Q 01/05

Which sign begins the astrological year at the March equinox?

A) Aries

B) Pisces

C) Libra

D) Capricorn

Answer · why

A) Aries

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 th...

Q 02/05

The word zodiac comes from a Greek phrase meaning what?

A) Twelve houses

B) Circle of little animals

C) Path of the Sun

D) Wheel of the heavens

Answer · why

B) Circle of little animals

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 ...

Q 03/05

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

A) Venus

B) Mercury

C) Saturn

D) Neptune

Answer · why

B) Mercury

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

Q 04/05

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

A) De Divinatione

B) Tetrabiblos

C) Geographia

D) Timaeus

Answer · why

B) Tetrabiblos

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 forec...

Q 05/05

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

A) Memphis

B) Antioch

C) Thebes

D) Alexandria

Answer · why

D) Alexandria

Alexandria, founded after Alexander the Great took Egypt, is where astrologers are credited with joining the Babylonian zodiac to Egypt's 36 decans, t...