Welcome again from Adrian Gilbert. Gradually, as you will perhaps have seen, my website is taking shape. This is just as well as I still have much information to put up and not much time in which to do it. So please bookmark the letters index page and come back to visit regularly. You never know what you might find.
For those of you interested in astronomy and the cosmic symbolism of the planets, this last few weeks has been quite special. You may have noticed a very bright star dominating the sky and visible throughout most of the night. This is actually not a star but rather the planet Jupiter and it really does look spectacular. Jupiter is now in the sign of Pisces, the fish. Close by it but not quite as bright is the other great giant of our solar system, the planet Saturn. It can be seen framed by the stars of Aries.As Jupiter moves faster than Saturn, at the end of next May these two planets will come into conjunction just between Aries and Taurus. Conjunctions between these two, slow moving planets are spectacular affairs that only occur once every twenty years and only do so in roughly the same place in the sky every sixty years. Thus the last such conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in this part of the sky (actually in Aries itself) occurred in August 1940.
This sixty year cycle of conjunctions, with its twenty year divisions, was considered to be most important by the ancient Babylonians to whom we owe much of our star-lore as well as our method of dividing the hour into sixty minutes and the minute into sixty seconds. They believed that each of the planets was the throne of a god. The gods were the governors over human affairs and the visible presence in the sky of his or her planet represented a strengthening of their influence. When two or more planets came together this symbolised a meeting of the gods concerned. The Babylonians, like the Magi of Persia, watched the movements of Jupiter and Saturn very closely indeed. They would have been well aware of the conjunction that took place between them in 7 BC. It is my contention, documented in Magi that it was this alignment of Jupiter and Saturn which excited the wise men of the time and was seen as heralding the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. This, of course is not a new theory but was first suggested in 1613 by none other than the father of modern astronomy, Johannes Kepler. Of course this is still a matter of great debate and last year there was published another book (by UK astronomer Percy Seymour) suggesting that the star of the Magi was a conjunction of Venus with Jupiter that took place in in the sign of Virgo in early November 2 BC.
I cannot agree with this theory for several reasons. First of all because Venus is a fast moving planet it passes Jupiter every year so that such a conjunction, unless it is particularly close (which this one was not) is nothing special. Secondly the Gospel story tells us that King Herod was alive at the time of Jesus's birth so that Mary and Joseph had to flee to Egypt to avoid his wrath. As we know from history that Herod died in 4 BC, the birth had to have taken place before this date. Thirdly, the date I gave of 29 July 7 BC ties the story of the miraculous birth to a set of very powerful signs in the sky over and above the actual conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. On that day, at dawn, there would have been seen spread across the sky a specific selection of stars which were close analogues of the birth event. In a sense the Bethlehem story was written in the stars in a most persuasive way. As this is all included (or soon will be) on this website in the section devoted to my book Magi I won't go into the symbolism involved here. However, what might be of interest to some people is that between now and the end of January say is a very good time to view these stars for yourself. With Jupiter and Saturn so bright in the sky you can imagine yourself as one of the Magi journeying from Mesopotamia or even beyond to visit the baby Jesus for Christmas. I shall be doing one better, for shortly I shall be going to Israel again and hopefully, clear skies willing, will be able to look at the stars there as they repeat their message over Jerusalem.
Have a good November and on this, Armistice Day, let us remember those whose lives were cut short not just in the Great War as it was then called but in all the terrible conflicts that have characterised the 20th century. Let us wish for better things in the coming new age of the 21st.
Best wishes,
Adrian G. Gilbert.
P.S. For those of you astrology buffs who think I must have gone mad saying that Jupiter is currently in Pisces when you ephemeris tells you it is is in Aries let me assure you I haven't. It is all to do with that old bugbear ‘the precession of the equinoxes’. Astrologers work with the so-called tropical zodiac. For them the astrological year begins with the sign of Aries, the sun being at 0° of Aries on the spring equinox. Unfortunately, though this was true astronomically speaking at the time of Ptolemy of Alexandria and back as far as about 1800 BC, it is no longer so and hasn't been for the past two thousand years. Because of the wobble of the earth the actual position of the sun at the equinox has been slipping back through the zodiac. It has now retrogressed about a sign and is currently towards the end of Pisces and near to Aquarius. This is the so-called dawning of the Age of Aquarius that was sung about in the musical Hair. What all this means is that the astrological or "tropical" zodiac is out of kilter by one sign with the "sidereal" zodiac of stars as they actually appear. Thus although I was born a Leo astrologically speaking, in point of fact the sun was really in the sign of Cancer on my date of birth: 26 July 1949. Fortunately this is not a huge problem to astrologers as what interests them most are the angles of the planets from one another and their positions in relation to the equinoctial station of the sun. Though they talk about "Aries", "Leo" and the rest, they are not really concerned with the starry background as such but rather with an imaginary zodiac of twelve signs beginning with 0°Aries at the Spring equinox.
My work—and this will be seen particularly in my forthcoming book: Signs in the Sky—is concerned with the sidereal zodiac, i.e. the real signs as they appear in the sky today. I therefore talk about Jupiter being in Pisces because that, sidereally speaking, is where it actually can be seen in the sky today even though astrologers, who use the tropical zodiac, say it is currently in Aries. The same can be said of Saturn which sidereally speaking is actually in Aries and not in Taurus.
Complicated isn't it? Perhaps we need some great genius to come forward and design us a new astrology for a new millennium. But there again, if the earth's pole shifts in the next few years, as many are now predicting, this will be the least of our worries. Who knows where the spring equinox might end up after such an event.