110 Fun Facts About Astrology

Which sign begins the astrological year at the March equinox?

Aries still opens the zodiac at the March equinox, yet the Sun no longer stands among its stars that day: a slow wobble of Earth's axis has carried the equinox point into a neighbouring constellation.

The word zodiac comes from a Greek phrase meaning what?

Circle of little animals is the literal sense of the Greek zodiakos kyklos, a name that stuck because most of the star figures along the Sun's yearly route are beasts.

Which planet's 'retrograde' spells, three or four times a year, get blamed by astrologers for garbled messages and tech glitches?

Mercury takes the blame because astrologers give the messenger god's planet charge of communication, travel and contracts; each backward spell lasts about three weeks.

Which companion to Ptolemy's Almagest served as the standard handbook of Western astrology for over a thousand years?

Tetrabiblos was Ptolemy's defence of astrology as a real but inexact art: easily mistaken, he admitted, yet too useful to throw out just because forecasts sometimes fail.

Horoscopic astrology, with its individual birth charts, is thought to have emerged in which city where Babylonian and Egyptian ideas met?

Alexandria, founded after Alexander the Great took Egypt, is where astrologers are credited with joining the Babylonian zodiac to Egypt's 36 decans, ten-degree slices of the sky.

Which Roman orator's attack on astrology in De Divinatione anticipated modern arguments against pseudoscience?

Cicero argued that the planets are almost limitlessly far away, so they can hardly shape a newborn, and that people born at the very same instant still end up with different characters and fates.

In Western astrology, a birthday on 1 September falls under which sign?

Virgo runs from about 23 August to 22 September, yet on 1 September the Sun actually sits among the stars of the constellation before it, because the signs are tied to the seasons while the star figures have drifted.

People born right on the boundary between two zodiac signs are said to be born 'on the' what?

Cusp comes from the Latin for a point, and many astrologers say nobody is really a blend of two signs: the Sun is in one or the other at any instant, so an exact birth time settles it.

Astrology sorts the signs into three modalities: cardinal, fixed and which other?

Mutable signs fall at the end of each season, when the weather is turning, which is why astrologers cast them as the adaptable ones; cardinal signs open a season and fixed signs hold its middle.

Which sign is symbolised by a pair of scales, the only inanimate object among the twelve?

Libra is the only lifeless emblem, and the ancient Greeks saw no scales there at all: they drew its stars as the Scorpion's claws, and its two brightest stars still carry Arabic names meaning southern and northern claw.

Which sign is depicted as a centaur drawing a bow?

Sagittarius is Latin for archer, and the star figure's arrow is aimed at the red star Antares, the heart of the Scorpion next door; one of its stars is still called Alnasl, Arabic for arrowhead.

Which planet is the traditional ruler of Aries?

Mars rules Aries, yet the matching names are a coincidence: Aries is simply Latin for ram, while Ares was the Greek name for the war god the Romans called Mars.

Which sign is ruled by the Sun itself?

Leo was given the Sun, Ptolemy explained, because the Sun passes through it in the hottest weeks of the northern summer, so the most powerful light was matched with the season of greatest heat.

Which sign took Pluto as its "modern" ruler after the planet's discovery?

Scorpio's modern ruler carries its myth with it: because Pluto is named for the Roman god of the underworld, astrologers tie the planet to death, rebirth and whatever lies below the surface.

Despite its name and its jug-pouring emblem, Aquarius belongs to which of astrology's four elements?

Air is Aquarius's element: astrologers cast the water-bearer as a thinker pouring out ideas for the whole community, and leave the water signs to stand for private feeling.

Between the Scorpion and the Archer, the Sun's yearly path also crosses which thirteenth constellation?

Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, actually holds the Sun longer than its famous neighbour: about 18 days from the end of November, against roughly a week for the Scorpion.

Which word for a great misfortune comes from the Italian for 'ill-starred', a relic of astrological belief?

