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ALTERNATIVE NEWS
n the morning of Feb. 16, 2013, the small city of Chelyabinsk in the southern Ural
mountains of Siberia got a taste of what the last days of Atlantis may have been like.
Traveling at close to 40,000 miles per hour, a meteor flashed through the heavens and ex- ploded with an estimated force of about 500 kilotons of TNT (or about 20 to 30 times the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan which ended World War II). The explosion oc- curred at about 10 to 15 miles above ground, but, still, the resulting shock wave blew out win- dows in over 3,000 buildings in six cities. The dazzling flash was witnessed by thousands (over 1,200 were injured by flying glass), and soon the multitude of photos taken by many digital cameras were going viral on the Internet.
As newsworthy as the event was, its full sig- nificance has only begun to be appreciated. Though entirely unforeseen by astronomers and astrophysicists, the Chelyabinsk meteor serves as both an unwelcome reminder of historic precedent and herald of 2013’s coming attrac- tions. Few could fail to note similarities with the still unexplained 1908 Tunguska explosion (also in Siberia) thought to be the greatest im- pact event in modern history, leveling over 1,500 square miles. The Chelyabinsk meteor also opened what has already been called “the year of the comet.” Understandably many religious devotees see the heavens, these days, as full of long prophesied signs and wonders.
On the very day of the Chelyabinsk explosion, came a long-forecast close encounter of the physical kind with the asteroid DA14, a 150-foot-wide space rock, which passed just 17,200 miles above Earth’s southern hemi- sphere—closer than the orbit of many weather satellites. Scientists who publicly touted their prowess at being able to find and track the asteroid with such accuracy, openly admitted that if it had struck southern California, it could have wiped out everything from Los Angeles to San Diego. However, they somewhat smugly pointed out, Earth would suffer no damage from the encounter. The Siberia meteor, though
O considerably smaller, was still large enough to have destroyed most of any major city that it might have hit. And, yet, no one saw it coming. That much, at least, is not in dispute.
Suddenly the great danger that Earth faces from unexpected space projec- tiles is finding new credence in circles where previously scant attention was given to such risks, albeit with no shortage of derision for those who have warned of a very real threat. “Vindication for Entrepreneurs Watching Sky: Yes It Can Fall,” proclaimed the New York Times. “For dec- ades, scientists have been on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet,” wrote William J. Broad in the Times. “Warnings that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious threats were largely ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers as Chicken Littles.”
Overnight, though, the opinion climate has dramatically changed. From Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C., many are now flocking to the cause. “Wouldn’t it be silly if we got wiped out because we weren’t looking?” Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive who leads a major detection effort, told the Times. In the meanttime Rep. Dana Rohra- bacher (R-Calif.), vice chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, re- sponded to the Russian fireball by telling Space.com, “the event should serve as a wake- up call.” Indeed.
In 1996, Atlantis Rising published the cover story, “Cosmic Collisions,” by Joseph Joch- mans, which focused on the odds that we might soon face an unwelcome rendezvous. “Rocky or iron asteroids 2,000 feet or more in diameter and icy cometary bodies of 4,000 feet or more in size,” Jochmans wrote, “would be able to penetrate the atmosphere and hit the surface with forces of 10 to 100 megatons of
TNT respectively.” In the years since, this publi- cation has reported regularly on the danger in- volved. The possibility that such a strike could have destroyed ice age civilizations such as At- lantis may have helped to stimulate our interest.
Generally the notion that Earth’s long history has been
punctuated by immense catas- trophic events has been
sneered at by mainstream academic science which has pro- moted a much more gradual
scenario to explain our cu- rious history. There have al-
ways been a few, though, like the late scientist, Immanuel Velikovsky, who have gone
against the tide. That the skies might pro-
vide omens for Earth’s future now seems more plausible. By the time you read this, the first of two comets expected this year will have appeared. The comet Pan- STARRS will have passed about 100 million miles from Earth and millions may have been able to see it. A far better chance for such viewing should come later this fall when the comet Ison will appear. Already trumpeted as the comet of the century, Ison may appear brighter than the moon and may fire the imagi- nations of many. Long feared as omens of dis- aster, comets, with their long, fiery tales have for millennia been identified as celestial dragons and bringers of trouble. To read about the possibility that the legend of King Arthur may have originated in the appearance of a comet, don’t miss Mark Andrew’s article elsewhere in this issue.
