To Follow a Star A Christmas Reflection. by Jock McTavish Some wise men came to Jerusalem from the east. "Where is the infant king of the Jews? they asked. We saw his star as it rose and have come to do him homage."1
	Following the Star by Arnold Friberg.

Each winter solstice, we celebrate Christmas, never losing the sense of wonder we felt as children. Each Christmas with singing and candles, the story of the Star of Christmas is told again. We feature the Star in our christmas decorations. It is a powerful symbol we seldom stop to analyse the meaning of. Yet we are puzzled each year by aspects of the story - for we are moderns after all. Specials on TV discuss the relative merits of various astronomical candidates for the star. Computers turn back time itself and we see the heavens as the wise men and shepherds might have seen it.

This paper is to examine the power of the star story together with the physics of the matter. And in a society where astrology is little understood, a backgrounding of astrology is explored towards a better understanding of the story's original meaning and of its continuing power.

Travelling in Circles

How does one follow a star? The image of wise men treking from the east to Bethlehem is strong in our minds - it's on our Christmas cards! We have always understand this literally. A bright star appears, it is followed, it guides the magi to Bethlehem - right over the stable in the pageant!

One simply cannot follow a star this way. When the sun sets the stars became visible in their seasonal positions. And all stars appear to move across the sky from the eastern horizon to the western horizon as the earth turns - except any star above the turning poles of the earth.

Ref 8.

NASA has released an interesting movie of the night sky December 23, 2000. Saturn and Jupiter were in Orion this Christmas and that sort of conjunction is one of the theories for the Star of Bethlehem, so a view of the movie might put you into the right perspective for the task of following the star. First click the image left to study the labeled perspective. Then click HERE to upload the gif-movie. It is very large - 542k - and will take time to load. Reload for replay will come from your hard disk and take little time - just close window and click the HERE above again.

This tradition is not entirely biblical, and there are issues on that. For example the magi visit Herod and then likely went to Nazareth some time after the birth. However we are more interested here in the common story as it continues to be celebrated, that we might better understand its origins and its meanings.

Let us try to follow a star.

If our star at sunset was on the eastern horizon, we would travel easterly until midnight when the star would be halfway across the sky. Then we would have to reverse our direction to the west as the star continued on its course to the horizon. By sunup we would arrive where we started in longitude but having travelled some distance north (or south) depending on the star's declination. So that doesn't sound too helpful a compass. It's only direction is north.

Now each following night the star would become first visible higher in the sky by about a degree. And so progressively we would have a net travelling towards the west - about 4 minutes more each day. It would take 3 months to become first visible from directly overhead (to move1/4 of the way across the celestial heaven). Let us consider starting from this point where the star is overhead when it first appears after sunset.

If we presume a northern star, and our travel commencing at first appearance overhead, we would at least travel only to the west. It would not be a steady bearing, but a changing course as we would start our night's travel aiming north and then progressively aiming westward until the star set at some particular angle. And it would set at midnight. We would have it in view only half the evening. Our travel would average half way between north and that setting angle. So even if the star set due west, our travels would take us northwest. And so the only directions available are northwest to north. (A star in the southern sky would be the reciprocal of this situation.) Again a strange compass for our guidance.

Half the stars would not even be visible because of the season or being on the sun side of the earth.

Pole Stars

Only the stationary pole star can be used for navigation. The manner of ancient navigation is not readily apparent to us today though it was elegantly simple. The principle thing in travelling is the ability to come home again. Then you can explore and travel with security. There are two kinds of lostness. One lostness is mere confusion about where we are at a given moment. But the lostness that has lost the way home is devastating. The ancients could always find their way home, whether across land or sea.

This depended on only one thing - the pole star. It gave you the direction of north and the latitude. Just looking at it gave north and latitude is the angle between the star and the horizon. That's it. Wherever you were, when it was time to go home, you simply traveled north (or south) until you reached the correct angle for home. Then you travelled directly east or west as required and you would inevitably come back home by the simple geometry of latitude. Maps and other traveller's tricks helped know where you might be, or skirt around geographical obstacles, but latitude was all you needed to arrive back home.

