THE MILL OF TIMECelestial Cycles And Ancient Mythological ScienceTerry Alden

We are on the verge today of a much greater appreciation for the scientific achievements of the world'smost ancient civilizations and an understanding of the workings of the ancient mind. At a time when it isstill fashionable for scientists to dismiss the possibility that the learned men of remote antiquity, long beforethe classical-period Greeks or the later Romans, could have known about phenomena like precession (theextremely slow wobble of the Earth's axis of rotation) without modern instruments, or about the sphericalshape and dimensions of our planetary spacecraft or its orbit about the Sun as the center of a solar system, afew lone investigators have recently found traces of a very high degree of scientific sophistication andknowledge of the natural world preserved in a metaphorical code which we call myth.

It is ultimately the purpose of this article to provide a solution to the long-standing mystery of the "Star ofBethlehem" and, in a closely-related problem, to announce the date of the beginning of the New Age, theAge of Aquarius, as determined by a method believed to be the same one used by the ancient Magi ofChaldea and other astronomical priesthoods in very early times. These topics will indeed be covered in thesecond part of this report.

The validity of the statements to be made on these subjects, however, rests on the foundation of the logicand integrity of the system or method of very-long-term time reckoning which the Magi and others, it isbelieved, followed -- a system based on both planetary and precessional cycles. Therefore, it is necessary todevelop the background or context in which our more specific later tasks will be seen to fit before dealingwith them individually. This context turns out to be nothing less than the ancient holistic world-view orparadigm which Joseph Campbell identified as the World Monomyth.

A good indication of the alienation of the modern psyche from the ways of thought in ancient times is thecurrent connotation of the term, 'myth.' A myth to us is a fabrication, a made-up story based solely onimagination, a lie. Outside of this 'definition,' most people today have no idea of what a myth actually is.Myths are metaphors expressing aspects of life in the natural world of human experience.

Campbell once asked an interviewer he didn't particularly like to give an example of a myth. After a long,uncomfortable silence the disconcerted man finally came up with: "The man runs like a deer." "That's not amyth," retorted Campbell. (It is a simile.) "The man IS a deer," stated Campbell. "But that's a lie," said theman. "No, that's a myth," said Campbell.

The meaning and intent of both expressions are much the same, to declare the swiftness of a particular man,but there is a subtle and profound difference. In the former case this is done merely through a comparison ofone factor, speed, between separated entities, while in the latter there is an identification with andparticipation in the qualities of the deer in a holistic and non-separative sense. The ancient perception coulddistinguish between a man and a deer as readily as any other, but a man might identify with and celebrateadmired qualities of animals in this metaphorical way without contradiction.

Holistic, simultaneous, non-separative perception is for us a very difficult proposition. It is involved inspiritual or religious perception. It is the opposite of the logical, sequential, objectified and difference-basedmode of perception which we revere as the hallmark of civilized and scientific thought.

Mythology has been the victim of our scientific way of looking at things. We saw only illogical stories andfantastic adventures and not the resonance with life and nature which is its reason for being. We relegatedthe subject to world literature never guessing it might contain elements of wisdom to help harmonize humanlife with the conditions of the environment, and, in its fullest development, comprise an integrated body ofnaturalist observation and recording amounting to a 'pre-scientific' science.

Those readers familiar with the theory of the perceptual qualities associated with the right and lefthemispheres of the brain will quickly relate the mythological form of knowing in terms of a directparticipation in the wholeness of nature with the spiritual right hemispheric perception. The logical andanalytical left hemisphere is clearly the one dominant in the scientific mode of perception.

Modern scholarship is indebted to the late mythologian, Joseph Campbell, for rescuing mythology from itsfallen state and for discovering the common themes in the mythologies of all times and all lands. He showedits origins in the basic facts and conditions of life abstracted in icons, ritual objects and other artisticrenderings and in the fundamental realities of life -- the masculine and feminine mystiques, birth and childrearing, food gathering, the transformations into adulthood and so on. The ground of mythology was shownas the expression of natural order in metaphorical form.

Not only is mythology based on nature, but there is an unexpected similarity in the major themes of the coremythologies of cultures widely separated by geography and time. Campbell came to the conclusion that itwas as though the same story was being told over and over again, but with a vast number of minorvariations as each retelling occurred in one culture and/or time period to the next. This universal story hetermed the One Myth or Monomyth.

The existence of a universal mythology is unexpected because of the vast distances between ancientcivilizations and cultures spread around the entire globe and the presumed lack of contacts between them.Here again, the modern scientific predisposition is to assume separation and lack of contact. But evenwithout contacts, ancient cultures could have developed similar myths because all are based on the samenatural order to a large extent with some variation for climate, locale, food sources, etc.

Another possibility is that the core myths of world mythology are much older than we suppose and havebeen handed down in a continuous stream as a verbal but non-written tradition perhaps from the earliestbeginnings of human awareness. We have records and artifacts dating back only about 5 - 6000 years, aperiod which is brief by comparison with the time span of sentient man on Earth.

Joseph Campbell saw the symbols of myth as universal archetypes, as did psychologist Carl Jung, whichappear again and again in dreams and are the inspiration for religion and art. He interpreted the heroic storyof the Monomyth as a metaphor representing the inner psychological transformations and spiritualpotentialities awaiting every man on his journey through life.

Contemporary with Campbell but much less well known is another investigator who wrote about theuniversality of the themes of world mythology and connected them not with the inner life of man but withhis external environment, particularly the celestial vault. His name is Giorgio de Santillana, and, back in1969 when his book, Hamlet's Mill, was first published, he was a Professor of Humanities at M.I.T. It islargely on the work of Prof. de Santillana that this article and the suggestions regarding the Star ofBethlehem and the Age of Aquarius in the concluding part are based.

It is highly instructive and appropriate that Campbell and de Santillana, though studying the same body ofmaterial, world mythology, would arrive at what would seem to be two totally different, even irreconcilable,interpretations of the significance of the Monomyth narrative. On the one hand, Campbell emphasized theinner psychological and spiritual dimensions of the story and had much less to say about any connections

with astronomy. On the other, de Santillana had little to say on the psychology of the Monomyth story, butwrote nearly 500 pages connecting it with observational astronomy.

In the holistic mode of ancient thought, however, both perspectives are valid simultaneously. The ancientdictum, "As above, so below," is precisely an expression of this unity. The motions of the stars and planetswere thought to express the same energies and natural laws as those which governed society and the internalworkings of the human body. The basic ideas of astrology were born of this union of above and below. Thenighttime sky was like a blackboard on which appeared messages from the Deity written in mysteriousmoving lights. If man could understand the signals of the gods and even predict some of their features, hemight partake of divinity himself and control his own destiny.

