THE PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES

Being a circle, the Zodiac has no obvious beginning, so a specific point must be determined from which measurement can commence. This is where the problems begin to occur, in particular because astrologers sought to align the Zodiac with the four cardinal points that mark the alteration of seasons: the equinoxes (where the Sun crosses the equator in spring and autumn) and the solstices (where it is furthest from the equator in summer and winter). In the early Classical period these were regarded as fixed in space although, in fact, they are subject to an almost imperceptible precession at the rate of 50 seconds per year. What this means in simple terms, is that the Sun does not cross the equator at exactly the same place on the ecliptic each year. It crosses at a point 50 seconds of arc to the east of the previous year. During a lifetime this shifting point of intersection between the ecliptic and equator is so small as to be negligible, but over several centuries it will be noticed that the backdrop of stars that once lay behind the crossing point is moving westwards. In layman's terms "the Heavens are moving" slowly and almost imperceptibly but this can be noticed over hundreds and thousands of years and was done by the Ancient nations like Egypt who studied the stars. This is the phenomenon called "Precession" and this celestial phenomena is caused by the Earth's axis slowly rotating around the celestial poles. Whilst the background of the fixed stars remain more or less constant to each other, at least for a long time, the ecliptic's intersection with the equator slides backwards through the Zodiac, completing one circuit in approximately 26,000 years - the 'Great Astrological Age'. It common knowledge that the day marks the period of the Earth's rotation upon its axis, while the year marks the period of its revolution around the Sun. However, many people to not realize that there is also a period of approximately 25,800 years known as the Great Year, during which the poles of the Earth's axis trace an imaginary circle in the sky. This gyration of the Earth's poles occurs because our planet is an ellipsoid, flattened top and bottom and bulging at the equator. The gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon on the equatorial protuberance produces an oscillating movement similar to the wobble of a spinning top which tilts first one way and then another. Astronomers call this wobbling motion "nutation," a word derived from the Latin word "nutare", meaning to nod. Consequently, the Earth's axis is not always inclined in the same direction. About five thousand years ago, the North Pole pointed toward the star Alpha Draconis. By 2100 A.D., it will be pointing almost directly at Polaris, the present North Star. In the year 7500 A.D. Alpha Centei will be the Earth's polestar, and by 14,000 A.D., it will be Vega (Alpha Lyrae). The celestial equator is a projection of the Earth's equator upon the imaginary sphere of the heavens. Similarly, the extensions of the Earth's poles are called the north and south celestial poles. The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun through the heavens, and can be imagined as a line passing through the zodiacal constellations as they are seen at night. Since it is the Earth, and not the Sun, which moves, the ecliptic is really the plane of the Earth's orbit extended to meet the celestial sphere. The angle between the ecliptic and the celestial equator is called the obliquity of the ecliptic. At the present time, it measures nearly twenty-three degrees thirty minutes.

During the course of the year, the Sun appears to move slowly along the ecliptic to the left. When it reaches the point where the equator of the sky intersects the ecliptic, days and nights are of equal length. These points of intersection are called Equinoxes from the Latin "equi", equal, and "nox", night. The spring, or vernal equinox, which occurs on or about the twenty-first of March, marks the point at which the Sun enters the sign (not the constellation) Aries. Before that time, it was seen in a position south of the celestial equator, and the nights were longer than the days in the Northern Hemisphere. After the passing of the Sun over the celestial equator for southerly to northerly declination, the days are longer than the nights. Take note please where the lines of the "celestial equator" intersect with the "ecliptic" for it is at this point that the Sun "passes-over" each year; one moving from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere at the Vernal Equinox and correspondingly 6 months later as it moves again over this same plane and the same intersection of the "celestial equator" with the "ecliptic" at the Autumn Equinox.

Answer for yourself: Why is this so important? It is at this moment the "Sun was on the Cross" and this concept is at the heart of the "dying/rising" god theologies we find all the way down through recorded history and which is at the core of the "Jesus Story" as well as a host of other "crucified sungods".

Due to the Earth's nutation, the point at which the Sun passes the intersection of the ecliptic and the celestial equator is seen each year in a slightly different position against the background of stars. Thus, the signs which are measured from the equinox, gradually move away from the constellations, whose names they bear and which provide the unmoving sphere against which the vernal point shifts slowly backward. This retrograde movement is called the precession of the equinoxes.

