FAQs answered by Maggie McPherson

FAQs

*** Questions asked with surprising frequency by disbelievers ***

11.1) Every sensible person knows that astrology couldn't possibly work, so why are you people wasting your time?

Answer: It is impossible to rule out astrological phenomena on _a priori_ grounds. Current understanding in scientific circles does not shape the actual structure of the universe. Science involves research. No mere mortal is omniscient, and so none can predict infallibly which effects would show up in research and which would not. What is currently known is not all that will ever be known. It is a mistake to buy into the current way of thinking as if it was an accurate and complete picture of the universe. Dogma is antithetical to true science. _A priori_ arguments are not the final word in science, which was designed, after all, as a means of discerning nature's secrets by actually examining nature, as opposed to just thinking about it the way Aristotle and Descartes did. (For sources of scientific research into astrology, see question # 4.4.)

11.2) How could planetary forces, of whatever nature, act upon an infant when it is outside the mother, but not when it is a fetus in the womb? Why should the forces only have effect at the moment of birth?

Answer: Given that we do not yet have an explanation for astrological phenomena, we cannot assume that astrological correspondences are due to some "force" (e.g., gravity) that can travel through a mother's body as easily as it can through the walls of the hospital. One research finding might be relevant to this question. The Gauquelins found that one of their results, the "inheritance" of angularity for specific planets (i.e., the child of a parent with an angular planet tends to have the same planet angular), was only present when the birth was natural. This finding suggests that it is not exposure to air per se that produces the astrological effect. Rather, the baby is "destined" (for unknown reasons) to be born at a certain time, and to retain the astrological character of that time. Unnatural births (e.g., C-section, or drug-induced labour) prevent birth at the "correct" time, and so the child fails to "inherit" its parent's planetary angularity in its own chart. (No studies have been done looking at the effect of the type of birth on any factors in actual chart interpretation, so the Gauquelins' finding does not speak to the issue of astrological charts in general; if future research fails to find an effect of the circumstances of birth on the validity of the birth chart, then the reason for the child's absorption of the character of the time of birth will not be able to be accounted for by destiny.)

11.3) Don't you guys know that astrology depends on a geocentric astronomy? Copernicus blew it away. Astrology can't work because it depends on the view that we are at the centre of the universe, which we clearly are not.

Answer: This is an argument that never occurred to Copernicus, who practiced astrology. Heliocentric versus geocentric is a method of calculation, and it is easy to postulate astral forces indifferent to the current interpretation of orbital mechanics. In any case, as the answer to the next question will show, demonstration of the possible causation of astrological effects is not clearly relevant to showing the existence of these effects. A force exerts the same influence whether the position of the body exerting it was calculated using Ptolemaic, Copernican, Keplerian, Newtonian or Einsteinian orbital mechanics. And, of course, astrology was originally practiced using observation, before astronomy was sufficiently advanced to allow highly accurate prediction of the positions of the planets. So the ancient theories about the relation of Earth to other bodies in the solar system had no effect on the estimates of bodily positions used by the astrologers of the time. Regardless of what one views as the "centre of the universe," the positions of celestial bodies relative to a person are obviously the only positions relevant when considering any possible effects of those bodies on the person (e.g., any influences that might pertain to astrological phenomena). The whole concept of a centre of the universe seems meaningless until it is proven that the universe has edges. And astrologers' use of geocentric coordinates certainly does not imply that they think Earth is at the centre of the universe! By analogy, a physicist can compute the gravitational effect of Earth on our Sun without adopting the belief that the Sun orbits the Earth.

11.4) Don't you guys know that no cause for astrological effects is known? Therefore such effects cannot exist.

