Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - Pine Cones： The Zodiac ｜ Rowan & Pine Shorts

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Mackenzie. We're the hosts of the Tea Tales and Talks podcast.

00:00:04.680 If you like sipping a cozy cup of tea while listening to a spooky tale and haunted talks,

00:00:09.540 then our podcast is perfect for you. We love ghosts, ghouls, and witches as much as the next

00:00:14.320 person, maybe a little more. So join us as we dive deep into mysteries of this world and others.

00:00:19.640 New episodes drop every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. Stay spooky and don't let your tea

00:00:25.540 The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, were made in

00:00:46.560 the interiors of collapsing stars.

00:00:49.780 are made of star stuff.

00:01:00.680 A tiny plaque carved from mammoth ivory was dated to around 30,000 BCE.

00:01:07.860 On its surface, a human figure stands in a pose that, some researchers believe, represents

00:01:13.800 the constellation Orion.

00:01:17.280 Deep within caves from that same era, paintings depict other familiar celestial forms like

00:01:22.880 Taurus, occupying the ancient sky then, just as they do now.

00:01:29.880 Welcome to Pinecones – short bursts of folklore from Roan and Pine.

00:01:35.660 I am your host Niamh, and if you're watching the video version of this on Patreon, welcome

00:01:40.620 to my office.

00:01:43.180 While it is nearly impossible to trace the exact moment our ancestors first looked up

00:01:50.020 and traced these glowing patterns of light, astrology grew directly out of their deep

00:01:55.660 desire to understand the universe and read the will of the gods.

00:02:01.300 Across the globe early human cultures interpreted the skies through their own unique lenses,

00:02:06.460 tying starry shapes to local flora and fauna, weaving them into existing folk legends or

00:02:12.500 building brand new myths around the shapes they saw. To find where this urge transformed into a

00:02:18.720 structured system, we have to journey to the banks of the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq,

00:02:24.780 55 miles or 85 kilometers south of Baghdad, right next to the modern town of Al-Hillah,

00:02:32.180 is the ancient city of Babylon, birthplace of astrology.

00:02:35.800 Babylonian astronomers were the first to observe that the sun takes 365 days to complete a full

00:02:44.140 circuit of the heavens. They structured this cycle into 12 months of 30 days each,

00:02:50.360 with 5 extra days added to complete the year. They monitored the movements of wandering stars

00:02:57.160 and planets against the time of year with painstaking detail. To the Babylonians, 0.76

00:03:03.160 cosmic timing was everything. If a planet failed to appear at its calculated moment,

00:03:09.120 it was interpreted as a divine sign that must be heeded.

00:03:15.740 These early sky watchers laid the foundation for the zodiac, the ancient stars that lie along the

00:03:21.760 ecliptic, which is the apparent path of the sun across the celestial sphere.

00:03:26.380 Remarkably, these constellations remain virtually identical to how ancient Babylonian astronomers

00:03:34.340 first documented them. While the zodiacal belt was known in Babylonia as early as 700

00:03:41.140 BCE, a text from 419 BCE revealed a dramatic leap forward. Planetary positions were now

00:03:50.340 recorded by indicating the specific sign a planet occupied. Later, planetary tables refined this

00:03:57.080 even further, calculating coordinates through signs, degrees and sexagesimal parts. By the

00:04:03.600 2nd century BCE, observational tablets and calculated ephemerides were recording the

00:04:10.740 precise dates planets crossed into every sign, cementing a legacy that still shapes how we look

00:04:16.940 at the stars today. The shapes and names of many constellations trace all the way back to

00:04:33.740 Sumerian times, reflecting animals and figures that held a central place in their daily life.

00:04:40.940 You can see the evidence of this geographic footprint in the creatures chosen for the night

00:04:45.580 sky. If the constellations had originated in India, for example, we might find tigers

00:04:52.460 and monkeys. Or if it was with Egyptians, we would expect to see jackals, crocodiles 0.60

00:04:58.520 and hippos scattered across the stars. Instead, we see goats and bulls. We have examples of 1.00

00:05:05.420 these variations. To the ancient Assyrians, the constellation we know as Capricorn was

00:05:11.000 called Munaxa or the goat fish. Later the Greeks added the names of legendary heroes

00:05:18.580 to these star patterns, and the Romans took those Greek titles and translated them into

00:05:24.220 the Latin names we still use today.