Disaster joins a prefix meaning ill to astro, the Italian for star, and the same belief named an illness: influenza is Italian for 'influence', because epidemics were once blamed on the stars.

Astrologers say the slow drift of the equinox is now ushering in the 'Age of' which zodiac sign?

Aquarius comes next because the equinox point slides backwards through the zodiac, about one constellation every 2,150 years, though by astronomers' star maps the crossing is still centuries away.

Which 1967 musical popularised the idea of a dawning new astrological age?

Hair took the stars seriously: the company kept its own astrologer, who chose the opening nights, Broadway's included.

In a birth chart, the zodiac sign on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth is called what?

Ascendant, or rising sign, changes about every two hours as the Earth turns, so two people born on the same day can have different ones, which is why astrologers ask for an exact birth time.

Newspaper horoscopes are usually based on which single factor at the moment of a reader's birth?

The Sun's position is the one chart factor a birthday alone fixes, so a columnist can address a twelfth of all readers at once; a full chart also needs the exact time and place of birth.

R. H. Naylor's horoscope for which royal, born in August 1930, led to Britain's first regular newspaper astrology column?

Princess Margaret was three days old when the Sunday Express ran it, and Naylor foresaw events of tremendous importance to the royal family near her seventh year; at six she saw her uncle abdicate and her father become king.

Which October 1930 event seemed to fulfil astrologer R. H. Naylor's printed warning about a British aircraft?

The R101 airship crash in France on 5 October was taken as proof of his gift, although the warning he printed had named the week of 8 to 15 October; the Sunday Express gave him a weekly column all the same.

Which First Lady secretly employed astrologer Joan Quigley after the 1981 attempt on her husband's life?

Nancy Reagan wanted safe days for the president's appearances after he was shot, and the secret held until 1988, when ousted chief of staff Donald Regan wrote that her astrologer's warnings had shaped the White House schedule.

British intelligence hired the horoscope writer Louis de Wohl in WWII to work out what?

What Hitler's astrologers advised was the brief, since de Wohl insisted the Führer planned by the stars; in 1941 he was sent to America instead, to tell the press that the heavens foretold a Nazi defeat.

Which astronomer served as personal astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I?

John Dee is credited with picking her coronation day, 15 January 1559, by casting a chart for the most favourable moment; under her sister Mary he had been arrested for calculating the royal horoscopes.

Which great astronomer worked as court astrologer to the Habsburgs?

Johannes Kepler advised Emperor Rudolf II on astrology as imperial mathematician, yet he called it the foolish little daughter of respectable astronomy.

A 1985 double-blind test, in which 28 astrologers matched birth charts to personality profiles, appeared in which British journal?

Nature published it that December: handed a birth chart and three personality profiles, one of them genuine, the astrologers picked no better than guessing, and the physicist in charge had begun the work as a Berkeley undergraduate.

Accepting vague personality descriptions as uniquely accurate, as horoscope readers often do, is known as which effect?

Barnum, the circus showman, lent his name in 1956, when psychologist Paul Meehl mocked personality reports vague enough to fit anybody; people shown such a write-up tend to rate it as a striking likeness.

Bertram Forer's 1948 students rated a 'personal' sketch from an astrology book as highly accurate; what was the catch?

All got the same one, stitched from lines such as 'You have a tendency to be critical of yourself'; Forer put the high marks down to gullibility, since such statements fit almost anyone.

Which psychiatrist's ideas gave rise to "psychological astrology" in the early 20th century?

Carl Jung told Freud in a 1911 letter that his evenings were taken up largely with astrology, and that he was casting horoscopes to find a clue to the core of psychological truth.

Astrologers blame the upheavals of the late twenties on which planet's 'return' to its birth-chart position?

Saturn needs about 29 years to circle the Sun, so it arrives back where it stood at a person's birth just as the twenties run out, and astrologers cast that homecoming as the push into full adulthood.

