origins of religion.

[_Z_]

juantoo3
‘the ring of justice’ i call it, where karma is a circle and what you put in comes back around, like in the saying ‘what goes around comes around’.
i thought the egyptians were of indo-european descendants not africans.

tao equus, hello!
upon reflection i have heard of some cities in african largely built with stone baked brick if i remember correctly - and hence they don’t last long once abandoned.
when juatoo3 said about Ankor Wat it brought the idea that perhaps the olmecs were from that part of asia too maybe? or perhaps there was a blend as with most cases. i don’t know where e.g. the aztecs get their big noses - i don’t think the normans or romans ever invaded.
it would be great if you could find some stuff on very ancient astrology. the egyptian book of the dead gives clues to how diverse this field is, in one image of a zodiacal disc there is a leg in the middle of the image - ha when i first saw that i wondered what the hell it could mean, i think it is something to do with how they associated spiritual aspects with certain parts of the body or a given gods body. you would have thought that they would at least have an eye in the middle not a flaming leg!

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Z!

Originally Posted by _Z_

juantoo3
‘the ring of justice’ i call it, where karma is a circle and what you put in comes back around, like in the saying ‘what goes around comes around’.
i thought the egyptians were of indo-european descendants not africans.

tao equus, hello!
upon reflection i have heard of some cities in african largely built with stone baked brick if i remember correctly - and hence they don’t last long once abandoned.
when juatoo3 said about Ankor Wat it brought the idea that perhaps the olmecs were from that part of asia too maybe? or perhaps there was a blend as with most cases. i don’t know where e.g. the aztecs get their big noses - i don’t think the normans or romans ever invaded.
it would be great if you could find some stuff on very ancient astrology. the egyptian book of the dead gives clues to how diverse this field is, in one image of a zodiacal disc there is a leg in the middle of the image - ha when i first saw that i wondered what the hell it could mean, i think it is something to do with how they associated spiritual aspects with certain parts of the body or a given gods body. you would have thought that they would at least have an eye in the middle not a flaming leg!

Haven't seen him in quite a while now, but there was a guy on here for a long time when I first got here who went by the screen name "nogodnomasters". He seemed to be pretty well up on a lot of the ancient astrology stuff, far more than I had a stomach for. You might try looking around for his old stuff here, or maybe even try emailing or PM'ing him, he would probably jump at the chance to share some of his knowledge in this area.

[Tao_Equus]

Well this is really frustrating. For 3 points I have spent hours of fruitless search online.
The first is this Congo Jungle wall, which I remember vividly because it made some joke about it not being to keep out King Kong, but elephants. I have searched most of the archives of my usual sources but have come up blank. Sorry.

My second one is an early Taoist reference to the origins of astrology being millenia old, this was in a book dated at about 2400bc. Again its not where I expected to find it in the writings of Lao Tzu and so I will need to read more/ other books to pin it down. But from memory the reference made links astrology to the very dawn of human conciousness.

The third point and hardest for me to delve into is references to the origins of astrology in the Jyotisha, the ancient Indian subcontinental version of this old science. Here, as I recal, there are references to an ancient civilisation that was global in span and had technologies that allowed flight by balloon. This race was said to have handed down astrology to India, but this lost race claimed astrology was even then ancient and passed to them by the Gods. This race if I remember right was said to have met its end some 14-16000 years ago.

The remarkable thing for me about astrology is its consistant methodology throughout the independent regions in which it developed. This suggests to me that it far far precedes the written history of it and most likely has a single source. Of course our ancient ancestors, well before agriculture, would have looked to the night heavens as a source of knowledge. The nomadic/ semi-nomadic lifestyles of the ancients had to have some way to know when it was time to move from one area to another and the rising and setting of particular stars or constellations is a very obvious way of doing this. I personaly believe this to be at its root. The tribal 'spiritualist' most likely would have been charged with this knowledge and, in these close knit communities, perhaps over the millenia they began to notice patterns and characteristics in the lives of people born at different times. This gradualy developed into the birth chart astrology we have today. Whether it is true...or works... is another matter. But if true then it would likely have been incorporated into the 'spiritual' understanding of these peoples as the will of the gods. And it is only very recently that it has seen any separation from the religious sphere at all.

I find it a bit frustrating that the written history of man has so few and such enigmatic reference to the subject. I think it to possibly be a key indicator of a pre-civilisation civilisation because of its consistancy as stated above. This is perhaps of more interest to me personaly than its use as a form of divination. I would love to know what unpublished works the vatican has on it. Anyhow enough unsubstantiated rambling.

TE

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Tao Equus!

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Well this is really frustrating. For 3 points I have spent hours of fruitless search online.

Don't you just hate when that happens?

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

The first is this Congo Jungle wall, which I remember vividly because it made some joke about it not being to keep out King Kong, but elephants.

Hmmm, I was thinking maybe to keep out mokele mbembe, kinda like how the Chinese built the Great Wall to keep out dragons (or so some say...).

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Tao!

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Anyhow enough unsubstantiated rambling.

What would the world be without unsubstantiated ramblings? I appreciate yours.

