Zodiackiller.com Message Board: General Zodiac Discussion: Zodiac's Symbol (i.e. Circle/Cross)

We all have are opinions on the origin of Zodiac's circle-cross symbol, however, I heard a new one today. I am wearing my God-awful Zodiac t-shirt with Zodiac a la Lake Berryesa Zodiac on the front. A woman at work noted that the symbol on the cloth hanging from his hood is a Luthern cross often associated with fisherman of old. Although, I don't doubt her observation, I do doubt that was where Zodiac lifted the design, however, I found the water/naval connection noteworthy.

Comments?

Actually, the Lutheran Cross is a bit different. It can be found here:

http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/41b/41b12.html

The Zodiac symbol has several old meanings:

http://www.symbols.com/encyclopedia/47/476.html

Only connection between that symbol and "Zodiac" I ever heard is the watch brand. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Unless you've a Freudian perspective.

Gregorypraxas,

As long as we're on the subject of the symbol...
A while ago, you mentioned that Zodiac watches were not the only place where the symbol and name appeared together. Where else do they show up?

The Ford Motor Co. manufactured a "Zodiac" model, and its hood ornament is sort of a squared-off version of the crossed-circle. There are some pictures on my "Photo Album" page.

--Jake
http://members.aol.com/Jakewark/index.html
"This is the Zodiac Speaking..."

Jake,

That's a possibility, although a remote one.
What I was trying to illicit was Gregorypraxas' explanation of his statement about the symbol and name.
I think he would argue that the Ford symbol was not what he was talking about, since it's a polygon who's lines did not extend beyond it's perimeter, not a circle who's lines extend outward.

I meant "elicit" a response from Gregory. Sorry.

In astrology, the crossed circle serves as the basis for the natal chart. In order to "read" a horoscope, one must construct such a chart, and the foundation of that chart is the crossed circle. The crossed-lines establish two hemispheres, as well day and night. The crossed circle can be divided into 12 equal parts in order to construct the houses of the astrological signs. This symbol is used to denote the earth, and the crossed cirlce serves various other purposes in astrology.

And, what is the name of the astrological construct?

The sign of the Zodiac?

The astrological Zodiac, or, simply, the Zodiac.

The dictionary has Zodiac as a "circle of animals," among other things.Oddly enough L.K. wares a ring on every finger of "animals" (when he dresses up) and two birds in flight around his neck.Two more and he would have the 12 needed to complete the circle for the word Zodiac.Maybe he had them, and I couldn't see them, under his dress jacket sleeve? Can it be he just thinks he is the Z,looks like the description given by more than one person, and had a thing for Donna Lass who just might be a Z victim, she is still missing? He was living in S.F. in Oct 69 not working with alot of time to do his "thing".Was in the Navy at one time, went to "code" school.Has brain damage, did you know most of your killers do have brain damage?

AND the Zodiac symbol is the Mark of Cain! Read my post of today under Lawrence Kane.

Realtor

I have an article about a white surpremist group called the America First Party. On the wall, in the background,there is their logo a cross with circle exactly like Zodiac's!The paper is stamped with Populist Party Of Washington state,Seattle ,Washington.Zodiac being a radical extremist could have seen this logo and it could have been another subber' or mind stacker that finally produced his monicker.Of course, this could have been just one source or just not at all!My guy was in SEAattle in 1967' for a short time.His friend said that he bought military shoes at a commissary there.

Howard, I understand that that symbol is also used by anarchist groups, as is the Yggdrassil, an "upside-down peace symbol" in a circle. "My" suspect used the latter device in connection with one of his murders, as well as expressing a hatred of leftists.

Here's another interesting interpretation of the symbol: a very similar one can be found in a novel entitled Japanese Inn by Oliver Statler (Random House, NY, 1961). It looks like Z's symbol, but the cross is fully contained within the circle, and it is explained as being "the crest of the Minaguchi-ya." On page 3, Minaguchi-ya is translated as:

The ya means that it is a place of business, but even its owners confess they do not know the significance or origin of Minaguchi. Perhaps, they say, it refers to "water" (italics mine) or "mouth." Perhaps, when long ago the inn was named, it was named for a nearby source of fresh water, but they make this suggestion without conviction.

So, this 1961 novel, which predates Z by seven years, has a symbol not unlike his that might mean "water place of business." The water connection to Z, of course, has been remarked upon for many years now, and near water or places with water names did Z conduct his business of murder. Is there a connection? I don't know, but I find it fascinating nonetheless.

Dear Ed,

"Minaguchi-ya" almost certainly came from "Minami-guchi-ya", which translated means "South entrance shop". It was probably a small shop located at the south entrance of somewhere. No water involved here.

