Whether or not you are a believer in the zodiac signs is secondary but haven’t you ever wondered how the signs came to be? Western astrology can be traced back to ancient Greece and Babylon. About 1800 years ago, Ptolemy, a famous astronomer, divided the earth’s orbit around the sun into 30-degree divisions. The entire orbit is 360 degrees meaning that twelve divisions were born. In each of these twelve divisions, he noted down the stars that could be seen from earth. Later, when people saw the patterns of the stars, they saw different symbols and sometimes even animals. These eventually became the zodiac symbols and the zodiac signs were named after them.
To list the different zodiac signs, we begin with Aires, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. According to Greek mythology, there are different stories about different stars, and these stories are often associated with the zodiac signs. For example, the story associated with Leo is that Hercules was given twelve tasks to complete as punishment for going insane and killing his children. One of these tasks was to kill one of the most feared lions, Nemea. Their battle was gruesome but by the end of it Hercules came out victorious. Although Nemea had lost the battle, Zeus rewarded his bravery by aligning the stars to look like him. That is the story’s explanation of how the constellation of Leo came to be.
While these constellations may not seem to be authentic representations of people’s personalities, people have developed certain patterns of behavior depending on what time of the year they were born. Some of the personalities match with each other, and others repel them. This practice is not supported by any sciences per se but it would be very interesting to read about how the stars were aligned at the time of your birth.