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Reincarnations of the Phoenix: myth or allegory?
Sources from Antiquity
Two entertaining riddles have come down to us from Antiquity, the familiar one
about the sphinx and another about the legendary phoenix. The first riddle was solved
by Oedipus, according to Sophocles, but the second continues to challenge our
imagination. As far as we know, the oldest description of the phoenix is by Herodotus
(c.484 - 425 BCE) in a report about sacred animals in Egypt1. After featuring crocodiles
and the hippopotamus, he goes on to say:
Otters also are found in the Nile, and are considered sacred. Only two
sorts of fish are venerated... the lepidotus and the eel. These are regarded
as sacred to the Nile, as likewise among birds is the vulpanser, or fox-
goose. They have also another sacred bird called the phoenix which I
myself have never seen, except in pictures. Indeed it is a great rarity,
even in Egypt, only coming there (according to the accounts of the
people of Heliopolis) once in five hundred years, when the old phoenix
dies. Its size and appearance, if it is like the pictures, are as follow: The
plumage is partly red, partly golden, while the general make and size are
almost exactly that of the eagle. They tell a story of what this bird does,
which does not seem to me to be credible: that he comes all the way
from Arabia, and brings the parent bird, all plastered over with myrrh, to
the temple of the Sun, and there buries the body....
It is curious that Herodotus pairs the Egyptian fox-goose, a culinary delicacy
that was widely available, with a bird that may not even exist. The commentators of
Antiquity and early Christianity were divided if the phoenix was a real bird or an
astronomical allegory. The latter is suggested by its long lifespan and because its colors
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match Mars, the red planet, and Saturn and Jupiter, which are golden. The alleged flight
of the phoenix from Arabia to Egypt, from the east to the west, happens to be the course
of these planets as seen from Earth, and if Herodotus quoted the accounts from
Heliopolis correctly, the destination of the ‘Temple of the Sun’ should be supported by
the astronomical facts as well.
Temple of the Sun
The Dutch scholar Roelof van den Broek has done substantial research for his
book ‘The Myth of the Phoenix’ and noticed a sudden interest in the phoenix during the
first century when it was ‘mentioned twenty-one times by ten authors’. This suggests a
recent appearance because ‘from the preceding eight centuries we have only nine
mentions of the bird’. 2
We should note that Herodotus begins his report about sacred animals with an
excuse: “If I were to explain why they are consecrated to the several gods, I should be
led to speak of religious matters, which I particularly shrink from mentioning; the points
whereon I have touched slightly hitherto have all been introduced from sheer
necessity.” The reason for his caution may be the fact that Egypt was ruled by the
Persian Empire at the time of his writing. The pharaohs of the 27th dynasty were kings
of Persia and Zoroastrians, and in view of the astrological symbolism of the phoenix,
the ‘people of Heliopolis’ that informed Herodotus could have been Magi.
To mix scientific research with religion is problematic and, like Herodotus, we
quote from Washington’s ‘Science News’3 only
from ‘sheer necessity’ because it had
the following article on Dec. 19, 1936: “Was Star Of Bethlehem Three Bright Planets?
Modern astronomers suggest that it may have been the planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars
grouped closely together in a little triangle. Such a grouping, astronomers calculate,
occurred about Feb. 25, in the year 6 BC.” The article mentions several American and
European planetariums that project the ancient skies of Judea “where the three bright
planets are thus shown in a miraculously bright triangle."
The astronomer W. Burke-Gaffney S. J.4 disputed the article at a Jesuit
Seminary in Toronto, Canada, and identified the German astronomer Johannes Kepler
(1571–1630) as discoverer of the triangle. He criticized Kepler’s 'misguided' ideas
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about the Star of Bethlehem5 and claimed that the triangle was not visible for naked eye
observers like the Magi, which he backed up with two prominent astronomers, Charles
Pritchard of Oxford and Ludwig Ideler of Berlin:
Pritchard does not even consider the approach of Mars to Jupiter and
Saturn in February of March BC 6, since neither Ideler nor Kepler had
suggested that these three planets could be mistaken for a single star, for
in Ideler's words: `at about this time Jupiter and Saturn lost themselves in
the rays of the evening sun.
