Blavatsky and the Great Year

What needs do mythology and religion serve in today's world and in ancient times? Here we discuss the relationship between mythology, religion and science from mythological, religious and philosophical viewpoints.

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Robert Tulip
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Post by Robert Tulip »

Tat, I am continuing to work through your comments here, sorry for the delay. Perhaps the mention of the notorious Madame Blavatsky in the thread title has put others off? Or maybe it is the combination with the Great Year. In any event it is all good discussion.
tat tvam asi wrote:That's an interesting take on it Robert. I like your vision of the Great Year as a natural cycle with the same effects as the sun or tide. It does sound very natural.
Yes, this sense from theosophy that every cycle of the earth is as regular and natural as night follows day should be a way to make discussion of the Great Year more accessible. We see it in Gerald Massey with his description of Christianity as ‘equinoctial Christolatry’ setting the natural framework of Christmas and Easter as the basis of a cosmic myth. Looking for such natural cycles in the history of the earth, we can see that precession contributes to the observed climatic rhythm of the Milankovitch cycles linking with the shape of earth’s orbit to produce hundred thousand year patterns visible in ice cores. But our discussion here focuses just on precession as the framework for mythology.

I think the main problem with using the Great Year as a framework for history is the lack of fit between the Great Year cyclic concept of a Golden Age ten thousand years ago and our usual anthropological and archaeological theories of cultural progress. The Vedas, Daniel, Hesiod, Virgil and Don Quixote give us the story of decline from a mythical Golden Age to a present Iron Age. Yukteswar links this cyclic vision to precession of the equinox, to say we are now on the upward path in a new bronze age after plumbing the depths of ignorance in the iron age of the Kali Yuga.

This cosmology of the Great Year matches directly to and encompasses the broad Biblical account used by Augustine of fall and redemption. In the bigger picture of the Great Year, the fall from grace in ~4300 BC is seen as the decline from a previous golden age and the redemption is understood in millennial terms against the Revelation account of the return of Christ in ~2150 AD as the dawn of the Age of Aquarius. We can set aside the creationist vision that sees this 7000 years as the whole of history by observing that the Bible itself enframes this time period within the longer story of the Great Year, through symbols including the Tree of Life and the tribulation.

The more significant problem in viewing the Great Year cyclic vision as natural is that it does not match to the scientific story of linear evolution from stone to bronze to iron to steel. How can we say that a world that was at a lower technological level, using tools of wood and stone, was somehow more spiritually advanced than today? This is where Theosophy, despite its scientific errors, offers a jarringly alternative conception of human evolution. I am now reading Out of Eden – The Peopling of the World by Stephen Oppenheimer. By grounding human expansion in DNA evidence, this book provides a decisive scientific explanation for our origins in Africa, and the path of expansion through Asia beginning 85,000 years ago, as I mention in my Blavatsky paper. We have not physically evolved in terms of intelligence for more than 100,000 years, so the question remains how recent myths such as Christianity may be grounded in very ancient wisdom. Could it be true that the upheavals of history have concealed the true nature of prehistoric high culture?

I have made a diagram of the observable heavens with the Milky Way as a straight line and the zodiac as a sine curve. This is a representation of the sphere of the sky. Similar diagrams of the sky can be made with the zodiac as a straight line and galaxy as a sine curve, or mapping the zodiac against the celestial equator instead of the galaxy.

In this diagram, the sun moves once from right to left each year and once from left to right each Great Year. Looking at the movement of the spring point, the place where the zodiac crosses the equator at the equinox, we see here that the Vedic Golden Age is centred on the top of this curve of the Great Year zodiac against the Milky Way, when the March equinox was in Leo 14,000 years ago, and the Iron Age is centred on the bottom of the curve, with the equinox in Pisces. The Milky Way galaxy is the axis for the eternal cycle of the Yugas. The model of the Yuga as a 24,000 year cycle matches directly to the model of the Great Year as analogous to a day with the galaxy as the horizon, correcting for the small error of an age of 2000 rather than 2147 years. In this physical cosmic version of the ‘Day of Brahma’ as discussed by Joseph Campbell, we can see that midday is the Golden Age, midnight is the Iron Age, and dawn and dusk are in the Silver Ages. This is a permanent stable physical cycle as old as the earth. As you say, it is purely natural.


A quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar draws the analogy between tides and history: “We at the height are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. (IV.ii.269–276)”. I sometimes feel that I missed my own flood tide when I was younger, fearing that all this material about the Great Year was too complex to discuss. However, I have devoted my life to study of the topic, and can see that ideas I had when I was 21 when I wrote my BA thesis on the Great Year and the Bible were too simple, although accurate in essence. Even so, I have faith that the songs I wrote at that time will soon be famous.

http://cervantes.thefreelibrary.com/Don-Quixote/101-1 includes Cervantes' version of the golden sticks, a story that Hamlet's Mill sees as linked to the Great Year.
My reason for seeing a continuity of Great Year knowledge is just due to the fact that its presence is evident in ancient myths with the 432 themes all over the place. It was known after the first century as well and has traveled along as veiled in our NT writings the entire time. Freemason's like Albert Pike are quoted admitting that Revelation concerns the ending on scale of Great Year in the sign of Aries. The Freemasons have obviously understood the astrotheological Great Year symbolism. I tend to think that higher level religious clergy understand such a reading as well. I see the evidence of a continuity of Great Year knowledge. The knowledge was available in the 1800's for Blavatsky. How did it get to her in the 1800's? She had to study and learn from available sources of information that had lasted from antiquity, continuously, into the modern era.
I remain of the view that previous understanding of the Great Year has been too fragmentary to be explained clearly. This is why in Hamlet’s Mill we see evidence of widespread intuitive sense that precession provides the framework for mythology, but an inability to analyse the mythology against scientific evidence, as we are discussing here. People have lacked a coherent framework to lift the veil on the New Testament and have seen the imagery as through a glass darkly rather than face to face. The Finnish myth of the Sampo as a millstone that has fallen off its axis speaks of this forgetting of the Great Year as the framework of cosmic attunement. This theme of the Great Year as a millstone appears several times in the Bible as well. As we move now back towards a restoration of the Aquarius-Leo axis at the equinoxes, this sense of cosmic attunement will steadily become more accessible.
I can see how the Great Year is very natural and that it's a part of the natural evolution of life on earth. But I almost have to wonder if the ancients did understand the Great Year in those terms when devising the Golden Age mythologies and categorizing the ages in and out of darker "times". And if they did understand a natural cycle like this way back when, then they would have good reason for the continuity of an orderly effort on the part of those in the know to steer things according to the "times". The mystery schools are alleged to be intended as a way of continuing knowledge forward through the decline. It's the notion that the Egyptians may have seen that a cosmic fall - on the back end of the Great Year - was underway, and then sprung into action with the Pyramid building era's in order to make preparations for what they saw as a cosmic winter ahead. A very predictable cosmic winter to those with the knowledge of the earth’s precession. I wonder if they would be unknowing victims of the natural cycle that they acknowledged. It seems more probable to me that they would anticipate these changes coming in advance to their arrival, "Prophecy" as it were. The Prophecy of Revelation has to do with anticipating the forces of light winning over the forces of darkness during the Aquarian age. If it did start out as an Egyptian and Zoroastrian drama about the Great Year ending in Aries and was then translated into Greek and Christianized much later, as alleged, then that represents a sort of continuity of keeping this information traveling along through "time", likely with knowing participants in the mix among with the completely ignorant the whole way through.
This comment reminds me of a beautiful short story by Isaac Asimov called Nightfall. It tells of a world with seven suns and permanent day, where astronomers find evidence of past high civilizations and predict collapse as resulting from a total eclipse occurring every few thousand years. They know what is coming but are powerless to stop it, and find themselves swept up in the fear of the dark when the eclipse starts.

The ancients had a detailed cosmology of the Ages, as indicated in the statue of Aion that I copied in the Yeats thread. However, the power of delusory ignorance was so great that the general populace simply could not comprehend a spirituality based on cosmic law, resulting in the historized literal account of Jesus that we have in the Bible. Yes there have been the hidden wise who kept alive the flame of cosmic knowledge through the Dark Ages, but we are now moving into a time when this secret knowledge may be openly discussed, so the misunderstanding produced by talking in code can be cleared up.
But that's just one perspective. And it doesn't exclude the possibility that the Great Year cycle is a natural cycle that affects life just like every other natural cycle on the earth. I like your perspective a lot. It doesn't have to with astrology and mysterious external forces, it has to do with what is happening on the earth itself while certain stars and constellations are the back prop. The age of Aquarius being a time when the back prop of these constellations has been a time of progress in terms of rising knowledge and awareness. Other times being times of forgetfulness. And the idea is that these myths are designed the way that are in order to carry certain knowledge over a vast period of time so that they will survive long enough to make it for countless generations into the distant future. There's the surface story line of the symbolism which offers great rewards for the preservation and continuity of the book of Revelation, for instance. A stern warning is given to all those who would add or subtract from the text. Eternal life is dangled as a reward for the continuity while hell fire and damnation is offered to those who refuse to honor the text and pass it along as absolute. I see lots of continuity and motivation for keeping these symbols moving through generation after generation towards the "time" period designated in the allegory.
That is an excellent summary Tat, thanks. We are opening ways to look at such mysterious traditions as eschatology and astrology against an objective empirical framework. An essential point here is that the Great Year is a physical wobble of the earth itself, and this is why I insist on accepting mainstream science regarding the lunisolar torque as the physical cause of precession. The stars are simply markers of a slow terrestrial cycle, not dynamic causes of this cycle through some mechanistic action at a distance. The seasons wobble from side to side of the Milky Way galaxy over the course of the Great Year to produce a terrestrial cycle that is as real for the evolution of life as the shorter cycles of the day and the year.

