To understand astronomy one needs to have some background.
Here's my crash course on esoteric astronomy in six quick lessons.
The earth revolves about the Sun in a plane called the ecliptic.
The twelve constellations of fixed stars that intersect the ecliptic are called the zodiac.
All the stars of the zodiac are actually our close neighbors compared to the size of our
entire galaxy.
The Earth's equator is tilted some 23.5 degrees with respect to the ecliptic.
Gary Osborn's fascinating Paradigmshift web site shows how the angle of the Earth's tilt
is symbolized in art.
Here are Isis and Osiris raising the Djed which amazingly matches the angle of the Earth's
tilt.
And here again the 23 and a half degree angle matches the slope of the pyramid on the dollar
bill.
Osborn has found this same angle symbolized in many other pieces of esoteric art.
The Earth's tilt is the reason we experience seasons.
The seasons are defined by the Earth's orbit which contains two solstices and two equinoxes.
Looking at the solar system from above, the seasons naturally make a cross.
Wicherink and Parlier call this the Earth cross.
Our galaxy is called the Milky Way because its myriad stars resemble milk streaking our
night skies.
If you were able to look at our galaxy edge-on you would see it as a flattened disc.
This flattened structure is what makes the milky way look like a narrowly defined streak
in the sky rather than an even distribution of stars.
The central plane of the galactic disc is called its mid-plane.
The ecliptic is tilted some 120 degrees with respect to the mid-plane, naturally making
a cross in two dimensions.
Wicherink and Parlier call this the Galactic Cross.
Imagine beginning a journey outside the galaxy, flying through the zodiac, passing by each
one of the visible planets, and stopping on Earth for a while.
After a short stay you begin the journey home, traveling out past the planets, through the
zodiac, and on toward the center of the galaxy.
This route describes the mystical journey of the soul.
It is mirrored in the Ptolemaic or geocentric cosmology that predated Copernicanism.
The ancient Egyptians represented beginning and ending waypoints along the journey of
the soul with silver and golden gates.
Wicherink and Parlier show that the direction of the silver gate is located between the
horns of Taurus as seen from Earth.
You can find the horns by following Orion the hunter's club or Monoceros the unicorn's
horn because both point at the intersection of the galactic midplane and the ecliptic,
a point known to the Egyptians as the Silver Gate.
Isis shown with horns framing the sun disc symbolizes her guardianship of the silver
gate, or gate of birth.
On the opposite side of the zodiac, the golden gate is located close to where the arrow of
Sagittarius is pointing and where the stinger of Scorpio is reaching.
The golden gate is the second place where galactic midplane and ecliptic intersect.
The winged scarab framing a sun disc was used to symbolize guardianship over the Golden
Gate, or gate of death.
The scarab is an appropriate symbol because of how this insect pushes dung balls backwards
with its hind legs, mimicking the Sun's retrograde precessional motion through the zodiac.
The coat of arms for the state of Vatican City features silver and gold keys because
these are the keys to the kingdom that Christ gave to Peter.
Pietro Perugino's fresco in the Sistine Chapel shows Christ giving one silver and one gold
key to Peter.
I see the two Roman arches flanking the fresco as secretly depicting the Egyptian silver
and golden gates.
The octagonal domed building in the center clearly represents the sun and the perspective
grid must be the ecliptic.
The people in the piazza are taking the journey of the soul.
I was taught as a child to follow the outer edge of the big dipper to find the north star
Polaris.
In the past this rule of thumb didn't always work because the celestial pole changes over
time due to the Earth's precession.
When the Great Pyramid was built the star Thuban in the constellation Draco was the
north star.
Remember one of the pyramid shafts point at Thuban.
The celestial pole actually traces out a circle in the heavens representing the 25,920 year
precessional cycle.
This cycle is called The Great Year.
In 3D the Great Year is seen as a precessional cone swept out over time by the Earth's tilted
axis.
The Earth's precessional cone, the Sun, and galactic mid-plane will precisely align on
winter solstice 2012.
Author John Major Jenkins calls this phenomenon Galactic Alignment.
The Mayan long count calendar was designed to end on Winter Solstice, Dec 21st, 2012.
