Archaeologica.org

Ishtar wrote:We can also see from FM’s first link that the first Sumerian seal (dated 3200 BC) contains Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. In fact, they all do. This is because these four signs are known as the Fixed Signs – i.e. they are the signs that hold the other signs in place in the circle. You can see them here, all opposite one another, and so holding the circle:



We know the Zodiac was originally a circle as the word ‘zodiac’ means “circle of animals” in Greek. So this proves that Sumerians in 3200 BC had – at the very least! - the Fixed Signs of the Zodiac that hold all the others in place in the circle.

But you may be wondering why we're considering it so important to establish the date for the first Zodiac. And so it's this:

If you look again at the first Zodiac, you’ll see a cross that shows where the two equinoxes (spring and autumn) and the two solstices (winter and summer) fall.




This is the known as “the cross of the Zodiac”, and was often depicted, in ancient times, with the sun god at its centre. This is a metaphor for the sun travelling around the signs/constellations during the year, and at certain times, residing in each one.

There are tons of these sun gods in the middle of Zodiacs, but here is one from the ancient synagogue of Beit Alpha in the Beit She'an Valley, showing Helios in his chariot:

http://www.bear-star.com/galgalmazalot_text.htm

These astrological signs, though condemned by the prophets, were widely used as decorative elements in both churches and synagogues of the Byzantine period. The twelve signs are arranged in a circle and accompanied by their Hebrew names. In the center of the zodiac, the sun god Helios is represented seated in a chariot drawn by four horses. The four seasons appear in the corners of the panel in the form of busts of winged women wearing jewels; they are inscribed with the Hebrew months initiating each season: Nisan (spring), Tamuz (summer), Tishri (autumn) and Tevet (winter).

My bolding: For 'seasons' read 'equinoxes and solstices'.


The astrotheists' case is that Jesus is just another sun god at the centre of the cross of the Zodiac, which is why we get pictures of him with a circle in the background showing the zodiacal cross of the equinoxes and solstices.



Here is a 2nd century AD, Nabataean example showing Allat, their goddess of fertility (aka sun goddess) at the centre of the circle of animals, or Zodiac.



http://nabataea.net/zodiac.html


And following on from that, the astrotheists go on to say that the original cross of the Romans and the Celts was actually a symbol of the Zodiac ....



... as is shown here:



And this pagan symbol in a stained glass ceiling showing the Sun of God in the centre of the Zodiac is from - you'll never guess where! - the Rotunda of the Missouri state capital building!



Do you think the Fundies of Missouri realise it's there?

All -

Sunwheel, anyone? And those critters are a hell of a lot older......... and worldwide.

Now lets just say that a reasonably cognitive, though "primitive" set of peoples just barely managed to figure out solstice and equinox - sorry, back off the sarcasm here - and with their knowledge of the sky map created the ur-symbol, the sun wheel. Successive generations, hundreds of them filled, in the gaps. And - gasp - they most likely travelled long distances and communicated.

Boats, hematite.

By the time the zodiac you folks are talking about went public, the use had shifted from predictive analysis of seasons, weather, hunting, fishing, tides, and the ability to predict passage of astronomical cycles to the manipulations of politics and religion. And warfare, of course.

The word co-opt comes to mind. Very similar to.....nope, not gonna go there.

In short, unlike Venus, the Zodiac was not - and I forget the exact quote here - "Born fully formed from the thigh of Zeus".

Arguments against?


john

Boats, hematite.

Keep stirring, John! I love it.

John

I'd be more than happy to give you an argument on this if only I knew what the flippin' hell you're talking about!

I read your post three times - and still I don't know!

Perhaps I'm one of these early primitives you mentioned, that has barely one brain synapse to fire off against the other!

Oh and ......mustn't forget.....

Boats
Hematite
Dib dib dib

john wrote:

Ishtar wrote:We can also see from FM’s first link that the first Sumerian seal (dated 3200 BC) contains Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. In fact, they all do. This is because these four signs are known as the Fixed Signs – i.e. they are the signs that hold the other signs in place in the circle. You can see them here, all opposite one another, and so holding the circle:



We know the Zodiac was originally a circle as the word ‘zodiac’ means “circle of animals” in Greek. So this proves that Sumerians in 3200 BC had – at the very least! - the Fixed Signs of the Zodiac that hold all the others in place in the circle.

