Tragedy of the Night Sky

Jesus’ Biography Allegorizes the Babylonian Zodiac

The major theme of this essay is religious symbolism. The tracking of astronomical cycles is related to agricultural success and economic sustainability: that’s why Christianity borrows symbols from earlier traditions of sun worship and emphasizes economic justice.

Key Takeaways:

1. Before electricity, people paid rapt attention to the night sky.

2. The 12 constellations of the zodiac track the Great Year.

3. Jesus’ biography allegorizes the zodiac.

The Night Sky

In today’s era of smartphones and giant flat-panel TVs, it’s easy to forget that the night sky was once the greatest show on Earth. Before electric lights drowned out the heavens, people paid very close attention to celestial comings and goings in the night sky.

Comets, for example, once terrified entire populaces. Since other animals seem to ignore the sky, people assumed that unfamiliar objects were hung there by the gods to warn them of a looming disaster. Coincidences cemented this notion in the popular mind. A classic example is the comet that appeared in the skies over Rome in 44 BC, the year of Julius Caesar’s assassination. This celestial visitation had such a profound impact on the Romans that they minted coins with images of the comet on the “tails” side.

It wasn’t until 1758 that Sir Edmund Halley finally rescued humanity from periodic astronomical terror by predicting the return of the comet that still bears his name. Though Halley had already been dead for 20 years by the time it reappeared, he proved that the comet was actually governed by ordinary laws of physics, and was not some dire warning from the gods.

Since then, the advent of electric lights and highly compelling screens has divorced us from what beat poet Allen Ginsberg referred to as “the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.” Some 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban or suburban environments, where light pollution cuts us off from the night sky.

The stars used to provide a nightly dose of awe and humility, bringing us into regular contact with the profound mystery at the core of the human experience. However, modern people have lost the ability to orient themselves in the celestial sphere. And that’s a tragedy.

The Zodiac

The daily rising and setting of the sun—and the annual change of seasons—are such obvious phenomena that no amount of light pollution could possibly obscure them. But there is a third astronomical cycle that takes 25,800 years to complete. That time scale is so long, relative to a single human lifespan, that we tend to overlook it. But it didn’t escape the careful attention of ancient astronomers.

From our vantage point here on Earth, the sun appears to confine itself to a narrow strip of sky that rings the earth. One edge of this road marks the sun’s path on the shortest day of the year, and the other edge is defined by the sun’s path on the longest day of the year. During the spring and fall equinoxes, the sun travels right down the center of this imaginary highway in our sky.

Without flat-panel TVs and cell phones to distract them, the ancients marked the sun’s progress along that celestial road according to the constellations of stars that appear behind it. Because stars are invisible during the daytime, they took note of which constellation the sun rises in front of on the first day of spring.

They discovered that the sun does not make it all the way back to its original starting point each year. Over the course of about two thousand years, that annual slippage places the sun in an entirely new constellation at sunrise on the first day of spring. And after 25,800 years, the sun slips all the way back to its original starting position. This is the Great Year.

The zodiac itself comes from the ancient Babylonians, who used a base-60 numbering system (as opposed to our base-10 system). Their convention is where we get the 60 seconds in a minute and the 60 minutes to an hour. The Babylonians divided the ring-like celestial road of solar travel into 12 houses of 30° each, for a total of 360°, thereby inventing the zodiac. Each house is themed according to the constellation of stars contained within it, and the 12 houses of the zodiac correspond to the 12 hours on a clockface.

Whichever of these constellations the sun appears to rise in front of on the first day of spring is considered to be the current astrological age. That sunrise lingers on each zodiac sign for approximately 2,000 years. It’s currently somewhere between the constellations of Pisces and Aquarius. That’s why the 1967 hit musical Hair refers to the “dawning of the Age of Aquarius”.

Christianity

In 274 AD, the Roman emperor Aurelian established Sol Invictus (or the Unconquered Sun) as the chief god of the Roman Empire. He dedicated a new temple to that deity on December 25th, and that date became the god’s birthday (Dies Natalis Solis Invicti). A century later, Theodosius I replaced the cult of Sol Invictus when he declared Christianity the new state religion of the Empire.

In the 1940s, workmen at the Vatican discovered the Tomb of the Julii in the old necropolis beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. This crypt is an early Christian burial site. A tile mosaic on the ceiling depicts Jesus as Sol Invictus, riding his chariot across the sky with sunrays emanating from his head. This mosaic is a clear illustration of early Christians associating Jesus with the sun god. This syncretism explains why he shares so many biographical details with the sun gods who preceded him. His inherited story is an allegory for the Babylonian zodiac.

In the centuries after his death, Jesus’ biography evolved to incorporate many familiar elements of sun worship. He had 12 disciples and 12 apostles, which correspond to the 12 signs of the Babylonian Zodiac, the 12 months of the year, and the 12 hours of the day. Jesus declared his ministry at age 30, matching the 30° in each house of the Zodiac.

Furthermore, Jesus’ biography became a solar allegory for the Great Year and the changing of the astrological age from Aries to Pisces. As the Age of Pisces draws to a close in our own time, the ichthys, or “Jesus fish,” has become a popular automotive accessory. Unbeknownst to most who affix that symbol to their car bumper, the fish represents the 2,000-year age of Pisces that began with the coming of Christ.

Conclusion

The Babylonian Zodiac is so old and so ubiquitous that we don’t realize how many of our familiar conventions are derived from it. The 12 houses of the zodiac match the 12 hours of the day and the 12 disciples of Jesus. The 60 seconds in a minute and the 60 minutes in the hour match the 360° of a circular clock face, derived from Babylonian sundials. These numbers relate directly to the Great Year, as measured against the zodiac. That’s why Christianity has been associated with the astrological sign of Pisces since its inception. Ancient attention to the night sky shaped many elements of modern culture—from measurement conventions to religious symbology. But we are so cut off from the skies today that most are blind to these layers of astronomical references. It’s just one of the many consequences of humankind’s modern divorce from the night sky.

Further Materials

The fifth element in civilization is science—clear seeing, exact recording, impartial testing, and the slow accumulation of a knowledge objective enough to generate prediction and control. Egypt develops arithmetic and geometry, and establishes the calendar; Egyptian priests and physicians practise medicine, explore diseases enematically, perform a hundred varieties of surgical operation, and anticipate something of the Hippocratic oath. Babylonia studies the stars, charts the zodiac, and gives us our division of the month into four weeks, of the clock into twelve hours, of the hour into sixty minutes, of the minute into sixty seconds. India transmits through the Arabs her simple numerals and magical decimals, and teaches Europe the subtleties of hypnotism and the technique of vaccination.
Will & Ariel Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, 1935, page 935

The words of children held mystical significance to the ancient Egyptians; their sun god Horus the Child (Har-pa-khered) points to his own mouth. The Greeks later adopted Harpocrates as their God of Silence, and that gesture came to mean “hush”. Aphrodite created roses as a gift to this god, persuading him to keep her many amorous indiscretions a secret. The Romans hung roses in banquet halls to remind revelers that utterances made “under the rose” (sub rosa) were strictly confidential. In the Middle Ages, roses were carved into the ceilings of council chambers, government meeting rooms, and Christian confessionals for the same reason. And now the Subrosa Club is an exclusive space for paid System Failure subscribers…