http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== CALENdeRsign Home <../index.html>CALENdeRsign Superstition in the Calendar The Influence of Ancient World Concepts and Apocalyptic Ideas upon the Adjustment of the Anno Domini Count by Sepp Rothwangl, CALENdeRsign given at SEAC conference in Isili/Sardinia 2005 Abstract The invention of the Anno Domini count is attributed to the 6th century scholar, Dionysius Exiguus, whose divergence of the date of Christ?s birth year compared with other contemporary chronologies usually is explained by a miscalculation. This paper reveals circumstances, worldviews, and ideas that were at the base of this yearly count, which aimed in fact to focus the end of the world. The inventor of the Anno Domini count was a sixth century monk, called Dionysius Exiguus, who used the Anno Domini count for a forecast of Easter dates, presented it in his Liber de Paschate. Dennis the Little was a fellow-student of Cassiodorus and canonist of the councils and synods of Nicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, and Sardica, and he was the author of Collectio Dionysiana, Codex canonum Ecclesiæ Universæ, and Codex canonum ecclesiasticarum. (Peitz, 1960) The Easter book of Dennis tells us that the end of St. Cyril?s Easter cycle in Diocletian year 147 was the reason to start a new Easter cycle in the following year, one that is no longer linked with Diocletian years, but with Christ?s incarnation or conception on vernal equinox 1 AD. Liber de paschate: ?Because the blessed Cyril began his first cycle in the 153 rd year of Diocletian and ended his last cycle in the 247th year of Diocletian, we have to start in the 248th year of this man who was a tyrant rather than emperor. However, we did not want to preserve the memory of an impious persecutor of Christians in our cycles, but chose rather to mark the times with the years from the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that the commencement of our hope will appear more familiar to us and the origin of the redemption of mankind, that is the Passion of our Redeemer, will shine in a more glorious way. (Translation: Declerq, 2000) Dennis? explanation seems like a pretext, and he gives us no further hints why he choose this of all years for Christ?s incarnation, which is contradictory to other chronologies (Geerlings, 1999). Thus we must consider the temporal concepts of the worldview that existed during his lifetime. The worldview influencing the creation of AD years is a complex composition or amalgamation of several ideas and circumstantial events: (A) The Great Year doctrine of classical Greek antiquity. The famous quote in Plato?s Timaeus tells about the Perfect Year, which is fulfilled when the relative speeds of the eight revolutions, of the seven planets and the sphere of the fixed stars, have finished together and reached their goal. In virtue, then, of this plan and intent of the God for the birth of time, in order that time might be brought into being, Sun and Moon and five other stars - ?wanderers?, as they are called - were made to define and preserve the numbers of time. Having made a body of them the God set them in circuits in which the revolution of the Other was moving - in seven circuits seven bodies. (Plato, Timaios 38c) They barely know that the wanderings of these others are time at all, bewildering as they are in number and of surprisingly intricate pattern. None the less it is possible to grasp that the perfect number of time fulfils the Perfect Year at the moment when the relative speeds of all the eight revolutions have accomplished their courses together and reached their consummation, as measured by the circle of the Same and uniformly moving. (Timaios 39c-d) The enormous number of authors who wrote about the Great Year doctrine shows that this idea was very common and powerful for temporal orientation in the Occident. List of authors upon Great Year doctrine (Callataÿ, 1996) cent. ago 25 Plato, Pythagoreans, Aristotle 24 Eudemos of Rhodes 23 Aratus, Chysippus, Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes 22 Dercyllides, Diogenes the Stoic 21 Alexander Polyhistor, Lucretius, Posidonios, Cicero, Varro 20 Seneca, Pliny the Elder,Tacitus , Flavius Josephus, Plutarch, Arius Dydimus, Heraclitus Stoicus, Verrius Flaccus, Vitruvius, Q. Fabius Laurentius Victorinus 19 Ptolemy, Aulus Gellius, Sextus Empiricus, Apuleius, Albinus (Alcinoos?), Galen, Abydenus, Adrastus, Pseudo-Plutarch, Aetius, Celsus, Sextus Empiricus, Sosigenes 18 Hippolytus of Rome, Clemens Alexandrinus, Minucius Felix, Censorinus, Eusebius of Cesarea, Solinus, Origen, Alexander of Aphrodisias 17 Firmicus Maternus, Arnobius, Porphyry 16 Nemesius, Calcidius, Proclus, Martianus Capella, Augustine, Macrobius, Servius 15 Simplicius, Joannes Philoponus, Aryabhta of Kusumpara, Lydus, Olympiodorus (B) The oriental tradition of the Great Year. 23 century ago, an oriental exponent of a similar idea was Berossos, a Chaldean priest, who founded a school of astrology in Kos and tells that a cataclysm of fire or water would occur