Answer: There are quite a few variations of this very popular fallacy. A common variation is to point out that the hands of the doctor delivering a baby exert a far stronger gravitational pull than any planet could. Again, the reasoning here goes, "no cause, therefore no effect." If there ever is a cause advanced for astrological effects, it may well not involve gravity. All sorts of sciences are based on empirical evidence alone, with no explanatory theories available. Genetics was accepted as part of science before the discovery of DNA, and, even now, the complete mapping from genetic factors to amino acids is far from complete. In psychology, the principles that govern the organisation of vision and audition (i.e., that determine the boundaries and content of separate "figures," "objects," or "streams" of sound) are well established, but researchers have no idea why perceptual processes follow these particular principles. Vast areas of sciences that *do* provide causal explanations make specific predictions that cannot be derived directly from the believed cause but are based on empirical evidence and descriptive theories that capture the structures inherent in the data. Tide tables, for example, are calculated empirically. Although physicists know enough about the relevant physical processes to make it plausible that there should be two tides a day, even though the earth revolves only once a day, mathematical formulae directly relating this cause to the observed tides do not exist. To tread but briefly on philosophical ground, the notion of causality itself is not well grounded, and is considered by many to be a function of human perception rather than a property of the universe (see, for example, David Hume in "A Treatise of Human Nature" and Immanuel Kant in "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics"). As the empiricist Hume discovered, humans make an attribution of "causality" when they have certain types of perceptual experience (e.g., when A is perceived to precede B in time, B is always perceived to be preceded by A, and so on, then A is perceived to "cause" B). The famous psychologist Albert Michotte did many studies in which he examined the factors that give rise to the impression of causality (see "La Perception de la Causalite," 1946, or the English translation, "The Perception of Causality," 1963). He showed, for example, that animated dots on a screen are perceived to be involved in a causal interaction, with one dot "causing" movement in another, when the timing relations of their movements and the relative direction of their movements fall within a certain range. (Of course no "causal relation" was ever actually present, since the movement was due to animation.) Even so pragmatic a scientist as Sir Isaac Newton argued that an appeal to cause is unnecessary because the type of laws he discovered, which are purely descriptive in nature (e.g., the relation f=m*a among the theoretical constructs force, mass, and acceleration), are sufficiently powerful to predict events and account for all the available data. He believed that physical theories are what the physicist Pierre Duhem called "the economic condensation of phenomena" (see "The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory"): "To tell us that every species of things is endowed with an occult specific quality by which it acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us nothing; but to derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy, though the causes of those principles were not yet discovered; and therefore I scruple not to propose the principles of motion above mentioned, they being of very large extent, and leave their causes to be found out." (Optics, Query XXXI at the end of the second edition.) So the descriptive theories of astrology, the relations that have been discovered and exploited over a period of thousands of years, may not lend themselves to an explanation in terms of causes any more than Newton's laws of motion do. The human mind seeks "causes" (at least in the West), but Nature herself may be indifferent to them. The Eastern vision of an harmonious universe with all its interconnected parts dancing in unison may be more in line with reality.

11.5) Don't you guys know that tests of groups of astrologers show they do no better than chance? Therefore astrology does not work.

Answer: The same is said of investment managers. From the Economist for March 7, 1992, p. 81: "Numerous studies suggest that `exceptional' investment managers do not exist. In any given period, each has no more than an even chance of doing better than the market index; moreover, a manager who does well one year is no likelier than others to do well in the next. A few funds may beat the index for, say, three years running, but these are no more common than chance would predict. Give a sample of coin-tossers three coins each. If they obey the laws of probability, one in either will toss three heads." Does this mean there is no such thing as good investment advice? The question of the standard of practice in the profession and of the validity of the discipline are not the same, and should not be confused. Do the best astrologers participate in such tests? Given that astrology is not a closed profession, can testing groups of people where the only criterion for selection is that they say they are astrologers really say anything about astrology? Given these sort of ground rules for the test, would a good astrologer decide to participate? Even if highly qualified astrologers agreed to participate in a study, did the specific test administered give the astrologers a fair shot at accuracy (e.g., if they are asked to match charts with people, are they allowed to get to know the people well and learn about their lives and personal history in detail, or are they allowed just a brief chat with the people)? It would be very hard to answer any of these questions with an unqualified "Yes." The talent of practitioners and the validity of the discipline they practice must not be confused. And scientific tests conducted by those attempting to "debunk" astrology must be evaluated with as much critical attention as any other scientific study. The tests must be fair. The conditions of the tests must be conducive to finding an effect if any is possible. They must not be arranged so that finding an effect is impossible simply by virtue of the experimental design. One must be very careful in drawing conclusions from a *lack* of evidence (either because of negative findings or because no studies have been conducted). The failure to find an effect does not mean that the hypothesis is false. It just means that one hasn't found evidence in favour of it. Nothing more, nothing less. But if one *does* find an effect, then one has evidence in support of the hypothesis (and any other hypothesis that would make the same prediction, whether or not that hypothesis is currently available). So there is an asymmetry that is rarely recognised: evidence (data) can support an experimental hypothesis, but a lack of evidence cannot refute it (even if the lack of evidence is in the form of failure to find a predicted effect, e.g., a difference between samples). The possibility always remains that our experimental design is flawed and/or our measurement techniques are inappropriate and so they fail to capture the effect. In psychology, where measurement is often very difficult and indirect (as it is in much astrological research), one can fail to find evidence to support a particular hypothesis even after years of experimentation. Then some clever researcher invents a new measurement technique, or creates a new experimental design more favourable for the emergence of the phenomenon of interest, and the predicted effect emerges! Note that many scientific astrological studies that do not focus on the ability of individual astrologers (e.g., to match charts to people) have found positive results that are replicable. (See # 4.4.) The elements of subjectivity and interpretive ability are missing from these studies because they concentrate on objective measures (e.g., the presence/absence of a planet in a certain area of the chart for a certain group of people) and so effects are easier to observe. As any experimental psychologist will confirm, subjective judgments are fraught with error, and the unreliability in such measures vastly reduces the success rate of experimental studies.

