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The Scorpio and Ophiuchus

Posted by Sjur Cappelen Papazian on October 6, 2019

Scorpio

Scorpio is the eighth astrological sign in the Zodiac, originating from the constellation of Scorpius. It
spans 210°–240° ecliptic longitude. Its name is Latin for scorpion. It lies between Libra to the west and
Sagittarius to the east. Scorpio is one of the three water signs, the others being Cancer and Pisces. It is
a large constellation located in the southern hemisphere near the center of the Milky Way.

The Western astrological sign Scorpio differs from the astronomical constellation. Astronomically, the
sun is in Scorpius for just six days, from November 23 to November 28. Much of the difference is due
to the constellation Ophiuchus, a large constellation straddling the celestial equator, which is used by
few astrologers.

Under the tropical zodiac (most commonly used in Western astrology), the Sun transits this sign on
average from October 23 to November 22. Under the sidereal zodiac (most commonly used in Hindu
astrology), the Sun is in Scorpio from approximately November 16 to December 15.

Scorpio is associated with three different animals: the scorpion, the snake, and the eagle (or phoenix).
The snake and eagle are related to the nearby constellations of Ophiuchus and Aquila.

Aquila is a constellation on the celestial equator. Its name is Latin for ‘eagle’ and it represents the bird
that carried Zeus/Jupiter’s thunderbolts in Greco-Roman mythology. Its brightest star, Altair, is one
vertex of the Summer Triangle asterism.

In ancient times, Scorpio was associated with the planet Mars. After Pluto was discovered in 1930, it
became associated with Scorpio instead. Scorpio is also associated with the Greek deity Artemis, who
is said to have created the constellation Scorpius.

Ophiuchus

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Ophiuchus is a large constellation straddling the celestial equator. Its name is from the Greek
Ophioukhos; “serpent-bearer”, and it is commonly represented as a man grasping a snake. The
serpent is represented by the constellation Serpens. It straddles the equator with the majority of its
area lying in the southern hemisphere.

Rasalhague, its brightest star, lies near the northern edge of Ophiuchus at about 12½°N declination.
The constellation extends southward to −30° declination. Segments of the ecliptic within Ophiuchus
are south of −20° declination.

There is no evidence of the constellation preceding the classical era, and in Babylonian astronomy, a
“Sitting Gods” constellation seems to have been located in the general area of Ophiuchus. However,
Gavin White proposes that Ophiuchus may in fact be remotely descended from this Babylonian
constellation, representing Nirah, a serpent-god who was sometimes depicted with his upper half
human but with serpents for legs.

To the ancient Greeks, the constellation represented the god Apollo struggling with a huge snake that
guarded the Oracle of Delphi. Later myths identified Ophiuchus with Laocoön, the Trojan priest of
Poseidon, who warned his fellow Trojans about the Trojan Horse and was later slain by a pair of sea
serpents sent by the gods to punish him.

According to Roman era mythography, the figure represents the healer Asclepius, who learned the
secrets of keeping death at bay after observing one serpent bringing another healing herbs. To prevent
the entire human race from becoming immortal under Asclepius’ care, Jupiter killed him with a bolt of
lightning, but later placed his image in the heavens to honor his good works.

In medieval Islamic astronomy (Azophi’s Uranometry, 10th century), the constellation was known as
Al-Ḥawwaʾ, “the snake-charmer”. Aratus describes Ophiuchus as trampling on Scorpius with his feet.
This is depicted in Renaissance to Early Modern star charts, beginning with Albrecht Dürer in 1515; in
some depictions (such as that of Johannes Kepler in De Stella Nova, 1606), Scorpius also seems to
threaten to sting Serpentarius in the foot.

This is consistent with Azophi, who already included ψ Oph and ω Oph as the snake-charmer’s “left
foot”, and θ Oph and ο Oph as his “right foot”, making Ophiuchus a zodiacal constellation at least as
regards his feet. This arrangement has been taken as symbolic in later literature, and placed in relation
to the words spoken by God to the serpent in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:15).

