Blog #19 - A return to Hamlet's Mill and the Milky Way

The great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter on December 21, 2020 had many eyes turned skyward (Figure 1). The press had been talking about it for days as the “star of Bethlehem”, last seen in 1623 and not to be seen this close again for 800 years! All of this was very engaging for the public. But what was missing from the public eye may have been much more important, as the event was a present-day connection to the distant past when modern man was first becoming conscious - a connection to the time of the birth of myth.

Figure 1. The Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in December 2020. On the top the two planets are just above the crescent moon, on the bottom they are just above the tree line on the right.

“Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission through Myth” by de Santillana, and von Dechend[1] was a tour de force in presenting early myths as a technical language describing the changes observed in the sky. While they begin their exploration with the Hamlet of Shakespeare, they go far beyond this to find astrological references in the myths of many ancient cultures: Sumerian, Babylonian, Persian, East Indian, Greek, Iceland, Finland, Polynesian and North and South American cultures. They allude to the likelihood that all of the myths share a very ancient common single source. A source that likely originated over 8,000 years ago – long before the building of the Great Pyramids of Egypt, long before writing was employed. The primary motivation for their work is to challenge a general belief that early humans were not sophisticated nor organised enough to observe and track movements of the stars and constellations so as to appreciate the slow, subtle precession of the equinoxes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession).

In brief summary, the precession of the equinox is the result of the slow wobble in the rotation of the earth. The earth is spinning like a top. But it is not spinning straight up and down, but at an angle of 23 degrees (Figure 2). This tilt is what gives us the change in the season from summer to winter and back. But the movement is a bit complicated. While it rotates at an angle, the axis of the spin also changes. It moves in a circle. The axis moves in a “backwards” direction relative to the spin of the sphere. You can see this with toy spinning tops in the video linked here: https://youtu.be/ODA9qAsRB80?t=85.  

Figure 2. A spinning top at an angle from a YouTube video: https://youtu.be/lWTnOrqqYU0?t=167.

So, what does this mean for the earth, and in particular, for humans living on the earth observing and tracking the movements in the sky? The result of this retrograde movement is that the “North Pole” as observed from earth moves over time. While we presently sight the North Pole as the end of the handle on the Little Dipper, Figure 3 shows the position of the North Pole going back through millennium. Present day is represented in the Figure at +2,000 at the end of the Little Dipper. Circling clockwise in the figure, going back 5,000 years ago, the North Pole would be the star in the constellation Draco. 16,000 years ago, the pole star would have been in the constellation Cygnus the Swan at the bottom left. The pole makes a complete cycle every 26,000 years or so. Over the lifespan of a 70-year-old a human, the pole moves only 1 degree out of the full 360-degree movement. Hardly much to notice.

Figure 3. The circle of the "North Pole" over time as a result of the precession of the equinox (based on https://www.wwu.edu/planetarium/a101/a101_precession.shtml). The constellation names refer to those which rose with the sun on the Spring Equinox. Thus this shows the associated precession of the equinox over time from 8,000-years-ago in Cancer, to 6,000 years-ago in Gemini, etc., etc.

But more than just the pole was moving, this movement is also reflected in changes in the location of the constellations in which the sun appears – and these changes are much more obvious to earthbound observers. There is a band of constellations through which the sun travels. These are the constellations associated with astrology – the zodiac. Throughout the year the sun rises in each of the 12 zodiac constellations. Presently, Spring begins each March, as the sun rises above the horizon at the same time as the constellation Pisces, i.e., in the constellation Pisces. This is called the helical rising of Pisces. But as a result of the precession of the equinox, 2000 years ago on the Spring equinox in March, the constellation rising with the sun was Aries. The helical rising constellations are labeled on Figure 3.  This change in helical rising of constellations on the Spring equinox would be much more noticeable than the movement of the North Pole. 

Again it would take longer than a single lifetime for the movement/change to be easily notice these changes, but a long-lasting culture with the sufficient memory would hace no problem noticing and tracking it. Cultures such as Sumer and Egypt survived for thousands of years. Over these time periods the precession of the equinox would be easy to track – if there was a reliable way of recording positions of the sky. Santillana and von Dechend convincingly put forward the case that this was the role of myth in early civilizations. We will not attempt to summarize the wealth of evidence they present, but a single example should be enough to introduce their approach – that of the Golden Age.

