Tierkreis Emoji

The term and concept of zodiac and zodiac constellations was firstly introduced in Babylon about three millennia ago. Babylonians used a twelve-month calendar according to the 12 moon phases, so it was quite convenient to divide the zodiac equally into twelve parts so that each sign corresponded with one month. The word “Zodiac” is Greek and it means “sculpted animal figure„.

In reality, ancient astronomers had counted 13 zodiac signs, but they had to get rid of one for the sake of convenience.

Even after this some signs went still beyond their segments. For example, the Sun points to Virgo for 45 days, but it points to Scorpius for only 7 days, and to Ophiuchus — for 18 days. To make the periods more equal, it was simplified and Ophiuchus was eliminated. The zodiac that we're familiar with has 12 signs: ♈ Aries, ♉ Taurus, ♊ Gemini, ♋ Cancer, ♌ Leo, ♍ Virgo, ♎ Libra, ♏ Scorpio, ♐ Sagittarius, ♑ Capricorn, ♒ Aquarius, ♓ Pisces.

However, the modern picture is a bit different from the past. The matter is the axial precession: there’s a slight movement of the Earth's axis, which can be observed during the planet's rotation, which causes a slow zodiac sign shift. In ancient times people couldn’t even imagine such a phenomenon. That’s why today's zodiac situation differs a bit from the traditional one. Don't be surprised that there are 13 symbols on this page and Unicode contains 13 signs. Welcome back, ⛎ Ophiuchus!

Any emoji can be copied and pasted to decorate your nickname or Facebook profile. Don’t forget to check your zodiac sign out first. Who knows, might be you’re not Scorpio any more 😉