The Star of the Magi
Astrology, Cosmology & Ancient Religion
The Most Up-toDate, Comprehensive Research on The Star of Bethlehem The Star of the Magi: The Mystery that Heralded the Coming of Christ New Light on the Star of Bethlehem… For the first time, an author with a solid background in the role of astrology in ancient religion takes on the Star. The result is a breathtaking blend of the latest discoveries in Biblical scholarship, history, astronomy, and astrology that finally tells the whole story as it has never been told before. The Star of the Magi, by Courtney Roberts, M.A., reveals who the Magi were, how their astrology informed their beliefs, and how much those beliefs influenced their Jewish neighbours... Read more at : http://www.thestarofthemagi.com/thestarofthemagi.htm Visions of the Virgin Mary Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje - millions of people of all faiths and nations flock to Marian shrines around the world; a testament to the enduring human desire for transcendence and meaning. Visions of the "Luminous Lady in White" abound: at Zeitun, Egypt, she was witnessed by hundred of thousands of Jews, Muslims, and both Protestant and Orthodox Christians. Courtney Roberts adds a new and fascinating dimension to these miraculous sightings, exploring them through the perspective of astrology. ...The first of its kind to introduce the astrological dimension into comparative religious studies,Visions of the Virgin delicately unravels the tangled skein of pre-Christian goddesses woven into the cults and legends of the Virgin Mary, and reflected in the stars, revealing a tradition of goddess worship still very much alive and well in contemporary Christianity. | The Astrological Weather with Courtney Roberts, M.A. Daily & Weekly video reports on the current planetary alignments, and what they mean for you.. Real Astrology and News you can use to make the most out of each day, every day.
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Archaeoastronomy in the Odyssey
Did a Solar Eclipse Guide Odysseus Home?
To this day, the tales of brave Ulysses retain their almost magical power to move us. Now two researchers claim that, before our hero slipped through the back gates of his own kingdom disguised as a beggar, strung his bow and put his beloved Penelope’s suitors to the slaughter, his triumphant return to Ithaca was heralded by a blood-red, total solar eclipse at high noon.
Back in the 1920’s,Carl Schoch and Paul Neugebauer did the calculations revealing that a total solar eclipse had been visible over the Ionian island of Ithaca around noon on April 16, 1178 B.C. Using this earlier work as a starting point, Marcelo Magnasco and Constantino Baikouzis of Rockefeller University in New York surmised that this eclipse would have taken place approximately one decade after the sack of Troy — which many date to the 1180’s B.C. If we factor in the legendary ten years of wandering which make up the Odyssey, there is a possible coincidence.
Magnasco and Baikouzis, who detailed their findings online on June 23rd in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are not the first to believe that a solar eclipse accompanied Odysseus on his return. The same possibility was raised by the 1st century, Greek historian Plutarch. After all, in the 20th book of the "Odyssey," the seer Theoclymenus foresees the death of the suitors, prophesying "The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an
unlucky darkness invades the world." This passage gave Plutarch the idea that the seer may have been referring to a solar eclipse.
The existence of Homer himself is even more of a mystery than that of his epic characters, but whoever the legendary blind poet was, he did leave a trail of astronomical clues in his tales which Magnasco and Baikouzis have dutifully followed, allowing them to further refine their hypothesis. For instance, as Odysseus breaks away from the clutches of the nymph Calypso, he “is told to watch the Pleiades and late-setting Boötes and keep the Great Bear to his left. Next, five days before the supposed eclipse, Odysseus arrives in Ithaca as the Star of Dawn - that is, Venus - rises ahead of the sun.”
The researchers also believe that poet made a purely mythological reference to a Mercury retrograde period, when “the messenger of the gods, Hermes, is sent west to Ogygia by the king of the gods Zeus to release Odysseus and then immediately returns back east roughly 34 days before the eclipse.” Apparently, there is only one date which satisfies all these conditions: April 16th, 1178 BCE.
Now whether this work proves to be yet another exercise in futility, or a real innovation, it does raise some important questions about how an eclipse, or other unusual planetary motion like retrograde periods, would have been interpreted by the Greeks of Homer’s time. Presumably, Homer’s Odyssey was compiled before the revolutionary discoveries of the cyclical nature of planetary motion in Mesopotamia, and the dawn of mathematical astronomy in approx. the 6th century BCE. If we should interpret Hermes’s roundtrip errand as an astronomical reference, (and why not, after all?) then this recent work encourages rigorous astronomical re-readings of the entire corpus of classical mythology. That alone is the key to a wealth of buried treasure…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080623/sc_livescience/datedeterminedforeclipseinhomersodyssey
They "are not convinced, as others have been, that Stonehenge was a holy place or a secular tool for calculating dates. Instead, they think Stonehenge was a site of healing. "The whole purpose of Stonehenge is that it was a prehistoric Lourdes," says Wainwright. "People came here to be made well." This is revolutionary stuff, and it comes from a reinterpretation of the stones of the henge and the bones buried nearby. Darvill and Wainwright believe the smaller bluestones in the centre of the circle, rather than the huge sarsen stones on the perimeter, hold the key to the purpose of Stonehenge."
If Stonehenge was a site for healing, and healers, as they claim, this only adds to the intrigue of the site's astronomical alignments. Apart from their obvious calendrical value, could these measures of the motions of the Sun and Moon also been used in the healing arts? There is certainly abundant evidence for their use in astrological medicine from every other age. Will Stonehenge one day emerge as the earliest known evidence for healing by the stars?
Complete reports of the excavation, with videos, pictures, etc., at:
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