PREFACE

To some extent, this investigation is meant to illuminate part of the material presented in JEP 4/2 concerning Sirius and Sirian System of 7 Suns which constitute the Origin of the 7 Rays, their Prototypes being found in the 7 Stars of Ursa Major, the 7 head centers of the One About Whom Naught May Be Said. Michael Robbins has suggested to me that there may be several LIVES designated by the name, the One About Whom Naught May Be Said (signifying ineffability rather than occultation). On the level of external system, or Fohat, perhaps Sirius, the Sirian System, and the ONE ABOVE THE LOGOS Who manifests through the Three Major Constellations (Ursa Major, Pleiades, Sirius) are 3.

However, it is my intent to be as concrete as I can in this essay and so a number of points bear reminding. Temple alignments to stars such as Sirius do not necessarily indicate intimate knowledge, communication, or cooperation with Sirian life and its expression, perhaps just a convenient, albeit elaborate, coincidence with the Nile floods and Greek sailing seasons. "Channeling," prayer, collective worship or meditation in these temples so aligned, undoubtedly reinforces cultural myths, societal conditioning, purposeful and purposeless varieties of "free association," and the resulting patchwork of thought form, rather than thought impulse, psychological aspiration, and living action, the former serving simply to justify and proliferate derivatives of the ordinary conditioned human social behaviors noted above. However, this observation intends only to point out the predominant effect on undeveloped human minds and hearts, and the lack of developed "mechanisms of response" — not to deny or negate the possibility of direct spiritual contact or experience. Certainly not to deny the inner rituals or disciplined observances of intelligent spiritual life and action — the sacrifice of the Spirit in service, rather than animals (including the human variety) in services, or circuses, for that matter. What Sirius signified in the mysteries guarded behind the ancient calendric systems at the core of all early religions is obscured even more by the nature of space and time.

It is true, though, that the most important world and human history, that of the soul and spirit, was seldom written down or given credence by tenured niche-filling authoritative censors found continuously active in most human institutions and societies throughout the ages. Nevertheless, the symbols of sublime realities are very frequently found in the insignia and escutcheons of the division of humanity which might be termed in descending order of consciousness as demi-god (asura), lower warrior caste (kshatriya), or even "predator elite" (corrupt bureaucracies?); not to deny these symbols' use by those who might be characterized incrementally as ego-invested, rational, illumined, or fully enlightened elites. Even with the Eastern psycho-spiritual wisdom enlightenment and the Western socio-political intellectual enlightenment, Humanity has been able to achieve only some of the potential and purpose of the past Piscean Age. The emphasis upon Service on the planet rather than strictly upon self-interest (as partially and perhaps ambiguously reflected in the increase of the human service/commmodity ratio economically), the emphasis on human and civil rights, the progressively inclusive nature of the evolution in civic, social and financial institutions sped on by the Virgoan industrial, technological, computer and telecommunication revolutions, have all been part of the glory of the Piscean Age. However, as with the poor, the predator elite will always be with us, until the evolution of reflective, reasoning consciousness keeps pace with gains in external structural restoration and formal civility in the "human" kingdom through knowledge; until, using the evolutionary social and psychological achievements of the past Age for waging peace, restoring planetary ecological health, along with a conscious utilization of our socio-political conflicts to enliven a more intelligent world-wide cooperation, Humanity will be seen to take its next most evident steps. This topic obviously demands more thorough treatment.

Secondly, I hope this essay clarifies the article in JEP 5/2 on the 3(4) axial coordinate systems of astronomy/astrology, particularly the 2 represented by the PISCES/VIRGO axis. Perhaps we can bring the concept and life of the Cosmic Christ (symbolized by the PISCES "Great Attractor" [Pisces-Cetus supercluster complex]) as well as His immediate purpose (EA 188-9) expressed by VIRGO (the Virgo Cloud of galaxies of which we are a member, headed toward the Cloud of Hydra-Centaurus) more down to Earth, through our immediate engagement with history, externally recorded, interpretively elaborated, or otherwise experienced.

1. THE PRECESSION AGES

Interestingly, while the Jewish religious calendar starts with the 7th month (LIBRA or SCORPIO), the Jewish secular or agricultural calendar starts with the first new moon after the vernal equinox (ARIES); the Babylonians (Iraqis) set their first new moon with the heliacal rising of the Pleiades (TAURUS); the Athenian Greeks set the first month, Hecatombeion, at the new moon around midsummer, just before summer solstice (GEMINI); and the Egyptian new year began during this period with the heliacal rising of Sirius on Julian 20 July (CANCER), that is, when Sirius is first visible rising before sunrise (daybreak), after emerging from the blinding solar disk. The Muslims set the first year of their Epoch from the Hegira, 16 July 622, starting this cycle at (CANCER) with the visible new moon (23° Cancer), but their lunar year is 354 days long and regresses every 32.5 years.
This sequence of calendars may help serve to elucidate the sequence of Precession Ages. Why was the advent of Pisces so critical? Because in the reverse motion of the precession cycle, its beginning at 0° Aries marked the end of an entire 25,000 year cycle and began another even greater Round of 250,000 years (which implies a ten-fold division). Incidentally, these four signs — Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer — are those which are occupied by Sirius and the Pleiades during the past 4,000 years, about which more below.

The previous 2200-year AGE OF ARIES found the Greeks sacrificing the oxen of Helios, the scapegoats of Dionysus and sheep to Zeus, whose temples were aligned to a Arietis; the popularity of the Heroic Cults, including the 7-fold planetary Ladder of Perseus, Hercules with his 12-fold solar labors, and the local hero Theseus of Athenian democracy; the Jewish dispensation of scapegoat purification through animal sacrifice and fulfillment of God's Law through a proliferation of human laws by means of the opposite sign Libra; the mnemonic Yoga Sutras of Patanjali for disciplining the permutations of the mental principle and leading to Union with God; the Turning of Three Wheels of Enlightenment for students of varying predispositions by Buddha; the Nondualist Atma doctrine of Shankara emphasizing "higher manasic" gnosis; and Pythagoras' God as Geometrician of Universal Law coming near its end.