It is not possible to go into every facet of de Santillana's argument and its extensive body of supportingmaterial. Those interested in this are referred to the book by de Santillana and von Dechend cited above.However, an outline of the mythological code which enshrined and preserved ancient knowledge of theheavens can be given. De Santillana's own account is episodic and somewhat difficult to follow. One of thepresent tasks, therefore, is to collate his material and make it more coherent and unified.

The Craftsman God is responsible for having constructed the Universe we observe in nature. He is oftendepicted as a giant blacksmith hammering out a piece of iron to fit up for the roof of heaven. Sometimes hefashions the Universe by shaping it on a potter's wheel which he spins with his feet.

He is also the possessor of a magical mill, similar to ancient stone mills or querns used for grinding flour,except that this mill produces not flour from its turning but Time. Never ceasing, it turns out the days, years,centuries, millennia and eons of time. The lower stone of the mill is the earth as the foundation of heavenand the upper stone is the sky endlessly turning on its axis by day and by night. The Craftsman God, undermany names in many cultures, rules the axis of the Earth's rotation and the machine which generates Time.

The fixed stars, since their patterns in the constellations do not appear to change over long periods,symbolize eternity, the transcendent realm, that which is beyond or outside of time and space. Saturn, whichtakes the longest time to travel around the Zodiac of all the planets which are seen without a telescope, was,therefore, considered the symbol of Time and identified with the Craftsman God.

Saturn was also thought to be closest to the fixed stars and the eternal realm because the planets wereimagined to be caught up in a Zodiacal whirlpool, and, as such, the ones closer to the center revolved fasterthan the ones farther out, an excellent model for the true structure and behavior of the planets of our solarsystem revolving around the Sun.

The Sun was at the center of the whirlpool and the chief object of Creation as the god which provided lightand warmth for the continuance of life, but Saturn seems to have held a special position as King of all thePlanets and Creator of the World, the Sun and Moon being included as 'planets.'

Saturn had a rival, however, in the visually much brighter planet, Jupiter, and Jupiter could regularly beseen to catch up to and pass Saturn in the Zodiac due to his faster speed. This rivalry and periodic closeproximity seems to have led to some interesting results for timekeeping in the way the ancients used naturalcycles to set up a system for studying time and space.

The Sun, of course, circuits the Zodiac in one year and defines the seasons as it goes, so the year is bound tobe one of the fundamental units or cycles of time. Saturn takes nearly 30 years and Jupiter nearly 12 years tocomplete their cycles. The numbers, 30 and 12, have clearly been very important in setting up our temporaland spatial units and coordinates.

Is it because Jupiter takes 12 years to move around the Zodiac that there are 12 constellations instead of

some other number? Multiplying 12 by 30 gives 360, the number of degrees in a circle or a Zodiac of 12signs of 30 degrees each. On the Equinoxes we have 12 hours each of daylight and night. The day has 24hours (twice 12) of 60 minutes (twice 30) each. The number 360 is also close to the number of days in ayear. The ancients had a calendar of 12 months of exactly 30 days each, the extra five days inserted betweencalendars being dedicated to the Lord of Misrule because they didn't fit in to the system. This was thefestival period of the Saturnalia when the normal order was suspended and the fool was paraded as mockking.

De Santillana correlated the myths of cultures from all over the world and identified their similarities, amajor task considering the sheer number of them. Most of the heroes of world mythology have not beenassociated with actual planetary bodies in the physical Universe in modern scholarship. Even the associationof the Greek god Zeus with the planet Jupiter or Kronos with Saturn has been resisted by specialists inlanguage, for example, specialism being another sign of the separatism and non-integration of modernscience. Some have resisted the phonetic connection between the Greek name for Saturn, Kronos, and theroot of English words related to time, such as 'chronic' and 'chronometer.' Nevertheless, for the purpose ofdemonstrating the large number of correlations which de Santillana has made to the universal myth, a tablehas been created. [See Table 1.]

Table 1

World Monomyth Gods/Heroes -- Forms of the Craftsman God

Ptah <S> Egypt -- Memphis

Khnemu <S> Egypt -- Elephantine

Thoth <S><*> Egypt -- Hermopolis

Osiris <S><*> Egypt -- Abydos

Amen, Amon, Amun <J> Egypt -- Thebes

Ra, Aten <*> Egypt -- Heliopolis, Akhetaten

Enki <S> Sumeria

Gilgamesh <S> Sumeria, Babylonia

Enlil <*> Sumeria

Marduk <J><*> Assyria, Babylonia

Ilmarinen <S> Finland, Esthonia

Kaleva, Kullervo <S> Finland, Esthonia

Hermes <S> [also Mercury] Greece

Hephaistos <S> Greece [form of Ptah]

Dionysos Greece

Hercules <J> Greece

Kronos, Cronus, Chronos <S> Greece

Zeus <J> Greece

Prometheus <S> Greece [>India]

Pan Greece

Phaethon <S> Greece

Adonis-Tammuz Greece

Orpheus <S> Greece

Odysseus, Ulysses Greece

Oedipus Greece [>Egypt]

Freyr, Frodhi <S> Iceland, Norway

Orendil, Orwandel Iceland, Norway

Hamlet, Amleth, Amlodhi <S> Iceland, Norway

Saturn <S> Rome

Jupiter, Jove <J> Rome

Kavag, Kaweh, Kawa <S> Persia

Kai Ka'us <S> Iran, Persia

Kai Khusrau <S> Iran, Persia

Jamshyd, Yima, Yama <S> Iran, Persia

Huang-ti <S> China

Yu <S> China

K'uei <S> China

Vishnu India

Krishna India [incarnation of Vishnu]

Samson Kolyvanovic Russia

Samson Agonistes Israel [form of Orion]

Jehovah <S> Israel

Susanowo <S> Japan

Quetzalcouatl <S> Mexico [Mayas]

Tane-of-Ancient-Waters <S> Polynesia

Tahaki <J> Polynesia

King Conchobar, King Arthur Celts

Cuchulainn, Sir Gawain Celts

Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad, Perceval England

Parzival, Parsifal Germany

<J>=Jupiter <S>=Saturn <*>=Sun

In this table, I have listed most of the mythological god names mentioned in Hamlet's Mill and indicatedtheir national origins. It will be seen that the list covers the globe with no major world civilization being leftout. Secondly, while most of these heroes are archetypes associated with the Craftsman God and Saturn, insome cases, where the indications seemed fairly clear, the identification may be with Saturn's mythologicalson or rival, Jupiter, or with the Sun. The letter <S> after the name indicates Saturn, <J> indicates Jupiter,<*> indicates Sun. A few have no attribution; their mythologies have elements of the Monomyth but it isnot clear which planet may have been meant.

