Is the Jesus story an astrological allegory?

[Ishtar]

Er... I didn't and to be honest I'm a bit sketchy on the Mayan calendar

Sorry War Arrow. It was KB. I knew it was someone! What was that quote about specialising - something about getting to know more and more about less and less!

I'm as bad on India really!

I think the Maya thing was one of my lobs from the sidelines Ish.
I have always been intrigued by the India / Maya connection.

You're singing my tune, KB. There's a lot of stuff in SA that's Indian, and ought not to be there if the world's historians are right - like Ganeshes when there were no elephants in SA. The Maya Codex has also got the famous Vedic story of the Churning of the Sea of Milk using Mount Sumeru and a snake. There's tons of stuff like that - but nobody can explain how it got there.

[Ishtar]

KB - This might interest you. It's from Stephen Knapps's book Proof of Vedic Civilisation:

"The Conquest of the Maya” by J. Leslie Mitchell explains that the basis of the old Maya empire was not the work of the ancestors of the present day Maya, but was imported from the same foreigners that built the palaces and temples of the Chams and the Khmers in Cambodia, and the temples in Java. He also points out that the similarities between the Mayan rain god Chac and the Vedic Indra, and the Maya monkey god with Hanuman. The Vedic origin is further enhanced by the frequency of the elephant motif that is found in Maya art, especially in the earlier works of the Maya, such as Copan, although the elephant never existed in the region.

....the Mayan people, also known as technicians, were no doubt named as such because of being with this person named Maya, or Mayasura, or Maya Danava. They were part of his clan or tribe. They had fallen away from the Vedic way of life and were sent or escaped to the region of central America. They also carried with them much of the science of astronomy and navigation for which the Mayasura were known.

Mayasura’s knowledge is more fully explained in the classic work of Indian Vedic astronomy known as the Surya Siddhanta for which he is given credit. Many people have wondered where the Mayans acquired their astronomical knowledge, for which they also developed their calendar. The Mayan calendar was a science they had long developed, carrying it with them from their previous location and civilisation. Incidentally, for them, the end of the world, or the way we have known it, is calculated as December 23 2012. Thus the calendar was not merely a record of time, but also a prediction of social change.

The Surya Siddhanta is dated to back to around 490AD by Rev Ebenezer Burgess, who uses certain descriptions of planetary positions it describes. However, its knowledge and information are said to have been known as long as 13,000 years ago.

Like the Vedic culture, the Maya had a pantheon of demigods, many of which have similarities to the Vedic deities. Mayan gods like Xiuhtechutli and Xipe Totec have their counterparts in Indra and Agni. Indra, like Xiutechutli, was the rain god and guardian of the Eastern Quadrant, and Agni, similar to Xipe Totec, was the god of sacrificial fire, born in wood and the life force of trees and plants. Then there is the Vedic Ushas, the beautiful goddess of the Dawn or Sky, who is similar to the Mayan view of Venus, goddess of Dawn.

....Hymn 121 of book 10 of the Rig Veda is very similar to the description of creation as found in the Popul Vuh.

The Mayan religious rituals also included attention to and worship of the ancestors, and were often based on astrological dates, similar to the Vedic people. The Mayans were advanced astrologers and able to calculate the length of the year more precisely than the Europeans. This was no doubt based on an earlier system that the Mayans brought with them, as referred to in the Surya Siddhanta. Mayans also calculated the Venusian year at 584 days, which modern astronomers have figured to be 583.92. So their system was well established.

The art of navigation was born in the river Sindh [India] 5000 years ago. The very word "Navigation" is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH

[War Arrow]

Neither Xipe Totec nor Xiuhtecuhtli are Mayan and the latter is not a rain God by any definition, in fact he is overwhelmingly described as the God of fire and the passage of time. Furthermore he is most closely associated with the fifth cardinal point (the centre) rather than the east - the fifth cardinal point being the one at which time (as expressed in two cycles of calendar Gods, both beginning with Xiuhtecuhtli) and space intersect. Xipe Totec appears in his most archaic form as Yopi, a Tlappanec Deity from south-west Mexico, then a Oaxacan Zapotec Deity.

