Black Moon Lilith
What is my Lilith sign?
Black Moon Lilith is not an object. It is a point: the far focus of the Moon's orbit, the direction of the Moon's apogee. Your birth date is enough to place it.
There is more than one Lilith
This matters more here than on any other page in the family, so it goes above the interpretation. We calculate the MEAN Black Moon Lilith, the smoothed average position of the lunar apogee. It is what most software and most books mean by Lilith. There is also a TRUE, or osculating, Black Moon Lilith, which follows the apogee's real wobble instead of averaging it, and the two can sit as much as thirty degrees apart, which is a whole sign and then some. Neither is more correct. They are two ways of describing the same orbit, and astrologers genuinely disagree about which to use. Beyond those two there are another two things called Lilith that are not this point at all: asteroid 1181 Lilith, a real rock in the main belt, and Dark Moon Lilith, a hypothetical second satellite of Earth that has never been observed. If another site gives you a different Lilith sign, check which of the four it computed before assuming one of you is wrong.
What Black Moon Lilith describes
The Moon's orbit is an ellipse, and an ellipse has two focuses. The Earth sits at one of them. The other is empty, and that empty point, in the direction of the Moon's apogee, is what astrologers call Black Moon Lilith. The name comes from a figure in Jewish folklore who refused to submit and left rather than negotiate, and the reading follows the story: Lilith is usually read as the part of a person that will not be domesticated, the appetite or the anger that does not present well and does not go away. Read carefully it can name something a chart rarely gets at. Read carelessly it becomes a licence for whatever you already wanted to do, which is worth watching for.
Frequently asked questions
What is Black Moon Lilith?
The empty second focus of the Moon's elliptical orbit, which is the same as the direction of lunar apogee, the point where the Moon is furthest from Earth. It is a calculated position rather than a body, in the same way the lunar nodes are.
Do you use mean or true Lilith?
Mean, and we say so on the result. The mean version smooths the apogee's wobble into a steady average and completes a circuit in about nine years. The true, or osculating, version tracks the real wobble and can differ from the mean by up to about 30 degrees, which is more than a whole sign. We use mean because it is the common default in astrology software and books, not because the other one is wrong.
Why does another calculator give me a different Lilith sign?
Nearly always because it is computing a different Lilith. Mean versus true is the most common reason. Occasionally a site is using asteroid 1181 Lilith, which is an unrelated rock in the asteroid belt, or Dark Moon Lilith, a hypothetical second moon that has never been observed. Four different things share the name.
Do I need my birth time?
Not for the sign. Mean Lilith moves about a tenth of a degree per day, so the hour changes the degree by a hair and the sign almost never. The house it falls in is a different question and that does need your exact time and place.
Is Lilith the dark side of my chart?
That is how it is usually sold, and it is worth being careful with. A point in a chart is not a verdict on your character. What Lilith can usefully describe is the place where you refuse to be managed, including by yourself. Whether that shows up as integrity or as a mess is not something a calculation decides.
Positions are computed with Swiss Ephemeris; the interpretation is editorial. How we work