The constellations have shifted by roughly a whole sign since the system was fixed, and astrology never updated
The Zodiac Bar in Camden holds a 4.7 from three hundred and seventy-seven people, charges ten to forty pounds, and it does karaoke.
And the zodiac in the name has moved.
Precession
The Earth wobbles.
Not much, and not fast – but the axis it spins on describes a slow circle, and it takes roughly twenty-six thousand years to complete one.
Which means that the position of the stars, as seen against the seasons, drifts.
And the zodiac – the twelve signs, and the dates attached to them – was fixed by the Babylonians and formalised by the Greeks, roughly two thousand years ago.
Which means the signs are wrong
In the sense that the sun is no longer in the constellation the calendar says it is in.
The drift is roughly one full sign over the two thousand years since the system was set – so a person born under what the newspaper calls Aries is, in terms of where the sun actually is against the stars, very probably in Pisces.
This is not disputed. Astronomers and astrologers agree on the fact.
Astrologers respond, entirely reasonably within their own framework, that the tropical zodiac is tied to the seasons rather than the constellations, and that the drift is therefore irrelevant to what they are doing.
The Prat’s astronomical desk has no dog in this fight and would simply observe that the signs are named after constellations that they are no longer aligned with, and that essentially nobody using them knows.
And there is a thirteenth
Ophiuchus.
The serpent-bearer. The sun passes through it, between Scorpius and Sagittarius, for about eighteen days a year – and it is a real constellation, in the ecliptic, and it always has been.
It was left out.
Because twelve is a better number than thirteen. It divides the year cleanly, it matches the lunar months roughly, and it is divisible by two, three, four and six.
Thirteen is a prime, and it divides into nothing, and it is useless.
So the Babylonians dropped a constellation to make the arithmetic work, and three thousand years later people are still reading horoscopes based on a system that discarded a piece of the sky for being an awkward number.
The word
Zodiac comes from the Greek for a circle of little animals – which is what it is, and which is why almost all of them are creatures.
Except Libra, which is a set of scales, and which was added later, and which was carved out of the claws of Scorpio.
Verdict
Good bar, excellent number, and a name based on a sky that has moved.
Go, sing badly, and know that you are probably a Pisces.
Why it persists
Which is a genuinely interesting question and which is not answered by calling people stupid.
A horoscope is a text that says something true about a person – because it is written to be true about anybody, using descriptions that are general enough to fit almost everyone while feeling specific.
This has been tested repeatedly, and it has a name, and it is one of the most robust findings in the field.
Give a room of people the identical personality profile and tell them it is theirs, individually, and the great majority will report that it is remarkably accurate.
They are not being foolish. The text is doing exactly what it was built to do.
Megan Amram is a standup comedian based in Portland, OR. She is a native of North London.
This is what happens when someone documents how institutions actually work instead of how they claim to work.