RE: What is unique or rare about the VM Zodiac signs?
-JKP- > 20-06-2020, 01:05 PM
Libra by itself is not a strong discriminator. I did a significant number of combination searches to try to figure out exactly which themes or shapes or poses or colors or styles were good discriminators. It took a couple of years of experimenting and regional cross-checking. It's also why I waited until I had collected a significant number of zodiac series before running these tests. You need a big dataset to reduce the spurious results.
Some of the things I discovered...
If you combine no-figure Libra with the crayfish and 2-legged archer, then the thematic patterns become more evident.
Crayfish versus crab was a reasonably good discriminator if the crab was combined with a dragony-scorpio. This is a mostly English combination. The dragon-scorpios are different from the turtle/tarask/lizardy scorpios (which are mostly continental).
The turtle-Scorpius was also a reasonably good discriminator, even by itself. It is primarily found in areas of eastern France and western HRE that were fond of the tarasque story (St. Margaret).
Long-nosed fish were reasonably good if combined with other themes like the crayfish.
There are certain areas where the line between the fish is omitted.
The tongue and leg-tail lions do not discriminate as well as I hoped. A lot of widely-separated regions used both motifs, but they can be combined with other themes to narrow a search to some extent. I learned to be careful with these however. Both traits can be found in English, French, German, Austrian, and Middle Eastern zodiacs in various combinations... so, I use this less than others. I thought the fat-tongue might be a discriminator but what I found was that a fat tongue usually just means a less-experienced illustrator (most of the time).
The crossbowman might be less discriminating than expected. It took me a while to figure out why. Its lineage is one of the more complex in thematic terms...
The 2-legged archer versus 4-legged archer (centaur) seems to be a more accurate discriminator when used with combination searches. Gradually I discovered that a crossbowman is an emblem in some places. So... if you were selecting a 2-legged archer rather than a traditional centaur AND if you were from a region where the crossbow is an emblem, as an illustrator you might choose the crossbow over the other styles of bows. The crossbow is not always a discriminator by itself. Of course, some illustrators simply copied (there is a group with crossbows which are obviously related, but not all of them), which makes it harder to see which one it is (emblem or direct copy), so I try to only evaluate the archer in combination searches, rather than by itself.
Virgo that sits is a partial discriminator.
Virgo that is male and is standing, and especially if it has wings, is a reasonably good discriminator of traditional zodiacs. When you find this kind of Virgo, then Sagittarius is usually a centaur, Cancer is usually a Crab, Capricorn is usually a seagoat.
Nude male Gemini with a shield is a fairly good discriminator.
Male combined with female Gemini, especially when used in combination searches with a crayfish and no-figure Libra, is a revealing combination as it has some specific regional characteristics that can be plotted over time to show the migration of this thematic group.
There are other combinations that are revealing (there are examples on my blog), but that gives an idea of some of the ones that help tease out some of the different thematic lines.
One of the things I noticed is that illustrators frequently substituted colors, or mirrored the direction of a particular figure, even if most of the rest was a direct copy. Sometimes they changed the shape that was enclosing the figure (although this was often retained).
I have much more information on this topic, but the post is long, so I'll leave it there for now.