22-04-2026, 10:32 PM
There are three issues here: the "24 parts" issue, the "15|30 items" issue, and the "360 names" issue.
For the "24 parts issue", you say
Agreed, but the important point is that those were supposed to be 24 arcs.
(A small point: it seems that up to the 1600s the solar terms were 24 divisions of the year into equal parts. That is, a solar term was 365.25.../24 days. The defintion was changed to be a division of the Ecliptic itself into 24 equal parts in the 1600s. This makes a small difference: because the orbit of the Earth is not circular, during each 1/24 of the year the sun seems to travel sometimes a bit more, sometime less than 1/24 of the Ecliptic. But those variations are small and the two divisions agree year over year. And note that neither definition depends on what was the unit of angle at the time.)
AFAIK in European astrology a division of the Ecliptic (or the year) into 24 parts instead of 12 was not common, to put it mildly. It would have been as strange as a modern wall calendar that showed only half a month on each page.
So how do we explain the splitting of Aries and Taurus into two halves? The Chinese Origin theory (COT) explanation is that the original book from which that section was copied was organized as 24 pages, one for each solar term.
How would the "European Origin" (EOT) explain that? "The pages were too small for the ring text that had to be written" is unconvincing, as I wrote in the previous post. Any other?
Now for the "15|30 items" issue. The question is, why does each of the surviving Zodiac diagrams on the VMS have exactly 15 or 30 labels each?
The EOT could explain it only by assuming that the Author used a division of the Ecliptic into 12 equal arcs of 30 degrees. Again, that concept was indeed the basis of the European Zodiac, but it seems that diagrams and written descriptions generally depicted the signs as being 30 or 31 days. So the Author instead chose to make that "geometric" view of the Zodiac explicit by depicting each sign as divided into exactly 30 parts. Is there a book from that time that does this -- depicts each sign as a circle divided into 30 sectors (rather than mixed 30/31 days) ?
The COT does a bit better on the first part, because the division into 24 equal arcs -- the solar terms -- was widely known and used. I admit that I could not find any clear statement that the Chinese ever divided each term into 15 smaller arcs, and depicted the "solar term" system as 24 diagrams divided into exactly 15 sectors each (rather than mixed 15/16 days). So, on that second part the COT does no better than the EOT.
And now the "360 names" issue. The VMS Zodiac is remarkable because it seems to assign a unique name to each of the 360 divisions of the diagrams. I don't know of any document "European" or "Chinese", that does that. The closest thing I can think of is the Catholic list of patron saints of the days -- but that has 365 or 366 entries, not 360. Can you think of any other?
Maybe the labels are star names, and the label of each of those 1-degree arcs is the name of the star that lies on that meridian, or between two meridians. But that could have been done under EOT as well as under COT. Maybe we can find a book that does it....
All the best, --stolfi
For the "24 parts issue", you say
(22-04-2026, 06:43 PM)rikforto wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you divide a circle into 24 arcs, you will have 24 parts. As there are only 24 solar terms, they could only divide the ecliptic into 24 such arcs.
Agreed, but the important point is that those were supposed to be 24 arcs.
(A small point: it seems that up to the 1600s the solar terms were 24 divisions of the year into equal parts. That is, a solar term was 365.25.../24 days. The defintion was changed to be a division of the Ecliptic itself into 24 equal parts in the 1600s. This makes a small difference: because the orbit of the Earth is not circular, during each 1/24 of the year the sun seems to travel sometimes a bit more, sometime less than 1/24 of the Ecliptic. But those variations are small and the two divisions agree year over year. And note that neither definition depends on what was the unit of angle at the time.)
AFAIK in European astrology a division of the Ecliptic (or the year) into 24 parts instead of 12 was not common, to put it mildly. It would have been as strange as a modern wall calendar that showed only half a month on each page.
So how do we explain the splitting of Aries and Taurus into two halves? The Chinese Origin theory (COT) explanation is that the original book from which that section was copied was organized as 24 pages, one for each solar term.
How would the "European Origin" (EOT) explain that? "The pages were too small for the ring text that had to be written" is unconvincing, as I wrote in the previous post. Any other?
Now for the "15|30 items" issue. The question is, why does each of the surviving Zodiac diagrams on the VMS have exactly 15 or 30 labels each?
The EOT could explain it only by assuming that the Author used a division of the Ecliptic into 12 equal arcs of 30 degrees. Again, that concept was indeed the basis of the European Zodiac, but it seems that diagrams and written descriptions generally depicted the signs as being 30 or 31 days. So the Author instead chose to make that "geometric" view of the Zodiac explicit by depicting each sign as divided into exactly 30 parts. Is there a book from that time that does this -- depicts each sign as a circle divided into 30 sectors (rather than mixed 30/31 days) ?
The COT does a bit better on the first part, because the division into 24 equal arcs -- the solar terms -- was widely known and used. I admit that I could not find any clear statement that the Chinese ever divided each term into 15 smaller arcs, and depicted the "solar term" system as 24 diagrams divided into exactly 15 sectors each (rather than mixed 15/16 days). So, on that second part the COT does no better than the EOT.
And now the "360 names" issue. The VMS Zodiac is remarkable because it seems to assign a unique name to each of the 360 divisions of the diagrams. I don't know of any document "European" or "Chinese", that does that. The closest thing I can think of is the Catholic list of patron saints of the days -- but that has 365 or 366 entries, not 360. Can you think of any other?
Maybe the labels are star names, and the label of each of those 1-degree arcs is the name of the star that lies on that meridian, or between two meridians. But that could have been done under EOT as well as under COT. Maybe we can find a book that does it....
All the best, --stolfi