GREAT CYCLES of HISTORY

Ages, Eras and Epochs

AGES
(Eras) (Epochs)
Just as the prevailing winds are caused by planetary spin, so the swirling currents of
history have definite courses and times, guided by the great
movements of the Earth, and governed by the nature of number and geometry,
on which all things are built. There are three such overall earth-movements:

A. The daily rotation or spin
B. The yearly orbit around the Sun
C. The precession or "wobble" of the axis of spin, in a cycle of almost 26,000
years. (A Great Year or Precessional Year.)

By well-established precedent we divide the day and the year into Twelve
(or 24) parts. Why should
we not do the same for the Precessional Year? When we do, using 25,920 as a convenient
estimate, we come out with an average length of 2160 years for a zodiac Age. Can we
measure and identify such Ages and their sub-divisions? There are two ways: By descriptive
style or theme, and by astronomical calculation. Let us start with the:

Age of the Pyramid
The Egyptian pyramids, and their Mesopotamian cousins the ziggurats, are massive piles of immobility, built in stone and brick. Can we not read such a style as expressing the theme
of staying-in-place, holding-one's-ground? That is easily associated with the zodiac sign
Taurus, which is derived from the nature of number One, the first substantial number.
Number One corresponds to the geometric Point, the first location or Place, and is tradi-
tionally classified as fixed-earth.
And as we find such a spirit or Zeitgeist of staying-in-place, holding-one's-ground, in archi-
techture, so we can see it in social practice, especially in the custom of "king-following".
Best known through the excavation of the Royal Tombs of Ur in southern Mesopotamia,
king-following was the entombment of entire royal courts --- men and women, servants and
high-ranking officials --- along with their dead king. Ostensibly done so that the court would
continue to serve their king in the after-life, it strikes us as strange that so many people
would have gone to their deaths in an apparently voluntary manner, in such a display of
social unity. How can we explain it?
Can it not be read as another expression of the theme or spirit of staying-in-place? Those
servants and aristocrats seem to have walked freely to their deaths because it held meaning
for their lives. Their place was in the court of the king, wherever the king was. That social
unity made sense of their existence, a sensible meaning apparently stronger than their fear
of death. Thus not even death could dislodge them from their context-of-meaning, from their
place in the world, in their Age of Taurus.

The Age of the Chariot
How different things suddenly appearred when such solidly settled societies were overrun by
rolling armies of invaders, by entire nations on the move, overwhelming everything in their
path. Without warning, the Age of the Chariot arrived, And that horse-drawn war-vehicle
made mobility such an advantage that it quickly became the order of the day.
So deeply moving was the Zeitgeist or time-spirit of the new Age that not only nations but the
geographical focus of history itself began to shift. Depicted at least legendarily in the mi-
gration of Abraham from Mesopotamian Ur to the neighborhood of Jerusalem, that westward
shift would continue as Hellas (Greece) rose to world-power, only to be supplanted by a
further westward movement to Rome, whose hegemony would reach all the way up to and
beyond Paris and London before the fall of the western empire. And we can see in all of this,
the restless, forward-driving spirit of Aries the Ram, ideally all starting and no stopping.
That entire westward arc of history was accomplished during the Age of the Chariot. And as
the Roman legions extended their theater to Britain, they found themselves confronted by
armies of the past, as it were, armies riding to battle in horse-drawn chariots, the very vehi-
cle which began the Age, but was long obsolete as a weapons platform elsewhere in civilization.
And that illustrates a phenomenon which is often encountered relative to the track of history.
Practices that began in centers of civilization tend to survive in more remote areas into much
later times. The former custom of king-following is another example, as it was practiced in
China at least a thousand years after it disappearred from Mesopotamia. And even closer to
the focus of history, the building of pyramids and ziggurats continued well into the Age of
Aries. But those Egyptian pyramids built after 2000 B.C. were of notably inferior quality.
(And the three great pyramids of Giza, which some claim were constructed thousands of years
earlier, might be an entirely different matter.)
Among the panoply of wandering nations in that Age of the Chariot, we must mention the
Israelites, led by Moses on their great Exodus out of Egypt. Perhaps at about the same time,
a branch of the Indo-European Volkerwanderung, the Aryans, moved into India. And still a
thousand years later, a national group of Gauls wandered from western Europe all the way
into Anatolia, where they managed to set up their own kingdom oof Galatia. (Echoing
Galicia in far western Iberia.)

