The cosmic news broke without warning. Or did the solar eclipse and floods and blizzards herald the rediscovery of the new sign of the zodiac, Ophiuchus, the snake holder? His usurpation of the 19 days between Scorpio and Sagittarius has altered everyone’s horoscope — and perhaps altered our personalities too. I used to be a Cancer and now I am a Gemini — and two-faced? Confused, yes.
But who exactly is Ophiuchus?
All the dozen previous signs of the zodiac have roots in classical mythology — specifically in the legend of how the 12 Olympian gods took the shape of various animals and creatures to flee the sulfurous, multiarmed monster Typhon, who was causing havoc and ripping up mountains and such. The myth doesn’t bear much fact-checking — or math. Does Gemini, for example, count for one or two? And if Zeus stood firm, then … something is missing … And what god or goddess would have sought refuge in the shape of Libra, a scale?
Otherwise, the symbols are meaningful only in terms of mnemonics — giving earthly shape to the constellations that occupy the moving belt of stars that define the terrestrial year. Allusions to myth help give each meaning. Cancer, for example, being perhaps a giant crustacean defeated by Herakles but also being a hard-shelled creature, provides a metaphor for the nature of any human born under the sign