Regards,

Kevin "betcha didn't know I am majoring in Japanese at ASU" M

LOL, Kevin... I don't doubt you. It's the explanation given by the author in his novel, and regardless of the actual meaning (and I believe yours over his; after all, the guy wanted to sell books), if Z read that book and liked the idea, that's what he would have gone with. Z wasn't too particular about facts...

I have come across what appears/could be the crossed circle and Z together with new meanings.
Iam not exactly sure what I have yet.Does anyone want to take a look and see if there's anything in it.I'd have to E-mail with attachment.

Lapumo, you can shoot it over to Jakewark@aol.com any time. If there's a picture of Anna Kornikova attached, though, I'm turning you in.

--Jake
http://members.aol.com/Jakewark/index.html
"This is the Zodiac Speaking..."

Jake,
Please confirm whether you received E-Mail.Not sure it went.

Lapumo, I'd be interested in seeing what you have as well. Please send to bamonson@pipeline.com Thanks.

Bruce M.

Bruce,I sent it to Jake but there was a problem.
The attachment was a wash. Ive tried again.As soon as Jake OK's it I'll send it on.

Okey dokey, Lapumo. Thanks!

Bruce,no word from Jake yet.However I tried sending it to you also.Let me know.
Been in to see Hannibal I see--Disappointing

Boys,
This symbol is also found in early celtic carvings, Welsh specifically. If ya' don't believe me, ask Tom Jones.
Regards,
Oscar
p.s. Penn in 2004. Storm the Bastille!

Lapumo, don't wait for me -- I still can't open the damned file. What is it?

--Jake
http://members.aol.com/Jakewark/index.html
"This is the Zodiac Speaking..."

Jake,
Iam really not sure what I have.It turned up in an old box of files.A friend of mine has just begun work setting up a genealogical center in a small town whose history would deal with Irish and English ancestry in the same town.There's no heading on the page but it was included in a small folder which included Latin terms and a list of clergy!.It appears to be either Latin or old English Calligraphy/abbreviation.The page itself contains a list of words from Abacus to Zebra and alongside each word is a letter in a certain style or a symbol.To make a long story short what appears to be the crossed circle symbol appears to be the symbol for a Carriage Clock.Opposite "Robin" there's a Z.It seems exciting all round given the obvious links our discussions here!.I am attempting to look into it further.The page itself was E-mailed to me so I do not know what the problem is.If you think it of interest I'll look in to getting it to you some way.What do you think?

Lapumo,
I am also interested in what you have found...
Can you send it to me?
You also talked about "Robin" and as you may know I am investigating the name Robin O'Neal ( I found it in the 13 character cipher).
Thanks,

-Eduard

I've sent out the above document to those who have requested it.I know Jake has a problem downloading
however another poster had no problem.
I would like to hear the views of those of you who received this sucessfully.I am also willing to send it on again to those who have had a problem .
Regards

On the document I have Ive noticed 2 possibly 3 more Symbols/letters used by Zodiac in his ciphers-crossed circle,Z,reversedY and +.I would really like people to see so we can discuss its relevance or lack of.
We possibly have
1.something with at least some of the Symbols used by zodiac.
2.Irish/english connection.
3.Symbols with meanings.
4.A name
5.If Zodiac did get his symbols from here then there are new avenues to discuss.

Reverse "Y" is a symbol used by Kaczynski. It stands for Ygdrassil, the so-called "World Tree." In Scandinavian mythology it symbolized the origin of the world. More recently it's been used by anarchist groups. As the Unabomber, Kaczynski spray-painted his version of the symbol on a wall, inside a circle; accompanying it with the letters "FC" (Freedom Club) and the word ANARCHY.

Douglas,
The reverse "Y" in this document appears to stand for Castle!. If Zodiac got his symbols from here he had a knowledge of old celtic/english.It's something worth exploring,if only to exclude.

To date only one person has successfully received a copy of the above.I can assure you all that I attempted to send it to all who requested it.At the moment I do not know why the file is downloading as "gibberish"or what the problem is.
Sorry for the inconvenience.I am open to suggestions if anyone has any ideas.I'll fax it if necessary if someone can post it for all to see.

Lapumo: I was able to download it successfully too. It certainly does look fascinating.

Ed, if you want to email me a copy of the file, we can see if a US-to-US transfer works any better. If it does, I'll post it, if that's ok with you, Lapumo.

--Jake
http://members.aol.com/Jakewark/index.html
"This is the Zodiac Speaking..."

That,s great.I just wanted to get it posted,for all to see and get a discussion going.I've been excited about this now for a while.

Now that a number of people have received the above document,I would appreciate hearing your opinions on it.
Thanks.

Eduard,
I am new to this board and have been reading all of these messages. You said above you were investigating the name Robin O'Neal that you came up with. Just wondering, how did you come up with that? These ciphers are very interesting and I am just curious.

