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THE MOON IN ANCIENT HISTORY


Ancient Calendars

Ancient Observatories

Five hundred million years ago, the Moon summoned life out of its first home, the sea, and led it onto the empty land. For as it drew the tides across the barren continents of primeval earth, their daily rhythm exposed to sun and air, most creatures of the shallows perished—but some adapted to the new and hostile environment. The conquest of the land had begun.
We shall never know when this happened, on the shores of what vanished sea. There were no eyes or cameras present to record so obscure, so inconspicuous an event. Now, the Moon calls again—and this time life responds with a roar that shakes earth and sky.

By Arthur C. Clarke. "L'envoi" from the epilogue of "First on the Moon".


The shifting patterns from light and dark, heat and cold, and the cyclical paths of the Sun, Moon, stars, and eclipses were pondered ever since our primeval ancestors first gazed out at the starry heavens. Their daily rhythm ruled each of the various stages of life, and their very survival.

Ancient cultures considered the flow of time to be a circle without beginning or end. Since people were mostly farmers, hunters and shepherds, they lived and worked closer to nature than in ages past. It was important that they knew the 'lore of the land' just to survive. They observed that the various phases the moon passed through in a month coincided with events transpiring in their environment. To this end, they learned to plant, fish, harvest, hunt, and make predictions, all by the light of the silvery moon.

Humanity seemed very little in control of the divine laws of nature. There were major and minor cycles of experience, and the mysteries of the heavens were a revelation of some divine principle of which they were a part. The ebb and flow of the seasons reflected life as a whole, in life, death, growth, rebirth and change. This was revealed to humanity in the metaphor of the Gods. They also paid careful attention to the eclipses of the Sun and Moon. Their basic assumption was that there is a sequence of consequences between events in the heavens and events occurring on the earth. ("As above, so below".) These observations formed the universal laws that are the foundations of ancient wisdom.

Studying these observations also meant that precise measurements needed to be kept and observatories needed to be established to measure these cycles. Refer to the following links:

Ancient Calendars And Ancient Observatories



 


The Moon and the Sun have been charged with certain attributes ever since the dawn of time. The Moon was the first universal measurer of time. The Moon symbolizes time, fate, spinning, wheels, weaving, cauldrons, and of course the Great Mother or feminine influence.

The cycles of the heavens are symbolized in the Medicine Wheel of the American Indian Tribes; the Egyptian Wheel of the Law; and the Tibetan Prayer Wheel, all of which the Moon is an integral part. In Astrology, the Moon is sometimes said to symbolize the horoscope itself. And of course it rules the astrological sign of Cancer.

 

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