But you may be wondering why we're considering it so important to establish the date for the first Zodiac. And so it's this:

If you look again at the first Zodiac, you’ll see a cross that shows where the two equinoxes (spring and autumn) and the two solstices (winter and summer) fall.




This is the known as “the cross of the Zodiac”, and was often depicted, in ancient times, with the sun god at its centre. This is a metaphor for the sun travelling around the signs/constellations during the year, and at certain times, residing in each one.

There are tons of these sun gods in the middle of Zodiacs, but here is one from the ancient synagogue of Beit Alpha in the Beit She'an Valley, showing Helios in his chariot:

http://www.bear-star.com/galgalmazalot_text.htm

These astrological signs, though condemned by the prophets, were widely used as decorative elements in both churches and synagogues of the Byzantine period. The twelve signs are arranged in a circle and accompanied by their Hebrew names. In the center of the zodiac, the sun god Helios is represented seated in a chariot drawn by four horses. The four seasons appear in the corners of the panel in the form of busts of winged women wearing jewels; they are inscribed with the Hebrew months initiating each season: Nisan (spring), Tamuz (summer), Tishri (autumn) and Tevet (winter).

My bolding: For 'seasons' read 'equinoxes and solstices'.


The astrotheists' case is that Jesus is just another sun god at the centre of the cross of the Zodiac, which is why we get pictures of him with a circle in the background showing the zodiacal cross of the equinoxes and solstices.



Here is a 2nd century AD, Nabataean example showing Allat, their goddess of fertility (aka sun goddess) at the centre of the circle of animals, or Zodiac.



http://nabataea.net/zodiac.html


And following on from that, the astrotheists go on to say that the original cross of the Romans and the Celts was actually a symbol of the Zodiac ....



... as is shown here:



And this pagan symbol in a stained glass ceiling showing the Sun of God in the centre of the Zodiac is from - you'll never guess where! - the Rotunda of the Missouri state capital building!



Do you think the Fundies of Missouri realise it's there?

All -

Sunwheel, anyone? And those critters are a hell of a lot older......... and worldwide.

Now lets just say that a reasonably cognitive, though "primitive" set of peoples just barely managed to figure out solstice and equinox - sorry, back off the sarcasm here - and with their knowledge of the sky map created the ur-symbol, the sun wheel. Successive generations, hundreds of them filled, in the gaps. And - gasp - they most likely travelled long distances and communicated.

Boats, hematite.

By the time the zodiac you folks are talking about went public, the use had shifted from predictive analysis of seasons, weather, hunting, fishing, tides, and the ability to predict passage of astronomical cycles to the manipulations of politics and religion. And warfare, of course.

The word co-opt comes to mind. Very similar to.....nope, not gonna go there.

In short, unlike Venus, the Zodiac was not - and I forget the exact quote here - "Born fully formed from the thigh of Zeus".

Arguments against?


john

Ishtar -

Go back to the original exchange here .......

OK. The sun wheel - as I call it - is the archetypal "cross within a circle" glyph, which you more than adequately addressed in your post above. It is both worldwide, and ancient.

So, lets take your argument that it indeed was the ur-symbol for equinox and solstice. I rather doubt that equinox/solstice was figured out independently by literally hundreds of cultures across an amazing span of time, and doubt even further that they (the cultures) managed also independently to come up with the same damn symbol every time.

I will stick to my point that early man also knew a great deal about the star-map as it related to the movements of the sun and moon, and associated terrestrial events such as seasons, migrations of animals and fish, tides and river flows, weather patterns, growth and death of foodbearing plants - all the things which allowed a group, or band of people to survive successfully.

My next point is that these ancient peoples filled in the blanks of the map of the sun cross with more detail generation after generation; individual constellations, and their appearance/disappearance and movement were related to ever more specific cyclical terrestrial events. The constellations were intuitively named for their resemblance to familiar things; a horse, a fish, a lion, a bull, a goose. Thus, the "Houses" of the Zodiac began life as a predictive map of events in the physical world. They were daimonic (that is to say, shamanistic) in nature.

And only much, much later were they hurled into the demonology of religion and politics. (If you want to have some real fun, read "Letters from the Earth", by one Mr. Mark Twain.)

