The Beginning of the Star Stories
At this point in the paper we have reached the realm of star stories. It is in this realm that the sacred time of 2012 is brought to light in charts of the stars. The creation stories associated with the stars as seen by the ancient civilizations were transformed into oral myths and have over the last few thousand years all but vanished as the night sky no longer holds the same sacred meaning as it once did before the “darkness comprehended not the Words of Heaven.” How the ancients were able to watch the movement of the stars is so incredible because the position of the stars moving just one degree of arc on the 360 degree precessional cycle would take 72 years and the completion of the entire cycle is approximately 25,920 years. Our modern sense of time would need to be drastically altered so we could imagine how the ancients were able to pass along to each generation the entire 26,000 year story. And how many cycles of 26,000 years had to be completed to allow the rich symbolism of the night sky to be passed down in such beautiful prose? The star field precesses as each star follows the course of its own proper motion. The constellations we see today had not formed 100,000 years ago, and they will be gone in another 100,000 years, but the Milky Way will outlast the Heavenly Hosts.
Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend began investigating the origins of human knowledge and its transmission through myth resulting in Hamlet’s Mill, a book published in 1969 that rekindled the ancient stories associated with the stars. Now, after almost forty years since its publication the number of scholars in the well known fields of astronomy, and archaeoastronomy, as well as the new disciplines of “cognitive astroarchaeology” developed by the American, Rush Allen, as inspired by the “cognitive archaeology” developed by the British, Paul Devereux have once again given these ancient stories a new life to guide humanity through the sacred time of 2012. These are the times when stars begin to reveal the apocalypse that their lights convey regarding purposeful cosmic existence in the epochs of the Rising Sun.
The astroarchaeologist Rush Allen picks up where Hamlet's Mill leaves off by showing the direct correspondence of the precession of the equinoxes and the ancient legends and star stories revealing the ancient model of the dance of the gods. Perhaps Allen is the only author who has been as exacting in explaining the meaning of the ancient star stories by offering his insights to reveal the Egyptian and Mayan cosmologies which are unequalled in their explaining the sacred truths the ancients used when reading the language of the stars. Specifically, Allen's explanation of Osiris, Horus, and Seth is especially insightful. To him Osiris is Jung's collective unconscious that carries instincts and archetypes. Osiris is Orion, the underworld being that holds up the earth and the sky (ecliptic and galactic plane). Horus the Elder is consciousness without cognition of consequence, i.e., judgment. Horus is the child of Isis and is represented by the constellations Antinous who is on Aquila (Garuda), Sol Invictus (Jesus). Seth is rational self consciousness preceding external awareness, and is the donkey in the constellation Lepus and the man in the constellation Perseus. Allen believes that after the repression of the collective unconscious by the rational self conscious, the adolescent Horus comes to his senses and acquires judgment and cognition of Osiris through the sentiment of Isis. Continuing Allen shows that the Maya legends tell precisely the same story using different personalities and similar celestial graphics in their glyphs which were derived by observing the movement of the equinoxes. Furthermore, he sees this movement of the equinoxes as a recursive spiral form of a helix, the consequence of which resulted in a process of adaptation and learning for the Maya.
Hamlet's Mill touched on the fact that the ancient cultures received from and projected onto the stars this same learning process known as the Sacred Way. The location of the solstitial cross in 2012 represents the return of the dead, whether the name of the First Father is Osiris, Hun Hunahpu or the Hindu Prajapati. All of our ancient monuments and myths are reflections of the solar celestial journey referred to in Hamlet’s Mill.
It may be no coincidence that the technology of computer science was also revealing its usefulness after cataloging all the stars thus creating a database instantly accessible by specially designed astronomy software enabling astronomers to orient their telescopes on earth or in earth orbit to automatically locate any star in the heavens. It was then only a matter of years when the wedding of astronomy software and archaeoastronomy and astroarchaeology would use this technology to compare the messages in the ancient star stories with their originating locations in the heavens.