11.6) Don't you guys know that astrology makes an infinity of claims? You could never test them all. Therefore we can dismiss it out of hand.

Answer: Any non-trivial field makes an infinity of claims. If you wished to refute physics you could not track down every prediction it makes. This does not mean physics is not a science. In verifying physics, you look at the basics. If they hold up, you consider it basically valid, and then attempt to replicate more abstruse claims. You will never be able to replicate every claim implied by physics.

11.7) Don't you guys know that you can't really prove a negative, such as astrology never working, anyway? Therefore we can dismiss it out of hand.

Answer: That a negative cannot be proven hardly constitutes a refutation of astrology. The argument above reduces to "a negative cannot be proven, therefore all negatives are false". If you want to be strict, you must accept that all negatives must be taken as possibly true, forever. It is not legitimate to say, "a negative cannot be proved, therefore all negatives that seem weird to me are false." That is simply clothing a prejudice in pseudo-scientific language.

11.8) Legitimate scientists (or educated people, etc., etc.) universally despise astrology. Can such a weight of opinion be wrong?

Answer: Yes. Easily. Examples in the social sciences of educated opinion doing a total about-face are common. Racialist theories, now despised by almost all those in academe, were orthodox before World War II, as just one example. In the health sciences as well, practices such as phrenology, acupuncture, hypnotism and chiropractic have all crossed in one direction or another the line that separates respected science from despised pseudo-science. If astrology does so too, it will definitely not be the first time, and probably not the last. This question is based on an appeal to authority and, as such, is an example of a common fallacy in reasoning. Plausibility based on current world views is a poor guide to the nature of reality, but scientists, being human, are as fallible as the rest of us in embracing modern views with undue passion. (Humans have a deep need to feel they understand things. The unknown is a source of fear, so many choose to deny it. But the unknown is only unreal for those who are omniscient. For those of us who are less than omniscient, humility is in order in any discussion of the nature of reality.)

11.9) Why don't astrologers consider the fact that when the Sun is in the sign of Aries, it is not really in the constellation Aries?

Answer: This is due to the phenomenon known as "the precession of the equinoxes." The equinoxes are the points in time and space at which the earth, with its tilted axis, is positioned with respect to the Sun in such a way that the length of day and night are equal. About 10 percent of astrologers in the world (tropical astrologers, most of whom are in western countries), base their work on a zodiac with sign boundaries determined by the equinoxes and solstices rather than the constellations. At the vernal equinox, which occurs on about March 20th of each year, the Sun enters into the sign of Aries in this zodiac. The signs are not defined by the constellations. The zodiac positioned with respect to the equinoxes and solstices is called the "tropical zodiac." (A zodiac based loosely on the constellations, which is called the "sidereal zodiac," is used primarily by Hindu astrologers. The first sign contains the constellation Aries, and the zodiac has 12 equal signs of 30 degrees each, like the tropical zodiac, but the position of this zodiac is determined with respect to certain marker or "fiducial" stars.) The equinoxes are precessing backwards with respect to the fixed stars by about one degree every 72 years. Approximately two thousand years ago, the beginning of the tropical sign of Aries was aligned with the beginning of the sidereal sign of Aries (perhaps around 217 C.E.).

Astrologers using the tropical zodiac do not do so out of ignorance of the precession. Knowledge of the precession is very ancient, and possibly predates the creation of the tropical zodiac. Precession was discovered thousands of years ago in Bharat (also known as India). Later, Sir Norman Lockyer found that many very early temples in Egypt had been moved at different periods in history so that they lined up with a particular star as it precessed across the sky. Also, the Egyptians had a succession of cults that adopted symbols (e.g., the bull, the ram) associated with the concurrent precessional age (see # 5.2). (See, for e.g., E. C. Krupp, In Search of Ancient Astronomies, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977.) (Note that early Christian symbolism was dominated by fishes, the symbol associated with Pisces, which is the constellation that defines the precessional age that began around the birth of Christ; see C. G. Jung, Aion, translated by R. F. C. Hull, 2nd edition, Princeton: University Press, 1959; modern-day Christians in America sometimes use a fish symbol to signal their Christianity; the fish symbol is often attached to their car or place of business. So perhaps an attraction to a symbol associated with the astrological age in which one lives need not be accompanied by conscious knowledge about the age and the precession that defines it.) The ancient Greek astrological writers (e.g., Ptolemy) were very explicit in distinguishing the tropical zodiac they used from the fixed stars and constellations (see below). This distinction is still made among modern western astrologers who use the tropical zodiac.

