Page 236 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

During the course of each year the earth’s movement along its orbit
causes the stellar background against which the sun is seen to rise
to change from month to month: AquariusÆ PiscesÆ AriesÆ
TaurusÆ GeminiÆ CancerÆ Leo, etc, etc. At present, on the vernal
equinox, the sun rises due east between Pisces and Aquarius. The
effect of precession is to cause the ‘vernal point’ to be reached
fractionally earlier in the orbit each year with the result that it very
gradually shifts through all 12 houses of the zodiac, spending 2160
years ‘in’ each sign and making a complete circuit in 25,920 years.
The direction of this ‘processional drift’, in opposition to the annual
‘path of the sun’, is: LeoÆ CancerÆ GeminiÆ TaurusÆ AriesÆ
PiscesÆ Aquarius. To give one example, the ‘Age of Leo’, i.e. the 2160
years during which the sun on the vernal equinox rose against the
stellar background of the constellation of Leo, lasted from 10,970
until 8810 BC. We live today in the astrological no man’s land at the
end of the ‘Age of Pisces’, on the threshold of the ‘New Age’ of
Aquarius. Traditionally these times of transition between one age
and the next have been regarded as ill-omened.
That, in a nutshell, is the meaning of ‘precession of the equinoxes’. And
that is exactly what is involved in the notion of the ‘dawning of the Age of
Aquarius’. The famous line from the musical Hair refers to the fact that
every year, for the last 2000 years or so, the sun has risen in Pisces on
the vernal equinox. The age of Pisces, however, is now approaching its
end and the vernal sun will soon pass out of the sector of the Fish and
begin to rise against the new background of Aquarius.

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