Precession and the sidereal zodiac

greybeard said:

We should keep in mind a very elementary fact. Constellations and signs are not concrete facts, but are constructs of man's mind. They have no substance in reality. The entire fabric of astrology is a construct of man's mind......

....The constellations (and individual stars within them) were man's first points of reference for locating the wandering stars (planets) in the sky. The signs evolved out of the constellations as man began to apply mathematics to the natural world around him. But the constellations themselves are mental constructs. I "see" a scorpion by connecting the dots. An image (and a correlation, an analogy) is what creates the scorpion...not something inherent in the stars themselves.

Thus, man's mind functions according to this universal scheme, and his capacity for analogy (which is the basis for astrological symbolism -- including constellations and signs) is in harmony with the nature of the cosmos in any of its expressions. That is why astrology works

Click to expand...

In ancient times when most people thought the universe was a living being, it was "The Norm" to imagine tiny points of light they saw in the night sky as being grouped into separate, distinct sets of 'Images'.

These 'Images' were made up of separate stars which - in the opinion of the ancient people of this planet - seemed to be grouped together.

Thousands of years ago, on various parts of the planet Earth, different cultures imaginatively 'connected the dots' of the tiny points of light that they thought were close to each other and personified them as 'Mythical Beings' and narrated stories about the lives of these Mythical Beings.

The Mythical Beings and the stories of their lives varied from culture to culture. Different cultures imagined different images in the patterns of the stars of the night sky. The ancient people of this planet did not know that these tiny points of light were hundreds - perhaps even thousands - of light years distant from each other.

NEVERTHELESS THOSE TINY POINTS OF LIGHT ARE 'REAL STARS'

THE FOLLOWING IS A QUOTE FROM WIDIPEDIA
Former constellations are constellations that are no longer recognized by the International Astronomical Union for various reasons. Many of these constellations existed for long periods of time, even centuries in many cases, which means they still have a large historical value and can be found on older star charts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_constellations

THE FOLLOWING ENCAPSULATED INFORMATION MAY BE FOUND AT http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/astro/...ation.faq.html

The oldest description of the constellations as we know them comes from a poem called Phaenomena written by Greek poet Aratus 270 B.C. and it is clear from the poem that the constellations mentioned originated long before Aratus' time. Some detective work reveals a plausible origin. Firstly, Aratus' constellations excluded any near the south celestial pole because that was always below the horizon of the ancient constellation-makers. From the size of this uncharted area of the sky, we can determine that the people responsible for the original constellations lived near a latitude of 36° north which is south of Greece and north of Egypt but similar to the latitude of the ancient Babylonians and Sumerians.

Because of a "wobble" of the Earth's axis of rotation, the position of the celestial poles changes slowly with time - which is a phenomenon known as precession. The constellation-free zone is not centered exactly on the south celestial pole, instead the uncharted area is centered on the place in the sky where the south celestial pole would have been around the year 2000 B.C. This date matches the time of the Babylonians and Sumerians. So it seems likely that the Greek constellations originated with the Sumerians and Babylonians. From there, knowledge of the constellations somehow made its way to Egypt - perhaps through the Minoans on Crete who had contact with the Babylonians and settled in Egypt after an explosive volcanic eruption destroyed their civilization, and from there early Greek scholars first heard about the constellations and wrote about them.

When most ancient cultures looked at the night sky they saw 'pictures' aka 'Images' in the stars. The earliest known efforts to catalogue the stars date to cuneiform texts (i.e. Sumerian/Babylonian/Assyrian texts and artefacts)and artefacts dating back roughly 6000 years. These remnants, found in the valley of the Euphrates River, suggest that the ancients observing the heavens saw the lion, the bull, and the scorpion in the stars.

here's a link to an interesting British Museum web page regarding the origins of writing in Mesopotamia
http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/writing/story/sto_set.html

http://www.astro.com/astrology/in_vedic2_e.htm

The above is the article I mentioned in the last post.

According to the Babylonian star catalogue given at the end of History of the Zodiac, by Robert Powell, Sirius is a frustrating 10 degrees from 10 degrees Cancer, with a sidereal longitude of 19 GE 53.

