Exploring the Zodiac
Beyond just, “what’s your sign?”, this is a scientific exploration of the history of mapping the stars.
The word zodiac itself means “cycles of little animals”. A hint of the words “zoo” “dial/diameters” can be found within it. But this ancient system wasn't created for personality readings or fortune-telling; it was developed as a sophisticated tool for tracking time, seasons, and navigation with the movements of the stars.
We think of the story of the constellations as forming from a single cohesive unit, but the one passed down to us is actually a cultural tapestry, woven from multiple ancient civilizations' understanding of the stars. It is a hodge podge of various cultures and times, recorded of notes from multiple people who wrote about the stars. These familiar symbols span millennia and intertwine with ancient cultures and stories. While we often credit the Greeks for our constellation system, they were actually relative latecomers to this cosmic story (about 1,500 years late). The Babylonians and Egyptians had been mapping the stars for thousands of years before the Greeks formalized the system we know today.
A Time Stamp
The Greeks cemented the constellation as we know it with Eudoxus, around 340 BC, right after he studied in Egypt. But the Babylonians and Egyptians (and others!) had each been using their own version of star maps for thousands of years.
There were two main sets of star names and stories: one for farming (the oldest version we know), and one (that came later) that assigned royal names to each month.
There were originally two distinct sets of star maps:
A Farmer's Guide: An older version was essentially an agricultural calendar, helping ancient civilizations track planting and harvesting seasons. This has mostly been lost to us, yet its pattern around seasons and remnants of its stories remain.
The Royal Calendar: A later version overlaid royal and divine names onto the known constellations and patterns, adding layers of religious and political significance
These royal names we are familiar with today are what triggered me to pay attention, since I noticed some of the royal sounds in many of the names, Ra and Is: the sun god and his mother. As I soon discovered, the royal names placed on top of older traditions matched perfectly with the idea that these star names hold royal sounds I am now triggered to notice.
The ancients divided the map of the night sky into 12 equal parts. As the sun sets, the constellation in the eastern sky corresponds to a particular season. And this season stays consistant for about 2,000 years. Since the earth tilts on an axis, in an act called precession, the whole alignment shifts every 2,000 years. The star map that was passed on to us embeds a specific time and place where those signs can be seen corresponding to their appropriate seasons. The Leo, for instance, is known for being in constellation during the heat of the summer solstice. This provides the red, hot, angry temperament of the King of the Jungle. And the word, Leo, contains a hint of the word for sun and kingship: rey. Many language have a hard time distinguishing between r’s and l’s, and this becomes an easy literary swap. The story of Leo the Lion, the king of the jungle, provides a perfect background to enforce this theory of being related to kingship. Enough stories exist today showing Leo as the fiery king of the entire zodiac of, yes, kings and queens, known for their chaRIsma, confidence, and fierce pROtective, and often self-centered qualities.
But when Eudoxus wrote down his star globe around 400 BC, the stars had already moved onto their next alignment. He had been given an ancient map, and copied it without ever comparing them to the night sky. The entire constellation calendar had already moved on to its next phase, yet he claimed ownership of its older placement. More than likely, the Egpytians gave him an old map, without wanting to give away their most sacREd, accurate, interpretations.
And in today’s time, the sky calendar has shifted once again. This means our entire idea of the horoscope is 2 to 3 phases off from what the sky and planets are actually telling us. Leo will one day be in the dead of winter, and will no longer make sense to apply the 4,000+ year story to ourselves, unless we account for this new shift in meaning.
The last sign of the zodiac to be added was aRIes, which opened the new year. The spring used to be the start of the new year, before the Romans changed it for some political office functions in their favor. Once a humble farmer, the star that designated the new year was changed to something, or someone, more dazzling, with another name with Ri- embedded into it: a-RIes.
But it is the one of the religious traditions, the one of gods and goddesses, that survived to today, while the more practical star map of farming faded away. This also means its navigational use and simplicity in understanding was also lost with it. We see remnants of scraps of a copied star globe. But even just with this, we find infinities of meaning, and these can be made into our own. The stories will always be meaningful and we can learn to apply them appropriately.