Upsetting the divine order and regularity of the cosmos was an evil factor and this was associated with thephenomenon of the precession. This is the very slow gyroscopic wobble of the Earth in which its axis ofrotation completes a circle in the sky in about 25,800 years. [See Figure 1.] The motion causes the seasonsof the year to very slowly get out of sync with the stars normally associated with those seasons. Forexample, Orion is a winter constellation for us in the nighttime sky, being mostly invisible in daytime skysduring our summer months. In about 13,000 years, it will be a summer constellation, seen at night in thewarm months.

There isn't usually a North Star either. The axis now happens to point near Polaris but through most of theprecession cycle there is no star to mark the pole. In about 13,000 years another star, Vega, will be near theNorth Celestial Pole.

The extreme slowness of the change made it seem insideous, and the fact that it contradicted the perfectionof heavenly order caused it to be symbolized by the idea of "working iniquity in secret." Thus, in the storyof the Monomyth, a tyrant usurps the legitimate authority, usually murdering the rightful king and marryinghis queen, setting the stage for the hero (the rightful king's son) to journey into exile, live in disguise untilthe right moment and ultimately avenge his father.

The story of Hamlet was adapted by Shakespeare from the Icelandic and Norwegian myth of Amlodhi or, ina later version of the name, Amleth, which became Hamlet. It is a Norse retelling of the Monomyth. AndAmlodhi was associated with a mill and the planet Saturn, hence "Hamlet's Mill."

Current scholarship claims that precession was unknown before the 2nd Century B.C. when it was'discovered' by a Greek named Hipparchus. This is because the effect is too small to be detected in onehuman lifetime without modern precision instruments. Our science doesn't say how Hipparchus discovered itwithout modern instruments, however.

But modern instruments are not, in fact, required -- only dedication and persistence in observing the majorfeatures of the heavens over long periods of time, at least a few centuries. This the ancients possessed inabundance. Festivals were held on the solstices and equinoxes. The spring equinox was particularlyimportant. The Zodiacal constellation rising in the East before the Sun as night turned to dawn wasmemorialized in myth.

These celebrations went on year after year for centuries and precise astronomical records were also kept inmany of the high civilizations of antiquity. After only a century or two, the changes due to precession wouldbe noticeable to a trained astronomical priesthood. And after 2000 years a whole new constellation would berising before the Sun on the Vernal Equinox. The Equinox point itself moves backwards through the Zodiacat a rate of about one degree in 72 years, or one 30 degree sign in about 2160 years. De Santillana believedthat the ancients not only knew about the phenomenon but were virtually obsessed by it.

This is not to say that precession was understood in the terms we know today, involving a torque or force onthe spinning planet from the gravitational pull principally of the Sun and Moon acting upon the unevendistribution of the planetary mass. It only means that they were well capable of observing its long-termeffects. They also knew the length of the precession cycle to some degree of accuracy. Plato is said to haveused a figure of one degree per century which is a bit too slow, but the excellent star watchers of ancientBabylon and Persia may have had a more precise value.

De Santillana suggested that the Zodiacal figure rising before the Sun on the Vernal Equinox held a specialplace in the religious worship of ancient peoples and was celebrated in ritual and storytelling during itstenure, on the average about 2160 years, before the next constellation took its place. The period of theprecession of the Vernal Equinox Point backwards through one Zodiacal group is referred to as a WorldAge, and each figure so rising before the Sun (called heliacal rising) gave its name to the Age.

In all of recorded history, covering a mere 6000 years, only three World Ages have taken place. These arethe Ages of Taurus (about 4400 - 2200 B.C.), Aries (2200 - 0 B.C.) and Pisces, the current era (about 1 -2200 A.D.). In the Taurean Age, according to de Santillana, the Bull was worshipped as the chief religioussymbol. In the Arian, it was the Ram or Lamb, and, in the Piscean, it is the Fishes, though this practice hasbeen mostly forgotten now.

Each age apparently put its own symbolic imprint upon the World Monomyth and reworked the story with anew cast of characters. Mostly it was just the names and incidental details which were new; the basicthemes did not change much. There was always a hero whose birth was foretold by signs and portents in theheavens who would come to save the people from the rule of a tyrant. The tyrant is usually a usurper whohas killed the former king, often his own brother, tried to kill the hero while still an infant because he is thelegitimate heir, and has taken the former king's queen for his wife.

The child is spirited away for his protection and grows up in exile or in some foster home. He is recognizedto have special powers and often plans his revenge from an early age. However, he must disguise himselfand hide his great abilities from the evil forces of the state until the proper time arrives to act. To do this hefeigns madness or folly. He convinces everyone that he is either insane or a simpleton by doing and sayingabsurd things. The chief Tarot card of the series of 22 major trumps, number 0, The Fool, is the symbol ofthe Monomyth hero in his disguise. It is also a pictorial representation of the bright constellation, Orion.

In some versions, as that of Hamlet, for example, he thwarts the tyrant-king's plots to find out if he is onlypretending to be mad and to kill him by sending him away with companions whose orders are to see that henever returns. In these cases he always shows his true genius by discovering the plot and turning thesituation to his advantage. There's no way the tyrant can get rid of him. In the end, he always returns, killsthe usurper with his own sword and terminates the evil order. A new World Age then begins.

Support for the idea that ancient religious worship was centered on the constellations rising before the Sunon the Spring Equinox has come from a recent book about the religion of Mithras which has, for its centralsymbol, the killing of a bull. Author David Ulansey has this to say in The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries(p. 83):

"... it would be difficult to conceive of a more appropriate symbol for the precession than the symbol of thedeath of a bull, representing the death of the previous Age of Taurus brought about by the precession..."

While the ancients could easily have been aware of the effects of precession in shifting the constellationswith respect to the seasonal reference points, the equinoxes and solstices, and could have known the lengthof the Great Year, as they called it, fairly well, they could not easily have determined the exact moment ofthe start of a New Age and end of the old by observing precession alone to an accuracy better than plus orminus a few centuries. The movement is just too slow and the constellations rising before the Sun on theSpring Equinox are bathed in the growing light of dawn. This would make the fainter stars disappear wellbefore the full constellation had risen and make the visual sighting of constellation boundaries a very trickymatter.

This technique is obviously very inaccurate. However, nature and human ingenuity contrived a very precisesystem for inaugurating World Ages, making it possible to identifiy a period as short as a day or two for the

great transition rather than a century or more. The ancients observed everything going on in the skies andmade records particularly of planetary motions which covered long periods. They discovered a peculiarcyclic pattern in the coming together of the planets Jupiter and Saturn which they called Great Conjunctionsto distinguish them from the more frequent lesser conjunctions involving the other, faster-moving planets.Great Conjunctions occurred about every 20 years but every third Great Conjunction, in about 60-yearintervals, occurred most often in the same constellation of the Zodiac.