Why do the tropical signs have the same names and symbols as the constellations with which they were aligned 2000 years ago? Aren't the zodiacal constellations the source of the meanings of the tropical signs? And so shouldn't astrologers take the meaning of a tropical sign from the constellation most closely aligned with it now? This argument is based on the presupposition that the meanings of the signs come from the natures of the symbols in the heavens that we call constellations. But clearly this is not the case. Some of the most dominant traits of Virgo are obsession with detail and an analytical and critical nature. How could these traits be derived from a picture of a virgin? How could the Piscean qualities of spirituality, selflessness, imaginativeness, capacity for inspiration, femininity, and idealism be derived from a picture of two fish? Few traits of each sign can easily be related to the symbol assigned to the constellation of the same name.

There is no necessity, given current knowledge, for the tropical signs to have received their meanings from the zodiacal constellations; it is possible that the nature of the tropical signs suggested a symbol to associate with a constellation (since most of the symbols look very little like the pattern of stars we associate with them). Much depends on which was established first, the tropical signs or the zodiacal constellations. When did the tropical zodiac and constellations appear? The tropical zodiac may have been around a long time. The Sumerians and the Egyptians had a tropical (luni-solar) calendar by the early part of the third millennium B.C.E. (see below); given the direct and transparent relationship between the signs of the tropical zodiac and the months of the solar year, they may have had a tropical zodiac as well, although we have no direct evidence of this. Tropical calendars in the form of standing stones (e.g., Stonehenge) date from 1000-5000 B.C.E. in Northwest Europe, so a tropical zodiac might have existed there. Unfortunately, the preliterate people of these cultures left no records behind. Martin Seymour-Smith (The New Astrologer, New York: Collier, 1981) claims that some sort of zodiac, possibly sidereal, with 12 equal signs of 30 degrees, existed in India in 3000 B.C.E. He claims that a manuscript (in Sanskrit) from that period shows that astrologers then used a zodiac, an equal house system, and aspects counted sign to sign (as in much modern-day Hindu astrology, and as in classical Greek astrology). Unfortunately, Seymour-Smith does not cite any references or explain how the dating of the manuscript was arrived at. If the dating is correct, then the existence of a tropical zodiac may predate 3000 B.C.E., given the likely origin of the sidereal zodiac in a tropical zodiac (see below). However, this dating is suspicious, given other information suggesting that the zodiac was transmitted to the Indians from Babylonia through the Hellenistic Greeks (e.g., the fact that the Indian names of the signs are either corruptions of the Greek names or translations of them; see W. M. O'Neil, Time and the Calendars, Sydney: University Press, 1975). It is more likely that the zodiac was imported to India in the first half of the first millennium B.C.E., when a calendar based on the passage of the Sun through the signs was instituted (O'Neil, 1975). Though the calendar (and the zodiac) was initially tied to the equinoxes and solstices, the signs were allowed to precess, with the Aries point becoming fixed, relative to the stars, between 285 C.E. (The Indian Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac for the Year 1967, Calcutta: Government of India Press, p. 389) and 450 C.E. (R. Sewell & S. B. Dikshit, The Indian Calendar, London: Swan Sonneschein, 1896, p. 9).

