The number 12 does not figure centrally among India’s national symbols, unlike the number 24 in the national Wheel Flag. Given the omnipresence of astrology in India, the number of Zodiac signs, 12 for the Solar and 27 for the Lunar Zodiac (as distinct from the 28-part Chinese and Arab Lunar Zodiacs) can’t entirely be ignored. Moreover, already in the Vedas, it is the number 12 that represents heaven: it is the number of the heavenly gods or Ādityas. (Cfr. the Greek Dōdekatheon of the 12 Olympic gods, and the Germanic pantheon of 12 Aesir.)

It deserves to be better known that in one of the most important texts ever composed, the Ṛg-Vedic “Riddle Hymn” (RV 1:164, vaguely 3rd millennium BCE), poet Dīrghatamas had already drawn attention to the division in 12: “The twelve-spoked wheel of Ṛta/regularity (dvadaśāram cakram ŗtasya) revolves around heaven.” This was the oldest known articulation of the twelvefold, though in that version not yet filled in with the Zodiac sign. That’s what you get with discoveries and invention: things in that stage do not have their classical form yet.

Together with the numbers 9 (as in the Magic Square), 12 is also non-ignorable in that these two are constituents of the number 108. This has itself no official status, yet is undoubtedly characteristically Indic, e.g. the number of beads in a mālā, or the number of seats in the parliament of Nepal when it was still a Hindu kingdom. For making it to official status in a republic that wants itself secular, it is just too Hindu: most Hindu clerics and devotees nowadays include it in their e-mail addresses.

The number 12 is more explicitly associated with another “union of states”, the one on Eurasia’s western subcontinent: the European Union. When in 1985 the European Economic Community (EEC, now European Union, EU) officialized the flag effectively already in use, it hoisted a heaven-blue field sporting a circle of 12 golden stars. Before being ordained top-down, the symbol had grown spontaneously, bottom-up: a very auspicious setting that made this flag more authentic. This design had first been accepted by the Council of Europe (uniting all sovereign European states) in 1955 as a symbol for all of Europe regardless of organizations.

The official justification was that a circle evokes unity, and that 12 is “the symbol of perfection and entirety”. True enough, but this is not the whole story.

For one thing, it had been designed in a context that the EU elite prefers to forget: religion. It was inspired by the New-Testamentic image of a 12-star circle surrounding the Virgin Mary, either as a crown around her head, or under her feet. In the present age of decline of Christianity, the conformistic EU elite prefers to obscure this religious background. Similarly, in the preamble to the Constitution which it proposed in 2004, it avoids extolling the role of the Church in lifting tribes above themselves into a continental identity, nor of crusader Charlemagne (ca. 800, when he was crowned Emperor by the Pope), whose empire was nearly identical in expanse to the European Community at its founding in 1957. That’s what you get with Secularists: they are bad historians, guilty of presentism, of projecting modern values onto the past. Back then, religion was a part of life, even of politics, so a national symbol could well have religious roots, this should not constitute an objection.

Anyway, the Biblical design of the circle of 12 stars, though surrounding the Virgin Mary there, was itself already an appropriation of a towering pre-Christian symbol: the Zodiac. In Hebrew: mazzalot, literally the “stars” (wherefrom the wish in Dutch: “De mazzel!”, effectively meaning: “Good luck!”). This had originated outside Europe: in Babylon in the 2nd millennium BCE, as far as we know. Unlike India, Europe has always been hetero-centric, seeking its roots outside itself: in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Palestine, Anatolia.

But the Zodiac had become part of European culture during Greco-Roman times and persisted after Christianization, reinforced by Biblical twelvefolds ultimately also referring to the Zodiac, such as the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. Now, what is so special about this division in 12?

It is a geometrical refinement of the less neat but universally observable fact that there are roughly 12 lunar cycles in the solar year. Strictly speaking, the moon-based division of the year is a temporary state of affairs that can’t sanctify an eternal and unchanging number. As time passes, the moon slowly removes itself from the earth, so that its cycle becomes longer and the number of cycles in a solar year becomes smaller. This soli-lunar twelvefold is not eternal, not sanātana, only a happy coincidence: we are lucky that we live in the period when the distance to the moon happens to be such that the yearly number of lunations is about 12 and thus suggests the fabulous number 12, which has some unique eternal intrinsic properties.