Hindu astrology, or Jyotisha, fixes its signs to the stars rather than the seasons, using which kind of zodiac?

Sidereal signs stay pinned to the constellations, so they have slipped about 24 degrees behind the season-based Western ones, and most people's Vedic Sun sign is the sign before the one they know.

In the legend of the Jade Emperor's race, which animal finished first and so leads the Chinese zodiac?

The Rat won by cunning rather than speed: it rode across the river on the Ox's back, then jumped off at the far bank and scurried to the Jade Emperor first, leaving its carrier in second place.

The Chinese zodiac's twelve animals were firmly established about 2,000 years ago, under which dynasty?

Han China is where the line-up settled, though its roots may run older; the animals were latecomers, added to the twelve Earthly Branches, an abstract set of markers already used to count years and hours.

When a planet goes 'retrograde' and seems to drift backwards, what is really happening?

An illusion of relative motion, like a slower car that seems to slide backwards as you overtake it on the motorway: Earth laps the outer planets and the inner ones lap us, so each appears to reverse for a while.

The Dendera Zodiac, an Egyptian temple ceiling first sketched by Napoleon's expedition, is now in which museum?

The Louvre has it because a French dealer's agent cut it out of the temple roof in 1821; Paris then argued over claims that the carving predated the Biblical creation, until Champollion's reading of its hieroglyphs proved it far younger.

In 2016 which organisation had to deny a viral rumour that it had changed everyone's star sign?

NASA answered that it studies astronomy, not astrology, and had only done the maths: the Sun really crosses thirteen constellations, and the Babylonians left one out to match their twelve-month calendar.

A Babylonian omen tablet first compiled over 3,500 years ago logs which body's vanishings and returns at dawn or dusk?

Venus vanishes for days whenever it swaps between the morning and evening sky, and Babylonian scribes logged each disappearance beside an omen; historians still use those dated sightings to help fix when Babylon's kings reigned.

Court astrologers picked the moment in 762 to begin building which new capital of the Abbasid caliphs?

Baghdad's ground-breaking was timed by the caliph al-Mansur's court astrologers, who elected the most auspicious moment they could find; within a generation the round city was the Islamic world's centre of learning.

Which Roman, famous for insisting that 'Carthage must be destroyed', told his farm overseers never to consult an astrologer?

Cato listed the 'Chaldean', Rome's byword for an astrologer, beside the soothsayers and diviners his overseer must shun; within a generation a praetor ordered the Chaldean astrologers out of Rome altogether.

Which astronomer, later condemned by the Inquisition, cast horoscopes for paying clients and for his own two daughters?

Galileo Galilei cast horoscopes for both his daughters, Virginia and Livia, and the fees from wealthy clients helped stretch a thin professor's salary; in his day the craft was part of a mathematician's job.

Which zodiac sign is represented by a goat?

Capricorn, Latin for 'horned like a goat', also names the Tropic of Capricorn: when the line was named, the Sun stood among the goat's stars on the December solstice, the day it passes directly overhead there.

Which two signs are both traditionally ruled by Mercury?

Gemini and Virgo share Mercury because ancient astrologers had only seven 'planets' to spread over twelve signs: the Sun and Moon took one sign each, and the other five bodies had to double up.

Astrologers call Aries and the other odd-numbered signs masculine, or which polarity?

Positive signs are the fire and air signs, which astrologers cast as active and assertive, while the six earth and water signs are 'negative', or receptive; some modern astrologers drop both labels for plain 'active' and 'receptive'.

Which sign recalls Zeus's disguise for abducting Europa?

Taurus is the white bull whose shape Zeus took to swim off to Crete with Europa, in the usual Greek telling; star maps show only its front half, as if the hindquarters were still under the waves.

Which zodiac sign is ruled by the Moon?

Cancer went to the Moon because ancient astrologers handed the two warmest signs of the northern year to the two great lights, the Sun and the Moon, before sharing out the rest among the planets.

