There are two things we can count in this world, one is the number of objects on the Earth and the other is the number of time periods between events in the Sky.
photo: The Moon, with Jupiter and Mars, on 11th January 2018. (see end for interpretation)
Objects are counted in an extensive way, from one to an almost infinite number, the count extending with each addition (or multiplication) of a population.
Time periods appear similar but in fact they emanate from measurable recurrences, such as phases of the moon, and these derive from the behaviour of celestial objects as they divide into each other.
For instance, the unit called the day is created by the rotation of the earth relative to the Sun and the lunar month by its orbit around the Earth relative to the Sun, and so on.
Thus, time originally came from the sky. Furthermore, it largely came from the zodiacal band of stars surrounding the Earth within which the planets, Sun and Moon progress eastwards. The Earth’s own orbital motion is superimposed upon those of the other planets and the inner planets (Mercury and Venus) also appear to orbit a Sun that appears to orbit the Earth once a year.
The zodiacal band is naturally divided up into a number of constellations or stars and about three thousand years ago it became popular to follow the Sun throughout the year into 12 constellations whilst the Moon tends to create 27 or 28 stars (nakshatras) where the Moon might sit on a given evening. When the moon is illuminated by the sun, the primordial month has 29 1/2 days and twelve such in less than a year hence perhaps first defining the 12-ness of our months within the year.
All celestial cycles recur and this has formed our notion of eternity, that the sky world is made up of cyclic time rather than extensive time – every year being the same cycle seen again but then numbered so that they can be referred to as to when something happened in the past. The intensive reality above our heads is the polar opposite of extensive counting of time we see in History where numbered years and days within named months provide an unbroken continuum of time and famous people are said to have made history through their actions at a given date.
Whilst on Earth we might measure feet or meters between objects, above we effectively measure angles and angular rates to arrive at a synthesis between intensive and extensive time we call a calendar, an inevitable necessity for an organised civilization. And the moon and then the sun gave rise to the early calendars that naturally led to the arising of history as a human phenomenon. The oldest myths were connected to the sky, and were less than historical because the language of the sky had not been formalized in a way we would recognize.
Myths speak of eternal patterns that repeat rather than of existential events, on earth. The sun, moon and planets were seen as gods whose generative functions were hailed as emerging from their interactions with each other.
It has been widely assumed that “primitive” thought was premature, fantasizing planetary gods out of thin air with an as yet unripened grasp on logic and reason. But a simpler explanation, for the equation of planets with super beings, was their finding of special numbers linking the planetary cycles when these were counted and compared. This quantification of celestial time evolved from knowing the days in a year and a month, into a running calendar – of various sorts. The Maya Long Count is an example where numbers could interact through week lengths of 13 and 20 days to give a sacred calendar of 260 days whilst in historical times the 7 day week emerged, tied to Saturnian time. In this way, a calendar could add weeks adapted to societal events such as having a market every Tuesday.
This is a big subject where we have all the sky data but do not spend time understanding it. In the past, the sky was our constant companion between few man-made spaces. The sky sits within the horizon and so was like a primordial cave for humans and, the sky became an early teacher through its phenomena.
Jupiter and the Lunar Year
The lunar month is like the common denominator of what happens inside time. The sun illuminates the phases of the moon during its month so that, the month combines the movements of the moon and the sun to form a synthetic (combined) period of 29 1/2 days and twelve of these months fit inside the solar year as the lunar year of 12 1/3rd months (354.367 days). Jupiter has its own relationship to the sun in that, when the sun is opposite the moon, Jupiter describes a loop amongst the stars, and strangely there are 13 1/2 lunar months between loops (Jupiter’s synodic period of 398.88 days). 13 1/2 months divided by 12 months is the ratio 9/8, a musical whole tone.
But in the image above, of Jupiter and the Moon, the moon would be full if Jupiter was going to loop (as earth “overtakes” Jupiter on the “inside lane” – the planets inspiring ancient racetracks). Mars is another “outer planet” which loops in the same way and so Mars is also not looping.
But without understanding these matters, the picture cannot be understood. The phase of moon shows where the sun is. The planets have been in conjunction. If Venus had been present, then it has a 4/3 ratio to Mars but has to remain close to the sun to appear first as an evening star, then a morning star, in a cycle 8/5 years (584 days) long compared to Mars synod (between loops) of 780 days. Less accurate than Jupiter to the Lunar year, by a day. This is what I mean by being inside time, where all the celestial bodies have relationships to one another, when these are seen by us from earth.
This is how I started, with my first book Matrix of Creation. The musical ratios and their entrance into ancient stories was explored in Harmonic Origins of the Earth. How ancient humans counted time was discussed in Lords of Time and a unified treatment made in Language of the Angels. Used alongside archaeology, more can be understood about the prehistoric and early civilizations since astronomy was the first real subject for the human race.
