The Western Zodiac in Astronomy and Culture

The term, the Zodiac, is striking in multiple languages and has the same Greek primary source as the English zoo; the Zodiac means a circle of animals. An insight into this term is even more evident in some tongues that have created special words for the Zodiac. In Czech, for example, it is Zverokruh, which is plainly and literally a "circle of animals." The same takes place in German (Zodiac = Tierkreis).

In contemporary practice, with the trademark Zodiac we address several different entities. Since antiquity, this brand served to denote the belt of 12 constellations that line the annual circular passage of the Sun on its starry background. As it is detectable from the Earth, like a watchful guardian, the Sun throughout the year consistently visits all its celestial subordinates. Today, the starry necklace of the Sun would be more correctly referred to as the ordinary Western Zodiac, and it is the focal point of our interest.

Much later, at the time of cultural mixing, another meaning of the Zodiac took root. The name was extended to label the antique 12-year Chinese calendric cycle. This cycle is employed by many nations of the Asia-Pacific area. The menagerie of the 12-year Chinese cycle serves as curious monikers to distinguish one year from another. Referring to this cycle, it is appropriate to call it the Chinese, or Eastern, Zodiac.

The institution of the Chinese Zodiac is traditionally ascribed to the Yellow Emperor. Some Chinese writers suggest that their nation actually begins with the Yellow Emperor because he is credited with the integration of the country. While the majority of Western historians dismiss the historicity of the Yellow Emperor, most Chinese historians regard him as a real person. Soon after him, the 12 beasts of the Eastern Zodiac surfaced in historic writings (Wu, 1982; Hucker, 1975). Depending on the interpretation of data, the count of the Chinese cycles starts in 2637 or 2697 BCE. Of course, both dates are questionable.

The Chinese Zodiac has nothing in common with the starry sky or any constellations. It is a string of tags applied to successive years, arising out of the particular mythology of the ancient Chinese world. The only commonality between the Western and Eastern Zodiacs is the use of sets comprised of 12 units (a 12-strong set). Otherwise, their respective long histories do not intersect.

The term Zodiac is also often used in referring to the star groupings that were arranged along the track of the Sun by indigenous Mesoamerican cultures (Aveni in Walker, 1996, pp. 269-303). However, those cultures were separated from the so-called Old World by the long-impassable Atlantic Ocean and had no influence on Western civilization. Knowledge of extinct Zodiacs of Mesoamerica is not widespread among the modern public, and, more to the point, has no connection with the contents of this book.

The accomplishment that is the conventional Western Zodiac is unique among the highlights of human intellect. In this book, we narrate only the birth of this pattern – the Zodiac in its Western form.

Zodiacs: Solar and Lunar

The Zodiac has many faces, and here is an additional facet. On the high seas of scientific publications, one can be confronted by a baseless assertion that our subject – the Western Zodiac – was preceded in time by a system of Lunar Lodges. Some scholars designate the regular 12-strong Western Zodiac as the Solar Zodiac in contrast to Lunar Lodges that compile the Lunar Zodiac. The latter contains 28 (or sometimes 27) starry groups, which in their totality denote the path of the Moon among stars in such a manner that it covers each "Lunar Lodge" in one day. In the sky, the observable path of the Moon is pretty close to the path of the Sun, but the Moon is moving among stars much faster than the Sun, performing one full revolution in about 29.5 days. This means that "Lunar Lodges" have to be about two and a half times smaller than one constellation of the Solar Zodiac.

The Lunar Zodiac has nothing to do with the genuine article, and the idea that it is more ancient is misguided. Moreover, while observations of the waning and waxing of the Moon are easy to conduct, the movement of the Moon among stars is so tangled that each "Lunar Lodge" cannot be determined from simple observations. The new Moon is born each time amongst different starry groups and moves sometimes above, sometimes below the path of the Sun. Finding the regularities of the Moon's motion is a daunting task even for modern astronomers. For the ancients it was nigh impossible. Under these circumstances, the Lunar Zodiac can be considered only as a later upgrade of the genuine Zodiac specifically for lunar observation.

There exist at least two substantial pieces of evidence why the Lunar Zodiac is significantly younger than the genuine Solar Zodiac. Using an analysis of the Chinese sky, this has been convincingly shown by Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker (1997).

The second major proof was granted in 2000 by the American astronomer Bradley Schaefer, who published a paper with an evaluation of the date of origin of the "Lunar Lodge" systems on astronomical grounds. He concluded (p. 283) that

"the best estimate for the date of formation of Chinese lodge system is 3300 BC with a one-sigma [i.e., one standard deviation - A.G.] statistical uncertainty of 480 years. Similarly, the dates for the formation of the Hindu and Arab system are 1750 ± 640 BC and 200 ± 600 BC respectively."

Further in this volume, I shall demonstrate that the offspring of the genuine Zodiacal system is several thousand years older than that. The trace and influence of the Lunar Zodiac in world culture is considerably less meaningful in comparison with the Solar Zodiac, so I shall not touch on the Lunar Zodiac in this book.

The Western Zodiac as an Astronomical Gadget

The Western Zodiac stems entirely from observations of astronomical phenomena. Relative to each other, the stars are practically stationary, while the Sun, the Moon, and the planets wander among them. The Zodiac was designed to denote these movements. Moreover, each zodiacal constellation corresponds to a calendric month, and, through this, the Western Zodiac is clearly related to another astronomical undertaking – the solar calendar.

Having survived in various times and lands, today the Zodiacal dial is a symbolic incarnation of the solar year with its regular rotation of the 12 months. And, though the Zodiac belongs to the science of astronomy, it would be incorrect to...