Which sign, traditionally ruled by Jupiter, was handed by modern astrologers to Neptune, the planet named after the sea god?

Pisces, the sign of the two fishes, answered to Jupiter alone until astrologers took up the planets found by telescope; in one Greek tale the fish are Aphrodite and her son Eros, who leapt into a river to escape the monster Typhon.

In the Vietnamese zodiac, which animal takes the place of the Chinese Rabbit?

The Cat finally gets a year in Vietnam; in one Chinese telling it lost its place in the great race when a rival shoved it off the Ox's back into the river, said to be why cats have hunted that rival's kind ever since.

Which philosopher called astrology a pseudoscience because its vague prophecies could never be proved false?

Karl Popper made astrology his model pseudoscience; his critics reply that it has in fact been tested and has failed, so it is refuted rather than unfalsifiable.

Which poet's vision of heaven climbs through seven planetary spheres, housing ardent lovers in Venus?

Dante reaches the stars of Gemini, the sign he was born under, and stops to thank them for whatever genius he has; from there he looks back down past all seven planets to a tiny, paltry Earth.

Cassius says the fault 'is not in our stars, but in ourselves' in which Shakespeare play?

Julius Caesar has Cassius goading Brutus to act instead of blaming fate; John Green borrowed the line for the title of his novel The Fault in Our Stars.

Which French queen summoned Nostradamus to court and had him cast horoscopes for her children?

Catherine de' Medici sent for him after his almanac hinted at threats to the royal family, and the visit paid off: he ended his days as physician-in-ordinary to her son, King Charles IX.

Which Church Father, a consulter of astrologers in his youth, later cited twins with different fates as evidence against astrology?

Augustine tells in his Confessions how a friend, born at the same moment as a slave in another household, grew rich while the slave stayed a slave; twins like Jacob and Esau, he added, clinched the case.

In a 2024 Pew survey, why did most Americans who consult horoscopes, tarot or fortune tellers say they do it?

Just for fun was the answer of 20% of US adults, double the 10% seeking helpful insights, even though 27% said they believe the stars and planets can affect people's lives.

Which Roman emperor, who later withdrew to Capri, kept the astrologer Thrasyllus at his court?

Tiberius met Thrasyllus on Rhodes and, as Tacitus and Suetonius both tell it, nearly had him thrown into the sea before a well-timed prediction won his trust.

Superstition about girls born in which zodiac year made Japan's births plunge in 1966?

Fire Horse women were said to be hot-tempered and deadly to their husbands, so many couples avoided having a baby in 1966, leaving a dent still visible in Japan's population pyramid.

Chinese astronomy's Twenty-Eight Mansions each mark roughly one day's travel across the sky for which body?

The Moon takes just over 27 days to circle the sky against the stars, so Chinese astronomers split its path into 28 'mansions', roughly one lodging for each night.

In 1552 the Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano cast a horoscope promising long life to which Tudor monarch?

Edward VI received Cardano, who was passing through London on his way home from Scotland; the chart foresaw a long life, and the king was dead by the following summer.

Michel Gauquelin's 1955 'Mars effect' claimed the planet was rising or overhead at the births of which group?

Sports champions were born unusually often just after Mars rose or peaked, Gauquelin said, but a French test of more than 1,000 champions found no such effect and blamed his selection of data.

Which illness got its Italian name from the old belief that outbreaks came from the sway of the stars?

Influenza is Italian for 'influence', short for the influence of the stars, a phrase on record since the 1300s. English borrowed the word in 1743, during an epidemic that had begun in Italy.

Which New York landmark's ceiling shows the zodiac constellations painted back to front, a mistake never corrected?

Grand Central Terminal's painted sky is reversed left to right, as a commuter pointed out within a month of the station opening. Every restoration since has left the error in place.

Which Founding Father, writing as 'Poor Richard', jokingly predicted the hour rival almanac-maker Titan Leeds would die?