As for "hematite and boats", hematite is a superb example of archetypal world culture, and watercraft are possibly the best "vessel", no pun intended for the amazingly quick and widespread communication of aspects of that culture.

As for my comment about Venus out of the thigh of Zeus (and I haven't been able to find exact quote or author), I'll state that early man was cognizant of both hematite and the star-map a couple hundred thousand years ago. The idea of the Zodiac springing out of the Neolithic fully formed is simply absurd.

john

I am absolutely convinced that the earliest form of todays western (let's be clear - western) zodiac is not more that 2700 years old and probably a few hundred years less. (most eastern or so-called sidereal zodiacs often had more than 12 signs). The evidence for the recent development of the zodiac comes from the fact the zero point known as the First Point of Aries is basically located at the piont where the sun would have been on or about 700bc. That means at some point in time, someone marked the position of the sun and said astrological time begins now.

The truly remarkable thing (boats, hematite) is how universally this was accepted and scattered through out the prevailng empire which at that time was the collapse of the Assryian and rise of the Babylonian. I personally do not feel it needed to be general knowledge but rather favor the idea that a priestly class of astrologers kept the secrets and passed them internally in their schools of 'hidden' knowledge.

Forum Monk wrote:I am absolutely convinced that the earliest form of todays western (let's be clear - western) zodiac is not more that 2700 years old and probably a few hundred years less. (most eastern or so-called sidereal zodiacs often had more than 12 signs). The evidence for the recent development of the zodiac comes from the fact the zero point known as the First Point of Aries is basically located at the piont where the sun would have been on or about 700bc. That means at some point in time, someone marked the position of the sun and said astrological time begins now.

The truly remarkable thing (boats, hematite) is how universally this was accepted and scattered through out the prevailng empire which at that time was the collapse of the Assryian and rise of the Babylonian. I personally do not feel it needed to be general knowledge but rather favor the idea that a priestly class of astrologers kept the secrets and passed them internally in their schools of 'hidden' knowledge.

Forum Monk -

I'll see you and raise you.

Using your own argument of 700 BC, the publication of the Zodiac is the exact moment the daimonic, Shamanic knowledge of the Zodiac was torn from the general public's knowledge, by force, and passed to "a priestly class of astrologers", with religious and political malice aforethought.

Argue me that.

john

I have my doubts John. Of all the people who look at the night sky, I would venture to guess the following:

• 90% will be duly impressed
  50% will notice the order to stars and seasons
  10% will notice the relation between sun and star positions
  1% will notice the relation between stars and the solar cardinal points
  0.001% will figure out how to exploit that knowledge

One can not remove knowledge from people, only prevent them from acquiring new knowledge. I think the farmers, laborers and common people who needed to understand seasons, meteorology and fundemental astronomy for their well being, continued with such knowledge. The so-called astrologers were basically servants of the ruling class. A groups of men or women who advised the king according to portends, omens and bullcrap.

Forum Monk wrote:I have my doubts John. Of all the people who look at the night sky, I would venture to guess the following:

• 90% will be duly impressed
  50% will notice the order to stars and seasons
  10% will notice the relation between sun and star positions
  1% will notice the relation between stars and the solar cardinal points
  0.001% will figure out how to exploit that knowledge

One can not remove knowledge from people, only prevent them from acquiring new knowledge. I think the farmers, laborers and common people who needed to understand seasons, meteorology and fundemental astronomy for their well being, continued with such knowledge. The so-called astrologers were basically servants of the ruling class. A groups of men or women who advised the king according to portends, omens and bullcrap.

Forum Monk -

I would exactly reverse your list as we go back in time, in terms of the connectivity early people had to have had with the observable universe, in order to survive.

You make a good point about "servants of the ruling class".

After all, it was in their (the ruling class) very specific interest to isolate the common people from their self sufficient knowledge in order to make them dependent on the ruling class, taxes, war, politics and religion all included.

So, my observation would be that general cultural knowledge of the proto-zodiac is in inverse proportion to the levels of separation from the natural world, and increasing levels of political and religious demand from rulers, priests and administrators operating from a purely homocentric worldview with the endgame of creating an abstract standard of "hard wealth".

Not knowledge, not understanding. Gold, or wheat, or armies.

