Concept
Earthly Branches
Overview
The Earthly Branches (also called the Terrestrial Branches or the 12-cycle) are a system of twelve ordered symbols used throughout East Asia. They are indigenous to China, and are themselves Chinese characters, corresponding to words with no concrete meaning other than the associated branch's ordinal position in the list.
Cultural applications of the Branches include a dating system known as the sexagenary cycle, and their use in Chinese astrology. They are associated with the ten Heavenly Stems in Chinese calendars, and in Taoist practice.
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.
There are certain familiarities or connections between different parts of the zodiac; and the chief of these is that which exists between such parts as are configurated with each other. This mutual configuration attaches to all parts diametrically distant from each other, containing between them two right angles, or six signs, or a hundred and eighty degrees: it also exists in all parts at the triangular distance…
Ptolemy, Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos
Close in meaning to Earthly Branches; the term itself is not named.
This application of the number 12 to the Universe is not at all an arbitrary invention of Pythagoras; it was common to the Chaldeans, to the Egyptians from whom he had received it, and to the principal peoples of the earth[258]: it gave rise to the institution of the zodiac, whose division into twelve asterisms has been found everywhere existent from time immemorial.[259] The distinction of the three worlds and…
Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, The golden verses of Pythagoras
Close in meaning to Earthly Branches; the term itself is not named.
Though the study of dream symbolism is far removed from finality, we now possess a series of general statements and of particular observations which are quite certain. There are symbols which practically always have the same meaning: Emperor and Empress (King and Queen) always mean the parents; room, a woman[2], and so on. The sexes are represented by a great variety of symbols, many of which would be at first quite…
Sigmund Freud, Dream Psychology
Close in meaning to Earthly Branches; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Yin and yang
- Japanese language
- Chinese astrology
- Korean language
- East Asia
- Warring States period
- I Ching
- Taoism
- Vietnamese language
- Sinosphere
- Shang dynasty
- China
- Astronomer
- Wuxing (Chinese philosophy)
- Heavenly Stems
Place in the tradition
Part of Chinese philosophy.