The 20-year conjunction points are roughly one-third of the Zodiacal Circle around from each other. If thepoints are connected, they form a near equilateral triangle within the circle. Each successive 60-year GreatConjunction occurs an average of about nine degrees farther down the track, in the forward directionthrough the Zodiac, from the previous one. Therefore, the entire triangle can be thought of as rotating in theforward direction through the Zodiac in increments of nine degrees every 60 years. This grand pattern isreferred to as the "Rotation of the Trigon of Great Conjunctions." Any one of the corners of the triangle ortrigon will move through 30 degrees in about 200 years and completely around the Zodiac in 2400 years.These intervals were easily discoverable by the ancients with simple observational persistence and recordkeeping; no sophisticated instruments were required.

Could this 60-year periodicity in the meetings of Jupiter and Saturn in the same constellation have givenextra importance to the number 60 such that it was incorporated in the number of seconds in a minute andminutes in an hour? Could the Trigon of Great Conjunctions have suggested a harmony between allconstellations one-third of the circle around from each other that came to be enshrined in the astrologicalidea of the triplicities -- the air, fire, water and earth signs?

The time of one full rotation of the Trigon of Great Conjunctions, 2400 years, is of an order close to thelength of an average World Age, roughly 2200 years. The Trigon would, therefore, make a fine vernier forsubdividing the lengthy ages into smaller time units while still utilizing observable features of the heavens.The sky becomes a Great Clock the 'hour hand' of which is the Vernal Point moving very slowly backwardsthrough the Zodiac by precession and the 'minute hand' of which is any corner of the Trigon of GreatConjunctions moving forward through the Zodiac.

It doesn't matter that a complete rotation of the Trigon is not exactly the length of an average World Age.All of these observations would have been made in the real sky against the background of the actualconstellations of stars. The constellations, as we know, are not of the same size.

Some, like Virgo and Scorpio, cover nearly twice as many degrees along the Zodiac or Ecliptic as someothers, like Cancer and Libra. Therefore, the World Ages of Virgo and Scorpio may be expected to lastmuch longer than those of Cancer and Libra, by as much as 1000 years or more! Similarly, a corner of theTrigon will take longer to traverse the larger constellations than the smaller ones.

All that is needed to precisely mark the moment of the beginning of a New Age, however, is a unique butpredictable event selected from a convenient and known system for breaking down world-age periods intosmaller intervals. Here is how de Santillana believed it was done. The mythology prescribes a conjunctionof Jupiter and Saturn "at the place of passage," meaning as close as possible to the location of the VernalEquinox Point as it precesses into the next World Age constellation. This is all that is required, with somejudicious reasoning regarding constellation boundaries, to identify the exact moment when a New Agemight commence. The two hands of the Cosmic Clock must coincide.

In mythological terms the Great Conjunctions were associated with a magnanimous motif in which "FatherTime," Saturn, King of the Planets, gives "...all the measures of the whole creation" to his son, Jupiter.Saturn is also "Lord of the Measures," that is, of the sacred units for measuring the Universe he created, theunits of time, space and mass or weight. As his first official act following Creation, the Craftsman God

measures everything he has made using himself as the fundamental unit-maker. Thus he measures time andspace "by his stride." And we have seen that the orbital periods of Saturn and Jupiter may have providednumbers which came to be the basis of our coordinate and time-measuring systems. [See Figure 2.]

The writer hopes that something of the unity and naturalism of this magnificent system for reading the signsand messages of the gods writ large in the heavens, of its coherence and integration on many levels from thecelestial to the inwardly human, and of the great reverence and worship which the ancients gave to the

cosmos as the inspiration for their mythology and religion will come through to the reader. One must useone's own right-hemispheric appreciation of wholeness and intuitive insight to put the pieces of so large apuzzle together -- that of rediscovering the significance of ancient mythological science.

In Part 2, the world-age time-reckoning system developed here will be applied to the question of themeaning of the Star of Bethlehem or Star of the Magi and to the determination of the true dawning of theAge of Aquarius. Some of the implications of the World Monomyth for history and religion will also beexamined. And finally, the question will be posed whether a resetting of coordinates in astrology will beneeded when the New Age begins.

Footnotes:

1. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time,2nd paperback ed. (Boston: David R. Godine, 1983).

2. David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, 1st paperback ed. (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1991).

T H E M I L L O F T I M E

Part 2

The Monomyth Retold: Beginning And End Of The Age Of Christ

Terry Alden

The first part of this article, entitled "Celestial Cycles And Ancient Mythological Science," laid thefoundation for the more specific, though still immense, reconstructive task being contemplated here. In itwas discussed the metaphorical code of mythology which has so long escaped our notice as the language ofpre-scientific science that it is. Myth was distinguished from its modern connotation of falsehood or fantasyand identified with the holistic, unified form of consciousness associated in contemporary psychology withthe right hemisphere brain function.

The common denominators of the core mythologies of all times and peoples were then presented in the formof the universal heroic saga which the late mythologian, Joseph Campbell, dubbed the World Monomyth.The Monomyth was found to work on more than one level. Campbell saw in its scenes and symbols thepsychological and spiritual transformation of everyman through the phases of life. Another investigator,Giorgio de Santillana, saw a connection with the heavens and early astronomy. Both perspectives, the innerand the outer, can be valid simultaneously in the ancient holistic world-view summed up in the phrase, Asabove, so below.

The de Santillana association of mythology with celestial factors has not received to date the attention itdeserves, and part of the purpose of the present effort is to make this work more widely known. It also leadsto some surprising results in connection with the Star of Bethlehem, the Age of Aquarius, and the influenceof mythology in history and religion.

Both parts of this article are based primarily on Prof. de Santillana's landmark book, Hamlet's Mill.

Let us now apply the de Santillana hypothesis to what the author firmly believes to be the solution to thelong-standing mystery of the nature of the Star of Bethlehem or Star of the Magi referred to in the Bible,which astronomers and others have struggled to interpret, as yet without reaching an acceptable conclusion

or consensus.

It is safe to say that everything under the Sun has been proposed at one time or another to answer thequestion, "What was this 'star' which led the Wise Men to Bethlehem and which heralded the birth ofChrist?" Was it something real, visible to everyone looking up at the sky, or was it imaginary, miraculous orhallucinatory and, therefore, 'visible' only to certain individuals? Was it symbolic and neither psychic norphysical?

This investigator hopes to show that the basic, underlying story of the life of Christ is a retelling of theWorld Monomyth and is involved with the concept of World Ages and the symbolic astronomy pertainingthereto. It is a big task for a short paper but all of the critical elements are now in place. If we can putourselves into the holistic, unified, intuitive and mystical mode of thought of the ancients, which relates tothe now mostly recessive right-hemispheric brain functioning, some of what follows may even seemobvious.