Hi Jeff,
Thanks for your interest.
Can you mail me at zodiac-hunter@mail.nu.
I will tell you about what I found out.

-Eduard

Could someone send me lapumo's file?? It would be much appreciated. Email to boonwhackr@aol.com
Thanks
Jeff

That file is trouble! First I couldn't open it, and now it crashes my HTML editor when I try to post it. Let me know if no one else sends it to you.

--Jake
http://members.aol.com/Jakewark/index.html
"This is the Zodiac Speaking..."

Has anyone ever thought that maybe Z worked for a newspaper? When I was in high school/college (summers) I was a pressman at a newspaper. We used marks just like Z's symbol to line up the color pages, each page had one at the bottom and when they all lined up the pages were correctly on the press. If he in fact worked at a newspaper he would have reasonable access to information about the case as well as horoscopes, etc. Maybe that's why he communicated with the newspapers so much......

Jeff, have you ever read the rest of my site, or any of the Zodiac books?

Yes...read the book a while back. Don't remember this. Has it been addressed before??

Tom, where on your site does it mention this. I have been looking but can't seem to find it....

has anyone considered that the symbol looks like the unit circle in trigonometry? amybe he did have a real love of things mathematical? coding? that he would have been a natural at it? it leads me to think that he would be a very linear thinking person.

Jim,
Check out the Archives as there is a ream of great guess work concerning the origin of the Zodiac cross/circle.Good thinking and welcome!

Hi, Jim... As far as the Unit Circle is concerned, check out Doug's theory as it relates to the Unabomber/Zodiac connection:

See: http://home.att.net/~mignarda/p18.html

Kaczynski was a mathematics professor at Berkley during the Zodiac timeframe. He was especially interested in the Unit Circle and published three papers utilizing the same.

Jim: do a keyword search on whatever topics you're interested in. Over the last three years, there has been much discussion here on many topics, including the unit circle. Any questions you may have will almost certainly be answered there.

ok thanks for the reference to the search possibility! i figured someone would bring up the TK/Z connection again with the unit circle thing.
jim

Zodiac was into metaphysical/occult teachings as is abundantly clear to those who really know metaphysics/occult doctrine.ZODIAC could parallel with Part of Fortune which is a cross/circle as found in astrology.Z used this well known(if one has studied astrology!)symbol in his cryptograms.There is a very great disadvantage not knowning metaphysics/occult, as it does relate to the Zodiac case as per Peterson and others ,that do know the subject.I spent a lot of hours on the subject, as it was necessary to make determinations on the case,based on knowledge of the subject,to verify if Zodiac did know the subject.He DID!
So to be conservative with what is KNOWN,especially his moniker or Zodiac,the symbol of the cross/circle refers to Part of Fortune.SECONDARILY,we have other symbolic meanings as has been discussed in past posts.Zodiac,for gods sake, wasn't trying to teach the public advanced math or geometry!There is nothing mystical there at all!When he discusses radians,etc.(this term and others,including symbols,are used in road surveying books,as well as other disciplines-no biggie)it is for 'directions' to a specific supposed site.His name is symbolic as well as his cross/circle.He was very mystical in his thinking as is demonstrated in his missives and planned activities.

there we go again with how mystical Z is...if he is so darn mystical and intelligent and so into symbolism why not stage certain aspects of his career knowing that image is everything in our society...so why not stage crime scenes and stage certain artifacts to make things appear to be something which they are not? did he not deliberatley mislead authorities all over the board all along the way?
jim

Jim,
Not "how mystical" Zodiac was,just that this was a PART of his persona.If you check my past posts you will see I take a balanced view of a very unbalanced killer!Segment my remarks please!

It's probably already been done, by someone, somewhere, but it would be interesting and perhaps informative to correspond with the Zodiac Watch Company and ask them how and why the Zodiac watch logo was originally chosen. The connection might be as has been suggested here, but maybe not.

Another possible source for the Zodiac symbol:
A Norse coin (Krone).



Eduard Versluijs

Which also looks a lot like the thing Zodiac wrote on his "Lake Tahoe card".



Eduard Versluijs

Eduard,
I have always believed Zodiac was into the occult and was a mythologist so your post shows us the possible connections.
Zodiac was probably multilevel in his thinking and probably saw at least two meanings to his symbols.

Bill,
Missed your post...I did do some checking on that at one time but was unable to find anything definitive. However part of the company slogan was;- " Time is an elemental and eternal component of the Universe" (so why not buy the Zodiac etc etc.) Perhaps it is reasonable to suggest that the idea/logo was born out of that concept!
Of course, as others have pointed out, Zodiac frequently mentions "time"!

ScottN raised an interesting point on another thread about bringing the Zodiac symbol and name together(in an attempt to investigate the origin of the symbol).
Rather than going into a lenghty explaination, let me give a few examples of what I feel fits and others that do not fit so well.

