Re: Sky & Telescope article

[Dennis <ixohoxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan Moonhawk Alford wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Dennis wrote:
> 
> > Dan Moonhawk Alford wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > In the last part of the last degree? People must've already been singing
> > > "This is the dawning of the Age o-of Pi-isces" in the streets! ;-)
> >
> >       Or,
> >
> >       "What rough beast, his hour come round at last,
> >       "Slouches towards Eridu to be born?"
> >
> > Incidentally.  Scholars, over the last ten years, have
> > discovered that the Mithraic cult of the middle to late
> > Roman empire originated from the discovery that the sky
> > was going from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Pisces.
> 
> Slight problem with that.
> 
> Astrologically, there was the Age of Taurus (~4-2000 BCE), then Aries
> (~2000-1 BCE), then Pisces (~1-2000 CE), and we're now on the cusp of
> Aquarius ~2-4000 CE).

	But I'm sure I've got the Mithraic cult placed
properly in time.  From "H.G. Wells' Pocket History of
the World", pp. 174-5: "The rise of the Roman Empire
opened the western European world to this growing cult
[Serapis-Isis cult]...  But there were many rivals to
the Serapis-Isis religion.  Prominent among these was
Mithraism. This was a religion of Persian origin, and
it centered upon some now forgotten mysteries about
Mithras' sacrificing a sacred and benevolent bull...
The bull upon the Mithraic monuments always bleeds
copiously from a wound in its side, and from this blood
springs new life."  That was written in 1941, long
before the new theory. 
 
> That would be Age of Taurus, then, when Egyptians, Minoans and others
> following astrology revered the bull; the Hebrew people moved away from
> (Taurus) bull worship to (Aries) ram/lamb slaughter at the cusp of
> Taurus/Aries. 

	My references definitely place Mithraism during the
Roman Empire

> All ancient civilizations following
> astrology, which Jung called "the psychology of the ancients," brought
> their religious practices into conformance with the current Age.

	But there are two very important exceptions - Judaism
and Christianity.  The Jews had to do some contortions
to adapt their one invisible God to traditional
cosmology.  Seven was a sacred number to ancient
cultures because the Babylonians had discovered that
one could predict the motions of the sun, the moon, and
the five visible planets by assuming that they were
mounted on crystal celestial spheres with differing
rate of rotation.  The Jews brought this to their way
of thinking by saying that God created the world in
seven days; the stars were merely lights in the sky,
instead of gods.  Twelve was sacred because of the
twelve tribes of Israel, not because there are about
twelve lunar cycles per solar cycle.  

	Were it not for all that, I'm not sure what would be
common belief now.  Westerners don't believe in the
four classical elements - earth, water, fire, and air -
but I've heard an Indian yoga teacher mention earth,
water, air, fire -- and ether!  (The Easterners don't
think that "nature abhors a vacuum".)  Astrology
probably would have been destroyed not by religion but
by science.

Dennis