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Global

A designation for traditions, figures or concepts that are worldwide rather than tied to a single continent. It is the atlas's own marker rather than a category any tradition uses, and it carries the material whose spread is itself the point.

Facts
Attributions
Tradition
Greek astrological material was translated into Sanskrit, and later into Arabic, Persian and Latin, so the transmission crossed continents repeatedly and in more than one direction. 1Tradition: Traditional Western astrology
Tradition
Horoscopic astrology has Mesopotamian foundations, an Egyptian layer, a Greek synthesis, an Indian line of development, an Arabic and Persian systematisation and a Latin European consolidation, so no single continent holds it. 2Tradition: Traditional Western astrology
Correspondences
Zodiac Rulership
None assigned. As the atlas's own worldwide marker rather than a region any classical chorography maps, Global was never given a quarter, triplicity or ruling sign. 1
Identity
Element
None assigned, for the same reason: Global names material whose reach crosses every quarter rather than a region within one of them. 1
Origins
Region
Worldwide by transmission rather than by origin 2Tradition: Traditional Western astrology
Learn More
A Marker, Not a Tradition's Category

Global is the atlas's own designation and not a category any tradition uses, which is worth saying at the top of its own entry.

Every other continent row here corresponds to something a source recognises: a quarter of the inhabited world, a triplicity, a region with sign assignments attached to it. Global corresponds to nothing of the kind. It exists because the atlas has to file material that is not tied to one landmass, and because leaving such material under a continent it merely passed through would put a false claim into the record.

Three kinds of thing end up here. The first is material whose spread is the point, a practice or a body of technique that moved across several continents and belongs to the transmission rather than to any one stop on it. The second is material that arose in several places without a demonstrated line between them, where asserting an origin would be asserting more than the evidence carries. The third is modern and contemporary material that was worldwide from the start.

Naming the marker as a marker is a small piece of honesty with a practical effect. A reader who sees Global on an entry should understand it as the atlas declining to make a geographic claim, rather than as the atlas making a very large one.

Why Some Material Has No Continent

The case for a continent free designation is easiest to see in astrology itself, which is the subject this entry was created alongside.

The technique in this vocabulary has Mesopotamian foundations, an Egyptian layer, a Greek synthesis, an Indian line of development, a Persian and Arabic systematisation, a Latin European consolidation, and a modern revival drawing on all of them. Filing it under a continent means choosing one of those and demoting the rest. Filing it as global states the actual situation, which is that the thing is the transmission.

The same reasoning applies well beyond astrology. Alchemical practice, divinatory geomancy, the great scriptural religions, calendar systems, and a large part of the herbal and mineral correspondence material this atlas records all have histories that cross continents, often repeatedly and in both directions.

There is a discipline that comes with using the marker. Global must not become the place where an unresearched origin goes to hide. A tradition with a known homeland gets that homeland, and a claim about origin that the sources do not support is recorded as an open question rather than dissolved into a category that makes it disappear. Used carefully, the row records a real property of the material. Used carelessly it would be a way of not knowing something quietly, which is why this entry is written as an instruction to the atlas as much as a description for a reader.

Connections

Associated With

This source names Global directly: "its own inculturation across the Global South in the decades that followed, the same shift this atlas records separately as the Global South Shift in Christianity's center of gravity."

Source What Happened at Vatican IIJohn W. O'Malley

This source names Global directly: "As a single-volume complete history covering the entire global conflict, it necessarily moves at a synthesizing pace through events that specialist monographs on any single campaign or theater treat..."

Source The Second World War: A Complete HistoryMartin Gilbert

This source names Global directly: "history, alongside a stated global figure of 5.75 million constituents in more than 200 nations and territories."

Source The UPCI Now Has One Million Constituents in the US and Canada (upci.org, 2024)United Pentecostal Church International

This source names Global directly: "than a hundred countries under one global body for the first time."

Source World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Global directly: "of Daoism, the faith's first global umbrella body, and elected Li Guangfu, president of the China Taoist Association, as its chairman."

Source World Federation of Daoism Established to Promote Unity of Daoists (Xinhua)

This source names Global directly: "best and only systematic attempt at a global Zoroastrian population figure that exists, which is why this atlas relies on it for that number."

Source The Zarathushti World: A Demographic PictureRoshan Rivetnathe holders' own account

This source names Global directly: "Towards a Global Ethic, An Initial Declaration, drafted principally by Hans Kung and endorsed by the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1993, is the primary document itself, signed by..."

Source Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial DeclarationDrafted principally by Hans Kung, endorsed by the Parliament of the World's Religions Assembly of religious and spiritual leaders

This source names Global directly: "The new church's formation grew directly from the Global Anglican Future Conference held in Jerusalem the year before, whose Jerusalem Declaration called for a new orthodox province in North America."

Source Anglican Church in North America (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Global directly: "of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist Church, adopted in 2022 at the denomination's founding, is the Global Methodist Church's own governing and doctrinal text, produced from a January..."

Source Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist ChurchGlobal Methodist Church

This source names Global directly: "of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist Church is the denomination's own founding governing and doctrinal text, adopted in 2022 when the Global Methodist Church organized as a new..."

