The 12 zodiac signs that most people are likely familiar with today originated around this time in Ancient Greece. Aries (roughly from March 21 to April 19), Taurus (from April 20 to May 20), Gemini (from May 21 to June 20), Cancer (from June 21 to July 22), Leo (from July 23 to August 22), Virgo (from August 23 to September 22), Libra (from September 23 to October 22), Scorpio (from October 23 to November 21), Sagittarius (from November 22 to December 21), Capricorn (from December 22 to January 19), Aquarius (from January 20 to February 18), These Western or tropical zodiac signs were given constellation names and assigned dates depending on how closely their positions in the sky appeared to relate to the sun.
By 1500 BC, the Babylonians had already divided the zodiac into 12 equal signs. They used names for constellations like The Great Twins, The Lion, and The Scales that are still used today, and these names were also used in Greek divination. These 12 signs were made more well-known by the astronomer Ptolemy, whose Tetrabiblos became a fundamental text in the development of Western astrology.
According to Odenwald, Ptolemy “codified the entire notion that there were 12 signs of the zodiac that were 30 broad, and the sun travelled through these signs frequently during the year. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, even the name “zodiac” is derived from a Greek word for a “sculpted animal figure,” and the conventional listing of the zodiac signs also dates back to that time.
In This Article...
What are the dates for the 12 zodiac signs?
- Aries (March 21April 19)
- The Bull (April 20May 20)
- Gemini – (May 21June 20)
- a cancer (June 21July 22)
- Leo (July 23August 22)
- Virgo (August 23September 22)
- Libra (September 23October 22)
- a Scorpio (October 23November 21)
- In Sagittarius (November 22December 21)
- The Capricorn (December 22January 19)
- Water Bearer (January 20February 18)
- a Pisces (February 19March 20)
When did the astrological signs begin?
During the early half of the first millennium BC, Babylonian astronomy is where the zodiacal signs were originally divided into sections of the ecliptic. The MUL.APIN catalogue, which was created circa 1000 BC, is one of the early Babylonian star catalogues that the zodiac takes stars from. Other constellations, such as Gemini “The Twins,” from MA.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL “The Great Twins,” and Cancer “The Crab,” from AL.LUL “The Crayfish,” can be traced even further back, to Bronze Age (First Babylonian dynasty) origins.
What is the order of the 12 zodiac signs?
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces are the 12 zodiac signs, listed in order. Greek texts from the Middle Ages have a symbol for each sign of the zodiac. Let’s examine the zodiac signs, constellations, and characteristics in more detail.
Aries (March 21-April 19)
The constellation of the ram serves as a representation for Aries, the first of the twelve zodiac signs. You are viewed as being active, ambitious, and competitive if you were born under this sign. The “fire” element is to blame for Aries’ predisposition to be impetuous and direct as well as their quickness and leadership abilities.
Taurus (April 20-May 20)
The constellation Taurus symbolizes Taurus, the second of the Zodiac’s twelve signs. You are seen as being dedicated, dependable, focused, and creative if you were born under this sign. Tauruses are renowned for their wit, dependability, and stubbornness (the sign is a bull, after all). Taurus people enjoy seeking pleasure and have a tendency to challenge authority.
Gemini (May 21-June 20)
The constellation Gemini, which features Castor and Pollux, the Dioscurithe twins, serves as the symbol for Gemini, the third of the Zodiac’s twelve signs. You are seen as being enthusiastic, expressive, intellectual, and playful if you were born under this sign. Although they have a reputation for being contradictory, Gemini are recognized for their extroverted personalities and wide range of interests.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
The constellation Cancer, which is most frequently pictured as a crab, is the zodiac sign for Cancer, the fourth of the twelve signs. If you were born under this sign, you are regarded as being brave, sympathetic, caring, and perceptive. Cancers are renowned for their ability to provide care and for having a propensity for being remote and passive-aggressive.
Leo (July 23-August 22)
The constellation of the lion serves as the symbol for Leo, the fifth of the Zodiac’s twelve signs. If you were born under this sign, people would describe you as fiery, lively, and outgoing. Leos are renowned for their warmth and high self-esteem, although they can occasionally be arrogant or envious.
Virgo (August 23-September 22)
The maiden constellation serves as the symbol for Virgo, the sixth of the Zodiac’s twelve signs. You are seen as being practical, analytical, and sophisticated if you were born under this sign. Virgos are renowned for their thoughtfulness and attention to detail, but they can also have a propensity for shyness and unreasonably high expectations for both themselves and their loved ones.
