The 13th Zodiac??

[DivineAthena]

A friend of mine said something about a 13th Zodiac called Ophiuchus, the snake spearer. Anyone know anything about it? Does one actually use it? Acording to a chart he showed me it pushed at the whole system so that it makes me a Libra instead of a Scorpio, which I think is strange. Is it commonly used at all, or are most people into the old version with 12 signs? Would you actually say that someone is a Ophiuchus if they were born during that time? I'm confused, I've allways seen the starsigns as something that doesn't change, that might be more spiritual then actually physical and such...

[Fluffmeister]

A friend of mine said something about a 13th Zodiac called Ophiuchus, the snake spearer. Anyone know anything about it? Does one actually use it? Acording to a chart he showed me it pushed at the whole system so that it makes me a Libra instead of a Scorpio, which I think is strange. Is it commonly used at all, or are most people into the old version with 12 signs? Would you actually say that someone is a Ophiuchus if they were born during that time? I'm confused, I've allways seen the starsigns as something that doesn't change, that might be more spiritual then actually physical and such...

Ophiuchus is a constellation, but not a sign. This is the way it works.

The Babylonians probably invented astrology, and it started by looking for omens. You see a comet in the sky, and two days later the king gets overthrown - so comets=bad. Then the next time a comet appears, nothing happens. This is puzzling, but then you realise that the planet Ishtar (we call her Venus) is shining brightly - so, you surmise, Ishtar is protecting your community from the evil comet. Before long, you have a whole catalogue of omens based on what's happening in the sky.

You then need to devise a way of saying whereabouts in the sky a particular planet is, and saying "it's a little above and to the left of those three close stars that are always together" gets a bit messy. So, how do they describe it?

Well, the planets are all gods if you're an ancient Babylonian. Shamash, the Sun god, drove his chariot through the sky by day - and the Sun follows a regular path through the sky. This is obviously the road of the gods (though we moderns call this path "the ecliptic").

Now at night, you can't see this road - but it's obviously still there, because you notice the other gods in the sky are always pretty close to this road (the technical reason for this is simple - if you look at our solar system from the outside, the planets are all in pretty much the same plane - you'll never see Mars high up near the Plough/Big Dipper for instance - all the planets lie close to the ecliptic). So this "road of the gods" is extremely important.

So to describe where Marduk (Jupiter), or Nergal (Mars) or Ninurta (Saturn) are, I just need to tell you whereabouts on this road the god is.

The Babylonians were pretty obsessesed with the numbers 12 and 30 (it's why we still have 12 months in a year, and divide our hours and minutes into 60 portions). So it was natural for them to divide the ecliptic up into 12 equal segments.

Inside each segment was a group of stars - now you can make pretty much any shape you want out of a set of dots, and that's what the Babylonians did. This 30 degree segment of the ecliptic contains some stars where if you join the dots it looks like a bull; that segment looks a bit like a lion and so on.

Now, the actual constellations that astronomers use today aren't all exactly 30 degrees - Pisces is big and sprawling, Aquarius is much thinner - but since we're not really interested in constellations, only the bit of the gods' road where a planet is, this doesn't matter. The Babylonians divided the ecliptic into twelve equal parts. At the time, each 30 degree segment roughly corresponded to a constellation - so the segment called "Leo" contained most of the constellation called Leo. Over the centuries this has drifted, so the bit of the ecliptic we call Aries now contains a mixture of stars from the constellations Pisces and Aquarius.

The other thing that has happened over the centuries, is that the ecliptic now doesn't just run through the 12 zodiac constellations, it now touches some of the stars in the constellation of Ophiucus too, so there are 13 constellations that the ecliptic touches now instead of 12.

However, from the perspective of telling you where a planet is, this is irrelevant. Astrologers don't use constellations in general - we use signs. These aren't the same as constellations, they just happen to share the same names. In fact, you can do astrology perfectly well without referring to signs - I could say that Mars is currently 348 degrees along the ecliptic from the Vernal Equinox point. Most astrologers would call this position 18 Pisces. It doesn't matter what notation we use, the planets are still in the same places - so astrologers still divide the 360 degree circle into 12 equal segments of 30 degrees each, and call each segment a "sign". It would be possible to divide the 360 degree circle into 13 unequal segments, but the notation would be messy - Pisces and Aquarius overlap somewhat, for instance, so a planet could be described as 28 degrees from the constellation of Aquarius or 6 degrees from the constellation of Pisces, and mean the same point! In this confusing notation, it would be feasible to say a planet was currently at 4 degrees of Ophiucus, but it would be extremely difficult to do any astrology (for instance, using standard notation we know that 4 Libra is opposite 4 Aries - this wouldn't be true using constellation notation, because the constellations aren't exactly 30 degrees each and don't line up that neatly).

