Calculated point
Black Moon Lilith in astrology
Black Moon Lilith is not an object and not an asteroid. It is the empty focus of the Moon's elliptical orbit, which is the same as the direction of the lunar apogee, the point where the Moon is furthest from the Earth. Astrology reads it as the part of a person that refuses to be made acceptable.
How old this reading is
The point is old astronomy; the Lilith reading is twentieth century
Also called: the lunar apogee, mean apogee.
Black Moon Lilith at a glance
| What it is | The empty focus of the Moon's orbit, so a point rather than a body |
|---|---|
| Cycle | About 8.85 years |
| Time in a sign | About 9 months |
| Retrograde | The mean version never; the true version frequently |
| Governs | Refusal, appetite, exile, what is not being apologised for |
Arithmetic rather than astronomy. These are positions derived from other positions, so they depend entirely on an accurate birth time and are meaningless without one.
What Black Moon Lilith means in a birth chart
The reading is drawn from the Lilith of Jewish folklore, the first wife who refused to submit and left. Applied to a chart, the sign and house describe where a person will not be managed: what they want without justifying it, and where being told to be reasonable produces the opposite of compliance.
It is usually read as a place of both power and cost. The tradition associates it with what a person was shamed for, and with the point at which they stopped accepting the shame, which is why it often reads as more comfortable at forty than at twenty.
Mean or true, and why charts disagree
There are two calculations. The mean apogee is a smoothed average and moves steadily forward. The true, or osculating, apogee is the instantaneous position and oscillates considerably, swinging back and forth by several degrees and often appearing retrograde.
They can differ by as much as thirty degrees, which is a whole sign. This site uses the mean apogee, the more common default and the one Astrodienst reports as Lilith. If another site gives you a different Lilith sign, check which version it used before assuming one of them is wrong.
The three other Liliths
Confusingly, the name is attached to at least three different things: this point, the asteroid 1181 Lilith, and a hypothetical second moon called the Dark Moon Lilith that has never been observed and almost certainly does not exist.
They are unrelated and give completely different positions. Anything on this site labelled Lilith means the Black Moon, the lunar apogee, and nothing else.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Black Moon Lilith?
- The empty focus of the Moon's elliptical orbit, which points at the lunar apogee. It is a calculated point rather than a physical object, and is read as the part of a person that refuses to be made acceptable.
- Why does my Lilith sign differ between sites?
- Almost always because one site uses the mean apogee and the other the true, or osculating, apogee. They can differ by up to a whole sign. This site uses the mean.
Where is your Black Moon Lilith?
None of this describes you until you know where your Black Moon Lilith actually sits. Every chart on this site now includes it, calculated from the Swiss Ephemeris alongside the ten planets.
Calculate my birth chart