Black Moon Lilith is not a planet or a moon. It is a calculated point: the direction of the far end of the Moon’s orbit, the apogee, projected onto the zodiac. Astrologers read it as the part of you that refuses to be tamed or made smaller. Here is what it is, how to find yours, what sign it is in now, and why two charts can give you two different Lilith signs on the same birthday.
Key takeaways
- Black Moon Lilith marks the Moon’s apogee, its farthest point from Earth, about 405,500 km away. Everyone has one in their chart.
- There are three ways to calculate it. The two most common, “mean” and “true” Lilith, fall in different signs on 36% of days from 1930 to 2030, and can be up to 30° apart.
- Mean Lilith moves steadily: about 269 days in each sign and 8.85 years around the zodiac. “True” Lilith changes sign about 25 times a year.
- Mean Lilith entered Capricorn on September 14, 2026 and moves into Aquarius on June 11, 2027.
- The name began as a claimed second moon of Earth that was never confirmed. The meanings are a modern astrological tradition, presented for reflection, not as advice.
In this guide
- What Black Moon Lilith actually is
- Mean, true or natural: why charts disagree
- What sign is Black Moon Lilith in now?
- How to find your Black Moon Lilith sign
- What Black Moon Lilith means in astrology
- Black Moon Lilith in the twelve signs
- Where the name Lilith comes from
- Black Moon, Dark Moon and asteroid Lilith
- Frequently asked questions
What Black Moon Lilith actually is
The Moon’s orbit is not a circle but a slightly stretched ellipse, with an eccentricity of 0.0549 according to NASA. At its closest, the perigee, the Moon is about 363,300 km from Earth; at its farthest, the apogee, about 405,500 km. Earth sits at one focus of that ellipse. The other focus is empty space. Seen from Earth, the apogee and the empty focus point in exactly the same direction, and that direction, marked on the zodiac, is Black Moon Lilith.
So Lilith is a direction, not a thing you could see. It moves because the Moon’s orbit itself slowly turns: the long axis of the ellipse goes once around the zodiac every 8.85 years. Our North Node guide covers the other famous calculated point of the Moon’s orbit, which cycles in 18.6 years and runs backward instead.
Mean, true or natural: why charts disagree
This is the part most guides skip, and it is why two websites can give you two different Lilith signs. The Moon’s path is pulled about by the Sun so strongly that it is not a clean ellipse. As the Swiss Ephemeris documentation, the reference behind most astrology software, puts it, “The lunar orbit is far from being an ellipse!” Astrologers have three ways of dealing with that:
| Version | How it is calculated | How it moves |
|---|---|---|
| Mean Lilith | The average position of the apogee | Smoothly, about 6.7 minutes of arc a day |
| “True” (osculating) Lilith | The apogee of the ellipse that fits the Moon’s motion at that instant | Swings up to 30° either side of the mean every month |
| Natural (interpolated) Lilith | Smoothed between the Moon’s real farthest points | Stays within about 6° of the mean |
We calculated all three for every day from 1930 to 2030, 36,890 days in all. Mean and “true” Lilith were in different signs on 36.3% of days. Mean and natural Lilith disagreed on only 10.0%, and “true” and natural on 39.6%. The two can sit as far as 30.1° apart, a whole sign.
Which should you use? The Swiss Ephemeris documentation describes the monthly swings of “true” Lilith as largely an artifact of forcing the Moon’s orbit into a simple two-body model, and says the Moon’s real apogee stays within a few degrees of the mean. That is why many astrologers use mean Lilith, and why our tables below use it. If a calculator gives you a different sign, check which version it uses before deciding one of them is wrong.
What sign is Black Moon Lilith in now?