The origin of the modern constellations is somewhat obscure, so it is very difficult to decide whether all of the zodiacal constellations were around to lend meaning to the tropical signs at the time when the tropical zodiac was created (especially because we cannot be certain when the tropical zodiac appeared). Noonan (1976; Journal of Geocosmic Research, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 6-7) claims that the first zodiac of the constellations appeared around 500 B.C.E. Some of the zodiacal constellations are clearly older than this, although there is no evidence that they collectively formed a zodiac, per se, in earlier periods. Some of them were used, though, as markers for decans (one-third divisions of the month); their heliacal risings coincided, during a certain era, with decans; see below. This fact has led some authors to the conclusion that the Babylonians originally had 36 zodiacal constellations, but it is unlikely that the Babylonians themselves thought of their decan markers in this way; many of the markers (or fiducials) are individual stars. S. Langdon (Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars, London: Oxford University Press, 1935) provides a list of the marker stars and constellations used for the decans after 1100 B.C.E.; these provide evidence for the existence, at that time, of the following zodiacal constellations (and I include only those that had the same symbol as the modern one): Taurus (the Bull of Heaven), Gemini (the Great Twins; possibly just Castor and Pollux, rather than the whole constellation), Cancer (the Destroyer/Crab), Virgo (or at least Spica, depicted as a maiden holding an ear of corn), Libra (the Scales), Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn (the Fish Goat), Pisces (the Fish Cord or Tails). (Leo was "Water Dog," and Aquarius was "Fish Man," although it may have been a water-bearer pouring water towards the Southern fish, as opposed to a man who is part fish. Aries was "The Hireling"; the Babylonians did not see a ram in the heavens; see Langdon, 1935.) We can be certain that the modern constellations of the zodiac existed by about 30 B.C.E. because they appear very clearly on the ceiling of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera in Upper Egypt (although the Crab is replaced by the Scarab Beetle). An earlier representation of the zodiacal constellations appeared in the temple at Esna in Upper Egypt, which is thought to date from 246 B.C.E. or later (see Krupp, 1977).

Although the time of creation of the tropical zodiac is unknown, it has very clear origins in ancient calendars. By about 3000 B.C.E., the Sumerians had a calendar with twelve months, one for each of 12 cycles of the Moon (from the first appearance of the New Moon after sunset to its last day of invisibility) in one solar year. (See Langdon, 1935.) The Egyptians also had twelve months, each of which began on the day after the last visible crescent Moon before the sun rose (see R. A. Parker, The Calendars of Ancient Egypt, Chicago: University Press, 1950). Note that the word "month" is related to the word "Moon." For the Sumerians (and other peoples of later cultures), the year began at the New Moon nearest the equinox. The Sumerians estimated the length of the Moon's cycle to be over 29 days, and so they allotted 30 days to each month. (The Egyptians determined, on a monthly basis, whether a given month would be 29 or 30 days in length; this practice was also observed in Babylonia and Assyria, at least in later periods; see R. C. Thompson, The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon in the British Museum, London: Luzac and Co., 1900; the Egyptians later adopted a solar calendar, their civil calendar, with 30 days in each month; see Krupp, 1977). This calendar, with 12 months of 30 days, was translated, at some point, into a zodiac with 12 signs of 30 degrees. This system of division is used for the sidereal zodiac as well, suggesting that it has its origins in a tropical zodiac or calendar. The Sumerians, like the ancient Greeks, always counted in discrete units; units could not be divided. As a result, the Moon's cycle had to be 29 or 30 days, with the day as the basic unit of counting; it could not be 29.5 days. Similarly, the year could not consist of 12.4 cycles of the Moon (the next largest unit of time), so it was made to consist of 12; the days left over in the year were used for a New Year festival; sometimes an intercalary (extra) month was inserted between months when the months began to cross too far outside the boundaries of the solar year (see O'Neil, 1975; the Egyptians did the same at one time; see Parker, 1950). The Sumerian tropical calendar is thus an idealisation of the yearly, monthly, and daily cycles of the Sun, Moon, and Earth respectively, such that the shorter cycles fit into the larger ones an integral number of times (i.e., 30 days in one month; 12 months in one year).

How did the ancients get from a calendar to a tropical zodiac? Presumably via marker stars. (See O'Neil, 1975.) For each one- third of a month (or "decan," a 10-day interval), the Sumerians identified a bright star or a constellation that rose heliacally in concomitance with the onset of the time period. (To rise heliacally means to rise with the Sun, Helios, or rather several degrees before the Sun, so as to be just visible before the Sun rises -- having just emerged from a period of hiding in the Sun's rays.) It is a fairly small (though profound) conceptual step from stars/constellations that heliacally rise at a certain time of year to divisions of the heavens demarcated by those stars/constellations. Positions specified in terms of tropical signs would readily permit the computation of arcs between planets or points; the zodiacal system may have been adopted by Babylonian astronomers for that reason -- although they continued to specify positions of planets with respect to bright stars and constellations (both zodiacal constellations and extrazodiacal ones, such as Orion; see, e.g., O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd edition, New York: Dover, 1969, pp. 102-103).