tat tvam asi
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Post by tat tvam asi »

Robert Tulip wrote:Yes there have been the hidden wise who kept alive the flame of cosmic knowledge through the Dark Ages, but we are now moving into a time when this secret knowledge may be openly discussed, so the misunderstanding produced by talking in code can be cleared up.
I believe that to be the case. The ZG movie has brought the Great Year into public attention more so than anything else before. There are millions of viewers who watched the basic break down of what precession is and how the Bible basically covers three world ages while foreshadowing a fourth. It's slow, but there is an evident increase of awareness gaining speed. People don't know all of the details, but the general understanding is going around on youtube and so forth. All of this while going into the last of the age of Pisces while Aquarius is fast approaching. It's interesting to consider the whole thing from the basic perspective of the wobbling axis of the earth itself. We can't avoid the reality that the axis of the earth has been wobbling as life evolved over vast millennia. It's rocked back and forth, and back and forth, and the constellations such as Orion have been moving up and down on the meridian over and over again. And people were living under a bright and prominent night sky for millennia.

Campbell touched on this a lot actually. He kept pointing out that there are mythologies making use of the 432 number system (4,320 / 43,2000 / 432,000 / 4,320,000...) long before the so-called discovery of precession. And I've also found that the Napta Playa find seems to be oriented around using Orion to indicate the movements of precession via Orion's changing position up and down on the meridian with the use of a primitive and basic stone circle. Thomas Brophy covers this in his book "The Origin Map". Then the Giza necropolis shows the same as Bauval discovered, but with the use of much more sophisticated building methods.

West seems to think that the ancients knew that a cosmic winter season was approaching and took great care to try and preserve ancient knowledge in stone and set the mystery schools into motion as a preservation of knowledge, similar to storing seed for the winter. And he sees the pyramids as a granary of knowledge tucked away for the eventual cosmic spring when the time for knowing and understanding becomes favorable once again. The great influence of the Egyptian religion on early Christianity is evident. So I do see the strong Alexandrian / Antioch connection at play and I do see how a lot of these allegorical tales in the NT were intentionally oriented towards the long anticipated age of Aquarius ahead. Luke 22:10 outlining a bloody obvious instance of this with the imagery of Jesus, the 12, and a male water bearer alluding to the passover which follows the vernal equinox. Through a heavily personified set of symbolism, the sun is telling the 12 signs of the zodiac to follow the sign of Aquarius into the house that he enters into after the last passing over of the sun during the age of Pisces ahead, basically. And astronomically that's when Orion reaches it's maximum on the meridian during the 'second age' of the new Great Year cycle as we've discussed. I honestly hope the ancients were correct and that there is such a cycle at play and that empirical science will be able to eventually get a handle on it by studying the earths wobble verses the evolution of life on the planet. As John Anthony West put it, it warrents a cautious optimism for the future - permitting that this is all correct - because then we're off to increasing better "times" if the ancient mapping of the GY cycle is correct. And it seems that if it's true then there should be detectable changes that correspond to the time periods of different world ages. We should see some indication of changes taking place over the period of the last descending Great Year for sure.