The Ray names
In my studies to uncover the ancient roots of our most enduring words, I started to notice some patterns in the names of our zodiac symbols. I am in the habit of looking for Ra and Is, and now I start to see them immediately.
The car in front of me at a stop light? Nissan. Sure, the company is a mesh of names in Japan, but in Hebrew, the name means “miracle”, and embeds the “IS” of the Egyptian mother goddess who gave birth to the sun god, Ray.
The names of the zodiac can be seen as linguistic fossils. The ancient Egyptian god Ray was both the holy child of the mother goddess, Isis. Her Son/Sun in the sky was reborn every day and year, making her a perpetual virgin mother, and the Pharaoh was seen as this sun god incarnate (male or female, king or queen, REx or REgina). This is why we have so many ROyal names that are synonymous with the son/sun in its latin form: REx and REyes. And this r- sound has been used with every vowel placed after it that gives us meanings related to this Sun King: Ray.
A: RAY, sunRAY, gRAnd, RAdiant, tyRAnt
E: REx, REign, REgina, gREat, REd, TyRAnasouRUs REx, RE-joice, RE-turn (like the cyclical sun)
I: RIca, RIch, chRIst, KRIstos, RIng, RIghteous, RIse, LIght, LIfe (L&R often synonymous)
O: ROund, ROyal, ROjo
U: RUler, RUby, LUck (L&R often synonymous)
Let’s look at the 12 names of the zodiac that have come down to us:
aRIes (RAm), associated with the sun god
tauRUs (bull)
Gemini (twins), (no r- sound, but the names of its twins are…)
Lugalgirra (LUgalgirRA) and MesLAmta-ea, (L/R easily replaced)
Cancer (crab), (RE? yes, the french/latin term is cancRE)
LEo (lion), (L/R easily replaced, and lions are the kings of the jungle, to REo)
Leo marked the summer solstice in ancient times, the heat of the summer, and represented with the red coloring of the flame, easily associated with the Rays of the sun, and his kingship
vIRgo (virgin), IR is another goddess name, like arco IRis, the goddess of the rainbow
virgo is one of the 3 female constellations among many men, but this quantity is made up for it being the second largest constellation and the oldest of deities: the Earth Mother.
LibRA (scales of justice), named by Julius Caesar himself
ScORpio (scorpion), OR/IR connected to goddesses (including IRis and associated vowels)
Many goddesses have been associated with scorpions, including ones from Egypt, Mesopotamia and Aztec cultures, including ISHaRA and NingiRIma
SagittaRIus (archer)
CapRIcorn (sea goat)
AquaRIus (water bearer)
PISces (fish), IS, the goddess ISIS, and the origin for the word EASt, the place of the rising sun
Let’s dive in to some fun facts about each one:
pISces is my favorite one on this list.
Isis is the Greek version of the Egyptian goddess Aset/Ishtar, whose name was spelled “ist”, and pronounced “eest”. And she was indeed associated with the eastern rising sun. The “-t” at the end of “east” seals the deal, as it is a feminine marker in the egyptian language, like -ess means female in French (actr-ESS, etc). The sound oss/ass/iss has long been associated with gods, but the “t” ending is strictly a female adder. Our word for the place of the rising sun is a female term.
Her other name, ASTARte preserves the origin of the word for “STAR” and “EASTER”, and associated with many other goddesses, like InANNa (where we get the word for ANNual)
Another fun fact: The Egyptian main direction faced the source of the Nile (from the south), and to them, the east was “left”. This is indeed how their name for left was preserved, meaning our “east”.
I have found many place names that have this "-is-” sound preserved that root back to feminine worshippers:
from the word ISthmus (having to do with an umbilical cord), to EdESSa (the place Mother Mary chose to die), and ISrael (which also preserves her son and lover for the original holy trinity).
A Timeline of the Stars
People were mapping the stars for a long time. Here is a history of just some archeological discoveries of our most ancient star gazers:
25,000 BC: The Ishango Bone, Africa at the heart of Lake Victoria and source of the Nile
Ivory jewelry etched with moon cycles, most likely associated with a woman’s period cycle and predicting birthdates
10,000 BC: Nabta Playa statues and alignments in Africa, 700 miles south of Cairo, Egypt
Key events between 6,000 and 3,000 BC, thousands of years of use
10,000 BC: Gobelki Tepe in Anatolia, Turkey, used for about 1,400 years, or 50 generations.