Let’s see what mathematics can say about 12 that, unlike the length of the lunar cycle, is really sanātana, “eternal”. Arithmetically it is 3×4, symbolically Time x Space; and it is 3+4+5, the sides of the first Pythagorean triangle, with 3²+4²=5². These arithmetical properties are interesting and cute, but in geometry, 12 is even more unique. Geometrically, 12 is:

(3, bronze) the number of angles in the inscribed regular polygon with surface = 3, viz. the dodecagon, the only approximation of the real circle (surface = π) with a natural number as surface. The circumference is an infinitely large number of infinitely small sides; the regular polygon of 12 is by far the wieldiest approximation of this infinity.

(2, silver) the division of the circle that somehow bridges the incommensurable straight diameter and the round circumference (and thus is the best approximation to “squaring the circle”, which in itself is impossible). Divide the vertical radius in 2, project the dividing points horizontally to left and right, and likewise, divide the horizontal radius in 2 and project the dividing-points vertically up and down. These straight lines divide each radius in 2 and each quarter-circumference in 3. So through these natural numbers it bridges straight and round, uneven and even, and as it were: heaven and earth, male and female. This is a truly unique property of the circle’s division in 12×30°.

(1, gold) the most natural (i.e. not needing any extraneous data, only the data intrinsic to it, given at its birth) division of the circle: (a) construct a circle; (b) using the same compass opening, construct an equal circle having as centre a random point on the original circle’s circumference; (c) then use an intersection point of the two circles as new centre for a new equal circle, and thus continue around the whole original circle, so that six equal circles with centres on every 60° of the original circle are formed. This yields thirteen intersection points: 1 in the centre; 6 on the intersection points of the six circles with the original circle, 60° separate; and 6 outside the original circle, again 60° separate. The points can be linked with straight lines. Those straight lines that go through the original centre yield 12 sectors of 30°: the Zodiac. Those that don’t, yield the śrīcakra or six-pointed star.

So even before one notices the twelvefold temporarily formed by the moon’s cycle in the sky; or if one stands on a planet that has no moon; one can derive the twelvefold purely with compass and ruler. That is the perfect twelvefold in the world of ideas from which the twelvefolds in this nether world are only implementations, often only approximations.

Coincidentally, this exact twelvefold of 12×30°, unrelated to the unruly moon cycle, already had roots in the Vedic age. The Yajur-Vedic sages had a Ṛtu-cakra of 6 seasons/Ṛtus, and then they subdivided these seasons into two. We are tempted to call the latter “months” because of their similar duration, but they have nothing to do with the moon and could have been deduced even if the earth had had no satellites. Starting from roughly the Winter Solstice (Uttarāyaṇa), these are:

• Śiśira (“wet winter”), divided in Tapas and Tapasya;
• Vasanta (“spring”), divided in Madhu and Mādhava;
• Grīṣma (“summer”), divided in Śukra and Śuci;
• Varṣā (“rain”), divided in Nabhas and Nabhasya;
• Śarada (“autumn”), divided in Iṣa and Ūrja;
• Hemanta (“dry winter”), divided in Sahas and Sahasya.

This yields a division of the year equal to the tropical Zodiac, 12×30°, based not on the heavenly constellations but on the earthly seasons.

It seems not to be the origin of the Zodiac that we know, though, except after a passage through Babylon, where the division in 12×30° was filled up with “signs” charged with meanings. Then the post-Alexandrine Greeks brought it into India, where the first Rāśi-cakra (12-Zodiac) had the Greek sign names and some Greek technical terms, in a primer candidly called the Yāvana-Jātaka, “Greek Nativities”. But the story of the development and the transmissions involved is yet to be detailed.
At any rate, about the division in 12, we can all agree. Dvadaśa amar rahe!