Betelgeuse

Definition

Betelgeuse is the red supergiant star marking the right shoulder of Orion (its formal name is Alpha Orionis). It is one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye, and a candidate to go supernova in the near future. Its brightness shifts — it is a semiregular variable, swinging between roughly magnitude 0.0 and 1.6 — and it sits about 550 light-years away, currently projecting onto the ecliptic at about 29° tropical Gemini. It is not one of the 15 Behenian Fixed Stars, but it is among the canonical first-magnitude fixed stars of classical and modern Western practice.

In Tradition

Across the Hellenistic-Latin, Arabic, and modern Western fixed-star tradition, astrologers read Betelgeuse with the qualities of Mars — partly because of its strong red color. Robson (1923) gives it a Mars-Mercury nature and ties it to martial honors, preferment, and worldly success, along with the harsher potential that any Mars assignment carries. Brady's modern treatment frames the star through the myth of Orion the hunter and the theme of facing your contest without flinching.

In Practice

Astrologers track Betelgeuse two ways. The first is by its position along the zodiac — currently around 29° Gemini, drifting forward at the precession rate of about 50 arcseconds a year. The second is by paran, the latitude-dependent way a star and a planet share an angle of the sky at once. When a natal planet, your Ascendant, or your Midheaven sits close to Betelgeuse, the star colors that point with its theme of martial honor. Because the star is so variable and so vast, it tends to act as a rarely-steady but strongly amplifying influence — Mars, the Sun, and the Midheaven are the contacts its literature most often links to public recognition won through courageous or martial action.

Historical Origin

Betelgeuse appears in the star catalog of Ptolemy's *Almagest* (2nd century CE). Its Arabic name, Ibt al-Jauzāʾ — "hand of Orion," or "armpit of the central one" — passed through various medieval-Latin transliterations to give us the modern English form. Robson's *The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology* (1923, public domain) carries the canonical pre-modern English treatment of the star.

Further Reading

• Vivian E. Robson, The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology
• Bernadette Brady, Brady's Book of Fixed Stars