You know, I could never really get into astrology. Which is weird, because I have literally never
been able to stop obsessing about the stars. True story - when I was in, like, third grade,
my school took us to a camp out in the middle of nowhere. Just like… thirty or forty
city kids gormlessly stumbling into the midwestern wilderness, tripping over ropes courses and
capcizing canoes. There was this nighttime activity that I don't remember the details
of at all, because when my group headed out into the night, I made the mistake of looking
up. As a city kid, I'd only ever seen, like… a dozen stars at a time, and the most I could
generally do was spot the big dipper or orion's belt or the summer triangle, the most boring asterism in the world. Well, that is not how the sky looks
outside of the city. I was so mesmerized that, again, true story, my group accidentally left
me behind and another group picked me up and I didn't notice anything was different for
hours. So yea, me and the stars, we go way back. Thanks for nearly getting me eaten by
coyotes! But I never really got astrology, because
astrology doesn't really care about the stars that much. It's like, we've got a sparkling
tapestry of infinite mystery, and I'm supposed to get invested in a fortune cookie. No thanks.
(wow, that's such a gemini thing to say-) I will CUT you.
But astrology aside, the zodiac is actually VERY interesting. So today let's talk about
stars, constellations, and why we've been obsessed with them since pretty much day one.
Now, astronomically speaking, the "zodiac" is the area of the sky that the sun, moon,
and planets apparently move through from the perspective of the earth. It's centered on
the ecliptic, the path the sun traces, and extends about eight degrees on either side.
And in rough alignment with that astronomical zodiac are the constellations of the zodiac,
twelve large constellations, each assigned a 30º segment of the full 360º of the zodiac
that the sun moves through over the course of the year. The zodiac starts with Aries,
and then continues through the rest of the zodiac constellations - Taurus, Gemini, Cancer,
Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Your zodiac sign is determined
by where the sun was on your birthday. Or… kinda. These constellations don't actually
perfectly align with the neat 30º partitions of the year. For instance, Aries and Libra
are tiny compared to most of the other signs so the sun spends way less time in them. There's
also a thirteenth constellation on the zodiac, Ophiucus, that's actually massive but gets
no credit because Scorpius and Sagittarius have that part of the year covered already.
And Leo's actually mostly above the ecliptic, with Regulus being the only star the sun gets
close to - it never acually passes through it. Plus, thanks to a little wobbling of the
earth's rotational axis, the equinoxes actually shift back very slightly every year, which
is called “Axial Precession” or “the precession of the equinoxes” - after a few
hundred years it's pretty noticeable that all your star charts are off. This is why
there was such a hullabaloo a while back when NASA announced that the stars had shifted
enough that some people's zodiac signs had changed! So this zodiac stuff is not an exact
science. In fact, it's not a science! But now that that's out of the way, let's dive
into how these constellations got set, and how their stories changed over time.
Our story begins, as so many do, in Babylon. Somewhere between 1300 and 1000 BCE, babylonian
astronomers catalogued a very comprehensive list of stars and constellations. This list
is generally referred to as MUL-APIN, named after the plough star which is first on the
list. In it, they set down the first official zodiac we have on record, containing seventeen
or eighteen constellations. Instead of evenly subdividing it into twelve parts for calendar
purposes, this list categorized all the constellations found on the ecliptic as part of the zodiac.
They start with the pleiades, a bright cluster of seven stars which they called "the star
cluster" or "the bristle". Very literal, no apparent associated myths just yet. Thanks
to axial precession, at the time, the sun passed through this point in the sky on the
vernal equinox, which is why it begins the list.
But the pleidaes star cluster is located in the constellation of taurus, and they definitely
had myths about that. This constellation was the bull of heaven, the mythical monster released
by Ishtar to battle Gilgamesh in retribution for his refusal to sleep with her. This is
a fun case where the constellation, which actually does noticeably resemble a horned
head, might have inspired the concept of the bull of heaven in the first place. In fact,
it's possible that the identification of this constellation with a bull is really, really
old, as there's a theory that some of the paleolithic bull paintings in the Caves of
Lascaux are a star map representing Taurus, which would set the identification of Taurus
with bulls as far back as 15,000 BCE. Anyway, the
next on their list is the loyal shepherd of heaven, the precursor to the constellation
of orion. This is another one where it's not a hundred percent clear what the associated
myth is - it's a star catalogue, not a theogony, and "loyal shepherd" is a bit vague. Now you
may note, Orion isn't actually on the zodiac - it’s “parazodiacal”, meaning it’s
near to the zodiac, and parazodiacal constellations actually do see some zodiac action when planets
pass through them, which is why they're included on the list.
