Lunar Standstill: Returning to the Cradle of Civilization

Full Moon Perigee—Eclipse @ Moment of Moonrise—California PDTime—Four Nights of Light

Earth and Moon in Eclipse–rarer than 18.6-year wobble at Standstill—courtesy SOHO

When the Ancients calculated ahead in time to the most spectacular tracking through the Heavens visible to the ‘greatest number of peoples of Earth’, it was foretold, we should all become visionaries. 2012 received much kudos and focus, but what if the Maya Long Count Calendar were three years out? What if the Egyptian and Assyrian and Indo-Arctic peoples were right, after all?

Tonight’s the Night, Josephine
Tonight it all comes into coalescence:
In North America at least, because of wide television and media publicity, a huge surge of population will raise their eyes to view the ‘closest blood moon’ to come our way. Actually, media moguls are only partially right: it is the closest to Earth—perigee—in the moon’s orbit round us for this year, but it is also the closest—cosmically—in breaking time-space barriers that will come our way once in a long time.* Tonight’s full moon—appearing most spectacularly in California at her stage entrance in the east, as she enters total eclipse AND as the sun is setting due west–is the crux of the 2015 Minor Lunar Standstill.

Now and over four nights the Harvest Moon will appear to rise and set at roughly the same place—and within moments of the same hour—on our east horizon, setting due west at dawn—in concert with sunrise— under identical conditions. Tonight’s total eclipse is a bonus of the Standstill.**

Closeness to Earth may appear to add vibration to her brightness.

Full equinoctial Standstill Moon Eclipse at moment totality breached, Sept. 27/28, 2015, courtesy Gail Slaughter

As for the tides, wow. Similar extremes: as high as seven feet; then ultra lows less than the ‘normal ‘six hours apart. Even the fishermen are confused. But abalone love moonlight.
*PDT Moon enters eclipse at Moonrise 7:11p.m. exits totality after approx. one hour, 8:11p.m. or: enters totality beginning at 10:11 p.m. EDT, ends at 11:24 p.m. EDT.

Ancient Man thought the Moon had come to a nineteen-year cyclical Standstill. Its so-called wobble created an enormous spread of cultural carvings in stone throughout the Neolithic world.

Are we any wiser for our anthropocine leap through time?

Twenty thousand years ago—18,000 B.C.—myth and legend were one. Man looked to the heavens for guidance and to check the weather, and then went out and found another flesh-eating animal to kill and cook on the sacred fire embers.

We may believe civilization has evolved way beyond that amygdalian impetus, but in the opinion of Maya calendrical scholar and astronomy buff, John Major Jenkins, we have barely scratched the surface of ‘civilization’.

SEPTEMBER REMEMBER, OCTOBER ALL OBER

Shifing aurora borealis erupt over Anchorage AK 9/19/15 at height of CME storm

Current notions about cultural evolution refers to a type of social Darwinism in which human society today is supposed to be hierarchically more refined and advanced in every essential way than our grunting? dirty, cave dwelling, ‘primitive’ Neolithic ancestors. This view is naïve; compare life in a typical Third World urban slum of today with the cosmopolitan city dwellers of Alexandria 2,000 years ago. Technology and science is not the barometer of cultural sophistication. Social Darwinism has entered the realm of cliché, although still to a surprising degree it holds currency in the underlying assumptions of many people, including scholars—John Major Jenkins on preface to Hamlet’s Mill de Santillana & von Dechend 1969

Heavenly intervention—in the form of repeat eclipses—is an aspect of Metonic cycle that has always intrigued.

As the sun, moon and earth return to the same relative positions, the pattern of eclipses of moon and earth repeats every nineteen years. A six-hour difference in the lunar draconic cycle, however, is enough to throw the eclipse repeatability out of kilter, but up to four eclipses may repeat around the same dates nineteen years apart, before this happens.

Lunar standstill calendar, NatiMuseum of American Indian, Washington DC

June—too soon
July—stand by
August—come it must
September—remember
October—all over
Hurricane ‘creation’ rhyme, Bahamas 1940s, now outdated, outclassed by year-round storms

ANCIENT OF DAYS—AUTUMN EQUINOX 2015—Repeating the Cosmic Loop—Eclipse, Standstill Harvest Lunar Wobble

Four dominant periods* are 18.6 years—the precession period of the lunar orbit— and 182.6 days or half a year; 13.7 days or half a month, and 9.3 years—the rotation period of the moon’s return to perigee.

