Jan 22
Chapter 4 — The Precession of the Equinoxes (for Dave)
“Actually, the Egyptians do describe the Precession, but in a language usually written off as mythological or religious.”
— GIORGIO DE SANTILLANA, Professor of the History of Science, MIT
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
— ZORA NEALE HURSTON
As Earth rotates around the sun, it wobbles slowly on its axis. This rotation, with its odd wobble, moves the axis with cyclical regularity over time through what most premodern cultures referred to as a four-stage cycle. They called these stages by various names — the four corners, the four directions, the four times, the four winds, the four royal stars — and related them to the four ministers, the four angels, the four mothers, the four sons, the four horsemen, the four kings, the four Guardians of Heaven, and so on. This movement of the direction of Earth’s axis takes place in increments of approximately seventy-two years as it moves around the sun, and through the twelve periods of time mapped by the zodiac. The movement may be visualized as a great “tree” or “tower” or “mill” above Earth, slowly “spinning”, “churning” or “grinding.” This slow spinning of the sky is called the precession of the equinoxes, and is the central mechanism behind the material in the previous chapters. In this chapter, we’ll examine the workings of this forgotten mechanism, and we’ll look at what it means for us and for the planet we live in.
To understand the precession of the equinoxes, we must keep in mind that everything in the universe is in constant motion. We may have the illusion that we’re sitting still, reading the words on this page, that Earth is solid and stable beneath us, and that the stars are securely embroidered on the tapestry of the sky. The truth is, however, that we’re hurtling through the vastness of space on a spinning, wobbling, toppling ball, and every object we see in the sky is likewise whirling at unimaginable speeds. You are at this moment careening through space at speeds greater than that of a fired bullet: approximately 66,000 miles per hour, with no law enforcement officer to write a speeding ticket.
For the purposes of this chapter, we’re going to imagine Earth as a gigantic top, spinning counterclockwise at a thousand miles per hour. Now, if a top is perfectly balanced and spun, it will appear motionless: it is vertical on its axis and, until the motion slows, you might imagine it is just a ball on a stick, planted in the ground. Earth, however, isn’t a perfectly spun top. For one thing, it is tilted on its axis at an angle that varies from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees, as we can see in this diagram.
The angle of Earth’s spin provides its residents in the north and south with seasons. When the northern part of Earth is angled away from the sun, it is, naturally, cooler. Thus people in North America and Europe have winter for half the year, while those in Argentina and South Africa experience summer. When the angle tips toward the sun, the seasons are reversed. Along the equator, the seasons are much less pronounced.
The variation in the angle of Earth’s axis isn’t the only discrepancy in our colossal spinning top, however. There’s another, much more subtle shift, which only becomes evident if extremely precise calculations of time and position are made. As we’ve seen, Earth takes a year to move through each of the segments that we’ve labeled the zodiac. It moves through these in a counterclockwise motion. At the same time, though, a minute flaw in Earth’s orbit means that it doesn’t come to rest at precisely the same place at the turn of the new year. There’s a tiny shift, so minuscule that it requires keen observation using finely calibrated instruments over a period of decades to detect it. In fact, the shift that’s visible along the horizon is about the width of an outstretched pinkie finger approximately every seventy-two years. Nevertheless, although the shift is infinitesimal, over centuries and millennia it adds up. If you sat in precisely the same place for a millennium, staring at the horizon, the stars that rose directly in front of you in year one would rise a foot or so to the right of you (in a clockwise motion, as opposed to the counterclockwise spin of the yearly advancement) in year 1,000. And if you sat there long enough, they would eventually come full circle.
For example, if the stars that rose in front of us on day one formed the constellation Leo the lion, then as the centuries passed, Leo would stalk off to the right, while Taurus the bull stampeded into focus, followed by Pisces the fish, and then the water bearer: Aquarius. And if you sat there long enough, Leo, with a roar, would return from your left and once again settle in front of your eyes (and in front of the Sphinx’s gaze). How long would you have to sit there to see Leo depart and return? Approximately 26,000 years — the number fluctuates somewhat over time. Our ancient ancestors calculated 25,920 years as the length of this forgotten cycle of time. Each sign of the zodiac takes 2,160 years to pass. This period of time spent in each sign was called by our premodern ancestors an “age” or “aeon”; for example, the Age of Leo (i.e., the 2,160 years during which the sun on the vernal equinox rose against the stellar background of the constellation of Leo). Note that the orientation of the Sphinx, the Giza pyramids and the Nile River on the ground that we looked in the previous chapter is a nearly precise reflection or “map” of the constellations of Leo and Orion (specifically Orion’s Belt). As above, so below.
