Page 244 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

seen to rise in a different constellation (thus if the sun rises in Pisces at
the spring equinox, as it does at present, it must rise in Virgo at the
autumn equinox, in Gemini at the winter solstice and in Sagittarius at the
summer solstice). On each of these four occasions for the last 2000 years
or so, this is exactly what the sun has been doing. As we have seen,
however, precession of the equinoxes means that the vernal point will
change in the not so distant future from Pisces to Aquarius. When that
happens, the three other constellations marking the three key points will
change as well (from Virgo, Gemini and Sagittarius to Leo, Taurus and
Scorpius)—almost as though the giant mechanism of heaven has
ponderously switched gears ...
Like the axle of a mill, Santillana and von Dechend explain, Yggdrasil
‘represents the world axis’ in the archaic scientific language they have
identified: an axis which extends outwards (for a viewer in the northern
hemisphere) to the North Pole of the celestial sphere:
This instinctively suggests a straight, upright post ... but that would be an
oversimplification. In the mythical context it is best not to think of the axis in
analytical terms, one line at a time, but to consider it, and the frame to which it is
connected, as a whole:... As radius automatically calls circle to mind so axis
should invoke the two determining great circles on the surface of the sphere, the
equinoctial and solstitial colures.
6
These colures are the imaginary hoops, intersecting at the celestial North
Pole, which connect the two equinoctial points on the earth’s path around
the sun (i.e. where it stands on 20 March and 22 September) and the two
solstitial points (where it stands on 21 June and 21 December). The
implication, is that: ‘The rotation of the polar axis must not be disjointed
from the great circles that shift along with it in heaven. The framework is
thought of as all one with the axis.’
7
Santillana and von Dechend are certain that what confronts us here is
not a belief but an allegory. They insist that the notion of a spherical
frame composed of two intersecting hoops suspended from an axis is not
under any circumstances to be understood as the way in which ancient
science envisaged the cosmos. Instead it is to be seen as a ‘thought tool’
designed to focus the minds of people bright enough to crack the code
upon the hard-to-detect astronomical fact of precession of the equinoxes.
It is a thought tool that keeps on cropping up, in numerous disguises,
all over the myths of the ancient world.

At the mill with slaves

One example, from Central America (which also provides a further
illustration of the curious symbolic ‘cross-overs’ between myths of

6 Hamlet’s Mill, p. 232-3.
7 Ibid., p. 231.

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