PURANIC COSMOLOGY UPDATED: The Importance of Makar Sankranti in Hindu Calendar Reform

A treatment in three parts
presented at the
First National Conference on Hindu Calendar Reform

Tirumala, 24-26 December 2010

Prepared by
Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea)
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology
Tamil Nadu, South India

PART THREE

I have established essential points in Parts 1 and 2; the most important of all is that Makar Sankranti and December Solstice are inseparable. In this final portion I will use visuals to elucidate the point to a greater degree.

Hinduism stands weakened today because it is weak within. But how does it become strengthened in view of the difficulties its character of diversity presents? This diversity is both its blessing and its bane. The current situation is a bane because unity is lacking. The motto being Diversity in Unity, it is implied that there is an underlying unity within which this pleasing array of diversity finds its place and support. In a maddening diversity such as we find in India, there must be a means to UNIFY that diversity regardless of each one’s preferences and prejudices. In spite of our failings and intransigencies, the Vedic Calendar unifies through Time and harmonises what would otherwise remain separate and discordant. That is the purpose of a Calendar that Unifies – unlike the one currently in use which is inherently divisive. It is an effective tool to divide-and-rule. And since we are considering consequences for 80% of India’s population, immediate measures should be taken to bring about order in this current chaos.

Thus, the eternal background for the cosmic play – as experienced on Earth – is that Vedic ONE CIRCLE of ‘twelve bands’ and ‘360 pegs’, our Earth Year in which these are ‘firmly riveted’.
There is another essential point to bear in mind when reform is considered: for a cosmically-based civilisation such as the Vedic, ALL measuring is Earth-centred. We are placed on this third planet of our solar system and nowhere else. The blessing this position itself offers is that this is the key to right comprehension and application of the cosmic harmony insofar as all measuring can and must be done from Earth. From this point we measure outward and beyond, not the reverse as is presently the case since the Nirayana system of time reckoning has imposed a measure from beyond our world, outside of our solar system. Indeed, for all practical purposes of application, the Earth becomes the centre of the universe, the point of convergence of the entire cosmic surround.

The Nirayana Post-Vedic system currently used does just the opposite. It ignores the Earth’s divine Measure and has imposed upon Hindus a very great error. Its measuring is carried out in the constellations of distant stars light years away from our solar system; above all, with no fixed point of reference except those illusory floating ayanamshas, dozens of them.

The measure of the Earth is easily recognised and determined. No great psychic powers or complicated mathematics are required: we live the Measure with every breath we take – the Year, the Month, the Day, all set within the ecliptic where the symphony of our solar system is played, the Music we hear, we know, because we are THAT. Consequently, can we ignore what and where we are in favour of a ‘beyond’?

The graphic above explains the position. This drawing of several circles describes the current confusion. The innermost with the zodiacal signs (spelt out) is the ONE CIRCLE extolled in the Veda, with its fourfold division marking out the four Cardinal points of Equinoxes and Solstices and their respective signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. These are stable and unchanging and, for all practical purposes, eternal.

The next circle (hieroglyphs) describes the one currently used by Nirayana pundits which is actually the constellation of fixed stars far beyond our solar system. Around it are placed the zodiacal animal and human figures fancifully projected onto that distant vault of heaven, also called zodiac by astronomers. They are divided equally though they do not correspond to the 30˚/30 days of the Tropical Zodiac. This is a distinction unknown to most because of the common nomenclature, to further confound the issue. The name would be correct provided it were a projection onto the circum-scribing cosmos of the same Vedic ‘12 bands’ and ‘360 pegs’ of the Tropical Zodiac. Then it could correctly be called by the same name. But try as they might the 12 containing the 360˚ simply do not fit as noted in the graphic. These constellations of astronomy vary vastly in size. Thus they cannot legitimately be equated with the zodiac of our Earth measure. Yet this is the equivalence that astronomers and Nirayana astrologers wish us to accept.

The One Circle (tropical/ecliptic) of the Veda has been replaced by this amorphous cacophony of uneven measure; and they try their best to establish some form of starting point in this indistinguishable and undefined vastness by arbitrarily selecting one degree or another as ayanamsha. Bear in mind that given the distance, we are dealing with vast cycles of time. For instance, a variation in calculation of seconds of degrees of celestial longitude will work out to days and even to years on Earth; hence the wild variations foisted on an unsuspecting public simply because there is no legitimate, unchanging, absolute starting point in the Constellations. It has to be arbitrarily selected according to each one’s fancy.

But the secret to unlock the wisdom contained in our solar system is that our planet, through her movements in space, her position in the System, her balance on the four points of the ecliptic, gives rise to the natural and eternal Zero Point. Without our Equinoxes and Solstices we would never know. We would be free to roam endlessly about submerged in that unknowing – which is the definition of the Cosmic Ignorance.

The next point, for which I will provide visual evidence, involves the important role of zodiacal imagery in Vedic culture. Most scholars, historians and Nirayana astrologers, reject any mention of those pictographs and hieroglyphs as being inherently Vedic. They claim, for the most part, that the zodiac used throughout the world was brought to India by the Greeks, and the Veda predate these incursions by many centuries, perhaps even millennia. With the evidence I will provide, this claim cannot hold. In my view, the zodiac, as we know it today, was like an alphabet in the Vedic Age. Its ‘language’ courses through the Veda like a sustaining vital fluid, as if it were such common, wide-spread knowledge that it needed no explaining. But its presence is easily detected when the secret doctrine of the Rig Veda is unveiled; that is, when the ‘journey’ is undertaken en route to the culmination in uttarayana, the Sun’s highest point of Makar Rasi. Similarly, only when the hidden doctrine also of the zodiac is known can the similarity between the two be appreciated. But in both cases, the Veda and zodiacal tradition, that knowledge has been lost.