In astrology, the thirty degrees of the ecliptic, known as the sign Aries, are always counted from the vernal equinox, even though year by year the slow retrograde motion of the equinoctial point along the ecliptic amounts to about fifty seconds of a degree, or a degree every seventy-two years. (This makes the normal human lifetime equal to one degree, or one day, of the Great Solar Year.) The vernal equinox marks a natural point of beginning, shown by the balancing of days and nights (think Ma'at, harmony, peace, the Kingdom of God), whereas the constellations are arbitrary divisions of the heavenly sphere and no one is yet certain where they begin.

The movement of the Vernal Equinox from one Zodiacal sign to the next - by which we are presently moving from the Age of Pisces to Aquarius - is a subdivision of this cycle that takes approximately 2,160 years.

The need to correctly identify the position of the Vernal Equinox, which sees the crossing of the Sun from the southern hemisphere to the north around 21 March, was a matter of vast significance to ancient civilizations.

Answer for yourself: And why was this?

The Sun's return to the equinox gave the official signal for the start of spring, a time of great jubilation and spiritual worship, where whole communities engaged in New Year festivities and ceremonies that spanned several days, dedicated to celebrating the return of the Sun's domination over the darkness of winter, the return of life over death. Let us not forget that man's greatest enemy and greatest fear since the beginning of time was his "fear of darkness". This "fear of darkness" lies at the very heart of so much of our "religious beliefs and doctrines" in Biblical Judaism and Christianity and few every know this. If you have never read this article stop right now and do so before you continue.

The great civilizations of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians placed tremendous importance on precisely locating and dating the "return of the Sun." The astrologers of the ancient period were observers, driven by religious and social needs to correctly locate the Vernal Equinox in order to set their calendars and regulate society. The people of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were not using the tropical Zodiac (it hadn't been invented yet), and so they had no need to establish a fixed reference point from which it could commence. But they were concerned with astronomical measurement of the cosmic points that indicated seasonal change, and they placed a heavy investment in their astrologers to keep their yearly cycles up to date by reference to the stars.

For our purposes in this study one of the most important things for us to understand is the previous precessional shift - the movement of the Vernal Point out of Taurus and into Aries, which took place within the golden heyday of ancient astrological worship, in the 2nd millennium BC.

Answer for yourself: Why is this time period of great importance to Judaism and Christianity today? It was during this time we have the great nations of Egypt and Israel from which much of our religious theology originated in Christianity.

Taurus has one of the longest histories of the Zodiac signs. The Sumerians refer to a star-bull ushering in the springtime, a reference to the Vernal Equinox being placed in Taurus sometime between the fourth and second millenniums BC (the 2,160 year of the Age of Taurus). This was the age in which the bull cult arose in Minoan Crete, the age of Montu the Bull in Egypt and the era of the biblical golden calf.

Bulls, ploughs and agriculture seem such an essential and mundane part of ancient life that one might expect them to be taken for granted. But domestication of the ox and bull and the invention of the plough was no mean accomplishment; in the native civilizations of North and South America neither occurred, a major factor in the failure of these civilizations to develop technology and effective defences. It was during the period of the great astrological age of Taurus that the people of the Middle East made this breakthrough, and around the same period began to employ the wheel, the lever and the most powerful invention of agriculture, the plough.

The first sign of the appearance of the wheel is traced to Mesopotamia and dates to just after 3500 BC. The earliest finds are solid wooden wheels which were attached to rafts for drawing loads upon a primitive cart. Shortly afterwards wheels and axles appear, along with levers and wedges from the earliest ploughs. Pulleys and large-scale irrigation systems had not yet been devised but the mechanical principles were in gestation, waiting for man's inventiveness to catch up with the potential of exploiting powers other than his own physical labour. The harnessing of animal power in the domestication of the ox opened the door to organized and efficient farming and that in turn allowed communities to settle, mature and develop their infrastructure. The tireless oxen, a creature capable of matching the strength and productivity of many men, provided the means whereby supplies of food stock could become far greater than the supplies required for its production. Domestication of the ox was a genuine cause for human celebration. The creature was honored for its resilience and strength and also for the fertility that it conveyed upon the land. From the Old Testament we can see how they were viewed as sacred, to be treated with great respect.

