The Jomon, the origins of the Japanese, and mankind's ancient past

Here's a link to a recent article from Past Horizons discussing research into the ancient history of Japan.

The article is interesting for several reasons. First, the research into the ancient cultures of any area is interesting in its own right. Additionally, the ancient history of Japan is extremely interesting, particularly the mysterious culture known as the Jomon, who left behind fascinating pottery, figurines, and stone circles. The questions surrounding the Jomon are discussed in some detail in Graham Hancock's Underworld, and they are questions with important implications for the mysteries of mankind's ancient past.

Further, the article touches on the fact that political and social prejudices in Japan have strongly influenced the conclusions drawn from evidence found in the past, and that they continue to have an impact today. This tendency is not unique to Japan, and in fact can be seen to have operated to steer the research that has been done and the conclusions that have been reached in many other places, including England and the United States, as discussed in this previous post.

While it may be relatively easy to spot the prejudices that skewed conclusions in previous generations (such as in England and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, or in Japan prior to 1950 as discussed in the above article), it is often more difficult to spot those that may be distorting the vision of academics today. For example, we have pointed out the way that a certain narrative about global warming and resource scarcity have led to new conclusions about the history of Easter Island which may be completely bogus.

The insistence by some groups that any historical narrative that threatens the idea that the Japanese have been isolated for over 20,000 years somehow diminishes their dignity or worth is also an example of another modern bias, which asserts the same thing about indigenous cultures in North and South America, or in New Zealand. Whatever we want to call this modern bias (perhaps "political correctness" is still the best term for it), it is a very narrow-minded view and one that tends towards the group politics and grievance-mongering that mars many institutions of higher learning today.

Thus, while the above article about the history of Japan may present some assertions about Japanese history as fact which may later turn out to be incorrect, it is valuable in that it reveals the topic of political and cultural pressures on scientific research and analysis, a subject that we often ignore or which we think only applies to the less-enlightened thinkers of previous centuries or decades.

We believe that the article's treatment of the Jomon culture as a somewhat primitive "hunter-gatherer culture" that was replaced by a more advanced culture "that could grow rice and forge both iron weapons and tools" may be incorrect. While the evidence that the Jomon were supplanted by a later influx of people very different from themselves may be correct, it is likely that the Jomon were not simply hunter-gatherers unable to grow crops or create advanced tools.

In fact, there is some evidence that the Jomon may be connected in some mysterious way to the ancient civilization that influenced cultures around the globe and which is discussed in the Mathisen Corollary and numerous books by other authors, including Graham Hancock.

Noteworthy in this regard is the Jomon figurine featured prominently in the Past Horizons article itself. In addition to the distinctive styling that is the hallmark of Jomon artifacts, the figurine features a very obvious example of the solar double spiral, discussed in some detail in this previous post. The direction of these spirals is no accident, and exactly parallels the double spiral found on Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico which is pictured in the post discussing this ancient design. As discussed in that post, this double spiral is also found in the facial tattoos of the Maoris of New Zealand and those found on ancient mummies from the Tarim Basin, as well as in the very ancient carvings on megalithic mounds in Ireland which have a solar function.

While primitive hunter-gatherers would be aware of the sun's path throughout the year and its association with the changing of the seasons, the solar double spiral indicates a very advanced understanding of celestial mechanics, which even conventional scholarship associates with agricultural societies.

However, the entire conventional model of mankind's ancient past -- which assumes a very long period of hunter-gatherer activity followed by the discovery of agriculture and then the development of specialization and enough leisure time to pursue astronomy and other arts and architectural achievements such as pyramids and ziggurats -- is itself built upon political and social biases and beliefs which are held as dearly by most modern academics as the Japanese biases discussed in the article.

Many of these biases are related to a commitment to Darwinism, a commitment which reaches an absolutely religious fervor in some individuals. Suggestions that Darwin was wrong are as unwelcome in most schools and universities today as suggestions of ancient cultural pluralism appear to have been in Japan in the past.

There is extensive evidence that the entire conventional model of mankind's ancient past needs to be rethought, and probably discarded.

Meteor shower tonight, and why they have calendar dates and constellation-names

Tonight (June 15) is the peak of this year's June Lyrid meteor shower, which is not necessarily the most spectacular meteor shower or the brightest, but does tend to produce up to fifteen faint meteor streaks per hour, which is nothing to sneeze at (for comparison, a list of meteor showers throughout the year can be found here).