The brilliant ancient star watchers with their complex understanding of the earth and sky, as described in the previous chapter, noted four moments in each year when the cycles arrived at a turning point, thus providing the recurrent number four that underlies so many of the ancient stories and religions, as we saw at the beginning of the chapter. These moments (or “corners”), marked by the four Royal Stars, were the two solstices and the two equinoxes. Solstices are the days in the year that are the longest and shortest. In the Northern Hemisphere, they fall on December 21 (the winter solstice, and the shortest day of the year) and June 21 (the summer solstice, and the longest day of the year). The equinoxes are the other two corners of the year: the days when the night and day are of equal length. In the Northern Hemisphere, the spring equinox occurs on March 21 and the autumn equinox on September 22. In the Southern Hemisphere, of course, the dates are reversed.
At the equinox, the sun will rise in a particular section of the sky. How¬ever, as the ancient astronomers noted, this section isn’t static: it shifts, as we’ve seen, by a fraction every year. Because our ancestors had divided the sky into twelve 2,160-year “houses” or “mansions,” each governed by an astrolog¬ical sign, they said that the sun was “housed” or “carried” or had a relation¬ship with each celestial character in turn: Leo, Pisces, Aquarius, and so on. Giorgio de Santillana says, “The sun’s position among the constellations at the vernal [spring] equinox was the pointer that indicated the ‘hours’ of the precessional cycle — very long hours indeed, the equinoctial sun occupying each zodiacal constellation for almost 2200 years” (de Santillana and von Dechend 1992, 59).
Where are we in this great cycle? What time is it according to the Clock of Ages? Right now, at the spring, or vernal equinox, the sun rises between Pisces and Aquarius. We are coming to the end of one of the zodiac mansions. Hancock says, “We live today in the astrological no-man’s land at the end of the ‘Age of Pisces,’ on the threshold of the ‘New Age’ of Aquarius. Traditionally, these times of transition between one age and the next have been regarded as ill-omened” (Hancock 1996, 240). And we are also moving into the end of time as the precessional cycle itself comes to a close again.
Let’s step back for a moment and look again at the larger context. We tend to imagine the sun as a relatively tiny cotton ball perched in the sky, but looks are deceiving. Imagine a huge fishbowl, filled with a million marbles. Pluck out one of those marbles and hold it next to the fishbowl. The marble is our Earth. The bowl is the sun. The sun is an unimaginably colossal, volatile, flaming ball, which periodically sends out plumes of fire so vast they could wrap around our Earth a dozen times. Its electromagnetic waves and gravitational field extend 15 trillion miles into space. Its gravitational field exerts a pull that’s magni¬fied when the planets also come into play. Scientists have long observed strange phenomena when the planets are in line. For example, when Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars are “in conjunction” (to use the ancient astrological term), shortwave radio frequencies become garbled. The New York Times mentions a “strange and unexpected correlation between the positions of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars … and violent electrical disturbances in Earth’s upper at¬mosphere. This would seem to indicate that the planets and the sun share in a cosmic-electrical balance mechanism that extends a billion miles from the center of our solar system” (Kaempffert 1951, 144).
At incremental stages of the precessional cycle, through each house of the zodiac, Earth’s axis shifts in relationship to the exposure of the planet to new electromagnetic relationships (and gravitational forces) that are moving within the larger cosmic electrical balancing mechanism. Earth’s magnetic axis, incrementally, disengages from declining influences while engaging with new influences as it moves along the zodiac path. At specific points on the path, it experiences events of tension, adjustment, and realignment which are experienced as if we’re riding in a cart that has a slightly broken wheel, so that the cart is jolted each time the wheel rolls over the broken spot. These jolts, which happen at regular increments as Earth moves through the approximately 26,000-year cycle, are the catalyst for the convergence of Earth-changing catastrophic and disruptive events that we looked at earlier, and provide a context for the theory of Catastrophism. This periodic tension, adjustment, and realignment is the most pronounced at the beginning and ending of each zodiac period, during the transitional “in-between” time when the electromagnetic and gravita¬tional influences of the declining zodiac house overlap with those of the rising house. This in-between period is noted for terrestrial systems chaos.
