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ALTERNATIVE NEWS
n the morning of Feb. 16, 2013, the small city of Chelyabinsk in
the southern Ural
mountains of Siberia got a taste of what the last days of Atlantis
may have been like.
Traveling at close to 40,000 miles per hour, a meteor flashed
through the heavens and ex- ploded with an estimated force of about
500 kilotons of TNT (or about 20 to 30 times the atomic blasts at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan which ended World War II). The
explosion oc- curred at about 10 to 15 miles above ground, but,
still, the resulting shock wave blew out win- dows in over 3,000
buildings in six cities. The dazzling flash was witnessed by
thousands (over 1,200 were injured by flying glass), and soon the
multitude of photos taken by many digital cam- eras were going
viral on the Internet.
As newsworthy as the event was, its full sig- nificance has only
begun to be appreciated. Though entirely unforeseen by astronomers
and astrophysicists, the Chelyabinsk meteor serves as both an
unwelcome reminder of historic precedent and herald of 2013’s
coming attrac- tions. Few could fail to note similarities with the
still unexplained 1908 Tunguska explosion (also in Siberia) thought
to be the greatest im- pact event in modern history, leveling over
1,500 square miles. The Chelyabinsk meteor also opened what has
already been called “the year of the comet.” Understandably many
relig- ious devotees see the heavens, these days, as full of long
prophesied signs and wonders.
On the very day of the Chelyabinsk explo- sion, came a
long-forecast close encounter of the physical kind with the
asteroid DA14, a 150-foot-wide space rock, which passed just 17,200
miles above Earth’s southern hemi- sphere—closer than the orbit of
many weather satellites. Scientists who publicly touted their
prowess at being able to find and track the as- teroid with such
accuracy, openly admitted that if it had struck southern
California, it could have wiped out everything from Los Angeles to
San Diego. However, they somewhat smugly pointed out, Earth would
suffer no damage from the encounter. The Siberia meteor,
though
O considerably smaller, was still large enough to have destroyed
most of any major city that it might have hit. And, yet, no one saw
it coming. That much, at least, is not in dispute.
Suddenly the great danger that Earth faces from unexpected space
projec- tiles is finding new credence in circles where previously
scant attention was given to such risks, albeit with no shortage of
derision for those who have warned of a very real threat.
“Vindication for Entrepreneurs Watching Sky: Yes It Can Fall,”
proclaimed the New York Times. “For dec- ades, scientists have been
on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could
devastate the planet,” wrote William J. Broad in the Times.
“Warnings that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious
threats were largely ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers
as Chicken Littles.”
Overnight, though, the opinion climate has dramatically changed.
From Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C., many are now flocking to
the cause. “Wouldn’t it be silly if we got wiped out because we
weren’t looking?” Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google
executive who leads a major detection effort, told the Times. In
the meanttime Rep. Dana Rohra- bacher (R-Calif.), vice chairman of
the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, re- sponded to
the Russian fireball by telling Space.com, “the event should serve
as a wake- up call.” Indeed.
In 1996, Atlantis Rising published the cover story, “Cosmic
Collisions,” by Joseph Joch- mans, which focused on the odds that
we might soon face an unwelcome rendezvous. “Rocky or iron
asteroids 2,000 feet or more in diameter and icy cometary bodies of
4,000 feet or more in size,” Jochmans wrote, “would be able to
penetrate the atmosphere and hit the surface with forces of 10 to
100 megatons of
TNT respectively.” In the years since, this publi- cation has
reported regularly on the danger in- volved. The possibility that
such a strike could have destroyed ice age civilizations such as
At- lantis may have helped to stimulate our interest.
