Aldebaran

Alpha Tauri — the Bull's red eye, Watcher of the East

Position (J2000)

9°47′ Gemini

Magnitude

0.87

Colour

Orange

Spectrum

K5 III

Distance

67 light-years

Nature

Mars

In the sky

Aldebaran is the fourteenth-brightest star in the sky at magnitude 0.87 and is distinctly orange to the unaided eye. It is an ageing giant, expanded to roughly forty-five times the diameter of the Sun and cooled as it grew, at a distance of about sixty-seven light-years. Although it appears within the V-shaped Hyades cluster it is not a member: it lies less than half as far away and happens to fall along the same line of sight. It can be found by following Orion's belt upward and to the right, where it marks the eye of the Bull.

The myth

The name is Arabic for the follower, since the star rises after the Pleiades and appears to pursue them across the sky. The Persians counted it among the four Royal Stars, the Watchers assigned to the quarters of heaven: Aldebaran in the east, Regulus in the north, Antares in the west, Fomalhaut in the south.

Where Regulus represents established authority, Aldebaran represents the figure who goes ahead of the line and meets what is approaching. The tradition attaches a condition to it stated more firmly than for any of the other three: what the star gives is held on terms, and the terms are ethical. The usual formulation is that this is the star of the honourable fighter, with equal weight on both words.

What it gives

• Courage of a practical kind The native finds it difficult to let certain things pass. Where others look away and think no more of it, these natives discover they have already intervened, sometimes to their own surprise.
• A definite internal standard There is an unusually exact sense of what is and is not permissible, and it operates faster than deliberation. This is as much the gift as the courage, and the two are not the same: many people will stand their ground, fewer can say precisely what for.
• Advancement through effort What comes under this star comes by work, and frequently after a confrontation that needed to happen. The tradition describes its rewards as wages rather than gifts, and as wages reliably paid.
• Endurance in opposition Natives sustain a position under pressure for longer than most, which makes them effective where a matter will be settled by persistence rather than by argument.

What to watch for

• Conflicts that do not warrant the native There is force enough here to be drawn into disputes of no importance, and each one consumes energy that a more serious matter will later require.
• Compromise in small matters The tradition holds that this star tests in minor things well before major ones. Small inconsistencies do more damage to this placement than to most.
• Self-reproach out of proportion When the native acts badly the world often fails to notice and the native does not, sometimes for years. The conscience that guides the star can also become a standing punishment.
• Confrontation used as a first resort Directness is this star's strength and its habit. Where a matter would resolve by patience, meeting it head-on can convert a difficulty into a quarrel.

How to work with it

Establish the habit of asking, before intervening, whether the matter is genuinely one's own. This single question preserves most of what the placement would otherwise waste.

Attend to small undertakings, since these are where the star's condition is actually tested and where most of a character is formed. A commitment kept privately carries the same weight here as one kept publicly.

Treat the internal reckoning as guidance rather than as sentence. Knowing that one will not forget a shabby act is useful chiefly as a reason not to commit it, and considerably less useful as material for prolonged self-punishment afterwards.

Where a situation will resolve without intervention, allow it to.

In brief

Aldebaran describes courage joined to a clear moral sense, and the tradition's condition on the star is an accurate observation rather than a threat: this placement functions well in natives who keep their own standards, and poorly in those who do not, because the standards are internal and cannot be evaded. Its rewards come through effort and confrontation rather than through fortune. Its characteristic waste is force spent on matters that did not deserve it.