Approximately every 2,160 years (thirty incremental stages of seventy-two years each, and three stages of 720 years), Earth experiences a pronounced jolting, chaotic period as its magnetic axis readjusts itself to new astrophysical effects, in relationship to the four directions and the sun, as it proceeds through the houses of the zodiac. Pressure builds, peaks, and then Earth’s axis realigns. The most significant jolts takes place at the half¬way point of the precessional cycle and at its completion; in other words, at approximately 13,000 and, even more disruptively, at approximately 26,000 years in the precessional cycle. There are also lesser convergent jolting events approximately every 720 years +/- 50 years. These abrupt, earthshaking system adjustments are accompanied by all of the difficult events listed in Chapter 2: globally catastrophic climate instability, volcanic and seismic activity, ecosystem failure, species die-off, and social chaos. In a previous chapter, we saw that approximately 13,000 years ago, Earth experienced a period of profound cataclysmic upheaval.
These jolts, occurring throughout the precessional cycle, are the central context of nearly all monumental ‘myths’ (including religious) sent forward in time by our ancient ancestors. Because our ancient ancestors took great care to track cataclysmic events, we have records of the precessional cycle and its effects — the atmospheric and geological changes — as well as their effects on civilization and living beings, reaching back into time. This dynamic cyclical pattern of approximately 26,000 years, now coming to an end once again, was known as the Great Year, Great Crossing, Great Return, Great Circle, Annus Magnus, Platonic Year, Solar Year, Eternal Return, Supreme Year, Wheel of Time, and other names. It was also described more subtly and coded into stories and riddles, symbols, geophysical constructions, and the mathematics and placement of architecture of nearly all advanced ancient and premodern cultures, extending back far into the depths of human civilization for tens of thousands of years.
The earliest overt mention of the precession of the equinoxes in ancient literature comes from Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer, at around 150 BCE. There has been a general belief that Hipparchus discovered that “the celestial longitudes were different and that this difference was of a magnitude exceeding that attributable to errors of observation. He therefore proposed precession to account for the size of the difference” (Encyclopedia Britannica 1991, 5:937, 8). Hipparchus calculated the amount of precession to be 45 or 46 degrees of arc, which is quite close to the actual amount of 50.274 degrees modern astronomers have calculated. However, although Hipparchus’s achievement should not be trivialized, we now have evidence that other cultures around the world knew of the precession much earlier. Giving Hipparchus credit for “discovering” the precessional cycle is like giving Christopher Columbus credit for discovering America.
The Chinese appear to have recognized and understood precession by at least 4500 BCE, and likely much earlier, and the Egyptians were aware of it from their earliest dynasties — from at least 3100 BCE, although many researchers and scholars now think the Egyptians inherited their knowledge of astronomy from a vastly older civilization. The Çatalhöyük complex in present-day Turkey symbolically expressed knowledge of precession as early as 6500 BCE and did the Gobekli Tepe complex as early as 9600 BCE. Mayan culture was aware of precession from at least 3114 BCE, and there’s strong evidence that they inherited their huge and precisely accurate body of astronomical knowledge intact from the much older culture known as the Olmec, which, as we saw, may have derived from Ancient Egypt. Babylonian and Assyrian, North American, Northern European, Oceanic, and Southeast Asian ancient cultures likewise had knowledge of this phenomenon from the earliest times, which they expressed symbolically, allegorically, and architecturally.
It’s now thought by some paleo-astronomers that the exquisite Lascaux cave paintings in southwestern France that have been dated to approximately 18,000 BCE are records of the zodiac constellations, fixed stars, and solstice points. All of the constellations, with the exception of Aquarius and segments of Pisces, are represented by corresponding animals. It’s believed that the cave itself served as a gnomon (calendric device), with a ray of the sun penetrating the cave on the summer solstice and lighting up the painting of the Red Bull in the Hall of Bulls (it was the constellation Taurus (the bull) that dominated the summer solstice sky). An analysis of 130 caves in the immediate area has shown a common orientation to the sunrise and sunset at summer and winter solstice and spring and autumn equinox (Jègues-Wolkiewiez 2000). It’s highly unlikely that whoever possessed and implemented this range of technical knowledge to track and record the precise movements of the sun would be unaware of the precessional dynamics and effects. A more likely scenario is that they, 18,000 years ago, were very familiar with the precessional cycle by way of even more ancient oral records that had been handed down to them.