Mean Black Moon Lilith entered Capricorn on September 14, 2026 and stays there until June 11, 2027, when it moves into Aquarius. It moves into each new sign roughly every nine months:
| Mean Lilith enters | Date (Universal Time) |
|---|---|
| Libra | June 29, 2024 |
| Scorpio | March 27, 2025 |
| Sagittarius | December 20, 2025 |
| Capricorn | September 14, 2026 |
| Aquarius | June 11, 2027 |
| Pisces | March 8, 2028 |
| Aries | December 2, 2028 |
| Taurus | August 26, 2029 |
| Gemini | May 23, 2030 |
How to find your Black Moon Lilith sign
Because mean Lilith spends about nine months in each sign, your birth date alone is enough to find it, unless you were born within a day of a change. Find the period that contains your birthday:
| Born (mean Lilith, Universal Time) | Black Moon Lilith sign |
|---|---|
| Sep 5, 1984 to Jun 1, 1985 | Aries |
| Jun 1, 1985 to Feb 27, 1986 | Taurus |
| Feb 27, 1986 to Nov 23, 1986 | Gemini |
| Nov 23, 1986 to Aug 18, 1987 | Cancer |
| Aug 18, 1987 to May 13, 1988 | Leo |
| May 13, 1988 to Feb 8, 1989 | Virgo |
| Feb 8, 1989 to Nov 4, 1989 | Libra |
| Nov 4, 1989 to Jul 30, 1990 | Scorpio |
| Jul 30, 1990 to Apr 25, 1991 | Sagittarius |
| Apr 25, 1991 to Jan 21, 1992 | Capricorn |
| Jan 21, 1992 to Oct 16, 1992 | Aquarius |
| Oct 16, 1992 to Jul 11, 1993 | Pisces |
| Jul 11, 1993 to Apr 6, 1994 | Aries |
| Apr 6, 1994 to Jan 2, 1995 | Taurus |
| Jan 2, 1995 to Sep 29, 1995 | Gemini |
| Sep 29, 1995 to Jun 23, 1996 | Cancer |
| Jun 23, 1996 to Mar 19, 1997 | Leo |
| Mar 19, 1997 to Dec 14, 1997 | Virgo |
| Dec 14, 1997 to Sep 10, 1998 | Libra |
| Sep 10, 1998 to Jun 5, 1999 | Scorpio |
| Jun 5, 1999 to Feb 29, 2000 | Sagittarius |
| Feb 29, 2000 to Nov 25, 2000 | Capricorn |
| Nov 25, 2000 to Aug 22, 2001 | Aquarius |
| Aug 22, 2001 to May 17, 2002 | Pisces |
| May 17, 2002 to Feb 10, 2003 | Aries |
| Feb 10, 2003 to Nov 7, 2003 | Taurus |
| Nov 7, 2003 to Aug 3, 2004 | Gemini |
| Aug 3, 2004 to Apr 28, 2005 | Cancer |
| Apr 28, 2005 to Jan 22, 2006 | Leo |
| Jan 22, 2006 to Oct 20, 2006 | Virgo |
| Oct 20, 2006 to Jul 17, 2007 | Libra |
| Jul 17, 2007 to Apr 10, 2008 | Scorpio |
| Apr 10, 2008 to Jan 3, 2009 | Sagittarius |
| Jan 3, 2009 to Oct 1, 2009 | Capricorn |
| Oct 1, 2009 to Jun 28, 2010 | Aquarius |
| Jun 28, 2010 to Mar 23, 2011 | Pisces |
To see Lilith alongside your Sun, Moon and rising sign, put your birth details into our birth chart calculator. The house Lilith falls in needs an exact birth time, and our guide to the houses explains what each one covers.
What Black Moon Lilith means in astrology
In modern astrology, Black Moon Lilith stands for what you were taught to hide: desires, anger, ambition or independence that got labelled as too much, and the part of you that refuses to make itself smaller to keep others comfortable. Its sign is read as the style of that refusal, and its house as the area of life where it shows up most.
Astrologers often describe working with Lilith as owning the trait rather than acting it out. The point is less to rebel than to stop being ashamed. This reading is modern: the point only got its name in the early 20th century, and its meanings were built up by astrologers since then, borrowing heavily from the Lilith of Jewish folklore described below. It is a symbolic tradition, not a measured effect. Lilith is often compared with other “difficult” points, which our Chiron guide sorts out.
Black Moon Lilith in the twelve signs
These are common modern readings, a starting point rather than a verdict:
| Sign | How Lilith is commonly read there |
|---|---|
| Aries | A refusal to be told to wait or tone it down; anger that was judged as “too much”. |
| Taurus | Desire for comfort, pleasure and ownership that someone taught you to feel guilty about. |
| Gemini | Words and curiosity that were dismissed; saying the thing no one else will say. |
| Cancer | Complicated feelings about mothering, home and need, and the right to need others. |
| Leo | A hunger to be seen that was shamed, and a pride that will not shrink to fit. |
| Virgo | Perfectionism and body discipline as control; a quiet rebellion against being useful on demand. |
| Libra | Refusing to keep the peace at your own expense; resentment of one-sided relationships. |
| Scorpio | Intensity, privacy and power; what you will not share and will not be shamed for. |
| Sagittarius | Beliefs and freedom that did not fit the family or community script. |
| Capricorn | Ambition and authority that were resisted, especially when others expected you to defer. |
| Aquarius | Being the outsider; independence that others found cold or strange. |
| Pisces | Sensitivity, fantasy and escape, and the fear of being overwhelmed by what you feel. |
Mean Lilith is in Capricorn for most of the 2026–2027 school year, so babies born then share that placement. Our page on essential dignities explains why traditional astrologers never gave Lilith a rulership: the system was finished centuries before anyone named the point.
