The Zodiac Man
Para1
BELCH: I did think, by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was formed under the star of a galliard. ... What shall we do else? Were we not born under Taurus?AGUECHEEK: Taurus! That’s sides and heart.BELCH: No, sir; it is legs and thighs.Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 3
Para2The Zodiac Man is the image of a naked man, his legs and arm spread, labeled to show
which zodiac sign has influence over internal and external body parts.
Para3Astrology was an important discipline in the early modern period, used for understanding
many things, including human medicine and behavior. Using the study of constellations
in relation to the body, thinkers believed that the movements of the heavens produced
hidden beams that affected human life. During the Middle Ages, various depictions
of the Zodiac Man appeared in many kinds of manuscripts, including prayer books, calendars,
and texts on astrology, philosophy, and medicine.
History
Para4The origins of the group of constellations known as the Zodiac are hard to track as
researchers have found multiple early sources that depict varying ideas of them. Scholars
believe one of the earliest depictions of a constellation was on the walls of a French
cave about 17,000 years ago. The prehistoric drawings display what European people
would call the constellation of Taurus—an image of a bull, with what looks like stars
over its shoulders.
Para5Ancient Mesopotamia also recorded constellations that they observed in the sky. The
Babylonians, who ruled the region in the second millennium B.C.E., developed a robust
astronomical tradition and kept detailed records of the movement of celestial bodies.
By observing these movements, the Babylonians generated the 12-part Zodiac still used
today.
Para6The Greeks built upon the Babylonian tradition, creating a list of 48 constellations
total, including the twelve the Babylonians developed. They called the area of the
sky zōdiakos kyklos (“circle of animals”) , or ta zōdia (“little animals”). Images of the Zodiac Man crosses many religious traditions with
only minor deviations. Through this deviation, scholars recognize that the Zodiac
Man grew out of Middle Eastern cultures, with its final form coming from the Greco-Roman
world.
Medical Prognostic Use
Para7Greek medical practitioners sometimes conceptualized the universe as a giant human
figure. The Zodiac Man helped people understand connections between earth and sky,
and overall, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The concept of the correspondence between
things of immense scale and things on a human scale remained important in the early
modern period. Astrologers and astronomers also collected data between the events
on Earth, what happened to people, political events, weather events, and celestial
events like comets, etc., in relation to the Zodiac.
Para8The first reference to the Zodiac Man being used to provide medical prognosis appears
in the first century CE in which each zodiac sign corresponds with a plant, mineral,
or body part. Medieval physicians found pragmatic daily use for these connections,
such as helping guide them in the practice of bloodletting or surgery by avoiding
certain body parts associated with celestial bodies at particular times, such as the
full moon. The conceptual framework provided by the Zodiac Man also helped explain
other illness and inform treatments as part of the early modern reliance on astrology
as a science, not merely an occult discipline. Many people consulted astrologers for
medical diagnoses, as the diaries of physician-astrologers such as Simon Forman demonstrate.
Key Print Sources
Astrology.Shakespeare’s Theatre: A Dictionary of His Stage Context, Jan. 2004, pp. 46–47.
Sheposh, Richard.
Zodiac.Salem Press Encyclopedia of Science, 2023.
Wee, John Z.
Discovery of Zodiac Man in Cuneiform.Journal of Cuneiform Studies. The American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. 67, 2015, pp. 217–233.
Witherden, Sian.
Balancing Form, Function, and Aesthetic: A Study of Ruling Patterns for Zodiac Men in Astro-Medical Manuscripts of Late Medieval England.Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History, vol. 20, 2017, pp. 79–109.
Key Online Sources
Best, Michael.
Signs and the Body.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/ideas/order/signs.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia.
Zodiac.Encyclopedia Britannica, 16 Aug. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/topic/zodiac. Accessed 16 Feb. 2024.
Clark, Charles.
The Zodiac Man in Medieval Medical Astrology.Quidditas, vol. 3, 1982, pp. 13–38, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol3/iss1/3/.
Lewsey, Fred.
From the Casebooks of the Most Notorious Astrologer Doctors in All England.University of Cambridge, 16 May 2019, https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/casebooks.
Image Source
Pond, Edward.
Pond. A President for Prognosticators. MDCIX. A Newe Almanacke for the Year of Our Lord Beginning at the Circumcision of Christ, Accounting the Yeare Current. 1609. Being the First after Leape Yeare. Calculated for the Auncient Shier-Towne of Chelms.Printed for the Company of Stationers, 1609. Folger Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img63988. Accessed 25 Jan. 2026.
Prosopography
Janelle Jenstad
Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director
of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Lovespreet Brar
Lovespreet Brar was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.
Melissa Walter
Melissa Walter is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Her research focuses on early modern English drama and English and European prose
fiction. She is the author of The Italian Novella and Shakespeare’s Comic Heroines (U of Toronto, 2019), and co-editor, with Dennis Britton, of Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Authors, Audiences, Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018). Her work on English theatre and the European novella has appeared
in several edited collections, including Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2008), and Transnational Mobility in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2012). She has also written about
Translation and Identity in the Dialogues in English and Malaiane Languages(Indographies, ed. Jonathan Gil Harris. Palgrave 2012). At the University of the Fraser Valley, she is a lead coordinator of UFV’s Shakespeare and Reconciliation Garden.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | The Zodiac Man |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Lovepreet Brar, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
|
| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published, peer-reviewed |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship |
| License/availability |
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