In terms of persons, we might measure the Age of the Chariot from Abraham to not much
beyond the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. After him, social decay accelerated. And after
about 220 A.D. it amounted to a full-scale social collapse, which lasted for half a century.
The Age of the Chariot was over. The old organizing-principle or Zeitgeist was gone. And
the new organizing-principle had not yet been found.

The Age of the Church
When it began to be found, first with Emperor Diocletian in his totalitarian reorganizing of
the empire --- a regrouping which implicitly renounced the entire westward drive by shifting
the capital eastward to Byzantium --- when the new organizing principle was found at last,
and explicitly acknowledged by Emperor Constantine, it turned out to be the new institution
of the Church. That was the social embodiment of the new Zeitgeist. And with that alliance,
the empire gained new life, and lived into the new Age which it would dominate.
Now what is the Church? It is universal, in the Spirit of Pisces the Fishes, which represent
the ocean as an image of the boundless universe. (And the name "catholic" means universal.)
But the Christian Church is only the leading example of the genre. There was the competing
Church of Mithra in Constantine's time. There was a new Zoroastrian Church in Persia. And
there has since arisen the Church of Islam. We might even say that there is a secular Church,
utopian and universal, in the movement of Socialism-Communism. (And is humanistic
Science also a Church?) In short our Age is dominated by the Church, as institution and
organizing principle. But what is a Church?
Can we say it is a universal congregation of believers? The Olympian religion of Greece was
not so universalist, but more localized. And like the contemporary national religion of Israel,
it was not so much a matter of believing, as it was of ritual practices. Perhaps we should not
say much more in definition, as it is peculiar to the sign of the Fishes (Pisces) to be vague
and indefinable more than any other sign. A Church is a sort of immersion (hence Christian
baptizing) in a body of utopian belief.

Astronomical Measurement

We have outlined three distinctive Ages:
A.The Age of the Pyramid
B.The Age of the Chariot
C.The Age of the Church
Now can we find astronomical confirmation fitting such times? We start with the sidereal
zodiac, not fixed along the ecliptic by the Vernal Equinoctal Point (V.E.P.) in the northern
hemisphere, but apparently by the longitude of the Apex of the Sun's Way at zero degrees
of Capricorn.
[This matter is well covered in the researches of Cyril Fagan and Donald Bradley, two
pioneers of modern Sidereal Astrology (On left side, scroll down to, "What age" and "Apex".]
With each sign measuring 30 degrees, it is easy to track the Ages by the position of the
V.E.P. as it retrogrades through the zodiac. Thus our present Age began when the V.E.P.
entered Pisces in 221 A.D. and that, as we have seen, marked the beginning of the half
century of social collapse in the Roman Empire. The other watershed dates are:
Age of Taurus 4138 B.C. --- 1954 B.C.
Age of Aries 1954 B.C. --- 220 A.D.
Age of Pisces 220 --- 2376 A.D.
Now let us subdivide those Ages into Eras, and see if our twin approaches of descriptive
style and astronomical calculation continue their congruence into the sub-harmonics of
historical time.

Origin of the Zodiac Top

ERAS

Libra and Virgo Renaissance and Later Medieval
Leo Early Restoration of Order
Aries, Taurus, Geminii-Cancer Folk-wandering, Sanctuary, Viking Era
Scorpio Dramatic Tragedy and Trenchant Defense
Sagittarius Classical
Capricorn Consolidation
Acquarius and Pisces Individualism and Collectivism


LIBRA and VIRGO    
Once again let us begin with the descriptive approach. One of the most distinctive times 
in Western history was the Italian Renaissance. Why did it happen just when and where 
it did? To address this question, let us cite some of its salient characteristics.