Researchers looking for a physical explanation for the Star of Bethlehem start by defining a time period,based on historical sources, during which Christ's birth is estimated to have taken place, usually about tenyears before and after Year Zero. Then they make every kind of guess as to what the star could have beenfrom all the types of known astronomical phenomena. Finally, by searching historical references andrunning computer simulations of the skies over the Middle East from 10 B.C. to 10 A.D., they look todiscover any likely candidates in suitable documentable phenomena falling within this period.

They have looked at meteors, comets, supernovae, eclipses and planetary alignments. Of these, only thesupernova looks and behaves anything like a special, one-point-source star. Bright supernovae are very rare,however, and would be expected to be seen and recorded all over the world for the few to several days oftheir normal duration. For example, a famous one was seen by the Chinese in July of 1054 A.D. It wasbright enough to be seen in daylight, like the planet Venus, for 23 days. We now study the remnants of thisgreat stellar explosion as the Crab Nebula and Pulsar, Messier Object Number One.

Unfortunately, no records corresponding to the apparition of a supernova are found close to the time ofChrist's birth. Similarly, no strong evidence is found for very bright meteors or comets occurring during thisperiod. Christ's nativity is often inferred in Biblical chronologies from the time of a total lunar eclipse whichJosephus said occurred not long before the death of King Herod, so this was probably not the Christ Star. Noeclipses of the Sun were found to have occurred either leaving planetary alignments as the only possibility.

The writer's experience in planetarium production and in delivering countless "Christmas Star" shows hasaided the inquiry. In ancient usage the term 'star' was construed much more broadly than it is today. Anyluminous object or configuration of objects in the sky could be termed a star of one kind or another. Therewere the fixed stars of the background. Planets were "wandering" stars (from the Greek, planetai,wanderers), comets were "hairy" stars (from the Greek, kometes, long-haired) and novae "new" stars (fromthe Latin, novus, new). Therefore, it is not at all unreasonable to expect that an important configuration oralignment of more than one celestial object would also be termed a 'star,' as in "Star of Bethlehem" or "Starof the Magi."

Closing in on a planetary configuration, a consensus seemed to be emerging in the planetarium world thatthe triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 6 B.C. was the most likely candidate. Two planets may comeclose together in the heavens on more than one occasion in a relatively short period of time due to what arecalled retrograde motions. This occurred with Jupiter and Saturn moving against the background stars of theconstellation of Pisces on about May 20th, October 17th and November 16th of the year 6 B.C.

Just this last year (1991), however, and well in time for Christmas, two new and imaginative ideas emerged

concerning the nature of the Star. One appeared in the October edition of Omni and substituted a series ofconjunctions of Jupiter with Venus in 3-2 B.C. The other appeared in the San Jose Mercury News onChristmas Eve and suggested an eclipse of Jupiter by the Moon, technically termed an 'occultation' ofJupiter, in 6 B.C. The point is that astronomers are still trying to solve the mystery but have lacked aconvincing proof or context in which to frame the problem such that their 'solution' may be seen as the onlycredible one. The missing context is, in this researcher's opinion, the Monomyth-World Age time-reckoningsystem of the ancient astronomical priesthoods.

Of all the great civilizations of antiquity, the one most noted for its mathematical and astronomical prowess,and which has influenced Western thought the most, is the Babylonian. In Biblical times, Babylon orMesopotamia was famed as the age-old center of astrology by the Hebrews and all other cultures withwhich it had contact.

Also called Chaldeans, their powers of divination by the stars were held in such respect, even fear, that theywere ascribed to magic and works of the devil by their less-advanced neighbors rather than to the carefulobservation and very long-term record-keeping of celestial cycles coupled with the mathematicalcalculations that were actually involved. The Babylonians were noted for being able to predict eclipses ofthe Sun and Moon, a very difficult problem, as well as for having set up the basic celestial coordinatesystem which we still use today. Even our modern dictionaries give as one definition of Chaldean, "anastrologer, soothsayer, or enchanter."

The three Wise Men who are said to have paid homage to the infant Jesus, bringing three gifts, are Magi, aclass of astronomer-priests and prognosticators from the general Chaldean-Persian region reputed to possesssupernatural powers. The term, "Magi," is also assigned a definition as "astrologers," and is the root of theword, "magic." The Star of Bethlehem is equally well-known as the Star of the Magi, those said to haveseen the heavenly sign when they were in the East (Chaldea-Persia) and then to have traveled West toJerusalem.

They are also the very people to have prophesied (predicted by calculation) the beginning of a World Age.Their priesthood would have observed the precession over the centuries and known how to use theconjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn to uniquely select a precise starting date. They would have expressedthese ideas in mythological or metaphorical terms as a revision of the universal story, the Monomyth,keeping most of the same basic elements but incorporating the symbols of the new constellation risingbefore the Sun on the Vernal Equinox.

In Part 1 it was suggested that many of the numbers used in organizing our celestial, calendrical and time-keeping systems (of Babylonian origin) are based on the orbital periods of Jupiter and Saturn, about 12 and30 years respectively, and possibly also on their 60-year conjunction cycle. Now we shall see that most ofthe chief factors in the life of Christ have direct counterparts in both the standard Monomyth storyand in astrological symbolism related to the World Age of Pisces.

The author believes that the solution to all of the mysteries can be found in a new consideration of the tripleGreat Conjunction series in 6 B.C. However, where the astronomy community came up with a good guess inchoosing this as the most likely candidate for the Star, we can now place these events into their propercontext and show that everything fits together coherently.

What the astronomers have ignored about the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions of 6 B.C. is that they took placeagainst the background of the constellation of Pisces (both physically and symbolically speaking). Thefishes is a Christian symbol. Furthermore, the Vernal Equinox Point at that time was just on the borderbetween the constellations of Aries and Pisces moving backwards and, therefore, into Pisces.

Without knowing it, they discovered one hand of the Cosmic Clock and also did not realize that there isanother, and that both come together to inaugurate a World Age as part of a tradition probably older than thebrief 6000-year span of recorded history.

The limitations of space prevent reproducing figures for each of the three Great Conjunctions that occurredin 6 B.C. Therefore, only the first one is shown, the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on May 20, 6 B.C.Figure 1 is a computer-generated graphic reconstruction of a portion of the sky for this date.

The slanted dotted line represents the Ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun through the Zodiacalconstellations with respect to the background stars through the year. Planetary and other positions referred toare to be understood as the positions of the objects when projected onto the Ecliptic. A line at right angles tothe Ecliptic passing through the object will intersect the Ecliptic at this projected position.

