The Circular Time
IntroductionIn the course of my lucubrations on the nature of time I have touched some issues which, while broadly treated by some authors, are nevertheless essential to the study of cosmic cycles and ages and therefore still require from us a thorough examination. An example that may seem extemporaneous at this moment is the probability that time influences cyclically the development of humanity along brief lapses of a few years or decades and also over longer periods, and either by itself or through the stars’ activity.
Note that I am not talking about two different things, as between time and the stars there is so close a relationship that it can perfectly be said that they create each other. Because if on the one hand it is by means of time that the celestial bodies are created, on the other hand it is motion – mostly circular motion – of the latter that somehow creates time - and in fact, time is, in terms of physics, inconceivable in the absence of motion of some kind.
In effect, is it not the Earth’s circular motion on its axis that creates the day, and is it not its almost circular orbiting around the Sun that creates the year? And what is true of these two basic “short” cycles is true as well of the greater ones. Again, is it not the circle drawn by the ideal projection of the Earth’s axis over the imaginary plane of the constellations that creates the period of the precession of the equinoxes, of a decisive significance to the history of mankind? This fact, which would itself be a definite proof of a circular time, and which even throws new light on fundamental sacred texts like that of the fourth “day” in the creation of the world, should make reflect both modern scientists and the western churches’representatives, who conceive of time as linear. For modern civilization has forgotten things that all of the past cultures, based to a lesser or a greater extent on the primordial tradition, used to regard as evident in themselves.
The process of creation. Time creates the heavenly bodies and,
conversely, it is the circular motion of heavenly bodies
which creates time. (Photo: archive)
On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that just as there is nothing in the world that is not subject to the action of time, so there is also nothing on Earth that is not somehow influenced by the Sun, the Moon and even our own planet, so that it would be absurd to think of the human being as the one alone that is not influenced by them to some extent as well. And in effect, the more we study the rhythms of nature, the more we understand that man is not an isolated entity but is part of an immensely more vast mechanism where he is influenced by the slow rotation of the Earth on its axis, the elliptic curve described by the Moon around the Earth, the Sun’s electromagnetic energy, and so forth; and where he is subjected to certain natural rhythms that parallel the twenty-four hours’ cycle, including changes in body temperature, hormonal levels and the awareness state every three hours, plus a well-known cycle in Yoga: the alternation between the right and left nostrils.
A yogi benefiting from his practice of pranayana nadhi shodana
As to the lunar cycle, its influence on the female menstrual cycle is so widely known that I will not mention other kinds of lunar effects about which there is some controversy. Nor will I press on physical and mental biorhythms, etc., or on certain cyclic motions of various durations the existence of which is not questioned even though their dependence on the stars remains unclear.
Also, it is not clear how the stars influence the well-known seven-year cycles that we all seem to be subjected to: the first at seven, coinciding with the first dentition and the transition from infancy to boyhood, the second at fourteenth as adolescence and second dentition are reached, the third at twenty-one with adulthood, and so on.
However, in dealing with longer cycles, it has statistically been proven that the stars influence agriculture as well as the existence of periods of 3.5 and 6.5 years which regulate the evolution of life on the Earth and, particularly, of certain biological phenomena like the world production of furs; which is not irrelevant because the same statistics, gathered over centuries, have helped to establish the well-known incidence of the sunspots cycle, with a length of approximately 11 years, on the psychological reaction of the masses and certain social disturbances as upheavals, etc., apart from ecological instability related to draughts and floods which obviously influence dramatically the evolution of human society.
As to the still longer cycles (and here we are drawing further into matter), great philosophers like Toynbee have generalized certain favorable circumstances created by the environment, either in the form of adverse changes or of climatic challenges, as triggering factors in the emergence of civilizations which force societies to behave differently by transforming themselves from static to dynamic – and vice versa, I might add. Examples of these cycles would be the planetary synods occurring every 179–180 years whose influence over the last 12,000 years is well known. It is, for instance, accepted that after 10000 BC, following the ice withdrawal, there ensued the warmest time in all of the inter–glacial period, which reached its peak between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago. Then followed an extremely cold period that climaxed about 3,000 and 2,300 years ago, and later on an “optimum secondary climatic” which culminated in the early Middle Ages, between 1000 and 1200 AD approximately. During this period, as the artic ice pack melted, new routes were opened to the Scandinavians who settled down in Iceland and Greenland and visited North America. From then on, there is what is known as the “small glacial era”, a reversal to the hard conditions that culminated in Europe along the seventeenth century and which are probably not yet over.
Another example of these major cycles are the periods of maximum/minimum solar activity apparently occurring every 500 years approximately and which were studied by astronomer John Eddy from the Observatory of Boulder, Colorado (USA), based on the analysis of the amounts of carbon 14 deposited on the annual rings of certain trees (the study was published in the Smithsonian Institute’s reports in the late 1977).
An interesting feature of these cycles is that at times of peak activity, relevance was placed on the so-called “solar myths” (Aton, Lugh, Mitra and Christ), while at those of minimum on the telluric ones (Isis, Lusina and Black Virgins), so that from 3000 BC three peaks would have respectively occurred: a Sumerian, a “pyramidal Egyptian”, and that of Stonehenge. After that, from 1500 BC, three minimums: Egyptian, Homeric and Greek; then a Roman maximum at about year “Zero”, and then, by order, a mediaeval minimum, a mediaeval maximum coincident with the times of the Crusades, starting from 1000 AD, and after two minimums – respectively called “Sporer Minimum” and “Maunder Minimum” – approximately from 1500 to 1750 AD, a current maximum that was expected to end in around 2000 AD.
