Astrological symbols should not be confused with Astronomical symbols.
Historically, astrological and astronomical symbols have overlapped. Frequently used symbols include signs of the zodiac and classical planets. These originate from medieval Byzantine codices. Their current form is a product of the European Renaissance. Other symbols for astrological aspects are used in various astrological traditions.
Symbols for the classical planets, zodiac signs, aspects, lots, and the lunar nodes appear in the medieval Byzantine codices in which many ancient horoscopes were preserved.[1] In the original papyri of these Greek horoscopes, there was a circle with the glyph representing shine for the Sun; and a crescent for the Moon.[2]
The written symbols for Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn have been traced to forms found in late Classical Greek papyri.[3] The symbols for Jupiter and Saturn are monograms of the initial letters of the corresponding Greek names, and the symbol for Mercury is a stylized caduceus.[3] A.S.D. Maunder finds antecedents of the planetary symbols in earlier sources, used to represent the gods associated with the classical planets. Bianchini's planisphere, produced in the 2nd century,[4] shows Greek personifications of planetary gods charged with early versions of the planetary symbols: Mercury has a caduceus; Venus has, attached to her necklace, a cord connected to another necklace; Mars, a spear; Jupiter, a staff; Saturn, a scythe; the Sun, a circlet with rays radiating from it; and the Moon, a headdress with a crescent attached.[5] A diagram in Johannes Kamateros' 12th-century Compendium of Astrology shows the Sun represented by the circle with a ray, Jupiter by the letter zeta (the initial of Zeus, Jupiter's counterpart in Greek mythology), Mars by a shield crossed by a spear, and the remaining classical planets by symbols resembling the modern ones, without the cross-mark seen in modern versions of the symbols.[5]
The modern sun symbol, pictured as a circle with a dot, first appeared in the Renaissance.[2] (The conventional symbols for the signs of the zodiac also develop in the Renaissance period as simplifications of the classical pictorial representations of the signs.)The modern sun symbol resembles the Egyptian hieroglyph for "sun" - a circle that sometimes had a dot in the center, .Similar in appearance were several variants of the ancestral form of the modern Chinese logograph for "sun", which in the oracle bone script and bronze script were .It is not known if the Egyptian and Chinese logographs have any connection to the European astrological symbol.
Symbols for Uranus and Neptune were created shortly after their discovery. For Uranus, two variant symbols are seen. One symbol,, invented by J. G. Köhler and refined by Bode, was intended to represent the newly discovered metal platinum; since platinum, sometimes described as white gold was found by chemists mixed with iron, the symbol for platinum combines the alchemical symbols for iron, ♂, and gold, ☉.[6] [7] An inverted version of that same symbol, was in use in the early 20th century.[8] Another symbol,, was suggested by Lalande in 1784. In a letter to Herschel, Lalande described it as "un globe surmonté par la première lettre de votre nom" ("a globe surmounted by the first letter of your name").[9] After Neptune was discovered, the Bureau des Longitudes proposed the name Neptune and the familiar trident for the planet's symbol, though at bottom may be either a cross or an orb .[10]
The astrological symbols for the first four objects discovered at the beginning of the 19th century — Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta — were created shortly after their discoveries. They were initially listed as planets, and half a century later came to be called asteroids, though such "minor planets" continued to be considered planets for perhaps another century. Shortly after Giuseppe Piazzi's discovery of Ceres, a group of astronomers ratified the name, proposed by the discoverer, and chose the sickle as a symbol of the planet.[11] The symbol for Pallas, the spear of Pallas Athena, was invented by Baron Franz Xaver von Zach, and introduced in his Monatliche Correspondenz zur Beförderung der Erd- und Himmels-Kunde.[12] Karl Ludwig Harding, who discovered and named Juno, assigned to it the symbol of a scepter topped with a star.[13]
The modern astrological form of the symbol for Vesta, ⚶, was created by Eleanor Bach,[14] who is credited with pioneering the use of the big four asteroids with the publication of her Ephemerides of the Asteroids in the early 1970s.[15] The original form of the symbol for Vesta,, was created by German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. Olbers, having previously discovered and named one new planet (as the asteroids were then classified), gave Gauss the honor of naming his newest discovery. Gauss decided to name the planet for the goddess Vesta, and also specified that the symbol should be the altar of the goddess with the sacred fire burning on it.[16] [17] Bach's variant was a simplification of 19th-century elaborations of Gauss's altar symbol.[14]
The symbol for the centaur Chiron, ⚷, is both a key and a monogram of the letters O and K (for 'Object Kowal', a provisional name of the object, for discoverer Charles T. Kowal) was proposed by astrologer Al Morrison, who presented the symbol as "an inspiration shared amongst Al H. Morrison, Joelle K.D. Mahoney, and Marlene Bassoff."[18]
A widely used convention for other centaurs, proposed by Robert von Heeren in the 1990s, is to replace the K of the Chiron key glyph with the initial letter of the object: e.g. P or φ for Pholus and N for Nessus .