Many of the ancient texts contain codified numbers, which often don’t seem to further the storyline. There’s nothing supernatural about these numbers; they are the mathematical measurements of time and space. Certain numbers in these records, as we’ve seen, are associated with the turning of Earth and the precession of the equinoxes. These are, according to Hancock, the time necessary to execute a one-degree shift in the position of the sunrise at the equinox; the time it takes for the sun to move through two houses of the zodiac; the time it takes for the sun to pass through one zodiacal segment; and a precessional “year” or “aeon.”
The numbers associated with the above items are as follows: 12, 30, 36, 54, 72, 108, 360, 432, 540, 2,160, and 25,920. Whenever we find these numbers or their multiples in ancient texts, or represented in architecture, geophysical constructions, craft, ritual, or symbol, we should be on the alert for precessional symbolism. Let’s take a look at a few examples.
The Tholos of Epidaurus
The Tholos of Epidaurus in Greece is a good example of architecture that represents the approximately 26,000-year precessional cycle.
Osiris Myth
The Egyptologist Jane B. Sellers has shown that the Osiris myth contains many of these precessional numbers. According to the myth, the year in the time of Osiris was 5 days shorter: it consisted of just 360 days, because the god of wisdom had won the extra 5 days from the goddess of the night sky in a betting game. The 360-day year consisted of 12 months, each 30 days long. Furthermore, the “evil” brother Seth chose 72 conspirators to help him kill Osiris. If we work with these numbers, simple multiplication gives us the following: 72 x 30 = 2,160, which is, we remember, the number of years in each astrological Age: the time the sun spends in a zodiacal house. Also, 360 x 72 = 25,920, which is the approximate period of the “Solar Year,” or the full cycle of the precession of the equinoxes. Intriguingly, the numbers codified within the Osiris story, when extrapolated to the precession, are much more accurate than those of Hipparchus. This suggests not only that the ancient astronomers were aware of precession, but that their instruments were more precise than those of later astronomers — and indeed, were not surpassed until Galileo in the seventeenth century.
Borobudur
Recent research at the Borobudur ritual complex in Indonesia, believed to have been constructed in the ninth century CE, has revealed that the main stupa in the world’s largest Buddhist temple serves as a calendric gnomon that utilizes the shadow of the sun’s rays. A team of astronomy professors and students, along with a researcher from the National Aeronautics and Space Institute, published their findings in the proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Oriental Astronomy in Tokyo, Japan, in September 2010. At the Arupadhatu level, the main stupa is surrounded by seventy-two stupas in a circular overlay that makes up the track at levels seven, eight, and nine, indicating knowledge of precession. We’ll see further along that this isn’t the only indicator of precession that’s encoded into the construction.
Manichaean Text — Third Century
Another good example of ancient precessional symbolism is found in Persian Manichean writings. Consider this passage: “Now for every sky he made twelve Gates with their Porches high and wide, every one of the Gates opposite its pair, and over every one of the Porches wrestlers in front of it. Then in those Porches in every one of its gates he made six Lintels, and in every one of the Lintels thirty Corners, and twelve Stones in every Corner. Then he erected the Lintels and Corners and Stones with their tops in the height of the heavens: and he connected the air at the bottom of Earth with the skies.”
Andrew Collins in From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race describes the passage’s meaning:
Multiply the 12 Gates with the six Lintels to each Porch and you get 72 — the number of years it takes for Earth to move 1 degree of a precessional cycle. Multiply this number with the 30 corners of each Lintel and you get 2,160 — the number of years in one complete precessional age. Multiply this number with the 12 stones in every Corner and you arrive at 25,920 — the number of years in one complete precessional cycle.
Mayan “Long Count” Calendar
The Mayan “Long Count” calendar uses vast increments of time that allowed the ancient Mesoamericans to reach far back into the past. In the calendar, one Katun is equal to 7,200 days. One Tun is 360 days. Two Tuns are 720 days. Five Baktuns are 720,000 days. And six Tuns are 2,160 days. Note the recurring numbers 72, 360, and 2,160. This calendar indicates that an immense time period of close to 5,000 years came to an end on December 12, 2012. Inscriptions centered around the calendar suggest that the shift between one period and another will engender upheaval and a new “kingship.” This coronation of a new king has traditionally been read as referring to a real Mayan ruler. However, it’s likely that the shift in paradigm and rise of a new presiding figure symbolically refer to the transition of our planet into a new zodiacal mansion.