Generally the notion that Earth’s long history has been
punctuated by immense catas- trophic events has been
sneered at by mainstream aca- demic science which has pro- moted a
much more gradual
scenario to explain our cu- rious history. There have al-
ways been a few, though, like the late scientist, Immanuel
Velikovsky, who have gone
against the tide. That the skies might pro-
vide omens for Earth’s future now seems more plausible. By the time
you read this, the first of two comets expected this year will have
appeared. The comet Pan- STARRS will have passed about 100 million
miles from Earth and millions may have been able to see it. A far
better chance for such viewing should come later this fall when the
comet Ison will appear. Already trumpeted as the comet of the
century, Ison may appear brighter than the moon and may fire the
imagi- nations of many. Long feared as omens of dis- aster, comets,
with their long, fiery tales have for millennia been identified as
celestial dragons and bringers of trouble. To read about the pos-
sibility that the legend of King Arthur may have originated in the
appearance of a comet, don’t miss Mark Andrew’s article elsewhere
in this issue.
The re-emergence of ancient teachings that the sky has much to tell
us about human des- tiny on Earth (“as above, so below”) is a
growing trend. To read about the way in which all ancient
traditions, including Christianity, have been shaped by sky wisdom,
see Julie Loar’s report on “The Bible and Astrology,” also in this
issue.
CELESTIAL CLOSE ENCOUNTER of the PHYSICAL KIND
An Exploding Meteor Leaves a Double Contrail in the Skies
Over Chelyabinsk in Siberia
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from Florida’s Museum of Natural History subse-
quently passed the most rig- orous of scientific scrutiny, they and
their implications
have been largely ignored by the establishment. A new in-
vestigation of the site, though, led by top archaeol- ogists from
Texas A&M Uni-
versity could be changing that; and in a major article
in its February issue “When Did Humans Come to the Americas?”
Smithsonian is
reporting the details. Among the difficult ques-
tions that the possibility of pre-Clovis humans in America forces
academic
science to consider seriously is, how did they get here? The
Smithsonian report suggests that
there could well have been several migrations,
and some may well have been by sea. Once
it is conceded that such ancient people
could have navigated the oceans, many other ques- tions will have
to be an-
swered, including just how much such ancient seafarers
may have known, and where could they have learned it? Difficult
days for aca-
demia may lie ahead.
ven as Atlantis Rising Magazine has been
among the few arguing that mainstream theories of how long humans
have lived in the Americas are outdated, evidence on the point has
continued to mount. Very slow to recognize the ob- vious,
mainstream academia has continued to insist, and to be echoed by an
ill- informed press, that the first humans (the so-called Clovis
people) arrived about eleven thousand five hundred years ago by way
of a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. Now, however, even that
bastion of scientific wisdom, Smithsonian Magazine has joined those
who say humans were likely here thousands of years sooner than we
have been told.
Citing research once thought “controver- sial,” such as at Monte
Verde, Chile, and Buttermilk Creek in Texas, Smithsonian reporter
Guy Gugliotta focuses on dramatic underwater discoveries in
northern Florida’s Aucilla river. In the 1980’s archaeologists
found tools and arrowheads near a tool-marked mastodon tusk dated
to 14,500 years BP. Though the discoveries by a team
E
Florida’s Ancient Aucilla River (Photo courtesy of Ebyabe)
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Story of Human Origins in the Americas Now Getting Long-Overdue
Rewriting
Story of Human Origins in the Americas Now Getting Long-Overdue
Rewriting
ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE
he Racetrack Playa is a flat-bottomed dry lake bed just northwest
of Death Valley but still within the boundaries of Death Valley
National Park. It is a
closed, or endorheic, basin 3,608 feet above sea level, and is 2.8
by 1.3 miles in size. Its average rainfall is only three to four
inches annually, and freezing nights in winter are not un- common.
There are two outcroppings of bed- rock at the playa’s north end;
one, called the “Grandstand,” is composed of adamellite, a mineral
made up mostly of quartz and feldspar. The other outcrop is made of
dolomite, a hard limestone (calcium carbonate). At the base of the
mountains bordering the playa are syenite stones made of igneous
feldspar containing po- tassium, calcium, and sodium
silicates.
The rocks, especially the ones composed of dolomite, move across
the playa, leaving tracks
T
Continued on Page 26
• BY WILLIAM B. STOECKER where they have plowed through the top
half inch or so of the sediment. This seems to happen every two or
three years or so; and, incredibly, al- though we know that they
have moved, no one has ever witnessed it. It is almost as if they
are moved by some agent that waits until no one is around. But
perhaps it is because they only move during periods of bad winter
weather when it is harder to drive the one dirt road leading into
the area; and, if they move only on cold and/or rainy nights, no
one wants to sit outside with night vision cameras.