For example, speaking from the American Northwest, the Olympic Peninsula in particular, do you know where Orion stands in the sky tonight, what the moonphase is, how many days it has been since Winter Solstice, what phase of the winter tides we are in, what the weather pattern for this time of year is likely to be, where the river flows are, what fish are either moving up the rivers or along the coast, where the elk and blacktail deer and bear are, and how long it will be until the Salmonberry and Dogwood bloom, the spring Chinook begin to come in, the Winter Coho run ends, the status of the Grey and Humpback whale migrations and calculate this all - in the past times - with how much food and fuel you have left for the winter, and what to do about it? Such was early man's calculus.

Now we have the calculus of SS and Federal taxes, and health insurance from our paychecks

We go hunting and fishing at Safeway armed with a fifty or hundred dollar bill.

And, even if we wanted to, the environment as a whole has been so savagely stripmined for resources, and we have been so successfully separated from living with the Earth, we can no longer live that way.

So its off to MacDonald's, which is to say whistling our way in the dark past the graveyard of the Earth, which we have not only created, but continue to accelerate at a hideous rate.

Big diff.

john

I personally do not feel it needed to be general knowledge but rather favor the idea that a priestly class of astrologers kept the secrets and passed them internally in their schools of 'hidden' knowledge.

That seems reasonable, Monk.

But what evidence do we have for similar cults across the whole M/E and Med?

Forum Monk wrote:I am absolutely convinced that the earliest form of todays western (let's be clear - western) zodiac is not more that 2700 years old and probably a few hundred years less. (most eastern or so-called sidereal zodiacs often had more than 12 signs). The evidence for the recent development of the zodiac comes from the fact the zero point known as the First Point of Aries is basically located at the piont where the sun would have been on or about 700bc. That means at some point in time, someone marked the position of the sun and said astrological time begins now.

.

FM, I take your point but I think it is a bit of jump to extropolate to the conclusion you have.

For example, many civs calendars start from early 3,000 BC - I can't remember the dates but the Indian and Mayan ones are remarkably similar. Because of this similar starting point, it's almost as if (once again, boats, hematite), there was some conferring on when to start....as if they were starting again, but starting from an already developed worldwide understanding of astronomy. They weren't starting again from the ground up.

Could the same thing not have happened with the Zodiacs? So yes, the first point of Aries may be located to where the sun would have been on or about 700 BC. But could not, for some reason, the Zodiac have been changed, or even stopped and restarted again, like the calendars?

The Vedic masters teach that Vedic astronomy was there to serve the astrology, and not the other round. So they had astronomy in 3,000+ BC .....do you take my point?

John

That’s a really interesting post – now that I understand it!

Sun wheels can also be known as sun crosses, and have been found as early as the Neolithic. I think these would be the earliest attested proof that early man was an astronomer - along with a botanist, a meteorologist, a biologist, a geographer, a geologist, a mathematician ....and probably so much more.

Where we pay a few select people to do something, ancient man had to do it all himself – and then we say that they were ignorant savages! Yet if they really had been ignorant savages, they wouldn’t have survived and we wouldn’t be here to call them ‘ ignorant savages’.

But I want to add just one more word to the Boats, Hematite mantra. I want to say Boats, Hematite, Television. Because Neolithic man also had television – but not to watch The Simpsons!

The Greek ‘tele’ means ‘afar, at a distance’. Put that with ‘vision’, and the rest is obvious. An African shaman, say, (although he almost certainly wasn’t called that) would journey into another dimension and meet there with a shaman from India who had also journeyed into this extra dimension in the same way.

At our latest training session, we did the following exercise: I had to journey into a dimension of my choice, and then my partner also had to journey to find me without knowing where I’d gone. I journeyed to a really beautiful place – snow-capped mountains around a glacial blue lake. I stood behind a rock and when I saw her coming on the other side of the lake, I flashed my necklace locket at her, so that she could see where I was. When we both came out of the journey, the last part of the exercise was for her to describe where she’d found me. She described it perfectly.

Currently shamans are coming together from around the world to map these dimensions – which is what these Neolithic guys failed to do, or did but we can’t find it! So eventually, and hopefully soon, there will be some sort of map showing these extra dimensions and how they fit together.

So yes, I think they had Boats. I think they had Hematite. But I also think they had Television.

