Marc Torra
«Time is like a spiral that creates circles, which do not govern us but do influence us. Among such cycles we find an equivalent to the year, to the seasons that it defines, to the month, to the day and even to the hour. Let's see, then, what are such cycles. »
Spiral time
THEY HAVE EXISTED AND there are still cultures that recognize the cyclicity of time, according to which the past is repeated approximately; but without being exactly the same. Such cultures include: the Andean, the Hindu and the Anawak (Olmec, Mayan, Toltec, Aztec, Zapotec, ...). We see this circularity of time expressed in its language, which is what usually gives us the best radiography of a culture; Well, unlike history, which can be manipulated, language does not deceive. To give some examples:
- In Quechua, the language of the Andes, the same word is used to refer to the “last year” or the “most distant year in the future” because we are essentially talking about the same. The term is "kunan wata."
- In Hindi the same word is used to say yesterday or tomorrow. For both concepts the term "kal" is used, a word that comes from the Sanskrit "kala" and simply means time, regardless of whether we project it forward or backward.
- A Nahuatl saying says: “ As things were, so will they be, somewhere, sometime. Those who now live will live again . (Codex Florentino VI).
Time thus becomes the other side of space, in its dual expression, retaining its same properties. This allows us to travel in circles "kunan wata", back and forth "kal", to relive it, that is, to visit again the same moment.
However, there were also and still are cultures that never got to separate time and space, not even conceptually. I am referring to Australian aborigines. In none of the approximately 500 languages spoken in Australia when Europeans arrived there were concepts of past or future . In fact, there was not even the concept of time in them . They retained the wisdom of children, who constantly live in the here and now and not in tomorrow or yesterday . And when they are not talking about that one defined here by the reality that surrounds us, it is that they are in the "Dreamtime" or the dream time: a place where past, present and future coexist and merge, or rather, in which they were never conceptually separated. For them, dreams happen in the reality of the ancestors ( Dreamtime ), while our reality is shaped by the dream of the ancestors. The here is being dreamed from there . So, when they move through what we call past or future, they simply consider that they are changing their dreams, like someone who changes the TV channel to watch a historical or science fiction movie.
From all the cultures mentioned we can learn something. From those that flourished in the Andes, the Himalayas and Mesoamerica we can learn that time is governed by cycles. These cycles define almost certain events and their probable effects. They are like day and night, which alternate with great certainty to define our most likely behavior: that we go to sleep at nightfall to wake up at dawn. However, our free will allows us to stay up all night. Hence the cycles influence but do not govern.
Of the cultures that flourished in Australia? The oldest land on the planet ?, we can learn that each phase of the cycle does not define a temporary period, but a dream. For them, time moves along with our walk through the landscape of the collective dream of the tribe, of a nation or of all humanity. The time goes by; but it also repeats to the extent that we return to places already known.
Many of the cultures that perceived the spiral formed by time and space also recognized that collective or consensus dream. In the Himalayas it was called maya, and among the Maya mitote . From all of them we are going to learn something. We are going to learn:
- what are the cycles that govern the collective consciousness of humanity;
- how these cycles are divided into phases or seasons, to determine what the collective consciousness seeks or needs to learn at every moment;
- how, in turn, these stations are fragmented into months, which affect the archetypal symbols used to channel and emotionally integrate such experiences;
- how the months are also fragmented into days, defining the day and night of cultures; and finally
- how those days are composed of hours, to delimit the precise moment of dawn and sunset of each new day.
Let's see, then, what are those cycles that govern sacred time. The sacred year
WHEN WE TRANSFER from worldly time to sacred time, solar years become platonic years of approximately 26, 000 years. They constitute the so-called cycle of precession of the equinoxes. Because of the precession movement, the constellations that appear at a specific time on a specific day of the year move, completing a turn every 26 millennia. It is believed that such movement is due to the oscillation of the earth's axis, which not only rotates on itself every 24 hours, but also moves like a spinning top.
And yet, I have the impression that such displacement of the constellations is not so much due to the swaying of the Earth's axis but:
- to the rotation of the Solar System on its axis, or
- to the orbit described by our Sun in relation to another star, constituting what is called a binary system.
The first explanation would resemble the precession of the equinoxes to the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis, but applying it to the solar system as a whole. The second resembles the Earth's orbit around the Sun, which defines the annual cycle, but again applied to the entire Solar System. Regardless of its cause, what is clear is that there is a third cycle, apart from the 24-hour daily and the 365-day annual. It constitutes a cycle that, like the previous two, has a profound effect on our environment and on our behavior as human beings. I call this cycle the sacred year. Others call it platonic year or great year.