The primary nutation of 18.6 years drives two other observational cycles:
the Saros cycle (18 years, 11 days) and
the Metonic Cycle (19 years)

2015 Eclipse Solar Lunar Cycles replicate Ancient Egyptian Astronomy
The great Zodiac of Dendera at Luxor, established during Roman rule 50B.C. and superimposed on the archaic Egyptian temple to Hathor, celebrated the wobbling moon.

The cause of this weird wobble cycle is the precession of the lunar orbit around us, on Earth.

Photographed from ISS: our galaxy, our planet, our moon in eclipse—surrounded by AIRGLOW

The Sun’s gravitational pull also brings about a precession of the Moon’s orbital axis, within a period of 18.6 years. Precession advances locations at points where the moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic—at the nodes.

Maximum moonrise and moonset invariably repeat every nineteen years.

Literally, after exactly nineteen solar years the sun will return to the same position relative to the stars—our view of the heavens—and the moon will have nearly the same phase—with a two-hour difference in its cycle.

Significantly, repeat eclipses will occur on the new or full moon nearest to the sun’s passing through one of the nodes.

Sun + Moon conjunct astral nodes. Ancient eclipse prediction practice returns equinox 2015 to surprise skywatchers

This sacred numeric calculation was much appreciated by the Egyptians, followed by the Greeks, Carthaginians and all early northern peoples, including pre-Celtic Arctic nations. As the dates of the new moon, full moon, would repeat every nineteen years, it naturally fell within cultural knowledge of the privileged. It became ‘mystery schools‘ fodder.

For any given solar calendar date, full Moon events will replicate every nineteen years.

This creates a cyclic loop back to pre-Celtic mythic nineteen Priestesses of Bridget/Brigantia. Each of these individual priestesses represented a character or experience associated with nineteen components of the Great Lunar Year. This relationship creates an excellent basis for cyclic pattern divinations.

*Lunar Standstills
Because of the 5.1 degree tilt of the moon’s orbit with respect to the ecliptic, the moon may be anywhere within 5.1 degrees above or below the ecliptic. During major standstills the moon reaches a declination of 23.5 plus 5.1 degrees or 28.6 degrees; major standstills occur every 18.6 years. At minor standstill the greatest declination that the moon reaches is 23.5 minus 5.1 degrees or 18.4 degrees.

Antikythera—Ancient Astronomical Prediction Device

Antikythera 2000-year old Greek analog computer geared to predict astronomical positions of sun, moon, major planets and constellations. Eclipses were used for calendrical and astrological divination for the Olympiads, 86B.C.

This means that every 18.6 years, the rising or setting Moon reaches a northern extreme in rising and setting azimuth at summer solstice, and a southern extreme at winter solstice. These are called major standstills. While such standstills can in principle be determined using horizon observations, as with the summer solstice Sun the Moon’s year-to-year angular displacement along the horizon at summer solstice is very small near standstill. It should be noted that 18.6 years is measured from the point of view of the lunar orbit. Observationally, from the Earth’s surface, the length of time between two major standstills is not 18.6 years: it switches back and forth between 18.5 and nineteen years, with 18.6 years a modern observational average.

Post Scriptum In Death We are in Life The Hajj Stampede
It is with regret that we observe the panic-related crush of death which came this week in Thursday’s New Moon pilgrimage—Hajj—to the Saudi shrine of Shrines. Ancient texts note death and life are one. Yet our condolences nonetheless.

Hilal [waxing lunar crescent]—First ‘New Moon’ Sighting sends Seven Hundred to their Death

Hajj—pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia—annually calculated to fall on waxing lunar cycle

2015’s Hajj—Pilgrimage of self-denial after month of fasting during Ramadan. Many believers were delirious with joy, even at the concept of being within sight of the shrine, staggering to follow fellow devotees in the sacred circumambulation of their faith’s most hallowed Mosque. Yesterday’s unfortunate panic—two fully locomotive swirling streams of humanity colliding at an intersection in the holy city—crushed and killed 736, leaving for dead thousands of adherents and lost family members in an Arab/Persian/Islamic nightmare.

With life so precious, may we all enjoy the miraculous Antikythera provided by the Heavens tonight and for the next few…
…millennia.
With gratitude
©2015Siderealview ©Marian Youngblood
Equinox 2015