The re-emergence of ancient teachings that the sky has much to tell us about human des- tiny on Earth (“as above, so below”) is a growing trend. To read about the way in which all ancient traditions, including Christianity, have been shaped by sky wisdom, see Julie Loar’s report on “The Bible and Astrology,” also in this issue.
CELESTIAL CLOSE ENCOUNTER of the PHYSICAL KIND
An Exploding Meteor Leaves a Double Contrail in the Skies
Over Chelyabinsk in Siberia
10 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 99 Subscribe or Order Books, DVDs and Much More!
Number 99 • ATLANTIS RISING 11See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74
from Florida’s Museum of Natural History subse-
quently passed the most rig- orous of scientific scrutiny, they and their implications
have been largely ignored by the establishment. A new in-
vestigation of the site, though, led by top archaeologists from Texas A&M Uni-
versity could be changing that; and in a major article
in its February issue “When Did Humans Come to the Americas?” Smithsonian is
reporting the details. Among the difficult ques-
tions that the possibility of pre-Clovis humans in America forces academic
science to consider seriously is, how did they get here? The Smithsonian report suggests that
there could well have been several migrations,
and some may well have been by sea. Once
it is conceded that such ancient people
could have navigated the oceans, many other ques- tions will have to be an-
swered, including just how much such ancient seafarers
may have known, and where could they have learned it? Difficult days for aca-
demia may lie ahead.
ven as Atlantis Rising Magazine has been
among the few arguing that mainstream theories of how long humans have lived in the Americas are outdated, evidence on the point has continued to mount. Very slow to recognize the obvious, mainstream academia has continued to insist, and to be echoed by an ill- informed press, that the first humans (the so-called Clovis people) arrived about eleven thousand five hundred years ago by way of a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. Now, however, even that bastion of scientific wisdom, Smithsonian Magazine has joined those who say humans were likely here thousands of years sooner than we have been told.
Citing research once thought “controver- sial,” such as at Monte Verde, Chile, and Buttermilk Creek in Texas, Smithsonian reporter Guy Gugliotta focuses on dramatic underwater discoveries in northern Florida’s Aucilla river. In the 1980’s archaeologists found tools and arrowheads near a tool-marked mastodon tusk dated to 14,500 years BP. Though the discoveries by a team
E
Florida’s Ancient Aucilla River (Photo courtesy of Ebyabe)
See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74 Number 99 • ATLANTIS RISING 11
Story of Human Origins in the Americas Now Getting Long-Overdue Rewriting
Story of Human Origins in the Americas Now Getting Long-Overdue Rewriting
ALTERNATIVE SCIENCE
he Racetrack Playa is a flat-bottomed dry lake bed just northwest of Death Valley but still within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. It is a
closed, or endorheic, basin 3,608 feet above sea level, and is 2.8 by 1.3 miles in size. Its average rainfall is only three to four inches annually, and freezing nights in winter are not un- common. There are two outcroppings of bed- rock at the playa’s north end; one, called the “Grandstand,” is composed of adamellite, a mineral made up mostly of quartz and feldspar. The other outcrop is made of dolomite, a hard limestone (calcium carbonate). At the base of the mountains bordering the playa are syenite stones made of igneous feldspar containing po- tassium, calcium, and sodium silicates.
The rocks, especially the ones composed of dolomite, move across the playa, leaving tracks
T
Continued on Page 26
• BY WILLIAM B. STOECKER where they have plowed through the top half inch or so of the sediment. This seems to happen every two or three years or so; and, incredibly, although we know that they have moved, no one has ever witnessed it. It is almost as if they are moved by some agent that waits until no one is around. But perhaps it is because they only move during periods of bad winter weather when it is harder to drive the one dirt road leading into the area; and, if they move only on cold and/or rainy nights, no one wants to sit outside with night vision cameras.
The usual explanation for the sailing stones is that high winds blow them over a thin, slick
layer of ice if freezing weather follows rain, or, alternatively, that they glide over a thin layer of mud. At first glance this seems logical enough, but there are a number of problems with the hypothesis. For one thing, lakes surrounded by rocky soil and located in areas where the surface can freeze are very, very common…but rocks are almost never seen far from the banks. And playas, or dry lake beds, are quite common in the more arid parts of the American West and similar places around the world, yet no rocks move in these places. Consider the Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah, the utterly flat and smooth bottom of Lake Bonne- ville, which dried up after the Pleistocene. Land speed records are regularly set there, which would be impossibly hazardous if rocks blew across the flats, yet the flats receive some rain and also freeze in winter. Why no moving rocks in such places? What is so special about Race- track Playa?