That theme continues for the next couple figures, the old man, aka perseus, and the scimitar,
aka auriga. More parazodiacal constellations, and again, not much of a story behind it.
But finally we hit another familiar zodiac figure in the great twins, aka gemini. The
babylonian great twins represented two minor gods, Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea, twin guardians
of doorways and possibly guardians of the underworld, who would chop the dead into pieces
as they passed through the gates. Lugal-irra is always on the left, Meslamta-ea is always
on the right, and sometimes little effigies of them would be buried under doorways as
gateway guardians. That’s what I’m talking about!
Next up is a familiar crustacean. The Crayfish, now more generally considered to be the crab,
aka cancer, has been represented by a lot of different shellfish over the centuries.
In egypt it seems to have been a scarab beetle, babylonian boundary stones sometimes make
it look like a snapping turtle, it's even a scorpion sometimes, which is just confusing.
But once again, no real stories just yet. Next we have the lion, very unsurprisingly
the precursor to leo. One of the earliest recognized constellations, it's possible the
mesopotamians saw it as a lion as early as 4000 BCE, which might account for its unclear
mythology if it's been Lost To The Fog Of History. It's possible it's represented in
the mythology by the monster Humbaba, another critter killed by Gilgamesh. That's a busy
boy. Next up is the seed-furrow, soon to be virgo,
which to the babylonians represented the goddess Shala, deity of grain, fertility and compassion,
and was usually represented as a woman holding an armful of plants, or sometimes a massive
double-headed mace. I'm guessing you get the plants if you farm sustainably and the mace
if you don't remember to plant your nitrogen-fixing legumes.
Then we get the scales, aka libra, a small and unassuming constellation without a clear
shape that represents a lot of different things depending on who you ask - the egyptians saw
a boat, sometimes it's combined with the constellation scorpio to form its claws - but to the babylonians,
scales were very important, since they served as the sacred symbol of Shamash, patron god
of truth and justice and twin brother to Ishtar. The next constellation, The Scorpion, aka
scorpio, is pretty self-explanatory and doesn't seem to get much press from the babylonians
- it's very identifiable from the hooked tail, but it’s another one with no apparent mythology
at this point. But its lack of complexity is more than made
up for it by its successor, the future sagittarius, known to the babylonians as The Overseer or
Pabilsag and visually represented on boundary stones with the familiar centaur archer shape
- only it doesn't stop there. This dude also gets wings, a scorpion's tail, and a second
head resembling a panther. Bit of a mess, honestly! Now the overseer title isn't very
clear, but Pabilsag is a god - we don't know much about him because he's the consort of
Ninsun, the mother of gilgamesh, and thus a much bigger deal than he is. He might have
been a healer god, or possibly a hunter god, he might've been syncrestized with the underworld
god Nergal, it's all a bit confusing. He seems to have been combined with a lot of gods over
time, and his physical representation is a little uncertain.
Anyway, next up is the goat-fish, aka capricorn, a… goat-fish. Half goat, half fish, all
goat-fish. These little dudes were symbols of the babylonian god ea, god of water, creator
of humanity and really big deal. Speaking of whom, the next constellation,
the future aquarius, was known to the babylonians as Ea, The Great One, a dope-ass merman often
portrayed holding a huge overflowing vase of water. Ea was generally benevolent, but
as a water god he was also held responsible when destructive flooding occurred, so feelings
were a bit mixed about him. And I don't know if it's directly related, but the sun is in
Aquarius near the end of northern-hemisphere winter, which between the Tigris and the Euphrates
usually meant snowmelt from the mountains and occasional flooding.
Now things get a bit confusing when we hit pisces, because the babylonians subdivided
it into a few different constellations. First of all, the southwestern part of it is either
two constellations, known as the tail and the great swallow respectively, OR it's one
constellation called the tail of the great swallow. Sometimes cuneiform is a little more
art than science. But meanwhile, the rest of pisces was either
seen as a stag or as Ishtar herself, the queen of heaven, future Aphrodite and full-time
absolute queen. And right next door in the place of the future
aries was The Farm Worker, aka Tammuz, consort to Ishtar, part-time dead guy and full-time
shepherd. We've discussed Ishtar and Tammuz in more detail back in the Aphrodite video,
but suffice to say - she's a really big deal, he's a really big deal, together they can
be an even bigger deal. Coming this summer, one man's journey,
to the underworld, because he's super dead- Now while this star catalogue recognized way
more than twelve zodiacal constellations, the babylonians did assign a zodiacal constellation
to each of their pre-established twelve lunar months. This Babylonian calendar was then
brought to ancient greece by astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus in the early 300s BCE - although
the babylonian zodiac was apparently introduced way earlier, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood
Phoenician traders rolling up around the 700s BCE. The Ancient Greeks obviously had constellations
of their own before this - Homer references Orion, the Pleiades, Ursa Major, and a few
others, and Scorpio is connected to the Orion myth pretty solidly, not to mention a whole
cluster of Perseus-related constellations that seem to have no mythical babylonian parallels.