The Egyptians have a long history of bull-centered symbolism in their worship of God and it is here that we find "sacred bulls" (Apis bulls). These were said to incarnate the spirit of their gods and their death was followed by a period of national mourning. Often, these were depicted with the crescent Moon for horns. Prior to the Age of Aries the predominant iconography in Egypt was the Bull of Heaven, which was replaced by an endless array of ram images from the 2nd millennium BC onwards. It is noteworthy that the physical manifestation of the god Montu was in the form of the bull, and the pharaohs who ruled at the end of the Taurean age bore names that spoke of the completion of his power. Mentuhotep (literally 'Montu is satisfied') reigned from 2060 - 2010 BC, followed by his successors Mentuhotep II and III. Some scholars have also dated the story of Moses overturning the Golden Calf to this same period, suggesting that there was a widespread awareness amongst rulers that they were ushering in a brand new age and needed to respond with demolition of the old (the Age of Aries replacing the Age of Taurus....Ram symbolism for the prior Bull symbolism). Throughout the ancient world there are numerous depictions of the Sun god wrestling with and overthrowing the Bull, most of which have been translated as pictorial celebrations of the shift from the Age of Taurus to Aries. Some have carried other interpretations, mainly based on the Sun god overcoming darkness because the stars of Taurus were illuminated by the full Moon in the midst of winter.

In ancient Egypt the ram was revered as an emblem of the Sun and held sacred except during the New Year ceremonies when lambs were offered to the Sun in sacrifice. The same is largely true in ancient Greece. Hamal, the alpha star of Aries, was worshipped by the Greeks at the festival of Jupiter Ammon, where they celebrated the return of the Sun to Aries with the slaughter of rams.

Answer for yourself: Do you remember Mithra and the slaying of the Bull (symbolic for the Constellation of Taurus)? This is the same idea; namely the Constellation of Taurus being replaced after 2,160 years by the Constellation of Aries at the Vernal Equinox.

Answer for yourself: Why was this a great "Spiritual Time" for all of mankind in the northern hemisphere?

This was a time of great spiritual significance; the re-emergence of the Sun from death at the Winter Solstice where correspondingly the Earth "had died" and withheld her food and her "salvation" to mankind. It is the time of the resurrection of the light and with the understanding that God's Sun was a "symbol" for the God of the Cosmos who provided His "salvation" to mankind through the medium of light, heat, warmth, the renewed chain, the vanquishing of darkness and its threat of "death" to all life then you can easily see how the Ancients came to understand at this great time of the year that it is the time of the "resurrection of God".

Now you see the importance of the article on the "fear of darkness" even better.

Like the mythical phoenix, which arose in its own ashes, the Ram was chosen as a natural symbol of resurrection because of its ability, when shorn, to replenish its stock of wool. In so many ways and in so many places man was continually taught by God, in Nature as well as in the Sky and in the Heavens, that God was "life" and that God provided for all life "a rebirth" of the "same"; not different but the "same". It was this "same Sun" that was reborn, it was this "same" plant that grew again, it was this "same" tree that blossomed again, it was this "same moon" that was born from the dead each month, it was this "same" Sun that rose from the dead daily, it was this "same" Sun that rose from the dead of the Winter Solstice each year in renewed life, it was this "same" Constellation that reappeared at the Vernal Equinox every 25,920 years (12 Houses, each ruling the Vernal Equinox for 2,160 years according to the Precession of the Equinox". Man understood like the Ram in the Sky and like "Mother Earth" he will follow this SAME PATTERN of all life above him (Sky/Heaven) and around him (Nature); man will live again! We have here "Eternal Life" at is foundation. Man will follow in the "same order" what God was speaking to him "above him, and around him".So as Above, So beneath!

"The Ram, who is rich with an abundance of wool and, when shorn of this, with a fresh supply, will ever cherish hopes", writes Manilius in the first century BC. Astronomica; Loeb, p.233; Ch 4. 124-128. This may help some Christian theologians place into better context the reference to Jesus as the "Lamb of God"; and demonstrates that the phrase need not imply that Christ was the literal sacrificial atonement for man's sins, which many find confusing and clearly contradictory to Christian teachings. Biblical references draw heavily on the symbolism in the description of Christ as the Light, the Resurrection, the Lamb of God. It is not by accident that Easter - the resurrection of the Lord - is held in the full Moon period that follows the Sun's entry into Aries, and our western custom of giving eggs is based on a similar need to offer symbols of new life and new opportunities.