Pluto, like Uranus, has multiple symbols in use. One symbol, ♇, is a monogram of the letters PL (which can be interpreted to stand for Pluto or for astronomer Percival Lowell), was announced with the name of the new planet by the discoverers on May 1, 1930.[19] Another symbol, which was popularized in Paul Clancy's astrological publications, is based on Pluto's bident: . This symbol is described by Dane Rudhyar as "suggest[ing] the planetary character of the Pluto mind by the circle, floating above the open cup." Although, this meaning is readily debatable due to Blavatskian origins, rather than a properly traditional understanding, such as may be found in Hermeticism.[20]
Symbols for other large trans-Neptunian objects have mostly been proposed on the Internet;[21] some created by Denis Moskowitz have been used by NASA[22] and are used by the popular open-source astrological software Astrolog, as well as being used less consistently by commercial programs.
The symbol for retrograde motion is, a capital 'R' with a tail stroke.[23] [24] [25] An 'R' with a tail stroke was used to abbreviate many words beginning with the letter 'R'; in medical prescriptions, it abbreviated the word recipe (from the Latin imperative of recipere "to take"[26]), and in missals, an R with a tail stroke marked the responses.[27]
| Name | Meaning | Image | Text[28] | Emoji[29] | Unicode | Symbol represents | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aries | Ram | U+2648 | Face and horns of a ram | ||||
| Taurus | Bull | U+2649 | Face and horns of a bull | ||||
| Gemini | Twinned | U+264A | Twins | ||||
| Cancer | Crab | U+264B | Two arms/pincers of a crab | ||||
| Leo | Lion | U+264C | A lion's head and tail | ||||
| Virgo | Maiden | U+264D | Derived from the Greek letters ΠΑΡ, an abbreviation of parthenos "virgin" | ||||
| Libra | Scales | U+264E | Scales The claws of Scorpio | ||||
| Scorpio | Scorpion | U+264F | Scorpion with stinging tail | ||||
| Sagittarius | Archer | U+2650 | Bow and arrow of a centaur | ||||
| Capricorn | Goat-horned | U+2651 | Head and forequarters of a goat with the hindquarters and tail of a fish[30] | ||||
| Aquarius | Water-carrier | U+2652 | Ripples of water | ||||
| Pisces | Fishes | U+2653 | Two fish |
| Name[31] | Image | Text | Unicode | Symbol represents |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sun | U+2609 | Circle with a dot as a solar symbol from Apollo's round shield with a boss | ||
| Moon | U+263D | A crescent moon | ||
| U+263E | ||||
| Mercury | U+263F | Mercury's caduceus; cross added in 16th century CE. | ||
| Venus | U+2640 | Perhaps a copper hand mirror with handle or necklace with pendant; cross added in 16th c. (see Venus symbol) | ||
| Mars | U+2642 | Mars' shield and spear | ||
| Jupiter | U+2643 | Monogram Ζ for Zeus with a cross-bar indicating an abbreviation (perhaps later seen as a cross) | ||
| Saturn | U+2644 | κρ for Cronus with a cross-bar indicating an abbreviation; cross added in 16th c. | ||
| Uranus | U+2645 | An orb with a monogram H for the discoverer's last name, Herschel | ||
| U+26E2 | Derived from the alchemical symbols of the planetary metals gold (Sun) and iron (Mars) to create a symbol for platinum, then applied to the planet | |||
| Neptune | U+2646 | Neptune's trident | ||
| Pluto | U+2BD3 | Pluto's orb and a bident | ||
| U+2647 | PL monogram for Pluto and Percival Lowell | |||
| U+2BD4 | Symbol used mainly in France, Spain, Italy and Germany.[32] | |||
| U+2BD5 | Symbol invented by German astrologer Hermann Lefeldt in 1946. Used by some followers of the Hamburg School of Astrology. Also proposed for Pluto's moon Charon. | |||
| U+2BD6 | Pluto's orbit crossing that of Neptune. Symbol mostly used in German-speaking countries and Denmark. |
Since the 1970s, some astrologers have used asteroids and other celestial bodies in their horoscopes. The symbol for the first-recognised centaur, 2060 Chiron, was devised by Al H. Morrison soon after it had been discovered by Charles Kowal, and has become standard amongst astrologers.[33] In the late 1990s, German astrologer Robert von Heeren created symbols for other centaurs based on the Chiron model, though only those for 5145 Pholus and 7066 Nessus are included in Unicode, and only that for Pholus in Astrolog. The following list is by no means exhaustive, but for bodies outside this list, there is often very little to no independent usage beyond the symbols' creators.