The Mayan elephant thing in all honesty strikes me as no more credible than Von Daniken seeing circuit boards in lost-wax method metal artefacts. As a hypothesis I cannot see any means by which it might be tested which leaves us back at square one, either you think it's likely or you don't. The Mayan Chac is essentially a variant of the similarly snouted central Mexican Tlaloc who, in more detailed variants is depicted wearing a stylised mask of snakes - one of which can be taken for a hooter. Snakes being a fairly basic fertility symbol - both Tlaloc and Chac being the rain God with similarly fairly basic fertility associations.


Tlaloc from Codex Ixtlilxochitl

Sorry. I see no convincing evidence of outside influence in SA. This is one of those arguments that could bat back and forth forever, so let's just agree to differ here. I don't want to derail the thread.

[Ishtar]

Sorry. I see no convincing evidence of outside influence in SA. This is one of those arguments that could bat back and forth forever, so let's just agree to differ here. I don't want to derail the thread.

Thanks for that War Arrow. I think Stephen Knapp does tend to see Indian gods everywhere, when they all could equally be compared to any other polytheistic culture.

However, mention of the Maya Codex suddenly reminded me of Hamlet's Mill, a book I read years ago, and I remembered that it was about how mythologists had discovered precession in the ancient myths.

So in the absence of archaeological evidence for the precession, we have to look at mythology and its metaphors for what was known astronomically in ancient times. This soon leads us to the ancient, worldwide myth of the World Tree.

The World Tree features in the mythology of the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Indians, the Sumerians, the Greeks and it was probably the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. It was also known to the Finnish in their ancient but undateable Kalevala as the pole of the Great Mill.

The main story in the Kalevala is that of the smith Ilmarinen and a Great Mill, called the Sampo (some think after the Sanskrit Skamba for pillar or pole). The mill or Sampo grinds, but it was also a metaphor for the world axis. In this myth, the mill peg that held the pole of the earth (World Tree) upright, had broken loose, and the polar axis had become tilted. Ilmarinen the smith has to push the peg back into place.

The idea of the churning of the mill, the peg breaking loose and the axis thus becoming tilted is thought among mythologists to be a metaphor for the precession of the equinoxes.

All of this has been written about in a book called Hamlets Mill by Santillana and Dechand.

To illustrate the point, here are some famous churning illustrations:

This first one is from the Maya Codex, and shows the churning of the sea of milk with a serpent by demons on one side and good spirits on the other.



This is the Indian version of the same ancient myth, from the Srimad Bhagavatham, about the churning of a sea of milk with a serpent by demons on one side and good spirits on the other.



And here was have the evil Egyptian Set and the good Horus churning away. If you look at the signs either side, you can see two that look suspiciously like Celtic crosses:



This shows that this myth involving the churning of a mill was worldwide (boats, hematite, teleology) and judging from the Finnish Kalavela version, is widely considered to be a metaphor for the precession of the equinoxes.

Unfortunately, all these illustrations don't help us to attest precession any earlier, because they're all dated around 200 CE, certainly no earlier. But we do know that they represent very old astronomical myths that were passed down in the oral tradition for generations before they ever made it into print and, as is shown, spread (somehow) all over the world.

There is a mill which grinds by
itself, swings of itself, and scat-
ters the dust a hundred versts
away. And there is a golden pole
with a golden cage on top which
is also the Nail of the North.
And there is a very wise tomcat
which climbs up and down this
pole. When he climbs down, he
sings songs; and when he climbs
up, he tells tales.

Tale of the Ostyaks of the lrtysh

[kbs2244]

Just so everyone knows. This is from the Time Line of Astrology posted a while back.

1327
Cecco D'Ascoli, astrology teacher and astrologer to Duke of Florence is burned at the stake for his teaching that Christ's story was astrological.

This could be a dangerous undertaking. I hope we all have our aliases down pat.

[Ishtar]

KB

If the Fundies take over, we will be the first to be burned at the stake!

