New Year, new luck. Or is it? You may have already read whether 2023 is under a good star for you in one of the numerous annual horoscopes that can be found in magazines and entertainment media around the turn of the year. Since time immemorial, the twinkling lights in the blue night sky have held an attractive fascination and provided information about hopes, wishes and dreams. Some even attribute character-building qualities and personality traits to them, so each of the 12 zodiac signs has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. A person's character and behavior are largely determined by which zodiac sign they were born under, allowing predictions about the future. But where does this connection between zodiac signs and the future come from? Let's venture a look into the past.


In ancient Mesopotamia, around 1250 BC, people were fortunate in that wind, rain and weather were very similar year after year and a certain regularity could be seen. Thus, weather patterns were as constant as the visibility of the constellations in the night sky, which is why the inhabitants of Mesopotamia associated them. Finally, conclusions were drawn about other areas of life, so that, according to the Mesopotamians, more than just the weather could be predicted. Personal horoscopes, however, did not exist at this time. This changed only with the development of a calendar. The calendar developed by scholars in the Mesopotamian city of Babylon, known today as the Babylonian calendar, divided the year into 12 simultaneous segments based on the moon's orbit. The constellations that could be seen in the sky during the respective phases of the moon then represented the first form of the zodiac.