Boats. Hematite. Television.

Forum Monk wrote: The evidence for the recent development of the zodiac comes from the fact the zero point known as the First Point of Aries is basically located at the piont where the sun would have been on or about 700bc. That means at some point in time, someone marked the position of the sun and said astrological time begins now.
.

FM, can you explain, as simply as you can, what you mean by the zero point known as the First Point of Aries, where it is located and why its position determines how the Zodiac is dated?

Indeed, Ishtar, it is not easy to define the FPOA in astrological time. First off, the terminology today refers to the point where the sun crosses the celestial equator when moving south to north. In 1950, the astronomers agreed to mark this point as the origin of the celestial coordinate system, but this idea had already come from astrologers who had done the same years before. The problem is, when did they do it, who did it and where were the constellation boundaries at the time they did it. A very big problem to know. So...if we assume Aries begins at the first visible star in the constellation Aries and so the sky divides into 12 segments of 30 degrees from that point, the zero point (or First Point of Aries - FPOA) becomes the moment the sun aligns with that star as it crosses the celestial equator. So for my determination I can consider the current first point to be either 25 degrees from the original or 39 degrees depending on the source:

More recently, in 2000 AD for example, the first point in Aries and the boundary of the sign of Aries — based on the specification of zodiac signs above — diverged by about 25°. In terms of the tropical system, this places the first point in Aries (in other words, the vernal equinox) in the Pisces constellation, near the projection of the NGC 7787 spiral galaxy. Other specifications of zodiac signs (whether sidereal or tropical) choosing different fixed points (in the celestial sphere for sidereal or in relation to Earth's seasonal cycle for tropical) would result in a different divergence either greater than or less than 25°. For example Cyril Fagan's sidereal zodiac is offset from the J2000.0 tropical zodiac by greater than 39° (as of 1977). This difference between the position of fixed stars in the tropical and sidereal coordinate systems is called the Ayanamsa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac

So, for the sake of argument lets take the worst case, Fagan's determination of 39 degrees: therefore precession has shifted 39 of 360 degrees or approx. 10.8% of the total. If we assume a precessional period of 26,000 years, 10.8 % of it would be 2816 years. So the first point was established approx. 816BC. Actually the precessional rate is less so the number of years is smaller, hence 700BC. According to the 25 degree calculation, the time would have been 1800 years ago or about 200AD - more in keeping with a Greek astrological time frame.

I will also refer the reader to this page which shows further the difficulty in establishing the ancient zero point. I chose Cyril Fagan, an expert on sidereal astrology as my point of reference.

http://www.cycle-of-time.net/firstpointofaries.htm

I have purposely been just a lurker on this one.

But the Celtic Cross is a side interest to me since I read a book called “The Golden Thread of Time” by a guy named Crichton E. M. Miller.
(His general outlook on life is one you might appreciate, Istar.)

It was one of my vacation “fringe” reads a few years back.
I enjoyed the way he tied together my interests in “out of place artifacts” and my belief in pre-history open ocean travel.

The short of it is that the cross and circle are a working navigation tool that allows the user to find both his latitude and longitude.
And it has been around a real long time, with knowledge of it, and the power that this knowledge brings, lost and re-found many times over history.

He ties together the Occult, Thoth, the cross, the third eye, the Sun’s magnetic pole flips, the Pyramids, stone circles, the Zodiac, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pi, Roslyn, Hopi Indian Prophesy, and the lead crosses of Tucson, AZ. (I am sure I have missed some.)

In doing all this it ties together the practicality of navigation and the mysticism of religion.
Surprisingly, it works very well.

kbs2244 wrote:
... it ties together the practicality of navigation and the mysticism of religion.
Surprisingly, it works very well.

Yes KB. It does work very well. It's only us, in more modern times, that have separated religion/mysticism/shamism off into one corner of our minds, and then given all the practical bits of our lives to another category we've invented called 'science', and put that in another corner.

It was called the Enlightenment. And I suppose it was necessary to get science away from organised religion as they were filling it with mumbo jumbo.

But before all that, man used to have a much more holistic view of the world and his place in it. We today have a more fractured viewpoint and thus, don't see ourselves as part of nature (or what mystics call the visible face of God or Spirit) but as separate to what we regard as just an exploitable resource.