There is another, even more serious, problem with the mud or ice hypothesis. If the stones glided over ice, they would not leave tracks; if they slid over mud, it would flow back and fill in what little track was produced. The whole point of such an explanation is to show how the rocks can move without grinding through the topsoil and encountering too much resistance. Yet, how do we know that they have moved? By the tracks they have left— made by grinding through the topsoil. The
smaller stones are in the boundary layer
and out of the wind; the larger stones encounter more wind
but are heavier. This is why we don’t see stones of any size
scraping along any- where else, even in high winds. So the
very evidence for the stones’ movement is
also evidence that the conventional explana-
tions don’t work, a seemingly obvious
point missed by virtu- ally everyone.
So is there anything special about
the stones or anything special about the area,
anything that might offer us a clue as to what is happening? The stones are nothing special, but stones in gen- eral, especially those made of quartz or of limestone, seem to have odd properties. Quartz crystals are used in electronic devices like quartz watches. Limestone areas, like the Salisbury Plain in England, composed of chalk (a soft
The
Death Valley
Why Has the Mystery of the Racetrack Not Been Solved? Why Has the Mystery of the Racetrack Not Been Solved?
Satellite image of the Death
Valley “Racetrack”
(U.S.G.S.)
THE OTHER SIDE
• BY PATRICK MARSOLEK he Sanskrit word “mahatma” means great soul. The term has been applied to recent historical figures, such as Mohandas Ghandi, due to his public
work and apparent spiritual development. Such great souls have been part of the founding of many of the worlds wisdom and spiritual traditions. In the 1880’s, the two mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi are supposed to have commu- nicated a whole body of esoteric knowledge to the early founders of the Theosophical Society through a large collection of “transmitted” letters. There has been much debate about the origin of the Mahatma Letters, and they re- main an enigma surrounding the origins of the Theosophical movement. Over a thousand pages of these letters reside today in the British museum.
The Theosophical Society was formed in 1875 to advance the spiritual principles of Theosophy, which is an esoteric philosophy seeking direct knowledge of the mysteries of being, nature, and spirituality. The founders of this or- ganization, Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, and William Judge did so to discover the purpose and origin of the universe through direct apprehension and as an alternative to the trend of material- istic science. Their stated and highly progressive intentions were to cultivate a universal brother- hood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color that would study re- ligion, philosophy, and science and investigate unexplained laws of nature and unexpressed powers in man. Theosophy remains active today, though it has morphed into several different groups and inspired many other modern spiritual movements.
The Theosophists believe that mahatmas are high-ranking students in life’s school. They are like us but more evolved and have attained direct knowledge of, and mastery over, the laws of the universe. They are not gods, but mortals who have evolved a great awareness of their spiritual potential and of other planes of being. Moved by compassion for the whole human
race, they have chosen to be in touch with mankind in order to further the progress of humanity. It should be said that these mahatmas were not then what later schools came to refer to as “ascended masters.” Literally, mahatmas had not ascended and had not left their bodies. The mahatmas who communi- cated with the early Theos- ophists were then in
T
building in the Chinese fashion, pagoda-like, between a lake and a beautiful mountain.” Bla- vatsky felt she had known Morya since she was a little girl and had been receiving teachings from him by clairvoyant means her whole life. When she met him in the flesh for the first time, she fell into an ecstatic rapture.
Though skeptics of the mahatmas and their letters claim these masters never even existed, there were others who reported physical meet-
Koot Hoomi Morya
Letter from Morya to Sinnett, Oct. 1881Letter from Koot Hoomi to Sinnett, Oct. 1880
Was the Correspondence from Higher Dimensions?
human form and interested in communicating their knowledge to the world.
Madam Blavatsky said she first met the mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi, also known as Kuthumi or K.H., during her travels throughout Asia seeking wisdom and ancient knowledge in the mid 1800’s. In a letter to a friend, Blavatsky wrote: “Now Morya lives generally with Koot Hoomi who has his house in the direction of the Kara Korum Mountains, beyond Ladak, which is in Little Tibet and be- longs now to Kashmir. It is a large wooden
A.P. Sinnett
r. Neville Whymant, a British professor of linguistics, was surprised when he found out the real reason he was invited to a dinner party at
the New York City, Park Avenue home of Judge and Mrs. William Cannon. But what he experienced that night during October 1926 went far beyond mere surprise. It left him awe- struck. Some believe it is perhaps the most intri- guing contact with the spirit world on record. As related by Whymant, first to the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) and then in a 1931 book, Psychic Adventures in New York, the story exceeds even the boggle threshold of many ardent Spiritualists.
