Ox
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Sources & Method
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What Counts as Tradition?
SAGE separates historically supportable calendrical structure from later folklore, symbolic interpretation, and modern reflective personality language.
Traditional facts, standard structural correspondences, material culture, symbolic interpretation, and modern reflection are intentionally separated so visitors can see which kind of claim they are reading.
Sources Behind the Traditional Record
Wang Chong โ Lun Heng ่ซ่กก, Wu Shi ็ฉๅข and Yan Du ่จๆฏ
Eastern Han
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Wu Shi preserves eleven of the familiar branch-animal correspondences and explicitly discusses several Five-Phase associations. Yan Du states that Chen ่พฐ corresponds to the Dragon, completing the conventional twelve across the work. Wang Chong also challenges simplistic attempts to turn the Five Phases into automatic animal outcomes.
Alfred Forke โ Lun-heng, Appendix II
1907โ1911 translation / study
ยท
Appendix II discusses the Cycle of the Twelve Animals as a calendrical and chronological system.
Metropolitan Museum of Art โ Twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac
Qing dynasty, 18thโ19th century
ยท
Public-domain jade set containing all twelve zodiac animals. Used as material-culture evidence that the complete animal cycle was represented in Chinese art; it is not used as evidence for personality traits.
SAGE Chinese Engine โ standard Earthly Branch correspondence table
technical method
ยท
SAGE's canonical sexagenary table supplies the standard branch-primary element and Yin/Yang correspondence. Traditional two-hour branch labels are presented as standard calendar correspondences. These are identified as structural conventions rather than attributed wholesale to one ancient quotation.
Modern Mirror Source
International Personality Item Pool
modern
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Used only as vocabulary support for modern reflective personality language. It does not validate zodiac personality.
Modern personality vocabulary is used only for reflective language. It is not evidence that zodiac birth year scientifically determines personality.