The constellation lies between Aquila, Serpens, Scorpius, Sagittarius, and Hercules, northwest of the
center of the Milky Way. The southern part lies between Scorpius to the west and Sagittarius to the
east. It was formerly referred to as Serpentarius and Anguitenens.

The Anguillidae are a family of ray-finned fish that contains the freshwater eels. Eighteen of the 19
extant species and six subspecies in this family are in the genus Anguilla. They are elongated fish with
snake-like bodies, their long dorsal, caudal and anal fins forming a continuous fringe.

In Hittite mythology, one of the sky and storm god Teshub’s greatest acts was the slaying of the
serpentin dragon Illuyanka. The contest is a ritual of the Hattian spring festival of Puruli dedicated to
the earth goddess Hannahanna, who is married to a new king.

Illuyanka is probably a compound, consisting of two words for “snake”, Proto-Indo-European *h₁illu-
and *h₂eng(w)eh₂-. The same compound members, inverted, appear in Latin anguilla “eel”. The
*h₁illu- word is cognate to English eel, the anka- word to Sanskrit ahi.
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Ophichthidae is a family of fish in the order Anguilliformes, commonly known as the snake eels. The
term “Ophichthidae” comes from Greek ophis (“serpent”) and ichthys (“fish”). Snake eels are also
burrowing eels, they are named for their physical appearance, they have long, cylindrical snakelike
bodies.

The constellation is depicted as a man grasping a serpent. It actually consists of two star patterns; the
snake that the man is holding is a constellation in and of itself — Serpens. In some old star books and
atlases, Ophiuchus is branded as “Serpentarius, the snake handler.”

To further confuse matters, some people consider the serpent to be two separate constellations, the
interposition of his body divides the snake constellation Serpens into two parts, Serpens Caput
(“Head”) and Serpens Cauda (“Tail”).

The official constellation boundaries set forth in 1930 by the International Astronomical Union keep
the head and tail of Serpens as their own separate entities, and yet both body parts constitute one
singular constellation.

Ophiuchus is a sort of summer counterpart of the famous constellation Orion, the Hunter, which
straddles the celestial equator and is prominent high in our southern sky on late December evenings.
Ophiuchus also straddles the celestial equator, and it sits high in the evening skies in late June.

In the northern hemisphere, it is best visible in summer. It is opposite Orion. Perhaps we could call
Ophiuchus the “anti-Orion,” because this celestial snake man is positioned diametrically opposite to
Orion in the sky; Ophiuchus appears in early summertime just about where Orion will be a half year
later, at the same time of night.

Asclepius

Ophiuchus is the celestial physician, for he represents the mythological doctor Aesculapius, who
supposedly had the ability to bring the dead back to life. In fact, to this day, Aesculapius is mentioned
in the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians.

Asclepius or Hepius is a hero and god of medicine in ancient Greek religion and mythology. He is the
son of Apollo. He represents the healing aspect of the medical arts. The rod of Asclepius, a snake-
entwined staff, remains a symbol of medicine today.

The serpent was important because it represented the ancient pharmaceutical elixir to cure all illness.
Of course, in real life, that has proved to be a fallacy, and the term “snake oil” has come to mean an
item that’s sold as a remedy but has no real medicinal value.

Yet, ironically, the universal medical symbol — the caduceus — depicts a serpent coiled around a rod.
We see it, for example, on the U.S. Army Medical Corps branch plaque, and various health care
providers have incorporated the caduceus into their logos over the years.

The 13th sign

Ophiuchus is one of thirteen constellations that cross the ecliptic. It has therefore been called the “13th
sign of the zodiac”. However, this confuses sign with constellation. The ecliptic – which marks the
path in the sky for the sun, moon and planets – cuts a much broader expanse through the Serpent
Bearer compared with the Scorpion.