The AGE OF TAURUS found the worship of the golden calf and Moloch; Isis/Sirius in the cow form of Hathor; the Vedic hymns to Hindu God-in-Attribute forms and the cowherds of sunrise; the advent and death of Krishna, surrounded by his cowherding maidens, presenting his teachings of seventeen-plus yogas during the Battle of Kurukshetra recorded by Vyasa in the Mahabharata; the late Mithraic mysteries with their icon, the tauroctony; the earlier Mithraism associated with solar fire in the Middle East and Asia Minor; the Bactrian fortress cities newly discovered in Turkmenistan by Victor Saryanidi of the USSR, with altars surrounded by fire pits and storage bowls still encrusted with ephedra-poppy sacramental wine, a mixture still found 1000 years later among the Zoroastrian fire devotees.

The AGE OF GEMINI was eminently depicted in the two pillars of Masonry, whose latter cousins were found in Solomon's Temple as Jachin and Boaz; perhaps the earliest Hermetic traditions start during this period; Thoth/ Hermes had a powerful influence on early dynastic periods, and is mentioned in the earliest Egyptian creation hymns as the 3rd Aspect of Atum, the tongue, or speech, coming after the 2nd Aspect of the heart.

The AGE OF CANCER may be depicted in the earliest Egyptian creation papyri where it is the Scarab (Cancer) which is carried in the Boat of the Sun (often used to denote current Ages in the precession cycle), held up from the watery abyss by the god Nu, and holding the solar disk up to the celestial goddess Nut. Mother Heaven, Father Earth arising from a watery abyss — the Great Flood of Noah? Within the constraints of modern historical "evidence," this might be construed as an elegant explanation of Herodotus' comment that the Egyptians had astronomical records in their underground libraries which recorded 3½ precession cycles. Instead of full precession cycles which would imply 85-90,000 years, perhaps subcycles from Cancer to Aries (c. 8,000 years) were intended. However, he stated explicitly that the Egyptian priests observed the same Star rising heliacally (heralding the Sun), setting at dawn on the opposite horizon for 3 cycles consecutively. The mystery remains.

Prior Ages are presented in reverse order by the calendars abovementioned — perhaps in order of antiquity of their cultures. There is a tendency to carry "new wine in old skins" during each generation, witness the strange historical pervasiveness of cow/bull worship. The Aries Age Greeks seem to have been the only people to have clearly observed the change in Age from TAURUS, based on alignment of their Temples to Zeus (a Arietis) — to ARIES. But a recent book on the origins of Mithraism seems to suggest otherwise.

Let us review the passing PISCEAN AGE in the West: Roman Empire; Holy Roman Empire; Knightly Orders; the rise of universities with Scholasticism; the rise of city-states with a Renaissance of philosophic and religious diversity; the rise of nation-states out of monarchism with the Enlightenment brought on by development of science and new social institutions; an age of socio-political revolutions with the Industrial Revolution; a League of Nations with World War I; a United Nations with World War II; a Cold War and Detente with superpower diplomacy; a Common Market and European Community with the rise of international economic and supranational security interest blocs reordering political priorities; and impending Green Evolution into intelligent unity arising out of the recognition of the value of a world made up of strengthening Common Interest Communities such as US-Canada trade agreements, the Pan American Union, South American Union, Scandinavian alliance, European Community, Arab League, Pan African Congress, a reordering of East European interests misrepresented in the past by Comecon, a Central Asian Islamic Awakening, China's slow self-rediscovery, India's Independence and emergence into the telecommunications age, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), new cooperative economic initiatives by Japan with the Philippines and Indonesia, telecommunications and world relief, the awakening of a "post-modern" imagination in cooperative programs between Japan and the US.
There is a lot to be hoped for if humanity's national, political, and business representatives don't lose their nerve, or decide to go for broke over a cheap substitute.

The AQUARIAN AGE has been characterized as one of Experience rather than Authority; the idea that "Hope and Faith are lost in Sight." Certainly we have the responsibility of omnipresence in world relations. I hesitate to use the word "inter-national" when the concept of nation-states is being submerged in a more inclusive and informed awareness of world interdependence through information and communication technology. The terms "supranational" and "transnational" have gained increased currency in recent scholarly and governmental discourse. Those who can be characterized as "group-conscious individuals" stand the greatest chance to succeed in a world populated by New Renaissance human beings, institutions, science and eventually religion — even though the possibility is ever-present that there may eventuate passing convulsive reactions among masses deprived of basic human rights physically, or obvious external enemies psychologically, which vacuum "en masse" may always be cynically manipulated by computerized pols serving limited self-serving ends, ill-thought-out coercions, or futile ideologic fashions.

Nevertheless, as Bailey pointed out early in the 20th century, science is as revelatory of God's life as is religion, echoing Blavatsky's 19th century battle cry, "There is no Religion Higher than Truth." For the Agni yogi, Maitreya's grand march into Infinity steadily reverberates in the heart of the unit, Humanity, and slowly but inevitably God's Plan emerges within new ranks of His entourage, radiating with joy throughout a planet Earth populated by admitted "prisoners of the planet" occupying seemingly isolated cells of consciousness and habitation, yet rediscovering each other as if for the first time.

SIRIUS AND THE GRAND TRIGON

SIRIUS

2. SIRIUS IN GEMINI (c. 1224 BC - c. 971 AD)

Greece and Rome

To give an idea of the "mythology" associated with Sirius and the Grand Trigon during its 2200 year period in Gemini (1224 BC to 971 AD), there are 4 instances where Sirius conjuncted the Trigon while in GEMINI.

