Cosmology – Page 5 – Numbers of a Living Planet

Review of Precessional Time and the Evolution of Consciousness

My third book (Inner Traditions, 2011) was recently reviewed by Paul Young in New Dawn magazine March-April 2019.

It is said that we are transiting from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius in a backward precession through the 12 zodiacal signs. Examining the numbers that define these Ages is one of the core themes of this book. The basic premise is that stories – some of them handed down orally since Neolithic times – enable us to identify the inner spiritual aspects within our material world and participate in the evolution of human consciousness foretold by ancient myths. The author is greatly influenced by G.I. Gurdjieff and his Law of Seven, albeit with revisions of his own.

Readers such as myself, for whom mathematics is not their strong suit, need not be daunted by the many sets of figures presented in this book. They are important as supporting evidence for the theories presented, and their comprehension is made easier by the use of diagrams. Moreover, the fractions and ratios are often related to musical octaves and the Do-Re-Mi music-reading system.

Harmonic Genesis of the Sumerians

The emergence of 2, 3, 5 from ONE then combining as ANU and leading to the differentiation of the World along various paths. The creation proceeds through three prime number dimensions, Ea (as in Earth) through 2, Enki through 3 , Enlil through 5. Anu remains the fountainhead associated with all three and with the Zodiac, which emerged in later Babylonian as a seasonally relevant calendar.

Here I start by publishing an important diagram that shows how the earliest known references to musical tuning (early 4th millennium BC) on clay cuneiform tablets, using “regular numbers” whose factors are products of only the numbers 2, 3 and 5, led to the cosmological vision of their gods, the primary god, Anu, being a balanced mix of all three numbers as 60 but also called ONE. This is the source of their Sexagesimal or base-60, still employed in measuring angles and time called minutes and seconds. All comes from ONE.

God of Harmony Osiris in Egyptian Mice Tomb

Recently an “early Ptolomaic” tomb was discovered similar in themes to the famous Egyptian Books of the Dead (Middle Kingdom). Normally written on papyrus, they feature multiple tableau of Osiris judging the dead and other scenes. Osiris is a long lasting and perhaps supreme god whose cult was present throughout 3000 years of Dynastic history. I have previously interpreted his throne through drawings but, in the new tomb, he is painted on the walls at least twice and the design of his throne looks like layers of “eggs”. Below is one of the press pictures taken from the Guardian, and the headline is Mummified mice found in ‘beautiful, colourful’ Egyptian tomb.

Osiris could have been seen as a/the god of Harmony and below I explain why harmony may have been thought technically significant at the dawn of our earliest texts, then found in Sumeria 900 miles to the East. The reason I believe musical ratios were significant at the dawn of history because they had naturally emerged from measuring the lunar and solar year and comparing these with the time between loops of the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn.

Wallis Budge drawing in Osiris Judge of the Dead. We can see the lines but no detail and the bottom right is a vertical root 2 rectangle rather than a near square.

A Moon that created Life?

Extracted from Precessional Time and the Evolution of Consciousness, Inner Traditions, 2011. There is a long history of speculation concerning the origins of our Moon which is still not fully settled but an early impact seems most likely and a key proponent has been William K Hartmann of the Planetary Institute (also space artist, see below). The Moon has played so many important functions for the development of both the Earth and its Biosphere, that it is worth noting some of these when considering the Moon’s relationships to the synodic periods of the outer planets through its lunar year.

Over 4.5 billion years ago the inner solar system was a jumble of would be planets and planetoids. It is thought that Earth shared its orbital zone with at least one other planet about the size of Mars, similarly composed of a heavy metal core and outer mantle. Both would have been mopping up smaller bodies but eventually the two collided with each other.

Figure 1 The Collision of Earth and Thea (©William K. Hartmann)

Extremely Ancient knowledge of Precession of the Equinoxes

The above is part of the title of an 2018 paper on the Athens Journal of History website, by Martin B. Sweatman and Alistair Coombs currently available here:

Decoding European Palaeolithic Art: Extremely Ancient knowledge of Precession of the Equinoxes

This work concerns our understanding of the astronomical knowledge of ancient people. This knowledge, it seems, enabled them to record dates, using animal symbols to represent star constellations, in terms of precession of the equinoxes. Conventionally, Hipparchus of Ancient Greece is credited with discovering this astronomical phenomenon. We show here that this level of astronomical sophistication was known already within the last ice- age, and very likely by the time Homo sapiens entered western Europe around 40,000 years ago.

They go on to say “The evidence used to verify our hypothesis is accumulated from many of the most famous Palaeolithic cave art sites across Europe, representing dates up to 38,000 BC including;• Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, southern Germany circa 38,000 BC• Chauvet, northern Spain circa 33,000 BC• Lascaux, southern France circa 15,000 BC• Altamira, northern Spain circa 15,000 BC. Moreover, this system of representing dates is fully consistent with our interpretation of Neolithic sites in Anatolia, namely;• Göbekli Tepe, southern Turkey circa 10,000 BC• Çatalhöyük, southern Turkey circa 7,000 BC”

The question of ancient origins and precession was brought up well by de Santillana and von Deschend in Hamlet’s Mill (1969) and in Tilak’s The Orion (1893,) based largely upon mythic texts. A number of authors have previously found for star maps in stone age art, but this work appears to have crossed some scientific Rubicon and may find itself in Rome. There is a direct descendent of Hamlet’s Mill in The Spiritual Science of the Stars by Peter Stewart (who wrote it after decades of follow-up to that book).

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