The usual explanation for the sailing stones is that high winds
blow them over a thin, slick
layer of ice if freezing weather follows rain, or, alternatively,
that they glide over a thin layer of mud. At first glance this
seems logical enough, but there are a number of problems with the
hypothesis. For one thing, lakes surrounded by rocky soil and
located in areas where the sur- face can freeze are very, very
common…but rocks are almost never seen far from the banks. And
playas, or dry lake beds, are quite common in the more arid parts
of the American West and similar places around the world, yet no
rocks move in these places. Consider the Bonneville Salt Flats in
northwestern Utah, the utterly flat and smooth bottom of Lake
Bonne- ville, which dried up after the Pleistocene. Land speed
records are regularly set there, which would be impossibly
hazardous if rocks blew across the flats, yet the flats receive
some rain and also freeze in winter. Why no moving rocks in such
places? What is so special about Race- track Playa?
There is another, even more serious, problem with the mud or ice
hypothesis. If the stones glided over ice, they would not leave
tracks; if they slid over mud, it would flow back and fill in what
little track was produced. The whole point of such an explanation
is to show how the rocks can move without grinding through the
topsoil and encountering too much resistance. Yet, how do we know
that they have moved? By the tracks they have left— made by
grinding through the topsoil. The
smaller stones are in the boundary layer
and out of the wind; the larger stones en- counter more wind
but are heavier. This is why we don’t see stones of any size
scraping along any- where else, even in high winds. So the
very evidence for the stones’ movement is
also evidence that the conventional explana-
tions don’t work, a seemingly obvious
point missed by virtu- ally everyone.
So is there any- thing special about
the stones or anything special about the area,
anything that might offer us a clue as to what is happening? The
stones are nothing special, but stones in gen- eral, especially
those made of quartz or of lime- stone, seem to have odd
properties. Quartz crystals are used in electronic devices like
quartz watches. Limestone areas, like the Salisbury Plain in
England, composed of chalk (a soft
The
Death Valley
Why Has the Mystery of the Racetrack Not Been Solved? Why Has the
Mystery of the Racetrack Not Been Solved?
Satellite image of the Death
Valley “Racetrack”
(U.S.G.S.)
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THE OTHER SIDE
• BY PATRICK MARSOLEK he Sanskrit word “mahatma” means great soul.
The term has been applied to recent historical figures, such as
Mohandas Ghandi, due to his public
work and apparent spiritual development. Such great souls have been
part of the founding of many of the worlds wisdom and spiritual
tradi- tions. In the 1880’s, the two mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi
are supposed to have commu- nicated a whole body of esoteric
knowledge to the early founders of the Theosophical Society through
a large collection of “transmitted” let- ters. There has been much
debate about the or- igin of the Mahatma Letters, and they re- main
an enigma surrounding the origins of the Theosophical movement.
Over a thousand pages of these letters reside today in the British
museum.
The Theosophical Society was formed in 1875 to advance the
spiritual principles of Theosophy, which is an es- oteric
philosophy seeking direct knowl- edge of the mysteries of being,
nature, and spirituality. The founders of this or- ganization,
Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, and William Judge did so to
discover the purpose and origin of the universe through direct
apprehension and as an alternative to the trend of material- istic
science. Their stated and highly progressive intentions were to
cultivate a universal brother- hood of humanity without distinction
of race, creed, sex, caste, or color that would study re- ligion,
philosophy, and science and investigate unexplained laws of nature
and unexpressed powers in man. Theosophy remains active today,
though it has morphed into several dif- ferent groups and inspired
many other modern spiritual movements.
The Theosophists believe that mahatmas are high-ranking students in
life’s school. They are like us but more evolved and have attained
di- rect knowledge of, and mastery over, the laws of the universe.
