Take Back the Night: Say NO! To the Global pRecession

                               
Friends, Family, Comrades, Citizens, and Gentleman of State:

A specter is haunting every economy and country in the world. In these troubled times of unemployment, earthquakes, climate change, and dubious fashion trends, it is only natural to search for the reason behind this mounting plague of uncertainty. Who is to be believed? Some of Them tell us the economy is to blame, others of Them attribute our demise to industrial pollution, politicians, and gluten. But alas, dear reader, don't believe them. They have simply been using these lies to cover up the even bigger lie that dates back at least to the ancient Babylonians.

For fourscore and seven years, give or take two millennia and/ or more, we have been fed a rather incandescent deception that the so-called "heavens" allegedly remain fixed above us, i.e. that a person deemed a “taurus” is born under the constellation of taurus; that the star call Polaris (as its supposed name indicates) is positioned above the north pole.

However. Due to some recent dabbling in astronomy, which has been necessary to undertake in order to better understand the astrological content of the early modern calendars I am looking at, I have discovered a very inconvenient truth. This truth, I would wager, is responsible for most modern ills.

Indeed, my friends, a specter is haunting the world. It is the specter of celestial mutability. Join me, please, in my campaign to Stop Global Precession.

                                 

What on earth is precession, you ask? Well, since precession is not a strictly earthly phenomenon, it would be technically impossible to answer your question.  OK, you stammer, well what in the universe is precession? Thank you. I can now answer your question at length.

Before I do so, however, let’s return to elementary-school science class. Are you with me so far?

Back then, we were taught about the rotation of the earth around its axis, which takes approximately 24 hrs. This, They taught us, we are supposed to call a “day.”  We were also taught about the revolution of the earth around the sun, which takes a little more than 365 so-called “days.” This revolution we call a “year.” These two basic movements, their imprecisions of leap years and minutes notwithstanding, helped us understand why we have seasons and years; why different stars are in different parts of the heavens during different times of the year or night. The stars rotate in a circular pattern, the center of which is the northern polar star known as polaris, aka the north star.

This is what They taught us, what They want us to believe. But friends, this is not the whole story. There is, in fact, a third motion of the earth. Experts call it axial precession, or the “third motion,” the “slow revolution,” depending on whom you want to believe. I, on the other hand, call it the Untold Story or the Great Conspiracy.

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In addition to the 24-hr rotation and 365+-day revolution the earth makes, it is also traveling a very long rotation around the ecliptic pole, and not from east to west, but from west to east.

This is a picture of the earth on an average day, just minding its own business and rotating along on its axis like it was supposed to. 

What is the ecliptic pole? It does not surprise me you are asking me this, because They have wanted so much for us to live in ignorance of this inconvenient truth that They never taught us what it was. Let that sink in for a moment.

The ecliptic is the annual path of the sun’s motion projected on to earth. Picture the earth tilted on its axis: the earthly equator is then an imaginary line that is not horizontal from this vantage point but tilted at an angle. The prime meridian, if drawn from north pole to south pole, would form an imaginary ninety degree angle with the equator, right? So if you keep those lines in place, but take away your picture of the earth, the lines would form a sort of “x” rather than a “+,” since the earth was tilted on its axis. Now imagine the earth, once again tilted on its axis, but instead of superimposing the imaginary “X” on it of the equator and prime meridian, superimpose a “+” on it, as though there were an imaginary pole at the very top and bottom and a separate equator that was perfectly horizontal from our vantage point, even though the earth is still on its axis. The horizontal line of the “+” is something like the ecliptic, a or of second equator, but whereas the equator indicates the earth's rotation around its axis, the ecliptic indicates the imaginary line drawn by the suns rays on earth's surface, since the angle of the suns rays hit horizontally across its axis. The vertical line of the cross is the imaginary line connecting the two “ecliptic poles.”  

Just like the earth rotates around its axis poles (the north and south poles) about once every 24 hours, it also rotates along its ecliptic poles about once every 26,000 years. This top-secret confidential video illustrates what I am talking about, however, I would not suggest watching it for a prolonged period of time or right after eating, as the truth of this movement may be too disturbing for sensitive viewers or those inclined toward sea-sickness.

This is the mutant sabotaged earth, rotating on its axis and the ecliptic. LIFE WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS COMPLICATED, MR. AXIS. KEEP IT SIMPLE. 

There are very real implications that stem from the Great Conspiracy. Essentially, the third movement of the earth means that, over the course of 260,000 years, all of the stars and constellations in our solar system undergo a process of constantly shifting and changing places in the sky. Stars we call “fixed stars,”  as opposed to stars that change like comets are not actually fixed. You heard me correctly. In actuality, our so-called fixed stars move at a rate of thirty degrees every two thousand years. “Degrees” in the cosmic sense is just a fancy schmancy word for “a long distance.” So, you can imagine that a long distance multiplied times thirty is like… a very long distance.

