Algol, the Demon Star, is Ready for its Close-up

Mars and Uranus land on the fixed star Algol next week—thoughts and prayers for Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

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SOME ASTROLOGERS DOT the horoscope’s periphery with luminary points known as ‘fixed’ stars. The word fixed sounds like someone hammered the stars up in the sky, but, of course, that didn’t happen. The name became a fixture in astrology as all of the planets in our solar system move beneath what seems to be a static canopy of lights. Of course, the fixed stars that have been cataloged may not even exist anymore—but their light still travels through space to reach us on Earth. As my central thesis goes, astrology is the study of light and its circulation/reflection throughout the solar system. So the stars hold a curious position within the art.

Do the fixed stars exert ‘influence’ or have relevance in astrological delineations? I’m not sure. Maybe. Kinda. I’ve worked with some of them over the years, with a particular ardor for the star Algol. The Moon and Saturn in Scorpio in my chart light up around ghoulish topics. The day my mom discovered I’d been hoarding black widow spiders in empty mayonnaise jars was the day that hobby ended for me. But still, I’ll always have Algol.

Most traditional astrologers¹ do acknowledge the relevancy of the fixed stars. For instance, here is a recent discussion between astrologers Deborah Houlding and Robert Hand about Donald Trump, where Hand, referencing the fixed star Regulus, had this to say about Trump’s future²:

“He has Regulus rising, conjunct his ascendant. That’s a royal star. He also has Mars just ahead of it rising. The chart is a daytime chart, Mars is a nocturnal planet. And therefore it’s out of dignity by sect. Benadi states— remember this is a guy writing around 1300 AD—that a person with this placement will rise to great heights and then fall in disgrace.”

The terms ‘daytime’ charts and ‘out of dignity’ are borrowed from the traditional school, a style of interpretation I don’t work with very much as it’s too in-the-weeds and kind of nutty. But to each their own.

So, Algol beckons next week—for each of us—as Mars and Uranus will conjunct the star, exactly, at 26 degrees of Taurus on July 15. Mars and Uranus conjunct every two years or so, so that’s not unusual, but it’s Algol’s ominous glamour that has people chattering this month. The etymology for the word ominous links it directly to the word ‘omen.’

Algol is a multiple-star system in the constellation Perseus, which, of course, incorporates Medusa, the gorgon—or rather her severed head—which is where Algol resides—on her forehead, sort of like her winking third eye. Why the blinking effect? From the Earth's point of view, two of Algol’s stars create an ‘eclipsing binary’ because their orbital plane contains the line of sight to the Earth—thus the winking phenomenon. So it’s like one star is orbiting around the other like a satellite. This is very strange, and indeed, Algol was one of the first stars discovered to have these properties.

Studying the star’s historical array of names is like revisiting Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto, where severed heads roll like bowling balls from the top tier of the Mayan pyramids. The English name Algol was taken from the Arabic ‘al-ghul’ for ‘ghoul.’ Hebrew folklore called it Rōsh ha Sāṭān or ‘Satan's Head.’ A Latin name for Algol from the 16th century was Caput Larvae or ‘the Spectre’s Head.’ The Chinese called it ‘Dà Líng, meaning mausoleum, and at one point, the Chinese name referred to it as the ‘pile of corpses’ star. Not exactly the ‘wish upon a star’ point within the night sky.

So, what does any of this mean for us? Let’s consider some possibilities: