About Solar Eclipses

The August 21, 2017, solar eclipse (the real deal pictured below) with all the attendant excitement in North America reminds me of the theme of The Sussex Beekeeper at the Dawn of Time. The whole point of the novel is an analysis by Sherlock Holmes of the meaning of total solar eclipses. What follows are a few items that support his hypothesis dealing with solar and lunar matters along with his reasoning that supports his conclusions.

Photo by John Johnson/copyright © 2017 by John Johnson.

Recall that in 1965 Gerald S. Hawkins published his book titled Stonehenge Decoded, and in 1972 renowned cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle published From Stonehenge to Modern Cosmology.

Hawkins used science, mathematics, and archeology to determine that the stones of Stonehenge are configured in a manner that could allow its designers to determine the occurrence of future solar eclipses. In other words, Hawkins strongly suspected that Stonehenge was built to be an observatory to keep track of the movements of the sun and moon for the principal purpose of knowing—knowing, not predicting—when solar eclipses would occur.

Hoyle used the same disciplines to build on Hawkins’ work by proposing scenarios, from a cosmologist’s view, illustrating why it might have been so important 5 thousand years ago to determine the occurrence of solar eclipses. Aside from the obvious fear factor, he pointed out the existence of nodes (invisible moving points in the sky), the substance and awareness of which the designers of Stonehenge would have positively needed to know and incorporate into their calculations for accuracy's sake when aligning their observatory’s titan stone blocks.

All this is important to the theme of The Sussex Beekeeper at the Dawn of Time because in the story Pope Pius IX believes that he can learn God's will first hand if he “listens in” on a dying nova in the constellation of Aquila. In order to accomplish this, he tasks James Maxwell, the leading scientist of the era, and Impey Barbicane, the genius engineer who built the gun that shot a projectile to the moon, to do whatever is required, with the coffers of the Vatican at their disposal.

While the telescope did not work as expected, nonetheless from it emanated a message from the Dawn of Time in Hans' click language that was clear as a bell to Quatermain's sidekick, who in turn conveyed the message to Quatermain. The message was a simple one, instructing humans to appreciate the miracle of total solar eclipses and to understand that such eclipses were instrumental in the development of civilization on earth. That message can be summarized as:

(1)  Total solar eclipses are, of course, the consequence of the earth's moon and the sun being coincidentally exactly the same relative sizes in our skies, and the probability of such an exact duplication in sizes—given their totally separate and unrelated diameters and distances from the earth—is exceedingly, even awesomely, remote in astronomical terms. [Yet ordinarily, modern inhabitants of this earth never consider this coincidence, always and utterly taking for granted the sun and moon and their movements, which is a foible of modern life.]

(2)  And this circumstance of coincident identical relative sizes of the sun and moon is a long-standing fact of terrestrial reality due to an "attentive, deliberate consciousness 'behind the veil'" beginning the task 4-5 billion years ago, deliberately setting things up so that those two orbs would, after a very long while, eventually be seen to march across our skies by our remote ancestors, with the moon incredibly but regularly and perfectly blotting out the sun….

(3)  ... in order to scare early Homo sapiens half to death to the extent that they strove to learn more about these terrifying occurrences through problem-solving….

(4)  ... which resulted in the conception of and the building of Stonehenge and similar prehistoric observatories and calculators over much of the world….

(Counter clockwise from top) Stonehenge as it appears today (wikipedia/searchoflife.com) plus two artists' conceptions of how it may have looked 4.5 thousand years ago. (stone-circles.org.uk/ancient-origins.net)  Click on the image to enlarge. Special photo juxtapositions by Thomas Kent Miller; copyright © 2016-2017 by Thomas Kent Miller.

(5)  ... which in turn further resulted in Homo sapiens developing cognitive skills that have held us in good stead ever since.

Naturally, for any of this to “work” as I’ve outlined, an "attentive, deliberate consciousness 'behind the veil'" must be presupposed.

All of which is meant to share my simple for-me incontestable awareness that while the fabric of the enormous universe with all its stars and galaxies and enormous spaces seems to be materially devoid of consciousness, nonetheless there is something, somehow, somewhere that is able to take the time out of its busy schedule to situate the sun and moon in such a way as to kick start human intellectual and cultural development, as well as, as I've explained elsewhere, prod me to go back to school. I am calling that “something, somehow, somewhere” an “attentive, deliberate consciousness 'behind the veil'” for want of anything better for the time being.


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