The history of the horoscope

The history of the horoscope

Astrology is a part of life; open any newspaper and discover what the heavens have in store for you today, this week, this month. It’s the idea that celestial events have an influence on our lives and our fates and it began the first time a human looked skywards. It traverses continents, cultures and eras, and while many other traditions have fallen to the wayside in the light of scientific explanation, astrology persists.

Everyone knows their star sign and everyone can identify with some of the traits associated with that sign. Pisces are emotional creatures, Aries are fiery and determined, right?

Faith in the horoscope differs wildly between individuals: some see them as a lifeline, a way of understanding themselves and their behaviours better; others dismiss them as a generalised statement that could apply to anyone who wanted to believe it. But astrology has long been rooted in science: ancient Egyptian farmers used the skies as a calendar to determine the imminent annual flooding of the Nile; the Bedouin tribes used the stars to determine direction across the dunes, as did sailors around the globe. In Ancient China, sunspots or eclipses foretold the fortunes of the emperor. The Babylonians were the first to systematically apply myths to the constellations and describe the twelve signs of the zodiac, the Egyptians refined it, the Greeks shaped it into its modern form. The logical Greeks were sceptical of the divination of the stars, with two varieties of astrology appearing: one read horoscopes to divine accurate details about the past, present and future, while the other focused on the search for human meaning in the skies. Western astrology developed when Ptolemy described the universe as a set of concentric spheres, with the earth at its centre. It was understood that each lunar cycle had a particular constellation at its centre: with twelve lunar cycles in a year, the twelve zodiac signs were established. Even though astrology fell out of fashion as science caught up, this sectioning of the skies into twelve has persisted, and people are still turning to horoscopes to determine their fate and explain their choices.

This is where newspaper and magazine horoscopes step in—the ones that bear the brunt of the generalisation claim. They simply advise you to avoid acting impulsively, get to know someone or use your charm effectively—the scepticism is justified.

The first newspaper horoscope column originated in August 1930 when RH Naylor was asked to do the horoscope for the recently born Princess Margaret. Naylor was an assistant to the high-society neo-shaman William Warner, known as Cheiro. Cheiro wasn’t available so the Sunday Express published Naylor’s report, predicting Princess Margaret’s life would be eventful, and noting events of ‘tremendous importance to the Royal Family and the nation would come about near her seventh year’: around this time, her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to her father. This eerily accurate prediction spawned enormous interest in horoscopes for ordinary people; Naylor’s new weekly column, What the Stars Foretell, offered advice to people whose birthdays fell that week, but by 1937, he was writing the horoscopes we’ve come to know: advice using the zodiac signs. Suddenly, everyone could take something away from Naylor’s column, and other newspapers leapt on the bandwagon. Horoscopes have become stalwarts of print journalism, in the same way the crossword is a standard across brands.

Horoscopes allow people to believe in there being a story for them, a path for them to tread, without having to give up their agency or control over their own lives. The stars determine the outcome of the decisions they make, but they still get to make said decisions themselves. They’re a harmless way of attempting to understand your life experiences, and can be a form of entertainment when taken lightly. They may be a bastardised version of an ancient artform, but hey, they’re fun.