A Constellation of Astrology Emojis 🌌🔮

As we observe the arrival of the Spring Equinox, emojis can help us make sense of the cosmos and channel our inner astrologers.

David Doochin

• 5 min read
A Constellation of Astrology Emojis 🌌🔮

Happy Astrology Day 2025! To those who find meaning in the ancient art of mapping the stars, reading birth charts, and interpreting celestial goings-on, today is a chance to reset and usher in a cosmic New Year.

@emojipediaofficial Happy Astrology Day! 🌌🔮 Those long copypasta emoji texts are kind of like the birth charts of the internet, right? ✨🤔 #astrology #astrologyday #emojis #horoscopes ♬ original sound - Emojipedia

Maybe you believe that the happenings in the heavens have a major influence on your life, or perhaps you dismiss astrology as a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. But there’s no doubt the practice has made a significant impact on global cultures, including in the Western world—from pop culture to mainstream media and beyond.

In our predominantly online, 21st-century communication, talking about astrology is easier (and more fun) thanks to emojis. Whether we’re repping our star signs or adding a little cosmic sparkle to our conversations, emojis are an essential tool in the astrologer’s arsenal.

As we say goodbye to Pisces season and enter the era of Aries, let’s take a look at how emojis help usher astrology into the digital age. 

🌞 EMOJIS FOR ASTROLOGY IN GENERAL

Any emoji that has to do with stars, the planets, outer space, or divination—the supernatural practice of gaining insight or predicting the future by interpreting omens—can arguably be considered an astrology emoji.

It’s why you’ll often see emojis like the 🔮 Crystal Ball and the ✨ Sparkles alongside emojis representing more celestial objects and phenomena like the 🌌 Milky Way, the ☀️ Sun (and its cheery cousin the 🌞 Sun With Face), the 🪐 Ringed Planet, the ⭐ Star, the 🌟 Glowing Star, and the 🌠 Shooting Star, as well as any of the emojis for the phases of the moon, like the 🌙 Crescent Moon, the 🌒 Waxing Crescent Moon, the 🌕 Full Moon, or the 🌑 New Moon (or their respective anthropomorphic counterparts, the 🌝 Full Moon Face and the 🌚 New Moon Face), for example. 

♓ EMOJIS FOR THE WESTERN ZODIAC

The range of astrological knowledge and interest that people around the world claim is about as vast as the cosmos themselves.

But one of the fundamental elements of astrology that many people know about and identify with is their sun sign—which indicates which of the 12 constellations represented in the Western zodiac corresponds to the position of the sun at the time of year they were born and is said to heavily influence many people’s personal characteristics, attributes, and archetypes. 

If you’ve ever heard, “You’re a Pisces,” “I’m a Leo,” or “What’s their zodiac sign?” it’s likely you were talking about someone’s Sun sign. These same signs also are also used to refer to people’s moon signs and rising signs, usually explained in popular astrology as someone’s emotional nature and what they project into the world, respectively. 

Each of the 12 signs of the Western zodiac is represented in emoji form with its corresponding symbol: 

  • Aries (March 21 - April 19): ♈
  • Taurus (April 20 - May 20): ♉
  • Gemini (May 21 - June 20): ♊
  • Cancer (June 21 - July 22): ♋
  • Leo (July 23 - August 22): ♌
  • Virgo (August 23 - September 22): ♍
  • Libra (September 23 - October 22): ♎
  • Scorpio (October 23 - November 21): ♏
  • Sagittarius (November 22 - December 21): ♐
  • Capricorn (December 22 - January 19): ♑
  • Aquarius (January 20 - February 18): ♒
  • Pisces (February 19 - March 20): ♓

Additionally, each sign has a corresponding real-world equivalent, assigned by ancient astrologers based on the constellations they observed in the night sky that they believed reflected the traits associated with each sign. Each of these IRL counterparts can be captured as an emoji:  

That each of these signs of the Western zodiac has an emoji representation is no coincidence.  One of the first emoji sets, created by the Japanese carrier Docomo in the late ‘90s, originally included symbols for the signs of the Western zodiac.

Above: symbols contained within the 1999 Domoco emoji set, including Western Zodiac symbols (second row.

However, the discovery of even earlier pre-emoji symbol sets from 1994 and earlier revealed that Japanese technology companies were already including Western zodiac signs in their character libraries before the term “emoji” even existed.

Above: the emojis from the Sharp PA-8500 in 1988, which featured icons representing the western Zodiac (middle of the right column). Credit: Matt Sephton.

When Unicode first standardized emojis with its release of Unicode 6.0 in 2010, all 12 symbol emojis were included, but not all the real-world emojis. The ones part of the 2010 release were:

Later additions include:

🐍 COMPARING THE WESTERN AND CHINESE ZODIACS

The Western world isn’t unique in having its own zodiac; in fact, you might have just heard about or celebrated the Chinese New Year, which marks the resetting of the Chinese lunar calendar, usually around late winter in the Gregorian calendar. 

Though, unlike the Western zodiac in that the Chinese zodiac assigns one sign to each year in a twelve-year cycle (with this year being the Year of the Snake), there are indeed some similarities between the two systems—namely in that each has twelve signs that have their own corresponding real-world object or animal (with the Chinese zodiac represented exclusively by animals). 

And just like in the Western zodiac, all 12 signs in the Chinese zodiac have an emoji representation as well, all of which were standardized by Unicode in 2010 to fill in gaps in some of the earliest Japanese emoji sets. These emojis are:

No matter what zodiac you turn to for gaining insights about the world, yourself, and the unfolding of your life, emojis are excellent tools for adding some personality, flair, and meaning to the experiences of every season, sign, and symbol.