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Books and other occasional writings

The Many Faces of Great Time

Figure 7.5 The widespread tradition of a God who changes the astrological Age, through the Precession of the Equinoxes: Top left, Mithras as Sol Invictus; top right, Mithras slaying the Age of Taurus; bottom left, Aion, God of Ages; and bottom right, Orphic God Phanes. Mithras slaying the Age of Taurus (photo by Tim Prevett courtesy of the Segontium Museum, 2005)

This article has been extracted from my 4th book Sacred Number and the Lords of Time as being a fairly self-contained read. The “great time” in the heading is the Precession of the Equinoxes or Great Year of Plato, in which god-like human figures are posited in ancient times as governing the Age named after the Zodiacal sign in which the sun sits at the spring equinox, today the age of Pisces is about to become the age of Aquarius, but the Current Era corresponds to the age of Pisces, inaugurated by the birth of Jesus, hence also called A.D. for “anno dominie” or “year of Our Lord”.


Figure 7.4. The conceptual model of Great Time as two bands at right angles, joined at the equinoctial points where the celestial meridian of the Age crosses the equator and ecliptic

In this model of precession (figure 7.4), a north-south ring of ages, explains an enduring feature within at least some of the mysteries found in late antiquity. In Greco-Roman times some mystery cults presented their god within a vertical elliptical band upon which the zodiacal constellations were marked (see figure 7.5).4 these all represented a god who could command time and affect what happened upon the earth. the iconography of these gods and their associated myths reveals the many aspects of such a god’s powers and intruded upon many aspects of the religious iconography and mythology of the ancient world, as was demonstrated by the authors of Hamlet’s Mill.

The clear relationship to the zodiac, when shown in a vertical setting for such a god, suggests that the above model of precessional time had been developed and become widespread in the preceding thousand years. this precessional iconography showed an epoch-making and hence history-making godhead who could bend the everyday powers of Helios-Ra, the sun, by moving the equinoctial crossing points of the sun and affect the world by moving the ecliptic and displacing the stars relative to the framework of heaven. Perhaps the clearest presentation of such a precessional cult in late antiquity was that of mithras.5

The cult of Mithras gave the precessional god the name “of Persia”, as if from there. But he appears adapted from the Greek god Perseus, who rode the winged horse Pegasus and killed the Gorgon (of solar imagery) while rescuing Cassiopeia (held in chains as a sacrifice to a sea monster). This cult took as its main image the Tauroctony, a tableau in which a youthful Mithras, in his signature Phrygian cap and cape, is killing a bull while looking away.

Figure 7.6. Tauroctony in Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Precessional god
Mithras presents his killing of the bull Taurus, at what was then the spring equinox. He is shown between his two equinoctial Dioscuroi, spring on the viewer’s right and autumn on the left, Cautes and Cautopates. The diametrically opposite constellation of Scorpio is shown below.

In the tableau above, Mithras has two important attendants to right and left. both have their legs crossed indicating the points of crossing for the sun on the celestial equator and each carrying a torch that represents the movement of the sun at each of these equinoxes (see figure 7.6). on the right side the figure, Cautes, represents the spring equinox, with the sun torch pointing upward to how that the summer lies ahead. The light of Cautes’ torch is shown touching he mouth of the bull of Taurus, indicating the scene takes place at the spring equinox. on the left side we find Cautopates, the fall equinox, whose torch is pointing downward to the left indicating the winter to come. at the feet of Mithras is the Scorpion (the constellation of Scorpio) and serpent carrier Orpheuchus, both diametrically opposite the constellation of Perseus in the sky.

Figure 7.7. The constellations of Perseus (top) and Serpens/Orphiuchus (bottom), opposite each other in the celestial Earth. They formed part of the new meridian after the vernal equinox, and hence the precessional meridian, left Taurus. From Urania’s Mirror, a boxed set of 32 constellation cards engraved by Sidney Hall, published in 1825

In the constellation of Perseus, we find Perseus holding the Medusa’s
head (the variable star Algol), which is iconic of the sun in Taurus at the spring equinox being cut off by the precessional god who stands above Aries, the new world age. Perseus is therefore part of the vertical colure or meridian of that age, presented upon the celestial earth of the stars. Such stellar iconography developed without sculpture or scriptural myths, since the night sky and its named constellations could illustrate the story.

The well-educated Jesus stood at the end of a dying age. Within the walls of a new temple mount, he was aware that the Jewish people were expecting a new dispensation and also that the mystery sects, popular with the Greeks, Romans, and Jews, were actually religious remnants of an astronomical fact, that the equinoctial sun had moved on before and was moving now from Aries to Pisces. Within four centuries the Roman empire would be declared Christian, but this would involve a Christianity quite unlike the early church, a Jesus quite unlike the original person, and a Christian scripture quite unlike those that circulated among early Christians. Where Mithras, aeon, Phanes, and Sol Invictus had once stood, Jesus would come to stand, as “Christ in majesty,” shown with the same precessional iconography that once accompanied the earlier precessional deities.

