Great Year

Abstract: The precession of the equinoxes and the myths that it has produced have been studied by George de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet’s Mill and Thomas D. Worthen in The Myth of Replacement . In this study, I examine its role in Finnegans Wake . The great year that corresponds to the precessional cycle and the myth of replacement that arises from the replacement of one pole star with another are, in the context of the Wake , another way of telling the story of generational conflict and cyclical return. I also analyze the appearance in the Wake of such authors as Plato, Cicero, Giordano Bruno, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, and W. B. Yeats whose representations of cyclical change drew on the mythology of the precession. Finally, I show how such heroes of the precession as Noah, Manu, and Arthur who survive the flood of chaos—the chaotic period between pole stars and between eras—become, in the Wake , avatars of HCE in his struggle to rear his kingdom on the ruins of time.

Abstract: The Anno Domini yearly count, invented in the beginning of the sixth century, was influenced by mixture of ancient world concepts, astronomical aspects, calendrical cycles, and apocalyptic teleology. AD counts the years since a date of Christ’s fictitious incarnation at the former annual vernal equinox on 25th March and was presented by Dionysius Exiguus as a new Easter computus titled “CYCLUS DECEMNOVENNALIS DIONYSII”. AD was invented, because the Cosmic Year 6000 of Julius Sextus Africanus’ chronicle was reached and caused end-time fever. Based on doctrines of late antiquity like the Great Year with the eternal return, millennialism, the Gospels, and the Apocalypse the AD years focused on the world’s end at an alignment of all planets in year 2000 of the newly invented count. The date of Christ’s incarnation was adjusted by the medieval value of precession 2000 years before that alignment. This article is a work in process of the book STARTIME (Rothwangl, soon published) and demonstrates that the dating of Christ’s incarnation by the Anno Domini Years is the result of a cosmological and astrological quest for the world’s end in the world view of late antiquity and early Christianity. The aim of the quest was to find a future alignment of all classical planets, which would mark the end of the world according the Great Year doctrine. After having forecast such an alignment, due to the astrological concept of the precessional ages and by the medieval constant of precession, exactly 2000 years before that alignment the date of the incarnation by the AD-Years was established. This also explains why the AD-Years, focusing on the incarnation of Jesus Christ, as established at beginning of the Sixth century by Dionysius Exiguus, diverge from historical data, such as the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, and is not synchronized with early historiographies.