Here's a link to a short writeup from Universe Today, which is also the source for the video above showing images of the meteors from last night.

Meteor showers take place around the same day each year because they are caused by the passage of the earth through debris in space along its orbital path. The current consensus is that this debris is most often the particles of frozen ice and other frozen elements such as ammonia that detaches from comets on their orbit of the sun. These detached particles of "comet dust" continue to orbit the sun as well, along the same general path that their "parent comet" took, except more slowly. Therefore, when the earth comes across one of these "comet trails" of debris, the particles enter the atmosphere and burn up, creating visible streaks across the sky.

Since these trails are located at specific points on the earth's orbital path, they can be seen on the specific day each year that the earth begins to pass through that location. Also, they are associated with a constellation that is visible from that point in earth's orbit where the meteors will seem to originate each year (the June Lyrids originating from a point in the constellation of the Lyre, and the spectacular August Perseids originating from the constellation of Perseus, for example).

If you think about the mental model of the earth orbiting the sun inside your dining room, which was described in this previous post on Orion, as well as in the recent interview on Red Ice Radio, you will remember that at certain points on its orbit, the walls visible at night to the observers on that earth would have different pictures on them depending on where in the room the earth was on that night. If you took two chalkboard erasers and clapped them together at a certain point in your dining room, then when the earth that was circling inside your dining room reached that cloud of eraser dust, the inhabitants on it would see a meteor shower that night when they were facing away from the sun (which is located in the center of your dining room, in the middle of the dining room table, perhaps in the form of a candle or a flaming ball of cotton).

It stands to reason that if there was a picture of a lyre on your wall in the direction that the observers would be looking when the earth entered the eraser dust cloud, then they would see that meteor shower emanating from that picture of a lyre (perhaps it is a Guinness poster on your wall that they would see, which features a harp rather than a lyre). The point from which the meteors appear to emanate is know as the "radiant" because they radiate from that location in the sky.

When the earth in your dining room passed out of the cloud and proceeded onward, it would pass through other clouds that are located along its track, but when it got back to the same point a year later, the eraser chalk dust would still be there, lingering in the air, and the inhabitants of the tiny earth in your dining room would see it originating from the region of the harp or the lyre on the wall of your dining room again.

The constellation of Lyra (the Lyre, not to be confused with the zodiacal constellation of Libra, the Scales) contains the brilliant star Vega, the fifth brightest in the sky and the first star ever photographed (in 1850), according to H.A. Rey (38). It is part of the easily-located "Summer Triangle" visible high in the summer sky in the northern hemisphere during the months May to October or so, and which consists of the stars Vega, Deneb (in the Swan) and Altair (in the Eagle). Both the Swan and the Eagle are in the Milky Way. Deneb can be found using a line from the back two stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper as "pointers," rather than the front two stars of the bowl (which are used as pointers to the North Star, Polaris).

Although the moon is full again and will be doing its best to drown out the stars in the night sky around it, try checking out the June Lyrid meteor shower tonight.

More evidence that ancient myth encodes advanced knowledge

In the previous post, we noted that Aristotle appears to have had a very different conception of myth than is common today. It is a well-attested fact of history that Aristotle learned from Plato, and the authors of Hamlet's Mill spend some time delving into Plato's texts to demonstrate that what we find there reveals the same sort of "science" disguised as myth that Aristotle understood myth to contain.

In Chapter XII of their work, Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend include a lengthy quotation from the Phaedo, focusing particularly on the description of "the earth" as seen from above, and the strange rivers which Socrates describes going around and through the earth in that dialogue. These rivers are Okeanos (Ocean), Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, Cocytus, and Styx.

In an impressive display of literary detective work, de Santillana and von Dechend reveal that the geography in the Socrates account corresponds not with earthly geography but with that of the heavens.

Socrates begins his description of "the true earth" with an analogy of the ocean, saying those who lived on the bottom of it would imagine that they inhabited the true earth, but if one could ever ascend to the surface and put his head out into the air, he would see a purer world above, not as prone to the corrosion of the sea-brine and the slime and mire of the watery world. In the same way, he says, we are living in a world less pure than the "true" world as seen by one who could ascend and view it from the purer ether that is above the air and surpasses it in the same degree that air surpasses seawater.

