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This astrology trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and covers the zodiac from every angle: the twelve signs and their symbols, the four elements and three modalities, ruling planets old and new, the ascendant and the houses, and Ophiuchus, the thirteenth constellation astrologers leave out. It also digs into the history: the Babylonians who first sliced the sky into twelve, Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, John Dee and Elizabeth I, Kepler moonlighting as a court astrologer, the first newspaper horoscope column, and the astrologer Nancy Reagan hid in the White House. There is a round on the Chinese zodiac and Hindu Jyotisha, and a few questions on the science side: the 1985 Nature test, the Barnum effect, and what "Mercury retrograde" actually is. It works for a horoscope-loving group chat and for the sceptic in it. Difficulty is marked on every question. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on astrology, the zodiac and the signs, and each question shows its citation.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sign begins the astrological year at the March equinox?
Aries
Its start, the First Point of Aries, drifts slightly each year because the equinox falls anywhere from 19 to 21 March.
Q 02The word zodiac comes from a Greek phrase meaning what?
Circle of little animals
Most of the signs are animals or mythical hybrids, hence the name.
Q 03The division of the sky into twelve equal signs was devised by astronomers of which ancient civilisation?
Babylon
Modern calculations put the invention between 409 and 398 BC, during Persian rule, by analogy with twelve 30-day months.
Q 04Which 2nd-century text by Ptolemy is regarded as the founding work of Western astrology?
Tetrabiblos
It was translated into Latin by Plato of Tivoli in 1138 and shaped European astrology for centuries.
Q 05Horoscopic astrology, with individual birth charts, was created in which city where Babylonian and Egyptian ideas met?
Alexandria
Alexander's conquest of Egypt in 332 BC put the two traditions side by side; the Egyptians contributed the 36 decans of ten degrees each.
Q 06Which Roman orator's critique of astrology in De Divinatione is called the first definition of pseudoscience?
Cicero
He raised the twins objection: people born at the same moment lead very different lives.
Q 07What are the four classical elements assigned to the signs?
Fire, earth, air and water
Fire and air signs are placed 180 degrees apart in the wheel, as are earth and water.
Q 08Which of these is a water sign?
Cancer
Despite carrying water, Aquarius is an air sign; the water signs are Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.
Q 09The three "modalities" that group the signs are cardinal, fixed and ___
mutable
Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn are cardinal, each opening a season.
Q 10Which sign is symbolised by a pair of scales, the only inanimate object among the twelve?
Libra
It sits at 180 to 210 degrees, directly opposite Aries.
Q 11Which sign is depicted as a centaur drawing a bow?
Sagittarius
Its traditional ruling planet is Jupiter.
Q 12Which planet is the traditional ruler of Aries?
Mars
Venus rules Taurus and Libra; Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo.
Q 13Which sign is ruled by the Sun itself?
Leo
The Moon, by the same logic, rules Cancer.
Q 14Which sign was reassigned from Mars to Pluto as its "modern" ruler after the planet's discovery?
Q 21Newspaper horoscopes are usually based on which single factor?
The Sun's position at birth
Sun sign astrology is a heavy simplification of the full birth chart, which also plots the Moon, planets, houses and aspects.
Q 22R. H. Naylor's horoscope for which newborn royal launched Britain's first newspaper astrology column in 1930?
Princess Margaret
He then forecast that "a British aircraft will be in danger" in October; the R101 airship crashed and the Sunday Express gave him a weekly column.
Q 23Which disaster in October 1930 was credited as a successful Naylor prediction and launched his column?
The R101 airship crash
Scorpio
Aquarius went from Saturn to Uranus and Pisces from Jupiter to Neptune in the same modernising move.
Q 15Which sign is the water-bearer?
Aquarius
It is an air sign, ruled traditionally by Saturn and in modern astrology by Uranus.
Q 16The Sun's path also crosses a thirteenth constellation between the Scorpion and the Archer. Which one?
Ophiuchus
Astrologers using the tropical zodiac ignore it, since their signs are fixed to the seasons rather than the stars.
Q 17Precession has moved the March equinox point since Babylonian times from Aries into which constellation?
Pisces
That is why the astronomical constellations and the astrological signs no longer line up.
Q 18One full cycle of the twelve astrological ages, called a Great Year, lasts roughly how many years?
25,772
The pop-culture idea of an approaching new age was popularised by a 1967 musical.
Q 19Which 1967 musical popularised the idea of a dawning new astrological age?
Hair
Astrologers cannot agree on when the age begins; one commonly cited date is 2150 CE.
Q 20The rising sign, the zodiac degree on the eastern horizon at birth, is also called what?
ascendant
Along with the twelve houses it was a Hellenistic invention, focused on the individual birth chart.
He had written only that "a British aircraft will be in danger".
Q 24Which First Lady secretly employed astrologer Joan Quigley after the 1981 attempt on her husband's life?
Nancy Reagan
The arrangement came out in 1988 in the memoirs of chief of staff Donald Regan.
Q 25What was astrologer Louis de Wohl, hired by British intelligence in WWII, meant to work out?
What Hitler's astrologers were telling him
His predictions were so poor he was labelled a "complete charlatan", and Hitler turned out to think astrology was nonsense anyway.
Q 26Which astronomer served as personal astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I?
John Dee
Cardano cast the horoscope of Edward VI, and Nostradamus was paid by Catherine de' Medici.
Q 27Which great astronomer worked as court astrologer to the Habsburgs?
Johannes Kepler
Tycho Brahe did the same job for the Danish court and Galileo for the Medici; the two disciplines were not yet clearly separate.
Q 28A famous 1985 test asked 28 astrologers to match natal charts to psychological profiles. Where was it published?
Nature
The protocol was agreed in advance by physicists and by astrologers, and the results were no better than chance.
Q 29Accepting vague personality descriptions as uniquely accurate, as with horoscopes, is called the what effect?
Barnum
Psychologist Bertram Forer gave 39 students the same vignette in 1948; they rated it 4.30 out of 5 for accuracy.
Q 30Where did Bertram Forer get the personality sketch he handed to every student in his 1948 experiment?
A newsstand astrology book
On average the students rated the identical text 4.30 out of 5 for how well it described them.