Many people throughout the world believe in astrology and base very important decisions on the advice of astrologers. Astrological advice and forecasts can be found in many daily newspapers, and several magazines and books are published on the subject every year. Most of this advice appears in a form known as a horoscope which is a chart drawn up to indicate what influences the heavenly bodies have on the life of an individual born at a particular time. Horoscopes are drawn according to twelve birth signs. An individual's astrological horoscope is determined by the position of all the planets at the exact moment of birth.
Astrologers divide a year into twelve equal sections called the zodiac.
This originally corresponded to twelve constellations which lay around the great belt of the heavens. Each constellation was regarded as a house of a particular planet. Each planet was believed to have either a strong or weak influence on a person's life, depending on its positions in the heavens. The divisions of the zodiac are called signs. Ancient astrologers assigned descriptive names, mostly of animals, to various constellations and devised abstract symbols to fit these names.