 The Trundholm sun chariot pulled by a horse is believed
to be a sculpture illustrating the sun, an important
part of Nordic Bronze Age mythology (Wikipedia)
There is no doubt, however, concerning mankind evolution, that among the major cycles the most important are the three great astronomical cycles that we have studied in more detail in a previous post, and that the most important among them, and which in a way is the central element in our study, is the cycle of precession of the equinoxes or Zodiacal year of 25,920 common years. We have given it special attention by placing particularly emphasis on the fact that 168 of them (which amounts to a “Divine Year” of 4'354,560 common years) are more or less equivalent to a Hindu maha–yuga of 4'320,000 common years, as well as on the divisions and sub-divisions that the old Egyptians, according to the Hermetic tradition, would have subjected this cycle to for the purpose of correlating it with the daily cycle of twenty-four hours.
On the other hand, it is interesting that these correspondences also occur with other Hindu cycles, as evidenced not only by this fact but also by the one that I will mention as follows: for the Pythagoreans, a “World’s day” was to the common day as one day is to a second; and in effect, in one day there are 24 x 60 x 60 = 86,400 seconds, which with five added zeros becomes, in common years and according to the Hindu doctrine in its most orthodox version, the duration of a Brahma’s day with its corresponding night.
In turn, we have studied the maha–yuga and its huge multiple, the kalpa of 4,320 million years, disconnecting ourselves from all known astronomical cycles. Still, here are likely connections with present-day science, including the fact that the most remote ancestor of the human species, the recently discovered Australophitecus Ramidus, might have lived 4.4 millions of years ago – a number of years that is virtually identical to the duration of the maha–yuga.
This is an artistic representation of the Australopithecus Afarensis,
who was a descendant of the Australopithecus Ramidus.
The Australopithecus Ramidus, supposed to be
the first hominid ever, appeared in Africa
about 4.4 million years ago.
On the other hand, the fact that the maha–yuga simply represents a human cycle or Manvantara, an eminently septenary period, to many qualified scholars, evidences that there are analogical correspondences between cycles of the most diverse order, and of course not only between the Manvantara and the maha–yuga, which is basically quaternary, but also between the former and the kalpa, of an essentially binary nature and divided into Day and Night – or better the opposite way, for it must be remembered that for most traditions, Night precedes Day. This in turn allows an additional inference: namely, that any cycle can be regarded as consisting of these two parts of day; and here it is possible to see yet another confirmation of the scientific – and at the same time symbolic – validity of these figures taken literally, for the Homo habilis, who no longer was an hominid but a human being almost in the full sense of the word, would have made his appearance on Earth about 2.2 millions of years ago, i.e. when the Night was just ending and the Day of the currentmaha–yuga was starting.
As to my calculation of the real length of the current Manvantara as 51,840 common years, or two Zodiacal Years, it should be regarded as preliminary and subject to demonstration, which will be attempted later on by means of historical data. Prior to that, I would like to mention two relatively recent discoveries somehow connected to circular numbers, especially 72, which provide new approaches to the close relationship between space and time.
The first of them was divulged by the magazine Geomundo (Vol. 5, No. 2, February 1981). In essence, it reveals that the ancient Teotihuacans knew, with astounding accuracy, the mean distances from the planets to the Sun. In fact, according to US engineer Hugh Harleston Jr., the author of the discovery, Teotihuacan would have been not only a great astronomical observatory but also, and mainly, a scale model of our solar system, an assertion supported by the distances measured between the stone tumuli punctuating the Avenue of the Dead from the Temple of Quetzalcoatl to the Pyramid of the Moon.
 Teotihuacan, Mexico - View of the Avenue of the Dead and
the Pyramid of the Sun, from the Pyramid of the Moon
(photo Wikimedia)
In effect, between the Sun on the one hand and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto on the other, the distances measured in hunabs – the standard unit of 1.0594(6) m determined by the researcher – multiplied by a certain factor, are 36, 72, 144, 520, 1,845, 2,880 and 3,780 respectively. Compare with the distances currently established in astronomical units, equivalent to the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun and which, in the same order, are 0.387, 0.723, 1.524, 5.203, 19.247, 30.220 and 39.642, and all possibility of their being a product of chance can be ruled out. But there is the additional, significant fact that all of the distances are perfect circular numbers, i.e. numbers whose digits add up to nine, with the only exception of the distance from Jupiter, whose digits add up to seven – a “sacred” number which, while somehow anomalous, we have had the opportunity to see frequently in the course of these studies.
The second discovery, reviewed by the magazine Año Cero (Year 6, Nº 10 – 01963), may be summed up like this: Within the current expansion of the universe, it is widely known that the greater the distance from a galaxy to the Earth, the greater the velocity with which the latter speeds away from the former. However, only now is it known that in this speeding away there are no intermediate velocities, but the galaxies travel at a given velocity and suddenly skip to another: in fact, they move like subatomic particles, or in speed packs, exactly by leaps of 72 kilometers per second or of some multiple of this velocity, such as 216, 432, etc., all of them figures we are most familiar with by now; all of which evidences what we might call the magical character of the universal operation and grants a renewed validity to the old hermetic saying that, «As is above, so is below.»
And here we are treading again on symbolic field, for the length of the current Manvantara – as established in a previous post – is precisely the product of 72 x 720. This, however, which might be a preliminary confirmation that I was not wrong in my calculation of such length – as 51,840 years may well represent, according to all of the scientific information available, the antiquity of Homo sapiens on Earth, apart from the fact that it is in close agreement with the Brahmanic tradition that civilization appeared on our planet about 50,000 years ago – can hardly be regarded as conclusive proof of its accuracy. We need, then, more tangible evidence, such as can endure the most skeptics’ scrutiny. But since the only such evidence is the one supported by historical data, precisely what is missing in this case, we need to resort to other means in order to get it. Now, which can those means be?
We will know in my next post.
Thank you,
Luis Miguel Goitizolo |