Whymant, who taught Oriental literature and philosophy at the Universities of Tokyo and Peking before teaching languages at Oxford and London Universities, was in the United States to study the languages of the American Indian when he received the invitation from the Cannons. But it was not until after he arrived at their home that Mrs. Cannon informed him and his wife that a séance with medium George Valiantine would take place after dinner. She ex- plained that their sittings with Valiantine had been going on for months and that they had heard from many spirits of the dead. Most of the voices had come through in English, but some were in Italian, French, and Portuguese. Recently, there was a voice which no one in their circle could make out other than that it sounded like Chinese. Knowing that Whymant was conversant in some 30 languages, including several dialects of Chinese, the Cannons hoped
that he would be able to interpret, but they feared that he would decline the invitation if he knew what was to take place.
Whymant told the Cannons that he was not particularly interested in “Spiritualism,” although he had experimented in the Orient with some of their seemingly paranormal phenomena and had authored a book the prior year titled Psychical Research in China. However, he remained very skeptical toward mediums.
In addition to his academic credentials, Whymant served as Far East editor of the New International Encyclopedia and was on the edi- torial staff of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Later, from 1947 to 1950, he was a foreign cor- respondent for the London Times and an adviser to the embassy of the Republic of China in London. Among his other books were Chinese and Greek Philosophical Parallels (1917), The Psy- chology of the Chinese Coolie (1920), and China (1923). Clearly, he does not seem to have been a man to be easily duped or to put his reputa-
D THE OTHER SIDE
• BY MICHAEL E. TYMN
tion on the line by telling a story that he knew most rational people would consider absurd.
Before the sitting at the Cannon home got underway, Whymant had a talk with Valiantine and wrote that he impressed him as “a typical example of the simpler kind of country Amer- ican citizen,” adding that Valiantine made amusing blunders in speech and misconcep- tion. He appeared as a “fish out of water” among the high society New Yorkers there, including a prominent physician.
Having heard there were many charlatans posing as mediums, Whymant made a careful inspection of the room, including looking under the carpet for trap doors. “There was no appearance or suspicion of trickery,” he wrote, “but I mention these things to show that I was alert from the beginning, and I was prepared to apply all the tests possible to whatever phenomena might appear.”
In the so-called “direct-voice” mediumship of Valiantine, the medium exudes a mysterious
substance called ectoplasm, out of which the spirits are said to form an artificial larynx or voice box. An aluminum trumpet, used to am- plify the voices, usually floats around the room and stops, suspended in the air, in front of the person to be addressed. Unlike trance-voice mediumship, in which the voices come through the vocal cords and mouth of the medium, the direct-voice phenomenon is independent of the medium's body, seemingly emanating several feet above him or her. Early investigators as- sumed that such mediums were talented ventril- oquists, but testing ruled that theory out with many of them, including Valiantine. In fact, Whymant observed Valiantine carrying on a conversation in “American English” with the person next to him while foreign languages were coming through the trumpet.
As the medium can be seriously injured if the ectoplasm is exposed to light, darkness is required. But there apparently was enough light for Whymant to observe Valiantine and to take
32 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 99
The Well-Documented 1926 Encounter Was Far Beyond Easy Explanation
ANCIENT MYSTERIES
ew know of the mysterious and distinguished King of Ethiopia, Lali- bela, who ruled from
1180 to 1225, who created at the behest of angels what might be considered the eighth wonder of the world, and who may have transported the Ark of the Cove- nant from Jerusalem to East Africa.
Robert Tabor remarks in Tales of Heroes and Angels that, “Lalibela is a man so steeped in legend and history that it is difficult to sep- arate his real life from myth and make it easily understood. Yet in spite of the myths surrounding him, the fact that he is responsible for the eighth wonder is well known. Even the name, Lalibela, means ‘the man bees obey.’
It was said that at his birth a swarm of bees landed on him and covered him completely. He was unharmed. Not one bee stung. It was also said that when he was older (about seven) he was lifted toward heaven, and spent three days there, seeing signs and symbols that were not known before.