| Category | Name | Image | Text | Unicode | Symbol represents | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asteroids | U+26B3 | A scythe (handle down), emblematic of Ceres as goddess of the harvest | |||||||||
| U+26B4 | A spear, emblematic of Athena | ||||||||||
| U+26B5 | A scepter, emblematic of Juno as queen of the gods, topped with a star | ||||||||||
| U+26B6 | The fire-altar of Vesta's temple | ||||||||||
| , | U+0025, U+2BD9 | The % sign (shift-5 on the keyboard for asteroid 5)[34] | |||||||||
| U+2BDA | A caduceus (an apparent error for the rod of Asclepius, itself an error for the snake as a symbol of Hygieia)[35] | ||||||||||
| U+26B7 | Stylized key; simultaneously the letters OK for "Object Kowal", as the object was known when announced as a new planet. The top is half of a "perfect X", with the staff rising above so that they're radii of a circle centered where they meet. The width and height of the oval are the golden ratio.[36] | ||||||||||
| U+2BDB | Symbols devised by German astrologer Robert von Heeren in the late 1990s, based on Chiron's | ||||||||||
| U+2BDC | |||||||||||
| Large trans-Neptunian planetoids, incl. dwarf planets | Eris | U+2BF0 | The Hand of Eris; also used non-astrologically by Discordians | ||||||||
| U+2BF1 | Based on the symbols for Pluto, Mars, and Venus; proposed by Henry Seltzer and used in Time Passages[37] | ||||||||||
| U+1F77B | Conflation of Hawaiian petroglyphs for woman and birth, as Haumea was the goddess of both | ||||||||||
| U+1F77C | Engraved face of the Rapa Nui god Makemake, also resembling an M | ||||||||||
| U+1F77D | Chinese character 共 gòng (the first character in Gonggong's name), combined with a snake's tail | ||||||||||
| U+2BF2 | Monogram of the Inuktitut syllabics for 'sa' and 'n', as Sedna's Inuit name is 'Sanna' (ᓴᓐᓇ) | ||||||||||
| U+1F77E | A Q for Quaoar combined with a canoe, stylised to resemble the angular rock art of the Tongva | ||||||||||
| U+1F77F | An O-R monogram for Orcus, stylised to resemble a skull and an orca's grin | ||||||||||
| Inverted Pluto, from Orcus being styled the 'anti-Pluto' | |||||||||||
| A stylized hippocamp | |||||||||||
| U+2748 | A gleaming star, as Varda was creator of the stars | ||||||||||
| Ixion | Ixion of Greek mythology lying on the Solar wheel to which Zeus had bound him in Tartarus--> | The solar wheel that Zeus bound Ixion to in Tartarus, with the spokes stylized as an I-X for 'Ixion' | |||||||||
| Based on the preceding, but with the Greek letters Ι Ξ for Ιξιων in place of Latin I and X. | |||||||||||
| Devanagari व va and Varuna's snake-lasso. | |||||||||||
| An aardvark, representing the beautiful aardvark girl Gǃkunǁʼhomdima< | -- | - | U+1F300 | Simplified representation of a hurricane, as in Greek mythology Typhon was a divine monster that could create hurricanes with his wings--> | |||||||
| Arrows pointing in all directions; the symbol of Chaos< | -- | - | |||||||||
| --> | |||||||||||
| Unknown< | -- | - | Twins orbiting each other | ||||||||
| --> | |||||||||||
| Fictitious planets | U+2BD8 | Object and symbol are unrelated to the asteroid 26 Proserpina. | |||||||||
| U+2641 | Symbol used for Proserpina and apparent synonym Kora by astrologers in Poland, and the astrology software Urania, who identify Proserpina with the dwarf planet Eris.[38] | ||||||||||
| Transpluto | U+2BD7 | Fictitious planet beyond Pluto (arrow pointing beyond Pluto's orbit) |
The Hamburg School of Astrology, also called Uranian Astrology, is a sub-variety of western astrology.[39] It adds eight fictitious trans-Neptunian planets to the normal ones used by western astrologers:[39]
