wouldn?t this affect all the olympic teams ?

The Moon is exactly on the ascendant when the ingress is calculated for Oslo. I included a link to the chart.