Exocarnation Towers
Exocarnation towers (now commonly referred to as dakhmas or Towers of Silence) were used in many Indo-Iranian cultures to dispose of the dead, dating back into prehistory. Bodies were placed on the roof of the tower, in slotted sections, exposed to the sun and the elements, and the bones were left to dry and turn to dust. The bodies were fed upon by vultures, which were the ultimate symbol of death and transformation, and a connection between Earth and the celestial realm.
The vulture, as a symbol — similar to the Grim Reaper — was associated with the precessional cycle and its effects on life. Its circular flight pattern as it hovers above a food source was a living symbol of the precessional circle at the top of the “tree”, shown in the precessional tower image above (fig. 19), and representative of the loss of life associated with its rhythmical pattern of degeneration and regeneration. The vulture, as symbol, is found in Bronze Age Cretan ruins, in Northern European and Iranian mythology as the griffin, in the Americas as the crow, in Tibet (where exocarnation was a common practice until recently), and around the world as the raven. The vulture is also seen in very early Buddhist mythology: most notably Vulture Peak, another name for Grdhrakuta Mountain, an ancient exocarnation site and unique habitat of vultures. There are still thousands of vultures living in the crevices of the hill rocks. Vultures, as symbolic representations, are seen in ruins that date back to Göbekli Tepe complex in Çatalhöyük, where large murals have been found depicting vultures on top of towers feasting on the dead.
In the following illustration of the roof of an ancient exocarnation tower located in Iran, if we count the number of segments going around the circle, we find 36 in the outer ring, and in each of the inner rings, segmented for bodies, we find 70 slots, with the path leading to the center (left side, in white) taking up the equivalent of two more slot spaces. (The numbers 70, 71, and 72 were all used by various ancient cultures to represent the same celestial mechanism — the modern measurement is 71.6, but this has fluctuated over time). We also see the four directions represented, as well as the nine realms of heaven, the five seasons of existence, and the cosmic turtle that are all found in ancient cosmologies around the world.
Chinese Secret Society
The Hung League is an ancient order similar to that of the Freemasons and Knights Templar in the West, and is considered to retain codes of an earlier body of thought. Like the Freemasons and the medieval alchemists, the members of the Hung League were forced to conceal and codify their wisdom, to avoid the ire of the ruling authorities. (The Chinese authorities have for millennia endeavored to suppress any organization that might threaten the ruling hegemony.) In the Hung League initiation ceremony, inductees must answer the mysterious question: “Do you know how many plants there were?” with “In one pot were 36 and in the other 72 plants, together 108 … the red bamboo from Canton is rare in the world. In the groves are 36 and 72. Who in the world knows the meaning of this? When we have set to work we’ll know the secret.”
One Hundred and Eight
Another precessional number that recurs consistently in ancient records is 108. This may seem a rather ungainly figure, until we realize that it is 36 (360 divided by 10) plus 72. Confirmation of this composition is contained in the ritual initiation ceremony for members of the Chinese Hung League described above. The number 108 occurs around the world as well, in the number of stanzas in the Rig Veda (10,800), in the 10,800 bricks in the Indian fire altar, in the Rosicrucian cycles of 108 years, and in the number of beads in Buddhist and Christian rosaries. The five gated avenues at Angkor Wat are each bordered by 108 statues (for a total of 540). Similarly, one of the themes of Homer’s Odyssey is the existence of the Proci, 108 suitors for the hand of Penelope, the missing Odysseus’s wife. And, the Book of Enoch has 108 chapters.
Four Hundred Thirty-two
Furthermore, 4 x 108 = 432, a number also found in the records, symbols, and architecture of ancient cultures in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America and which was specifically related to celestial cycles. Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval in The Message of the Sphinx point out that: “Equally ‘impossible’ — at any rate for a people like the ancient Egyptians who are supposed to have known nothing about the true shape and size of our planet — is the relationship, in a scale of 1:43,200, that exists between the dimensions of the Pyramid and the dimensions of Earth.” Similarly, at Borobudur, the ritual complex in Indonesia that we looked at above, there are 432 Buddha statues at the Rupadhatu level of the construction. Another example, according to the Satapatha Brahmana, is that there are 10,800 stanzas in the Rig Veda, each with 40 syllables, for a total of 432,000 syllables. The number comes up as well in the third century BCE; Chaldean astronomer Berossos, recording the ancient history of Babylon, wrote that the period between its first “king,” Aloros, and the Babylonian flood was 432,000 years. The number even shows up in a book central to a modern religion. In the book of Genesis in the Bible’s Old Testament, if we count the number of years between the creation of “Adam” and the “Noah” flood, we get 1,656 years. Julius Oopert, a distinguished Assyriologist, presented a paper to the Royal Society, the British fellowship of distinguished scientists and engineers, on the “Dates in Genesis,” showing that 1,656 years = 86,400 weeks of 7 days; 86,400 divided by 2 = 43,200.