That is why northern sailors were afraid to travel south. They were unawares of the Southern Cross allowing similar navigation in the southern hemisphere and feared when they could no longer see Polaris they would be unable to find their way home.

This is a "following of a star", though not literally. This navigation has to do with coming home or travelling to a place you've been to before and know something about. It is not a celestial beacon to a place.

Planets, comets and novas are other candidates for The Star. But all celestial bodies have the same diurnal motion. Such a literal following of stars is a special kind of foolishness, so what other meaning might there be?

Astronomy and Astrology

We created our science of astronomy from astrology. Astrology seems simple superstition to us today - how incredible to see our fate in the stars! So we need to see the heavens with ancient eyes. We are still awestruck when we consider the heavens. We rediscover humility looking at the milky way on a summer's eve away from city lights. We experience wonder when we see new Hubble photographs. Steven Hawking came to consider the Creator as he measured the miniscules of the first second of time².

But our awe is nothing compared to that of the ancients. They did not subdivide knowledge as the enlightenment taught us to do. Their knowledge was passed on to each generation as a most powerful mystery - as revelation from the gods. The ancients lived in unpredictable chaos. They looked to the heavens and saw order. They saw 7 "stars" that had their own course against the background of a million stars: sun, moon, mars, mercury, jupiter, venus and saturn. Even today, the sky, our geometry, our calendar and our time is divided as they divided, and named as they named. Humankind named the weekdays by these 7,³ (with norse influences. ⁴).

The "Ages" are an astrological concept. The sky is divided into 12 zodiac zones. In each is a major constellation given various human attributes and qualities. Not only does the earth pass along each year through these "houses of influence", but a man's life also is passing through these houses with a series of geometric relationships of difficulty and blessing when compared to his "natal sky" - or the condition of the heavens at the moment of his birth. These geometrical relationships constantly changing create the stuff of astrology. The practice is continued even today. It was through this sort of observation and calculation, that the magi of old would determine the heavenly schemes. And these auguries were their stock in trade. History itself was read in the heavens. Their job was to map it to the world beneath the heavens.

All numerical relationships found reflection in celestial numbers, shapes and ratios. The rule was always "As in the heavens, so also on earth." Mankind applied this rule everywhere possible. Astrology was no mere fortune telling, but thoroughly integrated into the knowledge systems of ancient times, and those systems in turn were in the custody of the priests.

A most remarkable achievement of the ancients was in determining the precession of the earth, as the earth wobbles in its orbit. They figured this out from the slow change of which "house" the sun rises in each spring equinox when day and night are equal. - a cycle of about 24000 (actually 25920) years. They named each "age" after the zodiac area we would be "in" for about 2000 years. Working back, we have just entered the Age of Aquarius. 2000 years ago we entered the Age of Pisces (the Fishes - a symbol of Christianity). Before that were the Ages of Aires (the Ram), and of Taurus (the Bull); the principle sacrificial animals of the times.

The Magi

So the principle thing the magi would have been concerning themselves with was this changing of the Age and portents accordingly - a secret special knowing only they possessed. This is a particularly powerful set of images then that came into the Christmas story.

Many ancient societies discovered these things, but the Summerians appear first. They divided the sky up into 360 degrees and 12 zodiacal months. They discovered the 5 visible planets. Their physical and political structures were modeled on what the priest/astrologers determined to be the heavenly model. The Persians inherited this tradition because each society starts from where the last left off.

Now the last biblical period of captivity was in Persia. Darius the Great is remembered for freeing the Jews to return home, specifying the rebuilding of the temple, and returning the temple loot stolen by Nebuchadnezzar. (The story is in the book of Ezra in the bible. The time is around 500 BC.) While the Jews were captive in Persia they probably absorbed as much of the Zorastrian religion practiced there as Darius did of their knowledge. The Qaballah is a Jewish mystical book originating from these times. It has had a secret following to the present day when it has become public and developed a modern following.

The priests of Persia were known as Magi. There are many elements of that religion that found roots in our Judeo-Christian tradition. Creation and flood stories are very parallel. The Zorastrian religion also birthed the Mithraic religion, and Mithra's story has most of the magical aspects we find in the Jesus story. The prophet Zarathustra predicted a Great King, with a bright star announcing his birth, a human mother and yet a son of god. His birth was a virgin birth. He was to be a redeemer of mankind. He was a son of god.