A. A new naturalizing style in art, connected with a new Humanism.
B. A new appreciation of Space, in three major ways:
1. The discovery of 3-D Perspective in painting
2. An outburst of overseas exploration, culminating in the circum-navigation of the
globe
3. The heliocentric solar-system of Copernicus
C. A new spirit of Reform, leading to the Protestant Reformation.

Now let us link those characteristics to the relevant zodiac sign, Libra. 

A. Libra is traditionally associated with the fine arts. And as the sign of common 
fallen humanity, it is the "human" sign.
B. The two geometrical figures of Libra are the sphere and the helix. both are the 
"discovery figures" of the third dimension of space. 
C. As the beginning of the second half of the zodiac, Libra represents a new start,
a re-birth or Renaissance. And such a second beginning tends to refer back to
the first beginning, resuscitating ancient principles and re-applying them as a 
Reform.

So in answer to our question, "Why did it happen just when and where it did?",
our answer is that it was the Libra Era in the cycles of history. And in terms of
place, Italy was where the focus of history was located at that time. [The west- 
ward arc of history had reached all the way to Britain, but the Focus of history 
had not yet gone beyond Rome. That focus had been divided and diffused by 
Diocletian's move backward to Byzantium. Then during the Renaissance the
Turks overran Constantinople, thus removing that focus, and strengthening the 
Roman focus briefly, before it moved on up to Paris and London.]
Now can we look back at the previous Age, that of Aries, locate the Libra Era by 
numerical calculation, and find quite similar phenomena?

A. A new naturalizing style of art, introducing human and animal figures,
which began to push aside the formerly pervasive geometric style. The new
trend would continue unabated, until the decoration was almost all natural
figures in the proto-Corinthian style, toward the end of the Era. Just at the
beginning of the Era, the new style first appearred on Dipylon funerary urns in 
Athens, around 775-750 B.C. Our calculation of that Libra Era is 783-616 B.C. 
(More on the calculations below.)
B. An outburst of overseas exploration and colonizing, from the eastern end 
of the black Sea to the western Mediterranean, expressing a new awareness
of space, a new spirit of discovery among the Hellenes. 
C. A great movement of religious Reform, not in Greece but in Judah, led by 
Kings Hezikiah and josiah, the latter basing his ruthless reforms on the re-
discovery of ancient documents.

Thus we see in these two Eras of Libra, a great similarity of theme, connecting
them across more that two millenia in the cycles of history.
And can we add to that discovery of space, to that new spirit of overseas explorimg 
among the Hellenes --- can we add the book of the Odyssey? Its date is uncertain, but
its stylistic connections are striking anough to be worth discussing. In contrast to the 
Iliad, which takes place in a static theater, the plain before the walls of Ilium, the
Odyssey is full of movement and adventure. The Iliad's main theme has much to do
with a stalemate, a stand-off, which stops the action of the war. The Odyssey is concerned  
with overcoming such stand-still. In the Iliad the shield of Achilles depicts the world 
as a comprehensive summation, all ordered and definitively arranged, in five concentric 
circles. The world of the Odyssey on the other hand, is an ongoing discovery, always new 
and unexpected.
In short, the relatively motionless, summarized world of the Iliad agrees in spirit with the
style of geometric pottery, which we can now identify as a style of Virgo (5) the sign 
preceding Libra. Virgo is the middle sign (and number) as in this sequence:

0   1   2   3   4   12   5   6   9   7   8   11   13

See Origin of the Zodiac
Number five is also in the middle of this arrangement:
1   2   3                                     
4   5   6                                            
7   8   9

