99 Fun Facts About Zodiac

The word 'zodiac' comes from a Greek word meaning what?

Zodiac comes from the Greek zōidiakos kyklos, 'circle of little animals': zōidion is the diminutive of zōion, animal, fitting a ring of signs that are mostly beasts or hybrids.

Which English word comes from the Italian for 'ill-starred', a relic of astrology?

Disaster comes from the Italian disastro, 'ill-starred' (dis- plus astro, star): a misfortune was once blamed on an unlucky position of the planets.

The zodiac and its 360-degree measurement originated with which ancient civilisation?

Babylonian astronomers divided the ecliptic into twelve equal 30° signs in the first millennium BC, and several of their figures, such as the Twins and the Crab, are still in use today.

What is the ecliptic?

The Sun's apparent yearly path across the sky is called the ecliptic because eclipses can happen only along it.

Because of precession, the March equinox point has moved from Aries into which constellation?

Pisces now hosts the March equinox point, so the star signs have slipped out of step with the constellations they are named after.

The habit of seeing vague, horoscope-style descriptions as personally accurate is named after which American entertainer?

P. T. Barnum gives the Barnum effect its name: in the late 1940s psychologist Bertram Forer handed every student the same profile, lifted from newsstand horoscopes, and they rated it highly accurate.

Which astronomer of ancient Alexandria wrote the Tetrabiblos, a handbook of astrology?

Ptolemy wrote the Tetrabiblos, 'four books', as the astrological companion to his Almagest, and astrologers treated it almost as scripture for a thousand years or more.

The Dendera zodiac, a circular ceiling relief now in the Louvre, comes from which country?

The Dendera zodiac was carved about 50 BC in the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, Egypt; removed by the French in 1821, it hangs in the Louvre in Paris.

Which is the first sign of the zodiac?

Aries comes first because the Sun enters it at the March equinox, the start of spring in the north and the point from which the zodiac is counted.

What animal represents Aries?

Ram is simply what the Latin aries means; Greek myth made it the golden-fleeced ram that carried Phrixus to safety, whose fleece Jason and the Argonauts later sailed to find.

Which planet rules the second sign, the bull?

Venus rules the bull, and the constellation has a love story to match: in the usual Greek telling the bull is Zeus in disguise, carrying Europa off across the sea.

Which three signs are the earth signs?

Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn: the earth signs sit four apart on the zodiac wheel, so joining them draws a triangle, which is why each group of three is called a triplicity or trigon.

Gemini is represented by which mythological twins?

Castor and Pollux were inseparable: when mortal Castor was killed, Pollux chose to share his immortality rather than live on without him, and in one version Zeus set them in the sky as Gemini.

Which heavenly body rules the fourth sign, the crab?

The Moon rules the crab because ancient astrologers gave the two great lights the signs of high summer: the lion went to the Sun and the crab, next door, to the Moon.

In Greek myth, the constellation Leo is a lion killed by which hero?

Heracles strangled the Nemean lion as the first of his labours, because no weapon could pierce its hide, and afterwards wore the skin as a cloak.

Which US First Lady had an astrologer help plan her husband's White House schedule?

Nancy Reagan began consulting astrologer Joan Quigley after the 1981 attempt on her husband's life, and the secret came out in 1988 in a memoir by his ousted chief of staff, Donald Regan.

Which is the only zodiac sign represented by an inanimate object?

Libra, the scales, is the lone object, and it was carved out of a neighbour: the Greeks saw its stars as the Scorpion's claws, and its two brightest still have Arabic names meaning southern and northern claw.

In Greek myth, why does Orion set just as Scorpius rises?

A giant scorpion stung him to death, in one telling after Orion boasted he could kill every beast on Earth; the two were then set on opposite sides of the sky.

The black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is named after which zodiac constellation?

Sagittarius gives its name to Sagittarius A*, which lies in that constellation's direction; astronomers inferred the black hole by watching stars whip around an invisible point there.

Capricorn is ruled by which planet?

Saturn rules Capricorn because ancient astrologers gave the coldest, most distant planet they knew the midwinter signs.

What is the opposite sign of Aquarius?

Leo sits six signs from Aquarius, exactly half the wheel, so a full moon during Aquarius season, being opposite the Sun, always falls in Leo.

The water carrier of Aquarius is most often identified with which figure from Greek myth?

