“There are a lot of constellations-88, if you want to get right down to it-so I’m not sure why everyone’s up in arms about this one,” astrologer Susan Miller told Elle back in 2011 (yeah, 10 years ago). Prominent figures in astrology don’t believe Ophiuchus changes anything. Because of this, Ophiuchus is sometimes also called Serpentarius. Ophiuchus is depicted as an image of exactly what you might expect: a large, powerful man holding a large snake represented by Serpens, a neighboring constellation, which is usually coiled around his waist. Ophiuchus was named as a mixture of two Greek words-“serpent” and “bearing.” So it’s no surprise that the face of the constellation is commonly Asclepius, the god of medicine in ancient Greek mythology, who holds a staff with a serpent wrapped around it (which, fun fact, is also the well-known symbol of the World Health Organization). It’s associated with Asclepius, the famous healer in Greek mythology. Below is all the info you need to know about the Ophiuchus constellation. (These people are not astrologers.)Įven though Ophiuchus is undoubtedly an observed constellation (located northwest of the center of the Milky Way, in case you were curious), could it have the chance to be an actual member of the zodiac? Well, astronomers won’t comment on that part, considering astrology is not science, and astrologers aren’t buying that our signs have shifted. That, along with the sheer existence of this not-new constellation, means some people argue that the astrological signs we’ve all come to know and love have altered. However, the Earth’s wobbly axis means none of the constellations are in the same place they were all 2,500 years ago, from our POV on Earth looking up at the sky. So, no, scientists didn’t “just discover it.” They saw the constellation of Ophiuchus, too, but since it didn’t fit neatly into one of these 12 slices, they decided to leave it out of the zodiac-along with dozens of other constellations. They studied an apparent relationship between the constellations’ placements in the sky and the movement of the Sun, and thus, the 12 signs were born.
The origins of the zodiac go back approximately 2,500 years when the Babylonians separated the sky into 12 different sections.
Not Sure What Your Zodiac Sign Is? Let Us Help.It’s always been a part of the Sun’s path in the sky (called the ecliptic), but it’s largely been left out of astrology.
In fact, we’ve known about it for thousands of years-according to The Guardian, the first recorded mention of Ophiuchus came in 300 BC. But this is undeniably astronomy, not astrology, and it doesn’t affect your zodiac sign.įirst, the Ophiuchus constellation isn’t new. The grain of truth in the Ophiuchus hoaxĪlthough Ophiuchus is not part of the zodiac, there is a teeny-tiny bit of truth in these viral stories: Ophiuchus is a constellation (although not a “new” one), and the appearance of the constellations in the sky has changed over time. With a little bit of searching, you can find used copies of Astrology 14 available online on sites like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay.
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The Time piece even acknowledges, " Astrology 14 is not exactly moving either heaven or earth within the trade."īTW, if you want to hear Schmidt's full argument, you can. However, it's important to note that even at the time, there weren't any astrologers who agreed with Schmidt.
Schmidt's "revised zodiac" was based partially on the constellations along the ecliptic, and partially on the fact that he felt like the Sun signs didn't accurately describe his or his son's personalities. Along with Ophiuchus, falling between Scorpio and Sagittarius, he introduced another sign called Cetus, falling between Aries and Taurus. Back in 1970 (yep, over 50 years ago), Time magazine published a story on the purported "revised zodiac." This "revised zodiac" was attributed to a man called Steven Schmidt who had just published a book called Astrology 14, in which he argued that there should be 14 zodiac signs, not 12. More recently, USA Today traced some 2020 headlines about the “13th zodiac sign” back to a viral Facebook post from a Virginia-based radio station.īut this story long pre-dates the internet. A flurry of headlines were published in early 2016 after NASA published a (since-deleted) blog post on its children’s site, Space Place, showing where Ophiuchus would fall in the zodiac if astrologers decided to include it, while acknowledging that, well, they didn’t. According to Snopes, these stories have been circulating online since at least as far back as 2002 via various chain letters and viral blog posts.
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