The middle tends to be motionless, moving neither forward nor backward. Hence the static theme
and setting of the Iliad.
Further, number Five is the first Sum of the sequence. As number One (unity) cannot in prin-
ciple be added, and two plus two is a doubling rather than a sum, the first sum is 2+3=5. This
summarizing nature will be seen even more clearly in the Virgo Era of our present Age.
But first, we spoke of the Odyssey as being a forward-moving adventure. Something had to
be done, however, to get the adventure moving. Odysseus and his men were sealed-up in the
cave of the Cyclops, unable to escape. That can be seen as a typical Virgo stasis. The geo-
metric figure of Virgo is the circle, and concentric circles. (That was seen above in the
shield of Achilles.) Does not the Cyclops' single eye represent the circle of Virgo, the
confining summation from which Odysseus and his men have to escape? And they do escape,
After putting out the Cyclops' eye, destroying the circle motif of motionlessness. Then they
emerge from the cave under the bellies of sheep, in an image of re-birth (Libra).
Another situation of stagnation exists at the home of Odysseus, where the suitors wait for
Penelope to finish her weaving. This scene is also Virgoan, for not only is it a stasis, but
Penelope is weaving a funeral shroud. Graves and funerals are endings, and Virgo is the
end of the first half of the zodiac. Thus the Iliad ended with two funerals.
(Also note that the citadel of Ilium was not penetraed in that book of Virgo, the virgin.
It was symbolically captured by running circles around it, thematically encompassing and
summarizing it.)
So Penelope is stuck in a motionless situation, even as were Odysseus and his men in the
Cyclops' cave. And how does the Achaean hero deal with the Virgoan stagnation his wife
is trapped in? He thematically puts out the Cyclops' eye again, by shooting an arrow
through the openings of twelve axes lined-up. (The zodiac number of signs.) He thus hits
the exact, definitive center, implicitly destroying it, and with it the attending encirclement.
And then can we not read his subsequent slaughter of the suitors as a ruthless reform,
echoing that theme of Libra?
The new start of Libra can be perceived as a breath of fresh air, ending the stagnation of
Virgo. Or in the motif of re-birth (Renaissance) there is the emergence of the Achaean
warriors from the belly of the Trojan horse (in the Odyssey).
But we should not leave Virgo without some better reputation than mere stagnation. Let
us consider the Virgo Era in our present Age --- the late medieval Era of 1215-1381 A.D.
(It will be seen by fitting such Eras of some 166 years into an Age of average 2160 years,
that there are in practice not twelve but thirteen Eras in every Age. The Era corresponding
to the sign of the Age is doubled.)
It was an Era in which the medieval Church emerged from the battle between faith and reason,
between Augustine and Aristotle, between the mystics and the Schoolmen, with the latter in
each case winning the day. The historian Henry Adams sums it up very neatly:
"Long before Saint Francis's death, in 1226, the French mystics had exhausted their energies
and the siecle had taken new heart...the Church bent again to its task and bade the Spaniard
Dominic arm new levies with the best weapons of science, and flaunt the name of Aristotle on
the Church banners along with that of Saint Augustine. The year 1215, which happened to be
the date of Magna Charta...may serve to mark the triumph of the Schools."
(Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, first paragraph of the chapter on Saint Thomas Aquinas)
Magna Charta might be considered as ending the previous Era (Leo). In the figure of the
king, that Era represented a high-point of monarchical prestige. Then the absolute power
of the English King John was curtailed when his barons forced him to acknowledge their
rights in the document of Magna Charta.

And what was the new Era that replaced the old? It was the Era of Scholasticism, dominated
by a spirit of "figuring everything out". It was the Virgo spirit of ordering and defining,
putting everything in its proper place in the overall scheme. In a word, it was the Era
of Summarizing. And it was very explicitly so, in the prevailing literary genre of the time,
the Summa. The most famous of them was the "Summa Theologica" by St. Thomas Aquinas.
But there were Summae written on zoology and many other subjects. It was the habit-of-mind
of the time.
Even more famous than the "Summa Theologica" is a work not labelled as a Summa, but classified
as such by some: The masterpiece of Dante Alighieri, the Divina Comedia. It is an all-
encompassing summation of life, recalling the shield of Achilles in the Iliad. And both the
Iliad and the Comedia begin "in the middle", the former in the midst of the stasis in the
Trojan War, and the latter literally with the words, "Nel mezzo..", in the middle, befitting
Virgo (5). And with the last word in this section, the architecture of the Comedia is largely
the Virgo patern of concentric circles.