Ganymede was a Trojan prince so beautiful that he was carried up to Olympus, by Zeus's eagle or by Zeus in eagle form, to pour wine for the gods; the cupbearer became the sky's water-pourer.

The astrological symbol for the twelfth sign shows two fish joined by what?

A string, or cord, joins the two fish by their tails; in one telling they are Aphrodite and Eros, who dived into a river as fish to escape the monster Typhon.

In Western astrology, which planet traditionally rules both Gemini and Virgo?

Mercury rules both Gemini and Virgo as the planet of communication, which is why astrologers blame its 'retrograde' spells, three or four times a year, for garbled messages and travel chaos.

Which constellation has been proposed as a '13th sign' of the zodiac?

Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, really is crossed by the Sun each year, between the scorpion and the archer; astrology's twelve signs are equal slices of sky, so it never got one.

Which animal comes last of the twelve in the Chinese zodiac?

Pig brings up the rear: in the legend of the great race it stopped to eat, then dozed off, and trotted over the finish line after all the others.

What does it mean to be 'on the cusp' in astrology?

Arriving as the Sun straddles two signs is possible because the Sun's disc is about half a degree wide; some astrologers then read the newborn as a blend of both signs.

Which musical opens with a song hailing the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?

Hair opens with 'Aquarius', an anthem to the astrological new age, though astrologers themselves can't agree when that age begins, or whether it already has.

Births tend to jump across Chinese communities in the year of which zodiac animal?

Dragon years bring a baby bump in places such as Taiwan, because children born then are believed to be blessed with luck and strength.

Which animal traditionally comes first in the Chinese zodiac?

The Rat comes first: in the legend of the great race it rode across the river on the Ox's back and leapt ahead at the finish line, beating the Ox to first place.

In legend, who held the race that decided the order of the Chinese zodiac animals?

The Jade Emperor, a ruler of heaven in Daoist belief, calls the race in the usual telling; another version gives the summons to the Buddha, with each of the twelve arrivals rewarded with a year.

In the Chinese 60-year cycle, each zodiac animal is paired in turn with one of five what?

Elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water take turns with the twelve animals, so each pairing returns only every 60 years; in Japan, births fell sharply in 1966 because it was a feared Fire Horse year.

Which animal replaces the Rabbit in the Vietnamese zodiac?

The Cat takes the Rabbit's place in Vietnam, perhaps because the Chinese branch name mao sounded like the Vietnamese word for cat, meo; the Water Buffalo likewise stands in for the Ox.

The newspaper horoscope column grew out of a 1930 Sunday Express birth chart for which newborn royal?

Princess Margaret's chart was drawn by astrologer Richard Naylor; weeks later a forecast of his seemed to foretell the R101 airship crash, and the paper rewarded him with a weekly column.

The word 'horoscope' comes from Greek words meaning what?

Time observer is the literal sense of the Greek horoskopos (hora, hour, plus skopos, watcher); for ancient astrologers the horoskopos was the point of the zodiac rising in the east at a birth, not a whole forecast.

Which planet do modern astrologers name as the ruler of Aquarius?

Uranus was unknown until William Herschel spotted it in 1781, so astrologers had to find it a home and gave it Aquarius, displacing the sign's ancient ruler.

Which Roman writer attacked astrology in his treatise De Divinatione?

Cicero's De Divinatione (44 BC) attacks astrology with the twins argument, that people born at the same moment lead different lives, and notes that soldiers with different birth stars died together at Cannae.

Antares, the brightest star of Scorpius, is often called what?

The heart of the scorpion is where red Antares sits; its Greek name is usually read as 'rival of Ares', because its colour so resembles the planet Mars.

The Pleiades star cluster sits in which zodiac constellation?

Taurus is home to the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters; Japan calls the cluster Subaru, which is why the car maker's badge shows six stars.

Spica, the brightest star of Virgo, represents what in the maiden's hand?

An ear of wheat is what Spica marks, and the star's name is Latin for exactly that; the grain is why some saw the maiden as Demeter, goddess of the harvest.

Roughly how long does one full cycle of Earth's axial precession take?

26,000 years is roughly one full wobble of Earth's axis, so the pole star changes: Thuban held the title around 3000 BC, and Vega will take its turn thousands of years from now.