One obvious thing to be noted is that that is precisely the time period in which the fallen nature theology of Zoroastrianism and eventually the "Fall of Man" theology of Judaism begin to arise from the 'human psyche'. That does line up very specifically and it may be due to a number of reasons. But to pay real close attention, man was mythologizing fallen nature concepts precisely as the descending half of the Great Year cycle was fast approaching the bottom end of the cycle. Zoroastrianism emerges and Judaism emerges. Then, after the Great Year had ended with the end of the age of Aries, we then find people moving to mythologize a conclusion to the "Fall of Man" concept. A conclusion which involves the idea of man ascending back to where he was before the fall took place. It's a restoration theology about the redemption of humanity that started back with the Zoroastrians and the sons of light verses the sons of darkness and then moved forward through time adapting to newer thought along the way. And it all matches the movements of the GY cycle. Campbell took issue with the evolution of the fallen nature theologies in several books and lectures but he never really spelled out in clear terms that the fallen nature theologies are nothing more than 'man mythologizing the falling and then rising motion of the GY cycle'. He simply took off trying to note how wrong it is to take the fall of man literally when it has metaphorical value to be understood. And of course it isn't literal in terms of taking Genesis literally to the letter, however the Fall of Man does describe the lower 1/3 of the GY allegorically. So from what I can tell we've just ventured out a bit beyond what Campbell was dealing with in a lot of his books and lectures. We're moving towards trying to advance something that he started but didn't quite zero in on within his own life time. Unless I've missed where he spelled it all out this clearly. If so I'd love to see where he addressed the fallen nature theologies on this particular level of consideration that we've been discussing so far.

The fall of man motif only makes clear sense to me when viewed beside the position of it's actual emergence in the world of mythology and religion nearing the end on scale of one complete GY cycle. And the idea that the fallen nature concept was passed on from the Zoroastrians and entered the post Babylonian Bible writing era places it's emergence squarely into the age of Aries. But the earliest possible dates still keep it earlier in Aries and perhaps even bring it back as far as Taurus with the earliest stretch of the imagination. But from the perspective of the late post Babylonian Bible writings periods it looks to be the case of the priests of those time periods looking back at the age of Taurus and then also forward to the age of Aquarius in order to outline the last two 'descending ages' and the first two 'ascending ages' of the GY cycle of the earth. The whole Fall and Redemption theology turns around into something well plotted on the part of the astronomer priests responsible for the Biblical writings, in that sense. And the truth of the matter is that if science ever can deduce - in clear empirical terms - that the GY does have something in the way of a natural effect on life on earth, then a whole new understanding of the fall of man against the back prop of the GY cycle suddenly comes into play. It would mean that while the story is very obviously a symbolic system of metaphor and allegory, it does refer to a natural cycle of the earth that was being perceived as a time of mans loss of spiritual awareness that will eventually be "saved" during a two fold event - one being the coming of the anticipated age of Pisces and the latter being the anticipated age of Aquarius - the 'first and second coming of the sun' into the first two ascending world ages of the fresh new GY cycle. This requires closer attention than many have given it.
"Scholars conjecture that a sense of divinity in Nature co-evolved with the first emergence of human consciousness, perhaps 100,000 years ago. The earliest god was Nature."

As far back as we are able to look into the past, says historian Colin Wilson, "human beings seem to have worshipped nature, and connected it to a higher spiritual reality, which they called god or the divine."

Ian Beardsley
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Interesting Thesis

Post by Ian Beardsley »

Tat Vam Asi sent me over here because he knows I have worked in astronomy, and thought I would be interested. It is an interesting thesis from what I can gather from the hypothesis. I would really have to read the argument closely, as it looks very involved, but I would really like to.

Religion, I believe, as hominids survived millions of years ago, crafted the stone points from stone, I imagine no doubt looked at the mountains and rivers, wondered where they came from, and said as I make spearpoints from stone, there must have been a maker of mountains and streams, and he identified his form with himself, as that was all he knew that was a maker, but certainly felt to make him or her, or mountains and streams had to be much more powerful, so the fear of god entered their notions, and they figured if they were good, they would go to good places, if not they would be punished. As agriculture entered, and they settled and formed civilizations, these notions became institutionalized religions, and, eventually the governments used the religions to control the people.

That human events are more on accordance with the longer cycles of the precession of the earth's axis would be interesting to look at. There is a longer period (much longer) and that is the orbit of the solar system around they galaxy, you may touch on that. That period is about 240 million years. Life began on earth what? More than 600 million years ago?

tat tvam asi
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Post by tat tvam asi »

Thanks for posting Ian. And just as I imagined you found a way to further the discussion. The whole thing needs consideration - the annual year, the Great Year of the earths spin wobble, and the orbit around the galaxy - with respect to the data available about the evolution of life on the planet during all of these natural cycles. It would seem that these great cycles are in some way ingrained into the DNA of life on the planet, including human life. I'm not sure why they wouldn't be.
"Scholars conjecture that a sense of divinity in Nature co-evolved with the first emergence of human consciousness, perhaps 100,000 years ago. The earliest god was Nature."

