‘’What’s your sign?’’
It’s a question almost everyone can answer, regardless of whether you believe in astrology or not. While astrology itself is centuries old, this question is surprisingly modern.
Before the 20th century, astrology was primarily used to understand timing, cycles, and the unfolding of events, from marriage and illness to war and the future of entire nations. While traditional astrologers and medieval texts did interpret traits and characteristics, these were derived from the full natal horoscope and served to predict how a life might unfold, rather than to describe a fixed personal identity.
In 1930, the editor of the Sunday Express, a daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, reached out to the famous British astrologer Cheiro (William John Warner), asking for a horoscope of the newly born Princess Margaret and a prediction of her future. Cheiro wasn’t available, and his assistant Richard Harold Naylor, known as Naylor, wrote the article ‘’What the Stars Foretell for the New Princess.’’ The article was a success, and Naylor was asked to continue writing astrological articles for the newspaper. Later that year, he gained public attention after predicting danger to a British aircraft, shortly before the R101 crash on October 5, 1930.
Naylor’s weekly columns consisted of one predicting events and the other focused on people born during that week.
By 1937, Naylor had developed a simplified system based on the twelve Sun signs, which he called ‘’Your Stars.’’ This new approach made astrology accessible; readers didn’t need to know their birth time, and everyone could easily identify with one of the twelve signs.
Due to a paper shortage during the Second World War, the column was discontinued in 1942. It returned ten years later in 1952, and although Naylor passed away later that year, the column was continued by his son, John Naylor.
This marked a turning point in the use of astrology. As Sun-sign astrology grew, people wanted to know more or couldn’t fully identify with belonging to a large group of Aquarius or Leo Suns. In response, astrologers started reapplying the older techniques, which included the full natal horoscope, to describe traits, tendencies and characteristics. The knowledge itself didn’t change; only the way it was applied did.
Naylor sparked the popularity wave of Sun-sign astrology, a wave that continued throughout the 20th century and well into the 21st. We still see magazine horoscopes based on our Sun sign to this day, and many people know little about astrology beyond their Sun sign. We shouldn’t define ourselves solely by our Sun-sign, as the full chart provides much more context.
Sources:
R. H. Naylor – Wikipedia
Other articles: no URL listed.
Leave a Reply