Although their consensus eliminates Kepler’s theory about the Star of
Bethlehem, the disappearance of the planets in the ‘rays of the evening sun’ seems to
support the symbolism of the death of the phoenix in the Temple of the Sun.
Furthermore, the special attention the myth had received during the first century
suggests a recent appearance of the phoenix, which is confirmed by one of the ten
authors, the Roman historian Tacitus (56-117 CE):6
During the consulship of Paulus Fabius and Lucius Vitellius, a bird called the
phoenix, after a long succession of ages, appeared in Egypt and furnished the
most learned men of that country and of Greece with abundant matter for the
discussion of the marvelous phenomenon. It is my wish to make known all on
which they agree with several things, questionable enough indeed, but not too
absurd to be noticed: There is a creature sacred to the sun, differing from all
other birds in its beak and in the tints of its plumage, which is held unanimously
by those who have described its nature. As to the number of years it lives are
various accounts. The general tradition says five hundred years. Some maintain
that it is seen at intervals of fourteen hundred and sixty-one years, and that the
former birds flew into the city called Heliopolis successively in the reigns of
Sesostris, Amasis, and Ptolemy, the third king of the Macedonian dynasty, with
a multitude of companion birds marveling at the novelty of the appearance. But
all antiquity is of course obscure. From Ptolemy to Tiberius was a period of less
than five hundred years.
4
Tacitus regards all antiquity as obscure, but has information about a recent
appearance of the ‘marvelous phenomenon’ that was discussed by ‘the most learned
men’ in Egypt and Greece. The consulship of Paulus Fabius lasted from 11 to 6/5 BCE,
Lucius Vitellius became consul in 34 CE, and both periods were during the life of
Tiberius (42 BCE - 37 CE). The two dates reveal that there were conflicting accounts,
but 34 CE was soon eliminated. Van den Broek writes: “According to Pliny, no one
took this phoenix seriously… Tacitus too notes that it was generally thought that the
phoenix he said appeared in A. D. 34 was a false one, had not come from Arabia, and
had not done any of the things the ancient tradition said it should have done.” 7
Consequently, Tacitus supports 11 to 6/5 BCE, a period of six years that includes the
‘miraculously bright triangle’ of 6 BCE, when the planets were ‘burned’ by the sun.
The phoenix riddle
The riddle was introduced two centuries before Herodotus by the poet Hesiod.
He is a major, historical source for early Greek mythology, astronomy and ancient time-
keeping, which qualifies him as an informed expert. The English translation of the
riddle (below) is from ‘The Precepts of Chiron’ and was accessed at
http://www.bartleby.com/241/
A chattering crow lives out nine generations
of aged men, but a stag's life is four times a crow's,
and a raven’s life makes three stags old,
while the phoenix outlives nine ravens,
but we, the rich-haired Nymphs, daughters of Zeus
the aegis-holder, outlive ten phoenixes.
The chatter of a crow mixed with a Greek chorus of bragging nymphs is a
sound effect that seems to enhance the absurdity of the riddle. There is no way of
knowing how old 'aged men' would have been in Antiquity, and if we were to use sixty
years for the calculation, a crow would have to live 540 years, which Pliny8 mentions
as
lifespans of the phoenix. It is a curious fact that old age is also an important part of the
‘Riddle of the Sphinx’, a winged creature in Greek mythology like the phoenix and is
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also said to have Egyptian roots. As the story goes, the sphinx sat on a high rock and
guarded the entrance of Thebes. Although the exact wording varies in some versions,
she asked each traveler:
“What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon,
and three feet in the evening?" Then the Sphinx strangled and
devoured anyone unable to answer the question, until Oedipus
solved the riddle: "Man, who crawls on all fours as a baby,
walks on two feet as an adult, and with a cane in old age".
Bested at last, the Sphinx threw herself from the rock to her death.