As far back as we are able to look into the past, says historian Colin Wilson, "human beings seem to have worshipped nature, and connected it to a higher spiritual reality, which they called god or the divine."

Robert Tulip
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Re: Interesting Thesis

Post by Robert Tulip »

Ian Beardsley wrote:That human events are more on accordance with the longer cycles of the precession of the earth's axis would be interesting to look at. There is a longer period (much longer) and that is the orbit of the solar system around they galaxy, you may touch on that. That period is about 240 million years. Life began on earth what? More than 600 million years ago?
Hi Ian. I have also been discussing the long term cycles at the thread here on The Great Year. Complex multicellular life appeared on earth after the Cambrian Explosion about 580 million years ago. Before that, microbes had lived on earth for more than three billion years. The sun has orbited the galaxy nearly three times since the Cambrian Explosion, and over 15 times since the dawn of life.

My view is that we should look at cycles over tens of thousands of years to match mythology and science. I've just made a diagram of insolation history over the Great Year. It shows that precession of the equinox is a main driver of climate change, and correlates with the myth of a decline from a golden age at the start of the Holocene Period 12000 years ago.

tat tvam asi
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Post by tat tvam asi »

Here's a link to CPAK 2008, which covers a well illustrated diagram of the Yuga's along side of the Precession of the equinoxes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd20IKYqATQ

The Egyptian "Zep Tepi" points to the period of the descending Satya Yuga which is the vernal age of the Leo-Aquaris axis which the Sphinx is aimed at. And the idea from West is that the Sphinx was there in Egypt not only at that time, but even one cycle previous, due to the rain erosion on the Sphinx. That's pretty controversial, but in any case the Sphinx is oriented to the sun rising in Leo and it does have rain erosion indicating some deep antiquity to rain forest climate. And the whole idea of the ancients anticipating a decline coming up on them which can not be avoided, but rather must be rode out through it's full duration, is interesting.

Especially considering that it coincides with the insolation data of decreasing physical solar light during the descending Yuga cycle of precession that Robert has brought up. As physical solar light was decreasing the ancients seemed to have the idea that human awareness was decreasing to some low point and used the metaphor of "light and darkness" to describe the higher and lower ages of precession. So it really makes me wonder how many precession cycles have been known on some level by observant human beings and whether they understood the natural insolation cycle of increasing and decreasing solar "light" when mythologizing the Great Year into a cycle of half ascending and half descending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7UjDpp1y9c

And the Zoroastrian myth of 'the suns of light verses the suns of darkness' coming at us from the time period in which it emerged into the historical record seems far too coincidental to not have been oriented specifically to the descending precession cycle, which, coincidentally, effects the amount of light received from the sun.

And that's the whole theme of Revelation really, the forces of "Light" overpowering the forces of "Darkness" on the earth during a 'several stage process' that results in a final triumph for "Light". And so the claim that Revelation is an old Egyptian and Zoroastrian drama written to usher in the age of Aries and the ending in scale of one GY only to have been translated into Greek during the CE and Christianized, makes quite a bit of sense. Here's an excert from "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold":
The Meaning of Revelation

Another biblical “code” in need of decipherment is the book of Revelation, which has mystified and fascinated people for centuries with its bizarre imagery and purported prophecy. This fascination has lead to endless speculation and interpretation of its prophecy, by biblical literalists, who, being unable to do anything else with it, usually interpret Revelation allegorically. …As Pike says, “The Apocalypse, or Revelations, by whom ever written, belongs to the orient and extreme antiquity. It reproduces what is far older than itself.” Higgins concurs:

“That the work called the apocalypse of St. John…is of very great antiquity is clearly proved by the fact that it makes the year only 360 days long – the same length that it is made in the third book of Genesis.”

Based on its astrological imagery, Massey evinced that Revelation, rather than having been written by any apostle named John during the 1st century CE, was an ancient text dating to 4,000 years ago and relating the Mithraic legend of one of the early Zoroaster’s. The text has also been attributed, psuedepigraphically to Horus’s scribe, Aan, whose name has been passed down as “John.” …In fact, the words “Jesus” and “Christ”, and the phrase “Jesus Christ” in particular, are used sparingly in Revelation, revealing they were interpolated (long) after the book was written, as were the Judaizing elements. …In fact, Revelation records the mythos of the precession of the equinoxes, or the “Great Year,” and was apparently written to usher in the age of Aries, which began around 4,400 years ago. As Churchward says:

“The drama appears tremendous in the book of Revelation, because the period ending is on the scale of one Great Year. It is not the ending of the world, but of a Great Year of the world.”