Benjamin Franklin named the day and minute in his first almanac, then printed an obituary once the date had passed. When Leeds protested that he was alive, Franklin insisted an impostor had taken his place.

Which Hebrew phrase, shouted at Jewish weddings, originally meant a favourable astrological sign?

Mazel tov builds on mazzal, the biblical Hebrew for a constellation, so it began as a wish for a lucky star. Guests now clap and shout it the moment the glass is broken at the end of the ceremony.

Which English composer, who called astrology his 'pet vice', built the orchestral suite 'The Planets' around it?

Gustav Holst learned astrology from a friend on a holiday in Spain and cast horoscopes for people he knew for the rest of his life. Each movement paints one planet's astrological character.

Which name does Matthew's Gospel give the eastern stargazers who followed a star to the infant Jesus?

Magi were priests whose skill at reading the stars was famous across the ancient world, and some Bibles call them astrologers outright. Their name is also where English gets the word magic.

Which Shakespeare tragedy opens with a prologue that calls its doomed couple 'star-crossed lovers'?

Romeo and Juliet coined the phrase, which rests on the astrological belief that the positions of the stars rule people's fates. The audience hears the lovers' ruin before the first scene begins.

Which creature, fifth in the Chinese zodiac's cycle, is the only one of the twelve that is purely mythical?

Dragon years typically bring a spike in births where the Chinese zodiac is followed, because children born under the sign are thought especially lucky.

In Greek myth the zodiac's lion was the beast of Nemea, killed by which hero as his first labour?

Heracles found that arrows bounced off the lion's hide, so he strangled it with his bare hands. In one telling, Zeus then set the beast among the stars to mark his son's feat.

Astrology's seven classical planets lent their names to which everyday set, as French lundi and mardi still show?

Days of the week were named after the classical planets of Hellenistic astrology. English later swapped in Germanic gods for several of them, which is why Thursday honours Thor.

In one Greek myth, the zodiac's scorpion was sent to kill which hunter who had threatened to slay every beast on Earth?

Orion and his killer were both raised to the sky, where the hunter rules the winter nights but flees each summer as the scorpion comes up.

Which twin brothers of classical myth, the sons of Leda, are the pair behind the zodiac sign Gemini?

Castor and Pollux had different fathers in the usual telling, so only Pollux was immortal. When his brother was killed, Pollux begged Zeus to let him share that gift, and the two were set in the sky together.

Which world, found by William Herschel in 1781, did modern astrologers make the ruling planet of Aquarius?

Uranus was unknown to the ancients, so astrologers gave the newcomer modern themes: invention, electricity, revolution and sudden change.

Which vast Hindu bathing pilgrimage moves between four riverside sites on a cycle set by Jupiter's lap of the zodiac?

Kumbh Mela means 'festival of the sacred pitcher'. Jupiter takes about twelve years to go round the zodiac, so each site's turn is worked out in advance from where the planet will stand.

The Western zodiac's sign names, such as Aries for 'ram', are everyday words in which ancient language?

Latin gave English all twelve names almost untouched: only Capricornus lost its ending. Gemini is simply the Roman word for twins.

The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are named for the zodiac signs the Sun once occupied at which yearly turning points?

The solstices fell in those two signs when the lines were named in the last centuries BC. The slow wobble of Earth's axis has since carried both turning points into other constellations.

Which satirist, posing as 'Isaac Bickerstaff', foretold astrologer John Partridge's death and then declared him dead?

Jonathan Swift's hoax of 1708 worked so well that, by the accounts of the day, an undertaker called at the astrologer's house and mourners wept under his window. Partridge had to publish a letter insisting he was still living.

Which scientist, though no believer, refused to sign 1975's 'Objections to Astrology', calling its tone authoritarian?

Carl Sagan said he would gladly have signed a statement that set out astrology's main claims and refuted them. The version printed in The Humanist carried 186 signatures without his.

Which Danish astronomer, who wore a metal nose after a duel, owed the crown a yearly astrological almanac?

