Algol
AL-gol
arabic: Raʾs al-Ghūl (Head of the Demon)
Definition
Algol (Beta Persei) is an eclipsing binary star — a pair that periodically passes one in front of the other — sitting at roughly 26 degrees of tropical Taurus. The medieval and Renaissance Latin tradition counts it among the principal "Behenian" fixed stars, the ones singled out as astrologically important. Its Arabic name Raʾs al-Ghūl ("Head of the Demon") gives us the modern English name. In myth the star marks the severed head of Medusa held by Perseus, and its changing brightness — the result of that eclipsing pairing — was seen in antiquity as a demon winking.
In Tradition
In the Hermetic-Behenian, Renaissance Latin, and modern Western fixed-star traditions alike, Algol is treated as the most malefic of the named fixed stars — tied to violence, beheading, and sudden misfortune when it sits close to a planet or an angle of the chart. The Hermes text *On the Fifteen Fixed Stars* places Algol third in the Behenian sequence and prescribes a diamond-and-black-hellebore talisman for the uses it can be turned toward: hatred, courage, protecting the body, and vengeance.
In Practice
Modern fixed-star astrologers find Algol's current position by taking the BM Bodleian MS. 52 reference point (26 Taurus 25, around 1265 CE) and carrying it forward by precession — roughly one degree every 72 years. A conjunction within one to two degrees of your Sun, Moon, Ascendant, or Midheaven is treated as significant, and the star is read against the area of life shown by the point it touches and the house it falls in. Practitioners in the Picatrix-Agrippa magical tradition follow the BM MS. 52 talisman recipe — diamond, black hellebore, and wormwood — to turn Algol's force toward constructive ends.
Historical Origin
The Hermes text *On the Fifteen Fixed Stars* — surviving in BM Bodleian MS. 52 and translated by John Michael Greer (2017) — places Algol third in the 15-Behenian sequence at 26 Taurus 25 (epoch around 1265 CE). Cornelius Agrippa's *Three Books of Occult Philosophy* (1531), Book II Chapter 47, carries the doctrine into Renaissance Latin practice. Vivian Robson's *Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology* (1923, public domain) drew the modern Western interpretation together, and Bernadette Brady's *Brady's Book of Fixed Stars* supplies the modern paran-based reading.
Further Reading
- Hermes Trismegistus, On the Fifteen Fixed Stars (Greer trans. 2017)
- Vivian Robson, The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology
- Bernadette Brady, Brady's Book of Fixed Stars