2 The time required for the sun to pass through one full zodiacal
segment of thirty degrees;
3 The time required for the sun to pass through two full zodiacal
segments (totalling sixty degrees);
4 The time required to bring about the ‘Great Return’4, i.e., for the sun
to shift three hundred and sixty degrees along the ecliptic, thus
fulfilling one complete precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’.
1 The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, author biography.
2 For example by Robert Bauval in The Orion Mystery, pp. 144-5.
3 The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, p. 174.
4 This phrase was coined by Jane Sellers, whom also detected the precessional
calculations embedded in the Osiris myth.
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Computing the Great Return
The precessional numbers highlighted by Sellers in the Osiris myth are
360, 72, 30 and 12. Most of them are found in a section of the myth
which provides us with biographical details of the various characters.
These have been conveniently summarized by E. A. Wallis Budge, formerly
keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum:
The goddess Nut, wife of the sun god Ra, was beloved by the god Geb. When Ra
discovered the intrigue he cursed his wife and declared that she should not be
delivered of a child in any month of any year. Then the god Thoth, who also loved
Nut, played at tables with the moon and won from her five whole days. These he
joined to the 360 days of which the year then consisted [emphasis added]. On the
first of these five days Osiris was brought forth; and at the moment of his birth a
voice was heard to proclaim that the lord of creation was born.5
Elsewhere the myth informs us that the 300-day year consists of ‘12
months of 30 days each’.6 And in general, as Sellers observes, ‘phrases
are used which prompt simple mental calculations and an attention to
numbers’.7
Thus far we have been provided with three of Sellers’s precessional
numbers: 360, 12 and 30. The fourth number, which occurs later in the
text, is by far the most important. As we saw in Chapter Nine, the evil
deity known as Set led a group of conspirators in a plot to kill Osiris. The
number of these conspirators was 72.
With this last number in hand, suggests Sellers, we are now in a
position to boot-up and set running an ancient computer programme:
12 = the number of constellations in the zodiac;
30 = the number of degrees allocated along the ecliptic to each
zodiacal constellation;
72 = the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a
precessional shift of one degree along the ecliptic;
360 = the total number of degrees in the ecliptic;
72 x 30 = 2160 (the number of years required for the sun to complete a
passage of 30 degrees along the ecliptic, i.e., to pass entirely through
any one of the 12 zodiacal constellations);
2160 x 12 (or 360 x 72) = 25,920 (the number of years in one complete
precessional cycle or ‘Great Year’, and thus the total number of years
required to bring about the ‘Great Return’).
5 The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Introduction, page XLIX.
6 Cited in The Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, p. 204.
7 Ibid.
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Other figures and combinations of figures also emerge, for example:
36, the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete a
precessional shift of half a degree along the ecliptic;
4320, the number of years required for the equinoctial sun to complete
a precessional shift of 60 degrees (i.e., two zodiacal constellations).
These, Sellers believes, constitute the basic ingredients of a precessional
code which appears again and again, with eerie persistence, in ancient
myths and sacred architecture. In common with much esoteric
numerology, it is a code in which it is permissible to shift decimal points
to left or right at will and to make use of almost any conceivable
combinations, permutations, multiplications, divisions and fractions of
precession of the equinoxes).
The pre-eminent number in the code is 72. To this is frequently added
36, making 108, and it is permissible to multiply 108 by 100 to get
10,800 or to divide it by 2 to get 54, which may then be multiplied by 10
and expressed as 540 (or as 54,000. or as 540,000, or as 5,400,000, and
so on). Also highly significant is 2160 (the number of years required for
the equinoctial point to transit one zodiacal constellation), which is
sometimes multiplied by 10 and by factors often (to give 216,000,
2,160,000, and so on) and sometimes by 2 to give 4320, or 43,200, or
432,000, or 4,320,000, ad infinition.
Better than Hipparchus
If Sellers is correct in her hypothesis that the calculus needed to produce
these numbers was deliberately encoded into the Osiris myth to convey
precessional information to initiates, we are confronted by an intriguing
anomaly. If they are indeed about precession, the numbers are out of
place in time. The science they contain is too advanced for them to have
been calculated by any known civilization of antiquity.
Let us not forget that they occur in a myth which is present at the very
dawn of writing in Egypt (indeed elements of the Osiris story are to be
found in the Pyramid Texts dating back to around 2450 BC, in a context
which suggests that they were exceedingly old even then8). Hipparchus,
the so-called discoverer of precession lived in the second century BC. He
proposed a value of 45 or 46 seconds of arc for one year of precessional
motion. These figures yield a one-degree shift along the ecliptic in 80
years (at 45 arc seconds per annum), and in 78.26 years (at 46 arc
8 Ibid., pp. 125-6ff; see also The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts.
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seconds per annum). The true figure, as calculated by twentieth century
science, is 71.6 years.9 If Sellers’s theory is correct, therefore, the ‘Osiris
numbers’, which give a value of 72 years, are significantly more accurate
than those of Hipparchus. Indeed, within the obvious confines imposed
by narrative structure, it is difficult to see how the number 72 could have
been improved upon, even if the more precise figure had been known to
the ancient myth-makers. One can hardly insert 71.6 conspirators into a
story, but 72 will fit comfortably.
