Interbane wrote:Your ideas are a bit esoteric, and my criticisms are of the connections that are perceived.

You are right that these ideas are esoteric, in that they are new and unknown and touch on the possibility of a rational cosmic religion. That reasonably makes these ideas suspect, but it does not make them wrong. I suspect that there was considerable esoteric cosmic wisdom in the ancient world, including in relation to precession, which was put into the Bible in popular form, as argued by Tom Harpur in The Pagan Christ. My aim is partly to reconstruct this esoteric wisdom present in fragmented code in the Bible. Eastern religion also has a precessional framework, notably the Hindu use of the period 2160 years and its myth of churning the milky ocean. The connections perceived are intended more as a meaningful parable than a precise scientific argument, given that Christ and Satan are hardly precise concepts or entities. Even with this imprecision, the parallels with Venus and the gas giant planets seem to me to provide a useful picture of the power balance between Christ and Satan.

These coincidences exist, sure, but it is the human mind that instills any meaning.

Yes, the human mind finds meaning, but why is this illegitimate?The coincidence with the role of Jesus, who sought to present a universal perspective in a human mind, is intended as a way to find our solar system humanly meaningful. You would debate this, but I see it not so much as instilling meaning into the cosmos as drawing out an implicit meaning already inherent in the cosmic complexity of human evolution. Surely if we can construct a narrative that explains our place in the universe in terms of a meaningful direction and purpose for our lives, and if this has some objective resonance, this is a good thing? My hypothesis entails that deep religious thought arises from a profound cosmic intuition.

Religion tries to explain why and how we belong here, so any sound intuition it has should be based on underlying cosmic truths. One of my favourite theologians, Wolfhart Pannenberg, defends the Christian idea of the trinity by saying relationship is intrinsic to the human concept of truth. Regarding Jesus and God, he says the father is not a father without the son and vice versa, so a dynamic connection is built into the cosmology. This approach contrasts with scientific objectivity which excludes such posited relationships as merely subjective.

Cosmos by Sagan is one of my favorite books, and does well to describe the elegance of the universe without adding the human construct of deeper meaning.

Mainstream astronomy is very arid with its exclusion of the human dimension. I am simply trying to look at the actual cosmos of which we are part in order to articulate how the human mind can be in harmony with it. In a sense, it is trying to bring up to date Milton's cosmology of a universe in which divine meaning was an intrinsic reality. This wholistic perspective requires what you call 'the human construct of deeper meaning' as a grounding axiom. This construct is justified by the claim that language can reflect how we relate to our cosmic context, noting that this statement of the role of language is outside the bounds of conventional scientific method.

RT: "Perhaps it is your own delusions about the validity of the modern world view which prevent you from giving credence to what I say!"What is this modern world view that I may examine it more closely? I question everything, including myself and my ego. If I'm deluded, please, point it out to me!

I was teasing you there Interbane for calling my ideas meaningless. By the modern world view I mean the assumption that there is no meaning outside scientific rationality. This is a powerful belief, but it excludes the religious framework which starts from asking how the individual is connected to his or her numinous context. Within its own context the scientific outlook is not deluded, but I think it unfairly excludes spiritual philosophy which has its own validity and rigor.

RT: "The problem with this mystical approach is that it lacks empirical correlation and validation, which is precisely what I am trying to develop, looking at weak cosmic patterns which nonetheless underpin all terrestrial reality, emerging into human consciousness in intuitive mythic form."I'm not against propositions that aren't empirically testable, but they must survive critical examination. My problem is that there is much proposed which is not only not testable, but also unnecessary in our understanding of reality. Again I'd use the analogy that I could add an "A" to the end of every word, but why? I'm sure many brilliant minds could come up with plausible correlations between the stars, celestial orbits, and concepts from books such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra that have a solid conceptual footing. Most of human thinking is devoted to creating false ideas or rationalizing them, and by that very rationalization it is difficult to see that they are false.

