The Wheel of Time - A Study in the Doctrine of Cosmic Cycles

Complete English Version

See table of contents HERE

See the book HERE

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

Ever since I was a youth I was fascinated by Oriental wisdom and

particularly by the Hindu doctrines.

However, it was not until a few years ago that I took to studying the
ancient doctrine of cosmic cycles from different perspectives, though
mainly using the most relevant sacred texts from all around the world.

In time, I felt the urge to write a book about that matter in my mother
tongue - Spanish - which I titled "La rueda del tiempo" (in English, "The
Wheel of Time").

More recently, after some years as a networker promoting various

programs, I decided to translate my book into English, a task that has
currently been completed.

Lima, Peru, December 2008

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

CONTENTS

Home

Prologue

Introduction

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The Wheel of Time - A Study in the Doctrine of Cosmic Cycles

1 – The Four Ages of Mankind

2 – Kalpas and yugas

3 – The Manvantara

4 – The Age of Kali

5 – The universal doctrine

6 – The primordial civilization

7 – The circular time

8 – The circular history

Glossary

Bibliography

«The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that
which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of
old time, which was before us.»
(Ecclesiastes,1:9,10)

Home

PROLOGUE

W hen I started my first version of La rueda del tiempo (in English, "The Wheel
of Time") I was motivated by very special circumstances. A most precious,
monumental Hindu holy scripture, the Third Canto of Bhagavata Purana, had
come to my hands as if by accident, and I was marveled to learn that in such
remote times the Hindus were already familiar with such advanced concepts as that
of the expansion of the universe and the space and time relativity, both of them
notions that the modern scientists would only become acquainted with from the
Twentieth Century onwards. But what really amazed me were the huge lengths of
time mentioned in relation to cosmic cycles. For instance, the Kali-yuga o "Dark
Era", a cycle which clearly corresponds to the Age of Iron of the Greek and Roman
traditions, would actually extend over 432,000 terrestrial years, a tenth of a human
cycle of 4'320,000 years; and if its start was in 3102 BC, as recorded by Hindu
astronomical texts, then its end would arrive as late as 429,000 AD, without doubt

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a reassuring date in times of enormous global crisis as we are living now, but
which does not absolutely correlate with data from other traditions announcing an
imminent end for our degenerated civilization.
The answer to my deep uneasiness would come a bit later, mainly in the form of an
extraordinary article by René Guénon: Some Remarks on the Doctrine of Cosmic
Cycles, originally published in French in 1937. Thanks to it, I was finally satisfied
that such figures were essentially symbolic, as suggested by the fact that they are
all multiple of nine – which precisely makes them “circular” o cyclic – and that
they must be basically assimilated to the great cycle of precession of equinoxes, a
key period of time in the development of mankind whose traditional length, 25,920
common years, also is a multiple of nine. True, at the same time I concluded that in
the light of the most recent scientific discoveries, such lengths could be taken in an
approximately literal manner, something that Guénon could not be acquainted with
in his time; but for the moment, it was fairly enough. Then, as if by magic, came to
my hands other articles, some of them very important and others that were not
quite so, which helped me do a preliminary study and publish a first edition in
1998. This first literary endeavor contained some elements that have remained till
now, the main one being my own calculation of the final date of the Kali-yuga and,
therefore, that of the current human cycle. An additional element was a footnote
according to which such final date would appear to have been drawn nearer by a
degree of such cycle, or 72 years – a phenomenon referred to in the texts as an
overlapping of yugas.
Soon thereafter, however, I realized that this first version in Spanish not only
contained some historical errors but also wrong quotations, so I tried to upgrade it
by means of a second edition which was published and circulated for some years
until – its cycle concluded – I opted for removing it from circulation.
By then, various articles by “disciples” of Guénon had started to appear mainly on
the Internet, in which they claimed the following:
(1) The length of the full human cycle is 64,840 years, equivalent to five half
cycles of precession of equinoxes (5 x 12,960 years); this calculation had been
suggested (but only suggested) by Guénon in the aforementioned article, as well as
the following point.
(2) The year 720 of the Kali-yuga (which would last 6,480 years, or a tenth of the
above figure) would have coincided with that of the beginning of the Jewish Era,
traditionally established as 3761 BC; therefore, also based on other tempting
elaborations by Guénon in various articles, the Kali-yuga would have started in the
year 4481 BC.
(3) Once the corresponding calculation was made (6480 – 4481), the end of the
Kali-yuga (virtually equivalent to the end of our civilization) would be in 1999.
Some even, resorting to decimal numbers, further specified: the catastrophe,
whatever form it adopted, would visit us… on the 14 November 1999!
Well, with regard to the doctrine of cosmic cycles, the first thing that we have to
understand is the word millennium is not equivalent, as might be thought, to a
thousand common years, but to an indefinite length of time, usually referred to any
major cosmic cycle. This is a point that will never be stressed enough, and it surely
is an elemental principle that the aforementioned authors seemed to have forgotten.
Still worse, not only did they evidence an inability to let go of the literal sense of
the term, but also a certain proclivity to the kind of hysteria that usually attacks the
masses as the end of any major cycle draws near – not to mention such a
frightening end of cycle as the one that was about to visit us.