Churchward continues:

“The book of Revelaton is and always has been inexplicable, because it’s based on the Egyptian Astronomical Mythology without the gnosis, or “meaning which hath wisdom” that is absolutely necessary for an explanation of its subject matter.”

Sacred Numerology / Gematria

The book of Revelation is in fact an encapsulation of the ancient astrological mythos and religion. A Part of which is sacred numerology. Indeed, several sacred numbers repeatedly make their appearance in Revelation, such as three, seven, 12, 24, etc. The “seven stars” or “spirits” are the seven “planets” that make up the days of the week and the Seven Sisters, which were variously the pole-stars or the Pleiades. …The seven “torches of fire” or seven branch lamp stand symbolizes the sun in the middle, with the moon and five inner planets as satellites, corresponding to the days of the week. Concerning Jesus as the lamb with seven horns and eyes, Wells says:

“Revelations figuring the heavenly Jesus as a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes ‘which are the spirits of God sent forth into all the earth” (5:6) is a manifold reworking of old traditions. Horns are a sign of power (Deuteronomy 33:17) and in Daniel designated kingly power. The seven eyes which inform the lamb of [what] is happening all over the earth seem to be residues from ancient astrological lore… according to which God’s eyes are the sun, the moon, and the five planets…”

The Great City of Revelation is the city of the Gods, located in the heavens, with the 12 gates of the zodiac. The “tree of life” in the city that bears “twelve manner of fruit” is also the zodiac. In edition, the 24 elders in white garments around the throne are the 24 hours of the day “around” the sun. The four angels “standing at the four corners of the earth” are the four cardinal points or angles of 90 degrees each…
The text does seem to have some hints of a greater antiquity than the common era. There's gnostic imagery throughout. And my guess is that's how an old Egyptian and Zoroastrian astrotheological drama would have found it's way into the New Testament era as something passing around with the gnostics and then taken over by orthodox authorities and used to benefit orthodox goals. The precession theme is evident and numberous in the text when you really get into it. The whole structure points towards a prediction that the forces of "light" will over power the forces of "darkness" in an absolute sense. There's no sense of maybe they will and maybe they won't in the text, it's saying that it will absolutely happen. And from the perspective of insolation, it will absolutely happen because it's simply part of a natural cycle that happens over and over again and is completely predictable to anyone who understands the precession of the equinoxes, which, apparently some of the more knowledgeable ancient astronomer-priests did.
"Scholars conjecture that a sense of divinity in Nature co-evolved with the first emergence of human consciousness, perhaps 100,000 years ago. The earliest god was Nature."

As far back as we are able to look into the past, says historian Colin Wilson, "human beings seem to have worshipped nature, and connected it to a higher spiritual reality, which they called god or the divine."

Ian Beardsley
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Post by Ian Beardsley »

I would say so Tat, you would be absolutely right that these cycles are in our DNA. Our DNA changes in responses to changes in climate through evolution's mechanisms of evolution, like natural selection. So we would evolve according to the cycles, to adapt to the changing environment.

Robert, this very interesting, and it would seem wise to focus on the shorter cycles of precession than the orbit around the galaxy, because we have more accurate data for shorter cycles, as you say, a wise move.

This is all very interesting.

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Post by Robert Tulip »

tat tvam asi wrote:Here's a link to CPAK 2008, which covers a well illustrated diagram of the Yuga's along side of the Precession of the equinoxes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd20IKYqATQ
Hi Tat, Thanks. Steinmetz provides a clear presentation. I made a picture of the correlation between the Yuga and the Great Year at
http://rtulip.net/yahoo_site_admin/asse ... 171922.ppt
drawing from a diagram published at godteacher.com. I combine the yuga, the great year and the south celestial pole to show the correlations over the period of the Great Year. I am now looking at how this cycle is reflected in astronomy, with a current period of lower summer light in between periods of higher summer light that are half a Great Year before and after the present.
The Egyptian "Zep Tepi" points to the period of the descending Satya Yuga which is the vernal age of the Leo-Aquaris axis which the Sphinx is aimed at. And the idea from West is that the Sphinx was there in Egypt not only at that time, but even one cycle previous, due to the rain erosion on the Sphinx. That's pretty controversial, but in any case the Sphinx is oriented to the sun rising in Leo and it does have rain erosion indicating some deep antiquity to rain forest climate. And the whole idea of the ancients anticipating a decline coming up on them which can not be avoided, but rather must be rode out through it's full duration, is interesting.