Hesiod may have created the riddle as a 'crutch' to solve the phoenix riddle or it
could be a zeitgeist we find difficult to understand today. That the lifespan of a human
being can be reduced to one day would be a major obstacle to solve any riddle. But if a
generation of 'aged men' could be reduced to ‘one’ in the phoenix riddle, the age of nine
years for a crow would make a more sense. Fortunately, there is a highly qualified
expert who offers such an approach.
The Greek scholar Plutarch (c. 46-120 CE) was an erudite historian and
biographer, a priest of the Pythian Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi and, according to his
own account, initiated in the secret mysteries of Dionysus. (Treatise 10). He admits in
"de defectu oraculorum" (Moralia) 9 that the divine oracles have lost their power
because people have changed, and this led to certain "defects of the oracles". Following
the concept of Plato's ‘Timaeus’, Plutarch creates a lively discussion which is narrated
by his brother Lamprias and features two holy men that meet at the Temple of Delphi:
the grammarian Demetrius of Tarsus who had just returned from a trip to Britain, and
Cleombrotus of Sparta who had spent considerable time in Egypt.
They cover many of Plato’s ideas, including reincarnation, and even the death of
Pan. The phoenix riddle is mentioned briefly in the context of the demigods, which
philosophers placed allegedly midway between gods and men, and they wonder
‘whether this doctrine comes from the wisemen of the cult of Zoroaster, or whether it is
Thracian and harks back to Orpheus, or Egyptian, or Phrygian…’ Cleombrotus points
out that the demigods are immortal, but that some did not “yield to temptation and are
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again clothed with mortal bodies... Hesiod thinks that with a lapse of certain periods of
years the end comes even to the demigods; for, speaking in the person of the Naiad, he
indirectly suggests the length of time with these words:
Nine generations long is the life of the crow
and its cawing, nine generations of vigorous men. (9)
The lives of four crows together
equal the life of a stag, (9x4=36)
and three stags the old age of a raven; (3x36=108)
nine of the lives of the raven the life of the
phoenix do equal, (108x9=972)
ten of the phoenix we Nymphs,
fair daughters of Zeus of the aegis.” (972x10=9720)
The discussion about the riddle exposes Plutarch’s esoteric concept because the
phoenix is never brought up and it’s only about the nymphs. The numbers we inserted
above show how the age of the nymphs is reached, which Cleombrotus calculates
differently by omitting the phoenix. Right after the riddle he starts with the ‘nine
generations of vigorous men’: “Those that do not interpret 'generation' well make an
immense total of this time; but it really means a year, so that the sum of the life of these
divinities is nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty years, less than most
mathematicians think, and more than Pindar (c. 522–443 BCE) has stated when he says
that nymphs are 'allotted a term as long as the years of a tree’ and for this reason he
calls them Hamadryads.”
By quoting Pindar, who was from Thebes and a priest at the oracle in Delphi
five centuries before Plutarch, Cleombrotus raises some serious doubts whether nymphs
can live as long as they are claiming. But Demetrius fails to pay attention and asks:
"How is it, Cleombrotus that you can say that the year has been called a generation?"
Without waiting for a response, Demetrius points out that Plutarch changed Hesiod’s
riddle when he says that those who read ‘in their vigor’ make a generation 30 years, like
Heraclitus… and those who write ‘in their eld’ (i.e. like Hesiod) ‘assign 108 years to a
generation; for they say that 54 marks the limit of the middle years of human life, a
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number which is made up of the first number, the first two plane surfaces, two squares
and two cubes, numbers which Plato also took in his Generations of the Soul.’ The
calculation of the grammarian is 1 + (1x2) + (1x3) +4 +9 + 8 + 27 = 54.
He mentions a ‘veiled reference’ by Hesiod that a conflagration might lead to a
‘disappearance of all liquids’ and ‘extinction of the nymphs’, which Cleombrotus
ignores to continue his argument: "This fact is also clear... that often the measure and
the things measured are called by the same name, as, for example, gill, quart, gallon,
and bushel. In the same way, then, in which we call unity a number, being, as it is, the
smallest number and the first; so the year, which we use as the first measure of a man's
life, Hesiod has called by the same name as the thing measured, a 'generation'."