"...Many of the world's crucified godmen have their traditional birthdays on December 25th.
This date is set because the ancients recognized that the sun makes an annual descent southward
until after midnight of Dec. 21st, the winter solstice, when it stops moving southerly for
three days and was "born again" after midnight of Dec. 24th.
Thus, these many different cultures celebrated with great joy the "sun of God's" birthday
on December 25th."
-Acharya S in The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
Christmas 2012 marks the beginning of a new Great Year.
The Milky Way galaxy has a rotational period that I like to call the Galactic Year.
It lasts approximately 224 million years.
Our solar system is elegantly related to the larger cycle through number.
There are 8640 Great Years in the Galactic Year.
In other words, 8640 x 25920 = 223,948,800 years.
It's amazing how the Earth's precessional cycle, the number of the Sun, and the Decad
harmonize with the Galactic Year.
Astronomy grew out of the much older tradition of Astrology, the belief that the movement
of planets influences events experienced on the human scale.
Astrology is the quintessential hermetic art epitomized in the motto: "As above, so below."
You might not be aware how interconnected Astrology is with Ptolemaic Cosmology, the
Tarot, and Magic Squares.
Let's have a closer look.
Viewed from above, the Galactic Cross looks like this.
The red arrow indicates the direction of soul travel through the system.
The galactic mid-plane is represented by the signs Taurus and Scorpio and the ecliptic
by Aquarius and Leo.
These four together are known in Astrology as the fixed signs.
In the Tarot these signs adorn the corners of The World card.
The Eagle is the ancient version of Scorpio and Man is of course the water bearer.
I see the ouroboros as the orbit of the planets and the wands Isis is holding symbolizing
the columns of the Silver gate.
The High Priestess card links the Tarot with ancient Egypt, Freemasonry, and the Kabbalah.
Notice how the columns have capitals just like those in the hypostyle hall of the Temple
of Karnac in Egypt.
The priestess sits between the Masonic columns Boaz and Jachin.
The fruits behind her are arranged in the Kircher Tree of Life pattern.
In the Kabbalah, each sepiroth in the tree of life is associated with a particular planet.
Rick Campbell of DCsymbols.com identified a lightning path passing through the tree
of life that amazingly follows the Ptolemaic order of the spheres.
This is the missing link between the tree of life and the mystical journey of the soul.
In the Bible, Ezekiel had a mystical vision where he saw "living creatures run and return
as the appearance of a flash of lightning (Ezekiel 1:14).
Might Ezekiel's lightning vision be recapitulating the mystical journey of the soul?
The 22 Major Arcana cards in the Tarot map to the 22 paths connecting the sephiroth in
tree of life.
The suits ranging from Aces through 10s map to the sephiroth themselves.
The Tarot is therefore highly correlated with the Kabbalah.
A magic square is an arrangement of numbers in a square grid such that the numbers in
all columns, rows, and diagonals sum to the same constant.
In this case it's 15.
Here is the first magic square ever to be seen in European art.
All rows, columns, diagonals in this square sum to 34.
Incidentally the artist strategically placed these two numbers together to read 1514, the
year the engraving was made.
Yes this magic square is part of Albrecht Durer's Melancholia I that we've seen several
times before.
Luca Pacioli also studied magic squares and collected a large number of examples.
I suspect Pacioli educated Durer in the use of magic squares, as I already established
their relationship in the Rome episode.
A contemporary of Pacioli and Durer, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa wrote De Occulta Philosophia,
which drew on all the important Hermetic books brought to light by Cosimo de Medici that
you learned about in the San Francisco episode.
Agrippa explained that there really is magic within magic squares; sigils can be encrypted
within magic squares to call upon angels & demons.
Agrippa associated magic squares of order 3 to 9 with specific planets.
Why the Sun was associated with the 6x6 magic square is simple; the Sun is the sixth planet
in Ptolemaic order.
An interesting fact about the magic square of the Sun is that the sum of all its columns
or rows is 666, the loaded number we saw in the detour to Winnipeg within the Jerusalem
episode.
We'll decode the so called "number of the beast" in Paris Part 1.