00:05:30.300 While the Babylonians developed the original 12 astrological signs, some of which were

00:05:35.380 later incorporated into the western zodiac, it was indeed the ancient Greeks who named

00:05:40.740 these 12 signs after the nearby constellations and linked them to specific dates based on their

00:05:46.340 alignment with the sun's orbit. This synthesis expanded dramatically following Alexander the

00:05:52.760 Great's conquest of Egypt in 332 BCE. In the cultural crossroads of Alexandria,

00:06:00.760 Greek traditions blended with Mesopotamian and Egyptian practices, giving rise to horoscopic

00:06:07.180 astrology. Between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE, Greek astronomers Ptolemy and

00:06:16.580 Hipparchus formalised this system, coining the term zodiacos kyklos, or circle of animals.

00:06:37.180 In his comprehensive works, Ptolemy listed 48 constellations, notably including several

00:06:45.080 in the southern hemisphere that neither he nor the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks or

00:06:51.140 Romans could actually see from their vantage points.

00:06:55.660 This detail proves that while most zodiacal constellations are fundamentally Babylonian

00:07:01.920 in origin, the Babylonians did not originate the exact geometric concept of a zodiacal

00:07:08.240 sign. Nor did they describe the sun's path as an oblique circle.

00:07:15.460 While ancient sky watchers could easily enumerate and name the constellations along the moon's

00:07:21.160 path, tracking the sun's precise path through the stars required far more exact measurement

00:07:27.240 and mathematical reasoning. Merely observing and listing star shapes does not naturally

00:07:32.960 lead to dividing the sun's path into 12 uniform signs.

00:07:45.020 Ptolemy went on to create a new cosmological system where planets moved within various

00:07:50.620 nested spheres. Working from the belief that celestial movements exerted a natural physical

00:07:56.860 influence on all living creatures. Far from treating it as mere superstition,

00:08:03.900 Ptolemy argued that astrology was simply another valid method of studying and understanding

00:08:09.340 the natural world. Referencing the way stars could influence human health and psychology,

00:08:15.900 gave intellectual respectability to the art and remained deeply influential for centuries,

00:08:21.500 demonstrating how individual horoscopes could be cast

00:08:25.440 based on a person's exact date of birth

00:08:27.980 and the specific positions of celestial bodies at that moment.

00:08:44.800 When we talk about astrology today,

00:08:47.560 as we've touched on with Megan and see constantly across popular culture we usually jump straight to

00:08:54.640 our sun signs or star signs. These classic 12 are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra,

00:09:05.480 Scorpius, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius and Pisces. Your sun sign reflects the zodiac sign

00:09:13.580 the sun was occupying at the moment of your birth, representing your core identity, ego,

00:09:19.700 life purpose and basic personality traits. But as any astrology enthusiast will tell you,

00:09:27.460 your sun sign is just one piece of your big three. You also have your moon sign which marks the

00:09:34.500 position of the moon at the exact moment you were born. While your sun sign showcases your outer

00:09:40.100 ego, your moon sign represents your inner emotional world, subconscious mind and gut

00:09:46.740 instincts, revealing how you process feelings and seek safety. Completing the trio is your rising

00:09:54.800 sign or ascendant, which is the specific sign ascending over the eastern horizon at the exact

00:10:01.720 minute and location of your birth. It shapes your outer style, first impressions and how you view

00:10:08.720 the world. In Greek mythology, constellations were far more than distant clusters of stars.

00:10:25.180 They were god-favoured heroes and mythical beasts granted an eternal place in the sky

00:10:31.520 to immortalize their deeds. Ancient sky watchers viewed them as living, semi-divine spirits striding

00:10:40.100 across the heavens. Most of these legendary star myths were passed down through the lost

00:10:45.960 astronomical poems of Hesiod and Pherosides, later recorded by classical writers.

00:10:52.500 aries is embodied by chrysomalus a flying golden fleeced ram sent by the cloud nymph nepheli

00:11:07.380 to rescue her children phrixus and heli from being sacrificed after carrying phrixus across

00:11:15.860 the black sea to colchis the ram instructed the boy to sacrifice him to the gods and place his

00:11:22.100 golden fleece in a grove sacred to Aris, securing his transformation into the constellation Ares.

00:11:32.240 Taurus represents the handsome Cretan bull summoned from the sea by Poseidon. Queen

00:11:38.880 Pasiphae of Crete fell under a spell of intense desire for the beast, hiding inside a hollow

00:11:45.060 wooden cow crafted by the inventor Daedalus to mate with it. A union that produced the

00:11:51.840 legendary bull-headed minotaur. Gemini honours the Dioscuri, the star-crowned twin gods Castor

00:12:05.720 and Polydeusis. Born to Queen Leta, these noble brothers became patrons of horsemanship,

00:12:13.420 travellers and the electrical ship glare known as St. Elmo's Fire. When the mortal Castor died,

00:12:21.500 his immortal brother, Polydeusus, begged Zeus to let him share his divine life.