Where the name Lilith comes from
The word appears once in the Hebrew Bible, in a list of wild creatures in Isaiah 34:14. Its meaning is debated: some read it as a night demon, others as a bird. The King James Version of 1611 translated it as a bird:
“the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.”
Isaiah 34:14, King James Version (1611)
The story of Lilith as Adam’s first wife, who refused to be subordinate and left Eden, comes much later, from the medieval Alphabet of Ben Sira, written between the 8th and 10th centuries. That rebellious figure is the one modern astrology draws on.
The astrological Lilith started somewhere stranger. In 1898 Georg Waltemath claimed to have found a second, dark moon orbiting Earth. It was never confirmed. The English astrologer Walter Gorn Old, who wrote as Sepharial, took the claim up and gave the moon its name:
“Dr. Waltemath, as everyone now knows, has definitely located the orbit of the second (? first) satellite of the Earth, whom we will here call, for convenience, Lilith.”
Sepharial, The Science of Foreknowledge, London: W. Foulsham, 1922 edition, p. 40
No such moon exists. Over time the name passed from that imaginary body to the empty point at the far end of the Moon’s real orbit. The Swiss Ephemeris documentation notes the same history: “Dark Moon” first meant the hypothetical second moon, and only later the lunar apogee.
Black Moon, Dark Moon and asteroid Lilith
Three different things share the name, which explains a lot of confused search results:
| Name | What it is |
|---|---|
| Black Moon Lilith (⚸) | The lunar apogee, a calculated point. This is the Lilith in most charts. |
| Dark Moon Lilith | Waltemath’s hypothetical second moon, as used by Sepharial. It does not exist, though some astrologers still chart its ephemeris. |
| Asteroid 1181 Lilith | A real asteroid, discovered by B. Jekhovsky at Algiers on February 11, 1927, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. |
The ⚸ symbol, a dark crescent over a cross, even has its own Unicode character, U+26B8, named “BLACK MOON LILITH”. For the bigger picture, see our astrology guides.
Frequently asked questions
What does Black Moon Lilith mean?
In modern astrology it stands for what you were taught to hide or suppress: desires, anger, ambition or independence judged as too much. Its sign shows the style of that refusal and its house the area of life it touches. It is a symbolic reading, not a measured effect.
What’s my Black Moon Lilith sign?
Find your birth date in the table above. Mean Lilith stays in each sign for about nine months, so your birth date is usually enough. If a calculator shows another sign, it may be using “true” Lilith, which disagrees with the mean on about 36% of days.
Does everyone have Black Moon Lilith in their birth chart?
Yes. The Moon always has an apogee, so everyone has a Lilith position. Some chart programs hide it unless you switch it on.
What sign is Black Moon Lilith in today?
Mean Black Moon Lilith is in Capricorn from September 14, 2026 to June 11, 2027, then moves into Aquarius.
Should I use mean or true Lilith?
Many astrologers use mean Lilith because it moves smoothly, and the Swiss Ephemeris documentation treats the monthly swings of “true” Lilith as largely a modelling artifact. Natural (interpolated) Lilith is a middle option. Whichever you choose, use it consistently.
Is Black Moon Lilith the same as asteroid Lilith?
No. Asteroid 1181 Lilith is a real rock in the asteroid belt, discovered in 1927. Black Moon Lilith is a calculated point in the Moon’s orbit. They are usually in different signs.
What is the Black Moon Lilith symbol?
A dark crescent Moon above a small cross, ⚸, Unicode character U+26B8.
Sources
- Astrodienst. Swiss Ephemeris documentation, sections 2.2.1–2.2.4 on the mean, osculating and interpolated lunar apogee. All positions, dates and shares on this page were calculated with it by the Numyra Methodology Desk.
- NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive. Moon Fact Sheet. Perigee 0.3633 and apogee 0.4055 million km; eccentricity 0.0549.
- Sepharial (Walter Gorn Old). The Science of Foreknowledge. London: W. Foulsham, 1922 edition, p. 40. Internet Archive scan.
- The Holy Bible, King James Version, 1611. Isaiah 34:14.
- NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Small-Body Database: 1181 Lilith (1927 CQ).