The first of these instances came close after the last conjunction in TAURUS, around the time of the Fall of Troy, mentioned above. There are rumors throughout the several epics of the Homeric tradition that both Pleiades and Sirius were implicated astronomically during the fall of the city. Indeed, Sirius was Achilles' star, found upon his shield, commissioned from Hephaistos (Vulcan) by his goddess mother, the sea-nymph Thetis. The close lives and deaths of Achilles and Patroklus, along with the gigantic "bonfire of the vanities" illuminating the funeral games at Patroklus' death closely parallel those of Alexander and Hephaisteion. Both sets occurred in association with this unusual cycle. The dual sibling theme in the Iliad is brought out intently in the stories of Achilles and Patroklus, the 2 brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus, as well as by the sisters Helen and Clytaemnestra. The latter were born with Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux) by Leda, wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta. Since Zeus came to Leda as a swan and ravished her, classical authors claim that Castor and Clytaemnestra were progeny of the earthly king, while Polydeuces and Helen were born of Zeus (See R. Graves, Greek Myths).

The first Gemini SIRIUS TRIGON occurred in June 1178 BC and fell within the reign of Rameses III who fought the "Peoples of the Sea," a Confederacy which included Greeks, Philistines, Sicilians and Sardinians. One of their major attacks took place close to 1182 BC, commemorated on a frieze at Medinet Habu. It may be that the raids of the Sea Peoples designated the separate Returns of fleets of the city-states joined in the Achaian Alliance against the Hittite Ilios (Troy), taking advantage of chaotic times to sack Hittite and Egyptian tribute states along the Eastern Mediterranean, when both Hittites and Egyptians were preoccupied with maintaining their collapsing empires (destruction of Hittite Boghaz Koy c. 1166; Rameses III and XXth Dynasty starting c. 1190). Though of questionable reliability, the Parian Marble notes 1187 as the first Greek settling of Ionia. It also dates the Fall of Troy at 5 June 1209. The librarian of Alexandria, Eratosthenes, dated its fall at 1184-83.

The Founding of Rome
The goddess Vesta was daughter of Cronos (Saturn) and Rhea (Earth). As protectress of Humanity, she guarded the sacred fire at Rome, kindled by the Sun, which was never allowed to go out, upon pain of death. This Fire symbolized the hearth at the center of the household, at the center of the planet itself, or of a Sun. The Palladium or sacred image of Pallas Athene, protectress of Troy, brought to Rome by Aeneas, was kept with the sacred fire at the circular Temple of the Vestal virgins in Rome. The Twins Romulus and Remus were born of Mars and Ilia, a vestal descended from Aeneas of Troy. Ilia was buried alive for breaking her vows after bearing them, and they were left on one of the seven hills to die, but were found and suckled by a she-wolf until rescued by a local shepherd. What more perfect symbol for the founding of Rome than dog-star (she-wolf) SIRIUS (Isis suckling Osiris), in GEMINI (Romulus and Remus), during the Age of ARIES (brought up to age by a sheep-herd)!
The fall of Troy occurred some time just after 1250 BC, an ancient example of the Trigon changing from Earth to Air, a triple conjunction in Libra occurring in 1-3-8/1257 BC (such as 1981 AD, ominously — remember RR, the male version of Evita Peron?). This coincides with the beginning of the 2200-year period when Sirius was found in both the constellation and sign of GEMINI (c. 1224 BC - 971 AD), as well as the interlude between Aeneas' arrival and Romulus' founding of Rome, continuing on to around 970-971 AD (using simple 10-yr. variance in motion calculations in tandem with conventional 30° borders between signs). Triple conjunctions of Jupiter-Saturn occur around 400 years apart, as an irregular pattern during the past 4,000 years (not at 660 year intervals as Arthur C. Clarke has asserted in one of his TV festivals of passionate scientistic skepticism — this is not even true for right ascension conjunctions!).

The Roman Gemini. The Roman representatives of the Gemini are depicted in sibling conflict which costs the life of Remus, while Romulus, as the agent of the lower self, definitely takes control over his warlike people; very unlike the Greek Dioscuri ("Sons of Zeus") who worked together on mutual terms of intelligent cooperation even though one was immortal, each spending half the year in the Underworld of Hades. Thus the 3 aspects of the Personality-Soul relation in Gemini are depicted in Greek and Roman myth (and history): 1) martial personality in control (EA 210); 2) personality and soul in mortal combat and eventual balance; 3) soul in the seat of power.
Romulus kills his brother over the Plans of the City and we see the lower personality, the true Son of Mars in charge of founding the city named after him, Rome (traditionally 753 BC). Later, as king, he is chopped into pieces in the Forum during a full eclipse at high noon (25 Cancer, 7/27/737 [?]) by his competitors in personality, the senators, who hide his body parts under their togas. When the Sun of daylight returns they explain to the gathered populace that he has ascended to heaven. Thereafter Romulus is given the divine name Quirinus and the festival of the Quirinalia (February 17th) is instituted. Rome was originally called Quirium by the Sabine tribes who inhabited it.

Eclipses. Looking to the traditional celebration date of April 21, 753 BC for the founding of Rome, there just happened to be three very small solar eclipses visible from Rome in the 3 years preceding the founding — two at the horizon rising, and the last setting (1/756 at 4 Aquarius, 7/755 at 14 Cancer, and 7/754 at 4 Cancer respectively).
Regarding the total eclipse at noon, we have three likely suspects:

a) 12/9/744, ending at 11 am Rome time at 69.5% totality at 10 Sagittarius;
b) 7/27/737, starting at 12:35 pm and achieving 44% totality at 1:57 pm at 25 Cancer close to Regulus; and
c) 5/15/733, at 59% totality 10:55 am at 16 Taurus.