He turns to the “qualities which may be inherent in numbers" while ignoring the
numbers that are inherent in the riddle. He claims that the age of the nymphs has been
calculated by adding the first four numbers and multiply them by four (1+2+3+4=10)
and then multiply the ten by four and five times by three (40 x 35 = 9720).
Even van den Broek, to whom we owe most major references, ignores Plutarch's
warning that ‘Those that do not interpret 'generation' well make an immense total of this
time’ because he is forced by the academic traditions to consider every option and even
calculates that a raven could reach the age of 3,600 years because it symbolizes the
Babylonian ‘sar’.10
He obviously regards the lifespans as purely allegorical and
proposes therefore that the lifespan of the phoenix might reach 32,400 years. He bases
this hypothesis on Plato's 'Great Year' as proposed by the Roman astrologer Manilius
who wrote that the Great Year starts ‘around noon on the day the sun enters the sign of
the Ram’11
, which is an important subject we’ll address in the context of astronomy.
We maintain, however, that the entire life of a human has to be interpreted as a
unit of ‘one’, like the one day in the sphinx riddle, which is suggested in Plutarch’s
hidden calculation of 972 years for the lifespan of the phoenix. In view of his reference
to Pindar, it seems that both priests from the Oracle of Delphi are in agreement that the
solution is as simple as the riddle of the sphinx – that it is simply about the truth!
Plutarch may have replaced the ‘chattering crow’ of Hesiod with a ‘cawing
crow’ to avoid any allusion to the ‘chattering’ Pythia, the priestess of the Delphi oracle.
He also reduced Hesiod’s ‘aged men’ to a generic concept because men can be ‘in their
vigor’ at any age. Finally, there is the problem of ‘ten’ that gives the nymphs 9720
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years. Cleombrotus never brings up that the nymphs claim they live ten timed longer
than the phoenix , only their questionable lifespan of 9720 years. Because he reaches
this number with a different calculation, the 972 and 9720 may not be definite numbers.
For example, 9720 years is wrong if the nymphs are immortal and also if they only live
as long as trees. Hence, their false claim makes the multiplication by ten invalid and
requires a simple subtraction of a lie: 972-10 = 962.
This simplistic solution is validated by the hidden calculation because the nine
years for a crow and the thirty-six for a stag are acceptable lifespans. But we have the
same problem with the ‘old age of a raven’ as we did with the nymphs, because 108
years is not true either and needs to be subtracted as well: 962-108 = 854.
The solution of 854 years as lifespan of the phoenix can only be supported by
religious matters and, following Herodotus, we mention them from ‘sheer necessity’:
The Viennese astronomer Konradin Ferrari d’Occhieppo12
had investigated Kepler’s
theories about the Star of Bethlehem and established from Babylonian tablets that Magi
were able to predict the planetary positions in 7/6 BCE and calculate that the planets
return to the same location in the sky every 854 years. To eliminate the possibility that
the matching of the two numbers could be a coincidence, it is necessary to make a
closer examination of the astronomical allegories Herodotus had learned in Heliopolis.
Astronomical evidence
According to Kepler, there was a triangle of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in 1604
which was regarded as an important omen.13
However, when Mars had moved away and
a supernova appeared above Saturn and Jupiter to top a ‘fiery’ triangle, the wild
speculations were endless, from the end of the world to another Star of Bethlehem, and
Kepler was ordered by his patron Emperor Rudolf II to take an official position. He
wrote in several articles that these were separate events because of the immense
disdance between the planets and the supernova, which had appeared among the fixed
stars like Tycho Brahe’s supernova in 1572. He followed up with a book about the
‘new star’14
and a comparison of the astronomical events in 1604 and 6 BCE in the
appendix, where he suggested cautiously that the Church may have miscalculated the
calendar because it seemed that the Star of Bethlehem had appeared a few years earlier.