Parsimony can be taken to dogmatic extremes. The idea that the myths of Christ and Satan are imbedded in cosmic structures is veryA differentA fromA addingA AA toA everyA wordA. I consider this cosmic approach as a way to bridge science and religion.

Most times when I read your ideas I feel an ulterior motive to support religion. I still consider your ideas deeply and offer my thoughts, against an instinct to attack the religious aspects. The problem isn't so much that there is religious underpinning, it's that there seems to be an ulterior motive. I apologize for being blunt.

Much appreciated Interbane, thank you. Yes, I do approach thought from a religious framework, but I don't understand how this would constitute an ulterior motive as I am trying to be transparent in my explanations.

Robert Tulip wrote:
The connection with Satan, also known as Lucifer, is that the ancients knew Venus in its appearance as the morning star as Lucifer, . . .

Robert, I am sympathetic to your approach but differ in interpretation. If I am not mistaken, the planet Venus represents Satan because it passes through phases, that is, darkens against man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus

The cosmic correspondent of Christ -- again, in my opinion -- is the Great Man whose head is Aries and whose feet are Pisces.

http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/starry/astrology.html

Frank 013 wrote: In short Satan was an agent of god and even when seemingly acting as an independent entity it was largely assumed that god was working behind the scenes because it was impossible for the Satan to work against god.

Paradise Lost is not to everyone's taste, but I'm glad it got this discussion going. In the epic, Milton's Satan is still presented as constrained by God, but with the important though problematic element of free will thrown in. Satan still can't do anything without God allowing it, but Milton insists his actions are free. Therefore Satan (and Adam and Eve) are responsible for their acts against God or goodness. So there is not 100% constraint on the characters' actions; it's just that their actions are 100% futile against the all-knowing and all-powerful. God is always acting behind the scenes in Paradise Lost, and all his maneuverings have taken into account, in advance, the free-will choices of Satan and A & E, since he is omniscient. But this is where the mind boggles at Milton's insistence that omniscience does not equal predetermination. Seems to me that either the choices weren't free after all, or omniscience over agents with free will is completely impossible.

Regarding the Satan-as-hero theme, the preference of Satan as hero over the years can be seen simply in terms of epics needing someone to fulfill the hero role. Who else but Satan could possibly be a candidate? This is not saying that Satan acts virtuously, of course, as true epic heroes do, only that he acts with boldness, endures torment, and most importantly acts against his fate, as tragic heroes do. These qualities have always resonated in literature. Milton was almost certainly aware of the risk he ran in bringing Satan to life in an epic/drama. It's always the flashy ones that carry the day.

RT: "Yes, the human mind finds meaning, but why is this illegitimate?"

I did not mean the human mind 'finds' meaning, it instills it. There is no objective connection that is to be investigated until it is illuminated and plucked of it's meanings. We are pattern seekers who need meaning to understand our reality. Our reality, being fundamentally mathematical, has many patterns, but they are manifested from the laws of nature.

RT: "Religion tries to explain why and how we belong here, so any sound intuition it has should be based on underlying cosmic truths."

Here is part of the problem, religion arrogantly tries to answer questions for which the answer would require us to be godlike ourselves. We are humans who need our curiosity sated, as such we create answers to the difficult questions. But these creations are nothing more than to sate our curiosity for understanding and meaning.

RT: "Parsimony can be taken to dogmatic extremes. The idea that the myths of Christ and Satan are imbedded in cosmic structures is veryA differentA fromA addingA AA toA everyA wordA."

They are only different in complexity, not in type. It is not a type of dogmatic extremism, it is a pragmatic type; why add that which isn't necessary for understanding? One reason is verisimillitude, but there is none that I can see. Only within your worldview is there verisimillitude, and that is a worldview constructed on anti-parsimonious beliefs, so the correlative sliding scale is little more than bias and doesn't survive critical analysis. It may seem you pre-empt the bible and it's less than sound contents by re-binding, but this re-binding would never exist unless the bible was written first.