Now it is possible to chart which stars would have been seen in the night sky at any epoch of human civilization by comparing ancient star stories and their relationship to the holistic heavens. Through this means the cognition of ancestral spirits return from the Way of the Dead. This combination of disciplines is perhaps the major contribution in the late 20th century to assure the survival of the sacredness human cultures place in the stories of creation. By this I mean that without knowing the relationship of the stars with our cognitive powers we become lost in the wilderness of space by not knowing how we were formed and developed to purposely mirror the arrangement of the stars all around us in the sky. Without the cosmic myths we fall back into the cosmic abyss. Celestial material navigation and astral spiritual navigation use the same dot-to-dot connectivity to achieve guidance on earth and in heaven. We coalesce the dots into animate forms and these into angels. These heavenly hosts have guided body and soul from the beginning of human cognition, and the evidence indicates that migrating birds have employed the same coalescence to travel from pole to pole for millions of years. The Vedic sages had Lord Vishnu place Prince Dhruva in a key position in the heavens as the Dhruva Nakshatra or the pole star as an example of his steadfastness and devotion to the sacred truths of the universe. The heavens would revolve around Prince Duruva and guide all the other stars at the moment of creation. Today we have the king’s star, Polaris, as that very astral and celestial guiding principal that marks the First Time. Over the past two millennia the camel (constellation Camelopardalis) has passed though the eye (pole star) of the needle (earth axis) and now Polaris announces the coming to the North Pole of Cepheus, known as a rich man and the king of kings. The head of the camel sits on the precessional orbit in the heavens and in the New Testament there is a verse referencing this celestial event in Matthew 19:24,
For the majority of humans today, lest I say almost all, any meaningful association between how we think in relation to which star is above us in the heavens has all but been lost to the consciousness of humanity. This is due to excess light and air pollution and dependency on expedient technologies derived from the stars such as calendars, watches and global positioning satellites. Astrology is the redacted vestige of that ancient cognition that experienced the dynamic interdependence between heaven and earth. But with astrology we are only left with the knowledge of the earth circling the sun every year with the division of that circle being reduced to twelve parts indicating a star group called an astrological house and an astronomical sign bounded in a two dimensional cyclical framework of the heavens without its holistic framework thus providing us with only an incomplete portrayal of the heavens.
A circle divided into twelve sections cannot represent the holistic relationship mankind has to the heavens as established by the formative influences of the universe to give sacred cognition to human awareness. The zodiac path has value in correlating human cognition of time and space if the real path is not hidden in the jargon of the science and its psychological paradigms do not place the creative mind in a coffin of fatalism. To become immortal and reflect the divine wisdom of the gods takes more than a circle albeit the circle of the wandering stars is a valuable redaction for it measures the days and the seasons and reveals the rational self.
But, if a spherical framework is understood our heavens can then be seen from a much grander field of view and more representative of the spherical space we are fabricated within. Astrology may guide the emotions of man, but mythology can guide ships at sea and spirits crossing the cosmic abyss as long as the Number of the Years is not lost. It is when space opens up to reveal its depths that a sense of movement in all directions can be properly conceived. It is then that an all encompassing sense of space becomes the sacred world of our ancient ancestors and divine beings such as Lord Varuna from Hindu mythology, Hunaphu from Mayan mythology, and Khephera from Egyptian mythology can speak to us directly. And let us not be blind to the Christian eschatology that was divined from the same heavenly hosts as Krishna and Vishnu and Mithras and Osiris and Horus as we contemplate the count of two millennia and twelve within its calendar, which was divined by a star announcing the return of an heroic prince.
There is a renaissance in human cognition taking place which is allowing a meaningful reference and understanding to the paths of billions of stars shinning in the heavens. What humanity is beginning to feel is a re-awakening of its sacred roots or the origins of how we were consciously fabricated to mirror every facet of the heavens we once saw. It is said we are becoming like gods and if this is so the sacred time of 2012 will bring all the star stories out of darkness and into light, again.
The Messages in the Stars
So let’s look at the star stories and see what they are telling us. The concept of a sacred universe passed down from ancient times has re-emerged on the minds of many people who are wondering how it is that the universe is part of cognition or the way we truly become aware or awakened to our identity in the universe. The vernal sun has been unchained from its annual circular path incarcerated in the zodiacal cells and is moving again in conjunction with the largest group of visible stars comprising the disk of our Milky Way galaxy also known technologically as the galactic plane an imaginary two dimensional plane of the galaxy at its own equator. The apparent solar path within the galaxy has always been the way our time relationship to the galactic plane has followed its preordained celestial architecture. Now this spiritual architecture is becoming understood by modern man in the Number of the Years. This restored consciousness of the sacred solar journey is the essence marked by Maya at the winter solstice of 2012. Then the solstice of the dead earth and the equinox of the rising sun will mark the return of creative cosmic cognition to human cultures bound for two millennia in the Valley of the Shadow of Death waiting for the Rising Vernal Sun.