The sacred seasons
THE SACRED YEAR defines four points, equivalent to the two equinoxes and two solstices of the solar year. These points mark the transit through the stations of the consciousness of the human being and are separated approximately by 6, 500 years. That amount of years defines the limits of our historical memory.
The first equinox marks the end of winter and the beginning of the spring of consciousness. The second marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. According to the western system, the transition from winter to spring of our consciousness occurs when on March 21 (vernal equinox of the solar year) the constellation of Aquarius dawns on the horizon, and the transit from summer to autumn of consciousness occurs when on that same date the sun rises in front of the constellation of Leo.
The solstices, on the contrary, mark the beginning of the winter of consciousness, at which time the human being immerses himself in his maximum degree of materialism; and the beginning of the summer of that same collective consciousness, during which spirituality reigns. Thus, we enter the winter when on March 21 the sun rises in front of the constellation of Taurus, and in the summer when it faces the constellation of Scorpio.
There will be those who wonder why it is precisely these four constellations that define the transit between one season of the sacred year and the next. A first way to answer such a question would be to argue that such constellations constitute the so-called fixed signs of the zodiac. Therefore it should not surprise us that the aforementioned four constellations appear three times in the Bible (Ezekiel 1:10, Ezekiel 10:14 and Revelation 4: 7). This also explains why the cosmic cross of August 11, 1999 marked a key moment in the evolution of consciousness. Many were the ones who woke up by those dates.
It should also be borne in mind that precession, as the name implies, constitutes a retrograde movement, a backward movement. That is why the precessional cusps are not located at the beginning of the sign (0º) but at the end of it (30º). They are located between Leo and Virgo, Taurus and Gemini, Aquarius and Pisces, and finally between Scorpio and Sagittarius.
However, this still does not answer the question asked why these four points and not others. To answer it we must consider when summer begins in the solar year. Summer begins in a given hemisphere when that half of the planet is as tilted as possible towards the Sun. Thus, the transit of the Sun through 0 ° Cancer, means that it is just perpendicular to the Tropic of Cancer, marking the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere And when it passes through 0º Capricorn, it is in its zenith passage through the tropic of Capricorn, marking the beginning of summer in the southern hemisphere. While the two equinoxes take place when the Sun travels just above the equator.
Similarly, the summer of the sacred year begins when on March 21 (0º tropical Aries) the Sun of our Galaxy just rises over the horizon. Such a point, also called the Galactic Center, is located just between the constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius. On the contrary, 30º Taurus (located between Taurus and Gemini) defines the opposite axis, which points towards the outer regions of our galaxy. Such distribution will vary over time, because of the orbit of our solar system around the galactic center. It constitutes an orbit that is completed in approximately 240 million years and which defines what we could call the Great Holy Year. However, we can be sure that the constellations, as we observe them today, will remain virtually unchanged for the next hundred sacred years (2.6 million solar years).
The sacred year of five seasons
HOWEVER, NOT all cultures divided the precession cycle into four seasons, but there were also some that did so in five, obtaining five eras of just over 5000 years each. Among such cultures we find the Maya, Inca and the Australian aborigine.
It is not a quadrature division but a quintile. Every 73 days, the Sun moves 72 degrees to define a quintile, the angle of a pentagon. Why did some cultures decide to use this angle, instead of the 90º defined the two solstices and equinoxes that separate the four seasons of the year?
In astrology, when two or more planets are in quintile it means that their energies have been harmonized, that they have been integrated as a result of an evolutionary maturation process carried out over many lives. It constitutes a harmonization whose resulting vibration is usually expressed in a creative way, since the quintile is linked to the planet Venus, which governs the process of creation and growth. Thus, every 584 days, Venus is placed between us and the Sun. In this way the so-called Venus synoptic cycle is formed. We could say that Venus kisses us, because at that moment it is placed at the shortest possible distance from us. Every eight years, this phenomenon is repeated five times, given that 584 x 5 = 8 years. That movement draws us a flower with five petals, which I call «the Flower of Venus». Hence, both the pentagon and pentacle geometry are linked to that planet.