I consider the Koch criticism of Indian astrology to be quite prejudiced and to contain many inaccurate statements. Note, though, that I am by no means a Vedic practitioner-but I do consider Vedic astrology to be an effective astrological model and worthy of respect.

I am also a 100% tropicalist! For me, signs and starry constellations are 2 seperate matters (apples and oranges, really!): I believe the signs arise from the Earth and are, so to speak, "windows" of the Earth which modify the subtle energies from the planets and stars, which pass through each window. But I also believe the stars and constellations are VERY important astrological factors, and that the zodiacal constellations each have special influences similar to the SIGNS, which in Hellenist/proto-Hellenist times, were named after them (because at that time the starry zodiacal constellations were mostly in the SIGNS, which latter were given the names of the constellations then occupying them)

I am not aware of babylon using only 12 ecliptic zodiacal starry constellations, until a very late period (4-5th centuries BC), ie, around the time of the beginning of a syncretization of Sumero/Elam/Babylonian + Egyptian + Magian astrological streams under an emergent Hellenist influence (the latter arising and spreading outward from Plato's Athens)
The earliest naming of the constellations in the Hellenist world, was by Eudoxus of Cnidus, c.360 BC (Aratos later used the prose work of Eudoxus, now lost, to write the poem about the constellations, which has come down to us)
Eudoxus, a student of Plato, travelled to Egypt where he spent 16 months at Heliopolis, learning about astronomy, before later returning to Greece and writing his books on astronomy (including the constellations and planets) and mathematics: so his astronomical learning came from Egypt (not Babylon)...

The most ancient civilizations were: Egypt, Sumeria, Elam (in the Western area of what is now Iran), the Indus Valley Civilization (Harrapa) and the Yellow River Valley Civilization (in China) We now know from archaeology that all of these most ancient civilization were in regular communication and trade with each other: where there is trade in goods, there is also exchange of ideas as well. "Star Names: their Lore and Meaning" by Allan, shows clearly that these various ancient civilizations all had concepts about the same stars and asterisms (constellations), only used different words to name and describe each of them. I consider it questionable to claim that any ONE of these most ancient civilizations, originated astronomical observation or was the foundational seat of astrology.

The division of the Ecliptic circle into 12 discrete areas (boxes, zones) of exactly 30 degrees each, originated with Hipparchus in 120 BC, and such a division does NOT extend earlier than that date; and, earlier, the Ecliptic was NOT the center of consideration, the EQUATOR was: and division of the EQUATOR into 12 parts far predates Hipparchus division of the Ecliptic into 12 equal segments.

These various factors must all be taken into consideration when attempting the VERY difficult task of trying to determine equivalents vis a vis stars, constellations, signs, etc.

I've been doing some more reading and stuff on line, and found a quote from an Swami on u tube video going back to 1894, which states that according to oriental astronomy, the Sun and Sirius are in a binary system together.

It seems that there is a growing number of astronomers who believe that the Earth doesn't wobble, and that precession is due to the curved motion of our entire solar system through space. Some of the evidence cited for this is:

Sirius has not moved due to precession along with the vast majority of other stars. This is shown by the fact that it has been rising one minute of time before the Sun 30 or so days after the solstice, for thousands of years. Apparently most Egyptian temples were set up so as to be attuned to this moment, and are still so attuned to this day.

The declination of Sirius is similar to many kuiper belt objects, and the kuiper belt ends too abruptly (presumably the inference being that there is a point at which bodies get captured when the Sun and Sirius are relatively close together).

Precession is speeding up, and is now estimated at 24,000 years for a full cycle. This does not concur with the wobble theory, but does concur with the binary theory.

The Binary Research Institute have a very good website if anyone is interested in looking further into this.

Elsewhere I've seen claims that the Mayans used Sirius as a marker of time, and then realised that this wasn't as stable as another star which they then used, and that they eventually used the galactic centre itself, which westerners only discovered little over a hundred years ago.

I don't know what the implications of all this for astrology would be - after all, it didn't really change when Copernicus came along - it just maintained its geocentricity while presumably using the heliocentric model simply to aid calculation of planetary positions. In this sense perhaps it doesn't matter what causes the ayanamsa to increase over time.