Working from this rounded-up figure, the Osiris myth is capable of
yielding a value of 2160 years for a precessional shift through one
complete house of the zodiac. The correct figure, according to today’s
calculations, is 2148 years.10 The Hipparchus figures are 2400 years and
2347.8 years respectively. Finally, Osiris enables us to calculate 25,920
as the number of years required for the fulfillment of a complete
precessional cycle through 12 houses of the zodiac. Hipparchus gives us
either 28,800 or 28,173.6 years. The correct figure, by
today’s estimates,
is 25,776 years.11 The Hipparchus calculations for the Great Return are
therefore around 3000 years out of kilter. The Osiris calculations miss
the true figure by only 144 years, and may well do so because the
narrative context forced a rounding-up of the base number from the
correct value of 71.6 to a more workable figure of 72.
All this, however, assumes that Sellers is right to suppose that the
numbers 360, 72, 30 and 12 did not find their way into the Osiris myth
by chance but were placed there deliberately by people who understood—
and had accurately measured—precession.
Is Sellers right?
Times of decay
The Osiris myth is not the only one to incorporate the calculus for
precession. The relevant numbers keep surfacing in various forms,
multiples and combinations, all over the ancient world.
An example was given in Chapter Thirty-three—the Norse myth of the
432,000 fighters who sallied forth from Valhalla to do battle with ‘the
Wolf’. A glance back at that myth shows that it contains several
permutations of ‘precessional numbers’.
Likewise, as we saw in Chapter Twenty-four, ancient Chinese traditions
referring to a universal cataclysm were said to have been written down in
a great text consisting of precisely 4320 volumes.
Thousands of miles away, is it a coincidence that the Babylonian
historian Berossus (third century BC) ascribed a total reign of 432,000
9 Death of Gods in Ancient Egypt, p. 205.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
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years to the mythical kings who ruled the land of Sumer before the flood?
And is it likewise a coincidence that this same Berossus ascribed
2,160,000 years to the period ‘between creation and universal
catastrophe’?12
Do the myths of ancient Amerindian peoples like the Maya also contain
or enable us to compute numbers such as 72, 2160, 4320, etc. We shall
probably never know, thanks to the conquistadores and zealous friars
who destroyed the traditional heritage of Central America and left us so
little to work with. What we can say, however, is that the relevant
numbers do turn up, in relative profusion, in the Mayan Long Count
calendar. Details of that calendar were given in Chapter Twenty-one. The
numerals necessary for calculating precession are found there in these
formulae: 1 Katun = 7200 days; 1 Tun = 360 days; 2 Tuns = 720 days; 5
Baktuns = 720,000 days; 5 Katuns = 36,000 days; 6 Katuns = 43,200
days; 6 Tuns = 2160 days; 15 Katuns = 2,160,000 days.13
Nor does it seem that Sellers’s ‘code’ is confined to mythology. In the
jungles of Kampuchea the temple complex of Angkor looks as though it
could have been purpose-built as a precessional metaphor. It has, for
example, five gates to each of which leads a road bridging the crocodileinfested moat that surrounds the whole site. Each of these roads is
bordered by a row of gigantic stone figures, 108 per avenue, 54 on each
side (540 statues in all) and each row carries a huge Naga serpent.
Furthermore, as Santillana and von Dechend point out in Hamlet’s Mill,
the figures do not ‘carry’ the serpent but are shown to ‘pull’ it, which
indicates that these 540 statues are ‘churning the Milky Ocean’. The
whole of Angkor ‘thus turns out to be a colossal model set up with true
Hindu fantasy and incongruousness’ to express the idea of precession.14
12 Ibid., p. 196.
13 Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico, p. 143.
14 Hamlet’s Mill, pp. 162-3; see also Atlas of Mysterious Places, pp. 168-70.
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Churning the Milky Ocean, one of the several ‘thought tools’ for
precession encountered in ancient myths.