Tycho Brahe held his island observatory in exchange for serving as royal astrologer, which also meant a horoscope for every newborn prince. Tests in 2012 showed his false nose was brass.

The water-bearer of Aquarius is usually identified with which Trojan prince, carried off to pour wine for the gods?

Ganymede was tending sheep, in the best-known telling, when an eagle swept him up to Olympus, and his father was consoled with the news that the boy was now immortal. The Eagle still sits beside him in the sky as Aquila.

Whose guide 'Sun Signs' became the first astrology book to reach the New York Times bestseller list?

Linda Goodman followed her hit with 'Love Signs', whose paperback rights sold for $2.25 million, then a record for a non-fiction book.

Which American astrologer won fame for a 1956 forecast that the winner of the 1960 election would die in office?

Jeane Dixon later changed her mind and tipped Richard Nixon to win. Mathematician John Allen Paulos coined 'the Jeane Dixon effect' for trumpeting a few hits while ignoring the many misses.

Which caped Puerto Rican astrologer, long a Univision star, is the subject of the documentary 'Mucho Mucho Amor'?

Walter Mercado got his break when a television guest failed to show and he filled the 25-minute slot with predictions, dressed in extravagant robes. He was made a regular at once.

Astrologer William Lilly faced an official inquiry after seeming to foretell which English calamity fifteen years early?

Great Fire of London investigators suspected Lilly of a hand in the blaze, because in 1651 he had printed pictures of a city in flames ringed by coffins.

Which Roman ruler, the victor of Actium, made his own horoscope public and struck a silver coin showing his birth sign?

Augustus at first refused to give the astrologer Theogenes his birth details, fearing a poor reading. When he finally gave way, Suetonius says, the seer sprang up and threw himself at his feet.

Which Mesopotamian people's name became the Roman word for an astrologer, a sense the Book of Daniel also uses?

Chaldeans had been a real people of southern Mesopotamia, but once their empire was swallowed by Persia the name lingered only as a label for a class of star-readers.

Which Greek astronomer found the slow precession that has slid the zodiac signs away from their namesake constellations?

Hipparchus noticed around 130 BC that his star positions would not match older observations. He is also counted the founder of trigonometry.

The zodiac is a belt of sky centred on which line, tilted about 23 degrees to the celestial equator?

The ecliptic is the Sun's apparent yearly path, and the zodiac reaches about 8 degrees either side of it. The ancients named the line for eclipses, which can only happen along it.

An astrological birth chart is cut into twelve sections, each governing one area of a person's life, known as what?

Houses each rule a patch of life: the second covers money and possessions, while the tenth governs career and public reputation. They are numbered from the eastern horizon downward.

Which astrological aspect, an angle of 120 degrees between two planets, is traditionally read as extremely beneficial?

Trine aspects join signs that share an element, since each element's three signs sit a third of the zodiac apart. Astrologers call the link comfortable and free-flowing.

Astrologers split each zodiac sign into three equal slices, an idea rooted in Egyptian star clocks, called what?

Decans began as 36 small star groups whose risings marked the hours of the Egyptian night. They first appear painted inside coffin lids about 4,000 years ago.

In Hindu astrology, which 'shadow planet', the severed head of a demon, is said to cause eclipses by swallowing the Sun?

Rahu has no physical existence: it marks the northern point where the paths of the two great lights cross, the only kind of place an eclipse can happen. Astrologers rank it as a planet all the same.

Which small body, found in 1977 and named after the centaur who taught Achilles, do some astrologers add to charts?

Chiron the centaur was famed as a healer, oracle and astrologer in his own right. His namesake was the first of a new class of bodies found orbiting beyond the asteroid belt.

Which French president regularly consulted the astrologer Élizabeth Teissier at the Élysée Palace?

François Mitterrand began seeing her in 1989. In 2001 she was awarded a sociology doctorate for a thesis arguing that science oppresses astrology, an award the scientific community contested.