Who is usually credited in the West with discovering the precession of the equinoxes?

Hipparchus of Nicaea, working around 130 BC, compared his star positions with older records and found the equinoxes drifting westward, the first Western account of precession.

What is Hindu astrology traditionally called?

Jyotisha began as a practical craft: it is one of the six Vedangas, the aids to studying the Vedas, and its first job was fixing the right days and hours for rituals.

In Western astrology, someone born on June 1 has which sun sign?

Gemini covers birthdays from about May 21 to June 21; ancient sailors prayed to its twin stars as protectors and saw the pair in the glow of St Elmo's fire.

Which sign does the Sun enter at the June solstice, around June 21?

Cancer begins at the June solstice, when the midday Sun stands directly over the Tropic of Cancer; the line was named in antiquity, when the solstice Sun really lay among the crab's stars.

In astrology, what is the aspect formed by two planets at the same celestial longitude?

Conjunction means two planets share a longitude and so appear side by side: in December 2020 Jupiter and Saturn drew so close that their meeting was nicknamed the 'Christmas Star'.

Which of the four fixed signs, one in the middle of each season, falls in the northern autumn?

Scorpio is the fixed sign of autumn; ancient astrologers called these four 'solid' because by mid-season the weather that began under the sign before has taken firm hold.

Which Hindu festival marks the Sun entering Capricorn each January?

Makara Sankranti follows the Sun rather than the Moon, so unlike most Hindu festivals it lands on almost the same date every year, usually January 14.

Which philosopher's falsifiability criterion is used to classify astrology as pseudoscience?

Karl Popper argued that astrologers keep their predictions too vague ever to be proved wrong, making astrology his model pseudoscience; critics reply that it has in fact been tested, and failed.

Which rock guitarist earned a PhD for a thesis on the zodiacal dust cloud that took 37 years to finish?

Brian May of Queen shelved his astrophysics doctorate when the band took off, then went back to Imperial College London and had the thesis approved in 2007.

Which First Lady secretly consulted astrologer Joan Quigley for years after an attempt on her husband's life?

Nancy Reagan turned to Quigley after the 1981 shooting of the president, and the arrangement stayed secret until an ousted chief of staff exposed it in 1988.

Aquarius is drawn as a water-bearer, yet the sign belongs to which of the four classical elements?

Air, not water, is the element of Aquarius, which shares it with Gemini and Libra. The true water signs are Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.

The Latin word libra, which also names a zodiac sign, survives in which abbreviation for a unit of weight?

The lb on a bag of flour is short for libra pondo, Roman for a pound by weight, and the same phrase gave the British pound its £ sign.

A birthday on which of these occasions falls under Aquarius, whose season begins in late January?

Valentine's Day lands near the end of Aquarius, which runs from about January 21 to February 19, so anyone born on February 14 is a water-bearer.

The 5th Dimension topped the US chart in 1969 with a medley about the Age of Aquarius from which stage musical?

Hair supplied both songs in the medley, which spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was later certified platinum.

Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole named for its zodiac constellation, sits at the centre of what?

The Milky Way turns around Sagittarius A*, a black hole of about four million solar masses that astronomers first imaged in 2022.

The red star Antares, in the zodiac constellation Scorpius, has a Greek name meaning the rival of which planet?

Mars and Antares glow the same rusty red, so the Greeks named the star anti-Ares, the rival of their war god's planet. Mars is also the traditional ruler of Scorpio.

When astrologers say an outer planet has gone retrograde, what makes it seem to slide backward through the zodiac?

Earth overtaking it in orbit creates the illusion, just as a slower car seems to drift backward when passed on a highway. The planet itself never changes direction.

In Greek myth, the crab honoured in the zodiac nipped the foot of Heracles while he fought which monster?

The Hydra had help: a crab bit the hero's foot mid-battle and was killed for it, and his enemy Hera then placed the crab among the stars.

A baby born on New Year's Day falls under the star sign pictured as which mythical hybrid creature?

A sea-goat, half goat and half fish, stands for Capricorn, the sign in season on January 1. Babylonians were already drawing the same hybrid in the Bronze Age.

The name of Sagittarius, the zodiac sign in season in early December, is the Latin word for what?

Archer is what Sagittarius means in Latin. Astrologers class the sign as human when it is drawn as a bowman but bestial when it is drawn as a centaur.

