Procyon in the birth chart: the star that rises before the Dog

Star data

sefstars catalogue, Swiss Ephemeris 2.10.03.

Procyon is the brightest star of Canis Minor, the Lesser Dog, and one of the brightest stars in the night sky. In the tropical zodiac it stands near the end of Cancer, a little after Pollux. The key astrological fact is Ptolemy's formula: Procyon acts like Mercury, with a smaller share of Mars, which makes it a star of quick thought and quick action rather than of power or luck.

In the sky

Procyon is close by stellar standards, about 11.4 light-years away, and that nearness explains much of its brightness. It is a white star of spectral class F5, somewhat warmer than the Sun and about seven times as luminous, with roughly 1.5 times the Sun's mass. It is classed as a subgiant: it is close to running out of hydrogen in its core and will slowly swell and cool.

The star has a famous companion. Procyon B is a white dwarf, the remnant of a star that was once more massive than Procyon itself. Astronomers knew it was there from 1844, because it made Procyon wobble on the sky, but the companion was first seen only in 1896. The two circle each other every 40.8 years.

Procyon lies about 16° south of the ecliptic. The Moon never passes in front of it, and a conjunction by zodiac degree is a shared longitude rather than a close meeting in the sky. For stars at this distance from the ecliptic some astrologers also use parans.

Finding it from Ukraine

Procyon is a star of winter and early spring evenings. It is one corner of the Winter Triangle, a large figure of three bright stars: the other two corners are Sirius, the brightest star of the night sky, and Betelgeuse, the red star of Orion. Once those two are found, Procyon is the remaining bright star that completes the triangle.

From the latitude of Kyiv Procyon climbs to about 45° above the southern horizon at its highest. It is best placed in the evening from January to March. In mid-July the Sun passes Procyon in the zodiac, and in the summer weeks around that date the star is lost in the twilight.

The name

The name is Greek and means "before the dog". At northern latitudes Procyon rises shortly before Sirius, the Dog Star, and so announces it. Roman writers translated the name as Antecanis. Arabic astronomy knew the star as al-Shi'ra al-Shamiyya, "the bright star of Syria", and also by a name meaning "the dim" or "the weeping one". Richard Hinckley Allen, in Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning (1899), offers several explanations for it; one is a fable about Canopus and his two sisters, Sirius and Procyon, in which Procyon is the sister left behind in tears. Procyon is the official name approved by the International Astronomical Union in 2016.

Allen also collects the myths attached to the little dog: it was taken for one of Diana's hounds, for the dog of Actaeon, or for Maera, the faithful dog of Icarius in the story told by Hyginus.

Nature according to Ptolemy

In the first book of the Tetrabiblos, among the stars south of the zodiac, Ptolemy describes "the bright star Procyon" as "like that of Mercury and, in a less degree, that of Mars". The order matters: Mercury leads, and Mars only sharpens it.

Mercury stands for thought, speech, trade, skill with the hands and the ability to move fast between people and ideas. Mars adds heat, impatience and a readiness to act. The mix describes a mind that works quickly and does not wait long before turning thought into action. Because Mars is the minor partner, a reading of this pair keeps the Mercury themes in front: wit, cleverness, talk and trade, with an edge of haste. The overview explains how these planetary formulas are read.

After Ptolemy

Procyon is one of the fifteen Behenian stars that Cornelius Agrippa lists "according to the doctrine of Hermes" in the first book of his Three Books of Occult Philosophy (chapter 32). There it is the sixth star, "the lesser Dog-star", and rules agate among stones and marigold flowers and pennyroyal among plants. In the second book (chapter 47) Agrippa describes the talisman made under it: the image of a cock or of three little maidens, said to win the favour of gods, spirits and people.

Allen, writing at the end of the nineteenth century, sums up its astrological reputation as a star that "portended wealth, fame, and good fortune". That is a later and more cheerful reading than Ptolemy's, and it sits uneasily with the Mars part of his formula.

Conjunctions with planets and angles

Procyon is used by conjunction, with an orb of about 1° (more on the orb). Pollux lies only a few degrees earlier in the zodiac, and a planet in the last degrees of Cancer may be close to both; within a 1° orb they are separate contacts. Two typical cases show how tradition reads Procyon:

• Procyon with Mercury. A Mercurial star on Mercury itself strengthens the planet's themes: fast thinking, a ready tongue, a talent for learning and dealing. The Mars share adds sharpness, so astrologers read it as a quick mind that can also be impatient or cutting in speech.
• Procyon on the Ascendant. The Ascendant describes manner and the way a person meets the world. Here the star's colour shows in a lively, restless style and a preference for acting early rather than waiting.

As always, the rest of the chart decides how much of this is visible: a star refines what the planet and its sign already say.

In celebrity charts

Conjunctions within 1° to the planets from the Sun to Saturn and to the chart angles.

• Joe Biden: Jupiter, orb 0°08′
• Priyanka Chopra: Sun, orb 0°13′
• Olena Zelenska: Mars, orb 0°31′

Find fixed stars in your chart