The Eighth Wonder of the World is a term sometimes used to describe phenomena in compar- ison to the widely known list of
F seven remarkable constructions of classical antiquity called the Seven Wonders of the World. Included among the eighth wonders are the extraordinary rock-hewn churches constructed by Lalibela in Roha (later called Lalibela) in Ethiopia.
Did Lalibela really bring the Ark to Aksum? For centuries it was believed that it was Menelik, son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon and according to legend the first ruler of Ethiopia, who brought the world’s most evocative religious talisman to the hidden, unknown kingdoms of Africa. In The Sign and the Seal (1993), Graham Hancock declares defini- tively that the Ark, or tabota seyon as it is called in Ethiopia, is still to be found in a chapel near the old, battlemented Church of Maryam Seyon (Mary of Zion) in the small, dusty town of Aksum. On the other hand, Stuart Munro-Hay, in The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant: The Truer History of the Tablets of Moses (2005) asserts that all that has ever entered into the churches of Ethiopia, though that in abun- dance, are replicas of the Ark along with associated objects—and, also, somehow, the powerful spiritual presence of the Ark itself.
Neither author takes too much time considering the strange and
• BY JOHN CHAMBERS
tinctly mark them as the colony of the Arabs; and this descent is con- firmed by the resemblance of language and manners, the report of an ancient emigration, and the narrow interval between the shores of the Red Sea [through which the earliest Arabs may have passed in Ethiopia].”
Two thousand years ago the civilization of Aksum (which would be called Abyssinia, and then Ethiopia) was already an in- fluential culture of language, art, math, and architecture. It already had its secrets. Today there still stands in Aksum a stelae 70 feet high, carved from solid rock and resembling a building seven stories tall. Another stelae, even taller, has been toppled and lies today where, an estimated four thousand years ago, it fell; it is almost as old as
the pyramids. Ethiopia has had a large Jewish
population for more than three thousand years, though exactly how the Jewish people came to Ethiopia remains a mystery. Some authorities speak of a “Lost Tribe of Dan” that fled south and west from Israel. These Ethiopian Jews, dubbed Falasha (“Strangers”) by non-Jewish Ethiopians, to this day call themselves Beta Israel (“House of Israel”) and claim full Jewish identity. In the early 1980s they achieved a measure of celebrity when the Israeli government, in a series of sometimes secret rescue operations, transported 36,000 of them to the Holy Land. A difficult but successful settling-in period en- sued: the new emigrants had had
fantastic story of Lalibela. Ethiopia is a part of the Horn
of Africa, that portion of Africa that sticks out like a horn into the sea. It is almost twice the size of Texas and, with 90 million people, the most populous land- locked country in the world. War clouds periodically darken this sub-Saharan vastness through which, centuries ago, herds of 5,000 elephants roamed with more impunity than the native peoples who were often sold into slavery by their kings. Arab emigrants began to flow into Ethiopia millennia ago. Edward Gibbon clari- fies: “The Aksumites, or Abyssin- ians, may be always distinguished from the original natives of Africa. The hand of nature has flattened the noses of the negroes, covered their heads with shaggy wool, and tinged their skin with inherent and indelible blackness. But the olive complexion of the Abyssinians, their hair, shape, and features, dis-
Hewn from solid rock, historic church at Lalibela, Ethiopia
Modern replica of the Ark of the Covenant
(Hasbro)
Might the Reputed“Eighth Wonder of the World” Tell an Even Stranger Story than We Knew? Might the Reputed“Eighth Wonder of the World” Tell an Even Stranger Story than We Knew?
What Does Judeo-Christian Tradition Owe to Ancient Celestial Lore?
What Does Judeo-Christian Tradition Owe to Ancient Celestial Lore?
ASTROLOGY
42 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 99
vary as to the number of Magi, but the oldest tradition says there were 12.
The practices of stargazing and divination were well known and respected in biblical times; divination means, “to be inspired by the divine.” There were Roman augurs, Sybiline or- acles, the Chinese I-Ching, the Tibetan State oracle, the Oracle of Delphi, and of course Jo- seph, who interpreted dreams for the Egyptian pharaoh in the Old Testament. Through most of its history, astrology has been considered a scholarly tradition and was accepted in political and academic contexts. Astrology was con- nected with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology
and medicine. The Chinese, Indians, and Maya developed elaborate systems for predicting ter- restrial events from celestial observations. Among Indo-European peoples, astrology has been dated to the third millennium BCE with roots in calendar systems used to predict sea- sonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communication.
