The Precession of the Equinoxes
Every 26,000 years the axis of the earth describes a circle... what meaning has this phenomenon taken on over time?
The term precession indicates the motion that the earth's axis performs in the opposite direction to that of the earth. To fully understand it, it is necessary to use a small simile imagine spinning a top. As long as it is at high speed and has not been affected by friction, it turns uniformly and without oscillating. When the speed begins to decrease, the axis of rotation of the top begins to oscillate describing a sort of circle and, more importantly, pointing, at various moments of this oscillation, in different directions.
The forces involved in this immense cosmic balance are various and of different natures. There is the attraction of the sun, that of the moon and the rotation of the earth both around its own axis and around the sun. These forces, therefore, produce the oscillation of the earth's axis (imagine the movement of the pedals of a bicycle, each pedal describes a circle), due to this oscillation the earth's axis points each time towards a different point in the sky, eras, of which that of Aquarius is about to begin.
The question that causes so much discussion is why is the knowledge of precession considered an important fact? The answer is simple, because it seems beyond any doubt that this phenomenon, whose discovery is attributed to the Greek Hipparchus (2nd century BC) was instead widely known both by the Egyptians at the time of the pyramids and by the ancient pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas. It is clear that we cannot be certain of this, and the fact remains that academic circles are not at all inclined to accept such theories, according to which if the Egyptians had knowledge of precession this knowledge would date back to at least 10,500 BC, a period in which there is no info of any evolved civilization.
Precession is therefore a very important celestial phenomenon. Many things depend on it. The most important implication of precession is what characterizes it as Precession of the equinoxes.
The equinoxes are days when the sun rises in the actual EST everywhere in the world, and the day lasts as long as the night.
Before going into even more detail, it is good to introduce some concepts such as horoscope or constellations.
The constellations, which then gave life to horoscopes, are groups of stars to which shapes have been attributed to a figure.
Imagine a small dot with a circle around it and a larger one on the outside. It's a bit like what happens to the earth. It is the dot, the circle around it is the fictitious orbit of the sun (since we know that the earth revolves around it), and the outermost circle is the area against which the sun appears to flow.
This area could be divided into 12 sections of approximately 30° each. Each of these sections is a constellation. Every day, therefore, the sun rises in the part of the sky where there is a constellation in the background, on which modern astrologers identify the zodiac signs. We said before that the day of the precession is the spring equinox, in this case, the spring day in which the sun rises in the EAST and the day has a duration equal to the night. In our current era, called the Age of Pisces, on the vernal equinox the sun rises in the area of the constellation Pisces.
It is good to know that since this is a precessional movement, the constellations flow in the opposite direction to the order with which we usually name them (...Leo > Cancer > Gemini > Taurus > Aries > Pisces > Aquarius...).
But in what terms can this phenomenon be quantified? (For ease of calculation, it is best to use rounded quantities).
We can say, according to Hipparchu's calculations that the sun takes about 2,200 years to pass through an entire zodiac house (constellation). We have established that each constellation has a width of approximately 30°, so with a quick division we will obtain that every year the sun crosses approximately 49'' of arc.
In simpler words, it takes about 73 years (a human life) to move just one degree. Continuing we can multiply 73 by 360 (which are the degrees of the entire revolution of the precession) and we get about 26,000 years (it seems that a complete revolution takes place in 25,776 years), it means that, once this one ends, the next age of fish will begin in 26,000 AD!!!
Other interesting questions might be why is precession important? How to use it? Imagine you want to leave a message to people who you don't know if they will speak your language, calculate time in the same way as you, have your level of intellectual development... Imagine that in this message you want to fix the period in which you lived.
What would you say? I was born in 1974, lived in 2000, worked in the 21st century? Who could understand you if the numbering of the years had changed over time, if we would no longer be aware of the difference between Before Christ and After Christ? So how to do it? How can I tell posterity that I lived in 2000?
The matter is not that difficult; it is enough to resort to a language common to all and which can never change, and to phenomena which, due to their slow but constant development, are never repeated except after very long periods of time. The first requirement seems satisfied by mathematics (an algebraic equation is carried out in the same way by an American as by a German or Italian) and the other requirement is the precession of the equinoxes. It would be enough to create something symbolic that would make us understand, beyond all means, that we lived in the transition between the age of fish and that of the aquarium, in a specific place. Just choose a more or less flat place, on which to align PERFECTLY EAST our massive stone sculpture (lasting over time), perhaps depicting a series of fish diving into an aquarium... then millennia later, we had discreetly indicated) to send a message to those who would observe and study our sculpture, a message like <<hey friend... I knew the precession of the equinoxes...>> .
Thus our friend of the future, resorting to eternal and immutable mathematics, will discover that our sculpture dates back to a period between 2000 and 2100... the year in which we moved from fish to the aquarium.
What if someone had done it before us? Maybe in 10,500 BC? Perhaps... perhaps the ancient inhabitants of Egypt built the sphinx whose axis faces EAST to say that it, which is a Leo, saw itself rising on the spring equinox of a given year.
No problem... except that the age of Leo dates back to at least 12,000 years ago between 10,970 and 8,810 BC and at that time man had just come down from the trees ...