The planet Venus governs the process of harmonious growth in nature. The proportion and balance govern. It should not surprise us that their rhythms are marked by the Fibonacci series. Recall that this series is obtained by adding a number with the previous one, obtaining: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ... (Since 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, etc.). That way, Venus turns the Sun 13 times while the Earth turns 8. In those eight years, the Sun, Earth and Venus will have alienated a total of 5 times.
In time, the Fibonacci series is found, for example, in the reproductive pattern of bees and rabbits. In space, we find it in the number of gold, also called the golden ratio or phi (?), Which governs Nature. The Fibonacci series tends justly to phi so that: 8/5? 13/8? 21/13?… =?. Therefore, it should not surprise us that the pentagon and the pentacle express phi in the proportion defined by their vertices.
As an expression of that pentacle we have the hand, with its five fingers and with the golden ratio again present in the distance defined by the phalanges of each of them. Hence, the hand, like the quintile, constitutes the expression of our creative potential, of our ability to imitate nature. This creativity is governed by the Venusian influence.
The winter we left from
DURING THE WINTER of the consciousness from which we left, the West, in its attempt to reach spirituality, moved away from Mother Earth to focus solely on worship and its complementary expression: that of Father Sky . In the subsequent attempt of science to understand that same nature from which it had moved away centuries ago, it was profaned until almost destroyed. The western religion denied it first and its science tried to subdue it later. Let's see how it all happened.
As the collapse of its military empire became more evident, Rome tried to recycle itself as an empire with faith with a religion (the Christian), which it had officially adopted in the year 313 d. C. Rome thus took the message of love from Jesus; but, for political interests, many times she was forced to read it backwards, not as a message of LOVE, but of ROME. She was forced to misrepresent him, so that he could satisfy his interests and political aspirations.
Among these misrepresentations we have to associate both the pentacle and Venus and Pan's face with the Devil. To rule the natural world, European paganism associated the pentacle with Pan, the Greek god of nature. But during the European Middle Ages (s. V to XV) said god fell out of favor. It was a Roman attempt to discredit the pagan beliefs that still endured, by competing against the new faith. This happened despite the fact that, according to the Bible, Jesus said: I am the root and the lineage of David, the shining star of the morning (Revelation 22 : 16) o Peter wrote: until the day gets clear and the morning star comes out in your hearts (Second Peter 1:19).
The denial of the natural world constituted an attempt to achieve divinity, by denying both our material and the feminine part. There was talk of the Father in Heaven; but the Mother on Earth was ignored. There was talk of the bird that allows us to take flight; but the snake that crawls on the ground will be equated with Satan. The world above was idealized, and the world below was stigmatized. The latter was called the Hell, a desolate place where souls in sorrow go to live in suffering for the rest of eternity. The priestesses, followers of the Goddess and healers with plants, were accused of witchcraft. As a result, it is estimated that nine million European women ended up at the stake.
However, there are many worldviews that never perceived the world below that way, but instead saw it as a complementary reality to that of the world above: the reality of Heaven. They saw how the intermediate world we inhabit emerged from the intersection between Heaven and the Underworld, so neither of them could be denied or despised. And much less must be stigmatized, because to ascend to Heaven one must first descend to Hell. In order for one to open the doors of Paradise, one must first descend to the Averno and express compassion towards the souls trapped in the darkest places of the earth's crust. One must bring light to those dark spaces to help the liberation of the souls that dwell there.
Of all the worldviews that understood that complementarity between the two worlds, three defined eras of little more than 5, 000 years. These cultures were: the Inca (Andean), the Anwak (Mesoamerican) and the Australian aborigine. This cycle arises from splitting the cycle of precession in the five petals defined by the Flower of Venus so that every 5, 000 years a new sun could emerge, a new world be born or enter a new path of the dream. This did not mean that the previous world was destroyed, but that it changed the vibrational frequency of the planet and the Solar System.
For the Incas and the Maya ( anáwak ), we are finishing just now the fourth Sun and entering the fifth. For the Aztecs ( anáwak ) we finish the fifth to return again to the first Sun of a new cycle. There is talk of the sixth Sun, but it is more correct to talk about the first Sun (holy month) of a new cycle (holy year), because adding suns beyond the five that has a cycle is wrong and is the result of the influence exerted for having a linear perception of time. Among Aboriginal Australians it is said that the Solar System enters a new Dreamtrack or dream path every 5, 000 years. That is, like the Incas and the various Mesoamerican cultures of the Anawak, the Australian aborigines also noted that this period of time changed the vibrational frequency of the Earth. They have noticed that the Solar System, in its transit around the galaxy, enters a new path of dreaming every such period of time. This amounts to the beginning of a new dream.