[_Z_]

hi tao eq

its frustrating when you find info along the way then just when you wish to use it, it has gone - i am always doing that . good luck with your search!
i would agree that it appears one culture would have spread astrology, i would also think that it crossed cultures too, just as certain elements of the books of the dead have done so without the cultures even meeting. yes, nomads probably had a lot to do with it as you say.
you know science makes all these claims about astrology being incorrect, yet the egyptians knew about the procession of the equinoxes but still continued regardless. secondly it is a matter of perspective, the sun may not go around the earth but to us it does - think of this as like a circle of people with you at the centre, it doesn’t matter how they move only how they relate to you. thirdly and most importantly, all of the arguments against astrology can be resolved if we imagine it as a measure and understanding of time,so that it is the periods of elapsed time that count rather than the movement of the stars. we may then say that astrology is universal and hence the stars and planets will tend towards the workings of these time cycles - this is connected with the synchronicity by which the earth sun and moon correlate. i think you could go anywhere in the universe and see these connections albeit in different translations of the language.
yes i am sure that much info has been destroyed and transformed by successive cultures and religions. i think the hebrews even had a form of astrology at one time, i don’t understand why it was removed - perhaps because of its references to many gods, but one may see it as the workings of a single god if we wish.

thanks
Z

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Z!

Originally Posted by _Z_

i think the hebrews even had a form of astrology at one time, i don’t understand why it was removed - perhaps because of its references to many gods, but one may see it as the workings of a single god if we wish.

It is my understanding the Hebrews did (do) have a form of astrology, even prior to the Babylonian captivity. I am not conversant about it though, you might try asking Bananabrain or Dauer.

[Francis king]

as far as I know the indo-european and aryan hypothesis favoured by victorian era intellectuals like max muller et al which suggests that all "indo-european" languages are such due to migration from asia towards the west is not upheld by all scholars and many ppl now feel that it is only as a result of western bias that the indo-european hypothesis was given any merit and taken so seriously for so long...

the term indo-european only originated in the victorian era, and was not used everywhere... germans, for instance, referred to our common roots as indo-germanic, and the irish referred to it as indo-celtic...

and so maybe it is ethnocentrism which is responsible for our indo-european hypothesis, not actuality...

yes, the Indus valley bore the fruit of ancient civilisations like Harappa, but ppl now think that maybe Harappa was a late Vedic urban settlement, and maybe not so ancient, after all...

my opinion is that when our ancestors all lived on the one land mass, before the continents where formed, the competition for resources had already ensured that these simians had migrated widely, eventually the continents shifted into almost the position they are in now, and the simians adapted to their enviroments over time to become seperate ppls with the diversity of racial characteristics we have today...

a fox is red in England, yet in the Artic circle his ears are smaller, his fur is white and much thicker, in the Gobi desert his ears are bigger, his fur is sandy... they are all the same species, they are all foxes, but they are different... why should ppl be any different?

astrology smology... man was desperate to make sense of the world, and so he looked to the heavens...

most ancient cultures have the same kind of gods- gods of the sun, gods of the rain, moon, etc, etc... why is that?

astrology and the gregorian calendar do not mix... most primitive ppl eventually came to look to the celestial bodies for portends and signs yet really this came from man's need to mark and define time, to know when it was best to cross a river, to know when it was most beneficial to plant his crops...

a big rock in the sky chooses my fate?

I thought that was my job...

[Tao_Equus]

So Francis are you an Aries or a Scorpio?

[_Z_]

francis, hi
yes indo european is very vague.

my opinion is that when our ancestors all lived on the one land mass, before the continents where formed

i thought the single land mass was millions of years ago, from before man even existed?

why should ppl be any different?

well a teacher at another forum seamed to think that there is no such thing as race - what he said made sense and also didn’t, but he quoted over 250 different scientific groups that agreed with this suspiciously noble notion. i agree with you though.

astrology smology... man was desperate to make sense of the world, and so he looked to the heavens...

father time would disagree as would i - i think there is more to time than a simple linear transformation process e.g. fate, connections and synchronicity. do you really believe reality is so concrete? i don’t really want to argue this here as i have just had two nights of cutthroat debating with those of the dawkins faith - me Vs loads of them [guess whom won ] heres a small part of my theory of ‘universal astrology’;

The Pandora cypher.
The hidden way of numbers; the chart below shows how things ‘fall into place’ by an invisible language of sequences.
in order to understand the beginnings of how this universal ‘language’ works, we must first understand that it does not only work in linear time but in all time and that it is entire. All things are not created at
once, if you create all things in an instant then existence would be like a painting of everything, still and unchanging with no room left for new occurrences or evolutions. To create everything one must create as you go – so to say, let us think of it as like a film rather than a still image, thence all things would be created in their ‘place’, often we have to destroy to create anew with one thing replacing the previous. I will use an analogy of boxes to represent this, as i like the idea of things kind of falling into place as time evolves, as if there is an invisible hand that floats over the boxes casting the seeds of time, filling them and taking form within their slot in events; history/coincidence/evolution.
It is not that say the number ‘23’ is all important nor any other number, what matters is ‘number evolutions’; in the evolution of the universe and of energy forms, the simpler natures belong to early numbers e.g. Light has seven [visible] or nine [actual] aspects. Simply put, if you begin an evolution it will follow a pattern simply because it begins [number 1] then progresses, certain natures will fall to their respective numbers and some things will migrate towards given numbers. It is as if a form of magnetism builds around some kinds of events forming polarities in time, these range from the physical to the holistic – after all an event is an event! Here we may begin to see how some [not all] coincidences may be formed of such attractions.