The horizontal dotted line represents the Celestial Equator, or the Earth's Equator projected onto the CelestialSphere. When the Sun's position on the Ecliptic is one of two possible points where the Ecliptic intersectsthe Celestial Equator, at noon on that day the Sun will be directly overhead as observed by all persons livingon the Earth's Equator. The two points of intersection are called the Equinoxes because, on the days whenthe Sun is there, we experience an equal number of hours of daylight and nighttime.

The figure shows the Equinox which, when the Sun is at this position on about March 21, officiallyannounces the beginning of Spring in the calendar. This intersection of the two lines (actually great circlesaround the sky) is called the Vernal Equinox even when the Sun is not there, and is used as the primaryreference position for locating all directions in space from Earth. It is the [0, 0] position of our celestialcoordinate systems.

It is this point of intersection, this zero reference point, which is precessing slowly along the Ecliptic in thereverse direction through the Zodiac as the Earth's axis wobbles. It is as though, in the figure, the Zodiacalconstellations are slowly moving upward and to the left along the slanted Ecliptic while the Equinox pointremains stationary. Fortunately the precessional motion is extremely slow or the Vernal Point would not bemuch good as a stable reference. The movement is about 50 seconds of arc per year, less than 1/60th of adegree.

Other names are the Sigma Point (symbolized by the Greek capital letter Sigma) and the First Point ofAries, which we will see is something of a misnomer now. However, in 6 B.C. when the positions were ineffect, the Vernal Point was close to the first point of the constellation, Aries, abbreviated 'Ari' in Figure 1.The lines connecting the principal stars of each constellation indicate its rough shape and extent along theEcliptic.

A line drawn at right angles to the Ecliptic and between the constellations of Aries (Ari) and Pisces (Psc) inthe figure would cross the Ecliptic slightly to the upward-left of the intersection point, the Vernal Point,shown.

It has been mentioned that observation of precession alone was too inaccurate for the ancients to date aWorld Age within a century. Adding the requirement of a Great Conjunction as close as possible to theVernal Point eliminated this difficulty. However, it also meant that the Vernal Point would generally not beexactly on the boundary between constellations when a new age began. Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions return toany particular constellation, as we shall see, approximately every 800 years. Therefore, the closest positionof the Vernal Point to the constellation boundary must be chosen from the 800-year-interval "windows ofopportunity."

For the World Age of Pisces, the best Vernal Point position is that shown in Figure 1, placing it somewhatinside of Pisces. The earlier window, 800 years previously, would place the Vernal Point about 10 degrees to

the upper-left along the Ecliptic and too far inside of Aries. This is the best position of the Vernal PointHour Hand of the Cosmic Clock for the start of the Piscean (and synonymously the Christian) Age.

One of the trickiest problems in deciphering the meaning of the Star of Bethlehem from its Biblicaldescription, in terms of an astronomical phenomenon, has been the statement that the star, originally seen inthe East by the Chaldean astrologers, somehow travelled West with them as they journeyed, it is thoughtover several months, first to Jerusalem and finally to Bethlehem, where it seems to have settled in the Westover the town, guiding the Magi to the Child. Let us first dismiss the simple explanation that everything inthe sky rises in the East and sets in the West by day and night. The story indicates something occurring overa period of several months, the time it would have taken in 6 B.C. to travel from Persia-Mesopotamia toJerusalem, and not a daily event taken by itself. Let us examine the broader observational scenerio of Jupiterand Saturn from May to November.

Figure 1 shows only the first of the three conjunctions which occurred in 6 B.C. The computer's symbolsfor the planets show them in exact conjunction as projected onto the close-by Ecliptic. This was on May20th. About five to six months later, on October 17th and November 16th, they were again in exactconjunction, a few degrees Westward (to the lower-right) of this position due to retrograde motions.

On May 20th the Sun would have been about 60 degrees East of the Vernal Point and the Jupiter-Saturnconjunction would have been seen rising in the East very late at night, about four hours before Sunrise. Thismight have been when the Magi first saw the Sign of Christ's birth "while they were still in the East."

Because the Sun moves one degree along the Ecliptic eastward each day, the planets would have risen

earlier and earlier each night until, several months later (not in exact conjunction but still near each other),they would be found above the Western horizon shortly before sunrise, having arced across the sky all night,and would be rising soon after Sunset. In October and November of 6 B.C., back in or close to exactconjunction, the pair would have been seen high in the sky at sunset, and the early hours of the eveningwould have found them gliding down to the Western horizon to set around midnight.

They would have briefly touched the Western horizon at a particular point before setting, perhaps suggestingthe idea of a star which came to rest over a single house. It must be borne in mind that myth is metaphoricaland symbolic, and should not be interpreted in a very literal way. Over all, the observational factorsconcerning Jupiter and Saturn in 6 B.C. seem to work well as the prototype of the description of the Star ofBethlehem's movement as poetically construed in the Bible.

The story of the Magi's visit may be metaphorical. The journey of the three Wise Men from the East,bearing a total of three gifts, may be mythical code language indicating a connection with Chaldeanastrology and the fact that the Great Conjunction of the New Age of Pisces was repeated three times over aperiod of about six months, initially in the East for only a few hours before Sunrise, and, at the end, as a starin the West, setting well into the evening after the Sun.

Joseph Campbell has suggested that myth became more and more concretized, literally construed andhistorically interpreted over the centuries; it lost its "transparency to transcendence," to use his terms. Thewriter would argue that this was the result of the parallel shift of perceptual dominance from the right to thescientific, rational left hemisphere of the brain which Marshall McLuhan and others have studied.

So the question becomes: "Is it real or is it Memorex?" Was Jesus a real, historical person or the archetypalhero of the World Monomyth, an ideal of what man should be? There is much to connect his life story withthe Monomyth.

As outlined in Part 1, the birth of the hero of the Monomyth is usually prophesied long in advance andattended by omens, celestial signs and the like. Certainly true of the Christ. His arrival somehow threatensthe established authority, often a king who has taken the throne illegitimately, who is a tyrant, and whodetermines to kill the hero while still a baby or child. The astrologers went to King Herod bringing the newsof the Star, and Herod decided that he did not want a Messiah challenging his rulership. He demanded toknow when the Star appeared and had all the male children born around that time executed.

The hero escapes by being taken into exile for his safety and we read that Jesus spent some time in Egyptfor the same reason. The hero always has special powers which he generally hides by pretending to beinsane or dull-witted, the theme of the feint of folly, again for protection and disguise until the right time toact. Christ performed miracles but did not pretend madness or stupidity. However, the "King of the Jews" ismocked by the crowd and made to wear a crown of thorns, recalling the fool's theme in the Saturnaliafestival when the village idiot was paraded as mock king during the intercalary days before the New Year.

