I'm An Astrologer and No, Your Zodiac Sign Isn’t 2000 Years Out of Date

The New York Times ran an article this week that had my astrologer group chats blowing up. The headline? Your Zodiac Sign Is 2,000 Years Out of Date. Amazing attempt at gotcha journalism. But the reality? No, it’s not. You don’t need to read a different horoscope. And as an astrologer, I can tell you why.

About once a year panic ensues when an article pops up—from reputable sources like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal—"exposing" that due to the Earth’s wobbling orbit, the sun is actually one zodiac sign off, and getting more behind every day. There’s also always mention of a 13th zodiac sign called Ophiuchius. 

This week’s piece in The New York Times was actually the best piece I’ve read in this genre. Someone actually did their research and reported on (most of) the astrological history of it correctly. Even giving a mention to known scientist Galileo’s gig as an astrologer to his patrons. But of course, there was still a calculator for figuring out your new sign, which I must reiterate is not a thing. Astrology’s interpretation is meant to shift with the times, but to do that, the system must remain steady.

The zodiac came to be when ancient stargazers noticed that the sun, moon and planets travelled through a specific path of constellations in the sky (known as the ecliptic). They began to use the positions of the planets within those constellations to interpret omens and make predictions about life on earth.

Approximately 2,500 years ago, the zodiac was standardized as astrologers divided the ecliptic into 12 equal parts. Those 12 equal parts (30º each in a 360º circle) were named after 12 of the stellar constellations along the ecliptic. Were these constellations ever arranged in a perfect circle in equal parts? Of course not. At the time this was all developed, common knowledge was that the Earth was the center of the universe. It was never “scientifically accurate.” It was meant to be a symbol!

And yes, thousands of years ago, at the spring equinox, the sun appeared in the sky alongside the stars in the Aries constellation. Now, at the spring equinox, it appears in the sky alongside stars in the Pisces constellation. But this doesn’t mean that Aries are now Pisces. When astrology was first being developed and codified, the characteristics of each sign were based on the season more so than the constellation image. In many ways, Aries is spring. Even the sidereal zodiac (used primarily in Vedic astrology that originated in India) that correlates signs with star positions rather than the seasons is still “off” from what’s going on in the actual sky. And they also use only 12 signs.

Though the New York Times mostly focused on the precession of the Earth’s orbit and how that changes everyone’s sign, they also couldn’t help but bring up Ophiuchus (pronounced oh-FEW-kuss). The long mythologized “13th zodiac sign.” Originally called Serpentarius, the ancient Greeks believed this constellation depicted Asclepius––the god of medicine––battling a giant snake. So why was Ophiuchius—which isn’t very visible in most parts of the world anyway—left out?

“We don’t really know why the Babylonians left out Ophiuchius from their zodiac signs,” writes the Times. They mention the Babylonians wanting the 12 signs to match the 12 months of their calendar, but no mention of the fact that humans have been obsessed with the number 12 throughout history. The number 12 has long carried spiritual, mythological and magical symbolism. There are 12 seminotes in an octave and 12 days of Christmas and 12 full moons in a year. It even shows up in our practical systems, like 12 inches in a foot. The basic units of time—60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours—are all divisible by 12.

The 13th sign wasn’t included in the original foundation for the same reason ancient stargazers divided the untamed sky into equal parts: to keep things simple. Like music, astrology works as a whole because of the simplicity of its parts. Astrology is about finding ourselves within the stars, correlating our actions to the movement of the planets. It’s a tool! And though there’s a lot of information, the key isn’t in the data itself, but in the interpretation.

So no, your zodiac sign isn’t 2,000 years out of date. The system is set. We’re the ones who get to change.