From there, looking down, we would see the "true earth" that would resemble "those balls which are made of twelve pieces of leather, variegated, a patchwork of colors, of which the colors that we know here -- those that our painters use -- are samples, as it were." Right away, the authors of Hamlet's Mill declare, we might suspect that we are talking about the heavens above, if we are familiar with the night sky and the division of the heavens into twelve segments along the ecliptic band (187), and they note that those who dogmatically insist that this cannot be correct might be advised to look closer.

Socrates then proceeds to describe the mythical rivers, first saying that they all flow together into the yawning void of Tartarus -- the biggest of all the chasms of the earth, he says, and the one that is bored right through the earth.

Now into this chasm all the rivers flow together, and then they all flow back out again; and their natures are determined by the sort of earth through which they flow. The reason why all these streams flow out of here and flow in is this, that this fluid has no bottom or resting place: it simply pulsates and surges upwards and downwards, and the air and the wind round about it does the same; they follow with it, whenever it rushes to the far side of the earth, and again whenever it rushes back to this side, and as the breath that men breathe is always exhaled and inhaled in succession, so the wind pulsates in unison with the fluid, creating terrible, unimaginable blasts as it enters and as it comes out. (quoted in Hamlet's Mill, 183).

Socrates then goes on to briefly describe special rivers that he "would mention in particular." First is the largest, "which flows all round in a circle furthest from the centre" -- Okeanos or Oceanus, which Hesiod (probably sometime between 750 BC and 650 BC) said "winds about the earth and sea's wide back" with "nine silver-swirling streams" and then "falls into the main" (from Theogony, 790ff, quoted in Hamlet's Mill, 199). After that, he describes Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, Styx, and Cocytus.

De Santillana and von Dechend then begin to muster evidence that Socrates (or Plato) is relating in this passage something more than a set of mythological rivers grounded only in fable (or "so much poetic nonsense," as they say on page 186). First they note that the river Okeanos described by Socrates and Hesiod as "deep-flowing," "flowing-back-on-itself," "untiring," "placidly flowing," and "without billows" may seem to describe an earthly ocean, but according to German mythologist E.H. von Berger (1836 - 1904) the adjectives used "suggest silence, regularity, depth, stillness, rotation -- what belongs really to the starry heaven" (190).

Then they note that the Orphic hymn 83 (probably penned in the first centuries AD) calls Oceanus the "ruler of the pole," a blatantly celestial description (191). Further, they point out that Numenius of Apamea (second century AD, a neopythagorean and an important exegete of Plato) declared that "the other world rivers and Tartaros itself are the 'region of planets'" (188).

Finally, they call upon the third manuscript of the anonymous Vatican Mythographer, who probably wrote between the ninth and eleventh centuries AD, explained that the Red River (Phlegethon or Pyriphlegethon) was meant "by certain writers" to be the exact counterpart of the circle of Mars in the skies." De Santillana and von Dechend exclaim, "So Numenius was not wrong after all. The rivers are planetary" (196).

They also note that Oceanus was personified as a god or a Titan (pictured above, from a mosaic at Petra), and one who was curiously above the commands of Zeus, able to remain aloof even when Zeus commanded the presence of all the other gods. He maintains the characteristics of "remoteness and silence" in the words of de Santillana and von Dechend (191), just like the silent heavens themselves.

We can note a few other points from the ancient texts, such as the fact that Hesiod describes the river Oceanus as "winding about the earth and the sea's wide back" -- clearly indicating that Oceanus is different than the sea, as it winds around both the earth and the wide back of the earthly sea.

Further, we can note that Oceanus is described by Socrates as the river that flows "in a circle furthest from the centre" -- perhaps referring to the planetary course that is furthest from the sun. Note that the number of the rivers corresponds to the number of the visible planets known to the ancients -- Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, Styx and Cocytus corresponding perhaps from furthest to closest to Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. De Santillana and von Dechend present convincing evidence that the fiery river Pyriphlegethon (called simply Phlegethon by later authors) corresponds to the red planet Mars. Even if the rivers are called by different names later (sometimes Lethe is substituted for Oceanus, for instance), the number of the rivers flowing through the world of the dead remains the same as the number of visible planets.