In Part 1 a Table listed the numerous gods and heroes of mythology whose symbols and lives are examplesof the Monomyth story, told and retold countless times over the ages. Most of these are believed to bemythical Saturn and Jupiter archetypes.

Another table could be created of names which we have always thought belonged to actual historical figureswho lived as physical human beings on Earth but whose life stories parallel once again the themes andmotifs of the Monomyth, leaving us to wonder whether they really lived or not. This list would includenames such as Jesus, Moses, King David, Buddha, Socrates, Alexander the Great, Emperor Claudius, LuciusJunius Brutus, and others.

Recognizing that mythology and religion may be overly interpreted as historical rather than as transcendent

or spiritual truth, the safest thing to say is that these persons certainly could have existed but that theMonomyth is primary and does not require the physical existence of human avatars even though it may bewritten as a story about exactly that. It exists as a universal instruction or guide in its own right with orwithout human embodiments. It seems that the lives of certain individuals may fall into the Monomythpattern, however, and become associated with it.

Associations of the Christ story with astronomical factors abound. The Vernal Point and the GreatConjunction came together in Pisces. As the Bull and Ram had been worshipped during the preceding Agesof Taurus and Aries, the Fishes became the great mystical symbol. Christ was said to be a "fisher of men"by way of incorporating this into the updated Monomyth. Another Christian symbol, the sacrificed lamb,likely refers to the end of the prior age, Aries, just as the slaying of the Bull in the Mithraic religion isbelieved to represent the end of the Age of Taurus.

Similarly the death of Christ, the Crucifixion, I think contains a symbolic reference to the end of the Age ofPisces when the Age of Aquarius begins. Christ's body was fixed to the Cross (Cruci-fixion) but astrologersknow of something called the "Fixed Cross." This is the group of four so-called "fixed" Zodiacal signsforming a cross within the circle of the Zodiac: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius.

When the Vernal Point precesses into Aquarius, the four seasonal points, the two Equinoxes and twoSolstices, themselves always forming a cross, will have moved into the fixed signs or Fixed Cross of theZodiac from the mutable signs where they are now. And on the way to his Crucifixion, Christ also madetwelve stops, known as the "Stations of the Cross," another allusion to the twelve Zodiacal signs.

As Pisces rises, Virgo, the Virgin, on the opposite side of the Zodiac, sets, and vice versa. The idea ofChrist's being born of a Virgin is likely a reference to this relationship. The name, Bethlehem, means "houseof bread," another possible reference to Virgo because the mythological constellation figure of the Virginshows her holding a sheaf of wheat.

Easter is the festival commemorating the resurrection of Christ after death. It is observed on the first Sundayafter the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox. It was originally a spring festival celebrating the returnof the light after the bleak, relatively dark winter, the days of warmer weather, more hours of daylight, andrenewed plant growth. Here again we see elements of the story of Christ tied to celestial and seasonalfactors.

The present year-numbering system was intended to have begun with the birth of Christ, a metaphor of theMonomyth-scripted birth of the Age of Pisces. There is disagreement concerning the correct date of Christ'sbirth, some scholars placing it in 2 B.C. and others some years earlier or later. If the meaning of Christ'sbirth is really the birth of the Piscean Age, then 6 B.C. should have been Year Zero.

The person credited with having devised the current system of reckoning dates from the birth of Christ is anabbot named Dionysius Exiguus who lived more than 500 years later. From this distance in time he was notable to calculate the date of the Great Conjunction to better than the known 6-year error, assuming he usedastronomical records. He is also said to have not included a Zero Year between 1 B.C. and 1 A.D.,compounding the error. Our time-reckoning system insists that there is an entire year called Zero rather thanmerely a Zero Moment.

Just as the mystery of the Star of Bethlehem seemed finally to have been solved and its timing accuratelydetermined, a new problem arose. There had been so much attention given to the 6 B.C. Great Conjunctionsand the other candidates for the Star in roughly this same time frame that it had not seemed necessary tocheck that this was indeed the Great Conjunction closest to the Vernal Point. Since the precession movesbackwards along the Ecliptic and the corners of the Trigon move in the forward direction, it seems

necessary to ensure that the Great Conjunction taken to start a World Age be the one occurring closest tothe Vernal Point when the Vernal Point, in turn, is closest to the constellation boundary.

In the year 54 A.D., one 60-year Trigon interval later, there was another, and final, Great Conjunction inPisces. It took place only a degree or two from the Vernal Point and much closer than any in the 6 B.C.triple series. This conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is depicted in Figure 2 and, by the ancient systemof the Magi, should have been the one to inaugurate the Age of Pisces. However, there is another objectin the picture.

The disk symbol just above the symbols for Jupiter and Saturn represents the Sun. This Great Conjunctionshould have been predicted but, occurring on March 18, 54 A.D., a few days before the first day of spring,would not have been seen around the time of exact alignment due to being in nearly the same direction inspace as the Sun. The event occurred in the day-time! One can only guess that this is the reason why we donot date the Christian/Piscean Age from this event instead of the earlier one.

There is no problem, however, in determining the exact time of the end of the Age of Pisces and thebeginning of the New Age of Aquarius. It is necessary, however, to first determine, as before, the correct"window of opportunity."

Since the Trigon of Great Conjunctions completes a full cycle in about 2400 years, it turns through one-third of the Zodiacal Circle in 800 years. This means that when JupiterSaturn conjunctions are occurring inany particular constellation as one corner of the Trigon sweeps through, it will be about 800 years laterbefore the next corner of the Trigon sweeps through the same constellation and Great Conjunctions takeplace there again.

In 800 years the Vernal Point moves westward about ten degrees. It is from these ten-degree steps that wemust choose the Vernal Point position which most closely meets the boundary between Zodiacalconstellations. Figure 3 is a portion of a star map showing the Ecliptic (slanted dotted line) as it passesthrough the modern astronomical constellations of Pisces and Aquarius. The Celestial Equator is the solidhorizontal line labelled 0 degrees in the left margin. Since the star map used was prepared for theprecessional epoch of 1950 A.D., the Vernal Point, at the intersection of these two lines, is shown in itsposition for that year.

The modern boundary line between Pisces and Aquarius is the lighter horizontal dotted line crossing theEcliptic where the astrological symbols for these constellations are located. It is readily seen that theposition of the Vernal Point (labelled with the Greek capital letter Sigma) in the 25th Century, the nextwindow of opportunity, is much closer to the boundary than the one 800 years later in the 33rd Century.This is, therefore, the window we must choose.

The Zodiacal constellations are not of equal extent along the Ecliptic. Some, like Virgo and Scorpio, are asmuch as twice as big as some others, like Cancer and Libra. The World Ages of these constellations, then,may differ in length by as much as 1000 to 2000 years. Furthermore, constellation boundaries, like moderngeographical boundaries, are set somewhat arbitrarily and by convention. Who can say exactly where theywere set in ancient times or how accurately the Vernal Point could be located in relation to them.