RT: "Within its own context the scientific outlook is not deluded, but I think it unfairly excludes spiritual philosophy which has its own validity and rigor."

I think the very act of classifying and categorizing oneself is a limiting exercise. I don't see myself scientific any more than I'm philosophic. However, I see no reason to accept much of what you call spiritual philosophy. To me, it's the inability of intelligent people to see how the higher level manifestation of collections of neurons can be so beautiful and coherent and still only composed of it's physical constituents. I see nothing other the the physical, simply because there is no need to. The physical system fully explains us and our reality. I'm not advocating any worldview any more than I'm relying on my critical thinking skills.

To play devil's advocate, or Venus's as the case may be:

Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune are in conjunction every 178.9 years.

Conjunction means alignment as viewed from the earth, but astrologers allow themselves an 8 degree range. How exact is this alignment of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune every 178.9 years? And why should this contingency of observation have anything to do with the earth's wobble?

What does "with error 0.3 years" mean? What error? 0.3 years = 3.6 months, quite a bit of maneuver room.

Did you discover the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction every 178.9 years or that this period of conjunction times 12 equals 2147 ? Or both?

There is a near-precise harmony between the periods of the gas giants and the long term cycle of the earth.

Do you mean that a Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction occurs at or near the date the sun enters a new zodiacal sign at the spring equinox? That is, did a conjunction occur in the year 0 when the sun is supposed to have moved into Pisces ? If a conjunction does not occur when the sun enters a new sign, why should there be any relation between the Great Year and the period of conjunction?

Why is the Age of Pisces the Alpha and Omega of the Great Year? Why isn't the Age of Aries the the Alpha and Omega of the Great Year?

"More than this, the Age of Pisces is also the Age of Virgo, because there are two equinoxes at spring and autumn in these signs each year."

Symbolism is very flexible. For example, if we begin with the Age of Aries, (the Lamb of God) then the second equinox occurs in Libra, in which Christ reconciles us to the Law. Christianity is so rich in symbolism that any pair chosen for equinoxes would make sense.

"The time of Christ, the year 0, the beginning of the Age of Pisces, was in a sense the Alpha and Omega of the Great Year, the end of one cycle after the preceding Age of Aries and the beginning of a new 25764 year astronomical cycle. So there is congruence between the title of Christ as Alpha and Omega and this astronomical observation."

A cycle is a circle, and a circle may be begun at any point.

"But what of Christ?"

Christ as logos represents cosmic order of any sort.

"The moral of this story is that our planet is in harmony with solar system cycles."

I doubt that the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction proves that the story has a moral or that the wobble of the earth is in harmony with solar system cycles. I do, however, think precession may be important. The earth's wobble is a possible reason for the cycle of glaciers. Mythologically, the discovery of precession is supposed to be the reason for Mithraism that Christianity replaced. So Christ too may be taken as the slayer of the horned beast.

When T S Elliot wrote:-

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons:

We all know what he meant....

We didn't say, 'How many coffee spoons'?
or, 'Well, what was the exact cubic capacity of the coffee spoons?'

We tell ourselves stories....to help us to understand the question..

What are we doing here?

The stories are not scientific......because science is asking a different question?

Note the question mark. I'm not intending to intrude on a debate which is somewhat above my head.

Well....more than somewhat......but I'm doing my best for the proletariat

Penelope wrote:The stories are not scientific......because science is asking a different question?

All you need to be scientific is decimal points

While the roof is off
Geometry of rafters
Frames Venus's rays

I have no problem with Elliot's saying. I also have no problem with the ideas of Alpha's and Omega's and numerical coincidences given names, or celestial signs, or any number of other things we see or use to help us understand the cosmos. I would have a problem if Elliot said that he had used 1,111 coffee spoon and thus there was a real connection to Jesus Christ. Then I would start asking questions about capacities and such, because as a claim, critical examination is required. The difference is I'm not asking about measurements from Robert in a scientific light, I'm asking philosophical questions in a non-scientific light.