| Name | Image | Text | Unicode | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cupido | U+2BE0 | |||
| Hades | U+2BE1 | |||
| Zeus | U+2BE2 | |||
| Kronos | U+2BE3 | |||
| Apollon | U+2BE4 | |||
| Admetos | U+2BE5 | |||
| Vulcanus | U+2BE6 | |||
| Poseidon | U+2BE7 |
In astrology, an aspect is an angle the planets make to each other in the horoscope, also to the ascendant, midheaven, descendant, lower midheaven, and other points of astrological interest. The following symbols are used to note aspect:[40]
| Name | Image | Text | Unicode | Angle | Ratio | Explanation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conjunction | U+260C | 0° | - | Two or more planets in the same house (zodiacal sign). A circle with a line implying two objects are aligned (or, the starting point of an angle) | |||
| Vigintile | U+0056 | 18° | 20 | Also known as semidecile. | |||
| U+0053 U+0044 | |||||||
| U+26BA | 30° | 12 | One sign apart The intersecting lines from the inner angles of the upper half of a hexagon (see Sextile). Also known as dodecile. | ||||
| Undecile | U+0055 | 32.73° | 11 | ||||
| Decile | U+0044 | 36° | 10 | ||||
| U+22A5 | |||||||
| U+004E | 40° | 9 | Also known as nonile. | ||||
| U+2220 | 45° | 8 | Half the angle of Square. Also known as semiquartile and octile. The symbol was originally an 'L' shape (half a square), now commonly an acute angle, though not actually drawn as a 45° angle. | ||||
| Septile | U+0053 | 51.43° | 7 | ||||
| Sextile | U+26B9 | 60° | 6 | Two signs apart The intersecting lines from the inner angles of a hexagon | |||
| Quintile | U+0051 | 72° | 5 | ||||
| U+2B20 | |||||||
| Binovile | U+004E U+00B2 | 80° | 9/2 | Also known as binonile. | |||
| Square | U+25A1 | 90° | 4 | Three signs apart / Same modality A regular quadrilateral that represents the right angle. Also known as quartile. | |||
| Biseptile | U+0053 U+00B2 | 102.86° | 7/2 | ||||
| Tredecile | U+0044 U+00B3 | 108° | 10/3 | Also known as tridecile. | |||
| U+2213 | |||||||
| Trine | U+25B3 | 120° | 3 | Four signs apart / Same elemental triplicity An equilateral triangle. Also known as trinovile. | |||
| Sesquiquadrate | U+26BC | 135° | 8/3 | The glyph of the Semi-Square under the glyph of the Square, implying the sum of them both. Also known as the sesquisquare, square-and-a-half, and trioctile. | |||
| Biquintile | U+0051 U+00B2 | 144° | 5/2 | ||||
| U+0062 U+0051 | |||||||
| U+00B1 | |||||||
| Quincunx | U+26BB | 150° | 12/5 | Five signs apart The intersecting lines from the inner angles of the lower half of a hexagon (see Sextile). Also known as the inconjunct. | |||
| Triseptile | U+0053 U+00B3 | 154.29° | 7/3 | Also known as tridecile. | |||
| Quadranovile | U+004E U+2074 | 160° | 9/4 | Also known as quadnovile and quadranonile. | |||
| Opposition | U+260D | 180° | 2 | Six signs apartThe glyph of the Conjunction plus a circle on top of its line, implying two objects are opposed. | |||
| frameless|upright=0.15 | U+1F775 | 0° | Conjunction with eclipse. Solar eclipse when the Sun and Moon are in conjunction. Less commonly used for the Moon eclipsing any of the planets, as opposed to a mere conjunction, or for any of the planets and their moons eclipsing each other. | ||||
| frameless|upright=0.15 | U+1F776 | 180° | Opposition with eclipse, or (rarely) any body in the shadow of the other. Lunar eclipse when the Sun and Moon are in opposition. |
| Name | Image | Text | Unicode | Angle | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vigintile | U+2BF3 | 18° | |||