Libra (September 23-October 22)
The lone inanimate constellation, the scales, stands in for Libra, the seventh of the Zodiac’s twelve signs. If you were born under this sign, people view you as diplomatic, fair-minded, and balanced. Although Libras are renowned for their generosity and amiability, they can occasionally be overly practical and insecure.
Scorpio (October 23-November 21)
Scorpio is the eighth of the Zodiac’s twelve signs and is symbolized by the scorpion constellation. If you were born under this sign, people view you as dependable, resourceful, and determined. Scorpios are renowned for their courage and pioneering spirit, yet they may also come off as prickly and distant to outsiders.
Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)
The ninth of the Zodiac’s twelve signs, Sagittarius, is symbolized by the constellation of the Archer. If you were born under this sign, you are regarded as cheerful, self-reliant, and intelligent. Sagittariuses are renowned for being charming and giving, although they can occasionally have a propensity to be haughty and overly direct.
Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
Tenth among the zodiac’s twelve signs, Capricorn is symbolized by the sea goat constellation. If you were born under this sign, you are regarded as patient, diligent, and disciplined. Although Capricorns are renowned for their persistence and preference for boundaries and norms, they may occasionally be obstinate and overly perfectionistic.
Aquarius (January 20-February 18)
The constellation known as the “water carrier” represents Aquarius, the eleventh of the zodiac’s twelve signs. If you were born under this sign, people admire your creativity, loyalty, and originality. Although Aquarius people are recognized for their originality and rebellious spirit, they can also have a propensity to be unyielding and distant with their loved ones.
Pisces (February 19-March 20)
The last of the Zodiac’s twelve signs, Pisces, is symbolized by the fishes constellation. You are regarded as intuitive, creative, and sympathetic if you were born under this sign. Although Pisces are renowned for their empathy and artistic talent, they can occasionally be too sensitive or delusional.
June is what sign?
The sun enters Cancer, the fourth sign of the zodiac, on or around June 21, the day after the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice. Depending on the year, people born between roughly June 21 and July 22 fall under the sign of Cancer. Depending on the astrological system they follow, people born on these dates may be referred to as “Cancerians.” Cancer is a northern sign, and Capricorn is its polar opposite. A warning indicator is cancer.
Cancer’s elemental sign is water, which together with Pisces and Scorpio makes up the water trigon. One of the zodiac’s four elemental trigons, along with fire, earth, and air, is the trigon of water. A trigon is considered to influence changes on Earth when it has influence. According to legend, persons born under the sign of Cancer have Neptune as their home planet and Jupiter as their exaltation planet. The Moon is its ruling planet.
Who named the zodiac?
NASA claims that the Babylonians already had a 12-month calendar based on the moon phases when they formed the zodiac. Despite the fact that they found 13 constellations that make up the zodiac, they chose to exclude one so the signs would more closely coincide with their 12-month calendar.
Before you Aries, Cancers, and Leos start making fun of your new Ophiuchus friends, keep in mind that the addition of this 13th constellation slightly changes the time frame for each zodiac sign. As a result, even though I have loved my life as a textbook Pisces, I have discovered through research that I am now an Aquarius. (Gasp!)
The Earth’s axis has moved and no longer points precisely in the same direction as it previously did, which alters the amount of time each constellation is visible in the sky. This information, which is 3,000 years old, reemerged last year when NASA revealed some scientific evidence about this.
The astrology community (and Twitter) went crazy, and many ardent supporters believed NASA “added a sign to the zodiac, upending the familiar and beloved signs. However, that is untrue. An astrological sign wasn’t added by NASA. Their Tumblr blog post states that they “I only calculated. If anyone is to be held accountable, it should be the ancient Babylonians for omitting Ophiuchus in the first place.
How old is the killer of the Zodiac?
- The former administrator of the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial, Joseph alias Giuseppe Bevilacqua, was named as a suspect in the Zodiac and Monster of Florence murder cases by Italian journalist Francesco Amicone in 2018. Amicone claimed that Bevilacqua confessed to killing the victims in both incidents on September 11, 2017. The investigations into Bevilacqua brought on by Amicone’s probe were concluded in 2021 at the request of Pm Luca Turco, the Attorney in charge of the Monster investigation. Turco stated that “this journalistic inquiry is marked by suggestions, assumptions, and asserted intuitions, and it does not contain any factual element likely to rise to the dignity of a clue” in support of his request. Additionally, Pm Turco pursued legal action against Amicone for slandering Bevilacqua.