This correspondence indicates that the realm of the dead where these rivers flow may well be the heavens, which is consistent with the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians inscribed in the Pyramid Texts (discussed here), in which the souls of the pharaohs are said to abide among the Imperishable Stars, and to other widespread ancient beliefs cited in Hamlet's Mill that the spirits of the dead travel through the Milky Way.

It also provides another piece of evidence that the myths of the ancients, which we may be tempted to dismiss as primitive notions left over from those who knew relatively little about the earth and the solar system, actually encode fairly sophisticated, even scientific knowledge. In fact, it provides another window on the possibility that very ancient myths were actually the carriers of encoded scientific knowledge, knowledge that in many ways surpassed even the achievements of the great Greek pioneers of scientific knowledge. This possibility raises the question of the identity of this ancient civilization that possessed and encoded ancient knowledge of this nature. (If these particular pieces of evidence are not enough to be convincing, consider them in conjunction with the data points discussed in this and this previous blog post).

In the Phaedo, Plato has recorded an example in which Socrates himself tells a tale which, like other ancient myths, seems fantastical and completely unbelievable on the face of it, but which on closer inspection contains metaphorical allusions to observations that would fall within the realm of what we today would classify as science, just as de Santillana and von Dechend allege the other myths about the gods do as well.

Aristotle's "ancient treasure"

In previous posts (see for instance here, here, and here), we discussed the concept raised by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill that the gods were derived from the planets, rather than the planets being named after the gods, and that the myths and legends handed down to us from our ancient ancestors encode the motions of the planets against the backdrop of the stars.

As de Santillana and von Dechend explain:

[. . .] what emerges here lifts the veil of a fundamental archaic design. The real actors on the stage of the universe are very few, if their adventures are many. The most "ancient treasure" -- in Aristotle's word -- that was left to us by our predecessors of the High and Far-Off Times was the idea that the gods are really stars, and that there are no others. The forces reside in the starry heavens, and all the stories, characters and adventures narrated by mythology concentrate on the active powers among the stars, who are the planets. A prodigious assignment it may seem for those few planets to account for all those stories and also to run the affairs of the whole universe. What, abstractly, might be for modern men the various motions of those pointers over the dial became, in times without writing, where all was entrusted to images and memory, the Great Game played over the aeons, a never-ending tale of positions and relations, starting from an assigned Time Zero, a complex web of encounters, drama, mating and conflict. 177.

We have cited the "ancient treasure" of Aristotle referenced above once previously, in the post discussing the activities of Mars and Venus and the Pleiades. The phrase comes from the last paragraph in Part 8 of Book XII of Aristotle's Metaphysics, in which Aristotle appears to make a somewhat veiled reference to the very concept that de Santillana and von Dechend outline above.

There, Aristotle says:

Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to their posterity a tradition, in the form of a myth, that these bodies are gods, and that the divine encloses the whole of nature. The rest of the tradition has been added later in mythical form with a view to the persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian expediency; they say these gods are in the form of men or like some of the other animals, and they say other things consequent on and similar to these which we have mentioned. But if one were to separate the first point from these additions and take it alone-that they thought the first substances to be gods, one must regard this as an inspired utterance, and reflect that, while probably each art and each science has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished, these opinions, with others, have been preserved until the present like relics of the ancient treasure. Only thus far, then, is the opinion of our ancestors and of our earliest predecessors clear to us.

This is a very curious and important passage. Aristotle has already spent a great deal of time enumerating arguments about the characteristics of various heavenly phenomena, refuting various opinions using reason and logic (such as various theories about the Milky Way, and why they cannot be correct), and putting forward scientific explanations for what we see from earth.

Now in this passage he voices the opinion that "our forefathers in the most remote ages" thought that the planets were gods (by "these bodies" he is referring to the five visible planets and the sun and moon, which he discussed in the preceding paragraphs). He then reflects that the stories about the gods somehow encapsulate an "art and a science" which was developed to a very advanced state in the distant past and then perished, and that the myths we have today are the remnants of what they knew -- "like relics of the ancient treasure."

This opinion is almost the opposite of what we are generally taught in school today (including in the halls of "higher education"). The general opinion of myth is that it is a sort of primitive understanding of the world around us, a record the gropings of the pre-scientific human mind. What Aristotle suggests in the passage above is that the myths in fact contain the relics of an ancient and forgotten science, a science that developed "as far as possible and then perished," leaving a corpus of encoded knowledge that demonstrates how much our most remote human predecessors actually achieved.

