Facts & origins · what was thrown away
What the tradition said and we stopped saying
Modern astrology did not inherit the tradition. It inherited some of it, dropped more of it than it kept, and the parts it dropped are the parts nobody publishes.
Physiognomy, dropped outright
William Lilly, Raphael and Sepharial all told you what each sign looked like — hair, complexion, stature, the shape of a face. 277 described features across the twelve signs in this corpus.
Not one is repeated by a contemporary source. This is the largest single thing modern astrology abandoned, and no competitor publishes it. Each sign page reproduces its own share, framed as what those writers said in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and for no other reason.
3 further descriptions from these authors classify people by ethnic type. They are recorded in our data with source and page, counted nowhere, and reproduced on no page — see the method.
The fates, dropped outright
The classical writers did not produce character sketches. They predicted outcomes — and 19 of those predictions survive in this corpus. Every single one has been abandoned: no modern source repeats any of them.
- a short lifeAries
- a short lifeGemini
- a violent deathGemini
- ruin and captivityCancer
- a violent deathCancer
- a violent deathLeo
- ruin and captivityVirgo
- public disgraceLibra
- a violent deathLibra
- public disgraceScorpio
It is worth being clear why this is on the site. Not because anyone should believe it — the disclaimer at the foot of every page covers that — but because a tradition that predicted death by crocodile and a tradition that offers self-care advice are not the same tradition, and only one of them is being sold as the other.
The exception: the work
Occupations are the one column where the tradition demonstrably reaches the present. 9 trades assigned by a classical source are still assigned by a contemporary one — after normalising the vocabulary, which is what made the question answerable at all.
- athleticsAries
- clerical and record workVirgo
- lawLibra
- divination and the occultScorpio
- lawSagittarius
- command and leadershipCapricorn
- engineering and technologyAquarius
- medicine and healingPisces
- the seaPisces
The sea for Pisces, law for Libra and Sagittarius, command for Capricorn. Compare that with love and shadow, where the modern material has no ancient warrant whatsoever — the classical texts do not discuss either — and the shape of what survived becomes visible.