We may now form the next layer and tie event magnetism with the ideas represented in the concepts of ‘a single thought that lasts forever’ the ‘dance the eternal’ and ‘painting masterpieces in the air’ notions [threads].

[Francis king]

yes, there is an interplay of forces, an established realationship between the zeitgeist, history and individual activity, yet I do still feel that evolution is a basically linear process and man creates only from necessity...

the number 23 means nothing to me, except it shows theres twenty-three of something... if u only have 22 things, you don't need a number 23... yes, of course, 23 was there, in its potentiality, but by itself it is inert and invaluable, it is only when we use it does it become important...

I'm assuming u dig string theory... lol... heavy, man...

with regards to astrology...who determines which celestial bodies are worthy of inclusion?

we can't see Pluto from earth without good equipment, and the ancients did not have it, we then discover it, we include it in the astrology tables, and now we're told that actually, we're down-grading it from planet status... what happens when our sun dies? what will happen to all the Leos?

for something like astrological predictives to be so accurate and infalliable I would expect it's parameters to be relatively constant, otherwise, we are potentially erroneously attributing A to B when it represents an actual unknown A2. If we do not have the capacity to determine the parameters of A2, that is not to say A2 does not exist, just we don't know about it yet...

and, incidentally... tau... I'm a virgo...

[Tao_Equus]

Lol...ok Francis.....and would you say you are typical of a Virgo?

[_Z_]

francis, hi

yet I do still feel that evolution is a basically linear process and man creates only from necessity

it manifests as a linear process indeed, would you not say that causality applies here too and in a universal sense. if you remember my ‘humanaive’ thread, i touched upon this as i feel there are certain things that are specific and others that have a universal nature. humanity is one such thing in the wider sense of the term; here we may thing of human-like creatures being a natural and inevitable aspect of evolution. the human form is simply one of if not the most dextrous form of all forms, thence it follows that it will eventually be arrived at.
i would also say that there is an original state for all things as i believe ‘an empty glass cannot be filled with nothing’, thus in short all aspects of evolution and transformation, along with its included history have there origins and potentials. secondly there are things which occur as a result of other manifestations and this is where fate comes in, it may not be so that everything has its place in the original container of essences - so to say. so here we find existences that arise on the back of created existences yet still have an essence in the universal scheme of things although they don’t have potential in the original state. it is a little like love, two people meet, we may not say that in the original scheme of things they are destined to meet as causality may have an effect on this kind of thing, yet we may perhaps say that the energy which exists between the two lovers - that tingling in the stomach - is eternal like a kind of magnetism by which things eventually meet and coincidence etc, falls into place in such a way as to bring these energies together if not purely by there own volition.

the 23 thing is rather vague - i am still working on that as i agree with what you are saying here. it is the same with fibonacci numbers, it is logical that in a universe of two’s i.e. males and females, then there will follow a birthing sequence that fits to the theory.

with regards to astrology...who determines which celestial bodies are worthy of inclusion?

i would say all bodies are worthy respectively to their proximity to us here on earth or any given centre. it is simply like a room full of people, the ones nearest to you and the ones that ‘match’ or connect with you are the ones that make a difference. if that room is as large as the solar system then sure pluto is the quit one over in the corner and the zodiac has only genral influence rather than each star thereof having specific influence like a planet would.
when the sun dies there wont be any leo's in this part of the galaxy! but i get your point; if one were born on mars then earth would be a planetary influence so what would you be if born in the time of aries or scorpio? this is why i am beginning to see it purely in terms of time i.e. the part/segment of the year rather than the position of the stars. as i said above the movements of stars and planets are equally affected as we are, yet also effected by forces of the universe. we may equally ask why the earth moon and sun are perfectly positioned for an eclipse to arise? there is i am sure you will agree, some kind of synchronicity arising here.


tao equus
typical virgo eh, he must have everything perfectly so.
this points to why i and many others for many thousands of years have believed in astrology, we are not dumb, it just seams that no matter how much we question it, it still persists - and believe me, i have questioned it!

.

[Vajradhara]

with regards to the origins of the various sorts of humans we see today, i would encourage the interested reader to read this link:

Documentary Redraws Humans' Family Tree

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/...hic/atlas.html

and to invistigate a scientist named Spencer Wells:

SCIENCE & NATURE: The Ultimate Genealogist

metta,

~v

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Vajra!

Thank you very much, this is an awesome contribution to this thread!

Originally Posted by Vajradhara

with regards to the origins of the various sorts of humans we see today, i would encourage the interested reader to read this link:

Documentary Redraws Humans' Family Tree

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/...hic/atlas.html

and to invistigate a scientist named Spencer Wells:

SCIENCE & NATURE: The Ultimate Genealogist

metta,

~v