Admit it. You read your horoscope. If not on a regular basis, then at least when your sun sign presents itself to you, leaping out from your Facebook stream in a flashy, winking attempt to flag you down. “Pssst! Scorpio! Yeah, you! Listen, buckle down today. It’s gonna be a rough ride.”

If your horoscope is positive, you are more likely to believe it. If it’s not, you’re not. And that might be the extent of the zodiac in your life. A temporary salve, a fun little distraction that allows you a moment of self-reflection in a go-go-go world.

Or maybe it’s more. Maybe the zodiac taps into something positively primeval in us. Maybe—just maybe—there is something to this idea that the way the stars align themselves on the day we are born helps solidify our personalities. That the universe is the Ultimate Calendar, and that our birthdate represents a snapshot of the time-space continuum.

Hard to say.

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“The stuff that legends are made of.”

“Mythical Proportions.”

“A Herculean task.”

When I was researching the zodiac calendar for The 13^th Sign, I confessed to my friend Darcy (who is an English teacher and writer, so she is well-suited for this kind of admission) that I was getting confused about all the Greek and Roman myths surrounding the constellations.

“I keep forgetting they are stories,” I said. “The way people talk about Hercules, for instance. People never discuss what he did as tales. They talk about him and his labors like they really happened. Like he truly cast a lion into the skies.” (Hey, don’t judge. It had been a long research day.)

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