Before Horoscopes: The Zodiac and the High Priest

I can’t recall precisely when I first learned I was a Scorpio. My earliest memories of zodiac signs go back to my friends and me poring over the newspaper, hunting for our horoscopes (yes, I am that old). My closest friends were a couple of Cancers and a Pisces, and we were deeply invested in one pressing theological question: Who were we going to marry?  Oh, the excitement!

Back then, the zodiac felt innocent and playful, a little mysterious, a little romantic, and mostly just fun. But as I grew older, another message quietly seeped in. Horoscopes were dangerous. Zodiac signs were of the Devil. Good Christians, I gathered, didn’t dabble in such things. I don’t remember a sermon on it or a formal teaching, just an ambient sense that this was territory best avoided.

I never gave horoscopes up entirely, but I did tuck them safely into the category of “harmless amusement.” I read them lightly, cautiously, making sure I wasn’t, heaven forbid, giving the Devil a foothold.

Fast forward to today. Astrology now lives in a strange cultural limbo: horoscope apps on our phones, zodiac memes everywhere, star-sign jewelry and mugs, professional astrologers with waitlists, all paired with an equal dose of eye-rolling skepticism. Meanwhile, many churches still condemn anything zodiac-related as spiritual flirtation with darkness.  So which is it?

As I shared in my introductory post, the last decade or two has taken me deep into a spiritual search for truth, one that led me far beyond my Evangelical Protestant upbringing. I began reading the Church Fathers, exploring ancient Jewish thought, and looking at Christian traditions that predate our modern reflexes.  

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, like crystals, the zodiac was already there!  Not as a New Age novelty or as fortune-telling, but as something ancient, sacred, and, yes, woven into the spiritual imagination of the biblical world.

So, what are zodiac signs, really? At its simplest, the zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky through which the sun, moon, and visible planets move. It is divided into twelve equal portions, each associated with a constellation: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. Based on our birth dates, each of us is associated with one of these signs. Hence, I am a Scorpio.

And what does that mean?  Well, Scorpios are said to need time alone with their thoughts, feel everything deeply but reveal little, possess hypnotic eyes, and carry an intense intellectual depth. We are famously loyal, like go-to-war loyal, and equally famous for our ability to go from calm to volcanic in about three seconds flat. We also tend to be unnervingly perceptive. Human lie detectors, some say. If we can’t see the truth, we’ll feel it.  Once we sense something’s off? All access denied. You’re dead to us. (Kidding. Mostly.)

But here’s where things get interesting.  Ancient peoples all across the Near East shared a similar zodiac system.  Ancient Jews and early Christians were no exception.  The zodiac pops up in all sorts of interesting biblical references and church history.  But, when followers of the Creator looked at the stars, they were not asking, “What will happen to me?” They were asking, “What kind of world did God create?”

In Scripture, the heavens are not silent. Genesis tells us the lights in the sky were placed “for signs and for seasons, and for days and years” (Gen. 1:14). In Job 38:32, God asks, “Can you bring forth the Mazzaroth in their season?”  Mazzaroth was a term widely understood to refer to the constellations or the zodiac’s cycle.

Later Jewish tradition went even further. Some rabbinical and mystical writings linked the twelve tribes of Israel to zodiac signs. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus, who had likely seen with his own eyes a practicing Jewish High Priest, wrote that the twelve stones in the High Priest’s breastplate were actually inscribed with the zodiac constellations. Wow!  In this worldview, the zodiac was not a mechanism of fate, but a sacred calendar, a cosmic order through which the Creator marked time, seasons, and holy rhythms.

This understanding becomes even more vivid when you think back to Ezekiel’s grand vision.  In Ezekiel 1, the prophet sees the throne of God borne up by four living creatures, later called cherubim, each with a distinct face: a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle. These four figures correspond to the cardinal signs of the zodiac: Leo, Taurus, Aquarius, and Scorpio (with the eagle often replacing the scorpion in ancient symbolism). Together, they form the cosmic base upon which the Divine throne rests.

This imagery didn’t disappear with Ezekiel. Early Christian iconography preserved it.  In many ancient icons of Christ Pantokrator, Christ as Ruler of All, the same four creatures appear surrounding Him. They are not decorations. They are theological statements. Christ is enthroned above the cosmos, ruling time, space, and creation itself. The zodiac wheel does not govern Him; He governs it.  This cosmic vision also helps explain why early Christianity did not outright reject the stars or the zodiac.

The Book of Enoch, which is mentioned in the New Testament and which we’ll look at in much more detail in a future post, offers a glimpse into early Jewish cosmology. In it, the angel Uriel teaches Enoch how the stars move, how seasons unfold, and how time itself is ordered. The stars are described not as gods, but as beings under Divine command, obedient servants within God’s created order.  This distinction mattered.

Ancient Israel rejected pagan astrology not because the heavens were meaningless, but because these stars/angels were not sovereign. Worshipping or consulting the stars for personal fate crossed a line. Reading the stars as signs of Divine order did not.  Perhaps this is why the pagan astrologers, the Magi, were blessed to be some of the first people to see Jesus after his birth.  

Early Church Fathers and later teachers echoed this careful balance. A few agreed that celestial bodies influenced the physical world and possibly human temperaments and natural tendencies, while firmly denying that they governed the soul or overrode free will. Astrology, when it claimed to predict destiny, was condemned as pagan fatalism and determinism. Astronomy, cosmology, and sacred symbolism were not.

Even controversies within early Christianity reflect this nuance. Aquila of Sinope, a second-century Jewish-Christian, was excommunicated, according to tradition, not simply for engaging with astrology, but for practicing it in a divinatory, predictive way after his conversion. The issue was never the stars themselves, but what humans tried to do with them.

And so, across the centuries from their ancient creation, the zodiac quietly remained, in synagogue symbolism, in Christian iconography, in church domes and monastery mosaics, in liturgical calendars marking the months and seasons. Medieval Catholic churches carved the zodiac into stone and glass, not to foretell romances, but to proclaim that time itself belongs to the Creator.

So is the zodiac a tool of the Devil?  Historically speaking, no.  It began as a way to recognize Divine order in creation, a sacred clock inscribed across the sky. The problem was never the stars. The problem was forgetting who made them.

I find myself aligned with the early Christian thinkers who acknowledged patterns without surrendering freedom. Like personality systems such as the Enneagram or Myers-Briggs, there is too much resonance to dismiss outright. I am a Scorpio, and while I don’t check every box, I check enough of them to pause, enough to wonder how ancient people noticed these patterns long before psychology existed.

What I reject is the idea that my sign determines my fate, predicts my future, or excuses my behavior. Scripture cautions against divination not because it is impossible, but because it is harmful. Knowledge before we are ready harkens back to the Fall of Man in the Garden.  The Creator works for our good, and shortcuts to His plan never serve us well.

So perhaps it’s time to reclaim the stars.  Not as tools of prediction, but as reminders of design. Not as masters of destiny, but as witnesses to a Creator who orders time, seasons, and souls with intention and care.  Your zodiac sign does not tell you where you’re going. But it may gently remind you that you were made on purpose, for a purpose, and within a cosmos that is anything but random.

The next time you look up at the night sky, don’t ask, “What’s my sign?”  Ask instead: What is the Creator whispering to me in this season?  You might just discover your destiny!  

Grace and light to you all.