Tag: Jupiter

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.
Continue reading “God of Harmony Osiris in Egyptian Mice Tomb”

The Cult of Seven Days

Published in Nexus Magazine in 2004

When understanding the origins of human knowledge, we tend not to look into the everyday aspects of life such as the calendar, our numbering systems and how these could have developed. However, these components of everyday life hold surprising clues to the past.

An example is the seven day week which we all slavishly follow today. It has been said that seven makes a good number of days for a week and this convenience argument often given for the existence of weeks.

Having a week allows one to know what day of the week it is for the purposes of markets and religious observances. It is an informal method of counting based on names rather than numbers. Beyond this however, a useful week length should fit well with the organisation of the year (i.e. the Sun), or the month (i.e. the Moon) or other significant celestial or seasonal cycle. But the seven day week does not fit in with the Sun and the Moon.

The Week and the Year

Continue reading “The Cult of Seven Days”

Megalithic Measurement of Jupiter’s Synodic Period

image: Jupiter with now-shrunken red spot – Hubble Space Telescope

Though megalithic astronomers could look at the sky, their measurement methods were only accurate using horizon events. Horizon observations of solstice sunrise/set each year, lunar extreme moonrises or settings (over 18.6 years) allowed them to establish the geometrical ratios between these and other time periods, including the eclipse cycles. In contrast, the synod of Jupiter is measured between its loops in the sky, upon the backdrop of stars, in which Jupiter heads backwards each year as the earth passes between itself and the Sun. That is, Jupiter goes retrograde relative to general planetary direction towards the east. Since such retrograde movement occurs over 120 days, Jupiter will set 120 times whilst moving retrograde. This allowed megalithic astronomy to study the retrograde Jupiter, but only when the moon is conjunct with Jupiter in the night sky and hence will set with Jupiter at its own setting.


Figure 1 The metamorphosis of loop shape when Jupiter is in different signs of the Zodiac
Continue reading “Megalithic Measurement of Jupiter’s Synodic Period”

Death of Zeus in Crete

written in 2004

How can an immortal god die? Especially Zeus who was not just a god but head of the Olympians, a new breed of gods that had replaced the Titans and their “despotic” ruler, Chronos. A Rome holding to Zeus/Jupiter perhaps rejected the Cretan tradition of the god’s death with the well-broadcast adage “All Cretans are liars”.

But we all should know that mythology uses contradictory, or at least inconsistent, versions of the same story, to express alternative perspectives and to transmit more knowledge in the process, rather than “a lie”.

The importance of the death of Zeus is that the story emerges exactly from that point in time and cultural transformation in which Zeus is also born and at that time it was familiar for a vegetative god, representing nature blooming in spring and dying in autumn, to die and be re-born within the immortality of the eternal round of the year or yearly daemon.

There were other norms too, including the birth of men and their world of form, out of the Earth and from within The Cave, as a natural sacred space created by the Mother or earth goddess. Directly symbolic of her womb, form emerges as shapes in formation like dreams, travelling towards the definite order found on the surface.

Figure 1 The Dictyan Cave, one of two in Crete claimed claimed to be Zeus’ Nursery 
Continue reading “Death of Zeus in Crete”

Harmonic Astronomy within Seascale Flattened Circle

first published in July 2018

Only two type-D stone circles (see figure 3) are known to exist, called Roughtor (in Cornwall) and Seascale (in Cumbria). Seascale is assessed below, for the potential this type of flattened circle had to provide megalithic astronomers with a calendrical observatory. Seascale could also have modelled the harmonic ratios of the visible outer planets relative to the lunar year. Flattened to the north, Seascale now faces Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant (figure 1).


Figure 1 Seascale type-D flattened circle and neighbouring nuclear facility.
photo: Barry Teague

Stone Age astronomical monuments went through a series of evolutionary phases: in Britain c. 3000 BC, stone circles became widespread until the Late Bronze Age c. 1500 BC. These stone circles manifest aspects of Late Stone Age art (10,000 – 4500 BC) seen in some of its geometrical and symbolic forms, in particular as calendrical day tallies scored on bones. In pre-literate societies, visual art takes on an objective technical function, especially when focussed upon time and the cyclic phenomena observed within time. The precedent for Britain’s stone circle culture is that of Brittany, around Carnac in the south, from where Megalithic Ireland, England and Wales probably got their own megalithic culture.

Continue reading “Harmonic Astronomy within Seascale Flattened Circle”

Planetary Resonances with the Moon

Readers of my article [post2post id=”327″] will be familiar with the finding that in 32 lunar months there are almost exactly 945 days, leading to the incredibly accurate proximation (one part in 45000!) for the lunar month of 945/32 = 29.53125 days.

In the previous article on Seascale I noticed that 36 lunar months (three solar years) divided by 32 lunar months is the Pythagorean tone of 9/8. This led me to important thoughts regarding the tuning matrix of the Moon within the periods of the three outer planets, since the synod of Jupiter divided by the lunar year of 12 lunar months is the same tone, the tone that on “holy mountains” of Ernest G. McClain’s ancient tuning theory. Such tones are only found between two tonal numbers separated by two perfect fifths of 3/2, since 3/2 x 3/2 = 2.25 which, normalised to the octave of 1 to 2, is 1.125 or 9/8.


Figure 1 If the matrix unit is one tenth of the lunar month, then three lunar years becomes 360 units which, taken to be high do or D” = the harmonic limiting number, presents the matrix above, in the style proposed as indicative of Ancient Tuning Theory by Ernest McClain (see his The Myth of Invariance).  This Harmonic Matrix for 360 = 36 months shows that the 32 lunar month period starts row 2 as 320.
Continue reading “Planetary Resonances with the Moon”