A fourth at 85.5% totality on 5/6/724 occurred at 6:47 am (7 Taurus) and so must be ruled out, unless there is some mistake in legend or time. However, the May 724 eclipse occurred 29 years, or approx. one Saturn cycle later, Saturn at 10 Scorpio. Saturn was found at 28 Scorpio in April 753, with Venus and Jupiter at 15 and 8 Taurus respectively. Also, throughout April and May 753, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter moved in and out of conjunction in Aries where a Arietis was to be found; the same planets conjuncted in Libra through October 724. We may have to choose between a Saturnian or Lunar metaphor, unless Zeus' temple star was recognized and supervenes, heralding the coming Piscean Age by the esoteric ruler of Pisces, Jupiter.

What makes the 2nd of the 3 most convincing (737) is that it was at high noon in the same Saros series as the three from 756-754 at the horizons rising and setting. Certainly a compelling symbol in itself — the solar king must die at high noon, the lunar goddesses, their calendars and worship usually emphasizing the dramatic rising and setting points. The Uranian/chthonic, Zeus/Kronos, or Apollonian/Dionysian mysteries seem to be symbolized here in some sense.

The first Trigon in ARIES since 1417 BC occurred in February 741 at 0° Aries conjunction a Arietis in 4° orb, with Sun, Mercury and Venus in Aquarius. The Trigon of January 721 was in 11° Sagittarius, conjunct Vega by 5°.

In 753, curiously, from April 21 and continuing on for two months through June, Venus, Mars and Jupiter were conjunct in Aries as morning stars. In 737, Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars were conjunct from mid-November through January in Sagittarius and Capricorn.

After Romulus' death there was a year's interregnum before the legendary Numa Pompilius was elected King by the Senate. Cicero gives his reign as 39 years in length; Livy 43 years. The Books of Numa, half of them describing Roman religious ceremonial, the other half on Greek philosophy which were burnt, were discovered in 181 BC and are now generally considered forgeries. However, perhaps they were assembled by city priests for a 500th anniversary of the founding, in which case 500 + 181 + the 43 year reign of Livy would put us at 724 BC, the fourth solar eclipse. That the Britannica gives him a 32 year reign beginning in 715 illustrates the confusion on the topic.

Historical Parallels to the Founding Legends of Rome. Virgil (70-19 BC) was to witness a vivid parallel to the mythic drama of Romulus and the senators when Julius Caesar, just after reforming the calendar in 46 BC, was struck down (March 15, 44 BC) during the Roman Civil War by jealous elites, daggers hidden under their togas, in the Hall of Pompey. Ironically, the Liberalia, or lesser Festival of Dionysus, the dismemberer, fell on March 17th; the renewal of Vesta's fire having just occurred on March 1st. Caesar was the first Roman to be declared "divus" by the senators. At the commencement of the funeral games held to celebrate Caesar's deification, a comet appeared at sunset and shone for 7 days, which may have accounted for a sharp rise in the pride index among Roman emperors, which went before the great fall after Augustus.

With Sirius in Gemini, there were six major temples where the Roman Senate assembled: Castor and Pollux, Apollo, Concordia, Bellona (Goddess of War), Jupiter Statoris (the Establisher, Stayer of Flight), and Quirinus (Mars) — three to war and three to peace. It is curious that of all these, the Temple of Castor and Pollux drew the attention of Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius, all of whom restored it to renewed splendor (rebuilt and glorified to their idiosyncratic tastes might be a better characterization since their reigns were successive and restoration would not seem urgent). A better reason may be found in the Mithraic mysteries of the Roman state religion. (See "Taurus and Scorpio in the Mithraic Mysteries," below.)

Alexander and the Hellenic Period
The second Gemini SIRIUS TRIGON was in July 384 BC, just after the sack of Rome (390) by the Gauls, which saw Rome's rebuilding, the founding of Plato's Academy (388), his "Symposium" (387), and the birth of both Aristotle and Demosthenes (384). After 3000 years of continuity, the last native Egyptian dynasty (30th) began in 366 and ended shortly thereafter.
The third SIRIUS TRIGON event was in May 324 BC when Hephaisteion died, accompanied by an unprecedented funeral pyre and games. He was Alexander's closest friend and ally and they had been tutored together by Aristotle. Alexander died the next year (323), crowning his generals by default over all his conquered territories. The same year the new Egyptian Empire under Ptolemy Soter began, who founded the great library at Alexandria. Euclid came out with his famous "Elements" on geometry, while Aristotle had to flee Athens to avoid the same fate as Socrates. He died the next year (322) along with Demosthenes, who was seeking refuge from Athens and the conquering Macedonians at an island Temple to Poseidon (ruler of Gemini, according to Plato and his pupil Eudoxos), where he took poison rather than surrender.

Greece and Rome in Byzantium
These celestial events must have made some impact during the golden age of Hellenism, but Hellenic populations were to be treated to yet another historic irony during the 4th and last Sirius Gemini Trigon in May of 531 AD. After several attempts to poison him, St. Benedict Thaumaturgus relocates at Montecassino to found a single monastery there, traditionally in 529. It is around this time that he composes the famous Rule of his Order, emphasizing a sober stewardship, which solidified Western monasticism and which was first quoted by Justinian in one of his Laws (11/17/530). In 527 the great Byzantine Christian Emperor Justinian acceded to the throne, and in 529 busied himself by codifying all the laws of Byzantium (ruled by a truly Augean bureaucracy), again and again several editions over, all of which had to be re-enforced in succession. This adept at enforcing external mundane legalistic authority over that of the inward-reflecting rational self-directed soul, Justinian, along with his wife Theodora, were described by Procopius in his Historia Arcana (12) as "anthropodaemons" sent to destroy the works and race of humankind. Luckily in 531 the Nika Revolt began and by 532 it razed Constantinople, which allowed Justinian's better judgment to build St. Sophia in the same year — Wisdom triumphing over the ruins of inadequate, insufficient yet still pitifully unapplied Knowledge. It was in this Sirius Trigon year of 531 that we may imagine a nervous Justinian finally first applying St. Benedict's Rule, after delaying years after its composition at the encouragement of Pope St. Hormisdas (d. 523). The Scythian monk, Dionysius Exiguus, and a certain Brother Lawrence seem to have informed part of the historical backdrop during the period of the Rules composition (See Chapman).