Especially considering that it coincides with the insolation data of decreasing physical solar light during the descending Yuga cycle of precession that Robert has brought up. As physical solar light was decreasing the ancients seemed to have the idea that human awareness was decreasing to some low point and used the metaphor of "light and darkness" to describe the higher and lower ages of precession. So it really makes me wonder how many precession cycles have been known on some level by observant human beings and whether they understood the natural insolation cycle of increasing and decreasing solar "light" when mythologizing the Great Year into a cycle of half ascending and half descending.
the insolation data shows that we are now at a low point in a cycle that is one Great Year in length, shortened by the combination of precession with other orbital factors to 21,000 years. Basically, when the northern summer coincides with the point in our elliptical orbit that is closest to the sun, the perihelion, there is more summer light, and a warmer period for the earth. When the summer is at the point furthest from the sun, aphelion, we have ice ages. We are now at a point in the cycle of a relative minimum, with times of maximum light about 12,000 years ago and 9,000 years in the future. The ancients could not have known the connection with the orbital ellipticity that drives how precession governs the rise and fall of ice ages. However, they saw clearly that the earth had emerged from the ice age 12,000 years ago, and called this time the golden age. It continued for a few thousand years after the time of maximum light, but then, as the summer light declined around the Age of Taurus or the silver age around 5000 BC, a shift in consciousness also set in that led towards what David Steinmetz at CPAK 2008 called the material age of the Kali Yuga, the iron age lasting 2400 years and centred in 500 AD.

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Post by tat tvam asi »

Ian Beardsley wrote:I would say so Tat, you would be absolutely right that these cycles are in our DNA. Our DNA changes in responses to changes in climate through evolution's mechanisms of evolution, like natural selection. So we would evolve according to the cycles, to adapt to the changing environment.

Robert, this very interesting, and it would seem wise to focus on the shorter cycles of precession than the orbit around the galaxy, because we have more accurate data for shorter cycles, as you say, a wise move.

This is all very interesting.
I found it interesting that you showed up and posted at jcf on your old thread right now because we just started getting into this particular focus shortly before that, and if there's a third party anywhere which can jump right into this, it's gotta be you. I'm glad you decided to check out the topic.
"Scholars conjecture that a sense of divinity in Nature co-evolved with the first emergence of human consciousness, perhaps 100,000 years ago. The earliest god was Nature."

As far back as we are able to look into the past, says historian Colin Wilson, "human beings seem to have worshipped nature, and connected it to a higher spiritual reality, which they called god or the divine."

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Post by tat tvam asi »

Robert Tulip wrote:Basically, when the northern summer coincides with the point in our elliptical orbit that is closest to the sun, the perihelion, there is more summer light, and a warmer period for the earth. When the summer is at the point furthest from the sun, aphelion, we have ice ages. We are now at a point in the cycle of a relative minimum, with times of maximum light about 12,000 years ago and 9,000 years in the future.
Which should be ingrained into the DNA of life, correct?
The ancients could not have known the connection with the orbital ellipticity that drives how precession governs the rise and fall of ice ages. However, they saw clearly that the earth had emerged from the ice age 12,000 years ago, and called this time the golden age. It continued for a few thousand years after the time of maximum light, but then, as the summer light declined around the Age of Taurus or the silver age around 5000 BC, a shift in consciousness also set in that led towards what David Steinmetz at CPAK 2008 called the material age of the Kali Yuga, the iron age lasting 2400 years and centred in 500 AD.
So does our DNA have anything to do with having a general lower awareness around the times when lower levels of solar light are reaching life on the earth during the precession cycle?

Campbell's ideas hinge around myth as coming from the conflicting biological energies within man, mythology is nature talking, basically. And from that perspective nature was speaking of itself as "fallen" through the medium of these human mythologies (biological energies within) that began to pop up in the northern hemisphere in the middle east during the latter part of the descending half of the GY. The farther eastern concepts of a balance between light and darkness (such as yin and yang) eventually gave way to the newer middle and near eastern concepts of a battle between the two where darkness dominates the earth for a while and then gets dominated by light in due time. We're sensitive to light and lack thereof. Especially for people living and spending time outdoors. People speak of the dark ages and say that it's just a figure of speech and that they weren't really darker in any literal sense, however we really are crawling out of a period of time of lower summer light in the northern hemisphere. And the biological energies of the body seemed to be expressing that through mythology as the decline in summer light in the northern hemisphere became greater and greater.
"Scholars conjecture that a sense of divinity in Nature co-evolved with the first emergence of human consciousness, perhaps 100,000 years ago. The earliest god was Nature."

