The Zodiac (Zodíaco) is a celestial wheel whose name literally means “wheel of animals”; the archive derives the term from diacos, “wheel”. It marks the apparent solar cycles through the constellations. The present needle points to Taurus, and the whole count rests on the year 300 before the Common Era.
On Antiterra
The wheel is more than a calendar: the archive states that the zodiac has twelve real consciences. Its signs color cosmology and the arts. Illustrations of this world are always related to the zodiac, stars may bear its marks, and chroniclers use Pisces (the fisherman) and Scorpio to name the attributes and characters of people.
Open questions
- What the twelve consciences want, and why the axis was set in that year, are not recorded.