Long before we could travel to Space – and before telescopes allowed us to study worlds beyond our own in greater detail – people turned their gaze to the night sky to observe the changing seasons and planned their lives based on the position of the stars. Many travelers have looked to the sky to decide which route to take, while sailors in ancient times trusted the celestial map and used the North Star for guidance. In ancient Egypt, the appearance of Sirius, the Great Dog, warned farmers of the annual flooding of the Nile in July. The Phoenicians evaluated the position of the Sun in the sky when they had to decide which direction to take, while ancient civilizations designed lunar calendars based on the phases of the Moon to track religious events.

Although it remains somewhat of a mystery when exactly the zodiac signs became associated with human characteristics and behaviors, what we know for certain is that they originated as a time-measuring mechanism. By mapping the constellations onto a band of the sky that extended around the Earth – along which the Sun, Moon, and planets moved – and dividing this band into 12 sections, the first astrologers were able to create a zodiac calendar. The sky is divided into 12 sections, each corresponding to a zodiac sign. Each zodiac is represented by a constellation generally described by the symbol of the respective sign, and it takes approximately one month for the Sun to cross the celestial section of each zodiac.