alternately, when all planets align in the respective winter or summer signs. (Waerden) Berossos, the interpreter of Belus, states that the courses of the planets determine the time of a fire disaster and a flood. A fire on earth will rage if all planets, which move now in different courses, will gather in Cancer, standing still in the same place (of the sky), such that a straight line can pass through all their positions. A flood, however, will come if the same group of planets comes together in Capricorn. (SENECA, Questiones naturales III 29,1) The main work of Berossos, the Babyloniaka, influenced a lot of publications in the subsequent centuries until the times of Dennis and early Islam (Kennedy, 1962). Circulation of the Babyloniaka through time (Schnabel, 1968) cent. ago 23 Berossos 22 Posidonios, Alexander Polyhistor, Juba, 21 Diodourus Alexandrinus, Ps.Epikurus, Lucretius, Vetusta Placita, Varro, Dydimus, Hyginus, Vitruvius, Eudoros Diodorus Siculus, 20 Papirius, Fabianus, Polyhistor interpolatus, Seneca, Plinius, Josephus, Pamphilius 19 Aetios, Ps. Plutarchos, Theophilos Tatianos, Diogenaios, Ailianos 18 Kleomedes, Censorinus, Abydenos, Hippolytos, Africanus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Athenios 17 Anonym. Aratum isagoga, Eusebios, Augustinus, Eusebios, Hesychios 16 Stobaios, Isodoros, Kyrillos, Panodoros, Helladios 15 Palchos, Versio latina barbara, Scholastica Germanici, Verso Armeniaca, Synkellos, Agathias, Photios 19 centuries ago, Nemesius wrote that during such a Great Year conjunction, when the planets come back to the same sign as at the beginning, the world would restore itself in a new creation, and he wrote that Christians imagine the resurrection on the Last Day in this way of restoration. ? the conflagration and the destruction of all beings is generated, after stated periods of time, by the planets, when they come back, both in longitude and latitude, to the same sign in which each one of them was at the beginning, when the world was first shaped. Then, from the start the world is restored anew. Since the stars are brought back similarly, everything which occurred in the previous period is accomplished, without any change. There will be again Socrates and Plato and every man, with their friend and fellow-citizen. ? everything will be the same without any change, even in the tiniest details. Some people state that Christians imagine the Resurrection by this way of restoration. (NEMESIUS, De natura hominis, 38) (C) The next idea, in the time of Dennis the Little was Precession and its rate. We have quite early witness of a value of precession. At the beginning its rate seemed to be a rounding up or estimation than a true calculation. Ptolemy could have known better, though he handed down the rate of 3000 y each 30° or 100y each 1°. Please notice that from about 1300 years ago we have consistent, safe oriental reports of a rate of precession of 66 years each 1°. It equates 2000 years each 30° or 666 years each 10° or decan. Early Rates of Precession (Burckhardt, 1968; Waerden, 1965; Hartner 1979; Neugebauer, 1970; Rawlins, 1999, Aslaksen,) cent. ago 24 Kidinnu (Kidenas) ca.: 50-60y/1° Aristarchos: 100y/1° ? 22 Hipparchos: 100y/1° 20 Menelaos: 100y/1° 19 Ptolemy: 100y/1° (72y/1°?) 17 Theon of Alexandria:Trepidation (oscillatory rate 66y/1°?) 15 Zij-i Shah (66y/1°?) 12 "Tabulae probatae" or "az-Zig al-mumtan?: 66y/1°; Al-Battani (Albategnius) and al-Sufi (Azophi): 66y/1° 11 Al Biruni, al Canon al Masud: 66y/1°, Ibn Yunus: 70y/1° 10 Arabic catalogue of fixed stars: 66y/1°, Zarqali (Arzarkel) and Thabit ibn Qurra (Thebit Chore):Trepidation "Libros del Saber" of Alfonso of Castile: 66y/1° Guo Shoujing (Shou Shi calendar) of Yuan dynasty: 66.66y/1° Precession, or better the change of the respective equinoctial constellations, left its trace in poesy, for which Vergil?s 4th eclogue is famous. Now there has come the last age of which the Cumaean Sybil sang; a great orderly line of centuries begins anew; now too the Virgin returns; the reign of Saturn returns; a new human generation descends from the high heavens. Upon the child now to be born, under whom the race of iron will cease and a golden race will spring up over the whole world ... (PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO, 4th eclogue) The return of Virgo tells of the precessional shift, due to which this constellation moved back into the region South of the celestial equator. In the Virgo-star-myth, Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken into the underworld. Due to precession, Virgo shifts up into the upper world, thus is leaving the underworld, to which once Saturn also was condemned. Remember, Hipparchos and Ptolemy observed and calculated the value of precession using Spica, the main star of Virgo. The Greek name of this star is era, the wheat-ear, which leads to the temporal term ?era?. Traces of precession are found in Christian iconography, where ICHTHYS the Latinized Greek word for fish became the first acrostic for Jesus Christ (Dechend, 1994): Iesous CHristos THeou HYios Soter (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour) It alludes to the current newly risen vernal equinox constellation Pisces and is still found in the petroglyphs of the Roman catacombs of Saint Callisto. Catacombs Petroglyphs in the Roman catacombs of St. Callisto Believers in this mystic Ichthys were themselves ?Fish-agers? according to a passage of Tertullian ... we, little fishes, after the image of our ICHTHYS, are born in the water. (TERTULLIAN, De baptismo, c. 1) (D) Early Christianity incorporated also pagan mythology such as the Phoenix. The story of this mythic bird briefly goes: In spring the Phoenix flies from the East to an altar in Heliopolis and sets itself on fire. Next day in the ashes, there is a little worm, the day after it is the size of a little chicken, and on the third day the bird is mature enough to fly back home again. The 10th book of Pliny shows a combination of a conjunctional Great Year and the Phoenix period, here being 660 years and attributed to Manilius. Please notice that this period agrees with the oriental rate of precession. But the Ph?nix of Arabia passes all others. Howbeit, I cannot tell what to make of him: and first of all, whether it be a tale or no, that there is never but one of them in the whole world, and the same not commonly seen. By report he is as big as an Ægle: for colour, as yellow & bright as gold; (namely, all about the necke;) the rest of the bodie a deep red purple: the taile azure blew, intermingled with feathers among, of rose cornation colour: and the head bravely adorned with a crest and pennache finely wrought; having a tuft and plume thereupon, right faire and goodly to be seene. Manilius, the noble Romane Senatour, right excellently well seene in the best kind of learning and litterature, and yet never taught by any, was the first man of the long Robe, who wrote of this bird at large, & most exquisitely. Hee reporteth, that never man was knowne to see him feeding: that in Arabia hee is held a sacred bird, dedicated unto the Sunne: that hee liveth 660 yeares: and when hee groweth old, and begins to decay, he builds himselfe a nest with the twigs and branches of the Canell or Cinamon, and Frankincense trees: and when he hath filled it with all sort of sweet Aromaticall spices, yeeldeth up his life thereupon. He saith moreover, that of his bones & marrow there breedeth at first as it were a little worme: which afterwards prooveth to bee a pretie bird. And the first thing that this yong new Ph?nix doth, is to performe the obsequies of the former Ph?nix late deceased: to translate and carie away his whole nest into the citie of the Sunne neere Panchæa, and to bestow it full devoutly there upon the altar. The same Manilius affirmeth, that the revolution of the great yeare so much spoken of, agreeth just with the life of this bird: in which yeare the starres returne againe to their first points, and give signification of times and seasons, as at the beginning: and withall, that this yeare should begin at high noone, that very day when the Sunne entreth the signe Aries. (C. PLINIUS; Holland, 1601) Behind the Phoenix cult and its brimborium could be a lunisolar calendrical period, as some other reported periods, such as 1461, 500, and 540 years, makes us assume. (E) The main influence on the AD years, of course, was the Bible and its interpretation. The most about the end time we find in the Apocalypse of John of Patmos, revealing its secrets in a rather cryptic way, using a lot of starlore. (Boll, 1914) We find at the very beginning of the Revelation a key to interpret it (Rothwangl, 1999, 2001). Its introduction presents us an allusion to the seven planets because it equates the seven stars explicitly with the spirits or angels of the addressed seven cities of Minor Asia. They are easy to identify as Artemis of Ephesus, where in antiquity was the major sanctuary of the moon goddess; - or Zeus with its famous altar in Pergamon, representing the planet Jupiter, and so on. [Rev 1:11] ?(the voice) saying, "Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven communities, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea." [Rev 1:20] As for the mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lamp stands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven communities and the seven lamp stands are the seven communities. Briefly: In the first part of Revelation, the seer?s vision tells of the constellations he could see during his lifetime at the most significant moment of the year: This is at dawn of the vernal equinox. There he describes Virgo, Lyra, Northern Crown, Pegasus, Milky Way and so on. FirmamentVEdawn1AD The firmament at dawn of vernal equinox 2000 years ago After opening the seventh seal the end-time-seer gives a view of the future sky of the same spring day morning, but 2000 years later. Now there is another constellation upon Western horizon due to precession. In the ancient mythical language, Leo with one foot is stepping out of the Sea. This mythic ?Stepping out of the Sea? for ?Rising of stars? we can easily grasp also by its