Which line of latitude takes its name from the zodiac sign that begins at the December solstice?

Tropic of Capricorn marks where the Sun stands overhead at the December solstice. Precession has since carried that solstice point into the stars of Sagittarius, but the name stuck.

Virgo, the zodiac sign of the maiden, begins its season in the final days of which month?

August is nearly over when Virgo begins, on about the 24th. Virgo is also the largest constellation of the zodiac, and the Sun needs 44 days to cross it.

Which planet takes nearly twelve years to circle the zodiac, spending roughly one year in each sign?

Jupiter needs 11.86 years for one orbit, so it lingers about a year in each sign. Ancient Chinese astronomers built their cycle of twelve earthly branches on that rhythm.

In one Greek myth, the zodiac's goat is Amalthea, nurse of the infant Zeus, whose broken horn became what?

The cornucopia, or horn of plenty, came from Amalthea's broken horn in this version. Other tellings make the constellation the goat-legged god Pan instead.

The brightest stars of the zodiac constellation Sagittarius form an asterism nicknamed after which kitchen item?

A teapot, with handle, lid and spout, is how stargazers pick out Sagittarius. Under dark skies a dense star cloud rises above the spout like a puff of steam.

The Eta Aquariid meteor shower, which appears to radiate from Aquarius, is debris from which famous comet?

Halley's Comet shed these meteors centuries ago. Its present orbit no longer passes close enough to Earth to drop fresh debris, so the shower is a relic of older visits.

Which ancient Greek artefact, recovered from a shipwreck in 1901, tracked the Sun and Moon through the zodiac?

The Antikythera mechanism used at least 30 bronze gears to follow the Sun and Moon and to predict eclipses. The ship carrying it sank around 70 to 60 BC.

Which term do astrologers use for the zodiac sign crossing the eastern horizon at the moment of a birth?

The ascendant, or rising sign, shifts about every two hours in theory, though Earth's tilt makes some signs cross the horizon much faster than others.

In Greek myth, Zeus became the white bull remembered in the zodiac in order to carry off which Phoenician princess?

Europa rode on the bull's back as Zeus swam with her to Crete, and the continent of Europe may take its name from her.

The medieval Zodiac Man diagram mapped the signs of the zodiac onto the body; which part did Aries govern?

The head belonged to Aries, and medieval surgeons were warned not to cut or bleed any body part while the Moon was passing through its sign.

Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn each open a season; which label do astrologers give all four signs?

Cardinal signs sit in the first month of each season, which is why astrologers link them with action. The other two modes, fixed and mutable, follow in turn.

The Sun's arrival at the so-called First Point of Libra marks which of the year's four turning points?

The September equinox is the moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading south. Precession has since carried that point out of Libra's stars and into Virgo's.

Which red giant star marks the glaring eye of the bull among the constellations of the zodiac?

Aldebaran means 'the follower' in Arabic, and some 320,000 years ago it was the brightest star in the entire night sky.

Which glowing remnant of a supernova seen in 1054 lies among the stars of the zodiac's bull?

The Crab Nebula belongs to the bull, not to the zodiac's own crab. It got its name from an 1840s drawing by the Earl of Rosse that looked like the animal.

Which group of stars, also called Praesepe or 'the manger', lies at the heart of the zodiac constellation Cancer?

The Beehive Cluster looks like a faint smudge to the naked eye. Galileo turned his telescope on it and picked out about forty separate stars.

Which zodiac, used in Hindu astrology, stays tied to the constellations by correcting for Earth's axial precession?

Sidereal zodiacs track the visible stars, while the zodiac of most Western horoscopes follows the seasons. The two matched about 2,000 years ago and have drifted apart since.

In one Greek telling, which goddess and her son leapt into the Euphrates and became the two fish of the zodiac?

Aphrodite and Eros were fleeing the monster Typhon in this version. Roman writers told it differently, with Venus and Cupid carried to safety on the backs of two fish.

Which psychological phenomenon explains why a vague, general horoscope can feel uniquely accurate to almost anyone?

The Barnum effect was first shown in 1948, when Bertram Forer gave every one of his students the same 'personal' profile, stitched together from a newsstand astrology book.

Which Tudor scholar, astrological adviser to Elizabeth I, was trusted to choose the date of her coronation?

