Historic Alignments
Observing >
For millennia the sun, moon, planets, and stars have served as guideposts for humans. In the next several weeks we’ll see several examples of how the heavens influence us even today.
PLANETARY ALIGNMENT ON APRIL 22nd
Passover and Easter rely heavily on the movements of heavenly
orbs to determine their dates, if not their significance.
Long ago the Hebrew people would begin their year in the month of Nisan.
Nisan would start on the new moon that followed the spring equinox. Two
weeks later on 14 Nisan, which happened near the full moon, they would
remember Passover. This commemorated the eventful night thousands of years
ago in Egypt when the angel of death “passed over” the Hebrew
houses marked with the blood of a lamb.
Easter’s date is tightly tied to Passover’s. Jesus of Nazareth
was killed at Passover in about A.D. 33. Christians celebrate his resurrection
from the dead several days later.
This Tuesday is the first full moon following last month’s equinox;
Passover is celebrated Thursday; Easter on Sunday. Next year we’ll
have different moons, so a whole new set of dates for these holidays.
Some look to the skies not for religious celebration but for counsel or
prognostication. Planetary alignments, like the much heralded one happening
now and climaxing around May 5th, have been extraordinarily influential
for thousands of years as signs from the heavens.
For
the ancient Chinese it was believed that Heaven declared both the beginning
of time and the start of the mighty Hsia dynasty in an incredibly
tight planetary grouping on February 26, 1953 B.C.
The Shang and the Chou dynasties were also ushered in on
planetary get-togethers, seen by the Chinese as “Mandates from Heaven.”
In 1226, the Mongolian leader/genius/friend-of-no-one,
Genghis Khan, spared the lives of an estimated 100,000 people simply
because of the “bad omen” of a planetary alignment that year.
Twenty million other victims of Khan weren’t so fortunate.
If you think that we are above all this in our “enlightened”
age, think again. Just 20 years ago, in 1982, when the planets were in
a zig-zag “line” there were fears by some not familiar with
the laws of nature that the united gravitational effect of the planets
would get the sun all hot and bothered. Somehow Earth would get all shook
up with California rocking and rolling right into the ocean. Needless
to say...
And
now, just weeks away from the next big alignment, books, websites, and
fringe lunatics are again heralding the end of the age.
Solar system bodies influence us, to be sure. The sun keeps us warm and
alive, asteroids crash into us occasionally with mass extinction force,
Jupiter and Saturn protect us from many incoming comets, and without the
Moon to stabilize us we wouldn’t be here.
But there is no evidence we will suffer anything but an attack of romanticism
next month with our pretty planets all in a row.
If you are interested, the details of the historic alignments are covered
in detail in the May issue of Sky & Telescope, and I’ll have
charts and QuickTime movies of those planetary arrangements and more at
firstlightastro.com/icolumn.html.
Here in this column next time, we’ll discuss briefly what sort of
destruction truly awaits us next month - if any.
Until then, happy holidays and clear skies!
QuickTime animations of April-May movements of the planets
>> From Earth's
point-of-view (533K)
>> From above
the Solar System (910K)
View Khan's alignment
Posted by Administrator at 2000.04.16 09:40 AM | Comments (0)