I thought you realised that! It's not too late to bale out you know!

[Ishtar]

The last post show how the ancients’ myths, passed on orally, contained a metaphor for the precession of the equinoxes.

All three of the Mayan, Indian and Egyptian illustrations show the churning or grinding of the mill (the ring of constellations) on some sort of pole (in the Indian example, Mount Sumeru, home of their gods).

Both the Maya and the Indian use a serpent as the rope to pull on the pole, and all three have demons and devas (good spirits) pulling or grinding on either side.

This is a metaphor within a metaphor within a metaphor – that of the ongoing battle between Light and Darkness, which has been interpreted by religion as the ever present War between Good and Evil (as seen in Enoch). But what it’s really about, I believe, is magnetism - positive and negative forces acting equally to achieve balance or polarity.

So that’s mythology and metaphor for precession - always highly contentious, especially with those who read religious literature literally.

But I have some more ‘scientific’ evidence for knowledge of precession before Hipparchus (2nd century BC). And it also brings back into the play the sunwheel, or the wheel cross, as described earlier:

If you click on this link, and scroll down a bit, you will see an interesting graphic.

http://www.crichtonmiller.com/the_cross ... erpent.htm

A Greek Zodiac of 500 BC has been superimposed on a computer generated map of circumpolar stars of the same time. If this is correct, it appears to show that the Greeks knew where to place the vernal equinox at that time, — thus they knew precession four centuries before Hipparchus.

The Greek Zodiac shows the meridian lines centred on the Ecliptic pole. To the east, the vernal point is in Aries as it should be for the epoch and the celestial pole is midway between Alpha Draconis and Polaris as it should be for the epoch.

That indicates the accurate understanding by the Greeks of precession ... how could the Greeks [in 500 BC] place the vernal equinox with such accuracy?

Also, the position of the constellations are accurately placed for dawn, and the stars cannot be seen by an observer in real time. So an ancient skill of measurement was performed to achieve this remarkable prediction by the Greeks.

It is the first coil of Draconis that is crucial because it holds the Ecliptic pole. The Ecliptic Pole is that point directly above the north pole of the sun.

It is obvious that they were tracking the position of the sun at night and using Draconis to pinpoint its position in the night sky.

So how did they do it? Well, this where our wheel cross re-enters the story.

Crichton EM Miller believes that many major geometrical measurements – from astronomy and navigation to building the pyramids - were performed by the ancients with just a Celtic cross and a plumb line:

http://www.crichtonmiller.com/instruments.htm

This measurement was achieved with an instrument that has disappeared from history only to be seen as a religious symbol. The wheel cross or the cross and plumb line. This type of measurement cannot be taken with a quadrant or any other simple method ......

So I’d be really interested in views on this, especially from our resident astronomers who can often be seen standing on piles of rocks or up to their armpits in sand, waving plumb lines around!

[Forum Monk]

So that’s mythology and metaphor for precession - always highly contentious, especially with those who read religious literature literally.

Sorry Ishtar, I'm not following the leap to precession in the churning myths.

The Greek Zodiac shows the meridian lines centred on the Ecliptic pole. To the east, the vernal point is in Aries as it should be for the epoch and the celestial pole is midway between Alpha Draconis and Polaris as it should be for the epoch.

That indicates the accurate understanding by the Greeks of precession ... how could the Greeks [in 500 BC] place the vernal equinox with such accuracy?

Also, the position of the constellations are accurately placed for dawn, and the stars cannot be seen by an observer in real time. So an ancient skill of measurement was performed to achieve this remarkable prediction by the Greeks.

It is the first coil of Draconis that is crucial because it holds the Ecliptic pole. The Ecliptic Pole is that point directly above the north pole of the sun.

It is obvious that they were tracking the position of the sun at night and using Draconis to pinpoint its position in the night sky.

This measurement was achieved with an instrument that has disappeared from history only to be seen as a religious symbol. The wheel cross or the cross and plumb line. This type of measurement cannot be taken with a quadrant or any other simple method ......