The calendaric origin of the tropical zodiac is evidenced in classical Greek thinking. Plato, in the Timaeus (39), describes the day (i.e., the diurnal cycle, or what he calls motion in the "circle of the same" because of the constancy of the day-night cycle, the daily cycle of the Sun) as the basic unit for measuring the movements of the planets along the ecliptic; this shows a conceptual link between a day and a degree. One of the few predictive techniques used by the ancient Greeks was the technique of primary directions; this technique equates a degree of right ascension with a year in the life, where the degree of right ascension is computed on the basis of the ascensional time of a sign (i.e., the time it takes for a sign, projected onto the celestial equator, to cross the meridian). By making use of ascensional times, which are fractions of the diurnal cycle, this technique rests on a unit that is tied to the daily cycle, the basic unit of the calendar. Further, many Greek astrologers directed against the order of the signs, in keeping with the direction of motion observed in the diurnal cycle. (See R. Schmidt & R. Hand, Project Hindsight Companion to the Greek Track, Berkeley Springs, WV: Golden Hind Press, 1994, p. 17; Paulus Alexandrinus, Introductory Matters, translated by R. Schmidt, Berkeley Springs, WV: Golden Hind Press, p. 76, footnote by Rob Hand.) The use of a day, versus a degree (1/360 of the zodiac), as a unit of measure persists into modern times in the use of a predictive technique known as "secondary progression"; in this technique, one day after the birth is taken as equivalent (symbolically) to one year in the life. Scholarly estimates of the time of the creation of a tropical zodiac range from 700 B.C.E. (B. L. van der Waerden, "History of the zodiac," Archiv fur Orientforschung, 16, 1953, 218-230) to 400 B.C.E. (Neugebauer, 1969). Such estimates are not terribly out of line with the prediction one can generate from the hypothesis that the zodiac has its origin in a luni-solar (tropical) calendar. If the tropical zodiac arose initially out of a sidereal zodiac with signs demarcated by the old decan markers, then this zodiac, when created, would have the vernal point (i.e., 0 Aries in our tropical zodiac) at about 15 degrees of Aries; this is because the decan marker stars would be 10-20 degrees behind the Sun when they heliacally rose to signal the beginnings of decans. There is, in fact, evidence that the first zodiac had the vernal point at 15 Aries (see, e.g., J. Lindsay, Origins of Astrology, 1971). Further, various ancient authors give the vernal point as 15 Aries (Neugebauer, 1969, p. 188), though some give 8 Aries (indicating, perhaps, an adjustment in the value based on later observations; by around 150 C.E., Vettius Valens was still giving 8 Aries as the vernal point, so such adjustments appear to have been infrequent). With precession occurring at a rate of about 1 degree in 72 years, this gives an interval of about 1080 years between the creation of the zodiac and the time when the sidereal and tropical signs came into perfect alignment. That occurred, according to Cyril Fagan, in 221 C.E., giving a time of creation of the zodiac of 859 B.C.E.