Figure 7.8. The central western gate at Chartres Cathedral holds Jesus as Cosmocrator exactly following the form of the ancient Mystery cult precessional iconography. The elliptical has been replaced by a vesica pisces, especially suited to the Gothic style of this early thirteenth-century cathedral.

On later icons Jesus was depicted as Lord of the World, the Pantocrator or cosmocrator (see figure 7.8). He was shown on a majestic throne, usually with his feet on an orb representing the earth, within a vesica pisces (instead of the elliptical of mystery cult iconography) and surrounded by the evangelists, these being openly associated with the fixed signs of the zodiac: Aquarius (the man), Leo (the Lion), Taurus (the ox), and Scorpio as an eagle.* Jesus came to be known in the early church as the fish because the Greek for fish ΙΧΘΥΣ (ichthys) is an acronym for Ίησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ, (Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr), which translates into English as “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.” this iconic acronym was compatible with his being the Lord of the age of Pisces and a fisher of men. his mother was represented, within the first three gospels, as the constellation opposite to Pisces, Virgo the Virgin. “the Virgin” was a common motif within Greek myths of parthenogenesis (παρθένος, parthenos, meaning “virgin,” and γένεσις, genesis, meaning “birth”), applied when a god gives birth to a hero through a mortal woman or as when Athena emerged from the head of Zeus.

There needed to be sufficient cosmological compatibility for an agreed form of Christianity to be accepted by the adherents of the other important mystery schools as the single religion of Rome. Thus Jesus came to be born on Mithras’s birthday of December 25th, three days after the winter solstice. This must have reassured the initiates of the Mithraic mysteries, many of whom were Roman legionnaires or other people of position in the Roman empire. Many other signature features of Mithras were incorporated into Jesus as well, such as the virgin birth, his death at the age of thirty-three, and so on, so as to make him recognizable as a precessional hero, something not widely recognized today.

extracted from Sacred Number and the Lords of Time, chapter 7: From Egypt to Jesus pp 182-187 by Richard Heath (Inner Traditions 2014), available worldwide – see top right sidebar.

An Angelic Geometrical Design

The above diagram contains information with can generally only be grasped by using a geometrical diagram. Its focus is the properties of a right triangle that is 4 times larger than its third and shortest side. The left hand view illustrates what we call Pythagoras’ theorum, namely that

“The squares of the shorter sides add up to the square of the longest side.”

Here this is shown as 144 + 9 = 153 because, if the third side is three lunar months long, then the 4-long base is 12 lunar months, hence the square of 12 is 144″. The longest side is then 153, the diagonal of the four squares rectangle, and the square root of 153 is 12.369 lunar months, the solar year when measured in lunar months.

Before Pythagoras, the Egyptians had a long tradition of geometrical mathematics which fed into their art in which designs can be seen to obey a grid of squares. Their view of Pythagoras’ theorum can therefore be put within a greater world of geometrical transforms using grids.

In the above, one can see this view (called Canevas by Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple of Man) in which the larger square is seen to fit when angled into a 5-by-5 grid (see right). The extra width and height of the grid enables the smallest square to be seen in this common framework of 25 squares.

The largest square of area 153 is distinguished as an integer, rather than its square root. Thus this is not a Pythagorean triangle with all sides integral, but rather the two smaller sides being integer allows them to be placed within a grid. Somewhat rare though is the arising of an integer on the square, so that Jesus disciples in the gospel of John could comment, in being asked to throw their net on the right side, they then caught 153 fish!

If the diagram was in its least numbers, the 153 would be 9 times smaller as 17 and so the 12.369 would be √9 × √17 instead. And in sacred number science, the interaction of numbers can be seen to be determined by the prime numbers which then make larger numbers such as 153 = 9 × 17. This 17 is known to be a factor of the node cycle of 18.618 solar years, which is 6800 days long and 6800 = 400 × 17.

When two lengths of astronomical time share a larger prime such as 17, it indicates numerical compatibility between two periods, and so the solar year of √153 lunar months (in which the sun moves once around the Ecliptic) has some affinity with the 6800-day period during which its orbital nodes also move once through the Zodiac.

If the larger, yellow square has 6800 days within it, the square root is 20 × √17, whilst the square of the solar year had 153, the square root being 3 × √17.

The new imagined diagram would be 20/3 relative to the above one. Without explaining how this could be, the point is that this cannot be known by the human mind without using sacred geometry which can notate how a higher intelligence might have organised the time environment of Earth according to definite criteria. Further examples can be found in my Book, Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels. The book is not about sacred geometry as a compendium of traditional knowledge but rather shows how it was that sacred geometry came into the human mind (and architecture) through the initial study of time periods as counted lengths, revealing angelic coincidences.

There is much else to know about the lunation triangle linking the lunar and solar years, discovered about 3 decades ago by my brother Robin Heath.

