Abstract

Ancient Chinese astrology was mainly “judicial” portent astrology that focused on the relations between celestial phenomena and human affairs.The astronomical chapters of the official histories of the past dynasties contain records of a large amount of celestial phenomena and their portending human affairs.These records constituted the “empirical evidence” for astrology. In this article we make a case study based on the Astronomical Chapter of the Jin Shu. We investigate how the celestial phenomena were made associated with the human affair, or, to put in another way, how human affairs were rendered “portended events”. We focus on the temporal relations between the celestial phenomena and their portending human affairs. Our analysis of more than 500 hundreds reveals interesting characteristics in the temporal relations between the two. Various factors are considered to explain these characters, providing a deeper understanding of ancient Chinese astrology.

Key Words

Ancient Chinese Astrology; Astronomical Chapter of the Jin Shu; Celestial phenomena; Portended human affairs; Temporal relations

Citation: Shi, A., Sun, X. 'Temporal Relations Between Celestial Phenomena and Their Portending Human Affairs in the Astronomical Chapter of the Jin Shu' [J]. Journal of Dialectics of Nature, 2017, 39(1): 72-77.

Download: Temporal Relations Between Celestial Phenomena and Their Portending Human Affairs in the Astronomical Chapter of the Jin Shu