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For many decades, and always in time for Christmas, astronomers have written
books about this ‘miraculous star’ because there is a market for an explanation of a
Christian miracle from a scientific point of view. To find a publisher, each astronomer
had to come up with a different hypothesis, which forced them often to either dispute
Kepler’s findings or discredit him as a misguided genius. This could only be achieved
by either ignoring his original works, or by a lack of language skills that allowed them
to pick translations of their peers that supported their revisions.
For example, some respected astronomers maintain in their books that Kepler
thought that the planets could have caused the supernova to ‘burst forth’, although he
had debunked this common error in a German article as a ‘childish idea' 16
and joked in
Latin that it would have been ‘like a mosquito giving birth to an elephant'17
.
There were de facto three conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter in 7 BCE, and
Mars joined in 6 BCE to form the 'great conjunction', as Kepler called it. Below are the
planetary positions according to Bryant Tuckerman (IBM) 18
. Note: There was no year 0
and 6 BCE is listed as -5.
The next sketch visualizes these numbers and reveals that there were actually
two triangles in 6 BCE. Moving from right to left, Mars reached 346 degrees on Feb. 12
to form a triangle of ‘watery’ symbolism and it topped a ‘fiery’ triangle when it reached
356 degrees on Feb. 28, 6 BCE, according to Zuckerman.
10
In an age before modern conveniences and the media, the ancients had much
more time and interest to contemplate celestial events. Unaware of the Earth’s rotation
and orbit, they observed how the sun, moon, and stars move at different speeds across
the heavens. This made the above scenario very special because a few evenings before
and after May 26, 7 BCE, Saturn and Jupiter were extremely close to each other, about
one degree, and each time followed the sun below the horizon. The planets repeated
their conjunction two more times, and due to the retrograde motion of the planets as
seen from Earth, they seemed to wait nine months for Mars to join them to form the first
triangle with Saturn like an anchor back at the location as the first conjunction. Before
we address the symbolic meaning, we should add that Tuckerman's tables cover ‘only’
601 BCE to CE 1 and 2 CE to 1649 CE. In recent years, astronomers have found a few
flaws in the tables, especially for the positions of Mars, and rely now on the JPL
(Pasadena, USA) where we had obtained in the 1980s the geocentric print-outs for 860
BCE, 6 BCE, and 849 CE: 19
The first numbers are different from Tuckerman’s because they show the sun at
the international dateline. The planetary positions are shown here for the fiery triangles,
but they are two weeks early in 860 BCE because we requested the wrong print-out.
However, every astronomer will be able to calculate and confirm with this data that our
Solar system completed an 854-year cycle on these dates.
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The sketches depict a metamorphosis every 854 years because the planets get
closer to each other and a few degrees closer to Aries, which only an astrophysicist can
explain because it is contrary to the precession of the equinoxes. At right are fusions of
the ‘watery’ and ‘fiery’ triangles into a hexagram, the ancient symbol of magic, which
invokes the magic art of the Magi Plutarch had mentioned. It could be a hidden message
that he brings up right after riddle ‘the order of the triangles' and a companion of Plato.
Although this looks like a ‘star’ on the horizon over Bethlehem, a creative
observer would be able to ignore the perspective and imagine the shape of a bird, with a
head and tail, two feet, and its wings spread wide, in the size of an eagle that soars
above the horizon until it is ‘burned’ by the Sun.
