The years go by faster and faster, it
seems, and our fate is known and approaches swiftly and inevitably.
Yet as horrifying as our reality may be, it is always fun for me to
remember that they have put up an evergreen in the center of
Manhattan and decorated it with toys and mistletoe again this year.
I doubt very much if most of the people who view the tree are aware
of the meaning these rituals had to some of our ancestors, but it is
impressive that the tradition survives at all.
This is the story of an ancient state
religion that survived disaster not once, but twice, and survives to
this day in two different forms. And whose fundamental principles
you recreate every time you look at a clock or tell the time. But
first lets set the stage for what the French historians call the
longue duree. (2), or the long view. It has various other names, but it means to try and take a longer perspective.
So first I indicate how astronomy does not change much in our lifetimes, but does change over a longer period.... so ...
So first I indicate how astronomy does not change much in our lifetimes, but does change over a longer period.... so ...
The earth spins on its axis in a
somewhat eliptical orbit around the so-called Sun and while it does
so, entropy inevitably increases and nothing you or I can do will
change that. The universe is by no means static and will change on
the scale of the solar orbits, but we won't notice because by that
time the trillions of nanomachines partitioned into the various
cellular entities that make up our so-called individual physical
existence will have collapsed into a soup of decayed matter long
before.
I know that is a little depressing, but
read on, it picks up.
We call the circle of circles around
the solar mass a "year", having picked a point on that
ellipse to demark the beginning and the end for accounting purposes
and because it corresponds to an inflection point on the curve.
This subdivision of a year into 360 circles as the planet rotated and
circled the sun was noticed by an ancient people "between the
rivers" (== Meso Potamia) many years ago and they developed a
"sacred mathematics" to explain what they observed in the
sky and all around them and made this a central part of their
religion and world view. In fact, it formed one of the pillars of
their religion and the rituals that held up the state that they lived
in.
Consider what it means for there to be
a state religion in a country. It means that certain beliefs that
are critical to the legitimacy of the government are built into the
fabric of society in a very functional and specific set of ways that
has evolved over time. When our constitution discusses "separation
of church and state", they did not mean that it was
unconstitutional to have religion in our government, it meant that
the religious leaders would not be selected by the state, or paid for
by the state, or that these religious leaders would be part of
government by the very fact of their role in the religion. The
specific counterexample for the American Revolution was that the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the top bishop of the Church of England,
was chosen by the King and acknowledged the authority of the King
over the Bishop of Rome (e.g. the Pope).
In ancient times, this relationship was
much stronger between religion and governance, though of course there
was a huge amount of variation. To give some examples and to
simplify to make the point, the heads of religion of the Roman
Republic were all members of the leading familes of Rome. The
rituals that were performed and how they were performed were
considered of the utmost importance to the survival of Rome and its
rule in the world. They did not care for the most part what people
believed as long as those rituals were performed in the correct way
and that whatever else you did or believed did not prevent you from
doing those essential rituals.
In many ancient societies that we know
of, the ruling class or monarch would consult with various religious
leaders before starting a war, or fighting a battle. The Romans
certainly did. It was believed that the gods that you worshipped
had an opinion about what was the right thing to do in such a
situation and by using certain technical arts that the gods would
tell you and help you to choose wisely. Or possibly that you could
influence the outcome of the situation with proper ritual and
sacrifice. The ancient Romans were big on making deals with
"god".... you do this and I will sacrifice 100 cows to you,
etc.
Although there was huge variation in
the ancient world, I think it is fair to say that aspects of the
religion of a people was very tighly bound up into the legimacy and
process of how they lived their lives, paid their taxes, went to war,
and chose who ruled over them and in what way. The more formal a
state, with a bureaucracy, taxes, and so forth, the more likely they
were to have a formal state religion.
But if the state religion said that the
rulers ruled by divine right and were in fact themselves gods, or
Gods, whatever, then if they got deposed that was bad for the
religion. To say the least. And that is what happened to the Neo
Bablylonians when their boys lost the war and the Persians came in about 539 BC.
So what is a religion to do? Well, it
adapts. Now instead of the gods being planets and stars and comets,
they are more universal forces and archetypes. And you formalize
some of the loose influences of the stellar bodies into their
archetypal forms. And if you are lucky enough to have Alexander the
Great around, you adapt all this to Hellenistic culture and become
the dominant way of predicting the future with the cachet of being
based on "old Babylonian religion" and there you have it:
modern astrology. Based on the former state religion of NeoBabylon.
On top of that, and not entirely
independently, part of that astrology branches off and without the
prediction part and morphs into a science of Astronomy. Now the
astronomers don't much believe in the influence of the Zodiac, for
example, but they do take a lot of terminology and conventions and
continue using them: like 360 degrees in a circle, to name one
obvious example. And so, too, Astronomy maintains some fundamental
beliefs that comes from the Old Religion.
We should only hope that some of our
belief systems should be so resilient and last even half as long.
For a good bibliography of Babylonian Astronomy & Astrology, see:
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