As far back as we are able to look into the past, says historian Colin Wilson, "human beings seem to have worshipped nature, and connected it to a higher spiritual reality, which they called god or the divine."

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Post by Ian Beardsley »

Glad to be here, Tat. Thanks for directing my attention to this thread.

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Post by Robert Tulip »

tat tvam asi wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote:Basically, when the northern summer coincides with the point in our elliptical orbit that is closest to the sun, the perihelion, there is more summer light, and a warmer period for the earth. When the summer is at the point furthest from the sun, aphelion, we have ice ages. We are now at a point in the cycle of a relative minimum, with times of maximum light about 12,000 years ago and 9,000 years in the future.
Which should be ingrained into the DNA of life, correct?
Yes, exactly. Algae has lived on earth for four billion years in which the precession-ellipse cycle has been a relative constant providing a main cycle of temperature over a period of about twenty thousand years. Therefore, it is probable, on the annual model of summer and winter, that species evolve that are more suited to the warmer phase, and others which are more suited to the cooler phase of the cycle, which matches the Great Year of the precession of the equinox adjusted for ellipticity of earth’s orbit.
The ancients could not have known the connection with the orbital ellipticity that drives how precession governs the rise and fall of ice ages. However, they saw clearly that the earth had emerged from the ice age 12,000 years ago, and called this time the golden age. It continued for a few thousand years after the time of maximum light, but then, as the summer light declined around the Age of Taurus or the silver age around 5000 BC, a shift in consciousness also set in that led towards what David Steinmetz at CPAK 2008 called the material age of the Kali Yuga, the iron age lasting 2400 years and centred in 500 AD.
So does our DNA have anything to do with having a general lower awareness around the times when lower levels of solar light are reaching life on the earth during the precession cycle?
Probably it links to a cycle like the annual cycle of breeding feeding and hibernating. We are now at a relative minimum, in between peaks ten thousand years before and after. But the present is a small dip rather than a deep ice age as occurred twenty thousand years ago. We are now moving towards ten thousand years of steady increase in summer solstice light. Against the framework of the Great Year, this points to a vision of the future coming into conflict with a vision of the past. The Age of Aquarius is a time when new ideas about how to live on the planet will bring big changes to human life. With management of the climate and oceans, there is scope for abundance at a planetary scale enough to provide security for all and to repair land ecology.

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Post by Robert Tulip »

I've posted the following at a science board, avoiding mention of the Great Year.

Thanks very much Trakar, these are excellent sources.

My aim in this thread is to find out what the data tells us.

I am not saying that insolation is the cause of global warming except over the very long term as understood by climate science. Maybe a better thread title would be insolation and climate change.

The insolation trend is over thousands of years while the current anthropogenic warming anomaly is measured in decades and centuries.

The current trend in the insolation data, as I show in the thread, is that we are at a minimum point in the curve, between maxima ten thousand years before and after the present.

An animated tutorial explaining the orbital cycles of the earth in nine slides is at http://www.sciencecourseware.org/eec/Gl ... ankovitch/

Further questions raised by these observations.

1. The chart linked at the opening post projects insolation data into the future, but sources I have found eg Early Pleistocene Glacial Cycles and the Integrated Summer Insolation Forcing have data that terminates at the present. Does anyone know where to get the data for the future projections of insolation?

2. How exact a date can be determined for the current minimum point of the insolation curve?

3. Is it possible or likely that over the billions of years of evolution, microbial life has evolved so that some species are more adaptive to the warmer part of the precession-ellipse-obliquity cycle, and others are more adaptive to the cooler parts of the cycle?

4. Is it true to state the precession-ellipse-obliquity cycle has been a relative constant over the history of life on earth?

Thanks

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Post by Rimbaud »

This is great :D

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Post by tat tvam asi »

Rimbaud wrote:This is great :D
Hey Rimbaud. Robert really stumbled into some interesting data here when discovering how closely the solar insolation cycle follows the GY mythology.
"Scholars conjecture that a sense of divinity in Nature co-evolved with the first emergence of human consciousness, perhaps 100,000 years ago. The earliest god was Nature."

As far back as we are able to look into the past, says historian Colin Wilson, "human beings seem to have worshipped nature, and connected it to a higher spiritual reality, which they called god or the divine."

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