A common theme in myths is the coming of a new age, humans having experienced a number of ages through myth history. Most recently the spread of Christianity began 2,000 years ago at the beginning of the age of Pisces with the helical rising of the constellation in Spring. This is the present age. Going back in time the Bible signposts several ages by the associated themes:  the age of Aries by the ram, the age of Taurus by the bull. The story of Moses coming down from the mountain and overthrowing the false idol of the bull is likely a record of the transition from Aries to Taurus. 

Going back one more 2000-year-long age from Taurus we find the age of Gemini – the twins. Digging into Hamlet’s Mill there are numerous references to two male characters in myth: the close friends (Gilgamesh and Enkidu), the brothers (Osiris and Seth), twins (Romulus and Remus). Many others are mention in Hamlet’s Mill. By only a slight stretch of imagination Christians can picture the siblings (Adam and Eve) in the Garden of Eden.

What might make the age of Twins, of Gemini, such a recurrent theme, so tied to a Golden Age when “[Men] lived like gods”[2]? At this time, 7,000 years ago the sun rose between the constellations Gemini and Taurus on the Spring Equinox. This area of the sky is where the Milky Way crosses the ecliptic where the sun “travels” (Figure 4). At this period, the sun and planets could be “seen” in the midst of the Milky Way band of stars – all nicely lined up together.

Figure 4. Star chart with the Milky Way Galaxy lined up through the centre (http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/galchart.html). Gemini/Taurus is on the far right 180 degrees from and Sagittarius/Scorpio that are in the centre of the figure.

This area of the sky is opposite, that is 180 degrees, from the area between Sagittarius and Scorpio (Figure 4) where the brightest area of the Milky Way galaxy is seen. This means that at this time period, six months after the helical rising of Gemini in the Spring, the Fall Equinox would be lined up with the thickest portion of the Milky Way – essential looking towards the centre of our galaxy. 

In both Spring and Fall equinox, the sun, moon, planets and galaxy could be observed together. 

 As captured in myth this would be a very orderly and pleasant age with everything together in time and space. But as the precession moved the Spring equinox constellation out of Gemini and into Taurus the sun and planetary orbits would no longer cross the Milky Way. Bad things are recorded in the myths: floods ravaged the world, the great mill became un-hinged, gods departed, humans were kicked out of the Garden – all because the Milky Way was no longer connected with the rest of the sky.

Getting back to the Great Conjunction of 2020. While the public was made well aware of the close encounter of Saturn and Jupiter as a rare event, they missed the bigger picture that this is just another observation of the planet Saturn’s continued marking of time on the 26,000-precesional scale. According to Hamlet’s Mill, Saturn has been used to track the motion of the sky for millennium. It was named by the Sumerians as Enki, by the Akkadian and Babylonian as Ea by the Egyptian as Ptah and by the Greeks as Kronos. Just as the Great Conjunction of 6 AD may have heralded the coming of the age of Pisces, soon a Great Conjunction will herald the beginning of the age of Aquarius. 

Outstanding Questions:

Ø  Was Sirius Hamlet’s mother? Sirius/Sopdet helically rose at the summer Solstice in Egypt for 3,000 years announcing the floods thus outliving the transitions from Hamlet’s father to his uncle to himself[3]?

Ø  Sellers speaks of Osiris/Orion “death” resulting from its failure to rise helically on the Spring equinox heralding the change of an age. But it is more likely that the constellation that was lost was Gemini – especially as she states on page 145 that “In Arabia, Orion/Osiris shared the name ‘Al Jauzah’ with the stars of Gemini”3. 

Ø  Going back further in time, were the pairs of T-shaped pillars in the centre of the Göbekli Tepe stone circles 9,000 years BCE related to Gemini? Possibly they were built to encourage the Golden Age of Gemini to remain in place?

[1] de Santillana, G., and H. von Dechend. 1977. Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission through Myth. David Godine, Boston.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age

[3] Sellers, J., 2003. The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, a study of the threshold of myth and the frame of time. Jane B. Sellers.