Thomas Hood wrote:To play devil's advocate, or Venus's as the case may be: Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune are in conjunction every 178.9 years. Conjunction means alignment as viewed from the earth, but astrologers allow themselves an 8 degree range. How exact is this alignment of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune every 178.9 years?

Tom, thanks for your questions. I can explain the science in some detail if you like. Conjunctions between outer planets are the same for geocentric and heliocentric frames. A picture here shows the position of the sun against the solar system centre of mass over 2000 years. The peaks and troughs are due to the 178.9 year Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune cycle. An example of the cycles of the triple conjunctions of these three planets is as follows and here. In 54AD, a Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Pisces followed the conjunctions with Neptune by two months for Jupiter and a year for Saturn. Successive 179 year repeats of this event, with tropical signs, are in 232-3 (Aries), 411 (Taurus), 590 (Gemini), 769 (Cancer/Leo), 948 (Virgo), 1127 (Libra), 1306-7 (Scorpio), 1484-7 (Sagittarius), 1663-7 (Capricorn), 1842-6 (Aquarius), and 2021-5 (Pisces). However, due to precession the triple conjunction next decade is sidereally in Aquarius. Over this cycle, the gap between the JS conjunction and their respective conjunctions with Neptune steadily decreases to a point where these three are near exactly conjunct in 769, after which JS meet an increasing time before they reach Neptune, with the gap increasing by 0.3 years per event. This pattern overlaps with other families of JSN conjunctions, for example 1344-5, 1523-4, 1702-3, 1881-2, 2060-1. This 1344-2060 group has 1523 as the year of closest JSN alignment in Pisces, with the JS conjunction precessing against the JN and SN dates as in the 54-2021 series. In all cases each event is about 30° further along the ecliptic than its predecessor 179 years before.

These families of repeating conjunctions are produced by the small difference in orbital periods with 9 x JS=178.7 ~= 14 x JN = 178.9 ~= 5 x SN = 179.3 years, averaging 178.9. These orbital JSN periods produce a clear gravitational pattern in the wave function of the solar system barycentre as shown at the link above.

And why should this contingency of observation have anything to do with the earth's wobble?

It is exactly a 1/144 fraction of the 25764 year long period of the earth's wobble.

What does "with error 0.3 years" mean? What error? 0.3 years = 3.6 months, quite a bit of maneuver room.

Explained above.

Did you discover the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction every 178.9 years or that this period of conjunction times 12 equals 2147 ? Or both?

The first point is an obvious if unremarked piece of astronomy. I noticed the apparent harmony with the earth's wobble. The JSN cycle seems like a whip entraining the earth as it spins like a wobbling top, except that the earth's wobble is explained by the sun and moon in a phenomenon known as lunisolar torque. I suspect there is a deeper undiscovered 'harmony of the spheres' holding the whole system in balance.

RT“There is a near-precise harmony between the periods of the gas giants and the long term cycle of the earth.” Do you mean that a Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction occurs at or near the date the sun enters a new zodiacal sign at the spring equinox? That is, did a conjunction occur in the year 0 when the sun is supposed to have moved into Pisces ? If a conjunction does not occur when the sun enters a new sign, why should there be any relation between the Great Year and the period of conjunction?

Dane Rudhyar in his book Astrological Timing assumes the period is 180 years and calls this period the 'house of the age'. He was scientifically slightly inaccurate as the period is 178.9 years. The graphs linked above show the sign position of a series of JSN conjunctions, each within a successive sign but not at the exact cusp points except in 769.

Why is the Age of Pisces the Alpha and Omega of the Great Year? Why isn't the Age of Aries the the Alpha and Omega of the Great Year?