4,900 BC: Goseck circle in Germany forms (used only 200 years)
thousands of stone circles with solar alignments found throughout Europe
4,000 BC: Stories within ancient Babylonian constellations forming
Babylonian constellations were primarily used to predict celestial events like lunar and solar eclipses, the rising of the new moon (marking the start of a new month), and the movements of visible planets
3,000 BC: Stories of Egyptian constellations forming
Egypt had the 365 day year in the Dynastic Period
3,000 BCL Stonehenge in England begins construction, used until 1600 BC.
2,500 BC: Ireland's oldest stone circle
2,200 BC: Babylon did not have stone circles, but their cities were designed in circular patterns, representing cosmic order.
The first gods worshipped here were female. The first writers were female, from female priestsess to female gods. It was to a female goddess (Inanna), written by Enheduanna, that the city of Ur was dedicated to. Abraham, the founding person in all three abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, was born in the city of Ur. All of the religions he started were monotheistic, but instead used male gods as central. He was using a female prototype to design the subsequent monotheistic religions.
1,800 BC: The Nebra Sky Disc found in Germany
Can be placed up to the sky to check if it will be a year with special significance, like a “leap year” every 3 years.
break in time over 1,500 years….
340 BC: Eudoxus travels to Egypt and “invents” the star globe
Recording the constellations as we know them. It is believed he mapped the Babylonian gods on top of an existing Egyptian/Minoan star map from around 2,000 BC. The Minoans disappeared after the Thera volcanic eruption around 1,600 BC, but had known trade connections with Egypt, Judea and Mesopotamia, and were avid navigators and goddess worshippers in extensive palaces, with a plumbing and a written language that was lost and not yet formed in the area for another thousand years. Their texts have still not yet been deciphered.
The most interesting thing to note about the cultures that mapped the stars with stone pillars, is that they each show ancient trade that is evidenced by blue beads that date back to 2,000 BC, exactly around the time when the first celestial maps were being recorded around the Mediterranean. These beads extended from Egypt and the Middle East, well into Germany, where ancient sky maps in stone also appear. These would not be the first items traded, just examples that bring us into ancient times. New discoveries can only bring evidence of this trade further back in time. Many discoveries are made everyday! There is no reason this connection would not be expected to reach before the first stone circles appeared in Europe. Other stories, like the oldest of Cinderella, bring us back to a jewish slave girl and an Egyptian prince, and Scota, an Egyptian princess who is considered to have founded Scottland, show even deeper connections with Ancients across the Mediterranean sea lost to time, but preserved in name and story.
The Lost Agricultural Wisdom
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of this history is what we've lost. While the religious and astrological interpretations of the zodiac survived, the practical agricultural wisdom embedded in the original star maps has largely faded away. These were once powerful tools for navigation and farming, helping civilizations understand seasonal changes and plan their crops accordingly.
Just like the origins of the first alphabet have been lost to us, the pattern remains, and we can thank the Jews in Egyptian mines for creating their own way of preserving their names into immortality that gave us THE original alphabet. I wrote a story about this here. <—-
Modern Implications
Understanding this history changes how we might think about astrological signs today. Our current zodiac interpretations are actually 2-3 phases removed from what the sky is actually showing us. This doesn't necessarily invalidate modern astrological practices, but it does invite us to think more deeply about how we interpret and use these ancient systems in our own time, and who we give credit to for these stories!
The story of the zodiac isn't just about mystical predictions or a silly little ring of animals - it's a testament to human ingenuity and our eternal quest to understand our place among the stars. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer in horoscopes, the scientific and historical foundations of star mapping reveal a fascinating chapter in human civilization's development. And they invite us to see the royal impRInt that AfRIca and the Middle East (iRAq/iRAn) left on us. This reminds us that progREss is NOT always linear. Sometimes we really need to look back to our ancestors, the elderly, to guide us, rather than assume everything “new” is better.