00:12:27.420 Zeus agreed, but required the twins to alternate their days forever between the underworld and

00:12:32.840 heaven. Cancer and Leo are both tied to the heroic labours of Heracles. Cancer arises from Carcinus,

00:12:43.860 a giant crab crushed underfoot while helping the Hydra battle Heracles. Rewarded with a place in

00:12:50.720 the stars by the goddess Hera for its loyalty. Leo stems from the Nemean lion, a beast with a

00:12:58.360 hide impervious to weapons. Heracles cornered it in its cave and wrestled it to death,

00:13:04.600 wearing its pelt as his famous protective cloak before Hera set the beast in the sky.

00:13:10.020 Virgo embodies Astraea, the virgin goddess of justice who lived peacefully among humans

00:13:21.580 during the Golden Age. She fled to the stars when humanity grew lawless during the Bronze Age.

00:13:28.500 Her scales, Libra, were not originally seen as scales at all. Ancient Greeks viewed those stars

00:13:35.260 as the giant outstretched claws of Scorpio. 0.60

00:13:38.600 It was the Romans who later reimagined those claws 0.94

00:13:41.500 as the scales of balance, 0.51

00:13:43.700 linking them to goddesses of justice like Astraea and Themis.

00:13:49.140 Scorpio, of course, tells the story of Scorpius,

00:13:53.220 a giant scorpion sent by Gaia, the Earth goddess,

00:13:56.640 to defeat Orion when he threatened to wipe out

00:13:59.320 every beast on the planet.

00:14:02.600 Placed opposite one another in the sky,

00:14:04.840 Orion and the Scorpion forever chase each other, so that as one constellation rises, the other sets.

00:14:16.020 Sagittarius represents Chiron, the wisest and eldest of the half-horse Centaurs.

00:14:22.580 Unlike his rowdy brethren, Chiron was an immortal half-brother of Zeus,

00:14:27.420 born after their father Cronus transformed into a horse to hide his romance with the nymph Phyllera.

00:14:34.840 Capricorn traces back to Egepan, a goat-legged version of Pan whose name translates to All-Goat or All-Stormy.

00:14:45.840 When the terrifying monster Typhius attacked, Egepan disguised himself as a fish-tailed goat and later rescued Zeus by stealing back the gods' severed sinews from the giant, a brave act rewarded with a stellar resting place.

00:15:04.840 Aquarius honors Ganymede, a handsome Trojan prince swept up to heaven by Zeus in the

00:15:15.440 shape of an eagle to serve as cupbearer to the gods and patron of love, alongside figures

00:15:22.000 like Eros. He sits in the stars pouring from his heavenly mixing cup, represented by the

00:15:28.420 constellation Crater, while his eagle, soaring nearby, forms Aquila.

00:15:37.040 And Pisces tells of Ichthes, two giant Surian river fish who rescued Aphrodite and Eris

00:15:45.120 as they fled the monster Typhius, or, in alternate tales, the fish forms the two gods assumed

00:15:52.300 to escape.

00:15:54.780 Predated also with assisting Aphrodite's birth from the ocean foam, these heroic fish

00:16:00.120 were immortalised side by side in the night sky.

00:16:11.120 Beyond the signs themselves, there has long been a mystery surrounding how the four classical

00:16:16.100 elements came to be linked with specific zodiac signs in medieval and modern astrology.

00:16:23.620 Since late antiquity, the standard assignment pairs fire with Aries, Leo and Sagittarius

00:16:29.380 to bring dynamism, passion and energy.

00:16:34.000 Water associates with Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces governing emotions, intuition and sensitivity.

00:16:41.580 Air goes with Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, fueling communication, intellect and sociability.

00:16:50.500 Earth with Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn, providing stability, pragmatism and grounding.

00:17:03.380 The earliest Hellenistic author to document these associations was Vettius Valens,

00:17:09.460 who noted that Aries is fiery, Taurus is earthy, Gemini is airy, Cancer is watery and so on.

00:17:18.820 However, Valens presents these pairings as common knowledge,

00:17:22.980 treating them as established facts inherited from an even earlier unnamed source.

00:17:30.900 Over centuries of observing human behaviour, these elemental foundations evolved into the

00:17:36.420 vivid personality profiles we recognise and use today, framing Leos as charismatic,

00:17:43.380 generous leaders capricorns as ambitious disciplined and serious scorpios as intense

00:17:50.660 mysterious and passionate and gemini's as adaptable curious and sociable etc etc

00:17:59.380 every few years popular news outlets ignite a debate over ophiuchus claiming it is a long

00:18:06.020 lost 13th zodiac sign wedged between Scorpio and Sagittarius.