The loss of the exact Knowledge complicates matters, for which reason Sanskritists and even yogis cannot fully understand the Rig Veda. Can this be the reason why the key to the cosmic harmonies has been lost and un-Vedic substitutes have emerged?

The discussion regarding the origin of the zodiac is like the question, what came first, chicken or egg. We can only study the reality of today. The first observation we make is that all temple art and architecture reveals that same zodiacal ‘alphabet’. The incidents are too numerous to detail here, but the point I wish to make is simply that had it been a ‘foreign import’ as certain nationalists claim, how could it have influenced temple matters so thoroughly and consistently?

Again I must refer to Makar Rasi. Though in temple observances and almanacs, the Sun’s apparent entry into each rasi is dutifully noted – yet abysmally incorrect by 23 days – as well as the planetary movements from sign to sign, today the circle of these sacred images is essentially being replaced by the Nakshatras. This seems to have come about due to the fact that with the 23-day inaccuracy the zodiacal script has lost its meaning, even though it continues to permeate myths and temple art and we regularly honour these sacred passages. But there is no higher knowledge in the Nakshatras, constellational or otherwise. Those distant stars serve only as markers for computation of the larger cycles of time.

However, the ‘Circle is One’ is our mantra. Therefore the Nakshatras, when used, should also be measured within that ONE CIRCLE as per the mean daily motion of the moon, 13˚20.

Whatever the origin of the zodiac and its hieroglyphs might have been, we have clear evidence that the Seer who first had the vision of the sacred Twelve must have been on the order of the famed Bhrigu Astrologers who read a horoscope for a present-day client from ancient papyrus leaves handed down across the centuries – yet, mystifyingly the ancient horoscope contains details of contemporary life unknowable when the leaves were prepared in so distant a past. I present below proof of the same capacity in the Seer who discovered the zodiacal ‘alphabet’:

This is the ancient zodiacal hieroglyph of the tenth sign of victory, Makar/ Capricorn, known significantly as the Name of God in astrological lore. Since this is also unanimously known as India’s zodiacal ruler, we are not surprised to discover depths never before plummeted about this design. We discover that it actually delineates with precision the geography of the subcontinent before independence and partition.

We are justified in asking how this can be. The precise origins of the hieroglyphs are unknown; we know only that they have been with us perhaps since pre-history. And yet this sacred-most of all symbols delineates the subcontinental landmass as one single body, though it dates from a time when cartography as we know it did not exist.

Whatever the answer to this enigma may be, the point I wish to make is simply to reveal an applied Veda, valid and meaningful in our new Age, and how this application itself provides the proof we need to render to the Veda its rightful place in a new cosmology. This means that we must, before all else, restore the synchronicity of December Solstice and Makar Rasi.

Conclusion
For every nation a calendar serves to unite its citizens; conversely, it can be a divisive tool. But in India’s case a calendar is much more. Because of Vedic observances for which Time is essential – the correct temporal ingredient, that is – the unification of collective energies released when a real and not imaginary cosmic connection is forged creates an atmosphere that not only brings energies together on a mundane level, the release is far more significant and purposeful in subtle dimensions. Such observances draw together various planes of consciousness, from the dense physical to the more subtle and rarified, those hidden as well as apparent to the naked eye. The power generated is therefore magnified. It is as if a shield would come into being, a protective energy field.

Since the West uses the Vedic calendar to regulate civic life, we might ask whether or not that shield exists over those nations. The point is that though the calendar may be correct there is no cosmic connection in those countries. Above all, having eschewed the Gods and Goddesses and their Idols from their culture, any such connection is impossible because they are personifications of those cosmic energies which we invoke in every ritual. Imagine how much more potent our observances would be if the true Circle and the correct temporal computation were used for the purpose; and if the zodiac images were once again restored to the special place they held from time immemorial on the subcontinent?

To illustrate the point, here is Gangadevi on her vahana. Of course, since she is preeminently the River of Capricorn, which can be proven through the Capricorn Symbol-Map whereby her position is measured longitudinally to locate her source at 12˚ Capricorn and mouths at exactly 0˚, she has been given the Makar/Capricorn vehicle by the ancient Tradition. Capricorn 12˚, measured in the Tropical Zodiac, corresponds to January 3rd. That would be the date of ‘birth’ of heavenly Ganga, through which portal in calendar/zodiacal time she descends onto Bharat. What would occur on the subcontinent if the millions who gather for the Kumbha Mela could worship the Goddess in harmony with Mahakala in the true order of things temporal and cosmic?

Unity of the Knowledge, which makes these images come alive today even more meaningful than they ever were, is what is lacking because of the Ayanamsha Chaos and the lost cosmic connection. It is our duty to help unify the energies of 80% of the population so that the greatness that once was can be restored.

In this task the Vishnu Avatars come to our aid today. Therefore, in closing I must dedicate this effort to Ramlala of Ayodhya, in gratitude for the help he has given by his contemporary appearance as Child. To make the Tradition vibrant and applicable today, he has placed his seal and sanction on this task by having timed his appearance post-independence exactly on the night of the Solstice of 1949: December 22-23 – that is, the true Makar Sankranti.