opposite, when a star is setting, which was called ?taking a bath in the sea?. Thus for example Callisto, the circumpolar Greater Bear, never could take a bath in the Sea after her condemnation into the Polar region. [Rev 10:1-2] Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring; when he called out, the seven thunders sounded. VEhorizonWESTnowdawn The View to Western horizon before Sunrise on the day of vernal equinox now. The same celestial situation is described by the apocalypse about the Eastern horizon, where after Pisces has set, another constellation is located now due to precession: The angel on the waters is alluding to Aquarius. [Rev 16:5] And I heard the angel of the waters saying: "You are righteous, ? VEhorizonEASTnowdawn The View to the Easter horizon before Sunrise on the recent day of vernal equinox. At the end, the apocalypse reveals the number of the beast. It can easily be interpreted as nothing else than the number of the zo-diacos, word-for word the cycle of the beasts. 666 represents the medieval rate of precession: The rate for each decan or Pliny?s Phoenix period. [Rev 13:18] This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number; its number is six hundred and sixty-six. 666 y/10°(decan) equals to 2000y/30° (sign), the medieval rate of precession or the period of the Phoenix (Pliny) In a loose page of the 1200-year-old Codex Basiliensis is an illustration of Germanicus on the Phainomena of Aratos (Haffner, 1997), where we find the confirmation upon this beast, showing that actually it means a future equinoctial constellation. Opposite Leo, at the position where Aquarius should be, there is a beast that looks like a panther, but with horns. arat Codex Basiliensis Ms. AN IV 18 Between Pisces and Capricorn on the usual position of Aquarius we find this horned animal, matching the apocalyptic beast. So far the influence of past world views upon Dennis. During his lifetime there took place a major event, which surely also influenced the AD invention: (F) Anno Mundi 6000 occurred. AM is a world-year-count established 300 years before Dennis in the first Christian chronicle written by Julius Sextus Africanus. Anno Mundi?s temporal conception was completely designed after the seven-day creation of Genesis. Within six days of each 1000 years the whole history of mankind should take place, after which the Seventh day is reserved for God. [Ps. 90:4] For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. [2 Peter 3:8] one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Africanus was influenced by Origen?s commentary on Matthew. Origen used only one day as the time frame for the whole history of mankind and dated the arrival of Christ to the 11th of 12 hours. Africanus as a consequence dated Christ?s birth to AM 5500. Writing in the first half of the third century, Origen, in his Commentary on Matthew, employed this analogy of the twelve hours of the day to divide the whole of biblical history into ages. Accordingly, he locates Noah at the third hour, Abraham at the sixth, Moses at the ninth, and, finally, Christ at the eleventh hour. (Declerq, 2000) The birth of Christ calculation in Anno Mundi therefore goes: 6000: 12 * 11 = 5500. Thus 500 years after AM 5500, the fictitious birth date of Christ, during life time of Dionysius the fatal Anno Mundi 6000 happened to occur, which was announced by Hilarianus and others as Last Day and resurrection of the dead. At the turn of the fourth to fifth centuries, i.e., precisely the moment when the barbarian invasions may have stirred up apocalyptic anxieties, the North African bishop Julius Hilarianus, for instance, wrote a treatise ?On the Duration of the World?, in which he calculates 5530 years from creation to the Passion of Christ, and 369 years from that event until the consulate of Caesarius and Atticus (AD 397); there remain, so he concludes, 101 years to go before the Resurrection of the dead. (Declerq, 2000) To circumvent this threatening, calendrically caused, Last Day and maintain faith in the church, Dennis? solution was a new time line called AD, in which the expected resurrection would take place at a conjunction of all planets at the end of the Piscean age. (G) Planetary periods. To precalculate a future Great Year conjunction, Dennis could have used the commensurable integer planetary periods, which were well-known for about 1000 years before him. One for example is the long period of the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, of 854 years, where 400 Mars orbits equate with 29 Saturn and 72 Jupiter orbits. Knowing for example the position of these planets for the year 292 AD, he could predict their positions for the year 2000. In a similar way he could have calculated Venus and even Mercury. For example, a contemporary of Dennis, the Indian Aryabhata reported that in 360000 years 18138 conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn take place, and he dated the beginning of the Indian Kali Yuga to an all-planet-conjunction 5107 years ago from now. Another device Dennis could have used are the values of the astronomical inscriptions of Keskinto in Rhodes/Greece. These 21 centuries old astronomical inscriptions show synodic and sidereal periods during Large Year periods. 