It was a natural act by which the stars of the constellation that held our attention at this period, the final death of winter and darkness, the re-emergence of the Sun's full glory, should be characterized in the form of a living representation. Principally a symbol of the resurrected Sun, the ram became a visible manifestation and symbol only of the Sun-god and its creative power; subsequent generations spoke of a mythical golden fleece, able to return life to the dead in the same way that Aries heralded the end of the season of death. Through this association the sacred Ram was an embodiment of the principles of fertility, vitality, new life and creative energy. The connection with the Sun was also reinforced by the culmination of Aries as Sirius rose heliacally and announced the annual inundation of the Nile for Egypt. It was the opportunity for mankind to experience renewed life from God and this "renewed life" came to man in many forms. It is the time to focus on God and His love and His salvation and provision given to mankind in many a forms and ways and with that man's attendant responsibilities to his Father in Heaven!

Man realized he was "IN COVENANT" with the Creator!

The glory that Egypt invested in the ram can be witnessed at the Great Temple of Amon-Ra at Karnak, built in 1480 BC. This includes an impressive avenue of ram-headed sphinxes and is oriented to the Summer Solstice at sunset. The temple is designed around a long passage, arranged to permit a beam of light from the Sun to reach down to a darkened sanctuary at the end. The path was narrowed so that the chamber could only be illuminated for a few moments on the day of the Summer Solstice. Impressive arguments have also been made that Karnak, together with other Sun temples such as the one at Luxor, form part of a huge reconstruction of the constellation Aries over the Egyptian landscape.

We are only just beginning to scratch the surface with our understanding of how deep and impressive was the full extent of the Egyptian worship of God, symbolized as the resurrected sun, which was also characterized in the symbol of Aries; or in our acceptance of how firmly this has underpinned the origins of Christianity.

It is no longer ground-breaking to demonstrate how many of the New Testament Psalms are translations of ancient Egyptian hymns to the Sun-god, or how biblical symbolism draws heavily on astrological ideas, motifs and parallels. It is no longer controversial to maintain the obvious fact that Easter, the pivotal point of the Christian calendar, is simply an altered form of worship of God, symbolized as the resurrected Sun as it reappears in its crossing of the Vernal point and initiates the season of spring. The name itself ties it to the astrological philosophy that recognizes the East, the point of ascension, as the spiritual source of new life and growth. It is the same astrological symbolism that proclaimed the birth of the 'New King' by the bright star rising in the east. The resurrection of Christ - the 'light too bright to look upon', the lamb (ie., 'resurrection') of God is now justly, irrefutably accepted as a mythological continuance of the New Year festivities that were so important to our ancestors.

But what has been dismissed far too lightly, is the apparent 'coincidence' that the transition of an astrological age accurately dated the coming of a new world order, and spanned the lifetime of a new physical manifestation of the 'one true god'. Astrologers have been too quick to 'turn the matter upside down', verifying the value of astrology by claiming that the onset of Christianity is reflected astrologically by the Christian adoption of the fishes as its symbolic motif.

Answer for yourself: Would it not be more likely, that astrologers were forewarning of the monumental significance of this precessional event with a view to past dynasties having trashed the iconatry of the old gods the last time that it happened? We only have to look at the turmoil in Egypt at the changing of the Age of Taurus where the Age of Aries displaced it and the resultant Exodus to understand the importance and huge ramifications of such "Celestial" and "Spiritual" events.

Answer for yourself: Would an attempt to create a new world order, based on a new spiritual source, not attempt to identify itself with the fishes, precisely because this was the sign of the Zodiac whose age was about to begin?

Answer for yourself: Could an attempt to redefine man's relationship with his God not be consciously manipulated or developed at a time that was perfectly suited to symbolically reinforce a spiritual need to do so?

Answer for yourself: Whereas Taurus justly was the age of the Bull and left its mark in the Heaven because of the benefits mankind accrued from the association at the time, was the overt use of fish symbolism in the rise of Christianity at the start of the Piscean Age, a deliberate attempt to identify with a symbol that was assumed to hold the new age power?

To my knowledge, these questions have never been properly probed or explored by historians, religious leaders or astrologers. But they appear to leave us with one of two very radical and startling suppositions. Either astrology verifies the Christian faith in a way that has never been fully appreciated or acknowledged, or Christianity is far more a mythological expression of ancient astrological belief than anyone in the organized church is willing to admit.

Bennoah1@airmail.net