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The myth: That marriages and romantic relationships of people who have favorable Zodiac signs are more compatible and successful.
The science: A major study of divorces in a Midwestern city showed that couples were getting divorced at a uniform rate regardless of what Zodiac signs they had. (Source: "Pseudoscience and the Paranormal," by Terence Hines),
My guess is, that hardly anybody believes in horoscopes - at least not openly.
But nearly everybody knows the signs of the Zodiac,
Am I right?
As for me, I do not believe in horoscopes.
But I know my signs.
I find astrology really entertaining and interesting. I don't put full stock in it, but I'm also not offended by it.
My guess is, that hardly anybody believes in horoscopes - at least not openly.
But nearly everybody knows the signs of the Zodiac,
Am I right?
As for me, I do not believe in horoscopes.
But I know my signs.
I am twin - or GEMINI - in the European system
- and a dog according to the Chinese system.
And on January 25th the Year of the Rat will start - if anyone wants to know.
Correlation does not equal causation
Hey Ramoss. In this case it may well be the case.
Tradition has it that the 12 tribes of Israel were formed when Moses went forth from Egypt.
So why did Moses split them into twelve? Supposedly they were the descendants of Jacob's 12 sons, but that makes very little sense historically.
The Israelites were what the Egyptians called "Habiru" (Hebrew), which seems to have been a catch-all for various non-Egyptian desert dwellers, nomads, caravan traders, and former raiders who had settled in Egypt at the time. They were primarily Semitic peoples who had immigrated to Egypt after the Hyksos invasion, and who started becoming seriously unpopular when Egyptian Nationalism became a big thing after the fall of the Hyksos Pharaohs, and especially in the return to the old ways that came after Pharaoh Ankhenaten tried to institute Aten (Adonai?) as the first monotheistic deity a mere century before the Exodus of Moses. However, the descendants of one man were unlikely to be numerous enough to be a threat to Egypt. OTOH, having entire races descend from a single person was a very common cultural narrative in ancient times (helped with social stuff donchaknow, when there was a blood relation).
One obvious possibility for selecting the number 12 is that it had huge cultural and mystical significance, and the reason for that was because of the 12 months of the stellar year.
In ancient cosmologies the number 12 variously represents the turning of the cosmic wheel, perfection, completeness, and sometimes the 12 primary deities (before they were reduced to 7 aka number of visible planets + sun/moon). It is no coincidence that juries since ancient times have consisted of 12 members. As the Jewish Elites were later exiled to Mesopotamia (the birth place of the Zodiac signs) there may also have been attempts to correspond various facets of their religion with that of their more urbane hosts. At the very least, Judaism certainly seems to have changed a bit by the time they got back to Jerusalem.
Modern scholarship does not generally accept the biblical notion that the twelve tribes are simply divisions of a larger unit which developed naturally from patriarchal roots. This simplistic scheme, it is felt, stems from later genealogical speculations which attempted to explain the history of the tribes in terms of familial relationships. The alliance of the twelve tribes is believed to have grown from the organization of independent tribes, or groups of tribes, forced together for historical reasons. Scholars differ as to when this union of twelve took place and when the tribes of Israel became one nation.
One school of thought holds that the confederation took place inside the country toward the end of the period of the Judges and the beginnings of the Monarchy. All of the traditions which see the twelve tribes as one nation as early as the enslavement in Egypt or the wanderings in the desert are regarded as having no basis in fact. This school recognizes in the names of some of the tribes the names of ancient sites in Canaan, such as the mountains of Naphtali, Ephraim, and Judah, the desert of Judah, and Gilead. With the passage of time, those who dwelt in these areas assumed the names of the localities.
Others feel that the tribes descended from the matriarch Leah - namely Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun and Issachar - existed at an earlier stage as a confederation of six tribes whose boundaries in Canaan were contiguous. Only at a later stage did other tribes penetrate the area, eventually expanding the confederation to twelve.
My guess is, that hardly anybody believes in horoscopes - at least not openly.
My guess is, that hardly anybody believes in horoscopes - at least not openly.
But nearly everybody knows the signs of the Zodiac,
Am I right?
As for me, I do not believe in horoscopes.
But I know my signs.
I am twin - or GEMINI - in the European system
- and a dog according to the Chinese system.
And on January 25th the Year of the Rat will start - if anyone wants to know.
Now I could add the question: And who knows the signs of the Chinese Zodiac?
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