The allegory of the dream allows us to understand why the historical memory of the human being is between 5, 000 thousand and 6, 500 years. The reason is that, when we change our dreams, we forget what we were dreaming before, we changed our mitote or dreamtrack .
The holy months
TO EXPLAIN THE concept of the holy month, we must recover the four seasons of the precession cycle, delimited by the two equinoxes and the two solstices of the cycle. Currently, we are in the equinox that marks the transition from winter to spring of consciousness. The winter we just lived was called the Iron Age in the Greek tradition, or Kali Yuga (Dark Age) in the Hindu tradition. According to Hinduism, we enter it after the death of Krishna in the year 3112 a. C. At that time the constellation of Taurus dawned across the horizon during the vernal equinox on March 21. Hence, Krishna received the names of Govinda or Gopala, alluding to his role as caretaker of cows. After Taurus we enter Aries, whose symbol is no longer the bull, but the ram. It should not surprise us, then, that the Old Testament of the Bible, written during this zodiacal era, no longer uses the allegory of the cow, but that of the sheep and the flock. For example: "For thus saith the Lord GOD: Behold, I myself will go looking for my sheep, and will recognize them" (Ezekiel 34:11). Instead, the New Testament was written during the zodiac era of Pisces, hence Jesus had fishermen as disciples, multiplied fish and that those early Christians identified themselves by drawing a fish on the sand. Finally, it should not surprise us that the name used in the Bible to refer to the return of the Messiah, which will no longer be given during the Age of Pisces but that of Aquarius, is that of the son of man, because Aquarius is the only sign of the zodiac that It is not represented by an animal, but by a human being.
After Aquarius will come Capricorn, followed by Sagittarius and after Scorpio. And between Sagittarius and Scorpio is Ophiuchus, the thirteenth constellation of the Ecliptic, recognized by the International Astronomical Union when in 1930 he redefined the boundaries of each constellation. Ophiuchus has a snake shape and defines the center of the galaxy, the Great Sun. If we consider that 13th constellation we would be in the summer of the soul when Ophiuchus dawned across the horizon during the vernal equinox.
We observe then that the zodiacal ages constitute a kind of sacred months, which define the symbols used to channel and emotionally integrate the experiences that each season of the sacred year brings us. If we add Ophiuchus, we could divide it into thirteen months, in the same way that the solar year defines approximately thirteen moonings or that the human body has thirteen main joints.
As for the joints, we have three in each arm (shoulder, elbow and wrist) and three in each leg (hip, knee, ankle). Similarly, the twelve constellations of the zodiac were grouped around four elements: three of fire (Aries, Leo and Sagittarius), three of water (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces), three of air (Gemini, Libra and Aquarius) and three of land (Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn). The elements constitute the four limbs of the celestial body, each with its three joints. Ophiuchus, the thirteenth constellation, symbolizes the neck, which joins us to the head, to the center of the galaxy.
When, approximately three thousand years ago, the Babylonians divided the Ecliptic into twelve identical constellations of 30 degrees each (the creation of the 12 signs of the zodiac), what they did was to project a reality that had nothing to do with that which could be observed in the sky. For convenience, they divided the sky based on the three phalanges of each finger that can be counted on the thumb, totaling 12 phalanges.
The Babylonians used a system in base 60, which they obtained by counting with the thumb of one hand the twelve phalanges of the remaining four fingers, while at each turn they took out a finger with the other hand. The result was 12 × 5 = 60. Thus they divided their world. They divided the Ecliptic into twelve months and the day into 12 daytime hours and twelve nighttime hours. But that division of the year into 12, when in reality one year fits 13 moonings, it was like considering a headless body. A body that possessed 12 joints; but the thirteenth was missing: the one that corresponds to the head.
Now that the International Astronomical Union recognized that the Sun crosses the twelve constellations of the zodiac plus a thirteenth called Ophiuchus (which corresponds precisely to the center of the galaxy), we are being given an opportunity to add its head to that body. When we do so, we can see again, smell, taste, listen ... all are powers that manifest their centers of perception right in the head.
