Intro
♀, ♂, ♃, ♄…
Today, these symbols appear on star charts, in astrology books, across alchemical diagrams, and even in the character sets built into our phones. Two of them have become so familiar that many people recognize ♀ and ♂ long before they learn that the signs once belonged to Venus and Mars.
They did not emerge at the same time, nor did they follow the same path. Some grew from images of celestial bodies, some carried traces of the gods associated with them, while others developed from abbreviations and monograms found in early manuscripts. Celestial bodies discovered much later entered a different age, when people could deliberately propose, debate, and select new glyphs for them.
Across the centuries, the same symbol could leave the sky and take on another life in alchemy, biology, astrology, and eventually the Unicode systems behind modern screens.