Fresh Batch #143: Is Precession Real?
The Universal System Made Applicable
If precession weren’t real, the almanacs and ephemerides wouldn’t require updating. Some make claims that precession is an invention by Heliocentrists, however, were precession not real, it’d be one less thing for them to have to account for regarding the worldview they’ve proliferated. Having to account for precession in a Heliocentric worldview is a burden, not a blessing. Ephemerides are used in celestial navigation.
According to Wiki, an almanac (also spelled almanack and almanach) is a regularly published listing of a set of current information about one or multiple subjects. It includes information like weather forecasts, farmers’ planting dates, tide tables, and other tabular data arranged according to the calendar. Celestial figures and various statistics are found in almanacs, such as the rising and setting times of the sun and moon, dates of eclipses, hours of high and low tides, and religious festivals. The set of events noted in an almanac may be tailored for a specific group of readers, such as farmers, sailors, or astronomers.
Prior to the ability to publish things like almanacs and ephemerides, the priests were responsible for reckoning the positions of the stars in relation to the sun throughout the year so that farmers could plant and harvest with precision. Recording this process in ages without the printing press, without general literacy, and the like, begat the necessity for establishing mythology and religious holidays.
For those interested in going through these things in-depth, see Ephemerides, siue, Almanach perpetuum.
According to Wiki, celestial navigation serves as a backup to satellite navigation. Software is widely available to assist with this form of navigation; some of this software has a self-contained ephemeris. When software is used that does not contain an ephemeris, or if no software is used, position data for celestial objects may be obtained from the modern Nautical Almanac or Air Almanac.
An ephemeris is usually only correct for a particular location on the Earth. In many cases, the differences are too small to matter. However, for nearby asteroids or the moon, they can be quite important.
Other modern ephemerides recently created are the EPM (Ephemerides of Planets and the Moon), from the Russian Institute for Applied Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the INPOP (Intégrateur numérique planétaire de l'Observatoire de Paris) by the French IMCCE.
Precession is not something that only astrologers (priests) accounted for. Other professions needed to know about it. The priests had to account for precession to maintain the holidays that reckoned the seasons and the year. It was accounted for in the updates of the almanacs and ephemerides, which must maintain precise data for celestial navigation to work in a pre-technological age. Navigation is one of the most critical bodies of knowledge required for exploration and cartography.
Why is this significant? Because celestial navigation can only be done on a flat plane, meaning Earth is measured and navigated flat, thus rendering any notion of Heliocentrism untenable. Navigators accounted for precession long before the ideas of Heliocentrism were introduced. The horizon is used to acquire elevation angles. If there is any degree of curvature, then one could not acquire a 90˚ angle to the object of interest in the sky, as well as its geometric (ground) position, nor could one acquire an elevation angle to that object of interest. Subtracting the sum of those two angles from the interior of a triangle (180˚) give the remaining angle of that triangle.
The following is from study.com.
What instrument measures latitude and longitude?
A sextant is a navigational tool used by sailors to determine latitude and longitude. The tool uses internal mirrors to measure the angular difference between the sun or stars and the horizon to determine location.
How is latitude calculated?
Latitude can be found by comparing the location of Polaris (North Star) or the sun to the horizon. If Polaris is at an angle of 60° above the horizon, then the latitude is 60°N.
Using the sun, the latitude is the angle below vertical. If the sun is 40° above the horizon, then the latitude is 50° (90-40=50).
How is longitude measured?
Longitude is the angular distance of a location east or west of the Prime Meridian or Greenwich, UK. To measure longitude, compare the local time at noon to noon in Greenwich, UK.
Four minutes of time is equivalent to one degree of longitude. If the time in Greenwich is 12 minutes in the afternoon, then the local longitude is (12/4=3) or 3° West.
Trigonometry and triangulation require triangles. Three circles of equal elevation are required for triangulation, which means the process can only be done on a flat plane; not even a fraction of curvature can be allowed or there would be no baseline of equal elevation, thus no triangle.
The idea of precession and Heliocentrism have no correlation. Precession was written about in Arabic books during the 9th & 10th centuries, but the duration was inaccurate, meaning the astronomers of the time thought the cycle of precession lasted approximately 620 years in each direction. It was referred to as The 8th Sphere, also labeled Firmament, depicted in the following illustration from the 16th century.
The claim that the idea of precession was propagated to corroborate Heliocentrism is non sequitur. If precession weren’t real, there would’ve been no reason to employ Sosigenes to establish the Julian calendar, and there would’ve been no reason to improve upon that with the Gregorian calendar.
According to Pliny (Nat. Hist.), “There were three main schools: the Chaldaean, the Egyptian, and the Greek; and to these a fourth was added in our country by Caesar during his dictatorship, who, with the assistance of the learned astronomer Sosigenes, brought the separate years back into conformity with the course of the sun.”
The following citation will paint a picture for the conditions that necessitated recording the cosmos and how that system would evolve as recording instruments, and materials to record on, improved.
Lockyer wrote (Dawn Astr. p. 61), “If a star was chosen in or near the ecliptic, sooner or later the sun-light as well as the star-light would enter the temple, and the use of a solar temple might have thus been suggested even before the solstices or equinoxes had been thoroughly grasped.
“There is no doubt that if we are justified in assuming that the stars were first observed, the next thing that would strike the early astronomers would be the regularity of the annual movement of the sun; the critical times of the sun’s movements as related either to their agriculture, or their festivals, or to the year; the equinoxes and the solstices, would soon have revealed themselves to these early observers, if for no other reason than that they were connected in some way or other with some of the important conditions of their environment.
“After a certain time, solar temples, if built at all, would be oriented either to the sun at some critical time of the agricultural—or religious—year, or to the solstices and equinoxes. But at first, until the fixity of the sun’s yearly movements and especially the solstices and equinoxes had been recognised, it would have seemed as useless to direct a temple to the sun as to the moon. After a time, however, when the solstices and equinoxes had been made out, it would soon have been found that a temple once directed to the sun’s rising place at harvest or sowing time, or at a solstice or an equinox, would continue for a long period to mark those critical points in the sun’s yearly course; and when this yearly course had been finally made out it would soon be observed that the sun at any part of the agricultural year was as constant (indeed, as we now know, more constant) in its rising-and setting-place as a star.”
Again (Ib. p. 62.), “Now, in the earliest times, as I have said, the constant movements of the stars would have stood out in strong contrast to the inconstant movements of the sun, and I think that there can be little doubt that the first fixing of any point in the year was by the rising or setting of some star at sunrise—or possibly sunset.”
This begets the Royal Stars, also known as the Four Evangelists: St. Luke, St. Mark, St. John, and St. Matthew. For those who don’t think the Bible and religion are replete with astrotheology, it’ll benefit you to know why Luke is depicted with a Bull, Mark with a Lion, John with an Eagle, and Matthew with an Angel.
What was used before almanacs and ephemerides? The universal system of priestcraft. It’s not just for religion or governance. It served a function that was invaluable to navigation and agriculture. To learn more about it, invest in yourself and go through the Spirit Whirled series.
When you’re ready to learn about the empire that spread the system throughout the world, read The Real Universal Empire.
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