CHINESE ASTROLOGY

The fact that traditional Chinese celestial sciences have parallels with Greek, Persian and Indian sciences suggests not only that they may have common archaic origins, but also that there may have been some cross-fertilization in historical times. However, these shared characteristics are fuse with distinctively Chinese developments. The Western and Indian traditions are rooted in the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian observation of the horizon, through the heliacal (with the Sun) rising and setting of stars and planets, and the ecliptic, the Sun’s annual path through the constellations. Chinese astronomy and astrology, on the other hand, are both circumpolar and equatorial: they observe the northern circumpolar stars (which never set at the latitudes of China) and, in particular, the passage of the stars across the meridian (the great circle through the Pole and the observer’s zenith, the point directly overhead).

A system of 28 lunar mansions, or xiu –in effect segments of the sky radiating out from the Pole- was established along the equator in the 1^st millennium BCE.

This approach, based on equatorial Moon stations, is found in Babylonian astronomy before 1000BCE, suggesting an early common origin. The xiu marker stars were selected according to their approximation in RA (Right Ascension, the measure along the celestial equator), to the dividing lines radiating out from the Pole. Circumpolar stars correlated with the equatorial Moon stations; these stars were the abodes of the heavenly bureaucrats who oversaw the earthly administration of the emperor, the “Son of Heaven”.

The 28 xiu are divided into four equatorial “palaces” of seven xiu each: the Green (or Blue) Dragon (east and spring), the Vermilion Bird (south and summer), the White Tiger (west and autumn) and the Black Tortoise (north and winter). The circumpolar sky forms the fifth “Central Palace”. This division brings astronomy into harmony with the ancient symbolism of the “Five Elements or Agents”, found everywhere in Chinese occultism.

Horoscopes giving planetary positions as a means of reading character or fate, are not characteristic of Chinese astrology until relatively late, reflecting an importation from the mature traditions of Indian and Islamic astrology.

The popular version of the “Chinese zodiac” takes one element of Chinese astrology and applies it to years, symbolized through a cycle of animals: rat, buffalo, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, cock, dog and pig. The origins of the Chinese animal zodiac remain a mystery, and despite attempts to derive it from the zodiac of Western tradition, a common link has not yet been found.