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. <sudden romantic trailer
music> 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.
<ahem> 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.
I’m not sure which made me laugh harder, Red’s unscripted time-travelling goat-fish rant or “the same reason why Pokémon told you this (rice ball) was a jelly donut.”
that fading out end was super weird lmao, i was like, "did red just die?"
So... I guess now we have to go look for a time-traveling goat-fish-man?
I kinda "need" to know what's the music at 17:52
wait heracles is possibly neolithic old? that's really cool
I have a new found appreciation for Skyrims skill tree design
I am having massive flash backs to when I was small. I was is the scouts as and youth and we use to climb in the hills. The skies are fucking beautiful in scotland and I once spent a hole night out of my sleeping bag staring at the stars.
It was hard to understand that video due to my lack of investment in astrology, but the one thing I'll always remember is that Capricorn is an Ancient Greek astronomy mystery.
I adore looking up at the stars. I work nights, so every morning on my walk to work, I get to see a lot of the constellations. On really clear nights I even get to see Mars off in the distance!
It's kind of nice how it's such a universal thing among our species throughout all of history.