Early forms of astrology emerged from Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt and entered Greece after 323 BCE when Alexander the Great’s conquests spread Greek culture throughout the Mesopotamian and Roman world. Egypt has star charts that go as far back as 4200 BCE. The earliest known evidence of astrology are markings on cave walls and bones, dated to twenty-five thousand years ago, showing lunar cycles. Babylon, or Chaldea in the Hellenistic world, was so identified with astrology that “Chaldean wisdom” became synon- ymous with divination through the stars and planets. In these cultures astrologers like the Persian Magi were astronomer-priests with sig- nificant power.
The zodiac of twelve constellations is one of the oldest conceptual images and began as a way to mark time. The twelve zodiac constellations are the backdrop for the Sun’s apparent path through the band of sky above and below the equator over the course of a year. The zodiac also reflects the twelve months of the year, the four seasons, and the solstices and equi-
ith the recent spate of spectac- ular astronomical news—as in February’s meteor strike in Si- beria, the close encounter with
asteroid DA14, or the dramatic appearance of purported comet of the century, Ison, expected later this year (see page 10)—it’s tempting to draw disturbing conclusions from purportedly prophetic Biblical passages. Consider this refer- ence in Revelation 8:10-11, “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as if it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters.” What are we to make of signs in heaven, prophecy, and the role of astrology in the Bible?
Is there, in fact, any relation- ship between the Bible of Chris- tians and Jews and supposedly pagan astrology? Turns out there is more than you might think.
Zondervan’s Pictorial Bible Dic- tionary states, “There are hun- dreds of references to stars, sun, moon and planets.” A well known verse from Genesis 1:14 proclaims, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.’” Job 38:31-33 is a well-known phrase, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Massaroth (zodiac) in his season or guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinance of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?” In Judges 5:20 we read, “They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” Sisera was a Caananite commander who op- pressed the Israelites. In Psalm 136: 7-9 the author says, “To him that made the great lights; the sun to rule by day; the moon and stars to rule by night.”
The story of the Magi, or wise men, and the star of Bethlehem is a favorite Christmas story that only appears in the book of Mat- thew(2:2). The Magi ask Herod, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? We have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.” And later in Matthew 2:10, “When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding joy.” Different authors have tried to identify the star, but it’s likely it was symbolic. The Catholic Encyclopedia informs us that “Magi is usually translated as ‘astrologers’ as the magi were thought to be priest-astrologers from Persia. The historian He- rodotus (5th century BCE), attests to the astro- logical mastery of the Persian Magi.” Accounts
W • BY JULIE LOAR
noxes. The term zodiac, “circle of animals,” in- dicates that constellations were personified as figures or animals. Scholars often conclude that the figures depicted in the constellations sug- gest what’s happening on Earth at the time. For example, lambs are born at the time of Aries, and harvest occurs at the time of Virgo, who holds a sheaf of wheat.
Rupert Gleadow, in The Origin Of The Zo- diac, says the idea of dividing the circle into 360 units originated independently in Babylon, Egypt, and China as an approximation of the number of days in the solar year. Further dividing the year into twelve months is an out-
growth of the lunar cycle as months have always been “moon periods.” Albert Churchward, in The Signs and Symbols of Primor- dial Man, states, “The division is in twelve parts: the twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve tribes of Is- rael, twelve gates of heaven men- tioned in Revelation, and twelve entrances or portals to be passed through in the Great Pyramid, before finally reaching the highest degree, twelve Apostles in the Christian doctrines, and the twelve original and perfect points in Masonry.”
Revelation 21:12 says that the new Jerusalem, “had a wall
great and high with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.” The origin of our twelve birthstones comes from Revelation 21:19-21 and is rooted in the twelve colored stones in the breastplate of the High Priest of ancient Is- rael as recorded in the Book of Exodus. The breastplate is sometimes called the breastplate of judgment because the Urim and Thummin, which were used for divination, were placed in- side. Although the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus condemn divination, Exodus 28 gives Urim and Thummin to the priestly class to “divine the will of Yahweh.”