The scholarly estimates are also reasonably plausible in that a sign sharing a name with a constellation would be sufficiently close to coincidence with the constellation in the first millennium B.C.E. that the signs could plausibly take their names from those constellations. The fact that the names of the months were not assigned to the signs suggests a real shift in thinking from a division in time to a division of the heavens. But one would be hard pressed to argue that the signs got their *meaning* from the constellations, when the signs originated in months, and the months originated in the age of Taurus at the very latest. If the meaning attributed to a constellation and a sign happen to coincide, this could be explained by the fact that the first associations of meanings with stars and constellations were tied to heliacal risings and settings. Robert Schmidt argues that the Sun was believed, at least by the Hellenistic Greeks, to "give signs" (episemainei) when a star (or constellation) was heliacally rising or setting, not when it was in conjunction with the star(s) (see his preface in Ptolemy's The Phases of the Fixed Stars, translated by R. Schmidt, edited by R. Hand, Berkeley Springs, WV: Golden Hind Press, 1993). A star or constellation that is heliacally rising has its eastern edge at a point that is behind the Sun; for the brightest stars, heliacal rising occurs when the star is about 10 or 12 degrees behind the Sun (see Ptolemy's Almagest and The Phases of the Fixed Stars), and for other major stars, about 15 degrees; but dimmer stars, such as those in the Pleiades of Taurus, may be more than 20 degrees behind the Sun when they heliacally rise (see O'Neil, 1975; a star or constellation may even be 30 degrees behind the Sun when it heliacally rises; see Krupp, 1977). For purposes of discussion, let us assume, contrary to fact, that each zodiacal constellation coincides in length of arc perfectly with a sign in the sidereal zodiac. We don't know if a constellation was said to be heliacally rising when the star at its western edge rose heliacally, when the first bright star in it rose, or when the whole constellation was visible. Let us assume that stars in the whole sidereal sign, the whole 30-degree slice of the sky overlapping with the constellation, were visible at the time of heliacal rising, and that the eastern boundary was at least 20 degrees behind the Sun. Now, a 20-degree gap between the Sun and a pattern of stars that is heliacally rising has an interesting implication: At a time one third into the age of Taurus (i.e., at the one-third mark of the period from around 4100 B.C.E. to 1940 B.C.E., when the equinox occurred while the Sun was in the sidereal sign of Taurus), or around 3380 B.C.E., at the beginning of the first month, when the Sun was near zero of our tropical Aries, the western edge of the sidereal sign Aries in which the constellation Aries resides would be at 10 Aquarius in our tropical zodiac, and the eastern edge would be at 10 Pisces, so that the constellation would be heliacally rising at the equinox, and so that the sidereal sign containing the constellation that later came to be known as the Ram would be overlapping with our tropical Aquarius and Pisces. In the age of Aries, at the time when the tropical zodiac was created, the constellations that rose heliacally at the beginning of a month during the age of Taurus would be beginning to move into alignment with the tropical signs that share their name, reaching perfect alignment around 221 C.E. (according to Fagan). So the meanings of the months that had been fixed during the age of Taurus could have been projected onto the constellations whose heliacal risings coincided with the months during that era, such that the constellation Aries, which was heliacally rising during much of the age of Taurus, could have taken on the character of the first month of the tropical year. That constellation could then, in turn, lend its acquired character to the tropical sign with which it overlapped during the Aries period. Langdon (1935) claims that the constellations were, in fact, given a symbol that was related to the monthly myths and festivals; the calendar originated in the same era as the myths and festivals (i.e., from before 3000 B.C.E.). It is certain that the symbol of the corn goddess holding an ear of corn, the symbol that we have come to call Virgo, was related to the harvest month in Sumeria (late July and August; see Langdon, 1935); Spica (`ear of corn') in Virgo was heliacally rising in the harvest month during the age of Taurus in which the relations between months and constellations were established. The relation between a bull and fertility, the quality that characterises Spring, is obvious. In the month after the Autumnal Equinox, the Babylonians believed that the dead and the living were judged and the fates were fixed; this "weighing" suggested scales as a symbol for the constellation rising at that time (Langdon, 1935). (The origins of the monthly myths and festivals, and of the specific attributions of characters to the months, are sometimes obscure.) So, for at least a subset of the zodiacal constellations, a symbol was assigned to them in accordance with the month of their heliacal rising. For others, the gestalten we call constellations may have received their symbols purely on the basis of their appearance (e.g. the Crab, which the Egyptians pictured as a Scarab Beetle). Ptolemy, among other astrological writers of the classical period, traced the natures of the tropical signs to seasonal variations in the quality of the environment. The four seasons, from Spring to Winter, are characterised, he argued, by the qualities wet, hot, dry, and cold respectively. He then went on to give an explanation for the zodiac beginning at the vernal equinox: ". . . There being no single beginning of the zodiac by nature as it is a circle, they postulate that the twelfth-part starting from the spring equinox, that of Aries, is also the starting point of them all, making the wet excess of the spring be the initial cause of the zodiac, as though of a living thing, and making the remaining seasons [the causes] for what comes next [in the zodiac]. This is because the first age of all living things, almost like the spring, has a surplus of wetness, being tender and still delicate. And the second age, which is up to the prime of life, has its surplus in the hot, almost like the summer. And the third age, which is already past the prime and at the beginning of the decay, already has its surplus in the dry, almost like the autumn. And the last age, which is near dissolution, has its excess in the cold, as does the winter" (Tetrabiblos I.10, translation by R. Schmidt, edited by R. Hand, Berkeley Springs, WV: Golden Hind Press, 1994, p. 25). Here, Ptolemy compares