- Newspaper editor Richard Gaikowski was the subject of a MysteryQuest program from the History Channel in 2009. Gaikowski was employed by the San Francisco counterculture periodical Good Times at the time of the murders. Gaikowski resembled the composite sketch in terms of appearance, and Nancy Slover, the Vallejo police dispatcher who was contacted by the Zodiac shortly after the Blue Rock Springs Attack, recognized the Zodiac’s voice in a recording of Gaikowski.
- In his book The Black Dahlia Avenger, retired police investigator Steve Hodel makes the case that his father, George Hodel, was the Black Dahlia murderer, who also killed Elizabeth Short. His father’s Los Angeles district attorney’s office previously concealed files and wire recordings were made public as a result of the book, proving that the senior Hodel was in fact a leading suspect in Short’s slaying. In a letter that was later written and included in the updated edition, district attorney Steve Kaye stated that if George Hodel were still alive, he would be charged with the offenses. A police sketch, the correspondence between the Zodiac Killer and the Black Dahlia Avenger, and an investigation of disputed documents were all used by Hodel to make the circumstantial case that his father was also the Zodiac Killer in a subsequent book.
- Lawrence Kaye, afterwards Lawrence Kane: Kane was identified in a photo lineup by Kathleen Johns, who claimed to have been kidnapped by the Zodiac Killer. Kane resembled the man he and Eric Zelms met, according to patrol officer Don Fouke, who may have seen the Zodiac Killer after the death of Paul Stine. Donna Lass, a potential Zodiac victim, and Kane both worked at the same hotel in Nevada. After sustaining brain injuries in an accident in 1962, Kane was given an impulse-control disorder diagnosis. He was detained for prowling around and voyeurism. A French-Moroccan business consultant named Fayal Ziraoui asserted in 2021 that he had cracked the Z13 cipher and that the answer to the riddle was “My name is Kayr,” which is probably just a mistake for Kaye. Others contested Ziraoui’s ability to crack the encryption.
- Richard Marshall was charged with being the Zodiac Killer after allegedly making a murderous suggestion in private, according to police sources. In close proximity to the locations of the Bates and Stine killings, Marshall lived in Riverside in 1966 and San Francisco in 1969. He was a projectionist and fan of silent movies, showing Segundo de Chomn’s The Red Phantom (1907), whose name was reportedly referenced in a 1974 Zodiac letter. Marshall “makes good reading, but in my opinion is not a very good suspect,” according to detective Ken Narlow.
- It was revealed in February 2014 that Louis Joseph Myers told a friend he was the Zodiac Killer in 2001 after realizing he had liver cirrhosis and was approaching death.
- Upon his passing, he asked that Randy Kenney call the police. Myers died in 2002, but Kenney allegedly had trouble getting officers to participate and take the claims seriously. There are multiple possible links between Myers and the Zodiac case; Myers supposedly worked in the same restaurant as victim Darlene Ferrin and went to the same high schools as victims David Farraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Myers was stationed overseas with the military between the years 19711973, a time during which no Zodiac letters were received. According to Kenney, Myers admitted that he targeted couples because he had experienced a difficult split with a partner. Despite their skepticism, the case’s officers think the story is plausible enough to look into if Kenney can provide solid proof.
- Robert Ivan Nichols, also known as Joseph Newton Chandler III, was a formerly undiscovered identity thief who committed suicide in Eastlake, Ohio, in July 2002. Investigators learned that he had stolen the identity of an eight-year-old kid who had died in a vehicle accident in Texas in 1945 after they were unable to find his family after his death. Nichols’ efforts to conceal his identity raised suspicions that he was a dangerous fugitive. The U.S. Marshals Service announced his identification at a press conference in Cleveland on June 21, 2018. He matched police sketches of the Zodiac, lived in California, where the Zodiac operated, and some Internet sleuths speculated that he might be the Zodiac Killer.
- Ross Because of the potential connection between the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates and the Zodiac Killer, Sullivan is now a subject of interest. Coworkers at Riverside City College, where Sullivan worked as a library assistant, suspected him of the murder because they claimed he disappeared for a number of days. Sullivan looked like a Zodiac sketch and was wearing military-style boots with patterns similar to those at the Lake Berryessa crime scene. For his schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Sullivan was admitted to the hospital numerous times.