They are not gods, but mortals who have evolved a great awareness
of their spiritual potential and of other planes of being. Moved by
compassion for the whole human
race, they have chosen to be in touch with mankind in order to
further the progress of humanity. It should be said that these
mahatmas were not then what later schools came to refer to as
“ascended mas- ters.” Literally, mahatmas had not ascended and had
not left their bodies. The mahatmas who communi- cated with the
early Theos- ophists were then in
T
Continued on Page 31
building in the Chinese fashion, pagoda-like, between a lake and a
beautiful mountain.” Bla- vatsky felt she had known Morya since she
was a little girl and had been receiving teachings from him by
clairvoyant means her whole life. When she met him in the flesh for
the first time, she fell into an ecstatic rapture.
Though skeptics of the mahatmas and their letters claim these
masters never even existed, there were others who reported physical
meet-
Koot Hoomi Morya
Letter from Morya to Sinnett, Oct. 1881Letter from Koot Hoomi to
Sinnett, Oct. 1880
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Was the Correspondence from Higher Dimensions?
human form and interested in communicating their knowledge to the
world.
Madam Blavatsky said she first met the ma- hatmas Morya and Koot
Hoomi, also known as Kuthumi or K.H., during her travels throughout
Asia seeking wisdom and ancient knowledge in the mid 1800’s. In a
letter to a friend, Blavatsky wrote: “Now Morya lives gen- erally
with Koot Hoomi who has his house in the direction of the Kara
Korum Mountains, beyond Ladak, which is in Little Tibet and be-
longs now to Kashmir. It is a large wooden
A.P. Sinnett
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Number 99
r. Neville Whymant, a British pro- fessor of linguistics, was
surprised when he found out the real reason he was invited to a
dinner party at
the New York City, Park Avenue home of Judge and Mrs. William
Cannon. But what he experienced that night during October 1926 went
far beyond mere surprise. It left him awe- struck. Some believe it
is perhaps the most intri- guing contact with the spirit world on
record. As related by Whymant, first to the American Society for
Psychical Research (ASPR) and then in a 1931 book, Psychic
Adventures in New York, the story exceeds even the boggle threshold
of many ardent Spiritualists.
Whymant, who taught Oriental literature and philosophy at the
Universities of Tokyo and Peking before teaching languages at
Oxford and London Universities, was in the United States to study
the languages of the American Indian when he received the
invitation from the Cannons. But it was not until after he arrived
at their home that Mrs. Cannon informed him and his wife that a
séance with medium George Valiantine would take place after dinner.
She ex- plained that their sittings with Valiantine had been going
on for months and that they had heard from many spirits of the
dead. Most of the voices had come through in English, but some were
in Italian, French, and Portuguese. Recently, there was a voice
which no one in their circle could make out other than that it
sounded like Chinese. Knowing that Whymant was conversant in some
30 languages, including several dialects of Chinese, the Cannons
hoped
that he would be able to interpret, but they feared that he would
decline the invitation if he knew what was to take place.
Whymant told the Cannons that he was not particularly interested in
“Spiritualism,” al- though he had experimented in the Orient with
some of their seemingly paranormal phe- nomena and had authored a
book the prior year titled Psychical Research in China. However, he
remained very skeptical toward mediums.
In addition to his academic credentials, Whymant served as Far East
editor of the New International Encyclopedia and was on the edi-
torial staff of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Later, from 1947 to
1950, he was a foreign cor- respondent for the London Times and an
adviser to the embassy of the Republic of China in London. Among
his other books were Chinese and Greek Philosophical Parallels
(1917), The Psy- chology of the Chinese Coolie (1920), and China
(1923). Clearly, he does not seem to have been a man to be easily
duped or to put his reputa-
D THE OTHER SIDE
• BY MICHAEL E. TYMN
tion on the line by telling a story that he knew most rational
people would consider absurd.
Before the sitting at the Cannon home got underway, Whymant had a
talk with Valiantine and wrote that he impressed him as “a typical
example of the simpler kind of country Amer- ican citizen,” adding
that Valiantine made amusing blunders in speech and misconcep-
tion. He appeared as a “fish out of water” among the high society
New Yorkers there, in- cluding a prominent physician.
