Puranic Cosmology Updated 15

6.5.2010

(click to enlarge)

Diagram: Robert E. Wilkinson

The innermost circle is the Tropical Zodiac, or the ecliptic pathway (divided into 12) of all the planets as they journey around the Sun, Earth included. Like the face of a clock it is a fixed, permanent and unchanging measurement and can be ascertained with great precision by the timing of the Equinoxes and the Solstices, the four pillars on which this permanency relies. On our imaginary clock-face these would be the 12, 3, 6, and 9 points. Then a calendar is born that is equally unchanging, but within change. Paradoxical as it may seem, this permanency within change holds the key to the purpose of our existence on Earth. It is only from this planet, third from the Sun, that conditions are appropriate for a species to evolve to the point of appreciating the full implications of this rest and motion – simultaneously. We could just as well describe this as a consciousness of unity, but in this new Age of the Supermind, these descriptions fall short of the true significance.

This calendar born of the permanency offered by the Equinoxes and Solstices is now a global convention – another sign of the universality of Aquarius, our present astrological Age – except in Hindu India where the ecliptic pathway of the Rishi’s ‘journey’ or ‘initiation’ is no longer of any consequence to 80% of the population, though it had been honoured in the Vedic Age and well into the Age of Pisces. Hindus are obliged by the pundits today to disregard that permanency in favour of the next circle – sidereal in the drawing.

That would be the circle of so-called fixed stars which, with respect to the ecliptic, is seen to move in a backward motion. This sidereal circle is indeed an important feature of cosmology, old and new, because by locating the exact moment in calendar time when the hands on our cosmic clock-face shift with respect to the tropical zodiac, we can know what astrological age we are experiencing on Earth. One thing is the astronomical/geological ages; another of far greater importance is the Astrological Age because it holds the key to destiny – in this case collective rather than individual as in an individual’s horoscope. The shifting of the equinoxes is to be understood as describing the Earth’s own horoscope where we read the destiny of entire civilisations. Thus, there is an individual destiny and a universal pattern which can help us discover our greater purpose for taking birth in this particular Age. It informs us of the higher evolutionary purpose when as a species we have passed a certain threshold to a more conscious progress as our collective destiny.

Incomprehensibly this shifting sidereal circle, where the passage of the Astrological Ages is registered, is used for temple timings and for all individual horoscopy. Charts for these purposes are constructed in disregard for the ecliptic zodiac, using the distant ‘stars’ as the basis. Nakshatras are also fixed according to that distant sphere, deceivingly called ‘zodiac’ to further confuse the issue. And since that constellational Zero Point (ayanamsha) is shifting as seen from Earth with each passing day, Indian astrologers prepare their charts accordingly, each one presenting a different calculation for that ayanamsha which is nearly impossible to locate. The practical result with a discrepancy of 23 days/degrees over the tropical zodiac is that a person born on 22 March, the start of Aries, would be considered born in Pisces since in this Nirayana system, as it is called, Aries does not begin until 14-15 April – well after the Vedic ‘door’ has passed. Being an essentially intuitive race Indians make ‘adjustments’ in their predictions accordingly, for which reason some come true, many do not. To call this Post-Vedic Astrology a science (taught with pride in certain universities) is a further indication that the journey of the Vedic-Age Initiate has become only a distant memory. Furthermore, it needs to be stated that the astrology (jyotish) practiced in India today is a purely predictive art unlike the Vedic which was an initiatory process entirely.

Thus the Nakshatras are also measured with this 23 degree discrepancy. The truth be told, the symbology of the Nakshatras does not contain Vedic Knowledge which is found only in the tropical zodiac with its enlightened hieroglyphics and imagery connected to the months of the year where we find… ‘the seat of our self-accomplishing’ of the Rig Veda. It is only the Vedic sequence of 12 as it figures in the hymns that contain higher knowledge, similar to all Mystery Schools down the ages. This has been the Initiate’s Journey from time immemorial.

