DWill wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 8:48 pm
How do those who credit astrology for any validity whatsoever, explain when the point came when the cycles began to affect life on earth in particular ways?
These are excellent questions, and I hope that some discussion may prompt people to read my paper where they are discussed in more detail.
There are three main dimensions of the long term precession effect.
1. the possible physical effect of the remarkable harmony between the precession and the structure of the solar system is a focus of my research, with the observation of the near exact 1/144 ratio between the wave period of the solar system centre of mass and the period of axial precession. This suggests a resonance generating a harmonic period of duration 2148 years for the Earth. This harmonic ratio is an empirical observation but its effect is purely hypothetical. My calculation was that the ratio was exact one million years ago, and the increasing distance of the lunar orbit will increase it to 1/145 over the next few million years. It creates what I term Houses of the Age, driven by the 179 year triple conjunction pattern of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune as the main integrating period of the solar system, with each successive triple conjunction occurring in the successive zodiac sign.
2. The quantified effect on climate of the Milankovitch Cycles. As I explain in my paper, there is an actual 23,000 year cycle of light and dark for our planet caused by the rotation of the perihelion, the point of our orbit where Earth is closest to the Sun, around the seasons. This was a main driver of ice age cycles, but no longer has any climate effect because it has been swamped by anthropogenic emissions, as a defining factor in the shift from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene. Precession only became a climate driver three million years ago, when the earth had cooled sufficiently for more snow to fall in winter than would melt in summer. This long term planetary cooling was mainly caused by the tectonic opening of the Tasman Seaway between Australia and Antarctica that started about 35 million years ago, accelerated by the joining of North and South America three million years ago.
3. The cultural imagination of zodiac ages that appears in mythology is based on ancient observation of the movement of the equinox between zodiac constellations every 2148 years. My view is that this was a major factor in early Christian cosmology, since lost to view. It has no dynamic physical effect, but the cultural effect is significant. It does however reflect a direct correspondence with the actual physical cycles of precession produced by the Milankovitch insolation changes. Notably, the theological period of fall occurred at the same time as the cooling effect of the physical period when perihelion moved through the season of fall, from about 4000 BC to 1000 AD. This is followed by the theological period of redemption matching to the underlying cyclic warming as the perihelion advances through January.
DWill wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 8:48 pm Were hominids earlier than sapiens under the sway of these cycles? For that matter, were other animal societies affected?
Precession did not affect climate before the Pleistocene, which started about 3 million years ago. Ocean benthic geological records show that before then plant and animal cycles of abundance were driven by the 41,000 year oscillation of the Earth tilt between about 21 and 24 degrees.
DWill wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 8:48 pmWhat evidence can there be that anything beyond evolution shaped the course of species' history?
None. But evolution includes adaptation to natural cycles such as the day, the month and the year. Given that the Milankovitch orbital cycles have been stable for four billion years, it is entirely plausible that their expression in climate would create selective pressure, such that species would have a long term pattern of differing quantities in warmer and colder periods. Precession is an evolutionary factor, although as I noted it has only been expressed in climate for the last three million years. A further issue here is that it is plausible that complex life is more sensitive to natural cycles like precession than we have been able to measure.
DWill wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 8:48 pm Why would the cycles of precession begin to operate on human beings only when complex societies emerged, if that is the claim of astrological belief?
A very interesting factor here, discussed in my paper, is the close match between the Indian Vedic myth of the Yuga cycle and the natural pattern of orbital precession, both of which have light and dark phases at about the same time. This Indian theory found its way into Judeo-Christian tradition. Authors such as Daniel, Hesiod and Ovid support the Vedic theory of a decline from an ancient golden age to a modern iron age, through intermediate ages of silver and bronze, which matches the underlying climate pattern. This points to a natural driver of the structure of myth. Further, language operates as an evolutionary factor through the cultural construction of meaning. The New Testament has a basic cosmology that matches to the Milankovitch Cycles. This has been concealed by dogmatic bigotry, but is clear when studied. It indicates that the cultural ideas of the astrological Ages of Taurus, Aries, Pisces and Aquarius formed core themes in Christian theology.
DWill wrote: ↑Sun Nov 06, 2022 8:48 pmThe exactitude of observation for which we can thank astrology is one thing, but its application to organic life is quite another. It's an arcane interest, and that is all.
Astrology has a plausible organic effect produced by the sensitivity of life to its natural context, recognising that life on earth has evolved in the niche of the solar system. The journal Correlation, where my paper was published, contains extensive empirical analysis of weak astrological effects that leave a detectible statistical trace. What is most interesting in this regard is that the Biblical theory of the rule of Christ on earth has a strong temporal correlation to the astrological idea of the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, supported by the underlying orbital climate dynamics of precession.