Top

LEO
From "the fury of the Northmen" and the chaos of the Viking Era, western Europe was saved
by the arrival of the Leo Era (1049-1215 A.D.) Looking back to the reorganization of the Roman
Empire under Diocletian, we might say that moving the capital eastward from Rome to Byzantium
contributed to the western European "Dark Ages". The focus of history had lost its westward
drive with the end of he Age of Aries (220 A.D.). And in effect what Byzantium did by its east-
ward shift was to withdraw from the westward march of history, to withdraw from the main cur-
rent of historical time, as it were, while yet remaining the world's greatest empire. They thus
produced a strangely timeless, even museum-like social preservation. The western part of the
Track of History would not be revitalized until the eleventh century.
We can mark the time when history regained its western extent, and Rome regained its
leadership, by the Great Schism, in which the Church of Rome separated itself from the
Church of Byzantium. Thus Rome resumed its western destiny. It was an announcement that a
new Western Society was coming together, setting itself apart in distinction from the rest of
the world. It was the beginning of the Era of coherent Leo (1049-1215 A.D.). The division
between the two churches was formalized in 1054.
We have seen the Era's end in Magna Charta, which restricted the power of the king. Its
beginning coincided with the recovery of the papacy from centuries of debility, and with
the start of a line of strong popes, sometimes referred to as the Papal Monarchy. "The
first pope to impose his authority upon the Church in general" was Leo IX (1049-1054).
(Encyclopedia Brittanica) But perhaps the most famous of those papal monarchs was
Gregory VII (Hildebrand) who stared down the Holy Roman Emperor with the claim of
absolute papal supremacy. And the strongest of them, who put the most armies into the
field against the German Emperors, was Innocent III, who died as soon as the Era ended
(1216).
The restored papal strength coincided with that mass movement of spontaneous enthu-
siasm known as the Crusades, an expression (often brutal) of the new coherence and con-
fidence of Western Society. And it was as though in regaining the westward impetus, they
felt obliged to attack and defeat the old focal points of history, especially Jerusalem and
Constantinople. It was a flexing of new historical muscles, and a loud proclamation that
a new and powerful Society had arrived. But after the first four Crusades (all in the Leo
Era) enjoyed at least military success, the Crusading art was quickly lost. Once again a
phenomenon persisted long after its proper time was past. The four major Crusades after
1215 had no significant military achievements.
The Fifth Crusade was the last in which the papacy took an active part. After a dreary
campaign, the Crusaders finally surrendered the one city they had captured, in return
for the freedom to retreat. The Sixth or Diplomatic Crusade was led by Frederick II, who
fought no battles, but negotiated to obtain Jerusalem. Louis IX of France led the
Seventh Crusade, which was a complete failure. And his death from pestilence marked
the end of the inglorius Eighth Crusade (1270).
Now back to the new Western Society of the early Leo Era. It was led at first by the
Normans, superior not only in battle, with their heavy cavalry, but also in administration,
in coherent organization of states, which earned them Europe's largest empire, the
Angevin Empire, including all of England and most of France, as well as leading them
to reconquer Sicily from the Saracens and to serve as papal administrators.
It was also the Era of the "knight in shining armor", of Chivalry, that romantic cultural form
which echoed the ancient religion of the goddess, with her consort the lame king, who
fought and died for her. That was the meat of the King Athur mythos, of the literary genre
of Romance, which was carried by troubadors from castle to castle. And the greatest and
truest of those stories (Its author tells us so himself) was Parzifal by Wolfram
von Eschenbach, which appearred right at the end of the Era (c.1210 A.D.)
And one last note on the notorious Fourth Crusade, which in terms of its stated objective
was a disaster. Instead of reconquering the Holy Land, they conquered their Christian ally,
Constantinople. Is this inexplicable? Or was it a matter of geopolitical momentum, as
mentioned above, the new Society asserting its dominance over the old? And in personal
as well as thematic terms, can we not see it as a fullfilling of a typical Leo urge, to win an
empire? In that light we might say the Fourth Crusade was the most successful of them all,
setting up the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which lasted for over half a century. Thus
the real dynamic of history is often different from what is thought and said to be happening.
Now can we look back into the previous Age and find a Leo Era at the appropriate time
(1117-950 B.C.)? In the Levant and in Israel, another new Society was forming at that
time, Syriac Society (in the terminology of the historian Arnold Toynbee) in the general
triangle of Tyre, Damascus, Jerusalem, in the time of Kings David and Solomon in
Jerusalem and King Hiram of Tyre.
And we can see, around the shores of the Aegean Sea, early signs that Hellenic Society
was coming together. The main evidence is stylistic, in the form of pottery and its deco-
ration. The older Mycenean ware, of rather haphazard shape and featuring wavy depictions
of sea-creatures such as the octopus, rapidly gave way to a much more formal and
coherent style. Its vases were of very regular symmetry, and featured exclusively geo-
metrical designs, drawn not free-hand but with a compass. In this new proto-Geometric
style we can see the first evidence of the coherence of the new Hellenic Society.