3. SIRIUS IN CANCER (c. 971 AD - c. 3165 AD)

Holy Roman Empire
Sirius' entrance into Cancer c. 971 AD falls quite close to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire in 962 by Otto I the Great of Germany (ancient Gaul) who crowned himself "Emperor Augustus." This simply served to initiate a 40-year period of conflict between German and Roman nobility which involved murder, debauch, poisoning and cynical maneuvering among the decadent and scrambling "religious" elites. At the triple Trigon in ARIES 5 years later (967-8), his son Otto II was crowned.

Two Grand Trigons after these two, in May 1084, Rome was ruthlessly sacked by South Normans, Calabrians and Sicilians (TAURUS Trigon in February 1087). The Anti-Pope Clement was elected in 1066, carried into the city with the sack, Pope Gregory VII holding out in Hadrian's Mausoleum, Castel Sant' Angelo. At this point in chaos, Rome was a blasted no-man's-land, a bit better preserved than Beirut in the 1966s (triple LIBRA Trigon 1981). Ironically, the two factions faced each other off from Hadrian's Pantheon and Mausoleum, respectively. Gregory was briefly reinstated at St. Peter's in May 1087 but soon retired to his beloved library at Monte Cassino and died in September. But enough of the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted until Napoleon abolished it in 1666, appropriately after another triple Trigon of purification and reorientation in VIRGO (1662) at the climax of Napoleon's rise and fall, the Napoleonic Wars (1796-1662; 1662-1813).

Islamic Civilization
An interesting parallel in contemporary sequential time frames should be noted here. The Andromeda "nebula" was first noted by Al Sufi in 963, to be rediscovered by Europeans in 1612. In 968 Cairo was founded on the year of the triple Trigon in ARIES, and Islamic sciences were flourishing with the founding (968) of Cordoba University in Spain, soon to reach their height under Caliph Hisham of the Omayyad Dynasty. During this period, of course, civilization as the Western tradition knows it was for the most part preserved by Islamic culture during the gross European interlude of the "Dark Ages," when the Europeans were working their way out of the Roman Empire through the Holy Roman Empire into a somewhat stabilized consciousness of Europe, about to flower in the Neo-Platonic Renaissances of the 3 SIRIAN GRAND TRIGONS of 1384, 1444, and 1504.
Work done during the time of the great Iberian universities encouraged later Neoplatonist, Lullist utopian philosophical communities who attempted to create forms of spiritual practice that might unite Judaism, Graeco-Roman planetary deity worship, Islam and Christianity. Unfortunately, there were not enough intelligent cooperators in this endeavor, given humanity's apparent addiction to the excitement of conflict with its doomed pleasures and rewards, habits of vain static comfort and co-dependency, and a thought process almost entirely dependent upon and stimulated by crisis. Not much has changed throughout the years.

Let us speak here of the principle of Harmony through Conflict among the Many Veiling Unity or the One, a theme particularly strong in the Egyptian schools of philosophy as well as the Islamic. From the point of view of the unit, Humanity — governed by the crisis habit and addicted to conflict for any degree of thoughtfulness — the principle of its Life, paradoxically, is Sensitivity to Contact and resultant coherence in mutually constructive Relationship. The Science of Right Human Relations has only just begun to have an impact through Human, Civil and Childrens' Rights movements, initiated by the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, among others (the Paris Lodge of the 18th and 19th centuries). These movements are beginning to rally a modicum of human responsibility to posterity, over and above the convenient rhetoric. The enunciation of the Four Freedoms by Roosevelt in the midst of World War II went some way to elucidate the sinuous razor-edged line between response-able free will and an assumption of spurious responsibility based on instinctive fear-driven reaction to sporadically recognized states of entrapment/imprisonment in nonreflective corners of wage-slave, market-pumping, modern societal conditioning.

Perhaps it could be said that after the Sack of Rome in 1084, mass Roman anger at the Southern Norman Anti-Pope factions who sacked the city was collectively psychologically displaced toward what seemed an easy target for gain in both pride and substance, as their overstimulated attention was "naturally" redirected into the first Crusade of 1096-99.

The Neoplatonic Renaissance
The tie-ins of this SIRIUS TRIGON cycle with the Aristotelian and Platonic Schools are truly intriguing. Platonic, Alexandrian, and many other classical Greek manuscripts were to prove safe in Byzantium until the Turks conquered the city in 1453. Fortunately, Cosimo di Medici and friends had been buying up all the Greek and Latin manuscripts they could get their hands on during the 1420s and 30s, so Cosimo could open the first great public library in Europe in 1437, and then pass on a good part of his own collection to the Platonic Academy being organized by Marsilio Ficino in 1462 (Pisces Trigon in 1464) with Cosimo's patronage (the two met in 1439). In Hungary, Matthias Corvinas was accumulating large manuscript libraries as well, which would be translated at his court and during the next several centuries by the many religious refugees from the cult wars of religion sweeping Europe. In the West at large, these Neoplatonic theosophical (hermetic humanist) ideas were the one central cause of the Renaissance which spread throughout Europe and which arose from the translation in Italy and Eastern Europe (into both Latin and the vernacular) of the classics brought by scholars fleeing Byzantium.