Having heard there were many charlatans posing as mediums, Whymant
made a careful inspection of the room, including looking under the
carpet for trap doors. “There was no appearance or suspicion of
trickery,” he wrote, “but I mention these things to show that I was
alert from the beginning, and I was prepared to apply all the tests
possible to whatever phe- nomena might appear.”
In the so-called “direct-voice” mediumship of Valiantine, the
medium exudes a mysterious
substance called ectoplasm, out of which the spirits are said to
form an artificial larynx or voice box. An aluminum trumpet, used
to am- plify the voices, usually floats around the room and stops,
suspended in the air, in front of the person to be addressed.
Unlike trance-voice me- diumship, in which the voices come through
the vocal cords and mouth of the medium, the direct-voice
phenomenon is independent of the medium's body, seemingly emanating
several feet above him or her. Early investigators as- sumed that
such mediums were talented ventril- oquists, but testing ruled that
theory out with many of them, including Valiantine. In fact,
Whymant observed Valiantine carrying on a conversation in “American
English” with the person next to him while foreign languages were
coming through the trumpet.
As the medium can be seriously injured if the ectoplasm is exposed
to light, darkness is required. But there apparently was enough
light for Whymant to observe Valiantine and to take
32 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 99
The Well-Documented 1926 Encounter Was Far Beyond Easy
Explanation
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ANCIENT MYSTERIES
ew know of the myster- ious and distinguished King of Ethiopia,
Lali- bela, who ruled from
1180 to 1225, who created at the behest of angels what might be
considered the eighth wonder of the world, and who may have
transported the Ark of the Cove- nant from Jerusalem to East
Africa.
Robert Tabor remarks in Tales of Heroes and Angels that, “Lalibela
is a man so steeped in legend and history that it is difficult to
sep- arate his real life from myth and make it easily understood.
Yet in spite of the myths surrounding him, the fact that he is
responsible for the eighth wonder is well known. Even the name,
Lalibela, means ‘the man bees obey.’
It was said that at his birth a swarm of bees landed on him and
covered him completely. He was unharmed. Not one bee stung. It was
also said that when he was older (about seven) he was lifted toward
heaven, and spent three days there, seeing signs and sym- bols that
were not known before.
The Eighth Wonder of the World is a term sometimes used to describe
phenomena in compar- ison to the widely known list of
F seven remarkable constructions of classical antiquity called the
Seven Wonders of the World. Included among the eighth wonders are
the extraordinary rock-hewn churches constructed by Lalibela in
Roha (later called Lalibela) in Ethiopia.
Did Lalibela really bring the Ark to Aksum? For centuries it was
believed that it was Menelik, son of the Queen of Sheba and King
Solomon and according to legend the first ruler of Ethiopia, who
brought the world’s most evocative religious talisman to the
hidden, unknown kingdoms of Africa. In The Sign and the Seal
(1993), Graham Hancock declares defini- tively that the Ark, or
tabota seyon as it is called in Ethiopia, is still to be found in a
chapel near the old, battlemented Church of Maryam Seyon (Mary of
Zion) in the small, dusty town of Aksum. On the other hand, Stuart
Munro-Hay, in The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant: The Truer
History of the Tablets of Moses (2005) asserts that all that has
ever entered into the churches of Ethiopia, though that in abun-
dance, are replicas of the Ark along with associated objects—and,
also, somehow, the powerful spiri- tual presence of the Ark
itself.
Neither author takes too much time considering the strange
and
• BY JOHN CHAMBERS
Continued on Page 67
tinctly mark them as the colony of the Arabs; and this descent is
con- firmed by the resemblance of lan- guage and manners, the
report of an ancient emigration, and the narrow interval between
the shores of the Red Sea [through which the earliest Arabs may
have passed in Ethiopia].”