The sun of our world which appears to be rising and setting on its eastern and western earthly horizons is now a part of the additional cognition and simultaneous witnessing as the winter sun begins to rise above the galactic plane. The sun is now heralding in the sacred time which our ancestors were trying to tell us about in so many ways when they embedded in their star stories and myths the celestial secrets which are being deciphered today. The winter solstice is the time of the dead on earth and the upper galactic region is heaven above. Symbolically the dead are ascending to the heavens above. At the same cosmic moment the vernal sun has begun its journey from the galactic depths as it enters the Land of the Rising Sun. The sacred time of 2012 is a time when the awareness of this alignment of the heavens is mirrored in how our thoughts are also moving, shifting, and ultimately reflecting the changes occurring with the position of the stars in the heavens and the cognition of immortality by mortals that the alignment brings.
The heavens have always moved and the movements of the sun and the moon during the day and night are approaching the sacred time of 2012 while providing a new awareness which focuses our attention on our planet’s millennial movements in the solar system, and as those movements are becoming understood in relation to an enlightenment in the heavens above known by the ancients as the reincarnating birth place of our world; then the very center of the galaxy on our horizon and the axis of the galaxy overhead have become realized, again. This reincarnated awareness is a leap out of the prison of the fixed time perpetuated by knowledge only of the number of the days in a year. Time is evolving where the earthly movement within the stars is now joined with the movement of the annual sun and the nodes of the moon for a holistic relationship aware of the heavens and how that awareness brings the universe into our realm of cognition and thus a sense of sacredness is becoming reality again as it was for the ancients who knew the Number of the Years and composed the star stories to repair the broken holistic Synchronicity of the First Time. We are beginning to conceive of ourselves as being alive in the Land of the Rising Sun as our ancestors return from the Way of the Dead.
The star stories which talk about the creation myths have been a part of all ancient civilizations. In Egypt the story is referred to as the Moment of the First Occasion. In India it’s the time when Brahma emerged out of the golden egg, a direct reference to the golden age when harmony existed throughout creation. For the Maya the myths talk about a world tree whose roots and top most branches form an axis connecting the Pleiades with the center of the galaxy through the section of the Milky Way that represents the caiman of Quetzalcoatl. In all these star stories the time we know of as 2012 had always been incorporated into the star stories even if 2012 was not mentioned numerically. The Maya incorporated the spirit of 2012 into their calendar system relating the movement of the heavens with our earthly existence because they had the sacred cognition of the Number of the Years. For all these ancient cultures the stars were seen as a part of the sacred design mirrored in true cognition as well as being the content for all the myths forming the basis of our passing on of the true witnessing. When we know why the stars move the way they do we not only know the plan of the gods but become our own cosmogonic creators in true cognition. In this way the City of God that was Teotihuacán in Mexico, recorded the Way of the Dead as the journey through the Land of the Rising Sun to the upper galactic region.
To appreciate more fully the sacred time of 2012 the relationship of this time to the creation myths is very important to understand, and more importantly to witness. The time is sacred because it defines the foundations for the construction of all creation myths and it is also the time where the movement of the stars takes on a direction which speaks of a mythical journey which we are now learning how to become participants in again. This journey of the pilgrim or hero is the ultimate sojourn to learn the secrets of life and death and immortality. This newly understood time of 2012 is sacred because it symbolizes the threshold the hero is about to cross over within our galaxy that reveals our immortal nature. Our behavior mirrors the organization of the stars in relation to the center of our “beingness”, to the center of our starry home. The center of the Milky Way galaxy in 2012 carries the winter solstice, where dying ends and rebirth begins on earth.
An ancient societal preparation of this “eternal return” is now taking place around the world to accommodate the completion of how the stars have been configured enabling our consciousness to reflect on the home within which we are born. Our ancient ancestors were able to see this cosmic dance of the stars providing shamanic proof of the unseen world of the gods and the existence of their cosmic plan. In his book, Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy, Eliade states, “it was the shaman who experienced the sacred with greater intensity than the rest…because they were chosen by gods, spirits and ancestors” (Eliade 1964, 32). Those intellectual elites of today, who regard ancient cultures as primitive, do so at the expense of ignoring the divine legacy the ancients passed down from antiquity through myth and mantras and thus deny our ability to learn how to connect with the center of creation.
End Part II
Next