| Novile | U+2BF4 | 40° | |||
| Quintile | U+2BF5 | 72° | |||
| Binovile | U+2BF6 | 80° | |||
| Centile (Sentagon) | U+2BF7 | 100° | |||
| Tredecile | U+2BF8 | 108° |
| Category | Name | Image | Text | Unicode | Explanation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The ascendant (also known as the "ascensum coeli") is the rising intersection of the ecliptic with the celestial horizon at a particular moment in time; it is used in the construction of a horoscope/natal chart | ||||||
| Midheaven | The midheaven (also known as the "medium coeli") is the point where the ecliptic crosses the local meridian; it is used in the construction of a horoscope/natal chart | |||||
| or | or | U+1F70A | The vertex and anti-vertex are the points where the prime vertical intersects the ecliptic. A crucible symbol,, is used by Astrolog and the HamburgSymbols font | |||
| Apparent retrograde motion | Retrograde motion | U+211E | Symbol represents the apparent retrograde motion of a planet in an astrological chart | |||
| Ascending Node | U+260A | Not all astrologers use the lunar nodes; however, their usage is very important in Vedic astrology. They are alternately known as the "Dragon's Head" (Rahu, Caput Draconis, or Anabibazon) and the "Dragon's Tail" (Ketu, Cauda Draconis, or Catabibazon). The two nodes together are most commonly referred to simply as the nodal axis, the lunar nodes, or the Moon's nodes. | ||||
| Descending Node | U+260B | |||||
| Black Moon, or Lilith | U+26B8 | The original Black Moon was a fictitious second, very dark moon of Earth. It is now often re-interpreted as the position of the mean lunar apogee as measured from the geocenter; variants of the Black Moon include replacing the mean orbit with a "true" osculating orbit or with an interpolated orbit; charting the empty focus of the Moon's orbit instead of the apogee; and measuring the desired point's barycentric or topocentric position instead of its geocentric position.[42] | ||||
| True Black Moon | U+2BDE | The lunar apogee calculated from its current position (disregarding solar perturbation), as opposed to its mean position. | ||||
| symbols related to Lilith | White Moon, or Selena | U+2BDD | Russian astrologer Pavel Globa invented this to serve as the symbolic opposite of the Black Moon in the 1980s. | |||
| True White Moon, or Arta | U+2BDF | Similar to White Moon, but calculated from the "true" Black Moon rather than the mean Black Moon. | ||||
| Solar apogee | -- | -- | Assumes an Earth-centered universe; the heliocentric equivalent would be terrestrial aphelion. Used to derive the (true) White Moon from the (true) Black Moon: ⯟ = ☊ + 7⁄4(⯞ - + 180°) | |||
| Alchemical 'Three primes' | U+1F70D | Western astrological symbolism has common early origin with alchemical shorthand glyphs, and planetary divination has long been held in association with alchemy's symbols; the three primes of Paracelsus have been associated with the zodiac sign modalities, and tendencies of their nature in an elementary way to be construed as being mutable (Quick-Silver or Mercury), fixed (Salt) or be cardinal (Sulfur). | ||||
| U+1F714 | ||||||
| U+263F | ||||||
| Serpent-holder | U+26CE | Ophiuchus has been proposed as a thirteenth sign of the zodiac by astrologer Walter Berg in 1995, who gave it a symbol which gained some popularity in Japan. | ||||
| Earth | U+1F728 | Four quadrants of the Earth | ||||
| Lot of fortune | U+1F774 | Glyph for planet Earth rotated 45 degrees. In some fonts the tensor product, U+2297 ⊗, can be used as a substitute for the symbol. |