Strictly speaking, this does not concern a Zodiac in the sidereal sense of the constellations, but if one accepts the tropical zodiac in its full cyclic psychological sense, then one can find a similar cycle in the Buddhist mythology tied to the creation of the Samsara (the illusion of our existence), this concerns the 12 interdependent factors (TenDrel Tchou Nyi) which maintain the cycle of rebirth, « The Wheel of Life » Yama, the Lord of death and time, is represented behind the wheel, enclosing it, the possibility of awakening by the Buddha being present in the background.
Without going too far into theological details, the Buddhist writings are specific that visual and mental consciousness alone do not have the power to accumulate Karma. Only conflictual and emotional consciousness create the accumulation of Karmic tendencies.
In this we find the twelve interdependent factors which maintain Maya, and which one can evidently try to combine with our traditional signs of the zodiac.
- 1 – Ignorance : a blind person gropes trying to find the way, with only the stick as a guide
Here, the blind person represents the ordinary basic state of the human being, unable to “see”, that is to say, to fundamentally “understand” what is around them, not knowing the real nature of existence, of reality : he or she is in the karmic creation and by impulsivity and ignorance, without even noticing it, embraces the duality and keeps on turning the wheel…
- 2 – Conditioning : A potter shapes the material and gives form to the clay
This symbolises the extent to which one cannot escape one’s karma : this conditions what we are and what we project, our thoughts, our complexes, our familial and behavioural patterns, as much at the conscious level as and even more so at the unconscious, it is somewhat equivalent to what in our contemporary world is called “genetic” in its biological aspect, or “innate” in its psychological one.
- 3 – Consciousness : a monkey moves around in the branches of a tree to catch the fruit
This is a typically mercurian emblem of the spirit which constricts itself on the basis of dualist opposition : the mental is subject to incessant questioning, mired in ignorance, it finds it difficult to ask the right questions and thus to arrive at the right answers, it wanders in an unstable fashion in illusion, struggling to find a structure for itself, it scatters its forces through often vain goals.
- 4 – The Name and the Form : two men are rowing in a boat
Consciousness- the boat- manifests itself by naming and conceptualising -the two men who represent Nama and Rupa-, this is the principle of cognition, different “mental images” are applied to things and to the environment, and create and a rigid pattern (the different veils of illusion crystallise here since we pass from a unitary, to a bipolar and to a multipolar world).
- 5 – The 6 Domaines : A facade of a house with six windows
This time, consciousness is represented by a house, the facade of which contains 6 openings onto the world, which represent the 6 senses by which man perceives the world and constructs the illusion : sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste and a sense which could be called intuition. Each of these windows can be a source of bewilderment, of the reinforcement of Maya, but, taken together, they can just as well allow one to break the force of conditioning.
- 6 – Contact : A couple hug tenderly
Here, consciousness enters directly into contact with matter, the effective bond which there is between spirit and the reality of Maya, and it is this sensual, carnal and sexual aspect which best symbolises this magnetism where one attracts the other.
- 7 – Sensation : A man receives an arrow in the eye
This is the image of the precedence of senses which impose and finish by determining thought, experience itself resulting in prior Contact, is by nature to profoundly modifies consciousness, and has a direct impact on the psyche.
- 8 – Thirst : A man who drinks
Consciousness of the senses now induces a dependence, an attraction, the desire to reproduce pleasures, to activate different mechanisms of compensation which push a person to seek what is agreable and to flee from what is not. This logic maintains not only the logic of duality but also, more deeply, the mechanisms of rebirth since at the origin can be found the most formidable thirsts of equal value : thirst of existence and thirst of non existence.
- 9 – Gathering : A man picks the fruitof a tree
This is the consequence of thirst, of desire, consciousness gives way to attraction and produces action with a view to gathering something, or, in the reverse sense, to rejecting it, here the karma is crystallized, the fruit is picked, that is to say that the consequences that acts must necessarily carry.
- 10 – Becoming : A woman awaits a child and rests
This materialises directly the fruit of karma, the advent of the consequences of action, all will brings with it direct repercussions, whether in this life or as a function of the soul, it is a flourishing, a completion, one must now reap what one has sown.
- 11 – The Birth : A woman gives birth, the child arrives
It is, frankly speaking, the harvest : the karma is mature, it takes shape, it externalises, not only personally but also in a social context, it is “present in the world” and will develop until it has completely purged the causes which have created it.
- 12 – Old Age and Death : A man carries a corpse
Here birth finds its finality, Karma is now completely worn out, the prime causes have had the time, in principle, to achieve their maximum resolution, eventual karmic residues are put back to the next cycle of existence, consciousness returns to a state of ignorance which will start again “the wheel of life “…