Category: Cosmology

Ideas about the nature of the whole

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
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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.

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Agni, the Indian God of Fire

Those new to Ernest McClain and his The Myth of Invariance, should know this book was a seminal work for anyone in my generation, that opened up a Pythagorean vision; of how number operates in the domain of harmony. This world of harmony can be numerically defined in a quite extraordinary and specific way and we, as human beings, can receive it through our mind whilst also through the senses. This relates to the unusual fact that, whilst all notes can be doubled in frequency through the number two, with a perfect consonance, a new population of notes is then opened up, within an octave, of intervals that are also harmonious, through the use the two next prime numbers: three and five. Thus music, so effective upon the human heart, can build a world of meaning, sometimes referenced in myths as sacred numbers, written through understanding harmony as fundamentally generated through numeric transitions within music.

In 2008 I prepared a summary of Ernest McClain’s statements about Agni because, in the midst of the perfect symmetry of musical harmony lies something new, born to the world opposite its beginnings and endings. I originally made the pdf below for my friend Anthony Blake, part of our attempt to study the origin of creativity within the existing world. It appears that something important comes into being at the centre of this issue of octaval harmony, just as we ourselves come into existence in the middle of the universe, as conscious beings, conscious then of our incompletion.

It occured to me to include this in an email to Ernest and, all in, he said in reply “I can’t imagine anyone improving on your few pages” and “Put it out now on your own website stamped with my approval”. Please enjoy this transmission from the centre of the octave:

What Ernest McClain says about Agni in The Myth of Invariance:

Visit Ernest McClain website: Musical Adventures in Ancient Mythology. In the section of online documents, his books are available for your to study as links to pdf downloads.

The Richard Syrett Interviews on Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels

I recently recorded a podcast with Richard Syrett and will be talking with him again today (January 2nd) on Coast to Coast, starting 10pm Pacific time. In the UK, this is tomorrow (Sunday the 3rd) at 6am GMT. Both these interviews are in response to my new book Sacred Geometry: Language of the Angels, which goes on release Monday 4th of January 2021.

Ways of Purchasing: This large-format book, richly illustrated in color throughout, can be seen in the sidebar (on mobiles, below the tag cloud) or visit Inner Traditions.

Evolving Intelligence of the Biosphere:

An Essay from DuVersity Newsletter 35 – 2014

The Light and Dark, as Value and Fact, could be viewed as reconciled by an evolved mind, within the biosphere. They could indeed be the cause of the arising of proto-minds, since existential situations in the Biosphere are of value for its beings whilst being factual. As Bennett points out, sex and death are innovations of the biospheric world, and we can now date their arrival during the Cambrian “explosion” (around 542 million years ago) when plants and animals (multicellular life forms) innovated sex to reproduce their organisms as a whole as well as regenerating their cells through cell division. Animals, unlike single-celled algae, are able to express action but must die to benefit from generational improvement by natural selection. Only by such means could the three brains of humans, motive, emotive and cognitive, be selected through their effectiveness in adaptation to living conditions within a variety of different biomes.

But there have been problems for humans in their maintaining a shared cultural harmony towards nature and the biosphere, due to the success of their cognitive brain capacity to solve environmental problems based upon facts. Technologies can arise whose consequences may conflict with social values that are somewhat weakly held to. Arguments can break out over values and the impact of technologies and those that wield them, but the factual benefits generally dominate other human views. The environmental argument is being lost whilst technology becomes an ever stronger threat to the biosphere as we know it. The modern world is simply the latest and greatest in which actions often clearly go against valuing the environment over the wealth it can create, and better-off populations have become used, inured and psychically hardened to human and biospheric tragedy.

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