The Precession of the Equinox – The wild celestial dance
(Graham Hancock – Fingerprints of the Gods; explains it so well)
But if anyone hasn’t read of it or knows (!) -
The earth makes a complete circuit around its own axis once every twenty four hours and has an equatorial circumference of 24,902.45 miles. Viewed from outer space, looking down on the North Pole, the direction of rotation is anti-clockwise.
While spinning daily on its own axis, the earth also orbits the sun (again anti-clockwise) on a path that is slightly elliptical rather than completely circular.
It pursues this orbit at truly breakneck speed, travelling as far along it in an hour – 66,600 miles. This means we are hurtling through space at the rate of 18.5 mile every second!
The earth’s axis of rotation is titled in relation to the plane of its orbit (23.5 deg to the vertical) This tilt, which causes the seasons, ‘points’ the North Pole. The earths tilt is referred as its ‘obliquity’ and the plane of its orbit is known as the ‘ecliptic’ which extends outwards to form a great circle in the celestial sphere.
There is also the ‘celestial equator’ which is an extension of the earth’s equator into the celestial sphere.
The celestial equator is today inclined at about 23.5 deg to the ecliptic, because the earth’s axis is inclined at 23.5 deg to the vertical. This angle, termed the ‘obliquity of the ecliptic’ is not fixed and immutable for all time. So our planet nods and spins while soaring along its orbital path. The orbit takes a year and the spin takes a day and the nod has a cycle of 41,000 years.
The suns gravitational pull on our planet is immense as well as the gravity of the other planets with which we share in our solar system. The moon’s gravity tends to tilt the earth’s axis so that it becomes perpendicular to the moon’s orbit, at the same time the equatorial bulge – the extra mass distributed around the equator – acts like the rim of a gyroscope to keep the earth steady on its axis.
Year in, year out, on a planetary scale, it is this gyroscopic effect that prevents the tug of the sun and the moon from radically altering the earth’s axis of rotation. The pull these two bodies jointly exert is however, sufficiently strong to force the axis to ‘precess’, which means that it wobbles slowly in a clockwise direction opposite to the earth’s spin.
Ringed around the earth’s ecliptic orbit, in a starry belt that extends approx 7 deg north and south, are the twelve constellations of the zodiac. These constellations are irregular in size, shape and distribution. Nevertheless their spacing around the rim of the ecliptic is sufficiently even to bestow a sense of cosmic order upon the diurnal risings and settings of the sun.
To picture this 1. mark a dot in the centre of a sheet of paper 2. draw a circle around the dot about half an inch away from it 3. enclose that circle in a second larger, circle.
The dot represents the sun. The smaller of the two circles represents the earths orbit. The larger circle represents the rim of the ecliptic. Around the perimeter of this larger circle, therefore, twelve boxes should be drawn. Since there are 360 deg in a circle, each constellation can be considered to occupy a space of 30 deg along the ecliptic. The earth travels on its ecliptic orbit in an anti-clockwise direction, from the west towards the east, and every twenty four hours it also makes one complete rotation around its own axis (again west to east)
Each day as the earth turns from west to east, the sun (which is of course of fixed point) appears to ‘move’ across the sky from east to west.
Roughly every thirty days, as the spinning earth journeys along its orbital path around the sun, the sun itself slowly appears to ‘pass’ through one after another of the twelve zodiacal constellations (which are also fixed points) and again it appears to be ‘moving’ in an east-west direction.
The four cardinal points of the year – the spring and autumn equinoxes, the winter and summer solstices are pointers to the earth’s ecliptic path. Most significant of all was the constellation in which the sun was observed to rise on the morning of the spring (or vernal) equinox. Because of the earth’s axial precession, the ancients discovered that this constellation was not fixed or permanent for all time but that the honour of ‘housing’ or ‘carrying’ the sun on the day of the vernal equinox circulated – very, very slowly – among all the constellations of the zodiac.
The sun’s position amongst the constellations at the vernal equinox was the pointer that indicated the ‘hours’ of the precession cycle – very long hours indeed, the equinoctial sun occupying each zodiacal constellation for almost 2125 years. Therefore a full procession cycle of the sun going through each of the twelve zodiac constellations takes approx 26,000 years.
Now, there is evidence of great universal cataclysm that is linked to taking place after each procession cycle of the sun; after 26,000 years – it is called a Great Year. Here, after a great year, there is a shift of the earth’s polar axis. It is an adjustment to the earth’s orbit on its axis – to keep the earth on its path.
There is further evidence that the after each procession cycle of the sun; after 2125 years – the Age of the constellation the sun is in – there is a cataclysm that takes places – in the form of earthquakes and other natural catastrophes.
There is reason to believe that the destruction of Lemuria and later of Atlantis was after a Great Year cycle. Further is the Nod cycle of 41,000 years. A Solar Year.
Phew .. well i’ll stop here … I can hear you saying ‘but we learnt this a school’ lol
I just think it’s good to know that our planet earth is in cycles that have ordered motion for a reason.