Have you ever heard of Hipparchus? I didn’t think so. The reason why you have never heard of him is that his voice has been silenced like countless other precession martyrs. Hipparchus is the first person we have on record of who spoke out against the movement of the stars. He compared his recorded observations of heavenly motions with some earlier Babylonian records he had, noting that all of the constellations were in slightly different locations. This greatly troubled him, since it was thought that the heavens did not change, that they were changeless, or immutable. 

Ptolemy, though, said that Hipparchus was full of it. Of course, the stars didn’t move, probably the old records were just wrong, after all were written by those idiot Babylonians.   After reprimanding Hipparchus’  finding, Ptolemy went on to make his grandest contribution to modern science, which was the evidential support of an earth-centered universe. So, clearly he knew his stuff. 

I think we all owe Hipparchus a big apology. It turns out, he was right all along.

But back to the Babylonians for a second. Somewhere around the sixth century BC, they had recognized that equidistant from the north pole, there is a belt of stars that, when split into equal increments, contained twelve constellations (like Cancer, Taurus, etc.) This made the Babylonians very happy, since they had a hard time telling time at night. I think this was because—being scattered across Mesopotamia—there weren’t any good cell phone towers nearby to set the clocks on their phones. Thanks to the zodiac, though, they devised a system of telling time. Since it is constantly in motion according to the earth’s rotation, about every two hours, a new zodiac sign is rising on one side of the horizon, while another is setting on the opposite side. Thus they split the night into six parts, and the day as well. This is where we get the twelve zodiac signs from, and the twelve hours of the day, and even the original proxies of the twelve months.

Over time, people began to perceive what they thought were patterns in people’s personalities and life events based on what sign was overhead during the time day or year they were born. Meanwhile, the Greeks were becoming more powerful and starting to catch on to this whole time-telling business, since they had the same cell phone problem. 

The Greeks came up with a word to describe all of this, which we still use today: horoscope. “Hora,” means hour and “skopus” means an object to which the eye is fixed. The original meaning of this word was simply the “hour mark,” or the sign one used to tell time at night, often used to record the exact time an important person or heir was born.  But like I said, the whole notion of these signs were expanding to accommodate making predictions about people’s lives, so over time, the word horoscope has also expanded in meaning to convey those ideas.

Now, I don’t put a lot of stock in horoscopes as we currently understand them. This is mostly because I am supposedly a cancer, which is a constellation of a crab. To be honest, though, I’ve just never felt much like a crab. I think if horoscopes were true, I would have at least developed some kind of exoskeleton by now, or cancer (Lord have mercy). If anything, though, I think I’m more of a Leo the Lion, because of my last name, or possible even Gemini, because I’ve always wanted a twin. But horoscope signs are like names and brothers and hair color: you can’t just pick and choose.  

But even though I don’t like horoscopes, I dislike being lied to even more, and that’s exactly what They have done. Remember when I said that the zodiac belt is split into 12 increments roughly equal in length? Well, that length is about thirty degrees; each zodiac constellation is about thirty degrees long. Think, when have we seen that number, thirty degrees? Oh yeah, it was when I said that the stars shift an average of thirty degrees every two thousand years.  This means that a “Taurus” is no longer born under the constellation of taurus—like he or she would have been back in the day of ancient Greece--but rather Aries. Contrary to the truth, however, that person is still called a Taurus in today’s society, even though the term is purely arbitrary. It’s simply wrong. Ask an astrologer to account for this and they will feed you a bunch of lies that involve differentiating between the sign and the constellation blah blah blah. 

                            

What I want to conclude with is what you can do in the face of this startling truth. First I want to encourage you that the problem, as bad as it seems, is reversible. When you really think about it, all that needs to be done is to stop the path of cosmic precession and make sure the earth stays still on its ecliptical orbit. That is plan A.

Plan B is organizing a global summit and inviting all members of the galactic community, including rogue constellations and stars such as Polaris and Cancer. The goal of this summit would be getting the constellations on board with planet earth so that every time precession causes the constellations to shift a degree, the stars move backward exactly one degree. This would ensure that, at least from our perspective, the stars stay put and obey the law.

In order to work, both plans A and B would take an enormous amount of awareness raising.  We want Precession to be the thing people are talking about on the street, at the breakfast table, on earth, and in the heavens. Science textbooks should be written that properly explain precession, and history textbooks should include the silenced martyrs of our astronomical tradition such as Hipparchus. Write to your local senator or congressional representative and inform them that you care about this issue. If they don’t make the global precession their top priority, elect officials that will work towards a better cosmic reality—like me.  Another strategy would be to construct tents so that we can camp out in important places like Wall Street. By camping, we can observe the heavens and show the press what is really happening to our world. The more people on board with this issue, the more support we will gain. The sun, for example, has already signed my petition and has promised to talk to his voting district about the issue. I believe if we can convince all of the inner planets and moons, we’d easily be able to persuade the rest of the solar system.  This goal may seem far away, but I assure you it is within reach.

So, friends, I hope you will join me. Say no to celestial mutability, say no to the changing positions of stars along the earth’s terrestrial ecliptic pole, say no to lies. Say no to the global precession. Say yes to truth, say yes to stars behaving themselves, say yes to Polaris. 

If not just for my sake, then for Hipparchus'.