the zodiac to a living thing, and shows a correspondence between the seasons and the phases of life, one that is revealed through assignments of the qualities. (Note that the four qualities, wet, hot, dry, and cold have meanings other than their concrete ones.) The Greek word for a sign, "zoidion" (plural "zoidia") means `living thing' (but also `image'; see Schmidt's discussion of "zoidion" in the preface to his translation of Paulus Alexandrinus's Introductory Matters, Berkeley Springs, WV: Golden Hind Press, 1993; see also Schmidt's preface to his translation of Vettius Valens's The Anthology: Book I, edited by R. Hand, Berkeley Springs, WV: Golden Hind Press, 1993). For the Greeks, the zodiac was literally alive, so Ptolemy's comparison is not just a metaphor. Readers familiar with Aristotle's ideas about transformations among elements and their qualities (e.g., Generation and Corruption) will understand that Ptolemy is claiming that the solar cycle is a chain of causality between pairs of qualities. (Aristotle himself would not have allowed transformations among isolated qualities, but only among elements, which each had a pair of qualities; transformations are driven by contraries, so there is no way to get a continuous cycle of change from sequences of qualities where they are not all contraries of one another, e.g., where hot and cold are contraries, and wet and dry are contraries, but where, say, hot and wet are not contraries.) Ptolemy goes on to give seasonal reasons for the natures of the three signs, one of each mode (cardinal/tropical and equipartite, fixed/solid, mutable/bicorporeal), that make up each season: "Now, the more general mixtures for each of them are analogous to the seasons which arise in them, but some of their peculiarities are also established from their congeniality with the Sun and the Moon [i.e., their "sect," diurnal or nocturnal] and the [planets] [i.e., their rulers, those exalted in them, etc.], which we will recount in the following sections, setting first the powers of the twelfth-parts themselves alone in their purity, regarded by themselves and in relation to each other. The first distinctions, then, are of the so-called tropical, equipartite, solid, and bicorporeal twelfth-parts. Now, two are tropical, the first thirty degree interval from the summer tropic, that of Cancer, and the first from the winter tropic, that along Capricorn. These have received their names from an accident [i.e., concomitant property]; for, the Sun turns when he comes to be at the beginnings of them, reversing in the opposite direction of his latitudinal passage, causing summer in Cancer and winter in Capricorn. And two are called equipartite, the first twelfth-part from the spring equipartition, that of Aries, and the one from the autumn equipartition, that of the Claws [i.e., Libra, the Scales, which coincides with the claws of the Scorpion]. These, again, have been named from an accident, since when the Sun comes to be at the beginning of them, he makes the nights everywhere equal to the days. Of the remaining eight twelfth-parts, four are called solid, and four are called bicorporeal. And those following the tropical and equipartite twelfth-parts are solid, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, since the wetness, hotness, dryness, and coldness of the seasons that begin in those preceding twelfth-parts bear down upon us more firmly when the Sun comes to be in these twelfth-parts, not because the conditions naturally arising at that time are more unmixed, but rather after we have already continued a long time in them, we also for that reason perceive their power more sensibly. Those following the solid twelfth-parts are bicorporeal, Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces because of being in between the solid and tropical and equipartite twelfth-parts, and, as it were, sharing the specific natural characteristics of the two states of weather at their ends and at their beginnings" (pp. 27-28). (If the reader is confused by the description of Virgo as bicorporeal, note that the ancient symbol for Virgo is a fruitful mother goddess of the harvest; her fruitfulness is associated with her motherhood, and she is often represented as a mother with her child, as in late depictions of the Virgin Mary with her son. In ancient Rome and Greece, Virgo was identified with Ceres/Demeter, the corn goddess, and mother of Persephone. So the bicorporeality is the mother and child, or the mother and an ear of grain as her progeny. A Sumerian myth, "The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi," includes a reference to Inanna, portrayed as a fertility goddess, giving birth to grain: "I poured out plants from my womb. . . . I poured out grain from my womb"; see D. Wolkstein & S. N. Kramer, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, New York: Harper & Row, 1983, p. 40. Inanna was often identified with Virgo.) Later, Ptolemy (Tetrabiblos, I.22) makes explicit the source of the signs' meanings in seasonal phenomena: "But that it is indeed reasonable to start the twelfth-parts and the boundaries from the tropical and equipartite points -- that we will not omit, as it happens to be worth dwelling over. This is both because the writers [i.e., ancient authorities] in a certain fashion make this clear, and especially because we see from the previous demonstrations that the natures and powers and [planetary] affiliations of the twelfth-parts and boundaries derive their cause from the tropical and equipartite origins and not from any other starting points. For, if other starting points are assumed, we will either be forced no longer to use the natures of the zoidia in prognostication, or else, if we use them, we will be forced to make mistakes because of the overlappings and separations of the intervals that secure the powers in them" (p. 45). The bulk of the evidence suggests that the meanings, symbols and names for the signs had their ultimate origin in the months of the luni-solar calendar of the Mesopotamians (and, later, of the Greeks), the precursor of the tropical zodiac. The tropical signs are, then, the spatial equivalents of ideal months (i.e., months equal to exactly 1/12 of a year, divided into 30 ideal days, each equal to exactly 1/30 of an ideal month). The signs of the tropical zodiac appear to have received their character indirectly from the months of the tropical calendar, and their names and symbols from constellations coinciding with them when the zodiac was created; because the constellations typically received their names and symbols from a consideration of the natures of the months that, at one time, coincided with their heliacal risings, these names and symbols were of a character appropriate for the tropical signs with which they came to overlap.

Back to Maggie McPherson Memorial