But the babylonian constellations seem to have been added after those greek constellations
were established, including all the central figures of the Zodiac. And - this is interesting,
because I've never seen anyone explicitly point this out - but a lot of Greek-adapted
Babylonian constellation myths are very specifically compiled in the labors of heracles. Now while
Heracles himself is a very ancient figure referenced by Homer in the Odyssey, and he
certainly predates the Phoenician influence by a wide margin, the story of his iconic
labors is actually much more recent. It was supposedly codified as late as 600 BCE in
a lost epic poem written by Peisander, with no known prior sources. So while heracles
himself predates the introduction of the babylonian constellations by a wide margin, the myth
of his labors seems to have been written shortly after their cultural introduction. And if
the labors were specifically being used to justify all these new constellations introduced
from Babylon, that'd explain why a solid half of them explicitly draw parallels to those
new constellations. It'd also help explain why there's very specifically twelve labors
- it's kind of an important number in the context of a yearly cycle.
Anyway, here's the quick rundown - Heracles starts with the Nemean Lion, which is directly
linked with the constellation Leo. Then the Lernaean Hydra, which goes to - you guessed
it - Hydra, which isn't on the zodiac but had a corresponding babylonian constellation,
the serpent. In fact, while fighting the Hydra, Hera summons a crab to distract heracles,
which he kills, and it becomes the constellation cancer, another babylonian zodiac myth accounted
for. Sagittarius isn't certain, but could easily be accounted for by Pholus, Heracles's
centaur friend who accidentally dies to a poison arrow. The ceryneian hind could easily
be the stag, the constellation that's sometimes also ishtar, aka pisces, while cleaning the
augean stables could have been a job for the water-bearer Aquarius, since flooding a river
is very much in line with Ea's job description. The Stymphalian Birds are theorized to be
a direct representation of Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra, a trio of bird-like constellations
that cluster in the northern sky, and sure enough, Aquila has a direct babylonian equivalent.
Capturing the Cretan bull is just Taurus again - and a contemporary mythographer, Acusilaus,
specifically drew that connection in the 500s BCE, just a few decades after the labors were
first supposedly codified. It really does line up way too well.
Now some of the labors don't have super obvious parallels - the Erymanthian Boar, the Mares
of Diomedes and the girdle of hippolyta don’t really have constellation parallels. And the
final three labours, where Heracles steals the cattle of geryon, retrieves the apples
of the hesperides and abducts Cerberos, are similarly not very starry.
Although, fun fact, those last three are still kind of astronomical. Geryon lives on the
island Erytheia, which was also supposedly home to the hesperides - the island of the
sunset. In fact, Heracles can only get there with Helios's help, lending him his sun-chariot
to make the journey. So Heracles is carried by the sun to the island where the sun sets,
and then goes underground to the underworld when he retrieves Cerberos. It's not too much
of a stretch to read into that. I'm just speculating here, but it would make sense - and it's also
very possible that a shorter version of the labors myth pre-existed the introduction of
the Babylonian zodiac, a version that already included these themes of following the path
of the sun - but was then modified to include these new star myths. This could also account
for the miscellaneous labors that don't have obvious constellation parallels. Also, this
isn't Heracles's only star myth - he's also credited as an infant with creating the arc
of the Milky Way during the infamous boob incident, and this is actually the original
source for the word galaxy, derived from galaxias kuklos literally meaning "milky vault". Gross.
But informative! But gross. (And again, this is really hard to look up. I tried find out when exactly the word "galaxy" or "galaxias kuklos" was first used and I couldn't find it, but it seems to predate this stuff by a pretty wide margin.) Anyway, Heracles may have the most constellation
credits to his name, but he's not the only source credited with the greek zodiac constellations.
All of them have a corresponding unique myth added later, even some of the ones Heracles
already accounted for. And these are the most well-known versions you’re probably already
at least a little familiar with, so I’ll try and keep this part concise.