In view of the colors of the planets, their course and their approach to the sun, it
would seem that the phoenix symbolism of Herodotus is herewith confirmed. However,
the celestial event would not have had such importance through the ages if the planets
were not visible to the naked eye. Unfortunately, Burke-Gaffney and Pritchard had
miscalculated the planetary positions next to the sun, which is confirmed by the
astronomers Robert Victor (Abrams Planetarium, Michigan) and John Mosley (Griffith
Observatory, Los Angeles). Victor saw the Mars-Saturn conjunction on Feb. 20, 1966,
with the naked eye although the planets were closer to the sun than in 6 BCE, and
observed from higher latitude than the Near East. In 1981, Mosley referenced Victor’s
observation in an article and confirmed that the triangle in 6 BCE was ‘clearly
visible’.20
But why is the return of a phoenix regarded as such an important omen? When
all planets that were known in ancient times vanish from the night sky and return one
after the other in Aries, the ‘great Platonic year’ comes to mind, which is often
interpreted as the 26,000 years of an orbit of planetary precessions, but this is just one
of interpretation21
. According to Otto Neugebauer ‘almost any period can be found
sometime or somewhat honored with this name’.22
That the 854-year cycle may be a
better choice is also indicated by Cicero23
(106 - 43 BCE) who writes in ‘De Natura
Deorum’ that “the ‘great year‘ is completed when the sun, moon and five planets having
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finished all their courses have returned to the same position”. It is important that he
adds that ‘the length of this period is hotly debated’. Our JPL print-outs show the
planetary triangles in 854-year intervals, followed by Mercury and Venus. In a book
about Matthew’s Gospel, the Rev. A. J. Maas, a Jesuit like Burke-Gaffney, writes that
Kepler ‘found that Jupiter and Saturn had been in conjunction A.U.C. 747 (i.e. 7 BCE),
and that Mars had made his approach the following
February and March; later on, the Sun, Venus, and
Mercury were added, so that in March, April, and May
A.U.C. 748 (i.e. 6 BCE) there was a perfect
conjunction.’ 24
This means that after the planets had
disappeared from the night sky, they returned one after the
other for a new beginning in Aries. This sketch is based on
JPL data and shows that Earth is isolated reach time on the
far side of the sun. The four line-ups are on 1. March 20,
860 BCE, 2. February 28, 6 BCE, 3. February 2, 849 and
4. January 18, 1703 CE. The is evidence that the phoenix
of Tacitus is identical with the Star of Bethlehem. That
both events were confused in the Christian tradition is shown by R. van den Broek25
with a Coptic sermon that mentions an appearance of the phoenix at the time of Christ’s
birth, and with St. Clement I (d. 99 CE), one of the first bishops of Rome, who wrote at
about the phoenix and referred to it as a symbol of Christ’s resurrection.
Tentative conclusions
We know from contemporary references that most works from Antiquity are no
longer extant. Consequently, our attempt to ‘connect the dots’ between a few surviving
works is quite a risk and questionable from an academic point of view. However, a wise
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man of our era, Albert Einstein, once said ‘imagination is more important than
knowledge’, and these words inspired these interdisciplinary researches in the 1980s.26
Although we have a plausible solution for the phoenix riddle, the question
remains why so many wise men could have been so wrong for so long? If we use our
imagination, we can’t exclude the possibility that the people in Antiquity could still
‘feel’ external force fields like so many species in the animal kingdom, and tried to
describe this inexplicable experience. Hence, a study of some superstitious beliefs
might reveal that they pertain to these ‘forces’.
Although Kepler rejected astrology as a ‘disease that infected a great part of
humanity’, he headlined an essay with a warning for theologians, doctors and
philosophers that it would be unprofessional to dismiss astrology as a whole because
they may be ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater'. On the cover of the article, he
goes on joke in his Baroque humor that he offers "many, extremely important, never
before raised or discussed philosophical questions for all true lovers of the secrets of
nature as a necessary instruction." 27
To entertain his readers with the possibility that there is a 'grain' of truth in the
dung of superstition, Kepler put the above vignette on the cover of ‘de stella nova’ with
a scratching hen and her ten chicks on a pile of manure. That it is difficult to understand
Kepler’s speculative ideas today is confirmed by Einstein: ‘The reader should note the
remarks on astrology. They show that the inner enemy, conquered and rendered
innocuous, was not yet completely dead.’28
Kepler had to address the Zodiac with ‘watery’ and ‘fiery’ triangles and Trigons
to be able to communicate in a superstitious environment. But he also added the above
‘grains’ of truth to his works, like the dismissal of the shapes of planetary triangles and
Trigons as utterly meaningless, and that it only matters how many planets join together
and how close they get to each other.29
This claim takes us straight to Kepler’s ‘inner enemy’ that was not completely
dead. He assumed apparently that close planetary massings radiate some kind of energy
he was able to ‘experience’ because he describes ‘stormy, meteorological agitations’
(Erregungszustände) of planet Earth during the line-up in 1604 that drove everyone to
do everything with a greater energy and passion.30
As this sort of astrophysical
‘agitation’ is unknown in modern science, it is a fact that Earth's eccentricity varies due
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to interactions with the gravitational fields of Saturn and Jupiter. Therefore, we could
imagine that some gravitational fields interact with and the magnetic fields of the
planets, which redirect an unknown ‘radiation’ towards Earth during the line-ups.