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The fact that Scorpius is so much brighter than Ophiuchus probably explains why Scorpius is
recognized as a member of the zodiac and Ophiuchus isn’t. And that’s a shame, because the snake
man really should be.

In late fall, the sun spends only about a week in Scorpius but three full weeks in Ophiuchus. Perhaps
the real reason the Serpent Bearer is being denied membership in the Zodiac is that its inclusion would
boost the number of zodiacal signs to 13.

Ophiuchus has sometimes been used in sidereal astrology as a thirteenth sign in addition to the twelve
signs of the tropical Zodiac, because the eponymous constellation Ophiuchus (“Serpent-bearer”), as
defined by the 1930 International Astronomical Union’s constellation boundaries, is situated behind
the sun from November 29 to December 18.

The signs of the zodiac are a twelve-fold division of the ecliptic, so that each sign spans 30° of celestial
longitude, approximately the distance the Sun travels in a month, and (in the Western tradition) are
aligned with the seasons so that the March equinox always falls on the boundary between Pisces and
Aries.

Constellations, on the other hand, are unequal in size and are based on the positions of the stars. The
constellations of the zodiac have only a loose association with the signs of the zodiac, and do not in
general coincide with them.

In Western astrology the constellation of Aquarius, for example, largely corresponds to the sign of
Pisces. Similarly, the constellation of Ophiuchus occupies most (November 29 – December 18) of the
sign of Sagittarius (November 23 – December 21).

The differences are due to the fact that the time of year that the sun passes through a particular zodiac
constellation’s position has slowly changed (because of the precession of the equinoxes) over the
centuries from when the Greeks, Babylonians, and Dacians through Zamolxis originally developed the
Zodiac.

Eagle and snake

In the Ancient world the eagle and the snake is always expressive of identical pairs of fundamental
opposites. It is a universal symbol; the eagle and the snake are animals with a great potentiality, a
great capacity for meaning and thus they become symbols that embody the most sublime experiences
of the ‘homo religiosus’.

When dealing with this group it is common to list the contraries (if they really are so) that these two
animals symbolise: height/depth, heaven/earth, light/shadow-twilight, or the account of the struggle
of the good and the evil.

Mankind has been fascinated by the golden eagle as early as the beginning of recorded history. Most
early-recorded cultures regarded the golden eagle with reverence. Many Eurasian cultures and faiths
also feature eagles quite prominently.

In many cultures, eagles were viewed as a link between terrestrial mankind and celestial deities. When
an emperor died, his body was burned in a funeral pyre and an eagle was released above his ashes to
carry his soul to the heavens.

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Eagles were particularly prominent in Roman culture. Many banners, coins and insignias from Rome
feature eagles. In Roman religion, the eagle was both the symbol and the messenger of the Roman sky-
god, Jupiter.

In Hellenistic religion, the golden eagle is the signature bird of the god Zeus, a connection most
notable in the myth of Ganymede, where the god adopted the form of a golden eagle to kidnap the
boy, as well as the eagle-like daimon Aetos Dios.

At least a few sources also associate it with Helios, in Ancient Greek religion and myth, is the god and
personification of the Sun, often depicted in art with a radiant crown and driving a horse-drawn
chariot through the sky.

The behaviour of snakes and their facial features (e.g. the unblinking, lidless eyes) seemed to imply
that they were intelligent, that they lived by reason and not instinct, and yet their thought-processes
were as alien to humans as their ways of movement.

In most cultures snakes were symbolic and symbols of healing and transformation, but in some
cultures snakes were fertility symbols. Snakes symbolised the umbilical cord, joining all humans to
Mother Earth.

The Great Goddess often had snakes as her familiars—sometimes twining around her sacred staff, as
in ancient Crete—and they were worshipped as guardians of her mysteries of birth and regeneration.

The classical symbol of the Ouroboros originates in ancient Egyptian iconography epicting a snake in
the act of eating its own tail. This symbol has many interpretations, one of which is the snake
representing cyclical nature of life and death, life feeding on itself in the act of creation.