If we examine the evidence objectively, it appears that Aristotle's view may in fact be the correct one. We have noted in previous posts the very widespread presence of precessional numbers in myths around the world, which encode a very precise understanding of the motion of precession -- more precise than anything that was understood in Aristotle's day, or that was understood by later astronomers including Hipparchus (190 BC - 120 BC or 126 BC) and Ptolemy (AD 90 - AD 168). These precise numerical codes appear to have been present in very ancient myths, including the myths of Osiris and Set which are found in the Pyramid Texts dating to before 2300 BC, myths which are probably much older than the Pyramid Texts as well.

The idea that our most ancient forefathers may have been far more advanced than the Greeks and Romans who came thousands of years later is quite startling to those raised on the conventional timeline and who have heard the conventional assumptions repeated from the time they were in the earliest grades of school. However, it is worth considering very carefully -- especially when it is propounded by a thinker of the stature of Aristotle.

Museums that influenced, continued: the 1979 exhibit of the treasures of Tutankhamun

In 1979 the exhibit of the treasures of the tomb of King Tutankhamun came to San Francisco's De Young Museum, at the end of a three-year tour of the United States.

I was nine or ten years old, and already completely enthralled by ancient Egypt (I had already been corrected for using up all the masking tape in my classroom to make mummies out of sticks in second or third grade a couple of years before). My parents took me to see the exhibit at the De Young museum, waiting for hours in an enormous line that snaked back and forth across the grounds leading up to the building where Tutankhamun's treasures were displayed.

The exhibit was of course magnificent, with room after room of statues, canopic jars, thrones, animals, and jewelry. The centerpiece of the exhibit was the golden funerary mask, one of the most exquisite relics of the ancient world in existence, and as stunning today as it must have been on the day it was sealed in the tomb over 3,300 years ago.

The mask was placed over the head and shoulders of the mummy itself, which was then placed inside three successive nested sarcophagi. This mask did not accompany the recent return of the exhibit to the United States in 2005.

A short news clip describing the exhibit from 1976 (when it was in Washington DC, prior to making its way across the country) can be found on YouTube, here.

Martin Doutré believes that the numbers of the stripes on the nemes headdress of the golden mask contain astronomical and calendrical significance. As he explains in this article from his website, the mask contains counts of 13, 14, and 26 stripes along the important portions of the nemes, some of them in blue lapis lazuli, some of them in gold, and one of them an ornate central gold band surmounted by the vulture and cobra.

Mr. Doutré puts forward some fascinating arguments that these numbers represent the number of 28-day months in a raw year of 364 days (13 months of 28 days equals 364), the number of days in a biweekly period (14), and the number of such biweekly periods in a 364-day year (26 biweekly periods of 14 days equals 364). He also notes that the total number of gold bands, 56, is the same number of post holes in the Aubrey Circle at Stonehenge, and relates to the calculation of Sabbatical Years, and that the total number of blue bands, 55, relates to the diameter of Silbury Hill and when multiplied by ten pi yields the precessional number 1728 (which is 24 times 72).

He also points out that the vulture atop the mask is not actually a vulture but a serpent with a vulture's head, which may have connections to the feathered serpents appearing frequently in ancient Central American statuary and mythology. His assertion that the ornate gold band associated with the two serpents may have equinoctial significance certainly rings true given the discussion of the symbology of the double solar spiral in this previous post, as well as the serpentine motion of the sun shown in the video linked in the third-to-last paragraph of this post.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of Mr. Doutré's argument is the assertion that the number of lines in the mask of King Tut may have a connection to the lines formerly found in the facial mokos of the Maori of Aotearoa New Zealand. In the post, he notes that these mokos very often had dark curving lines along the forehead of the subject which appear to be very similar in design to the lines of the nemes headdress. In fact, he also points out that many Maori mokos also feature a beautiful fleur-de-lys pattern in the middle of the forehead dividing the lines on the left and the right, which may be related to the double-serpents on the Tutankhamun mask. This insight is rather remarkable, and can be confirmed by a close examination of the paintings of actual Maori elders made during previous centuries.

Mr. Doutré also notes that there are a different number of dark blue stripes in the forehead portion of the Tutankhamun nemes on either side of the twin serpents -- five blue stripes on our left side if we are facing the mask, and four on the right. This fact can be perceived (barely) in the two screen shots from two YouTube videos of the Tutankhamun mask itself, below:

























Above, the left side of the mask (as we face it) has five blue stripes of lapis lazuli above the forehead (numbered). For the original video of this, see here.