Figures associated with the 1st Cancer SIRIUS TRIGON in 1384 and 1385 broadly include Catherine of Siena, Thomas a Kempis, John Wyclif, Jan Hus, Hafiz, Chaucer and Nicholas of Cusa. After a century during which England, France and Italy had established major universities, Germany founded several within a few years of the Trigon.
On May 6, 1385, suspiciously timed to the 1st SIRIUS TRIGON, the studious Gian Galeazzo Visconti devised his ingenious coup over family plotters and began one of the first modern attepts to reunify northern and central Italy after Rome, albeit under force and subject to his duchies of Milan and Pisa.

The Great Schism in the Roman Catholic church began in 1378 after the Avignon Papacy, and occupied attention for 40 years. The University of Paris was consulted in 1384, which arranged a council in Pisa for 1409. As an aside, Pope John XXIII of the Vatican II Council in the 20th century was named after an earlier corrupt and very brief successor of the compromise candidate of the Pisa council, Alexander V (who died mysteriously at John XXIII's castle before reaching Rome), a modern attempt to expiate and erase the memory of an earlier knave. (However, see Baigent et al., p. 159.)

Hunyadi Janos (later Rakoczi) and the Draculas
The SIRIUS TRIGON of 1444 witnessed both death and rebirth in the conflict and cooperation of Christian and Islamic societies. In 1443-44, Hunyadi Janos led the "Long Campaign," a crusade against Murad II, returning to Buda in February 1444, after driving the Turks out of most of the Balkans. However, the Ottomans defeated the Christians at Varna on the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria on November 10, 1444. Now Hunyadi was made Voivode or Governor of Transylvania, Count of Temes, modern Timisoara. He was later declared Voivode of all Hungary (1446-52). Early in his life he studied warfare with Francesco Sforza of Milan, Giangaleazzo's political successor, and the Bohemian Hussites, who developed the idea of cannon mounted on wagons. His greatest victory, at Belgrade on July 22, 1456, freed Hungary from Turkish dominion for 70 years.

Another famous family fought the Turks in Varna, the Draculas. The name Dracul came from the investiture of Dracul Senior with the Order of the Dragon of the Holy Roman Empire by Sigismond in Nuremberg, February, 1431. Sultan Murad soon lured young Vlad "Tepes" Dracul (Dracula) into a trap, who remained captive as a janissary page until 1448. In December of 1447 his father Dracul was murdered by Hunyadi's zealous henchmen. After the disaster at Varna, Vlad blamed Hunyadi Janos for the death of his father and brother, and they became lifelong enemies. In 1460, Dracula's version of St. Bartholomew's Day in Brasov claimed close to 30,000 victims on stakes. In the next year, 1461-2, although outnumbered 6 to 1, Dracula deliberately insulted Mohammed II, and the Wallacho-Turkish Campaign began, with Dracula impaling the entire Turkish citadel of Giurgin, leaving them to rot outside his capital Tirgoviste for 6 months until Mohammed II arrived, appalled. Where Dracula's scorched earth policy failed, the plague outbreak soon succeeded. In 1462 Hunyadi's son Matthias incarcerated the terrible Vlad (1462-1474), called by some a "premature nationalist." Nevertheless, undaunted, Vlad later married Matthias' sister.

Hunyadi's contemporary spiritual successors, rallying around the Hungarian minority priest in Transylvania, Father Tokes at his home in Timisoara, Rumania, under the November 1989 Jupiter-Saturn opposition in Cancer/Capricorn, freed Rumania from the Ceaucescu brood. The Hunyadi/Dracula - Father Tokes/Ceaucescu parallels are quite striking. The Tokes Mass and demonstration took place in Timisoara, Hunyadi's hereditary capital (See Florescu & McNally).
The Ceaucescus, ironically —or was it deliberately— fled to and were captured in Tirgoviste, Dracula's capital. They were finally executed in the "sanctuary" of Tirgoviste by the Rumanian people on Christmas Day 1989, as if to make sure they were exorcised for good. Wasn't it Hitler who recently reminded us of how close to the surface the "old gods" remain?

It must be remembered that during this same SIRIAN TRIGON of 1444, Cosimo de Medici was to found Europe's first public library, the Library of San Marco. Muhammad II, first Ottoman Sultan, established the Ottoman Empire in 1451 and with the capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Turks brought about the end of Christian Byzantium, but with a new Ottoman efflorescence of classical Arabic culture. Cosimo's early collection of manuscripts was to be considerably augmented by classical Greek works making their way to Italy with the fleeing Greek population from the Fall of Byzantium in 1453. Classical works preserved and translated in the Iberian universities reached Italy and the Neoplatonic presses in a similar manner with the fleeing Jewish population from Spain in 1492.

The 2nd Cancer SIRIUS TRIGON conjunction of 1444, occurred four years after Gutenberg developed moveable type (brought to completion in 1454), allowing an early period of media flourishing just in time to disseminate the translated classical rediscoveries and bring in the Renaissance. I mention this special cycle only to evoke the echoes ringing down the best of the living past.

1504 Trigon. The Age of Discovery.
Sirius in Cancer during the Aquarian Age
Sirius again conjuncts the Trigon, by 4° orb, in both 2298 and 2358 AD, or 310-370 years from now.
Sirius enters LEO c. 3165 AD.

4. THE MYSTERY SCHOOLS AND RELIGIONS

Egyptian Sekhmet — The Lion and the Bull
There is reason to believe that Zurvan is a syncretized version of Sekhmet, the Egyptian lion-headed goddess with uraeus centered in the Sun-disk behind her head. She was identical with the hippopotamus-crocodile or Taurt-Isis form of Hathor at Denderah, and with the cow form of Hathor at Thebes across the Nile, the city of her consort Bull, Amen-Ra. For at least a 1000-year period, Egyptian immortality consisted in securing a place on Amen-Ra's Boat of a Million Years, and imbibing his rays as sustenance on the journey. In the depictions of Sekhet-Aaru, the Egyptian Blessed Fields, are found regions that contain boats with a flight of 7 Steps, which regions are labeled "the great company of the gods," or "the place of the spirits." There is certainly a resonance between these two astronomical and mythic symbol iconographies, through the Isis-Osiris relation to Semele/Persephone-Dionysos, to the Mithraic tauroctony, which sublimated to a certain extent the Zagreus aspect of Dionysos.