Puruli was a Hattian spring festival, held at Nerik, dedicated to the earth goddess Hannahanna, who
is married to a new king. The central ritual of the Puruli festival is dedicated to the destruction of the
dragon Illuyanka by the storm god Teshub.

The corresponding Assyrian festival is the Akitu or Akitum (Sumerian: ezen á.ki.tum, akiti-šekinku,
á.ki.ti.še.gur₁₀.ku₅, lit. “the barley-cutting”, akiti-šununum, lit. “barley-sowing”; Akkadian: akitu or
rêš-šattim, “head of the year”) was a spring festival in ancient Mesopotamia.

The name is from the Sumerian for “barley”, originally marking two festivals celebrating the
beginning of each of the two half-years of the Sumerian calendar, marking the sowing of barley in
autumn and the cutting of barley in spring.

In Babylonian religion it came to be dedicated to Marduk’s victory over Tiamat (Akkadian: DTI.AMAT
or DTAM.TUM, Greek: Thaláttē), a primordial goddess of the salt sea, who mated with Abzû, the god
of fresh water, to produce younger gods.

She is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creation. She is referred to as a woman, and described as
the glistening one. Some sources identify her with images of a sea serpent or dragon.

It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos, the first in which Tiamat is a creator
goddess, through a sacred marriage between salt and fresh water, peacefully creating the cosmos
through successive generations. In the second Chaoskampf Tiamat is considered the monstrous
embodiment of primordial chaos.

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In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, she gives birth to the first generation of deities;
her husband, Apsu, correctly assuming they are planning to kill him and usurp his throne, later makes
war upon them and is killed.

Enraged, she, too, wars upon her husband’s murderers, taking on the form of a massive sea dragon,
she is then slain by Enki’s son, the storm-god Marduk, but not before she had brought forth the
monsters of the Mesopotamian pantheon, including the first dragons, whose bodies she filled with
“poison instead of blood”. Marduk then forms the heavens and the Earth from her divided body.

The motif of Chaoskampf (“struggle against chaos”) is ubiquitous in myth and legend, depicting a
battle of a culture hero deity with a chaos monster, often in the shape of a serpent or dragon.

The same term has also been extended to parallel concepts in the Middle East and North Africa, such
as the abstract conflict of ideas in the Egyptian duality of Maat and Isfet or the battle of Horus and Set.

The origins of the Chaoskampf myth most likely lie in the Proto-Indo-European religion whose
descendants almost all feature some variation of the story of a storm god fighting a sea serpent
representing the clash between the forces of order and chaos.

Early work by German academics such as Gunkel and Bousset in comparative mythology popularized
translating the mythological sea serpent as a “dragon.” Examples includes Indra/Vritra, Ahura
Mazda/Ahriman, Horus/Seth,Odin/Jörmungandr or even Zeus/Typhon.

The Vulture / Eagle

Clear carvings and depictions of vultures, as well as representations of birdmen, have been found at
Göbekli Tepe and other PPN sites in SE Turkey and North Syria. The main relationship between key
PPN sites such as Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Çori is the fact that their layout, design and art are the
same. They were constructed by the same unique people.

They connect with Çatal Hüyük, the oldest Neolithic city anywhere in the world, situated in southern-
central Turkey and dating to 6500 BC, because this was a latter development of the same high culture,
and so this city – excavated first in the early 1960s by British archaeologist James Mellaart – can tell us
much about the earlier cults at places such as Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Çori.

Like, for example, the Neolithic cult of the dead. At Çatal Hüyük, we find frescoes of vultures
accompanying the soul of the deceased into the next world, and also of shamans taking the form of
vultures for presumed shamanic practices, such as contacting or journeying into the other world.