John Dee had earlier been arrested for casting the horoscopes of Queen Mary and the young Elizabeth. Once Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, he picked her coronation day.

A birthday on which of these occasions makes someone a Scorpio, one of the three water signs?

Halloween falls about a week into Scorpio, which runs from roughly October 23 to November 21 and shares the water element with Cancer and Pisces.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the three signs Aries, Taurus and Gemini together span which season of the year?

Spring belongs to these three, starting with Aries at the March equinox. South of the equator the same three signs fall in autumn instead.

In Hawaiian tradition, the curved stars of the zodiac constellation Scorpius form the giant fishhook of which demigod?

Maui's great hook, Manaiakalani, is the one he is said to have snagged on the ocean floor while fishing up the Hawaiian Islands.

The Sickle, an asterism of six stars in Leo, resembles which piece of punctuation written backward?

A question mark in mirror image is what modern observers see in the Sickle, which takes in Alpha Leonis, the brightest star in the constellation, and five fainter ones.

Gemini's season straddles two calendar months; in which of them do most of its days fall?

June holds about three weeks of Gemini, which runs from roughly May 22 to June 21 and ends as the summer solstice arrives.

Which New Year festival, held at the March equinox, was defined by Persian astronomers as the day the Sun enters Aries?

Nowruz means 'new day' in Persian. The poet and astronomer Omar Khayyam reformed the Iranian calendar in the 11th century to pin the festival to the vernal equinox.

In which country do the month names combine a zodiac sign's Hindu name with a word meaning 'the arrival of'?

Thailand's months end in -akhom if they have 31 days and -ayon if they have 30, both from Sanskrit words for arriving, so each name announces a sign.

The Geminid meteors, which streak out of Gemini every December, are debris from which kind of parent body?

An asteroid called 3200 Phaethon sheds the Geminids, which makes them one of only two major meteor showers that do not come from a comet.

Which body adopted the official borders of the zodiac's constellations, drawn up by astronomer Eugène Delporte?

IAU stands for the International Astronomical Union, which adopted the borders in 1928. Its constellations are irregular in size and shape, unlike the evenly spaced signs of astrology.

Which Booker Prize-winning novel by Eleanor Catton matches each of its central men to a sign of the zodiac?

The Luminaries also casts other characters as planets. At 832 pages it was the longest novel yet to win the Booker Prize when it took the 2013 award.

What name do astrologers give the three equal slices of each sign, a scheme borrowed from Egyptian star clocks?

Decans began as 36 groups of stars whose risings marked the hours of the night for the ancient Egyptians. Astrologers later folded them into the zodiac, three to a sign.

Which astrologer, born in Victorian London, is often called the father of modern astrology?

Alan Leo took his own sun sign as a pen name and steered horoscopes away from predicting events toward describing a person's character.

Hindu astrology divides the sky into 27 lunar mansions; which Sanskrit term names these divisions?

Nakshatras number 27 in most later systems, although one ancient list in the Atharva Veda names 28 of them.

Which book of the Hebrew Bible contains the word Mazzaroth, often interpreted as a term for the zodiac?

Job has the word in a speech where God asks whether any human could lead out Mazzaroth in its season. Scholars still debate exactly what it meant.

Which Mughal emperor issued gold coins that showed a zodiac sign in place of the month of minting?

Jahangir wrote in his memoirs that the idea was his own and had never been tried before. His successor Shah Jahan is said to have had the coins melted, and survivors are very rare.

Which German composer wrote Tierkreis, a set of zodiac melodies first heard on music boxes in the 1970s?

Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote one tune for each sign as part of a theatre piece for percussionists, and the little cycle became his most popular work.

In medieval churches and prayer books, the signs of the zodiac were often paired with which cycle of scenes?

The Labours of the Months show the rural work typical of each part of the year. The most famous set was painted by the Limbourg brothers for the Très Riches Heures.

Which Thames-side royal palace has an astronomical clock, installed in 1540, that shows the Sun's place in the zodiac?

Hampton Court's clock also told Tudor courtiers the time of high water at London Bridge, vital when the usual way to reach the palace from London was by barge.

Which Roman poet wrote the Astronomica, the earliest largely intact work on astrology and the zodiac?

Manilius opens the poem by claiming to be the first to sing of astrology, and it runs to five books of hexameter verse.