[Dionysos arrived in a boat and with Mithra guarded 7 initiatory steps or degrees.] Both temples to Hathor were dedicated to the circumpolar stars, and aligned to Gamma Draconis.
In one Egyptian text it is said that Her Majesty (Mut, Mother of the Gods) came to settle at the Theban lake "in her form of Sekhmet" at the time of the creation. Indeed, the greatest number of Sekhmet statues were found associated with this temple, attached to that of Amen, the Bull. Sekhmet represents the ferocious aspect of the Sun (the mild Eye of the Sun was the cat Bast). According to Sir Norman Lockyer (The Dawn of Astronomy, MIT Press 1964), the Gamma Draconis form of Isis was replaced by the Sirius form of Isis in nearby temples associated with these great centers around 3000 BC. It might be suggested that the change took place closer to acknowledged periods of construction, say, at 4067 BC when Sirius entered Taurus; at 2495 BC when the Pleiades entered Aries; or at 1224 BC when Sirius entered Gemini. Obviously some closer work needs to be done.

The Temple of Mut first became a major cult site during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut (1490-1469 BC), "Pharaoh's Daughter," who mentions in a stela inscription of 1477 BC: "And when I came as King, my Uraeus spat fire against my enemies. And when I allowed the abominations of the gods to depart, the earth swallowed their footsteps. This was the directive of the Primeval Father, Nun (primordial Waters), who came one day unexpectedly." On the other side of the tsunami, after one of Thera's eruptions, Moses had parted the waters which swallowed up Pharaoh's chariots and troops. Advertising and PR were alive and well in the 2nd millennium BC.

It should be said that Amen-Ra of the state religion supporting the concept of divine king, and most of the strictly solar cults were found in the later dynasties, emphasizing the Bull depictions of deity. Sekhmet is of the earlier dynasties and predynastic periods associated with Nun. Yet both female consorts as Hathor, in her Sekhmet or Taurt form are associated with Set, the mysterious god of "darkness" and the circumpolar constellations. Hence Taurt, the "Wife of Set" for Draco, which is perpetually circumpolar (particularly close from 4000-7000 BC during the GEMINI and CANCER Ages); the Thigh, the "Thigh of Set" for Ursa Major, circumpolar through the period from c. 4000 to 1 BC for the TAURUS and ARIES Ages; the Jackal, the "Jackal of Set" for Ursa Minor, which came in with Ursa Major as circumpolar constellations around 2000 BC for the ARIES, and particularly for the PISCES Age.

Looking further back to the LEO Age, in c. 8660 BC when Regulus marked the Spring Equinox, we find HERCULES closest to the Pole. Perhaps with more excavation and analysis, it can be said that the revival of Sekhmet with Queen Hatshepsut in the ARIES Age was a stimulus or even contemporary with the rise of the Herakles hero cult elsewhere, both of which derived from a very much earlier period in the Age of LEO.

Reiterating, both Temples of Hathor were aligned to Gamma Draconis or Taurt, the Hippopotamus goddess of childbirth, which might help explain her Age of CANCER reign, and Egypt's only reigning queen's special interest in her revival. This alignment seems to have been carried to Greece by Cadmus, who tradition tells us raised his armies from Dragon's teeth, and introduced Phoenician and Egyptian worship. This is emphasized by a major temple at Boeotian (Gr.) Thebes which seems to have been dedicated around 1300 BC, by alignment to Gamma Draconis. Curiously, it was the Theban prince Pentheus who resisted the Thracian mysteries of Dionysus from the north, whose fate is told in Euripides' The Bacchae.

The Herakles Hero Cult Among the Mystery Religions
Herakles was already a dead hero in the Homeric epics (7th-9th centuries BC). Pindar asserts the cult of the Twelve Olympians was established by Herakles. Thucydides and Herodotus both mention altars to the Twelve at Athens (6th cent.) and at Olympia. The Twelve may have safeguarded the Ionian Dodecapolis (12 cities of Asia Minor) in the 7th century. Plato and his protegé Eudoxos assigned each to a sign of the zodiac (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hermes, Athena, Hephaistos, Hestia).
Dionysos was later to replace Hestia at the hearth of Greek culture (see W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods). Later, Alexander was to build an altar to the 12 at his easternmost march into India, around the time of the Sirian Trigon of May 324 BC in GEMINI, with Sun, Venus and Mars in TAURUS. Dionysos was born of the lightning-ravaged Princess Semele of Thebes, and brought to term in his father Zeus' thigh with Mercury as midwife. By the 5th century, Thebes, the city of Herakles, was considered the seat of Dionysos in Greece and his Maenads were sent on orders from Delphi to found shrines throughout the rest of the Greek world. Of course, if he was not welcomed by any city, the women would be the first to go mad and they would all have their way.

The Montanist "heresy" within the Christian church of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD is considered by some a late appearance of Dionysos, since Montanus chose to ordain women as priests, bishops and elders, driving them to prophesy and the patriarchal church to madness. Tertullian wrote his Apology for Christianity in 197 AD (Sagittarius Trigon 193 AD) and turned to Montanism soon after Septimius Severus (d. 211) (Virgo Trigon 213 AD).