Two thousand years ago the civilization of Aksum (which would be
called Abyssinia, and then Ethiopia) was already an in- fluential
culture of language, art, math, and architecture. It already had
its secrets. Today there still stands in Aksum a stelae 70 feet
high, carved from solid rock and resembling a building seven
stories tall. Another stelae, even taller, has been toppled and
lies today where, an estimated four thousand years ago, it fell; it
is almost as old as
the pyramids. Ethiopia has had a large Jewish
population for more than three thousand years, though exactly how
the Jewish people came to Ethiopia remains a mystery. Some
authorities speak of a “Lost Tribe of Dan” that fled south and west
from Israel. These Ethiopian Jews, dubbed Falasha (“Strangers”) by
non-Jewish Ethiopians, to this day call themselves Beta Israel
(“House of Israel”) and claim full Jewish identity. In the early
1980s they achieved a measure of celebrity when the Israeli
government, in a series of sometimes secret rescue operations,
transported 36,000 of them to the Holy Land. A difficult but
successful settling-in period en- sued: the new emigrants had
had
fantastic story of Lalibela. Ethiopia is a part of the Horn
of Africa, that portion of Africa that sticks out like a horn into
the sea. It is almost twice the size of Texas and, with 90 million
people, the most populous land- locked country in the world. War
clouds periodically darken this sub-Saharan vastness through which,
centuries ago, herds of 5,000 elephants roamed with more impunity
than the native peoples who were often sold into slavery by their
kings. Arab emigrants began to flow into Ethiopia mil- lennia ago.
Edward Gibbon clari- fies: “The Aksumites, or Abyssin- ians, may be
always distinguished from the original natives of Africa. The hand
of nature has flattened the noses of the negroes, covered their
heads with shaggy wool, and tinged their skin with inherent and
indelible blackness. But the olive complexion of the Abyssinians,
their hair, shape, and features, dis-
Hewn from solid rock, historic church at Lalibela, Ethiopia
Modern replica of the Ark of the Covenant
(Hasbro)
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Might the Reputed“Eighth Wonder of the World” Tell an Even Stranger
Story than We Knew? Might the Reputed“Eighth Wonder of the World”
Tell an Even Stranger Story than We Knew?
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What Does Judeo-Christian Tradition Owe to Ancient Celestial
Lore?
What Does Judeo-Christian Tradition Owe to Ancient Celestial
Lore?
ASTROLOGY
42 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 99
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vary as to the number of Magi, but the oldest tradition says there
were 12.
The practices of stargazing and divination were well known and
respected in biblical times; divination means, “to be inspired by
the divine.” There were Roman augurs, Sybiline or- acles, the
Chinese I-Ching, the Tibetan State or- acle, the Oracle of Delphi,
and of course Jo- seph, who interpreted dreams for the Egyptian
pharaoh in the Old Testament. Through most of its history,
astrology has been considered a scholarly tradition and was
accepted in political and academic contexts. Astrology was con-
nected with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology
and medicine. The Chinese, Indians, and Maya developed elaborate
systems for predicting ter- restrial events from celestial
observations. Among Indo-European peoples, astrology has been dated
to the third millennium BCE with roots in calendar systems used to
predict sea- sonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as
signs of divine communication.
Early forms of astrology emerged from Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt
and entered Greece after 323 BCE when Alexander the Great’s
conquests spread Greek culture throughout the Mesopotamian and
Roman world. Egypt has star charts that go as far back as 4200 BCE.
The earliest known evidence of astrology are markings on cave walls
and bones, dated to twenty-five thousand years ago, showing lunar
cycles. Babylon, or Chaldea in the Hellenistic world, was so
identified with as- trology that “Chaldean wisdom” became synon-
ymous with divination through the stars and planets. In these
cultures astrologers like the Persian Magi were astronomer-priests
with sig- nificant power.
The zodiac of twelve constellations is one of the oldest conceptual
images and began as a way to mark time. The twelve zodiac
constella- tions are the backdrop for the Sun’s apparent path
through the band of sky above and below the equator over the course
of a year. The zo- diac also reflects the twelve months of the
year, the four seasons, and the solstices and equi-
ith the recent spate of spectac- ular astronomical news—as in
February’s meteor strike in Si- beria, the close encounter
with
asteroid DA14, or the dramatic appearance of purported comet of the
century, Ison, expected later this year (see page 10)—it’s tempting
to draw disturbing conclusions from purportedly prophetic Biblical
passages. Consider this refer- ence in Revelation 8:10-11, “And the
third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven,
burning as if it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of
the rivers and upon the fountains of waters.” What are we to make
of signs in heaven, prophecy, and the role of as- trology in the
Bible?
