Curiouser and Curiouser

Lately I've been wondering why it is that watery Albus is associated with the intellect and the planet Mercury, rather than airy Rubeus (as one might expect from Western astrology). Today, I ran across a few more interesting tidbits.

In Mesopotamian astrology, the planet Mercury is associated with the Sumerian water god Enki (Assyrian Ea), who is the god of knowledge and craft. (In particular, he seems associated with water in the sense of the male creative energy—that is, semen—but as also applied to mental processes.)

In Chinese astrology, the planet Mercury is literally called "water star:" though this is the Chinese element of water (rather than the classical Greek element of water), it has similar associations to Albus of retreat, stillness, erudition, old age, etc.

XOR Through the Ages

Please don't think I'm trying to explain geomancy using Mesopotamian mythology or astrology, with which it is clearly not directly connected, but I keep finding cute similarities that I'd like to share. This one comes from Ulla Koch-Westenholz' Mesopotamian Astrology:

A simple rule that is common to all kinds of Babylonian divination is of almost mathematical rigour: within the same omen, a good sign combined with a good sign has a good prediction; good combined with bad means bad; bad combined with bad means good. Expressed algebraically, the rule is also familiar to us: + + = +; + - = -; - - = +. An often quoted example of this rule is found in the astrological texts: if a well-portending planet is bright: favourable (+ + = +); if it is faint: unfavourable (+ - = -); if an ill-portending planet is bright: unfavourable (- + = -); if it is faint: favourable (- - = +).

That is to say, the ancient divinatory practices follow the same binary XOR rule as geomancy does.

On Convergent Evolution

Okay, okay, one last cute thing and I'm done for the night.

Geomancy (that is, "earth divination") is built upon the repeated use of the logical XOR operation. In computer science, the symbol for XOR is usually rendered as a plus inside of a circle: ⊕. (This is because XOR is addition that loops back on itself instead of carrying into the next place.) This happens to be suspiciously similar to the modern astronomical symbol for the earth: ⨁. (This is supposed to represent a globe crossed by the equator and a meridian.)