The Atlantis horoscope and the flower horoscopes

Alongside the Western and the Chinese system, numerous other systems of correspondences are in circulation: flower horoscopes, tree horoscopes, Celtic, Egyptian, Atlantean. They have one thing in common, and it is worth knowing.

The common structure

Almost all of them are built on the same pattern:

• twelve birth periods — sometimes more, up to forty-two in the tree horoscopes;
• whose boundaries fall on or near the Western zodiac signs;
• each period is assigned an image from nature — a flower, a tree, an animal, a stone;
• the interpretation follows the qualities of that image.

The structure, then, is Western, and only the layer of imagery has been swapped. A system that came from a tradition of its own would have no reason to take over the boundaries of the Greek zodiac.

Where they come from

Flower horoscopes are an invention of twentieth-century self-help literature. There is no tradition that assigns flowers to people by date of birth.

Celtic tree horoscopes appeal to a supposed tree calendar of the druids. That calendar is a twentieth-century construction, built on a free interpretation of the medieval Ogham alphabet. The Celts themselves left nothing of the kind — they left very little in writing at all.

Atlantis horoscopes appeal to a civilisation whose only source is two dialogues of Plato, in which it appears as an example in a political argument. There is nothing for a tradition to rest on.

Why this has to be said

Not to spoil the pleasure for anyone. A system of correspondences can work well as a language of images — it puts things in order, it is easy to remember, it gets one thinking.

The difference lies elsewhere: Western and Chinese astrology appeal to a documented practice several thousand years old, with texts that have survived. These systems appeal to a tradition that does not exist. Anyone who uses them should know which of the two kinds they are dealing with.

A practical test

The question to ask is which source is the oldest. For Western astrology the trail leads to Ptolemy, Valens and Dorotheus — surviving texts, available in critical editions. For Chinese astrology, to the calendar works of the Han period. For a flower or Atlantis horoscope the chain regularly ends at a book from the 1970s or 1980s.

See also: the nature horoscope — the same case — and the Western zodiac signs.