Is there, in fact, any relation- ship between the Bible of Chris-
tians and Jews and supposedly pagan astrology? Turns out there is
more than you might think.
Zondervan’s Pictorial Bible Dic- tionary states, “There are hun-
dreds of references to stars, sun, moon and planets.” A well known
verse from Genesis 1:14 proclaims, “And God said, ‘Let there be
lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the
night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days,
and years.’” Job 38:31-33 is a well-known phrase, “Canst thou bind
the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Massaroth (zodiac) in his season or guide
Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinance of heaven? Canst
thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?” In Judges 5:20 we
read, “They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought
against Sisera.” Sisera was a Caananite commander who op- pressed
the Israelites. In Psalm 136: 7-9 the au- thor says, “To him that
made the great lights; the sun to rule by day; the moon and stars
to rule by night.”
The story of the Magi, or wise men, and the star of Bethlehem is a
favorite Christmas story that only appears in the book of Mat-
thew(2:2). The Magi ask Herod, “Where is he that is born King of
the Jews? We have seen his star in the east, and are come to
worship him.” And later in Matthew 2:10, “When they saw the star,
they rejoiced with exceeding joy.” Different authors have tried to
identify the star, but it’s likely it was symbolic. The Catholic
Encyclopedia informs us that “Magi is usually translated as
‘astrologers’ as the magi were thought to be priest-astrologers
from Persia. The historian He- rodotus (5th century BCE), attests
to the astro- logical mastery of the Persian Magi.” Accounts
W • BY JULIE LOAR
noxes. The term zodiac, “circle of animals,” in- dicates that
constellations were personified as figures or animals. Scholars
often conclude that the figures depicted in the constellations sug-
gest what’s happening on Earth at the time. For example, lambs are
born at the time of Aries, and harvest occurs at the time of Virgo,
who holds a sheaf of wheat.
Rupert Gleadow, in The Origin Of The Zo- diac, says the idea of
dividing the circle into 360 units originated independently in
Babylon, Egypt, and China as an approximation of the number of days
in the solar year. Further di- viding the year into twelve months
is an out-
growth of the lunar cycle as months have always been “moon
periods.” Albert Churchward, in The Signs and Symbols of Primor-
dial Man, states, “The division is in twelve parts: the twelve
signs of the zodiac, twelve tribes of Is- rael, twelve gates of
heaven men- tioned in Revelation, and twelve entrances or portals
to be passed through in the Great Pyramid, before finally reaching
the highest degree, twelve Apostles in the Christian doctrines, and
the twelve original and perfect points in Masonry.”
Revelation 21:12 says that the new Jerusalem, “had a wall
great and high with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels,
and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes
of the children of Israel.” The origin of our twelve birthstones
comes from Revelation 21:19-21 and is rooted in the twelve colored
stones in the breastplate of the High Priest of ancient Is- rael as
recorded in the Book of Exodus. The breastplate is sometimes called
the breastplate of judgment because the Urim and Thummin, which
were used for divination, were placed in- side. Although the books
of Deuteronomy and Leviticus condemn divination, Exodus 28 gives
Urim and Thummin to the priestly class to “di- vine the will of
Yahweh.”
In the first book of Ezekiel (1:10) he has a vision and describes
four living creatures above the wheels of the chariot he sees, “the
four had the face of a man and the face of a lion on the right
side: and the four had the face of an ox on the left side; the four
also had the face of an eagle.” That’s a confusing description to
be sure, but these symbols can be compared to the four fixed signs
of the astrology: Leo the lion, Aquarius the man with a water
pitcher; the Calf is Taurus the Bull, and the Eagle is one of the
symbols of Scorpio.
There are many references to the idea of an “age” in the Bible that
seem related to as- trology. For example, In Matthew 28:20
Jesus
Continued on Page 69
Tiberias synagogue.
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battle.’ This is backed up by ninth century Welsh cleric Nennius,
who draws a distinction between Arthur and the kings of the
British. He also states that at the earlier battle of Mount Badon,
Arthur took out 960 men from a single charge, “and no one laid them
low save he alone.” He was either superhuman, or there is more to
Arthur than meets the eye.