00:18:13.620 This hitherto unnoted slice of cosmic pie supposedly shifts all traditional sun sign

00:18:19.800 dates.

00:18:21.520 Running from November 29th to December 17th, Ophiuchus is symbolised by a man grasping

00:18:28.740 and wrestling a large snake.

00:18:30.820 A figure linked mythologically to Asclepius, the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing.

00:18:37.980 Those born under Ophiuchus are said to be natural healers, wisdom seekers, passionate

00:18:44.140 and fiercely independent.

00:18:59.580 On top of your big three, your personal horoscope is further divided into the 12 astrological

00:19:05.660 houses.

00:19:07.600 There are many, many house systems in astrology, but the basic premise is something like this.

00:19:16.640 Imagine taking a panoramic snapshot of the entire night sky at the second you were born,

00:19:22.900 capturing everything above and below the horizon line.

00:19:27.620 When right at your rising sign, that cosmic wheel is sliced into 12 distinct sections

00:19:33.000 called the houses.

00:19:35.060 If your signs are who you are, the houses are the stage setting showing where that story

00:19:40.380 actually plays out.

00:19:41.940 To figure out how a specific house operates in your chart, you first look at its cusp,

00:19:48.120 the exact boundary line where the house begins.

00:19:51.420 The zodiac sign sitting on that cusp becomes the ruling sign for that house.

00:19:57.180 From there you look at the ruling planet of that sign to find the house's ultimate ruler.

00:20:03.240 For instance, if your 5th house cusp falls in Libra, Libra rules your 5th house.

00:20:09.880 And because the ruling planet of Libra is Venus, Venus becomes the planetary ruler of

00:20:15.720 your 5th house, shaping how you approach creativity, romance and self-expression.

00:20:27.020 Each house targets a completely different area of the human experience.

00:20:31.840 Your first house, for example, acts as your personal front door, governing your self-image

00:20:38.460 and the immediate instinctive impression you make when you step into a room.

00:20:45.440 Further around the wheel, when you hit the heavier, more intense waters of the 8th house,

00:20:50.800 this domain tackles the things outside your direct control, managing everything from shared

00:20:56.120 resources and deep emotional transformations to personal crises and major life transitions

00:21:02.300 and up at the very tip top of your chart sits the 10th house which handles your public reputation

00:21:10.480 your career path and your ultimate legacy essentially framing how you want to be remembered

00:21:16.380 by the world long after you're gone

00:21:26.120 I get it. It's complicated. Maybe you're at the stage where you're mapping out the

00:21:32.680 ruling planet of your 5th house, trying to untangle what's going on in your 8th or you

00:21:38.160 literally just learned what your rising sign was. There's a version of astrology for you.

00:21:44.760 All these intricate layers, the signs, the elements and the houses bring us right back

00:21:49.320 to the central magic. It's the ultimate human storytelling system. A blueprint designed

00:21:55.440 to help us make sense of where we fit in the wider landscape of the world.

00:22:01.620 When you look at the whole picture from 30,000 year old mammoth ivory carved by our earliest

00:22:06.860 ancestors to the birth chart apps on our phones, our obsession with mapping the sky has never

00:22:12.780 really been about cold empirical physics. It has always been about us.

00:22:19.100 Long before we had telescopes, people looked up into the dark and refused to feel small,

00:22:24.920 projecting their own struggles, grief, survival and fierce imagination into the void.

00:22:32.280 Goddesses of justice like Astraea fled earthly chaos to light up the night, while protective

00:22:38.540 crabs, immortal centaurs and loyal golden rams were granted eternal cosmic notoriety

00:22:45.720 just for showing up.

00:22:48.920 And sure, astrology may not hold up under a scientific microscope, but as a living tapestry

00:22:55.720 of folklore, archetypes and a little narrative magic, it gives us a rich, deeply personal

00:23:02.020 vocabulary to understand our messy, messy lives.

00:23:07.040 Whether you treat your chart as a sacred mirror, a tool for self-reflection, or just the original

00:23:13.380 form of ancient cinema, it stands as proof that we have always used the dark to find

00:23:19.380 our own light.

00:23:24.600 Thank you for joining me for another Pinecones short episode. Until next time, keep your

00:23:32.260 eyes on the cosmos, protect your first house, and if a suspicious god in the shape of a

00:23:37.620 golden bull approaches you on a beach um politely decline and run just run the other way okay 1.00

00:23:44.820 thanks for listening and fuck yeah 0.99

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Rowan & Pine: A Feminist Folklore & Mythology Podcast - August 28, 2026

Pine Cones： The Zodiac ｜ Rowan & Pine Shorts

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