Phanes and the Orphic Mysteries
Phanes, the Orphic/Pythagorean precursor of Mithraic Zurvan, took the Homeric emphasis on the twins and Dioscuroi as Zeus/Dionysos, the celestial and terrestrial spheres (however construed). This is clarified in a Hellenistic relief from Modena of Phanes, his right hand pointing Zeus' fiery thunderbolt at the Twins in the zodiacal ring which surrounds him. He points lightning at the Dionysos twin Castor, since the other, Polydeuces, carries Apollo's harp, and in a sense is identified himself with Apollo/Helios. Apollo's shrine at Delphi was dedicated to the prophecies of Zeus, conveyed through his Pythia, while Dionysos was allowed to range through the mountain and forest "hunting grounds" between Thebes and Mt. Parnassos. Phanes' Mystery Axis staff points to the edge of Pisces bordering Aries, close to where a Arietis would be found, indicating the entrance into a New Age. The staff is grounded in the middle of Scorpio — all 3 signs (Gemini, Aries, Scorpio) appropriate symbols for the Orphic mystery emphasis on Phanes-Protogonos (Light-Primeval Generation) and Olympian Zeus/Cretan Zagreus as Eros/Dionysos before the sacred marriage of Eros and Psyche. This mystical marriage recalls DK's remark that the union of the soul (Psyche) with the body (Eros) through desire is in actuality the first sexual act. Of course all the above are expressive of the ancient Kabirian Mysteries of Samothrace, where the Dioskuroi are represented as Dionysos and Eros, where Hermes was established in his erect state, and the Kabirian Dactyls (Dioskuroi), or 10 fingers of 2 hands — the inferior and superior conjunctions of the Venus heliocosm, ruling the 8 year cycle of 10 Sun-Venus conjunctions.

In the Orphic Mysteries it was revealed that Apollo and Helios were identical, in Ouranian form as the Olympic cult of the tireless god Apollo/Helios, or in Chthonic Earth form as the heroic cult of Herakles, whose 12 Labors are the symbol of all those who choose to cleanse the human world of its monsters and illusions. In fact, Herakles was worshipped at two kinds of cult sites, one for the immortal Olympian and the other for the hero of the Earth, glory of Hera (She of the 4 year cycle of 50 lunations). But he was the only hero to be worshipped as an immortal, until the Mithraic degeneration into animal sacrifice once again.
Orpheus, and the ascetic "Orphic life," with its religious sacraments focused on universal mysteries, can be thought of as the immediate precursor to Christ, for the fact that Orpheus, like Christ who superceded him, wished to bring an end to what Jane Harrison characterizes thusly:

On the altar of his Unknown God through all the ages man pathetically offers the holocaust of his reason. (Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 505)

In his screenplay for Orphee, produced in 1949 after he had left the French Resistance movement, Cocteau wrote (through Maria Casares playing the character of Orphee's Death):

Some suppose He (God, the Universal Mystery) thinks of us;
Some that He thinks us;
Others that He dreams us — a bad dream!

Yet as an initiate in the Hermetic Mysteries, Cocteau was hinting at the Silent Watcher, Sanat Kumara, Melchizedek, the Eternal Ancient of Days which Phanes especially represents.

Mithraic Zurvan, the Long Body of the Solar System
From our geocentric and 5-sensory human point of view, we cannot see the solar atom in its true nature, only through exercise of our mind's eye. As for the galactic atom, all we can perceive of it is a squashed accretion disk, similar to conventional representations of the solar system. We do not immediately perceive either in living stretched-out motion except over time.
The dynamic nature of both can be most easily visualized as the "Long Body of the Solar System" (or galaxy) posited by Rodney Collin in his Theory of Celestial Influence. While the Sun is carried spirally round the galaxy as the galaxy is moving "North" in tandem with Andromeda, the Sun also moves "North" in relation to whatever set of local stars or clusters within the galaxy you choose to compare its motion with. This is the Solar Apex. Allowing this, one visualizes 250 years of the Sun's motion in a straight line north (1 orbit or circle/spiral of Pluto moving northward with the Sun towards Hercules/Vega), surrounded by the increasingly tight spring-like spirals of the inner planets, through the increasingly dilated spiral orbits of the outer planets. Within this "organism" one may visualize both globes and heliocosms (geometric star-like conjunction patterns of planets with earth and sun) periodically aligning with and triggering off their own and each other's planetary nodal axis points.

As mentioned before, heliocosms represent the spiral-cyclic aspect of planetary motion, not the rotary-orbital motion of the globes themselves, nor the forward-spirallic motion of the slow circuit of planetary nodes as the Sun travels north through space toward the Solar Apex in HERCULES/(Capricorn)/ SAGITTARIUS, along with our Milky Way galaxy toward (Aries)/PISCES/PERSEUS in its dual rotation with ANDROMEDA, our twin galaxy.

There is reason to believe that the Mithraic Mysteries were greater than once imagined. The "Long Body of the Solar System" is easily seen in the Mithraic deity Zurvan, the Lion-headed Cosmocrator (Ruler of the Universe), with 2 or 4 wings (Forward/upward motion) and a serpent of 3-6 coils (planetary spiral-cyclic orbits) wrapped round its torso, with the Serpent's head peering out over the Lion's like a uraeus (cobra third eye). Zurvan holds 2 Keys to the celestial and terrestrial axes, as well as a long staff in some instances, the greater Mystery Axis (the shifting precession axis) of which he is the expression. He stands on a Globe crossed with the ecliptic and celestial equator, and has Thunderbolt, Gorgon, or Lion head at his heart. (This interpretation is allowable now, thanks to the work of David Ulansey, of which more below.) He has been called Saturn or Time because only 6 planetary coils encircle his body, as the 7th or outermost coil is represented by the serpent's head as uraeus. However, he was preferred by Orphics in the similar form of the god Phanes to represent the innermost coil of the Sun, or Tower of Fire, in their heliocentric Pythagorean system.

Continued....