It would probably avoid confusion if astrologers could come up with different names for the signs, so that people didn't confuse them with constellations. So we could rename the sign of Gemini to "The Cellphone" leaving the name "Gemini" to refer purely to the constellation of Gemini with its stars Castor and Pollux, and Capricorn could be renamed "The Business Executive" and so on :D

[KEishin]

It would probably avoid confusion if astrologers could come up with different names for the signs, so that people didn't confuse them with constellations. So we could rename the sign of Gemini to "The Cellphone" leaving the name "Gemini" to refer purely to the constellation of Gemini with its stars Castor and Pollux, and Capricorn could be renamed "The Business Executive" and so on :D

Nice!! So I'm a Cellphone rising. Explains last month's cheque to the phone company! :veryweird

[Evendusk]

Ophiuchus is a constellation, but not a sign. This is the way it works.

The Babylonians probably invented astrology, and it started by looking for omens. You see a comet in the sky, and two days later the king gets overthrown - so comets=bad. Then the next time a comet appears, nothing happens. This is puzzling, but then you realise that the planet Ishtar (we call her Venus) is shining brightly - so, you surmise, Ishtar is protecting your community from the evil comet. Before long, you have a whole catalogue of omens based on what's happening in the sky.

You then need to devise a way of saying whereabouts in the sky a particular planet is, and saying "it's a little above and to the left of those three close stars that are always together" gets a bit messy. So, how do they describe it?

Well, the planets are all gods if you're an ancient Babylonian. Shamash, the Sun god, drove his chariot through the sky by day - and the Sun follows a regular path through the sky. This is obviously the road of the gods (though we moderns call this path "the ecliptic").

Now at night, you can't see this road - but it's obviously still there, because you notice the other gods in the sky are always pretty close to this road (the technical reason for this is simple - if you look at our solar system from the outside, the planets are all in pretty much the same plane - you'll never see Mars high up near the Plough/Big Dipper for instance - all the planets lie close to the ecliptic). So this "road of the gods" is extremely important.

So to describe where Marduk (Jupiter), or Nergal (Mars) or Ninurta (Saturn) are, I just need to tell you whereabouts on this road the god is.

The Babylonians were pretty obsessesed with the numbers 12 and 30 (it's why we still have 12 months in a year, and divide our hours and minutes into 60 portions). So it was natural for them to divide the ecliptic up into 12 equal segments.

Inside each segment was a group of stars - now you can make pretty much any shape you want out of a set of dots, and that's what the Babylonians did. This 30 degree segment of the ecliptic contains some stars where if you join the dots it looks like a bull; that segment looks a bit like a lion and so on.

Now, the actual constellations that astronomers use today aren't all exactly 30 degrees - Pisces is big and sprawling, Aquarius is much thinner - but since we're not really interested in constellations, only the bit of the gods' road where a planet is, this doesn't matter. The Babylonians divided the ecliptic into twelve equal parts. At the time, each 30 degree segment roughly corresponded to a constellation - so the segment called "Leo" contained most of the constellation called Leo. Over the centuries this has drifted, so the bit of the ecliptic we call Aries now contains a mixture of stars from the constellations Pisces and Aquarius.

The other thing that has happened over the centuries, is that the ecliptic now doesn't just run through the 12 zodiac constellations, it now touches some of the stars in the constellation of Ophiucus too, so there are 13 constellations that the ecliptic touches now instead of 12.

However, from the perspective of telling you where a planet is, this is irrelevant. Astrologers don't use constellations in general - we use signs. These aren't the same as constellations, they just happen to share the same names. In fact, you can do astrology perfectly well without referring to signs - I could say that Mars is currently 348 degrees along the ecliptic from the Vernal Equinox point. Most astrologers would call this position 18 Pisces. It doesn't matter what notation we use, the planets are still in the same places - so astrologers still divide the 360 degree circle into 12 equal segments of 30 degrees each, and call each segment a "sign". It would be possible to divide the 360 degree circle into 13 unequal segments, but the notation would be messy - Pisces and Aquarius overlap somewhat, for instance, so a planet could be described as 28 degrees from the constellation of Aquarius or 6 degrees from the constellation of Pisces, and mean the same point! In this confusing notation, it would be feasible to say a planet was currently at 4 degrees of Ophiucus, but it would be extremely difficult to do any astrology (for instance, using standard notation we know that 4 Libra is opposite 4 Aries - this wouldn't be true using constellation notation, because the constellations aren't exactly 30 degrees each and don't line up that neatly).

It would probably avoid confusion if astrologers could come up with different names for the signs, so that people didn't confuse them with constellations. So we could rename the sign of Gemini to "The Cellphone" leaving the name "Gemini" to refer purely to the constellation of Gemini with its stars Castor and Pollux, and Capricorn could be renamed "The Business Executive" and so on :D


I wish the authors of the astrology books I've read wrote as clearly on the subject as you did!

[Pure Ahimsa]

Nice!! So I'm a Cellphone rising. Explains last month's cheque to the phone company! :veryweird


LOL

[DivineAthena]

Thanks so much for the great answer!

So simply put, there are 13 constelations that the sun passes through, but only 12 signs, yes? I shallt tell my friend so, and taunt him for me being right :P