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Guest Blog: Excerpt from Hamlet's Mill
Jan. 14th, 2011 08:59 pmWith all the hullabaloo about zodiac signs changing scattered around the internet, I thought it would be fun to break out my copy of Hamlet's Mill (sadly, not the one with my college notes in it) and do an excerpt from the venerable tome by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. The pair of authors relate mythology to astronomy, and discuss mythology as a scientific language that describes events in the heavens. They delve into the concept of world ages, as well as discussing a lot of material that I didn't entirely comprehend in college and have yet to really delve back into. (In fact, in my final paper for Mark Vecchio's Mythic Imagination class, which was required as a script of multiple voices, including the writers and myself, one of the characters comments on my analysis of Hamlet's Mill that I still haven't quite figured out what they're talking about. I knew my own shortcomings.)
So, for your reading pleasure, the Precession of the Equinoxes.
--
First, what was the "earth"? In the most general sense, the "earth" was the ideal plane laid through the ecliptic. The "dry earth," in a more specific sense, was the ideal plane going through the celestial equator. The equator thus divided two halves of the zodiac which ran on the ecliptic, 23 1/2 degrees inclined to the equator, one half being "dry land" (the northern band of the zodiac, reading from the vernal to the autumnal equinox), the other representing the "waters below" the equinoctial plane (the southern arc of the zodiac, reaching from the autumnal equinox, via the winter solstice, to the vernal equinox). The terms "vernal equinox," "winter solstice," etc., are used intentionally because myth deals with time, periods of time which correspond to angular measures, and not with tracts in space.
This could be neglected were it not for the fact that the equinoctial "points"--and therefore, the solstitial ones, too--do not remain forever where they should in order to make celestial goings-on easier to understand, namely, at the same spot with respect to the sphere of fixed stars. Instead, they stubbornly move along the ecliptic in the opposite direction to the yearly course of the sun, that is, against the "right" sequence of the zodiacal signs (Taurus->Aries->Pisces, instead of Pisces->Aries->Taurus).
This phenomenon is called the Precession of the Equinoxes, and it was conceived as causing the rise and the cataclysmic fall of ages of the world. Its cause is a bad habit of the axis of our globe, which turns around in the manner of a spinning top, its tip being in the center of our small earth-ball, whence our earth axis, prolonged to the celestial North Pole, describes a circle around the North Pole of the ecliptic, the true "center" of the planetary system, the radius of this circle being the same magnitude as the obliquity of the ecliptic with respect to the equator: 23 1/2 degrees. The time which this prolonged axis needs to circumscribe the ecliptical North Pole is roughly 26,000 years, during which period it points to one star after another: around 3000 B.C. the Pole star was alpha Draconis; at the time of the Greeks it was beta Ursae Minoris; for the time being it is alpha Ursae Minoris; in A.D. 14,000 it will be Vega. The equinoxes, the points of intersection of ecliptic and equator, swinging from the spinning axis of the earth, move with the same speed of 26,000 years along the ecliptic.
The sun's position among the constellations at the vernal equinox was the pointer that indicated the "hours" of the precessional cycle--very long hours indeed, the equinoctial sun occupying each zodiacal sign for about 2,200 years.
So, for your reading pleasure, the Precession of the Equinoxes.
--
First, what was the "earth"? In the most general sense, the "earth" was the ideal plane laid through the ecliptic. The "dry earth," in a more specific sense, was the ideal plane going through the celestial equator. The equator thus divided two halves of the zodiac which ran on the ecliptic, 23 1/2 degrees inclined to the equator, one half being "dry land" (the northern band of the zodiac, reading from the vernal to the autumnal equinox), the other representing the "waters below" the equinoctial plane (the southern arc of the zodiac, reaching from the autumnal equinox, via the winter solstice, to the vernal equinox). The terms "vernal equinox," "winter solstice," etc., are used intentionally because myth deals with time, periods of time which correspond to angular measures, and not with tracts in space.
This could be neglected were it not for the fact that the equinoctial "points"--and therefore, the solstitial ones, too--do not remain forever where they should in order to make celestial goings-on easier to understand, namely, at the same spot with respect to the sphere of fixed stars. Instead, they stubbornly move along the ecliptic in the opposite direction to the yearly course of the sun, that is, against the "right" sequence of the zodiacal signs (Taurus->Aries->Pisces, instead of Pisces->Aries->Taurus).
This phenomenon is called the Precession of the Equinoxes, and it was conceived as causing the rise and the cataclysmic fall of ages of the world. Its cause is a bad habit of the axis of our globe, which turns around in the manner of a spinning top, its tip being in the center of our small earth-ball, whence our earth axis, prolonged to the celestial North Pole, describes a circle around the North Pole of the ecliptic, the true "center" of the planetary system, the radius of this circle being the same magnitude as the obliquity of the ecliptic with respect to the equator: 23 1/2 degrees. The time which this prolonged axis needs to circumscribe the ecliptical North Pole is roughly 26,000 years, during which period it points to one star after another: around 3000 B.C. the Pole star was alpha Draconis; at the time of the Greeks it was beta Ursae Minoris; for the time being it is alpha Ursae Minoris; in A.D. 14,000 it will be Vega. The equinoxes, the points of intersection of ecliptic and equator, swinging from the spinning axis of the earth, move with the same speed of 26,000 years along the ecliptic.
The sun's position among the constellations at the vernal equinox was the pointer that indicated the "hours" of the precessional cycle--very long hours indeed, the equinoctial sun occupying each zodiacal sign for about 2,200 years.