This then would have been the more likely substance of the story, that the changing of the Ages was determined to be upon them, that certain celestial events made them consider a special new King had been born. They were then on a pilgrimage not "following a star", but looking for the royal person that their studies of the stars led them to expect. Their knowledge led them to this, but no ordinary person would know what they knew, whether of stars or of their world. In a sense, following stars was their profession.

It was customary for this sort of thing to be more a justification than a prediction in the history of famous personages. So when a battle was won it was as likely that the stars were found after the fact to be in the relationships that history required, rather than having fortold the victory before the battle was fought. Some would then say that this story of Christmas is then the way in which the ancient world stamped authority upon the event, for if Jesus Christ was the principle avatar of the age, then of course the heavens would have declared it so.

Qualities of Greatness

What then are the gifts of astrology to us today? We may reduce this ancient wonder to some old mystery, but we would do better to consider the dimension of their awe - in seeing the actions of God in all things, in seeing history written in the heavens, and the mystery of what Jung called synchronicity. No mere fortune tellers they, but respectful seekers of destiny, and industrious builders of society.

We can never tell which children might be great one day. When someone attains greatness, is it such a wonder that we look into the earlier history for indicators - what James Hillman⁶ called the acorn of the soul?

So also did our ancestors glorify their great people. And when they encountered the best of the great, they saw godhead, they saw the turning of history. And were they wrong? Surely history has so turned. Let us not look with cynical modern eyes and say it was not historical. Let us rather look back and consider what was there about such people that made their generation and generations following venerate the memory of the great so.

Wishing on a Star

The happiest childhood image is wishing on a star. We humans can do nothing except we first wish it to be true. Only then can we actualize our dream. Only then can we journey towards a star. Though we begin with simple images of childhood, we should not stop there. As we begin to critically notice the myths of our own traditions, our culture, our religion, we should neither stop there. Let us recognize in the archetype our own need for traditions, and let modern knowledge add understanding and respect to those traditions. We were meant to walk by starlight.

Scott Peck⁷ notes that when the religious spirit within us questions the structures and symbols of our faith, we commence a quest for truth and regained faith. When the quest is over and we return to our traditions, we bring new depth to our understanding. That is why traditionalists and revisionists honour the same icons. There may be new traditions born in such ways, but mostly the old is reborn. Each generation finds what truth it needs in the depths and in the wildernesses of its own traditions. This may be the true meaning of tradition. For without renewal tradition becomes mere history.

Christmas is much more than mere history.

References

1. Matthew 2:2 Jerusalem Bible)

2. In a Larry King interview 1999. See also A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, Bantam, London,1988.

3. For the days of the week in 30 languages and a little essay on the history of the 7 day week, see http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Astronomy/7day.html by Vincent Mallette vmallette@inwit.com

4. At the Social and Behavioral Sciences E-Campus Joan A. Andersen, has compiled as part of a course on creation myths, data on ancient calendars. For the Norse contribution to our days of the week, http://users.erols.com/bcccsbs/norscal.htm

5. For a background essay on the magi and their history within a traditional christian perspective, THE WISE MEN: GENTILES ON A JOURNEY OF FAITH Peter Colón of The Friends of Israel organization. http://www.foigm.org/IMG/colon3.htm

6. The Soul's Code - In Search of Character and Calling, James Hillman. Random House, New York. 1996

7. The Road Less Travelled and Beyond - Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety. M. Scott Peck, M.D. Touchstone. NewYork. 1997

8. The NASA photo archives at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image

Jock McTavish, 14 November 2000mctavjoc@shaw.ca , of St. David's United Church, Calgary, Canada.
Written for background for Study Group Holy Manners, centered on the book The Meaning of Jesus - Two Visions, by Marcus Borg and W.T. Wright. This discussion is posted on the website of St. David's United Church in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, as an ongoing debate between the traditionalists and the revisionists within the Christian community. Click HERE to visit. Your comments are welcome.

14 November, 2000 Updated 30 December 2000