The point is that the ten-degree steps were accurate enough to make the system work very well. One of themcould always be found in best agreement with the boundary region. The advantages of precision,predictability and having a clear and visible sign in the real sky of incorporating Great Conjunctions into theWorld Age dating process far outweighed any disadvantage from not locating the Vernal Point precisely onthe boundary.

There was also the advantage of an automatic warning system of the immanent commencement of a newWorld Age. When the precession has reached its last ten-degree notch and it can no longer be denied that anew constellation is rising before the Sun on the first day of spring, there is then, on the average, a 200-yearperiod in which the conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn every 60 years in this constellation can be seenmoving closer and closer toward the Vernal Point. The ancients knew where the Vernal Point was evenwhen the Sun was not there, of course, in relation to the background stars. The World Age conjunctions didnot have to occur on March 21st.

Applying this to the Age of Aquarius, there will be at least two or three "Announcers" of the beginning ofthe Age before it actually starts. Figure 4 is a diagram of the Cosmic Clock for the dawning of the AquarianAge. It shows a corner of the Trigon sweeping through the astronomical constellation of Aquarius on itsway toward the Vernal Point. The Great Conjunctions in Aquarius announcing (and preceding) the New Age

will occur on Feb. 2, 2259; April 27, 2318; and Feb. 18, 2378.

The minute and hour hands of the Big Clock will precisely coincide on May 10-11, 2437 A.D. Figure 5shows the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on this date. It can be seen in this computer simulationthat the positions of the planets are not merely in conjunction with each other but so close to the VernalEquinox Point as to be in mutual conjunction with it.

This is surely the most precise celestial alignment possible for the commencement of any World Age! Whilethe politics and record-keeping of Biblical times as well as the contingencies of astronomical motions seemto have made something of a muddle of the exact beginning of our current era, if we wish to continue thetradition of the Magi into the next World Age, we can do so now with an ease and precision which theycertainly would have envied.

So the popular song from the musical, "Hair," entitled "The Age of Aquarius," was a little premature andgot most of the details wrong. It's doubtful that, anytime soon, peace will guide the planets or love steer thestars. The true dawning of the Age of Aquarius will have nothing to do with the Moon being in the 7th orany other House, will involve Jupiter aligning with Saturn and not Mars, and will be more than 450 yearstoo late to have been of any help to the flower children of the '60s. But it was a nice thought and a greatsong at the time!

A few collateral considerations remain. If the astronomical time reckoning system of the Babylonians iscontinued into the Age of Aquarius, then the year 2437 A.D. will become a new Year Zero A.D.A. Theabbreviation A.D.A. stands for "Anno Domini Aquarii" (in the Year of Our Lord of Aquarius).

We do not yet know the name of the new Avatar of the Aquarian Age or even if there necessarily will beone, so we can only number the present period by counting backwards from the beginning of the Age andinserting a blank in the identifier. Thus the year 1992 becomes the year 445 B.X. where the X stands for theinitial of the name of the Aquarian Avatar not yet born.

We can assume that the World Monomyth will need another revision but will tell the same eternal story in anew updated way, somehow utilizing the symbols associated with the constellations of the Water Carrierand its opposite, Leo, the Lion. Perhaps the hero of this Age will be born of or raised by a lion and have acareer in water conservation.

It has long seemed too coincidental that the astrological signs, measured by regular 30-degree intervals fromthe Vernal Point, are not much more than 30 degrees or one sign out of synchronization with the actual starconstellations. Precession has moved the Vernal Point from the first degree of Aries to about the 6th degreeof Pisces now. When the Age of Aquarius begins it will be at the beginning of Pisces moving backwardsthrough the back door of the constellation of Aquarius. It is a misnomer to refer to it, as we still do, as the"First Point of Aries" when clearly it will soon be at the first point of Pisces.

And how did our astrological system come to be set up when the Vernal Point was moving from Aries intoPisces at the time of the birth of Christ when we know very well that the Magi had set up the system andhad been practicing astrology for thousands of years before that? The misalignment of the stars with theseasons should be at least two or three whole signs, not one.

The way out of this dilemma is to reset the coordinates at the beginning of each New Age so the signsnamed and measured along the Ecliptic from the Vernal Point are the same as the star constellations in thesame vicinity. This would require changing the name of the Vernal Point from the First Point of Aries to theFirst Point of Pisces and shifting all of the signs by one House.

The 1st House would then be associated with Pisces, the 2nd with Aries and so on around to the 12th whichwould be that of Aquarius. Repeating the process each World Age, the signs and constellations would neverget more than one sign out of sync, and this must have been what was done at the start of the Age of Pisces.Astrology was invented long before the time of Christ's birth; its coordinate system, however, must havebeen reset to connect the 1st House with Aries instead of Taurus (as it would have been from the beginningof the Age of Aries around 2200 B.C.).

The Precession Cycle and the long- and short-term movements of the stars and planets in the heavensformed the central myth and mystery around which ancient civilizations were organized. Each new dayprovided a unique, never-to-be-exactly-repeated read-out of the Cosmic Clock: its face the background offixed stars and the special group of twelve Zodiacal constellations and its pointing hands the Vernal Pointand the corners of the Trigon coupled with the positions of all the planets, the Sun and Moon, and anythingelse that might from time to time appear in the sky.

The World Monomyth, on one level perhaps a kind of manual for studying and interpreting the dials of theUniversal Clock, in combination with the body of astronomical knowledge with which it is associated, isprobably the oldest and most important creative and scientific work of mankind to survive to the present. Ithas been in use longer than we can know, 6 - 10,000 years, at least. Civilizations have devoted theirenergies for millennia to the study, refinement and preservation of this tradition. We might well continue tohonor it through the remainder of this Age and on to beyond the end of the next.

And yet, like all the works of Man, however grand, it is as nothing in the face of Eternity -- a breath ofwind, a flash of light, a glimpse into the One Mind. We have taken the measure of our greatness and ourinsignificance in but a few turns of the Mill of Time.

The above Figure depicts the event which will inaugurate the Age of Aquarius as it will be seen in the earlymorning hours just before sunrise on May 11, 2437 A.D. from the latitude of San Jose, California. Thecomputer-generated image shows the exact conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn with the Vernal Equinox veryclose to the boundary between Pisces and Aquarius.

Footnotes:

1. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill: An essay on myth and the frame of time,2nd paperback ed. (Boston: David R. Godine, 1983).

2. VOYAGER: The Interactive Desktop Planetarium, V. 1.2 for the Apple Macintosh (San Leandro,California: Carina Software, 1988).

Copyright 1991, Terry Alden -- All rights reserved

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