Which France football coach, fascinated by astrology, had to deny dropping winger Robert Pires for being a Scorpio?

Raymond Domenech believes star signs shape personality, but he insisted the Arsenal winger was simply declining and a bad influence on the squad.

Which Booker Prize-winning novel by Eleanor Catton casts twelve local men as the twelve signs of the zodiac?

The Luminaries gives a second set of characters the roles of planets, so its plot turns as the heavens did over a New Zealand prospectors' town in 1866.

Which book of tables, its Greek name meaning a diary, shows an astrologer where every planet will be each day?

Ephemeris shares its root with 'ephemeral': both come from the Greek for 'daily'. More than one of them are properly called ephemerides.

Which way of dividing a birth chart, named after a 17th-century Italian monk, is the commonest in Western astrology?

Placidus fails near the poles, where some degrees of the zodiac never touch the horizon, so planets there cannot be placed at all. Its namesake taught mathematics at the University of Pavia.

Which New York astrologer was cleared of fortune-telling in 1914 after reading the horoscope of the judge's own son?

Evangeline Adams so impressed the judge that he acquitted her of all wrongdoing and praised her skill. Her astrology books were ghostwritten by the occultist Aleister Crowley.

In Greek myth the zodiac's ram rescued the children Phrixus and Helle and later yielded which treasure sought by Jason?

The Golden Fleece came from a flying ram called Chrysomallus. Helle slipped from its back in mid-flight and drowned in the strait named the Hellespont after her.

Which Japanese manga follows the Sohma family, cursed to turn into beasts of the Chinese zodiac when hugged?

Fruits Basket follows the orphan Tohru Honda, who moves in with the family after a landslide wrecks the tent she has been living in, and then stumbles on their secret.

Which European capital's medieval astronomical clock, the Orloj, still tracks the Sun's place on a ring of zodiac signs?

Prague's clock dates from 1410, with a Sun icon that travels round a movable zodiac ring. It was badly damaged by German guns during the uprising of May 1945.

Which animal comes twelfth and last in the Chinese zodiac, after falling asleep during the great race?

Pig years close each twelve-year cycle: in the legend it stopped for a feast and dozed off, and the Jade Emperor was about to end the race when a late oink was heard.

The maiden of Virgo is traditionally shown holding which crop, recalled in the name of her brightest star, Spica?

Wheat suits a sign tied to Demeter, the Greek goddess of the harvest. The star's name is short for a phrase meaning 'the virgin's ear of grain'.

To work out a rising sign, an astrologer needs the date of a birth, the place and which third detail?

The exact time matters because the rising sign changes roughly every two hours, and far from the equator some signs slip past in an hour or less.

Which Hermetic maxim, a paraphrase of the Emerald Tablet, is often read as a statement of astrology's central idea?

As above, so below became a New Age motto, yet the tablet's original Arabic never says the two realms are alike: it says only that what is above and what is below come 'from' each other.

In many Hindu communities, families have an astrologer compare two birth charts, or kundalis, before agreeing to what?

A marriage alliance in many communities of North and South India waits on the two horoscopes being matched for compatibility. A kundali is also traditionally used to choose a newborn's name.

The disease cancer shares its name with the zodiac sign because Greek doctors likened swollen tumours to which creature?

A crab came to mind because the swollen veins around a tumour spread out like legs. Hippocrates used the Greek word karkinos, and the Roman writer Celsus kept the image when he translated it.

In which Shakespeare tragedy does the villain Edmund mock astrology as 'the excellent foppery of the world'?

King Lear gives the speech to a schemer who scoffs at people who claim to be 'villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion'. His father has just blamed recent eclipses for the kingdom's troubles.

Which Thai New Year festival, known for water fights, is named from a Sanskrit word for the Sun's passage between signs?

Songkran begins when the Sun is reckoned to cross into a new sign, and court and village astrologers use the festival to forecast the year's rain, harvests and politics.