Thus, according to the new cosmology, we are now in the Age of Aquarius given the sidereal circle’s relationship to the special movement known as the Precession of the Equinoxes. This motion is created by what is often referred to as a ‘wobble’ of the Earth due to gravitational pull (of the Moon?). In effect, it is only because of this ‘wobble’ that we can discover the very slow movement formed precisely by the Equinoctial plane. It is not a distant star that informs us of the passage of the Ages: this measure is determined by the Earth herself. We may use a particular star as a pointer, like the pole star, but the evolution as mirrored in the Precession of the Equinoxes is born of the Earth’s rhythms produced by the circular gyration of her axis. The result is that a circle is traced in the heavens by this equinoctial projection, the completion of which requires 25,920 Earth years. In the new cosmology it is called one Great Round.

This is certainly not a new discovery; it was known in ancient Egypt and from there it was passed on to the rest of the Middle East, then to Greece and finally to Rome. From that early period the Julian calendar was devised and adopted by most of the then known world; it is still in use even today but with certain modifications introduced by Pope Gregory in the 16th Century to accommodate the accumulation of five extra days over the 360 degrees of the ecliptic circle. The Sun of our system is seen to move approximately one degree of celestial longitude per 24 hours – sometimes slightly more, other times slightly less, hence the leeway of a day one way or the other in establishing the Sankrantis each year. But the discrepancy is not only one day for Hindus; it is 23 days!

The conclusion drawn by latter-day scientifically-influenced pundits, those who prepare the almanacs that set forth important timings such as the entry into India’s own ruling sign Capricorn, is that ‘Makar is no longer THERE’. According to contemporary science it has shifted – the ‘science’ which is ignorant of the higher knowledge that is the foundation of these harmonies. And lacking this foundation these sacred matters are left to pundits to determine, who are easily intimidated because they do not know what they are meant to measure any longer. Simply put, they measure the sankrantis in the WRONG CIRCLE, the sidereal/constellational, completely disregarding the permanent tropical zodiac/ecliptic. And lamentably that measuring act hundreds of light years away is also inaccurate, resulting in inaccuracy even for determining entry into Mitra’s Age of Aquarius the Friend; it is particularly important to get this right because it involves the Evolutionary Avatar’s appearance every 6480 years. Lacking the proper measure, the result is ‘avatars’ abound today.

The lead has been left to contemporary science which proves time and again to be ignorant of matters that require initiation before all else, just as described in the Rig Veda. This error is committed even by scholars who should also know better: they mix the two, sidereal/constellational and tropical, calling them both ‘zodiac’ (another ‘distortion’ tactic?). But the ‘journey’ is only a property of the ecliptic zodiac. That is where knowledge is found by initiation, not by projection beyond to the constellation of stars, which we persist in calling ‘the zodiac’ to further confuse the issue, but which lacks those ‘doors’ to open through ‘the months and the years’ in the initiatory experience.

Our point of observation and measurement is the Earth, ever and always. Indeed, the most important feature of the updated cosmology is the reinstatement of the Earth as the fixed point of observation. It can be noted from this explanation that the Earth set the measure in the Vedic Age, a function attributed to the Divine Maya, the feminine power of the Transcendent, she who shapes His infinitudes in the material universe, she who gives form to His eternities through her gestating power of Time; and true to the Hermetic aphorism ‘as above – so below’, from our point of observation the key in number-power is 9 – the gestation period of the human being as well as the cow, hence this creature was honoured by the ancients with the due solemnity she deserves – for one, because of this correspondence with the human gestation. Surely reverence for the cow connected to the Sun in ancient Egypt must have come from Vedic India because in Sanskrit, known as ‘the language of the Gods’, the word for cow, gau, means both the animal and a ray (of the Sun).

Every time we transgress the harmony by ignoring the Earth’s own rhythms, claiming as contemporary pundits do that Capricorn is ‘no longer there’ where the sign was in ancient Egypt and Vedic India, and that the ‘door’ to enter Makar has shifted 23 days backward from the December Solstice and insist on separating the two – shortest day of the year and Capricorn entry, or separating the inseparable – we reveal that not only have we buried the Divine Maya (measure) completely and decisively, but that Knowledge has been replaced by Ignorance. Maya has been divested of her divinity – along with the sacred feminine throughout the world – and that highest of all principles is now known as ‘illusion’. Surely the condition of women and the society we have spawned confirms this pathetic state of affairs.

This is the result of distortion. We continue worshipping the Goddess in this land that is her very body, but having disregarded her sacred geometries of both space and time, the result can only be superstition born of Ignorance. These sacred arts must be the preserve of those who have realised the consciousness in which the Rishis and Initiates lived. There was no divide then between matter and spirit as exists today after the split. There was simply THAT, undivided, harmonious, one. Because necessarily academics study these issues from a mentally-poised consciousness, deciphering the old or new codes is an impossible task. What the Rig Veda hymns and the discoveries unearthed in Egypt of the ancient civilisation do reveal is that those utterances and those monuments are proof of the undivided perception I am describing.

Again I must state, all is not gloom and doom for Earthlings.

Puranic tradition, though having suffered distortion during the Piscean Age we left behind in 1926, does continue to hold the key to the manner in which from age to age Vishnu sends his Avatar precisely to re-set the cosmic clock. By his coming alone can this re-setting be done accurately, because it is a precision science cannot provide.

Back to American wisdom (‘…Put your money’…). I have stated that one Round of the Precession of the Equinoxes consists of 25,920 Earth years, moving as it does one degree of celestial longitude every 72 years; numbers which can all be reduced to 9 by the Mathematics of Unity. I have also stated that re-setting the cosmic clock is accomplished by Vishnu’s Avatar in astrological ages proper to his quality of Preservation. To prove that 25,920 is not arbitrary and cannot be rounded off, as some are inclined to do, the Coming itself does indeed prove the exactitude of this particularly important Divine Measure, insofar as the number-powers of the full birthdates (day/month/year) of Vishnu’s Avatar and his ‘team’, which I call Line, can be numerologically reduced to verify this special formula without which no further deciphering is possible. Thus, the four birth numbers in question equal 2-5-9-2-0 in the descending order in which their births did take place, the first two joined in time and number by the thousand position (25,920), followed by the next two of the Line in proper sequence both in number and time. The addition of the 0, the womb of all Number merits a separate discussion further on. This can demonstrate the exactitude of the updated cosmology. No guessing, no equivocation, no ‘science’ other than the Divine Mother’s sacred Geometry of Time.

Indeed, how can the science we know today pretend to organise four births in perfect sequence, cutting across time and dimensional barriers to fulfil a predetermined pattern known to sages of old, just to validate an ancient formula? And for what purpose? Coincidence, they claim. But when the ‘coincidences’ are repeated thousands of times to confirm the Coming from all angles with factual proof of the old and new cosmology, then a better argument has to be offered to be convincing, in this Aquarian () Age of Vishnu.

The Divine Consciousness holds all Gnosis in her womb of fullness, as in the Piscean/Matsya Ocean, gestating it until the time for the next principle above Mind to manifest which can make sense of the Geometry of Time and all that is connected to it. Supermind, above Mind, can establish and prove the reality of the next stage in human evolution en route to a divine apotheosis. Pisces is that dark womb where the higher truths of the Veda were gestated in preparation for the following Age of Vishnu . The human mind as it stands now cannot accomplish this organisational feat, much less understand how it came to pass and what its purpose might be. In discovering the background to this controlling power with the proper tools of higher knowledge, we understand the unique destiny of our planet.¹

1.See Appendix regarding the Constellations vis-à-vis the Tropical Zodiac.

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet
Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology




Appendix

The diagram below can explain why it is entirely inappropriate to call the constellations the Zodiac, and the confusion this has created in the name of Science. Also included is Robert Wilkinson’s explanation of his graphic:




The constellations of the zodiac we know today are believed to have originated with the Babylonians and Chaldeans, some 3000 years ago. They have the same names as the signs of the zodiac, but they are not the same thing. The groups of stars marked on charts as constellations are not actually groups at all. What we see from earth is the grouping of several points of light, some from points many millions of light years away, and others from much further even than that. In total there are 88 constellations, which can be divided into eight constellation families. While we usually think of twelve constellations which relate to the Zodiacal signs, there are over 24 constellations contained in the Ecliptic and they do not fit into neat 30 degree sections. Unlike the zodiac signs in astrology [of the Tropical Zodiac], which are all thirty degrees in length, the astronomical Constellations vary widely in size and position. Aries for example is very small and occupies less than 30 degrees of the ecliptic while Pisces is huge and occupies much more than 30 degrees of the ecliptic. RW