Since statues of birdmen, as well as those of vultures, have been found at both Göbekli Tepe and
Nevali Çori, we can be pretty sure that the same cult existed here as far back as 11,500-10,000 BP. There
is some evidence to suggest that over time as this culture developed the bird image evolved into that
of a vulture-goddess. But most importantly at least one of the murals from Çatal Hüyük apparently
shows a human being dressed in a vulture skin.

It is believed that in the early Neolithic culture of Anatolia and the Near East the deceased were
deliberately exposed in order to be excarnated by vultures and other carrion birds. The Neolithic
period’s highly prominent cult of the dead was focused around excarnation, and the use of the vulture
as a symbol of both astral flight and the transmigration of the soul in death.

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The vulture image appears to represent for them a god-form, responsible for removing the head (i.e.
the soul?) of the deceased. They may have practiced sky-burials (where corpses are left to the birds to
eat) or the imagery may have been entirely metaphorical, or both.

The head of the deceased was sometimes removed and preserved — possibly a sign of ancestor
worship. This, then, would represent an early form of sky burial, as still practiced by Tibetan
Buddhists and by Zoroastrians in Iran and India.

In many cultures, eagles were viewed as a link between terrestrial mankind and celestial deities.
Eagles were particularly prominent in Roman culture. Many banners, coins and insignias from Rome
feature eagles.

In Roman religion, the eagle was both the symbol and the messenger of the Roman sky-god, Jupiter.
When an emperor died, his body was burned in a funeral pyre and an eagle was released above his
ashes to carry his soul to the heavens.

The eagle-headed staff

Zababa (also Zamama) is a war god who was the tutelary deity of the city of Kish in ancient
Mesopotamia. He is connected with the god Ninurta, and the symbol of Zababa − the eagle-headed
staff − was often depicted next to Ninurta’s symbol. Inanna and Baba are variously described as his
wife.

The Hittites applied the name ZABABA to various war gods, using their Akkadian writing
conventions. Among these gods were the Hattian Wurunkatte; the Hittite and Luwian Hašamili,
Iyarri, and Zappana; and Hurrian Aštabi, Hešui, and Nubadig.

In Greek mythology, the Rod of Asclepius, also known as the Staff of Asclepius (sometimes also
spelled Asklepios or Aesculapius) and as the asklepian, is a serpent-entwined rod wielded by the
Greek god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing and medicine. The symbol has continued to be
used in modern times, where it is associated with medicine and health care.

The original Hippocratic Oath began with the invocation “I swear by Apollo the Physician and by
Asclepius and by Hygieia and Panacea and by all the gods …” The national divinity of the Greeks,
Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and
diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more.

It is frequently confused with the staff of the god Hermes, the caduceus (“herald’s wand, or staff”), the
staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology and consequently by Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-
Egyptian mythology. The same staff was also borne by heralds in general, for example by Iris, the
messenger of Hera.

The caduceus is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. In Roman
iconography, it was often depicted being carried in the left hand of Mercury, the messenger of the
gods, guide of the dead, and protector of merchants, shepherds, gamblers, liars, and thieves.

As a symbolic object, it represents Hermes (or the Roman Mercury), and by extension trades,
occupations, or undertakings associated with the god. In later Antiquity, the caduceus provided the
basis for the astrological symbol representing the planet Mercury.

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Some accounts suggest that the oldest known imagery of the caduceus has its roots in a Mesopotamian
origin with the Sumerian god Ningishzida; whose symbol, a staff with two snakes intertwined around
it, dates back to 4000 BC to 3000 BC.

Ningishzida is a Mesopotamian deity of vegetation and the underworld. Thorkild Jacobsen translates
Ningishzida as Sumerian for “lord of the good tree”. In Sumerian mythology, he appears in Adapa’s
myth as one of the two guardians of Anu’s celestial palace, alongside Dumuzi. He was sometimes
depicted as a serpent with a human head.

The caduceus is often incorrectly used as a symbol of healthcare organizations and medical practice,
particularly in the United States of America, due to confusion with the traditional medical symbol, the
Rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake and is never depicted with wings.

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