Below, the right side of the mask (as we face it) has four blue stripes of lapis lazuli above the forehead (numbered). For the original video of this, see here.

























Mr. Doutré points out that the Maori mokos of the past often duplicated this imbalance in lines, and illustrates his point with a painting of a Maori man by English explorer and painter George French Angas (1822 - 1886). He notes that the moko in this painting has 13 dark lines and 14 lighter (non-tattooed) lines, which appear to correspond to the significant numbers found in the Tutankhamun mask, and to point to the same celestial significance. He also notes that the moko in the painting clearly has an additional dark band on one side of the forehead that is absent on the other side, just like the mask of Tutankhamun.

It must be pointed out that by no means did all mokos adhere to this pattern -- mokos were "as personal" to their owners "as a signature today," according to this web page discussing the portraits of Maori men and women done by Gottfried Lindauer (1839 - 1926). Many of the portraits he did, which can be seen online at this website (which also includes an excellent "zoom" feature allowing you to zoom in with high resolution onto the portraits), have the same number of tattooed bands on either side of the forehead (most often four on the right and four on the left). However, some do appear to have an uneven number, such as the portrait of Tamati Waka Nene (#48 of 69 in the gallery) and the portrait of Ratene Hihitawa (#40 of 69 in the gallery; this one is more difficult to ascertain whether the bands on either side of the forehead are different in number or not). Whatever the details of their mokos (and some do not have facial tattoos at all), all of the portraits are deeply moving for the way they convey the powerful dignity of their subjects.

Some might argue that the large number of mokos in that gallery that have symmetrical numbers of bands on the forehead disproves Mr. Doutré's argument, but it is certainly possible that by the late 1800s some elements of the moko that were present previously were no longer emphasized. Certainly the central pattern resembling a fleur-de-lys or caduceus is present on some mokos and not on others, and appears to have been ignored for most of the mokos, but this does not diminish the clear parallels with the twin serpents atop the Tutankhamun mask for the mokos in which it is in fact present.

Further, this observation of Mr. Doutré is by no means the only evidence he has found of some contact between the Maoris and the descendents of a very ancient civilization -- see some of the discussion in this previous post, for example. One possible source of this contact might have been the descendents of an ancient civilization that visited New Zealand in the centuries before Christ and stayed there until the Polynesian seafarers arrived in the 1200s AD; the recently-discovered skull of the Ruamahanga Woman represents another very strong piece of evidence in favor of that possibility. Certainly the Maori have many cultural characteristics in common with the Polynesian cultures elsewhere in the Pacific, but they also have other cultural characteristics that are completely unique, and may represent some contact with another culture that is overlooked by conventional history.

All these fascinating possibilities were completely unknown to me when I visited the treasures of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1979, but that visit made a lasting impression on me, and I am thankful to this day for the memory of it.

Mars, Venus, and the Pleiades

Right now, early in the morning, there is a planetary conjunction taking place, the implications of which are truly remarkable and even breathtaking.

Very low in the sky, about an hour before sunrise, Venus is within five degrees of the Pleiades, and Mars is eight degrees above and to the right of Venus (for observers in the northern hemisphere).

Because the planets all travel along the ecliptic path (the same path that the sun travels as well), the rising points of Mars and Venus will be in roughly the same area of the eastern horizon from which the sun will rise an hour later. Specifically, Mars will rise at 4:11 am on June 11 at an azimuth of 67^o for observers at latitude 35^o north. Venus will rise at 4:45 am on June 11 at an azimuth of 65^o for observers at latitude 35^o north.

Like Orion, the Pleiades are an extremely important group of stars (they are not, strictly speaking, a constellation), and one that is associated in our epoch with winter, because that is when they can be found high in the night sky. However, right now they rise above the eastern horizon very early in the morning before being blotted out by the sunrise. On June 11, the Pleiades rise at about 4:34 am in the same vicinity as the planets just mentioned (the Pleiades are located on the ecliptic, and so they are often visited by planets).

