Capella

Definition

Capella (Alpha Aurigae) is the brightest star in the constellation Auriga and the sixth-brightest in the whole night sky (apparent magnitude 0.08). It is actually a four-star system led by two yellow giants, lying about 42.9 light-years from Earth, and it currently projects onto the ecliptic — the Sun's yearly path — at roughly 22° tropical Gemini. Capella is the 4th of the 15 Behenian Fixed Stars in the medieval Hermetic tradition (BM Bodleian MS. 52, ascribed to "Hermes" through the Picatrix-Agrippa lineage).

In Tradition

In the Hellenistic-Latin and modern Western fixed-star tradition, Capella is read as a star of honors, learning, and public eminence. Robson (1923) gives it a Mercury-Mars nature and ties it to care for and curiosity about the world; the medieval Hermetic Behenian tradition assigns talismanic correspondences — sapphire, horehound, mint, wormwood, and mandrake — for royal favor and the healing of toothache, under the Latin name *Alhayhoch*. Brady's modern revival reads Capella through the myth of Amalthea the nurse and the theme of learning that nurtures.

In Practice

Astrologers read Capella two ways: by its conjunction position in the zodiac (currently near 22° Gemini, drifting at the precession rate of about 50″ a year) and by paran — the latitude-dependent way a star and a planet reach an angle of the chart at the same moment (see Brady). A conjunction of Capella with a natal planet, the Ascendant, or the Midheaven is treated as significant, and it especially amplifies anything Mercurial. In the Behenian magical tradition the talisman is made when Capella is rising and the Moon is conjunct it, using sapphire engraved with the star's character; the medieval English form *Alhayhoch* — likely from the Arabic al-ʿAyyūq, "the goat" — is preserved in Renaissance-era talismanic compilations.

Historical Origin

Capella is named in Ptolemy's *Almagest* star catalog (2nd c. CE). The Arabic name al-ʿAyyūq is preserved in medieval Latin as *Alhayhoch*. Robson's *The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology* (1923, public domain) gives the standard pre-modern English fixed-star treatment. The Behenian 15-stars tradition survives in BM Bodleian MS. 52 (Greer translation 2017 via Joan Evans, Dover 1976); Cornelius Agrippa elaborates the Arabian-Behenian doctrine in *Three Books of Occult Philosophy* II.xlvii (1533, public domain).

Further Reading

• Vivian E. Robson, The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology
• Bernadette Brady, Brady's Book of Fixed Stars
• John Michael Greer (trans.), Hermes on the 15 Fixed Stars