Aries is often equated with the golden ram, the source of the golden fleece sought by
Jason and the Argonauts - a very old myth that predates the introduction of the Babylonian
zodiac, since it was well-known by Homer's time in the 700s BCE.
Taurus is often correlated with Zeus in one way or another, either when he turned into
a bull to abduct Europa or when he turned Io into a cow to abduct her.
Gemini still represents twins, but replaces Lugal-Irra and Meslamta-Ea with Castor and
Pollux, twin sons of Leda (of Leda and the Swan fame) and brothers of Helen of Troy,
though despite being twins, they had different fathers (which seems to be kind of a Thing in greek mythology) - Castor's father was the mortal Tyndareus,
while Pollux's father was Zeus, and for his demigod perk, Pollux was straight-up immortal.
When Castor is mortally wounded during a cattle-raid gone wrong, Zeus allows Pollux to give half
his immortality to Castor, letting them spend half the year in the underworld and the other
half in the heavens as the brightest stars in the constellation Gemini. This myth has
some interesting holdovers from the Babylonian version, like the liminal role the twins play
with the underworld, or the fact that images of Castor and Pollux guarded the doorway to
a house in Pompeii like Lugal-Irra and Meslamta-Ea guarded the ones in Babylon.
Virgo, meanwhile, was a bit tricky and kind of a catch-all figure, and the Greeks never really settled
on which goddess she was supposed to represent - she was most commonly correlated with demeter
or persephone because of the grain association, but sometimes she was combined with the nearby
constellation of libra and turned into lady Justice, the roman personification of the
law. Libra, meanwhile, was codified as its own constellation in honor of Julius Caesar
to signify the importance of the aforementioned justice - before that, Libra had lost its
divine symbol status and had been subsumed into Scorpio, filling the role of the scorpion's
claws. Scorpio, of course, was connected with Orion, since the scorpion famously killed
him and was placed in the sky to continue their eternal chase.
Sagittarius, while usually a centaur, wasn't always consistent in which centaur it represented
- sometimes he's Chiron, the eternal mentor, but sometimes Chiron is accounted for by the
completely different constellation centaurus. Erastothenes suggested that Sagittarius wasn't
a centaur at all, but was actually Crotus, son of Pan and inventor of Archery, immortalized
in the stars on horseback. Capricorn is another one with a weird non-story
- ancient greece didn't have the same goat-fish symbolism of Ea, so the general explanation
either links it with the goat that took care of baby zeus, or says that it's Pan and he
gave himself a fish tail to run away from typhon easier. I mean, it's fine, but Pan,
if you wanna be a mermaid, you don't gotta justify or anything. You can just rock them sparkly scales.
{unscripted rant time} Uh, quick side note. When I was looking up the symbolism of Capricorn, I found
a whole bunch of websites that were claiming that there was a goat-fish created by
the greek god of time, Chronus (not Kronos), uh, and
this goat-fish was immortal and had time powers and... created... all other goats
as his offspring, they were, like, goat-fish, but then... they... went on land
and they lost their intelligence and got stupid, and like,
he - he kept trying to... use his time powers to roll back time to
stop them from going on land and getting stupid, but it didn't work and- and eventually he gave up,
and I was like,
"That's a really weird myth and it doesn't really sound like a proper myth, it's got, like, modern story elements, and I don't think
Greek mythology ever features time travel," so I tried finding a source, and all of these, like, astrology websites
were just linking OTHER astrology websites as their source with no actual, like, credible… like, primary sources in there anywhere.
And it drove me nuts. So the long story short is I think it's completely fake, and there's probably some, like…
person, who like, wrote that thing up in the '70s for their, I dunno, astrology column, and was like, "Yeah!
Nobody cares about… greek mythologies being accurate these days! We're all rewriting stuff anyway, it's FINE!" so. I'm like…
85% sure that there is no… time-traveling goat fish in greek mythology.
If you have a primary source for me I would LOVE to hear it, PLEASE tell me, because this really drove me nuts for, like, a whole day.
I was like "Where's the stupid goat-fish? WHERE'S THE TIME-TRAVELING GOAT-MAN, INTERNET??" and there WAS no goat-man there was NEVER ANY GOAT-MAN
A N Y W A Y
On a similar note, Aquarius got a pretty serious downgrade when it lost the association with
Ea - instead of "mighty god carrying an overflowing water jug" it got shortened to "water jug".