5-5-2000geocentric 5-5-2000; CEP -246492, geocentric Dennis shifted the expected end of the world into the future towards the assumed end of the age of Pisces at a Great Year conjunction, which occurred in fact on the fifth of May five years ago. 2000 years before it, or one supposed Platonic or precessional age ago, he placed the starting year of the Anno Domini count. Lack of more historical or documental evidence of Dionysius? intention can be explained by the church?s split usage of astrology: On the one hand it used the narrative of the star of Bethlehem to attribute Jesus a divine birth, on the other hand it forbid to calculate the birth chart of Christ. Hopefully more evidence will be revealed in the hidden archives of the Vatican. Fatal consequences of mingling AD years and end of the world plot Thought contagion by memes of millennialism, world?s end awaiting, apocalyptic creed, and religious fundamentalism have caused during the last years and recently a lot of mass suicides or suicide-murder attacks, which seem to be influenced by a Year-2000-fever and its subconscious linkage with a world?s end calculation. History tells us that at the end of the first millennium, people expected the Lord?s return, and this was a motive to agitate believers into the crusades. The list shows only a few examples of these recent mass killings. Recent Islamic Mahdi ideas should be counted to this list, because the Mahdi is the Muslim redeemer character, expected at the end time, and Mahdi characters appeared already 160 years ago, exactly 1000 Islamic years after the vanishing of the 12th Imam. mahdimahdiarmymahdi The desired Mahdi, Al-sadr and the Mahdi army ? Peoples Temple leader, Jim Jones, former ordained Christian preacher in San Francisco, claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus, as well as Ikhnaton, Buddha, Lenin, and Father Divine. At a mass suicide in Guyana 27 years ago 914 people died or were killed. jim jones jonestown Jim Jones and Jonestown ? At Waco 12 years ago, David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians, which is an offspring of Seventh-Day Adventists, claimed to be a Son of God and believed the apocalypse would be in close future. 80 members and 4 policemen died after siege by turmoil and fire. waco waco waco Waco ? Aum Shinri Kyo (Highest Truth) leader Shoko Asahara, claiming to be the reincarnation of Buddha, Shiva and Christ, predicted a soon-coming world's end and at the vernal equinox 10 years ago, with a poison gas attack killed 12 people, and 5000 were wounded. In vain Shoko Asahara ordered his several thousand followers to commit suicide. aum Victims of AUM ? 63 members of the OTS, Orde Temple Solaire, committed suicide or were killed ritually 10 and 11 years ago in Switzerland, Canada and France. The founders and leaders of the Order of the Solar Temple claimed to be followers of the Templar knights and said the apocalypse was near. OTS Luc Jouret of OTS ? At vernal equinox eight years ago, near San Diego in California, police found 39 bodies of members of the Heaven's Gate religious New Age organization. applewhite Marshal Applewhite of Heavens Gate ? More than 924 followers of the Ugandan cultic ?Movement for the Restitution of the Ten Commandments of God" died in a ritual self-burning at the vernal equinox five years ago after its leader, Bishop Joseph Kibwetere, said the world would end in 2000. uganda Uganda Conclusion: Dennis used the precessional value 666y/10° to place the date of Christ?s fictitious incarnation on vernal equinox 2000 years before the year, for which he calculated in advance a Great Year conjunction, in order to mark in this way the beginning and the end of the Platonic age of Pisces. Focusing toward the future border of his worldview horizon, Dennis? end-time speculation and AD-adjustment resulted in a rare planetary massing that happened to take place in Anno Domini 2000, of all years. The described connection with former, now out-of-use and invalid weltanschauungen allows us from the present point of view to state that the AD count is a superstition and abuse. 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Berlin 1960 Rawlins, Dennis: Continued-Fraction Decipherment: Ancestry of Ancient Yearlengths & [pre-Hipparchan] Precession. DIO, vol 9.1. http://dioi.org/vols/w91.pdf,1999 Rothwangl, Sepp: The stars of Revelation. Archaeostronomical Interpretation of the Apocalypse. http://www.calendersign.com/en/pr_stars_of_revelation.php, 2001. Sternstunde 2000. Der Countdown zum Jüngsten Tag. Graz, 1999. Schnabel, Paul: Berossos und Babylonisch-Hellenistische Literatur, Hildesheim 1968. Waerden, Bartel L. van der: Die Anfänge der Astronomie. Erwachende Wissenschaft. Bd. 2. Groningen, 1965. Das Große Jahr und die ewige Wiederkehr. Hermes 80 Star charts created with Skymap Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mrs. Joan Griffith for English corrections