Warriors of the Zodiac

I've alwasy been fascinated by the psychology of series. Every series is a breakdown of a personality to its minutest degrees, and in Astrology, this is exemplified in the Zodiac. While the eastern zodiac, with its fully animalistic aspects, is fascinating in and of itself, the western world is more familiar with the Euro-centric one (despite having its origins in Asia's Babylon).

Symbolism abounds in the Zodiac, and thus I figured I'd make a stab at doing this. This is actually my second attempt at this (the previous ones were given as gifts to particular people, so you'll never see them), but here I am attempting to be particular.

This series will be done in order, beginning with Aries and ending with Pisces. You may expect some patterns, I know I sure have; for example, some of the signs are concerned with pairs or couplets of ideas, and in many cases this has been continued, but in order to be unique I am abandoning some of them. I have been looking into why and how people depict certain signs, and it amazes me how many time the same images or ideas are expressed in the same way, differing largely only in style and setting (Virgo and Gemini have very common and repeated themes). In this series, I chose two features for each sign, and the entire composition is being worked around that, with an underlying third theme (less a part of the structure than of the presentation).

1. Quality. Each sign is depicted based on a characteristic, sometimes referred to as a positive or a negative trait; in my opinion, these traits are psychologically neutral, and in their application, can be negative or positive. I will leave it to the reader to figure out which quality has been chosen, and how it's been presented.

2. Weapon. This has been done by others, using a prop as a feature to embody the sign, or as a quality benefiting it in some way. Libra is almost always shown with a set of scales of some sort, some more nuanced than others. In this case, each of the warriors will be a warrior of some sort (some subtle, some blatant) and will have a prop (almost always a weapon, but in a few cases it will be very different), and be presented in such a way as to be seemingly effective in an actual combat scenario.

Finally, 3. History. An historical setting or costume is woven into the image, to complement the figure or pose, or to draw attention to the mythology of the sign. The one thing I will definitely not be doing here is describing the sign for you, just what I am doing in the image. I will not be talking about astrology, ruling planets (or other bodies), or houses, or plants, parts, humours, etc. This is not because I disbelieve in astrology (I don't believe in it, as an agnostic) but because the piece has nothing to do with the astrology of the piece. There are some perfectly gorgeous pieces that have done just that and far better than I (such as puimon's work) that I wholly recommend to others.

Warriors of the Zodiac

Aries -- qilong.deviantart.com/art/Zodi…
Taurus -- qilong.deviantart.com/art/Zodi…
Gemini -- qilong.deviantart.com/art/Zodi…
Cancer -- qilong.deviantart.com/art/Zodi…
Leo -- Coming soon (it's finished, I just need to scan it)