Zodiac

 The word "zodiac" comes from the Greek ζῳδιακός (zōdiakos) — meaning "circle of little animals" or "animal belt in the sky." It got its name from the constellations resembling animals (or living beings) along that path.

In other words, the zodiac is the celestial stage visible from Earth. To us it appears as if this stage is slowly turning, even though the opposite is true.

We are the ones riding on a gigantic carousel called Earth, which spins around the Sun — and the effect is the apparent movement of the celestial dome.

To make navigation easier, we divided this belt into 12 equal parts — zones — and named them after the constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and so on. Each constellation has one or more bright, prominent stars that help us recognize its shape.

So now we have a background: a celestial stage that turns slowly and predictably, giving us a way to orient ourselves. In times without GPS, television, mobile phones, or telescopes — when calendars didn’t pop up on phones, in hair salons, or on printers — these stars told sailors where they were, farmers which season it was and whether they could expect rain, and ancient astrologers the signs of favorable or unfavorable times.

Now we can place the actors on this stage — the characters: Sun, Moon, the planets we know — and watch how they move. This gives us the first and most important dynamic picture of the sky. We no longer have to explain to a fellow astrologer: "You know, last year when the cherries were blooming and the Sun was next to that star…" Instead we can simply say: "Last year when the Sun was in Aries…" and anyone who follows the stars knows exactly what that means.

Suddenly, though, the sky gets crowded and it’s hard to keep track. One body goes this way, another that way, then something flashes by that doesn’t even belong in this neighborhood and will never appear again.

To have an overview, we start with the most important ten planets — too difficult to track by staring at the sky all the time. So we transfer this picture onto paper and get a circle divided into 12 parts — the 12 signs — with the planets, Sun, and Moon placed in them at a particular moment of sky observation.

With this we have the outline of the first horoscope — but that’s a topic for another day. 




Location: Zagreb, Hrvatska

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