We are taught very early that the word zodiac is related to "zoo" and the "wheel of animals," but this may be a somewhat incomplete concept. Although zōdion is indeed the diminutive of zōon (animal), the term was also formerly employed in the sense of "image, figure, or painting" of something. However, the suffix of zoidion can relate to both the diminutive or the locative. In the latter, a sign could also refer to the place where an animal or image would be located in the sky.
I propose here a reflection on the images: for example, we can think of the image of the crab associated with the sign of Cancer and its symbolic unfoldings, but we must take into account that it was conceived at a certain time and culture. In Egypt, although positioned on the same segment in the ecliptic, the image conceived for this sign was a scarab beetle; in a Babylonian catalog, the sign is depicted as a crayfish, and there are even references to a lobster and even a snapping turtle.
An image can be altered by intention, sociocultural context, or chance. In 1627, a Catholic lawyer named Julius Schiller published an atlas that changed the celestial figures to Christian imagery. Schiller altered the images of constellations, from the 12 signs (such as that Cancer to John the Evangelist), to smaller ones, with images that even included Noah's Ark (image above). Regardless of whether Schiller's symbolic assimilation was valid or not, his atlas did not gain wide acceptance and eventually faded away.
Psychologically, the power of an image is not in its literal signification, but in what it can awaken in us and to our individuation process. Jung says that "every psychic process is an image and an 'imagining', and those images are as real as you yourself are real". By connecting to an image through art, a poem, by painting it, or through astrology itself, we put ourselves at its service. However, there is a certain danger when we reduce images to allegorical conventions and - at times - moralistic stereotypes, using the image for the benefit of individual/egoic intentions rather than psychological, that is, aiming at the expansion of our consciousness.
A symbol has the ability to take us to a place beyond the ego's reach: the world of the Soul. We can call it 'idolatry' when we identify with an allegorical image for personal/egoic profit. On this path, we may end up losing the power of the image and symbols. This power comes from the Soul dimension, not from the ego - the power to make us identify with something beyond the surface level. Whatever the times, culture, or image, personifying a symbol or archetype not only helps to discriminate and to understand it, but also offers another way of accessing and imagining our experiences.
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