concept
Cycle
A return that can be counted: day, month, year, or a craft that claims to come back on itself. The word is not a proof that every story is circular.
Also known as return
Cycle is associated with Moon.
The moon’s phases are a countable return. Calendars that follow them are lunar; they are not therefore a theology of rebirth.
associated with · interpretive · documented
Cycle is associated with Sun.
The year is a solar return in places that count by solstice and harvest. Egyptian daily solar hope is a different cycle, with a night road.
associated with · interpretive · documented
Cycle contains Season.
Seasons are one way a year is quartered. Not every tradition quarters the year the same way.
contains · interpretive · documented
Cycle is connected to Time.
A cycle is time that can be expected to come back. Linear aging and a circling year can share a life without being one metaphysics.
connected to · interpretive · culturally specific
Cycle is associated with Rebirth.
Rebirth stories borrow the language of return. A year coming back is not the same claim as a justified dead going forth by day.
associated with · interpretive · speculative
Rebirth is associated with Cycle.
A year that returns and a dead person who goes forth are both returns. They should not be captioned as one cycle.
associated with · interpretive · speculative
Alchemy
Cycle is associated with Alchemy.
Alchemical writing treats a work that returns on itself. The cycle is a laboratory claim, not the moon’s phases.
from Tabula Smaragdina (Emerald Tablet), medieval Latin tradition (Arabic antecedents)
associated with · partially sourced · culturally specific
Daoism
Yijing is associated with Cycle.
Hexagrams are read as situations that can turn. The turning is the book’s own grammar of change.
from Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes (translation) · I Ching (Yijing), Wilhelm 1924; Baynes English 1950
associated with · partially sourced · historically uncertain
Astrology
Saturn is associated with Cycle.
A slow planet marks long returns. Hellenistic astrology’s Saturn is a delay inside cycles of the seven, not a farmer’s season.
from Claudius Ptolemy · Tetrabiblos, c. 150 CE
associated with · partially sourced · documented
sources
- Tabula Smaragdina (Emerald Tablet)
Tabula Smaragdina, medieval Latin Emerald Tablet.
- I Ching (Yijing) · Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes (translation)
The I Ching or Book of Changes, trans. Richard Wilhelm, English Cary F. Baynes.
- Tetrabiblos · Claudius Ptolemy
Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos.