Astrological age

He notes that the claims of zodiac influences on human history are biased, relying on widely varying dates for events and selective cherry picking of evidence.

"[7] Neil Spencer in his 2000 book True as the Stars Above expressed a similar opinion about the astrological ages.

[13] Another method is to significantly vary the duration of each astrological age based on the passage of the vernal equinox measured against the actual zodiacal constellations.

[21] Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190–120 BCE) is often credited with the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, a fundamental astronomical phenomenon that plays a crucial role in the concept of astrological ages.

Precession refers to the gradual shift in the orientation of Earth's axis of rotation, which causes the positions of the equinoxes to move slowly westward along the ecliptic, completing a full cycle approximately every 26,000 years.

[22] Hipparchus made this discovery while comparing his observations of the positions of stars with records from earlier astronomers, particularly those from Babylon.

In his work, Hipparchus noted that the position of the vernal equinox had shifted by about 2° relative to the stars over the course of a century, which implied a slow, continuous motion of the celestial sphere.

Hipparchus' calculation of the precession rate was remarkably close to the modern value, estimating it at roughly 1° per century, which is only slightly different from the current measurement of approximately 1° every 72 years.

[25] In the early post-Hipparchus period, two schools of thought developed about the slow shift of the fixed sphere of stars as discovered by Hipparchus.

[citation needed] Theon of Alexandria in the 4th century AD includes trepidation when he wrote Small Commentary to the Handy Tables.

However some scholars gave credence to both theories based on the addition of another sphere which is represented in the Alfonsine tables produced by the Toledo School of Translators in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The Italian astronomer Cecco d'Ascoli, professor of astrology at the University of Bologna in the early 14th century, continued to have faith in trepidation but believed it swung 10 degrees in either direction.

The near-total lack of written descriptions or scripture necessitates a reconstruction of beliefs and practices from the archaeological evidence, such as that found in Mithraic temples (in modern times called mithraea), which were real or artificial caves representing the cosmos.

Ulansey's analysis is based on the tauroctony: the image of Mithras killing a bull that was placed at the center of every Mithraic temple.

In the standard tauroctony, Mithras and the bull are accompanied by a dog, a snake, a raven, a scorpion and two identical young men, with torches.

Mithras' killing of the Bull, by this reasoning, represented the power possessed by this new god to shift the entire cosmic structure, turning the cosmic sphere so that the location of the spring equinox left the constellation of Taurus (a transition symbolized by the killing of the Bull), and the Dog, Snake, Raven, and Scorpion likewise lost their privileged positions on the celestial equator.

[citation needed] From this, Ulansey concludes that Mithraic iconography was an "astronomical code" whose secret was the existence of a new cosmic divinity, unknown to those outside the cult, whose fundamental attribute was his ability to shift the structure of the entire cosmos, and thereby to control the astrological forces believed at that time to determine human existence.

By the fourth century AD, Theon of Alexandria assumed a changing rate (trepidation) of one degree per 66 years.

The current Anno Mundi calendar theoretically commenced with the creation of the world based on information in the Old Testament.

He was heavily influenced by ancient cosmology, in particular the doctrine of the Great Year that places a strong emphasis on planetary conjunctions.

A year after these points were in exact agreement, the Sun crossed the equator about fifty seconds of space into the constellation Pisces.

[citation needed] The edge established between Pisces and Aquarius locates the beginning of the Aquarian Age around the year 2600.

[citation needed] The Austrian astronomer Hermann F. Haupt [de] examined the question of when the Age of Aquarius begins in an article published in 1992 by the Austrian Academy of Science: with the German title "Der Beginn des Wassermannzeitalters, eine astronomische Frage?"

[40] Based on the boundaries accepted by IAU in 1928, Haupt's article investigates the start of the Age of Aquarius by calculating the entry of the spring equinox point over the parallel cycle (d = – 4°) between the constellations Pisces and Aquarius and reaches, using the usual formula of precession (Gliese, 1982), the year 2595.

[...] As briefly has been shown, the results and methods of astrology in many areas, such as concerning the Aquarian Age, are controversial on their own and cannot be called scientific because of the many esoteric elements.

[43] Marcia Moore and Mark Douglas write that the lighting up of the earth artificially by electricity is a sign of the Age of Aquarius.

Terry MacKinnell has developed an alternative approach to calibrating precession of the equinoxes to determine the Astrological Age.

His major point of departure from the traditional modern approach is how he applies the vernal equinox to the zodiacal constellations.

This one hour represents approximately 15 degrees difference compared to the contemporary method based on the position of the Sun among the zodiacal constellations.

Based on the heliacal rising method, the Age of Aquarius arrived about 1,080 years earlier than the modern system.