Source Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist ChurchGlobal Methodist Church

This source names Global directly: "Tzu Chi's own global homepage statistics dashboard, stating 25,815,558 beneficiaries in 2024 under its Individual Assistance mission, one of the foundation's eight core missions."

Source Tzu Chi Charity Foundation Official Website (2024 Individual Assistance Statistics)Tzu Chi Charity Foundation

This source names Global directly: "a hundred countries and regions, and a global volunteer base organized around eight core missions: charity, medicine, education, humanistic culture, international relief, bone marrow donation..."

Source Who We Are (Tzu Chi Charity Foundation Official Page)Tzu Chi Charity Foundation

This source names Global directly: "As a compiled scholarly assessment drawing on a global network of named linguists rather than a single institution's own administrative record, it sits at this atlas's top tier alongside Ethnologue."

Source UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in DangerChristopher Moseley (ed.), with contributing regional linguists

This source names Global directly: "documentary heritage of outstanding global significance, distinct from both the UNESCO World Heritage List, which recognizes sites, and the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of..."

Source UNESCO Memory of the World RegisterUNESCO Memory of the World Programme

This source names Global directly: "Baptist News Global, an independent religion news outlet unaffiliated with the United Methodist Church or any Methodist body, reporting the November 2025 ratification of the United Methodist..."

Source United Methodists Ratify New Global Structure (Baptist News Global)

This source names Global directly: "of construction, remains the church's global center."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)

This source names Global directly: "Francis on May 9, 2019, establishing global legal procedures for the whole Catholic Church to handle allegations of sexual abuse and, distinctly, to hold bishops and religious superiors themselves..."

Source Vos Estis Lux MundiPope Francis

This source names Global directly: "Francis on May 9, 2019, establishing global legal procedures for the whole Catholic Church to handle sexual abuse allegations and, distinctly, to hold bishops and religious superiors accountable..."

Source Vos Estis Lux MundiPope Francis

This source names Global directly: "book, published by Polity Press, is a global history of witch persecution, situating the European witch hunts within a broader comparative and world historical frame rather than treating them as an..."

Source Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global HistoryWolfgang Behringer

This source names Global directly: "The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online's own article compiling the worldwide distribution of Mennonite membership across history, drawing on denominational and regional membership..."

Source World Mennonite Membership Distribution (GAMEO)Mennonite historical societies and partner bodies (GAMEO)

This source names Global directly: "Archives; its 2021 estimate places the global Jain population at approximately 5.3 million, notably higher than the Indian census count alone because it estimates the worldwide diaspora that the..."

Source World Religion DatabaseGina A. Zurlo (editor)

This source names Global directly: "their own counts, so the resulting global total is a careful compilation of self-reported regional figures rather than an independently audited census."

Source Worldwide Quaker population map, 2017Friends World Committee for Consultation, World Officethe holders' own account

This source names Global directly: "cultural history rather than a global comparative study, so a claim about yellow's meaning in a tradition outside that frame, an East Asian association with imperial authority for instance, needs a..."

Source Yellow: The History of a ColorMichel Pastoureau

This source names Global directly: "Anderson is a scholar of global Pentecostalism, and this University of South Africa Press book is his academic study of the African Initiated Churches of southern Africa, including the Zion..."

Source Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South AfricaAllan H. Anderson

This source names Global directly: "Spirituality, and Capitalism in the Global Osho Movement, published by the University of California Press in 2015, is the standard scholarly account of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later Osho, and the..."

Source Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spirituality, and Capitalism in the Global Osho MovementHugh B. Urban

This source names Global directly: "gathered under the theme Bridging the Global Zarathushti Existence, with retired Indian Supreme Court Justice Rohinton F."

Source 12th World Zoroastrian Congress 2022 NYC (FEZANA)

Showing 101 to 126 of 126 in Associated With, page 3 of 3.

Contrasts With

Africa, Continents

Global is not a landmass. It marks material whose spread crosses the continents rather than belonging to one of them.

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion
Americas, Continents

Global is not a landmass. It marks material whose spread crosses the continents rather than belonging to one of them.

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion
Asia, Continents

Global is not a landmass. It marks material whose spread crosses the continents rather than belonging to one of them.

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion
Europe, Continents

Global is not a landmass. It marks material whose spread crosses the continents rather than belonging to one of them.

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

Spread Events Here

Anchored to the same Global continent entity the Latter-day Saints' own global-south growth event already uses, since this fact is genuinely worldwide rather than tied to one country or region.

Source Pentecostal Resource Page (Pew Research Center, 2006)Pew Research Center

This shift spans Latin America, Africa and Asia at once, unlike this movement's earlier, place-specific events, so it is not pinned to any one continent on the map; the specific regions and the 1996 milestone are named in the description above.

Source Over Half LDS Now Outside U.S. (Church News)John L. Hart
Sources
1. A History of Horoscopic Astrology
James Herschel Holden, American Federation of Astrologers, 2006View the Source
2. A History of Western Astrology
Nicholas Campion, Continuum, 2009Publisher's book description, on the volume's scope
Quote, Publisher's book description, on the volume's scope
This is the first comprehensive examination of the origins of western astrology from ancient times to the end of the classical world, around 500 BCE.
View the Source
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