In the first book of Ezekiel (1:10) he has a vision and describes four living creatures above the wheels of the chariot he sees, “the four had the face of a man and the face of a lion on the right side: and the four had the face of an ox on the left side; the four also had the face of an eagle.” That’s a confusing description to be sure, but these symbols can be compared to the four fixed signs of the astrology: Leo the lion, Aquarius the man with a water pitcher; the Calf is Taurus the Bull, and the Eagle is one of the symbols of Scorpio.
There are many references to the idea of an “age” in the Bible that seem related to astrology. For example, In Matthew 28:20 Jesus
Tiberias synagogue.
battle.’ This is backed up by ninth century Welsh cleric Nennius, who draws a distinction between Arthur and the kings of the British. He also states that at the earlier battle of Mount Badon, Arthur took out 960 men from a single charge, “and no one laid them low save he alone.” He was either superhuman, or there is more to Arthur than meets the eye.
Notwithstanding Arthur’s amazing feats, which could perhaps have been magnified by the bards over the centuries, a number of historical Arthurs have been proposed by various authors. David Hughes, for example, believes that there was a real Arthur that was born in AD 479, became king in 507, and died in 537; whilst Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett believe there were two King Arthurs. They provide good evidence of an ‘Arthur I’ figure from the fourth century, who they consider to have been some sort of British-based emperor of Western Europe. They then re- count the evidence for a second, more local King Arthur who lived in South Wales from 503 to 579. Their conclusion is that the modern Arthur was a composite of the two.
Wilson and Blackett believe their second Arthur lived through a time during which Britain was devastated by a comet. Their story, taken up on their behalf by more than one author, ends up with the Welsh Arthur emigrating to America to later die in Kentucky and being brought back to Wales to be buried. Far-fetched, some may think, but there is ample evidence that at least a local ruler called Arthmael (‘Iron Bear’) or Arthwys (‘called to lead/instruct’) did exist.
However, a researcher into the sixth century who has rather more academic credentials is Professor Mike Baillie of Queen’s University, Belfast. Professor Baillie has helped to develop the science of dendro- chronology, or tree-ring dating. This relatively accurate means to gauge the growth conditions of trees from many thousands of years ago shows that—to quote Baillie and his co-author—“from European oaks, through pine chronologies
• BY MARK ANDREW
e know the legen- dary King Arthur today as a re- nowned British
king, who rode out with the Knights of the Round Table to fight twelve epic battles. He was based in Camelot, whose location is still debated today; and after receiving a deadly blow in his last battle, was taken to the mythical Isle of Avalon to be healed.
What is less well known is that much of Arthurian legend comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth and other writers from the twelfth century or later. Geoffrey incorporated Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon, his magician adviser Merlin, and the story of Arthur’s conception into Arthurian legend. His work has been described as “imagina- tive” and “fanciful.” How much did he really draw from earlier records, and how much was simply literary invention?
When the earlier records—or those that survive today—are looked at in more detail, there is
W very little of any substance about Arthur. In fact, journalist Adrian Berry asks a very perti- nent question: “Why were events before the Arthurian time—the decline of the Roman Empire, with its wars, treaties and assassina- tions—so precisely measured, as were events after Arthur, while the century in between is filled with fantastic stories about prin- cesses who lived at the bottom of lakes and knights whose severed heads talked from beneath their arms?”
In order to explain this apparent anomaly, Berry has sug- gested that “parts of our history are periodically blotted out, with sometimes whole civilizations being eradicated, by impacts of de- bris from the sky.” Could some- thing cataclysmic have happened in the age of Arthur that was not properly recorded at the time? Has this later been ‘mythologized’ to
create the figure we today know as Arthur, and all the stories that
come with him? It is perhaps useful
to start at the end of Arthur’s story, namely his supposed death in
the middle of the sixth century. Although
some researchers asso- ciate Arthur with the
fifth century, both Ge- offrey of Monmouth
and the Welsh Annals record Arthur’s demise
around AD 540. Geoffrey says that Arthur met his end at the battle of Camlann in AD 542. The possibly more trustworthy Welsh Annals (Annales Cambriae) say that Arthur and Mordred (his son or nephew) “fell” at the “strife of Camlann.” Although there is no certainty re- garding the dating of the Welsh An- nals, most agree that this entry re- lates to the years 537 or 539.
Interestingly, the earliest sources do not describe Arthur as a king but rather apply a term that has been translated as ‘leader in
Geoffrey of Monmouth
What Really Happened in the Sixth Century, AD?
“And there be those who deem him more than a man, And dream he dropt from heaven”
Tennyson, The Coming of Arthur
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