Twelve: determining Time and Space on the Earth

ABOVE: South rose window in Angers Cathedral of Saint Maurice. Stained glass by Andre Robin created after the fire of 1451. At centre, Christ of the Apocalypse, in glory (Revelation 21:5). At bottom, 12 radial windows showing 12 elders, crowned and playing musical instruments, rejoicing, indicating the remade world (the heavenly Jerusalem). At top, circular ends of 12 radial windows showing the 12 signs of the Zodiac, indicating the incarnation of Christ as a man on earth under the stars. Sequence from left to right has last 2 signs before first, i.e. Aquarius/Water-bearer (grey), Pisces/Fish (grey), Aries/Ram, Taurus/Bull (yellow), Gemini/Twins, Cancer/Crab (red), Leo/Lion (yellow), Virgo/Virgin, Libra/Scales, Scorpio/Scorpion, Sagittarius/Archer, Capricorn/He-goat (blue background)
photo: Chiswick Chap for Wikipedia Foundation.

The Moon was the means by which a 12-fold harmony became established on the Earth. This harmonization occurred through the lengthening of the lunar month until 12 months fitted, in a special way, within the solar year. The excess of the solar year over the lunar year of 12 months became 7/19 lunar months, causing seven extra whole months over 19 years. This 19-year (235 month) Metonic period was well-known to the ancient world, and it leads to the remarkably short cycle for the pattern of similar eclipses, we call the Saros period, which repeat every 18 years (235 minus 12 months = 223 months). And eclipses are highly visible because the disk of the Moon has come to be the same angular size as the disk of the Sun, causing total solar eclipses.

Continue reading “Twelve: determining Time and Space on the Earth”

Powers of the Golden Mean

Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque  is one of the masterpieces of Iranian architecture that was built during the Safavid Empire, standing on the eastern side of Naqsh-i Jahan Square, Esfahan, Iran. Construction of the mosque started in 1603 and was finished in 1619.
for Wikipedia by Phillip Maiwald

The Golden Mean (1.618034) or Phi (Greek letter) is renowned for the behavior of it’s reciprocal and square which are 0.618034 and 2.618034 respectively; that is, the fractional part stays the same. Phi is a unique singularity in number. While irrational, shown here to only 6 figures, it is its infinite fractional part which is responsible for Phi’s special properties.

The Fibonacci series: Found in sacred buildings (above), it is also present in the way living forms develop. Many other series of initial number pairs tend towards generating better and better approximations to Phi. This was most famously the Fibonacci series of 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 … (each right hand result is the simple sum of the two preceding numbers (0+0 = 1, 1+1=2, etc.

Continue reading “Powers of the Golden Mean”

Leak Project Interview

Rex Bear talked to me by Zoom on the 11th March; about the extensive background of my new book Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels. Below is embedded from the Leak Project YouTube channel.

The Stonehenge Trilithons (Part 2): Day-Inch Counting

In the previous article, it was shown that the form of the trilithons, of five taller double sarsens approximating to a five-pointed star, matches the astronomical phenomena of the successive morning and evening stars, as Venus approaches Earth from the east and then recedes to the west as the morning pass. On approach, the planet rises in the evening sky and then dives into the evening sun and if one traces this motion it have the appearance of a horn. Venus shoots past the sun and reappears in the morning sky as the sun rises, creating another traced horn shape, symmetrical to the evening.

Figure 1

In support of the form of the trilithons resembling five successive double horns of Venus over 8 years, the width of the inner faces can also be interpreted as to their length being one megalithic rod, that is 2.5 megalithic yards. The distance between each pillar is ¼ of a megalithic rod so that, each inner face is divided by 4 of these units which units are 5/8ths of a megalithic yard, the ratio of the practical year of 365 days relative to the Venus synod of 584 days (365 / 584 = 5/8), the common factor between the two periods being 73 days.

The combined inner width of each pair of supports would therefore symbolize 8 x 73 days, or 584 days. Five of these pairs would then be 5 x 584 days, which equals 2920 days, this time period also being 8 x 365 days or eight practical years.

The inner surfaces lie on an ellipse which can be framed by a 5 by 8 rectangle whose sides are exactly the diameters required to form a day-counting circle for 365 day-inches (116.136 inches) and 584 day-inches (185.818 inches). The 365 day-inch circle (shown red and dashed in figure 4) has its centre in the center of the ellipse and so would have touched the two trilithons at A and B, at a tangent to their faces.

Figure 2 The Venus count of 584 day-inches (shown blue and dashed) was concentric to both the bluestone and sarsen circles, sitting inside of the bluestone circle.

The high degree of correlation between,

  1. the five-fold form of the Venus synod and the five couplets of trilithons,
  2. the summed inner widths of the trilithons as being 5 x 8 = 40 units of 73 days = 2920 days.
  3. the out-rectangle of the inner ellipse being 8 by 5 and
  4. the rectangle’s sides being the diameters of two circles of 584 inches and 365 inches, suitable for day-inch counting,

……. points to the 5-fold horseshoe of trilithons as a “temple” to the unique astronomical behavior of Venus in its synodic relationship to the solar year of 365 whole days.

No other compelling explanation exists, though many interpretions have been proposed such as