1.The Zodiac watch fits for me (not because of Allen) but as Scott said, we have the name and symbol together in the same place.Also it's a symbol that fits technically.The cross extends beyond the circle.

2. The part of Fortune. Again we think Zodiac... Astrology and as Howard point's out, it is not unreasonable to link both.However the Part of Fortune is as often depicted with an X within a circle as with a cross. It does not represent "the Zodiac" technically but is an astrological symbol. Also the cross or X does not extend outside the circle.

3. There are others such as Eduards "Krone" above, celtic crosses etc, that look like this symbol but for other reasons don't fit well with the moniker or are not technically the same as Zodiac drew.

I am not calling any of these wrong, I am just asking what people feel about the importance of having a direct link between both symbol and moniker and/or if there is any benefit in getting technical?

Lapumo:

The circle containing the cross (sometimes with the lines touching the circle, sometimes not, but never extending beyond it) is the astrological symbol for Earth, and I believe the Part of Fortune is indeed an X. As it ought to be, to avoid confusion.

I also agree that the watch logo is a much closer association with the word than anything in astrology. What if anything do you make of the fact that the watch symbol is not actually circular, but more of an oval?

I agree with Peter that the watch symbol *on occasion* appears to be more of an oval than a circle.

In these samples of Zodiac watches from the 60's however, including the Sea Wolf, note that number 2 appears to be more a circle than number 3.

http://www.vintagezodiacs.com/Stock/Seawolf/SW-History.jpg

Again: the connection of the name Zodiac to this design is unique to this brand of watch, which has been around for 100 years or so.

Great graphic , Scott. Note especially on No.3 the similarity with the numbered symbol on the Phillips 66 map. Its not exact (12 on the watch is 0 on the map) but the sinmilarity is striking.

Just to clarify my position..the watch idea works best for me personally, because everything is there.Name,symbol,time,phillips map,water connection (if there is one) and of course its something personal. That's not to say that it's correct and that others ideas or wrong.
I just wondered how other people thought about it,in terms of what satisified them or indeed how important (they felt) connecting both symbol and name was to Zodiac.

"What if anything do you make of the fact that the watch symbol is not circular,but more oval?"

I certainly wouldn't exclude it based on that.It appears its something they played around with.
I would view it that same way as I view the lettering. Look at the various "O's" in "Zodiac.
Some are elongated/oval others are circular.
As Scott pointed out the shape of the symbol on No.2 is more circular as are the ones on nos.6 and 7.
If we are going to be technical then the two watches we should be concentrating on are nos.2 and 3. No.2 produced in the 60's and 70's. No.3 in the late 60's and 70's. Possibly number 2 more so!.
I don't suppose it's any good to us now but it appears that all these watches were registered in the purchaser's name.

"it appears that all these watches were registered in the purchaser's name."

Say that again.

It's true that they claimed they were registered in the owner's name, but in looking at the official Zodiac website, I do not see how to find out that info. Even if traceable, you'll probably find that ALA's mother bought it. BTW, they are owned by Fossil now, because Fossil wants to claim to make Swiss watches.

Right. Fossil bought all the bankrupt Zodiac assets. Perhaps including the registry. Which, if locatable would tell us when Allen got his watch, or at least the earlies date that he could have. that could be very significant

Right you are, Peter, I had forgotten about the date it was purchased. This would be worth checking into.

Maybe starting with the guy running vintagezodiacs.com would be beneficial.

Go for it!

"All Zodiac watches are registered in the purchasers name and unequivocally gaurenteed by the Zodiac Watch Agency, New York and by affiliated agencies throughout the world"

So you have to have a name and date. I just assumed the records were not still around today and somewhat surprised that Law Enforcement(apparently) hadn't nailed down the date of that purchase.

Mybe not. Maybe it could be searched for on just the name, if the registry exists. That would determine the date.

Interesting that Zodiac watches, like Rolex, have a tracking system attached to the buyers. I wonder who my Seawolf once belonged to...
I have no real comment to add, so delete this if you want...

Actually Wendi, I was going to add that my Rolex is registered. (And, I'm happy to report, is the worst keeping timepiece I've ever owned) Knowing the dirty Swiss, like we all do, somewhere there is a record of Mrs. Allen's purchase.

On the question of when Allen actually recieved tha watch we have his brother claiming that it was a Christmas gift in 1967.
The only challenge we have to that comes from Allen himself (which we can't believe either way)in that he puts the date at July or August 69.
This is Allen himself putting it at the anniversary of the first letters July 31st 69,the first time the symbol was used.Either way does this not suggest he had the watch before the symbol was used?
On the link Scott provided we can see that the watch Allen actually had (No.3) was not produced until "late 69". Perhaps we could find out when this watch was first available in stores.At least it would tell us the earliest he could have had it.