- Dennis Kaufman asserted that Jack Tarrance, his stepfather, was the Zodiac in 2007. The FBI received many things from Kaufman, including a hood resembling the Zodiac’s. News reports state that the FBI’s DNA testing on the objects was found inconclusive in 2010.
- Lyndon Lafferty, a former member of the California Highway Patrol, said that the Zodiac Killer was a 91-year-old resident of Solano County, California, who went by the alias George Russell Tucker. Lafferty found Tucker and laid out an alleged cover-up for why he wasn’t pursued using a group of retired law enforcement personnel known as the Mandamus Seven. Because the authorities did not view Tucker as a suspect, his death in February 2012 went unreported.
- Gary Stewart said in a book he wrote in 2014 titled The Most Dangerous Animal of All that he had come to the conclusion that Earl Van Best, Jr., was the Zodiac Killer as a result of looking for his biological father. The book was turned into a documentary series for the FX Network in 2020.
Why is Aries the first sign in the zodiac?
On the first day of spring, also known as the vernal equinox, the Sun used to be “in” the constellation Aries. We should clarify that the Sun appears to move between the thirteen constellations that make up the “zodiac” as the Earth circles around it. The phrase “First Point of Aries” (or “Cusp of Aries”) was first used by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus of Nicea (190-120 BCE), who noted that the Sun was in the constellation Aries at the time of the spring equinox. However, because to precessional wriggling, the Sun’s apparent vernal equinox position has consistently moved along the ecliptic by nearly 1 degree every 73 years. Every 26,000 years, our planet’s pole describes a 47-degree circle in the sky due to the wobbling, which is mostly brought on by interactions with the Sun and Moon. As a result, during this 26,000-year cycle, the vernal equinox point will be “hosted” by each of the thirteen zodiac constellations. Astronomer Jean Meeus claims that around 68 BCE, the vernal equinox point crossed the Aries-Pisces boundary. Ironically, barely than a century after Hipparchus’ passing, this change took place. Since then, Pisces has been the western route taken by the vernal equinox point. The vernal equinox will pass through Aquarius, the Water Bearer, in AD 2597. Or, to be more precise, it will enter the rectilinear area known as the Aquarius “region” by the International Astronomical Union. The vernal equinox will probably still be referred to as the “First Point of Aries” by astronomers even then.
The vernal equinox point moves around the ecliptic as a result of the Earth’s precessional wobble once every 26,000 years. The term “First Point of Aries” refers to this point’s former position in Aries the Ram. The vernal equinox point is currently in Pisces and will move towards the Aquarius region in the late 26th century. Keep in mind that the astrological sign of Aries serves as the emblem for the vernal equinox point.
Is October 22 a Scorpio or a Libra?
The sun spends a month in airy Libra before swimming into watery Scorpio on October 22 or 23 of every year. You may identify as a so-called Libra-Scorpio cusp if your birthdate is within a few days of these dates.
Planets can only be in one zodiac sign at a time, thus even if you were born in the very last minute of Libra season, you are still very much a Libra sun sign. Being born close to one of the sun’s zodiacal ingresses does not automatically make you a combination of two signs.
However, it doesn’t follow that a person born on the Libra-Scorpio axis couldn’t also have a healthy dose of both energies in their natal chart. There is a good likelihood that a late-October Libra would have some Scorpio planets in their horoscope because planets like Mercury and Venus often move close to the sun in the zodiac (or vice versa for an October Scorpio). Someone who exhibits both Libra and Scorpio features, or what some could refer to as Libra-Scorpio cusp traits, could be the result of this.
All zodiac signs can sense the shifting energies when the sun transits through this area of the sky, regardless of whether or not a person was born close to the Libra-Scorpio axis. Since Libra season always starts on the day of the autumnal equinox, it aids us in finding equilibrium and establishing social bonds as we set out on our autumnal journey. However, after the sun enters Scorpio, we tend to become more contemplative, and the casual connections we had throughout the Libra season have a potential to develop into more close-knit relationships. Each planet’s trip through the zodiac is represented by a path, and the energy of the Libra-Scorpio axis invites us to develop trust with those around us as we enter the heart of autumn.
Although being a cusp sign isn’t really an astrological notion, if you were born close to the sun’s shift between the two signs, you could still have a lot of Libra and Scorpio zodiac energy in your chart. If so, recognizing the characteristics of the Libra-Scorpio cusp might help you identify your most distinctive attributes.