Top

ARIES, TAURUS, GEMINII-CANCER

Folkwandering, the theme of the wandering nations, reappears in our Era of Aries (386-552 A.D.)
just as it did in the Age of Aries, when a double Aries Era opened the Age (1954-1619 B.C.). In
our later example it was mainly Germanic tribes and central Asians attacking the Roman empire.
Ostrogoths were active in the east, and Vandals, Visigoths, Franks and Anglo-Saxons in the west.
The Avars and the Huns (led by Attila) added to the outpouring, the latter threatening Rome it-
self, and many of them settling down in the Carpathian plain now known as Hungary.
Barbarians had actually been invading the empire for some time. But they were accomodated
and given land to settle within the Roman framework. After the death of Theodosius the Great
in 395, the invaders were no longer assimilated, but wandered where they would. Rome was
taken and pillaged for three days by the Visigoths under Alaric in 410 A.D.
However there were some island refuges where the invaders could not reach. And in these places
of sanctuary, civilization flourished in the next Era (Taurus). Prominent among such havens
were Crete in the earlier time (1619-1452 B.C.) and Ireland in the later (552-718 A.D.). And
the latter briefly became the school for Dark Age western Europe.
Another phenomenon of these Taurus Eras has to do with the importance of Place in stage
number One. Emphasis on the native place is shown in the Reclaiming (revanchism) by the ancient
Egyptians as they threw out the Hyksos (invaders from the previous Era). And over two millenia
later, in the same general area, the rising surge of Islam expelled the thousand-year occupa-
tion of Syriac territory by the Greeks and Romans (from Alexander to Mohammed). That reclama-
tion reached all the way to formerly Carthaginian (Phoenician) Iberia.
The concept of Sanctuary, the inviolable Place (Taurus) seems to be embodied in the myth of
the Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth. That figure, a hybrid of man and bull, occupied a place
so well-protected by its surrounding maze that no one could navigate it. But it was finally
overcome, according to the myth, by a device which speaks of the cleverness of the sign of
the next Era, Geminii. Theseus, the first king of Athens, defeated the labyrinth and thus the
Minotaur by stringing-out a thread behind him so he could find his way out of the maze.
This theme of stringing together two points, connecting opposite poles, speaks of stage Two
(Geminii).
Later, Daedelus solved a similar problem when he put a string through a spiral sea
shell, by tying one end of a thread to an ant, which then crawled through the shell. Thus
Geminii is the connector, the problem-solver and Communicator. And the people of
Theseus, the Myceneans, apparently captured and destroyed the Cretan capital of
Knossos around 1450 B.C., right at the beginning of the Era of Geminii, ending Taurus.
[ In at least one version of the myth, it was Daedelus who gave to Theseus the thread by
which the latter navigated the labyrinth. ]
A related facet of Geminii (2) is the function of Iconoclast, breaking-up the unity of Taurus.
This was acted-out literally in the Geminii Era of 718-883 A.D. when the Iconoclast Movement
swept through Byzantium, aimed largely at breaking-up the unity and power of the
monasteries, the religious sanctuaries.

(continued)

Questions and comments to: Forum (Finnegans Wake)

Paul Albertsen