The same may be true of Java’s famous temple of Borobudur, with its
72 bell-shaped stupas, and perhaps also of the megaliths of Baalbeck in
the Lebanon—which are thought to be the world’s biggest blocks of cut
stone. Long predating Roman and Greek structures on the site, the three
that make up the so-called ‘Trilithion’ are as tall as five-storey buildings
and weigh over 600 tons each. A fourth megalith is almost 80 feet in
length and weighs 1100 tons. Amazingly these giant blocks were cut,
perfectly-shaped and somehow transported to Baalbeck from a quarry
several miles away. In addition they were skillfully incorporated, at a
considerable height above ground-level into the retaining walls of a
magnificient temple. This temple was surrounded by 54 columns of
immense size and height.15
15 See, for example, Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients, Time-Life Books, 1990, p. 65.
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In the subcontinent of India (where the Orion constellation is known as
Kal-Purush, meaning Time-Man16), we find that Sellers’s Osiris numbers
are transmitted through a wide range of media in ways increasingly
difficult to ascribe to chance. There are, for instance, 10,800 bricks in the
Agnicayana, the Indian fire altar. There are 10,800 stanzas in the
Rigveda, the most ancient of the Vedic texts and a rich repository of
Indian mythology. Each stanza is made up of 40 syllables with the result
that the entire composition consists of 432,000 syllables ... no more, and
no less.17 And in Rigveda 1:164 (a typical stanza) we read of ‘the 12spoked wheel in which 720 sons of Agni are established’.18
In the Hebrew Cabala there are 72 angels through whom the Sephiroth
(divine powers) may be approached, or invoked, by those who know their
names and numbers.19 Rosicrucian tradition speaks of cycles of 108 years
(72 plus 36) according to which the secret brotherhood makes its
influence felt.20 Similarly the number 72 and its permutations and
subdivisions are of great significance to the Chinese secret societies
known as Triads. An ancient ritual requires that each candidate for
initiation pay a fee including ‘360 cash for “making clothes”, 108 cash
“for the purse”, 72 cash for instruction, and 36 cash for decapitating the
“traitorous subject”.’21 The ‘cash’ (the old universal brass coin of China
with a square hole in the centre) is of course no longer in circulation but
the numbers passed down in the ritual since times immemorial have
survived. Thus in modern Singapore, candidates for Triad membership
pay an entrance fee which is calculated according to their financial
circumstances but which must always consist of multiples of $1.80,
$3.60, $7.20, $10.80 (and thus, $18, $36, $72, $108.00, or $360, $720,
$1,080, and so on.22
Of all the secret societies, the most mysterious and archaic by far is
undoubtedly the Hung League, which scholars believe to be ‘the
depository of the old religion of the Chinese’.23 In one Hung initiation
ritual the neophyte is put through a question and answer session that
goes:
Q. What did you see on your walk?
16 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Sister Nivedita, Myths of the Hindus and Buddhists,
George G. Harrap and Compa
ny, London, 1913, p. 384.
17 Hamlet’s Mill, p. 162.
18 Rig Veda, 1:164, cited in The Arctic Home in the Vedas, p. 168.
19 Frances A. Yates, Girodano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, the University of
Chicago Press, 1991, p. 93.
20 Personal communication from AMORC, San Jose, California, November 1994.
21 Leon Comber, The Traditional Mysteries of the Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya,
Eastern Universities Press, Singapore, 1961, p. 52.
22 Ibid., p. 53.
23 Gustav Schlegel, The Hung League, Tynron Press, Scotland, 1991 (first published
1866), Introduction, p. XXXVII.
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A. I saw two pots with red bamboo.
Q. Do you know how many plants there were?
A. In one pot were 36 and in the other 72 plants, together 108.
Q. Did you take home some of them for your use?
A. Yes, I took home 108 plants ...
Q. How can you prove that?
A. I can prove it by a verse.
Q. How does this verse run?
A. The red bamboo from Canton is rare in the world.
In the groves are 36 and 72.
Who in the world knows the meaning of this?
When we have set to work we will know the secret.
The atmosphere of intrigue that such passages generate is accentuated
by the reticent behaviour of the Hung League itself, an organization
resembling the medieval European Order of the Knights Templar (and the
higher degrees of modern Freemasonry) in many ways that are beyond
the remit of this book to describe.24 It is intriguing, too, that the Chinese
character Hung, composed of water and many, signifies inundation, i.e.
the Flood.
Finally, returning to India, let us note the content of the sacred
scriptures known as the Puranas. These speak of four ‘ages of the earth’,
called Yugas, which together are said to extend to 12,000 ‘divine years’.
The respective durations of these epochs, in ‘divine years’, are Krita Yuga
= 4800; Treta Yuga = 3600; Davpara Yuga = 2400; Kali Yuga = 1200.25
The Puranas also tell us that ‘one year of the mortals is equal to one
day of the gods’.26 Furthermore, and exactly as in the Osiris myth, we
discover that the number of days in the years of both gods and mortals
has been artificially set at 360, so one year of the gods is equivalent to