Aquarius is sometimes just the jug, but sometimes it's associated with Ganymede, a beautiful
trojan prince Zeus kidnapped to serve as his "cup-bearer". I'll bet he wanted him to bear
his cup. Ahh, gross. Anyway, last up is Pisces, one of the more
confusing constellations - supposedly it represents two fish tied together with a rope. Like,
I know a lot of these constellations are, like, four or five stars and we're supposed
to see something super detailed in them, but seriously, this is an oddly specific visual.
Anyway, anyone who watched the Aphrodite video will be unsurprised to learn that this Ishtar
constellation became immediately associated with Aphrodite, who, according to Hyginus,
turned into a fish along with Eros to escape from Typhon's rampage. Another myth suggests
that Aphrodite hatched from an egg that was gently nudged ashore by two helpful fish,
who were then immortalized in the stars as thanks for their help. (Seriously, two fish
and a rope? There has to be something more interesting we can do with this. Iiit's…
nunchucks. It's two pretty flowers in a vase. Come on, work with me here! The mayan zodiac
made pisces a skeleton. Why can't you be more like the mayans??)
Now while these myths are fun, and definitely more detailed than the MUL_APIN star codex,
it's interesting to note how inconsistent some of them are. Sure, we link Taurus with
Zeus, but we can't even decide what specific cow it represents? And why can't we decide
who Sagittarius is? It's cuz rather than deriving stories from these observed constellations
like the Babylonians, the Greeks were trying to retcon existing stories to fit the constellations
they were given - so Taurus got connected with every important cow they already had,
rather than specifically the Bull of Heaven, Virgo was every plant-affiliated goddess instead
of specifically Shala, and Sagittarius got assigned anyone that looked like a mounted
archer from the right angle. Aries became The Golden Ram, not because the myth of the
Golden Fleece was derived from the constellation, but because greek mythology was short on goats
and it's kind of the only option. And the goofier constellations like Pisces and Capricorn
got some really weird explanations. I mean, you try justifying a goat-fish.
Incorporating another culture's mythology is hard. Stories lose context and specificity.
While the ancient Greek zodiac shared the same symbols as the babylonian one, the stories
they connected them with were naturally distinct, because the originals didn't fit in their
new context. They didn't have Gilgamesh fighting Humbaba, so instead they had Heracles fighting
the Nemean Lion. No bull of heaven? No problem! Zeus loves turning people into cows, just
pick one of them! Etcetera. The stars didn't change, and the base stories didn't even change
that much - Taurus was still a bull, Gemini was still a set of twins, aquarius was still
about the water - but the specifics were adjusted to fit.
Essentially, all this confusion is cuz the Ancient Greeks localized the Babylonian zodiac.
So the next time someone asks "why is aquarius a dang water pitcher", you can say "same reason
Pokemon told me this was a jelly donut". So anyway, with the Ancient Greek zodiac firmly
established, the rest is history - and that's solidly not my department, so I'll make this
quick. Suffice to say that by 150 BCE the greeks had subdivided the zodiac into twelve
equal intervals with corresponding constellations like the Babylonians, and by the 100s AD,
Ptolemy was laying the groundwork for modern astrology by drawing connections between the
four humours and the seasonal temperament of each zodiac sign. Throw in the High Middle
Ages sparking a nostalgic interest in the archaic magics of the Roman Empire and the
Renaissance going even harder on that angle, and it's no real surprise that the zodiac
made it to the modern day almost completely unchanged.
Now of course, this isn't the only zodiac. Plenty of cultures worldwide have noticed
the reliable movement of the sun, moon and planets through the fixed stars make a very
useful timekeeping tool. The Mayans had developed a zodiac of their own ages before any european
contact, Polynesian wayfinding techniques relied on massive constellations and required
a very sophisticated understanding of the stars, and of course, nearly everyone knows
the basics of the Chinese Zodiac - although structurally the chinese zodiac doesn't actually
have much in common with the babylonian one. The twelve animals of the zodiac don't actually
have constellations, and instead of being a monthly subdivision, it's actually a year
classification based on the orbit of jupiter, which makes a full circuit in roughly twelve
years - so every year, Jupiter advances into the next section of the zodiac. But that's
definitely a subject for another video, cuz there's a lot going on there and this is already
running long. For now, I leave you with your daily horoscope.
Yes, you. You personally. You're welcome.
You get along well with some people, but not others. You're fun and people like you. You
should spend time with your friends more! The brooding hooded figure sitting in the
corner is probably secretly a good guy, but watch out for brooding hooded figures out
in the open - they're up to no good. Someone will introduce a gun to you - make sure to
fire it before the end of the third act. Don't chase the shiny briefcase, it's never worth
it. If you're less than two weeks from retirement, for god's sake, keep it to yourself.