Holy day
MANY WERE The cultures that also realized that there was another minor cycle, which we will call sacred day. This governs the rise and decline civilization. The cycle lasts approximately 13, 000 moonings, or to be more exact, 12, 863 full moons; adding a total of 1040 years. This constitutes the synchronization period between the solar year (365.242264 days), the lunar (29.530589 days) and the day. Being the equivalent of the day, the cycle consists of a diurnal phase that lasts approximately 520 years and another night phase of equal duration.
We said that the sacred day governs the rise and civilization decline. Well, in the same way that when the sun rises in one part of the planet and in the other part the night falls, this cycle also happens differently according to the culture. Some cultures will enter their civilization day at the same time as others will see the night fall on them.
On the sacred day we observe him in the myth of the Phoenix: he is reborn from his ashes 500 years after his death, lives another 500 years and throws himself back to the funeral pyre. The myth was inherited by the ancient Greeks of the Egyptian Bennu . We also find it in other cultures, such as Persian. The myth refers to the 500 years of light or splendor that a civilization usually experiences, after which it goes into decline so as not to emerge again until 500 years later.
For the Hebrews, a thousand years constitute a day of Yahweh, which is the result of raising the ten units of the decimal system (10 fingers) to the cube (3 dimensions). For them it symbolizes the number of perfection, the one who completes a cycle.
The Incas considered that every 500 years a minor pachacuti took place. The word pachacuti means time-space ("pacha") turned upside down ("cuti"). With each sunrise and sunset there is also a pachacuti, as the light gives way to darkness and vice versa. Hence the sacred day is also governed by that same alternation, which marks the phases between light and darkness. They considered that the 5000-year cycle was divided into ten pachacutis : during five of them we entered a period of darkness or civilization dusk, while the other five constituted the dawn or civilization boom. Then, as we have already seen, with the tenth pachacuti (10 × 500 years) humanity entered a new Sun, in a period that was to be governed by a different vibratory quality.
From An An wak comes the identification of this cycle with two very specific celestial events. On the one hand, the synchronization between the cycles of the minor planets (Mercury, Venus and Mars) with the Sun, which takes place every 468 years (52 9). On the other hand, 1040 years (52 20) were the ones needed to synchronize the vague solar calendar (without leap year) with the 260-day tonal calendar ( Tonalpowalli ). And thirdly, 2080 years (52 40) constitute the period of synchronization of Venus's departure as a morning star with the solar cycle. That is, Venus will dawn as a morning star in a certain day of the year, after 236 days she will hide behind the Sun and, approximately 90 d After that, he will show himself as a star of the dusk for another 250 days to spend 8 days of transition or lower conjunction. Well, 2080 years later, Venus will return to dawn as a morning star on that same date of the year.
Sacred hour
468 IS THE result of multiplying 52 9, while 520 is the result of multiplying that same figure by 10. 1040 is obtained by multiplying those 52 years by 20, and 2080 by multiplying them by 40. Hence we extract another sacred cycle, which we will call the sacred hour of 52 years.
This constitutes the so-called new fires, a temporary measure that is once again linked to the planet Venus. We already know the cycle that Venus performs. The 260-day period was very important among the various Mesoamerican cultures of the An wak . It constitutes the Mayan Tzolq in or the Aztec Tonalpohualli .
The 52-year period is the time it takes for the 260-day cycle and the 365-day annual cycle (lazy calendar) to synchronize. After 52 solar years, 73 cycles of 260 days will have been completed. But for these cycles to be synchronized, not with the vague calendar of 365 days, but with the grinding that takes leap years into account, 52 20 = 1040 years are required; that is, a holy month.
Therefore, sacred hours help us determine cycles of transcendent events. For example, between the years 1968 and 1972 a whole series of events of great relevance took place. During those years, the pillars on which the era of 5125 years had been constituted, which now ends, were integrated (see article The Pillars of a New Era ). If we add 52 years to those dates, it gives us 2020-24. It is foreseeable that during these years the pillars of the New Age in which we are entering now will manifest more clearly; while those of the old one will be undergoing an accelerated process of disintegration, transmutation or loss of importance. This will foreseeably occur during the years immediately prior to 2020, that is, during the eight-year period from 2012 to 2019.
Complementary reading If you want to know the practical application of these cycles you have it in three articles, which are:
- "Cosmic Cycles and Eras", an article that speaks mostly of the sacred year.
- "The Pillars of a New Era", an article that tells us about the season, day and sacred hour.
- "The Prophecy" article that tells us about the sacred day.
2011, Marc Torra for mastay.info