The claim by the ancients that the direction of each line-up has a different effect
is even more of a science-fiction because it would involve a direct energy transfer from
outer space. As strange as it may be, this hypothesis is supported by the importance of
Aries in the context of the Zodiac, including Plato’s ‘Great Year’, and the Chaldean
priest Berossus who held, according to Seneca,31
that the line-ups of the planets under
the sign of Cancer would cause major conflagrations, and major inundations if they line
up under Capricorn.
In other words, even if 854 years is the solution of the phoenix riddle, more
questions are raised than can be answered. Until new discoveries can validate Kepler’s
observation that unknown force fields affect life on Earth, the celestial events that got
so much attention from the prophets, poets, and philosophers are merely figments of
their imagination and meaningless superstitions.
BACK
Notes
1. Henry R. Immerwahr, Herodotus, Cambridge History of Classical Greek Literature:
Greek Literature, (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 430-431, 440.
2. Roelof van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix, (Leiden, 1972), pp. 393, 394
3. Science News Letter, Washington D.C., December 19, 1936, p.393
4. J. Burke-Gaffney, S.J., Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada,
Toronto, 1937, pp. 416-425
5. J. Burke-Gaffney, S.J., Kepler and the Jesuits, (Milwaukee, 1944, p. 56. He
dismissed his theories about the Star of Bethlehem as ‘typically Keplerian – born of erudition
wedded to astrology by misguided genius.” Einstein was a contemporary of the Jesuit, and he
evaluated Kepler differently: “There we meet a finely sensitive person, passionately dedicated
to his research for a deeper insight into the essence of natural events, who, despite internal and
external difficulties, reached his loftily placed goal…” Quoted from a book by Carola
Baumgardt, Johannes Kepler - Life and Letters, (New York, 1951), pp. 9-13.
6. Tacitus, The Annals, tr. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodrib, Book VI.
7. Van den Broek, see above 2, p. 115
8. Pliny the Elder, X, 4: ‘vivere annis DXL’
9. Plutarch, de defectu oraculorum, Moralia, Vol. XI, (Cambridge, 1927), pp. 381-387
10. Van den Broek, (see above, n. 2), p. 97
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11. Ibid., p. 103
12. Konradin Ferrari d'Occhieppo, Hypothese zu einer 854-jährigen Planetenperiode in
der Babylonischen Astronomie, (Vienna, 1969). Based on cuneiform tablet 35429 (British
Museum) and others. Also his book Der Stern der Weisen, (Vienna-Munich, 1969).
13. Johannes Kepler, Gründtlicher Bericht Von einem vngewohnlichen Newen Stern in /
wellicher im October ditz 1604. Jahrs erstmahlen erschienen, (Prague, 1604).
14. Johannes Kepler, De Stella Nova, Mysterium Cosmographicum, Gesammelte
Werke, vol. 1, ed. Max Caspar, (Munich, 1938), pp. 441-61.
15. David Hughes, The Star Of Bethlehem, An Astronomer's Confirmation, (New York,
1980), p. 134: "It is possible that in Kepler's view the conjunction had caused the development
of the nova and it is even possible that he had thought the conjunction at the time of Christ's
birth caused the nova of 5 BC." See also Michael R. Molnar, The Star of Bethlehem, Legacy of
the Magi, (New Brunswick, 1999), p. 147. "...it was natural for him (Kepler) to suspect that the
conjunction had caused the bright star to burst forth."
