Word: zodiac
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...signs may change in the Zodiac...
...high point in the art of calendar-making, if not in science, is the Zodiac Man (opposite) drawn for Jean de France, Due de Berry, between 1413-16 by the famed manuscript illuminators, the Limbourg brothers. Now one of the treasures of France's Condé Museum and a magnificent compendium of astrological lore, it was meant for the use of physicians, giving the proper time for bloodletting, purgatives, medication and even bathing. Showing a universe divided into quadrants composed of the qualities (moist, dry, cold and warm), and put in harmony with man's organs and appendages...
...Egypt, Babylon and China, the whole culture was built on the ideas of the stargazers. Each nation was ruled by the incarnation or representative of some sort of Sun God or Son of Heaven, and each regarded the bull as the sacred animal, the chief constellation of the zodiac (or circle of life). "These correspondences," says Moran, "were not accidental. They were part of a vast cosmological system . . . The slaughter of a bull at the spring equinox on altars so far separated as Ur of the Chaldees and the Valley of the Han shows common roots in a common culture...
...From an ancient Chinese astrological table and the P'u Pan. the necromancer's divining board. Moran did find what he believes to be the key. It was not from the signs of the solar zodiac that he got it; it was from the 28 signs of the Luna (i.e., moon) zodiac, which were invented long before "to fix the calendar and to determine the times of planting and seasons of harvest and the religious ceremonies which accompanied them." From these primitive astrological signs, the Chinese built up many of their own characters. Other civilizations apparently evolved...
...Greece, the first letter of the alphabet was originally written Ψ, a bull's head resting on its side. In Hebrew, it was written Ψ. The astronomical sign for the constellation Taurus is Ψ which resembles the later Greek letter Ψ. The Chinese Luna zodiac sign for the same constellation was six stars Ψ, in the shape of a bull's head, while the sign of the Chinese Luna zodiac was Niu, the "ox" which in primitive form, resembled the head...