Explanation of Precession Movement

Mechanism of Precession Movement

Due to this precession movement, a starlit sky looks as if it is regularly rotating when looking it up from the earth. Yet it requires a long period of observation to notice such movement. This is because it takes 25,776 years to make one round. Thus, the tips of the axis extending from the North Pole and the South Pole take 25,776 years to draw a circle, and the polar star must be also changing with the times.

It has been believed that the person who discovered such a phenomenon for the first time in the Western world was Hipparchus who has lived in the period around 100 B.C. But that is just the way the Western people view history, and it seems that ancient Egypt, China, India, and Mesopotamia had already been aware of such phenomenon even from much older times as a matter of fact. It is hardly possible that those people with the same level of brains as man of today who had been observing a starlit sky every night since fifty to a hundred thousand years ago did not notice such a phenomenon.

The Ecliptic

The constellation, which rises due east immediately before the sun comes up, used to be a "place" where the sun could be content with its position...the constellation was considered as a "carrier" of the sun, and the vernal equinox was regarded as "origin"...note11

In short, each period had been determined based on the constellations that rose in the eastern sky at dawn on the first day of spring. In passing, at present, it is the Fish that rises in the eastern sky right before the sunrise on Vernal Equinox Day, and thus it is the Age of Fish now. It will be changed to Aquarius before long. In other words, it will soon be the Age of Aquarius.

One constellation rises above the horizon at dawn on the vernal equinox for about two thousand and a hundred sixty years. That means that the Age of Fish must have started sometime around when Christ was born, and that same period is still continuing on to the present.

The tips of the earth's axis are drawing a circle, and, as long as it is a circle, one revolution can be divided into 360_. 25,776 years divided by 360 degrees makes 71.6 years. Thus, 1 degree is going to be equal to about 72 years. The origin of the way to regard a circle as 360 degrees is still unknown, but it has been widely adopted everywhere in the world since the earliest times.

The Precession Numbers

Let's briefly enumerate the Precession Numbers.

12	The twelve signs of the zodiac
30	The angle each constellation takes up on the ecliptic
72	The number of years necessary for the sun to make one round along the ecliptic due to the precession movement
Multiples of 72	144(x2), 288(x4), 504(x7), 576(x8), 648(x9)
360	The whole angle of the ecliptic = circumference
2160(72x30)	The number of years necessary for the Sun to move 30�‹along the ecliptic. In other words, it is the number of years it takes for one of the twelve constellations on the ecliptic to completely pass through.
25920(2160x12)	The general number of years one cycle of precession movement takes
36	The number of years necessary for the sun to move 0.5�‹along the ecliptic. It is half the angle of one constellation.
108	72+36
540	1080/2
4320	The number of years necessary for the sun to move 30�‹along the ecliptic. It is twice the angle of one constellation.

You should pay extra attention if any of these numbers appears in a myth or ancient ruins. This is because there might be some kind of message hidden behind it.

Although we know that there is a close relationship between precession and the twelve signs of the zodiac, it is still a mystery when those constellations were named. According to the newest theory, they had already been established in around 8000 B.C in the ancient Egypt. note12

The twelve horary signs of China are also formed as dividing the path of the ecliptic into twelve parts and giving a name of animal such as the Rat, the Ox, and the Tiger to each part. Mr. Kumagusu Minakata explains: "The ecliptic of the sun had been divided into twelve to form the twelve horary signs, and giving the names of twelve different animals to those parts was peculiar to China that has begun far back in the period of Chou." note13 The period of Chou had existed as early as 1000 B.C. If the idea of the twelve horary signs has started around that time, then there must have been knowledge from astronomical observations that had been accumulated for a long time until then. Or, it might be a property left by a civilization that had existed even further back in ancient times. The ideas of the twelve horary signs of China and the twelve signs of the zodiac of Egypt and Mesopotamia are similar to each other, and I feel that there is a common root existed somewhere between them.