16. Kepler, (see above, n.13), vngeschickten kindischen gedancken.
17. Johannes Kepler, de stella nova in pede serpentarii, Über den neuen Stern im Fuss
des Schlangenträger, tr. Otto & Eva Schönberger, Eberhard Knobloch, (Würzburg, 2006),
p.159, Oder hält es jemand für wahrscheinlich, dass eine Mücke einen Elefanten hervorbringt?
18. Bryant Tuckerman, Planetary, Lunar, and Solar Positions, (Philadelphia, 1979).
19. This is the full print-out for Feb. 14-24, 6 BCE, from JPL to confirm its authenticity
and to validate our illustration of Tuckerman’s planetary positions:
20. John Mosley, Common Errors in "Star of Bethlehem" Planetarium Shows, the
Planetarian, (Los Angeles, 1981), also available online.
21. Plato: Complete Works, Timaeus, ed. John M. Cooper, Indianapolis, 1977), p.1243
22. Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient mathematical astronomy, Berlin –
Heidelberg – New York, 1975, p. 618
23. Cicero, de natura deorum academica, tr. H. Rackham, (Cambridge Massachusets –
London, 1967)
24. A.J. Maas, S.J., The Gospel according to Saint Matthew with an explanatory and
critical commentary, 2nd. ed., (St Louis, 1916), p. 20.
25. Van den Broek (see above, n.2), p. 119: An excerpt from the Coptic sermon:
‘According to the number of its years it was the tenth time since genesis after the sacrifice of
16
Abel that it made a sacrifice of itself: in this year the Son of God was born in Bethlehem. And
on the day the priest Zechariah was killed, they installed the priest Simeon in his place. The
phoenix burned itself on the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. On the eighth day after the
holy Virgin had brought fourth our Savior, she took him with Joseph to the temple in order to
make a sacrifice for him as firstborn, he was named Jesus. From that moment on no one has
ever seen this bird up to this day.
26. W. v. Chmielewski, Hexagrams in the Sky: from the Star of David to the Holy
Grail, presented at the annual meeting of Southern California Academy of Sciences at
California State University San Bernardino, May 1986. Abstract 60: "According to astronomical
computations, the relative positions of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, as seen from Earth, changed
within ten days from a watery to a fiery triangle in 6 BC and AD 849, at the vernal equinox,
followed by a massing in Aries of all planets known to the ancients with the Sun. This
transformation symbolizes the fusion of ‘wise men’ into a hexagram, the ancient symbol of
magic. Evidence from the Bible, mythology, philosophy, and literature suggests that planetary
hexagrams appeared in intervals of approximately 854 years, with different meanings in
different civilizations...”
27. Johannes Kepler, de fvndamentis astrologiae certioribis, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4,
ed. Max Caspar, Franz Hammer, (Munich, 1941).
28. Carola Baumgardt, (see above, n. 5)
29. Johannes Kepler, (see above, n. 14), pp. 210-11. In reference to the 1604
conjunction: "Es besagt ja nichts für die Veränderung des menschlichen Zustandes, ob ein
Dreieck nach dem Feuer oder dem Wasser benannt wird; doch darin liegt der grosse
Unterschied, ob viele oder wenige Planeten und ob diese eng oder locker und entfernt
zusammentreten."
30. Johannes Kepler, (see above, n. 14), p. 448. Max Caspar sums up: ‘Er sagt, die
Erfahrung habe ihm gelehrt, dass zur Zeit der Planetenkonjunktionen und gewisser anderer
Aspekte die Erde Erregungszustände zeige, die sich in stürmischen meteorologischen
Erscheinungen äussern, und dass die Menschen zu solchen Zeiten das, was sie unter den
Händen haben oder zu tun beabsichtigen, mit grösserer Energie und Leidenschaft betreiben.‘
31. Van den Broek, (see above, n. 2), p. 74
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