The following is an essay on some of the forgotten astronomy of our ancestors.
One of the more intriguing riddles of the past is Nibiru. Mentioned in several Babylonian texts, many people think it is a planet set to visit or collide with the earth in the near future. Although these claims have been well refuted by reputable scholars, they still contain great power; a Google search on “Nibiru Planet X Conspiracy” currently returns 3.4 million hits.
The tenacity of these fanciful ideas is partly caused by no one knowing what, exactly, Nibiru is. The documents refer to it in at least five different ways: the planet Jupiter, a ‘star,’ a ‘station,’ the planet Mercury on one occasion, and a ‘red’ object identified as Marduk-Jupiter on another.
I proposed a superficial solution to the Nibiru puzzle in a book titled Laughing at the Devil (LATD).1 That answer echoed one which had already been put forward—and dismissed—by others. Not realizing this, the topic was closed, because Nibiru was a miniscule (and unimportant) subject in my work.
But Nibiru kept reappearing, uneasily, in the back of my mind. Something important was missing, so I dove in one more time. After a lot of digging, a solution appeared that makes sense of all the Nibiru references, and I am happy to share my knowledge.
(I am making this version of the fourth chapter ofLaughing at the Devil free, hoping it helps spread comprehension of a much misunderstood portion of our history: the Jesus tale.)
A Political Story
The story of Constantine [told in the previous chapter] helped me realize that Western religion was originally a tool used for political gain. This caused the priests to obtain great control over the populace.
By this, I do not mean the church had unlimited power. Rather, picture them as people on surfboards; able to guide the stick, and set a course. In reality they were only ‘riding the waves’ of society’s beliefs—going too far beyond specific parameters would result in loss of control, and a wet (and sometimes humbling) spill.
Just as now, the populace of those times wanted a better life. Many leaders liked the authority and wealth they possessed, and didn’t want things changed. The priests—charged by the people to improve conditions physically as well as morally—had to be excellent politicians, both when dealing with the government, and their parishioners.
While coming to grips with my childhood trauma, I realized part of it was caused by political and religious figures thirsting for supremacy long ago (and not so long ago). That realization sparked my decision to never again be controlled by the Christianity of my past. I also decided to not accept the ideas and beliefs of others until all the questions in my mind were answered.
In addition to my skepticism, a deep curiosity pushed me to continue studying. Was there more to religion than most people suspect? Why was it allowed to do what it did? And of course, the hidden question bubbled behind everything: “Am I wrong? Could the teachings in my youth be correct?” All of these issues were put to rest when
(This is a three-part video. There is a link to the second part at the end of this installment. Occasionally, YouTube erroneously states that the video has been removed by the author. If that happens, here are links to Part Two and Part Three.)
In the previous entries we have seen a portion of my own story, and what I was led to discover about how the days of the week came into existence. Today, we will look at another fascinating relic of the past, which is why an hour is composed of sixty minutes, and an arc-minute is made up of sixty arc-seconds.
Have you ever wondered what caused this number to be found at the heart of our sciences? Perhaps you’ve investigated, and discovered many historians believe it was chosen because sixty can be evenly divided by a lot of numbers: two, three, four, five, six, ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty, and thirty. This means it is good to use in fractions, and we know our ancient mathematicians made extensive use of those. For an ingenious example, investigate one of the past uses of the Egyptian Eye of Horus.
But the question remains: why did our ancestors first choose sixty?
Welcome to the second installment in this ancient astronomy overview series. In it we will start exploring the connections which once existed between religion and science.
Previously, I said my investigations gave me a new appreciation of our history, and helped me look back at it with love and understanding, rather than ignorance and disdain. The period I was referring to is the age of paganism, when the stars and planets were believed to be responsible for our fates, and the creation of reality.
During my childhood I read stories of the saints, and recall hearing about how a few of them gloriously turned the pagans away from false gods by proving the power of the Christian god. But I never heard what pushed those pagan beliefs to dominance millennia earlier.
I wish I could say I was smart enough then to ask why paganism came into being, but I wasn’t. A lot of studying over many years was needed to find the answer, and it feels like the solution arrived hand-in-hand with the question.
Can religion and science work together harmoniously? Many people believe these subjects can’t mix, but life led me to the exact opposite conclusion: their intimate connections are so deep that our early priests pursued knowledge of God with—you guessed it—scientific methods.
As you might deduce from the previous paragraph, the history of religion has fascinated me for a while. Within the upcoming LATD overview writings I look forward to revealing some of the most interesting items I’ve discovered in the quest to understand that topic. My ego likes to believe these efforts will give you many fascinating things to ponder, and ultimately result in a paradigm shift coming into existence around the world, resulting in a new period of peace and understanding. But my ego has always dreamed big!
Regardless of my largess, I can reveal some of the deep connections which once existed between religion and science
Welcome to my ‘small slice of web programming’ page.
One of the items that I fought with for some time is prototyping and building this website. The engineer in me wanted a method of testing it on my machine, then having it work flawlessly when it was uploaded to my ISP’s servers.
A problem with a straightforward implementation of a site is that when testing it on your own machine, the links are not the same as those needed when the page goes live. For instance, the main webpage might be on “D:\Documents\website\index.html”, whereas on the web this needs to point to
If you have a Samsung DVD recorder/player, and your install disk contains Nero Express 7 and is labeled “[BG68-01353A REV. 02],” do yourself a favor, and DON’T INSTALL IT! Well, do install it, but not the way you would normally think to do.
The engineers who created this disk and allowed it on the market should be ashamed of themselves! Installing the Nero suite is INCREDIBLY SLOW! Over the course of 30 minutes, it had only copied about thirty percent of the files to my drive.
One of the major tasks while completing a book such as Laughing at the Devil is creating the index. If you are fortunate, you will work with a professional indexer at some point, because it takes skill to know what to ignore and what to include. (If you do this yourself, and have never had any training, the question to keep in the forefront of your mind while performing this job is “What will the reader really want to look up?” Place a lot of emphasis on the word ‘really’ in that sentence, as a neophyte will tend to include too many subjects.)
For those creating their index in Microsoft Word, Seth Maislin’s tips at http://taxonomist.tripod.com/indexing/wordproblems.html will be a great boon. (He is one of those professionals, and might be able to help you with that ‘really’ item in the last paragraph, or possibly more. His site also contains links to help you find other indexers.) In addition to Maislin’s tips, the following two tools might also be useful.
Two weeks ago, while working to get this blog up and running, the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics played on the TV in the background. Like others, I was often mesmerized, particularly by the whales on the floor. But the item which struck me deepest was the failure of the post of the cauldron to rise (starting at about 1:22:00 in the linked video).
From an engineering perspective I wanted to know what the root of the problem was – hydraulics? computers? other? But a mythical element also caught my attention, and it made me chuckle deep in my gut.
