Modern mathematical science deals in precise measurements accurate to many decimal places. Simple integers rarely appear. the trend has recently been toward reforming our units of measure to get away from specific objects of reference and base them on universal physical properties. in ancient times people tried much the same thing, but, not having an arithmetical system, they used whole numbers of the same length (the inch) to measure astronomical time (the day). then, using geometry, they created their first objective measure, a megalithic yard, which expressed the difference between the solar and lunar year.
Their idea of sticking to whole numbers remains part of our number theory and, as Leopold Kronecker famously said, “God created the natural numbers, all else is the work of man.” The natural numbers or integers carry with them a sense of unity and design as to how they interact with one another. As symbols these number relationships affect the physical world and this suggests they provided a fundamental creative fabric for the universe. the constructions made by megalithic people present such a view. The monuments could only reflect a “heavenly pattern” (“as above, so below”) because the fabric of abstract whole number relationships appears to have been employed in a later weaving of planetary time cycles, which were then seen as the work of some god or gods (the demiurge) who surrounded the earth with numerical time ratios.
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.
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,
the five-fold form of the Venus synod and the five couplets of trilithons,
the summed inner widths of the trilithons as being 5 x 8 = 40 units of 73 days = 2920 days.
the out-rectangle of the inner ellipse being 8 by 5 and
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
above: Carreg Coetan Arthur portal dolmen in Newport, Pembrokeshire.
The prehistory of sacred geometry was the late stone age, when the stone circles, dolmens, and long alignments to astronomical events on the horizon, used megaliths (large stones) in geometrical ways. Their geometries served their quest to understand the heavens, without telescopes or arithmetic, by using counted time periods as geometrical lines, squares and circles. Geometry, supplemented by the days counted between alignment events, was therefore a prelude to sacred and then secular geometry.
By developing early geometrical methods, they forged an enduring cultural norm lasting millennia, as part (or not) of the more-familiar aspect of the neolithic, innovating an agricultural pastoralism, that could support settlements, cities and, only then, the great civilizations of the middle and far east. It was civilization that generated our earliest written histories; these still powering our historical context and leading the basic notion of economic progress and territorial expansion, as superior to all that went before.
Our surviving megaliths are hence deeply enigmatic, a mysterious and mute presence in a world far less mysterious. The megaliths may have something we have forgotten in a collective way, something pushed out by millennia of later ideas and now relatively recent ones too.
There seems little trace of the megalithic astronomers themselves, their geometricized landscape overlaid by our notions of a primitive Stone Age. And, as the prelude to world history, their geometry gave birth to sacred geometry and sacred buildings; pyramids, ziggurats, temples and religious complexes. In some way, therefore, geometry obtained its sacredness from the skies or the earth itself, as if these had been built from the harmonious organization of the solar system seen from Earth and given to it by one or more gods or angels.
Sacred geometry the became a secular and analytical geometry, which would become an encyclopedic exploration of all that geometry could do, rather than a set of techniques dreamt up by a band of roaming astronomers. In our schools, many lose interest in having to learn geometry in the abstract and so, in this, the megalithic had an advantage. They could learn geometry as and when they needed it, as their astronomy brought up new questions to solve, learning by finding methods to answer questions.
If one truly travels backwards in time, to discover what the megalithic astronomers had understood, I believe one has to decide which bits of your own skills have to be applied to solve the riddles of the megalithic mind. Each modern researcher must not assume the megalithic could calculate using numbers, use trigonometry, knew Pythagoras’ theorum, and so on. And yet, one can employ modern equipment to help investigate the megalithic. Google Earth, for example, can allow megalithic alignments to be studied, their azimuth, length and interrelation, whilst the context of sites can be seen that may provide clues not available in site plans, written descriptions and so on, which are sometimes difficult to obtain or require a personal expedition. The most basic tool for me has been the Casio scientific calculators, since the megalithic interaction with space (geometry) was blended with the interaction of numerical time counting, numbers which exist in the geocentric world of time.
Finally, one must realise the past is only in the present through our attention to it and, in the absence of much official interest in applied geometry, dimensionality and astronomical intent of the sites, it is left to non-specialists to become new specialists in the sense of recovering and conserving the true achievements of the megalithic, for our present age, while the monuments still exist as living mysteries. In this I advocate the path leading to what this website is about.
The Saros cycle is made up of 19 eclipse years of 364.62 days whilst the Metonic cycle is made up of 19 solar years of 365.2422 days. This unusually small number of years, NINETEEN, arises because of a close coupling of most of the major parameters of the Earth-Sun-Moon system which acts as a discrete system, a system also commensurate with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Venus. It is this type of coherent cyclicity which lies at the centre of what the megalithic were able to achieve through day-inch or similar counting of visible time periods and comparing of counts using geometric means. [see my books, especially Sacred Number and the Lords of Time, for a fuller discussion].
It would have been relatively easy for megaithic astronomy to notice that eclipses occur in slots separated by eclipse seasons of 173.3 days and also to see that the difference between lunar and solar years resolves over the 19 year of the Metonic so that lunar orbits, lunar months, the starry sky and the rotation of the earth provide a close repetition of alignments over 19 solar years which equal 235 lunar months and 254 lunar orbits. The Saros period is 223 lunar months long and is therefore one lunar year of 12 months short of the Metonic of 235 lunar months.
image of stone L9, left of corridor of Gavrinis Cairn, 4Km east of Carnac complex. [image: neolithiqueblog] This article was first published in 2012.
One test of validity for any interpretation of a megalithic monument, as an astronomically inspired work, is whether the act of interpretation has revealed something true but unknown about astronomical time periods. The Gavrinis stone L9, now digitally scanned, indicates a way of counting the 18 year Saros period using triangular counters founded on the three solar year relationship of just over 37 lunar months, a major subject (around 4000 BC) of the Le Manio Quadrilateral, 4 Km west of Gavrinis. The Saros period is a whole number, 223, of lunar months because the moon must be in the same phase (full or new) as the earlier eclipse for an eclipse to be possible.