You misread my point. The Great Year is a cycle of twelve Ages which for convenience we can say start with Pisces and end with Aries. This cycle has happened 175,000 times since the dawn of life. My speculation that this cycle has a structure is based on the idea that the macrocosm reflects the microcosm, so the Great Year reflects the northern hemisphere terrestrial year, which of course starts with Aries in spring and ends with Pisces in winter. The point between Aries and Pisces is the vernal equinox, which on this model corresponds to the time of Christ. I discuss this in some more depth in essays here, here and here

RT "More than this, the Age of Pisces is also the Age of Virgo, because there are two equinoxes at spring and autumn in these signs each year." Symbolism is very flexible. For example, if we begin with the Age of Aries, (the Lamb of God) then the second equinox occurs in Libra, in which Christ reconciles us to the Law. Christianity is so rich in symbolism that any pair chosen for equinoxes would make sense.

But Christ came at the end of the Age of Aries/Libra and the start of the Age of Pisces/Virgo. I agree, as discussed in the first essay just linked, that Christ incarnated the spirit of the full cycle, but the age of Christianity has a definite Pisces/Virgo quality. For example the Gothic Cathedrals of France, planned and built at the high point of the age, are laid out on a map corresponding to the stars of Virgo and dedicated to Beata Virgo Maria.

"The time of Christ, the year 0, the beginning of the Age of Pisces, was in a sense the Alpha and Omega of the Great Year, the end of one cycle after the preceding Age of Aries and the beginning of a new 25764 year astronomical cycle. So there is congruence between the title of Christ as Alpha and Omega and this astronomical observation." A cycle is a circle, and a circle may be begun at any point.

Yes true, which is why my myth is not fully scientific, even though my claim that the circle does have a start and end (as does the natural year) is scientifically possible.

"But what of Christ?"Christ as logos represents cosmic order of any sort.

I am simply pointing out that there is a main real cosmic order in our solar system which correlates to biblical ideas of the age presented by Christ.

"The moral of this story is that our planet is in harmony with solar system cycles."I doubt that the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction proves that the story has a moral or that the wobble of the earth is in harmony with solar system cycles. I do, however, think precession may be important. The earth's wobble is a possible reason for the cycle of glaciers. Mythologically, the discovery of precession is supposed to be the reason for Mithraism that Christianity replaced. So Christ too may be taken as the slayer of the horned beast.

YOu are confusing precession with the Milankovich cycle of climate. I pointed out there is an actual harmony of ratio 1/144. This is equal to a low C against a high D.

Robert Tulip wrote:Tom, thanks for your questions. I can explain the science in some detail if you like.

If I am not mistaken, Robert, your view on conjunction is a poetic interpretation of the heavens and basically does not depend on science. The image of the Gas Giants whipping the earth like a top is delightful. And I find that you have set this image to music too. I think your view would get a better hearing if you presented it as a poetic interpretation, which I think is a valuable thing. It makes the world a friendly place.

I have not found anything on the Internet about a Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction, and have even asked a professional astrologer, and he didn't know about it, so the topic is indeed rare. The term "triple conjunction" does not refer to three planets in conjunction but to a sequence of three conjunctions of two planets because of retrograde motion:

"A triple conjunction is an astronomical event, where two planets or a planet and a star meet each other three times in a short period . . . ."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_conjunction

About this:

>Did you discover the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction every 178.9 years or that this period of conjunction times 12 equals 2147 ? Or both?

First you say "The first point is an obvious if unremarked piece of astronomy" and then you say "Dane Rudhyar in his book Astrological Timing assumes the period is 180 years and calls this period the 'house of the age'" so I suppose the period was in use by Rudhyar but has not been held to be significant by astronomers. And then you say "My speculation that this cycle [Great Year] has a structure" I think means that you are the one who related the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune conjunction to the Great Year. And I think you made this connection because the next JSN conjunction sometimes occurs in the sign the sun has moved into, as happen when the sun moved into Pisces in the year 0. The next JSN conjunction occurred in Pisces 53 years later.

Is it a general rule that the first JSN conjunction after the sun moves into a new sign is in that same sign?

Tom