The Pleiades are incredibly beautiful and unforgettable. They are located in the constellation Taurus, and appear to the naked eye as a tiny sparkling cloud studded with six blue stars. As can be seen in the NASA image above, there are actually many more than six stars in the Pleiades cluster, and in fact they are associated with the seven daughters of the titan Atlas and the nymph Pleione (hence they are sometimes called "the Seven Sisters"). Their names are Maia, Electra, Celaeno, Taygeta, Merope, Alcyone, and Sterope.

But it gets better . . .

The fact that Venus and Mars are close to one another in the pre-dawn sky and close to the Pleiades recalls a famous myth recounted in the Odyssey during Odysseus' visit to Phaeacia, in the court of king Alcinous. There, we are told, the bard Demodocus sings for the assembled guests the "irresistable song" of "The Love of Ares and Aphrodite Crowned with Flowers."

Ares, of course, is the Greek name for Mars, while Aphrodite corresponds to Venus. In Hamlet's Mill, as we have already seen, the scholars Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend put forward the startling argument that the stars were not named after the gods, but rather that the gods were named after the stars (see this previous post). The planets are the active powers among the heavenly objects, moving among the background of the fixed stars and constellations. The ancient people encoded and preserved their knowledge of these movements in the myths that they wrote, myths so "irresistable" that they have in fact survived to this day and are still fairly well known many thousands of years later.

In Chapter 11 of their far-ranging treatise, de Santillana and von Dechend point to a perceptive ancient writer who explained this very thesis almost two thousand years ago:

Lucian of Samosata, that most delightful writer of antiquity, the inventor of modern "science fiction," who knew how to be light and ironic on serious subjects without frivolity, and was fully aware of the "ancient treasure," remarked once that the ludicrous story of Hephaistos the Lame surprising his wife Aphrodite in bed with Mars, and pinning down the couple with a net to exhibit their shame to the other gods, was not an idle fancy, but must have referred to a conjunction of Mars and Venus, and it is fair to add, a conjunction in the Pleiades.

This little comedy may serve to show the design, which turns out to be constant: the constellations were seen as the setting, or the dominating influences, or even only the garments at the appointed time by the Powers in various disguises on their way through their heavenly adventures. 177.

This revelation is stunning, and it is completely defensible from the myth itself, as we shall see in a moment. It is all the more stunning in that this very conjunction is taking place right now! Why this is not front-page news is either a testament to the rather low opinion we have of the scientific knowledge our very ancient predecessors, or to the fact that the true meaning of these encoded stories have always been jealously guarded from the masses, who were not intended to understand them.

Let's examine the story of Aphrodite, Ares and Hephaistos in greater detail, using the superlative translation of the late Professor Robert Fagles:

now the bard struck up an irresistible song:
The Love of Ares and Aphrodite Crowned with Flowers . . .
how the two had first made love in Hephaestus' mansion,
all in secret. Ares had showered her with gifts
and showered Hephaestus' marriage bed with shame
but a messenger ran to tell the god of fire --
Helios, lord of the sun, who'd spied the couple
lost in each other's arms and making love.
Hephaestus, hearing the heart-wounding story,
bustled toward his forge, brooding on his revenge --
planted the huge anvil on its block and beat out chains,
not to be slipped or broken, all to pin the lovers on the spot.
This snare the Firegod forged, ablaze with his rage at War,
then limped to the room where the bed of love stood firm
and round the posts he poured the chains in a sweeping net
with streams of others flowing down from the roofbeam,
gossamer-fine as spider webs no man could see,
not even a blissful god -- VIII.301-318

Homer goes on to explain that, having set the trap, Hephaestus pretended to head off on a business trip, in order to give his wife and the god of war the opportunity to fall into it. Sure enough, no sooner has he departed than Ares strides in, grasps her hand, and leads her off to bed, where they eventually fall asleep. The cunning chains then descend over them, and the Sungod, who has been keeping watch for Hephaestus, sees the two, and notifies the angry husband. Hephaestus comes limping in and begins to roar with anger and sorrow, summoning all the immortals, who gather around and begin to laugh at the hapless couple, pinned down by the net in their bed of love.