Notwithstanding Arthur’s amazing feats, which could perhaps have
been magnified by the bards over the centuries, a number of his-
torical Arthurs have been proposed by various authors. David
Hughes, for example, believes that there was a real Arthur that was
born in AD 479, became king in 507, and died in 537; whilst Alan
Wilson and Baram Blackett believe there were two King Arthurs. They
provide good evidence of an ‘Arthur I’ figure from the fourth
century, who they consider to have been some sort of British-based
emperor of Western Europe. They then re- count the evidence for a
second, more local King Arthur who lived in South Wales from 503 to
579. Their conclusion is that the modern Arthur was a composite of
the two.
Wilson and Blackett believe their second Arthur lived through a
time during which Britain was devastated by a comet. Their story,
taken up on their behalf by more than one author, ends up with the
Welsh Arthur emigrating to America to later die in Kentucky and
being brought back to Wales to be buried. Far-fetched, some may
think, but there is ample evi- dence that at least a local ruler
called Arthmael (‘Iron Bear’) or Arthwys (‘called to
lead/instruct’) did exist.
However, a researcher into the sixth century who has rather more
academic credentials is Professor Mike Baillie of Queen’s
University, Belfast. Professor Baillie has helped to develop the
science of dendro- chronology, or tree-ring dating. This relatively
accurate means to gauge the growth conditions of trees from many
thousands of years ago shows that—to quote Baillie and his
co-author—“from European oaks, through pine chronologies
• BY MARK ANDREW
Continued on Page 70
e know the legen- dary King Arthur today as a re- nowned
British
king, who rode out with the Knights of the Round Table to fight
twelve epic battles. He was based in Camelot, whose location is
still debated today; and after re- ceiving a deadly blow in his
last battle, was taken to the mythical Isle of Avalon to be
healed.
What is less well known is that much of Arthurian legend comes from
Geoffrey of Monmouth and other writers from the twelfth cen- tury
or later. Geoffrey incorporated Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon,
his magician adviser Merlin, and the story of Arthur’s conception
into Arthurian legend. His work has been described as “imagina-
tive” and “fanciful.” How much did he really draw from earlier
records, and how much was simply literary invention?
When the earlier records—or those that survive today—are looked at
in more detail, there is
W very little of any sub- stance about Arthur. In fact, journalist
Adrian Berry asks a very perti- nent question: “Why were events
before the Arthurian time—the de- cline of the Roman Empire, with
its wars, treaties and assassina- tions—so precisely measured, as
were events after Arthur, while the century in be- tween is filled
with fan- tastic stories about prin- cesses who lived at the bottom
of lakes and knights whose severed heads talked from beneath their
arms?”
In order to explain this ap- parent anomaly, Berry has sug- gested
that “parts of our history are periodically blotted out, with
sometimes whole civilizations being eradicated, by impacts of de-
bris from the sky.” Could some- thing cataclysmic have happened in
the age of Arthur that was not properly recorded at the time? Has
this later been ‘mythologized’ to
create the figure we today know as Arthur, and all the stories
that
come with him? It is perhaps useful
to start at the end of Arthur’s story, namely his supposed death
in
the middle of the sixth century. Although
some researchers asso- ciate Arthur with the
fifth century, both Ge- offrey of Monmouth
and the Welsh Annals record Arthur’s demise
around AD 540. Geoffrey says that Arthur met his end at the battle
of Camlann in AD 542. The possibly more trustworthy Welsh Annals
(Annales Cambriae) say that Arthur and Mordred (his son or nephew)
“fell” at the “strife of Camlann.” Although there is no certainty
re- garding the dating of the Welsh An- nals, most agree that this
entry re- lates to the years 537 or 539.
Interestingly, the earliest sources do not describe Arthur as a
king but rather apply a term that has been translated as ‘leader
in
Geoffrey of Monmouth
What Really Happened in the Sixth Century, AD?
“And there be those who deem him more than a man, And dream he
dropt from heaven”
Tennyson, The Coming of Arthur
LOST HISTORY
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