Concept
Chinese astrology
Overview
Chinese astrology is based on traditional Chinese astronomy and the Chinese calendar. Chinese astrology flourished during the Han dynasty (2nd century BC to 2nd century AD).
Chinese astrology has a close relation with Chinese philosophy (theory of the three harmonies: heaven, earth, and human), and uses the principles of yin and yang, wuxing (five phases), the ten Heavenly Stems, the twelve Earthly Branches, the lunisolar calendar (moon calendar and sun calendar), and the time calculation after year, month, day, and shichen (時辰, double hour). These concepts are not readily found or familiar in Western astrology or culture.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The same principle, the attraction of the Sun, which thus accounts for the motions of the Nodes, connects, too, another very perplexing irregularity in the appearances of the Moon; the perpetual variation in the inclination of her orbit to that of the Earth. As the Moon revolves in an ellipse, which has the centre of the {381} Earth in one of its foci, the longer axis of its orbit is called the Line of its Apsides…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Chinese astrology is.
Astrology may rest on better foundations than Magic. For if no one has seen either Goblins, or Lemures, or Dives, or Peris, or Demons, or Cacodemons, the predictions of astrologers have often been seen to succeed. If of two astrologers consulted on the life of a child and on the weather, one says that the child will live to manhood, the other not; if one announces rain, and the other fine weather, it is clear that…
Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
Close in meaning to Chinese astrology; the term itself is not named.
The universe revolves around a centre once in twenty-four hours, but the orbits of the fixed stars take a different direction from those of the planets. The outer and the inner sphere cross one another and meet again at a point opposite to that of their first contact; the first moving in a circle from left to right along the side of a parallelogram which is supposed to…
Plato, Timaeus
Close in meaning to Chinese astrology; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Yin and yang
- Mercury (planet)
- Taoism
- Han dynasty
- Zhou dynasty
- Fairy tale
- Chinese philosophy
- Wuxing (Chinese philosophy)
- Earthly Branches
- Fire (wuxing)
- Earth (wuxing)
- Water (wuxing)
- Wood (wuxing)
- Metal (wuxing)
- Ursa Major
- Heavenly Stems
- East
Place in the tradition
Part of Taoism.