When Jesuit monks first began proselytizing in China in the late 1500s, they recorded that the Imperial Library contained in its collections an extraordinary set of records, consisting of 4,320 volumes that were recorded to be a history of all knowledge. Charles Berlitz, an American linguist, wrote that this record includes a description of the effects brought about when “mankind rebelled against the high gods and the system of the universe fell into disorder” and “the planets altered their courses. The sky sank lower towards the north. The sun, moon and stars changed their motions. The Earth fell to pieces and the waters in its bosom rushed upwards with violence and overflowed the earth” (Berlitz 1989,126).
And, in the dramatic Day of Ragnarök (the Doomsday of the Gods), found in the Grímnismál, one of the poems of the Norse Poetic Edda, the narrator says:
Five hundred and forty doors
there are to Wal-hall I ween.
Eight hundred of the Chosen
shall go out of each door at one time,
when they go forth to fight the Beast.
The number “Five hundred and forty” (also found at Angkor Wat) multiplied by “eight hundred” equals 432,000.
Tying all these examples together, the cycle of the precession of the equinox, recorded by the ancients as lasting 25,920 years, is also connected to 432 because 432 x 60 = 25,920. Each of the 12 ages of the zodiac extend for a period of 2,160 years (for a total of 25,920 years), which connects 432 to 216, as does that fact that 216 x 2 = 432. 216 ÷ 2 = 108. And 108 x 4 = 432. For a fascinating and in depth examination of the encoded numerical and symbolic references to the precessional cycle in ancient texts, I refer readers to Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth by Giorgio de Santillana (a professor of the history of science at MIT) and Hertha von Dechen (a scientist at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität).
And now, at last, the grand fugue, with almost eerie, spine-tingling precision, begins to become apparent. The Egyptian Giza complex, Stonehenge, the Mayan Way of the Dead, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Borobudur complex in Indonesia, the exocarnation towers in Iran and India, Greek architecture: all these must be understood as references to a celestial movement so minute that it shifts in yearly increments about the width of a needle held at arm’s length, a movement that, nevertheless, periodically wreaks havoc on our planet. The Borobudur complex is a colossal representation of the precession of the equinoxes. The Giza Pyramid complex and the Sphinx, and the Mayan Way of the Dead, are magnificent calendric machines tracking the same phenomenon. Gilgamesh, Krishna, the biblical Adam, Samson, Prometheus, Hercules, Thor, Hamlet, Siddhartha, Jack, Rapunzel: all tell the story of this grand cycle of time that was known in nearly every ancient culture. The ancient oral traditions, written records, and folk tales from around the world preserve the celestial mechanism and data in story form, passing on information that’s critical to the sanity, wellbeing, and survival of the human community. These stories are history, advanced mathematics, and precise science preserved in a multifaceted technical language that ensured that this information would survive and be remembered for the greatest amount of time by the greatest number of people. And it worked. We should be grateful for their genius and dedication, employed for our benefit. Our ancient ancestors succeeded in passing this information, accumulated over tens of thousands of years, all the way to the end zone of the current grand cycle, although the message is now nearly completely mythified, mystified, and dismissed.
According to this preserved message and confirmed by ancient calendars, we’re now in the tail end of the final zodiac segment of the circle, bringing the precessional cycle, and a world era, to a close. The serpent of time (Ouroboros, Quetzalcoatl, Wadjet, Aidophedo, Jormungandr) that lurks at the base of the tree of stars is beginning to eat its tail, as we move deeper into the Sixth Extinction. And even though our ancient and premodern ancestors invested enormous thought, time, and energy for many thousands of years to prepare us, we are asleep. We’ve forgotten what time it is, and we ignore the wisdom of the ancients at our peril.
