Is the apparent thirteenth star sign Ophiuchus all a hoax?

Answer 1

It's definitely not a "hoax"; the constellation exists and the sun and other "planets" do pass through it. Whether you accept it as a new star sign is up to you. The majority of modern astrologers don't acknowledge it but some so-called side-real astrologers do. The ancient Greeks apparently sometimes used it as an extra element in their Astrology and associated it with healers and physicians but it wasn't considered a star sign. The reason it was brought up in the 20th century was that the star locations change slowly but constantly and in the last thousands of years, the zodiac has shifted and thus now can be said to include Ophiuchus.

There are no absolute rules in astrology, as it's based on pseudoscience, so all interpretations are more or less valid. The majority of the community is still against including Ophiuchus, though, even some of the side-real astrologers, apparently. If you're interested, I suggest that you find out what your side-real zodiac sign and possibly other signs as well are and decide for yourself which one seems more accurate to you and your personality.

Answer 2

Not exactly fake, but based on a whole different way of viewing the sky. Ophiuchus is not part of the traditional Zodiac because it is a fairly faint constellation, while Scorpio is very prominent constellation (in fact, one of the only ones that is even recognizable as what it is said to be). A lot of Scorpio's stars lie well to the south of the line marked by the apparent path of the Sun and planets (the ecliptic), but that didn't matter to the astrologers -- they called that sector of the sky after the dominant constellation.

Astronomers are a little more fussy and they have established very fixed, rectilinear boundaries between the constellations, and, according to their reckoning, a segment of the ecliptic passes through the area they label Ophiuchus. (And very little of the ecliptic passes through Scorpio.)

However, the astronomers' boundaries are completely irrelevant to astrologers; on top of which, most western astrologers don't even use a form of the Zodiac that lines up with the constellations.

Answer 3

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