So I’d be really interested in views on this, especially from our resident astronomers who can often be seen standing on piles of rocks or up to their armpits in sand, waving plumb lines around!

I would really like to see a non animated version of his supposed 2500 year old greek skymap. I have looked on the web but failed to find it. I would like to confirm the date and authenticity as well as look at it more closely before commenting.

[Ishtar]

Sorry Ishtar, I'm not following the leap to precession in the churning myths.

Try this, FM, from Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet's_Mill

Hamlet's Mill

The proposed interpretation is that the precession of the axis was discovered long before the accepted date of the Greek discovery, and that this was discovered by an ancient (perhaps around 4000 BCE) civilization of unsuspected sophistication; this civilization believed that the world passed through cyclical & Zodiacal stages based on the precession, and that myths which encode this astronomical knowledge symbolically transmit this belief, typically through a story relating to a millstone and a young protagonist - the title, "Hamlet's Mill", comes from a prototype of the Shakespearean Prince Hamlet, the Scandinavian Amlodhi of Saxo Grammaticus or Snorri Sturluson.

Careful examination of the "relics, fragments and allusions that have survived the steep attrition of the ages"[2] permit reconstruction. In particular, the book reconstructs a myth of a heavenly mill which rotates around the pole star, and grinds out the world's salt and soil, and is associated with the maelstrom. The millstone falling off its frame represents the passing of one age's pole star (symbolized by a ruler or king of some sort), and its restoration and the overthrow of the old king of authority and the empowering of the new one the establishment of a new order of the age (a new star moving into the position of pole star). The authors attempt to demonstrate the prevalence of influence of this hypothetical civilization's ideas by analysing the world's mythology (with an eye to revealing mill myths) using

"cosmographic oddments from many eras and climes...a collection of yarns from Saxo Grammaticus, Snorri Sturluson ("Amlodhi's mill" as a kenning for the sea!), Firdausi, Plato, Plutarch, the Kalevala, Mahabharata, and Gilgamesh, not to forget Africa, the Americas, and Oceania ....

The Indian, Maya and Egyptian illustrations were to their versions of the story, which, in the Indian case, is about the churning of the ocean of milk.

FM, none of this is literal. You have to see it through the mind of a poet.

[Cognito]

1327
Cecco D'Ascoli, astrology teacher and astrologer to Duke of Florence is burned at the stake for his teaching that Christ's story was astrological.

This could be a dangerous undertaking. I hope we all have our aliases down pat.

Christ's story as an astrological allegory along with the concept of the cross and four seasons reminds me of the Druid ritual of turning the cross while in a sacred circle to progress the seasons. Guess you had to be there.

For my part, I'm going with Alfred E. Neumann as an alias when the torches light up the night sky and they come my way with pitchforks.

[Ishtar]

I would really like to see a non animated version of his supposed 2500 year old greek skymap.

Right...so you're keeping a really open mind then.

Here's a non-animated, enlarged version:

[kbs2244]

Holy Cow, Ish (that's an India thing isn't it?.)
Did you read that Crichton EM Miller book that fast?
It took me a week to read and then a couple of weeks to digest.

[Ishtar]

Hi KB

I haven't read his book yet. I've just ordered it from Amazon. I just read his website to get the gist of what he is saying.

What did you think of his book?

[Forum Monk]

Here's a non-animated, enlarged version:

Just what I thought. Its not greek, much less from the 6th century BC.

Thanks.

I am open minded...but skeptical.


btw - sincerely, you did a great job finding the picture. You must be a google master.

[kbs2244]

Ish
I found his arguments believable.
I am, however, pre-disposed to believe in his premise of early, long range, open ocean, travel.
He thinks he has found the tool that made it, along with monumental constructions, possible.
He thinks the “Celtic Cross” was a real Swiss Army Knife in the right hands.
Like so many books of this “fringe” type you have to keep a real open mind.
But, he seems to have an answer to every objection.

I also feel the concept of reed boats has been woefully neglected.
(Most likely because a pile of rotten grass, if it survived very long, would not make a very exciting thesis subject.)