bhagolblog

Myth vs method · The gist

The sun-sign column

The daily horoscope sorted into twelve boxes was not handed down by any tradition; it was worked out by British newspaper editors between 1930 and about 1940 because twelve short paragraphs was as personal as one printed page could get, and when it reached India it brought a way of labelling people that Indian practice had never used.

The essay7 minThe gist2 min

This is the short way in. The essay has the working, the sources and the sky.

The article that started the format, printed on 24 August 1930, came with an editor's note explaining to readers what a horoscope was. The paper did not assume anybody knew. Within about ten years, a British survey found that roughly two thirds of adults were reading some astrology feature.

In August 1930 the Sunday Express wanted an article about the newborn Princess Margaret. The best known astrologer of the day was busy, so the job went to his assistant, R. H. Naylor. At the end of it Naylor added short forecasts sorted by the reader's date of birth.

Weeks later he printed a warning that British aircraft would be in danger between 8 and 15 October. On 5 October the airship R101 crashed in France and 48 people died, and he is remembered for predicting it. Look at the dates: the crash came before the window he named, on the morning his warning was printed. He got a weekly column anyway.

The twelve-box layout took about seven years. Early columns mixed forecasts by birth date with world politics. One writer tried the sign names in 1935 and dropped them again. By 1937 Naylor had a twelve-sign column; by 1940 the names were normal.

Why twelve, and why the sun? Every reader gets the same printed page, and the only fact about a stranger it can use is the birth date, from which the sun's sign follows. Twelve short paragraphs was as personal as one sheet could be.

Money matters here. Normally the person being read pays the astrologer. In a newspaper the reader pays nothing, the astrologer is staff, and the paper earns from sales and advertising. Nothing in the column is addressed to one person, so nothing in it can be checked. It only has to be worth reading next week.

India already had printed sky-information, and it worked differently. An almanac tells you about the day, the same for every reader. Anything addressed to you needed a chart, a person and a fee. Indian practice does not label a person by the sun's sign. It uses the moon's sign, and behind that the birth star: one of twenty-seven, each cut into four, one slot in a hundred and eight. The sign in the paper is usually not the sign used at home, for reasons another essay here works through.

Words decoded

sun sign
the sign of the zodiac the sun was in on the day you were born; it can be worked out from your birth date alone
moon sign (janma rashi, जन्म राशि)
the sign the moon was in at the moment of your birth; this is the sign most Indian practice actually uses for a person
nakshatra (नक्षत्र)
birth star; the moon's path is cut into twenty-seven equal slices, and yours is the slice the moon was in when you were born
almanac (panjika, पञ्जिका; panchang)
a yearly printed book of sky information for each day, the same for every reader
sankranti (संक्रांति)
the moment the sun crosses from one sign into the next; Makar Sankranti is the best known of these
column
a regular newspaper feature by the same writer, appearing weekly or daily
R101
a British airship that crashed in France in October 1930
Why anyone should careMillions of people describe themselves with a word whose resolution was decided by how much text fitted on a 1930s newspaper page. That is worth knowing before you let the word stand for you, and it is worth knowing that the sign in the paper is usually not the sign your own family would name.
Read it properly, 7 min The sun-sign column