Now that we have been alerted to them, the celestial elements of the story could not be more clear -- note the important role played by the sun, who is twice mentioned as the one who spies Venus and Mars as they are lingering together. Note that Venus (and Mercury) make their orbits closer to the sun than does earth, so that in order to see them from earth one must be looking generally towards the sun. That's why they are either seen around sunrise or sunset, and not long before or after the rising or setting sun (Venus for this reason is alternately the Morning Star and the Evening Star). They will never be seen arcing across the night sky -- if we were to spot one of them high in the sky at midnight (when we are facing away from the sun) that would mean they were suddenly orbiting the sun outside of earth's orbit, but because that will never happen we will never see them out there. Thus, to have a conjunction in or near the Pleiades, the Pleiades themselves must be located near the horizon around sunrise or sunset -- and from the context of the bard's song, we can see that we are talking about a sunrise, when Helios comes upon the two lovers.

Some of the jests made by the other immortals as they laugh at Ares and Aphrodite in their predicament point out how the speedy god Ares has been caught by the slow, crippled god Hephaestus: no doubt a reference to the relative speed of orbit of Ares (the closest of the planets that is outside of earth's orbit, and hence the fastest of the planets that cross the entire night sky) and Hephaestus, whom de Santillana and von Dechend elsewhere explain (with arguments that go far beyond the scope of a single blog post, and almost beyond the scope of a single book) is associated in a mysterious way with Kronos-Saturn (as is Prometheus), the furthest of the visible planets beyond earth and one with a much slower orbit (for more on the importance of Saturn, see this post).

The implications of this little-understood connection between myth and science are very deep. This discussion is almost certainly related to the subject we discussed in the previous post entitled "God and the gods."

This very myth is now being played out in the early morning sky (while Venus and Mars are not precisely within the Pleiades right now, they are close enough to illustrate the story). Don't miss it!

note: there are several websites that will show you the relative locations of the planets in the morning -- Venus lowest, Mars above and to the right (for viewers in the northern hemisphere), and Jupiter above and right of that (all arranged along the ecliptic path). This website includes a video that shows their positions before dawn.

Museums that influenced me growing up: Rosicrucian Egyptian Oriental Museum of San Jose

When I was growing up, my dad used to take me to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Oriental Museum in San Jose, California. I'm sure the first time we went there I was not more than 8 or 9 years old, and possibly younger than that.

The collection was first opened to the public in 1927 and outgrew its location in the administration building of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) in 1932. In addition to the collection and gardens, the museum is home to one of the earliest (if not the earliest) planetariums west of the Mississippi River, which still has fascinating and educational shows for visitors.

Red Ice Creations has a 30-minute video tour of the museum which they filmed in 2009 located on their website here (must be a member to view the video). The video touches on some of the history of the American order of Rosicrucians.

As a child growing up, however, I perceived very little about the Rosicrucians themselves: to me, the Rosicrucian Museum was the "mummy museum." For me, and probably for most children visiting the museum, the mummies were the highlight of the trip.

And why not? In the very worthwhile lecture linked in this previous post, professor Victor Maier explains that children are fascinated by his discussion of the mummies of the Tarim Basin; it's only when he explains that they are not real mummies but desiccated corpses that they all begin to cry. But the Rosicrucian Museum of San Jose has real mummies, not desiccated corpses, and what mummies! In addition to the human mummies, there are also mummified cats and baboons, but the human mummies of course are the star attraction.


















The Rosicrucian Museum also has an impressive replica of an actual rock-cut tomb from Beni Hasan, Egypt, complete with wall paintings depicting the judgment in the Hall of Two Truths, in which the heart of the deceased is weighed against the feather of Maat in the presence of Thoth, while the demon Amut looks on in hopes of devouring the heart and destroying the soul forever. After successfully passing this judgement, the soul of the deceased is led by Horus into the presence of Osiris.

The connection of the legend of Osiris and Horus with the celestial phenomena of precession is discussed at length in the Mathisen Corollary; for some examination of those connections, see this previous blog post.

The museum also has a wonderful bookstore which I remember fondly from my earliest visits. I remember asking to buy a postcard depicting the mummy of Ramses II and being surprised that my parents would actually buy such a treasure for me (I was probably in third grade at the time). I also remember fondly a miniature nested mummy case which contained a hidden magnet and allowed you to do a magic trick by which you could strike the top of the case to reverse the polarity and make the mummy case repel the nested sarcophagus so that it would not lie still inside!

The Rosicrucian Egyptian Oriental Museum is a venerable fixture in the San Francisco Bay Area and well worth a visit, especially if you have children. Of course, if you take them there too often, you never know what lifelong repercussions it may have!