A main Eastern form, for example, called Sidereal astrology, looks to the background stars, those famous constellations, as its guide. Western astrology -- which uses the zodiac -- has its signs fixed to the seasons. Most Westerners, and all those horoscope pages we eagerly check, go by the zodiac. These signs follow what early astrologers called star signs, whose reference points are the tropics that form a ring around the earth. The zodiac is based on our relationship to the sun, not the stars.
About 2,000 years ago, the astrological signs and the astronomical ones were the same. But not anymore. The locations of the signs are based on the sun's location on the first day of spring. That location in the sky has because of something called "precession" -- the earth continually wobbles (a scientific term for a slight motion) every 26,000 years. Since the constellations were first identified, they have shifted some 30 degrees. Translation: The signs have slipped about a month westward, relative to the stars. slowly drifted westward
What this means to you: If you follow astrology that is linked to the constellations, your sign would go from say, a Gemini to a Taurus. You could even have a 13th sign, Ophiuchus, which you may have read about.
In short, if you follow the Sidereal astrology, the Eastern branch, your sign may have shifted. (And most likely, no surprise to you at all: This news is hundreds of years old). But for the rest of us, our horoscope, and our signs, are still the same.
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