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Under these terms, the fact that the year 2000 arrived painlessly – in other words,
without any fatal outcome to regret – did, by far, not mean that the validity of the
doctrine of cycles became dubious. On the contrary, it merely denoted that it was
all misconceived. Looked at in retrospect, on the other hand, it did not mean either
that our planet had got rid of the atrocious cataclysms that usually escort the end of
all major cycles, as quite obviously such end, should the doctrine remain valid,
would be yet to arrive.
Be it as it may, sure as I was that Guénon would have never approved of such
excesses – though still doubting whether or not his “suggestions” had been made
on purpose so that such calculations failed – I set myself to the task of publishing a
third edition of La rueda del tiempo with a view to clarify this point as much as
possible, at the same time that correct any omission, make some points more
specific, and even improve the general appearance from the previous editions.
It has not been until now, however, that I have been able to finish this task. And
curiously enough, the most remarkable fact about it is that I have not had to
substantially modify the previous editions, apart from correcting one or two wrong
references, adding some data, and refining writing and syntax. On the other hand, I
have doubted as to the convenience to keep some sections, such as, for instance,
the description of the Egyptian “Divine Year” in Chapter 1, which could deviate
the attention from the main subject, and I even was tempted to completely suppress
Chapter 6, which could seem little convincing. But I was dissuaded by the fact that,
while such sections are not essential for understanding the matter, they can be
profitably read, above all the latter, which briefly depicts the Kali-yuga of the
present cycle – virtually the history of our so-called civilization.
Now, it is understandable that this particular view of history will frontally crash
with that of the majority of readers, who, save for one or two exceptions, know
very little about oriental doctrines. In this sense, it is essential to understand the
concept of maha-yuga, the Hindu cycle of four yugas or decreasing ages whose
lengths are proportional to 4, 3, 2 and 1 and which can, in fact, be assimilated to
any temporal cycle, as another fundamental point of the doctrine is that there exists
a total correspondence among them all; and then stop at the concept of
Manvantara, this one referred to the total human cycle and whose length must be
calculated as two cycles of precession of equinoxes or a total 51,840 common
years. One more step, and it must become clear that if the yugas sum up
proportionally 10 (because 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10), then the length of the Kali-yuga
will be one tenth of that total, i.e. 5,184 common years.
Yet another step, consequent with the previous one, will make us understand that
the characteristics of the present Kali-yuga, by virtue of the correspondences to
which I have referred, reflect accurately – yet in a more incisive way – those of the
full cycle of 51,840 years; this, in practice, will give us a small-scale image of this
cycle, including, also in a small scale but with lengths always proportional to the
scale 4, 3, 2 and 1, that of the four descending yugas. The last step will be to focus
on the last of these yugas, which we may call the kali-yuga of the present Kali-
yuga: a period of time of little more than five hundred years, extremely rich in
historical events and great material achievement but which unfortunately, precisely
by reason of their being only material, would appear to be leading us towards
disaster at an ever increasing speed.
Thinking therefore about the Western readers, who in their great majority tend to
believe in a brilliant future for mankind, I have seen it convenient to commence
this study by reviewing certain passages from the Bible that they may be me more

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familiar with, and starting from this point and from the unbelievable coincidences
between those and other sacred texts from all over the World – coincidences that
strangely prefigure the most recent discoveries of modern Astrophysics – to usher
them through ancient universal myths such as the Four Ages of Mankind and the
Seven Eras of the World, to finally arrive at disquieting conclusions about the
present moment and the near future of our planet – a turning point in time towards
which there would appear to be converging, in a most threatening fashion, cosmic
cycles of various orders and magnitudes.

Lima, Peru, July 2007

Last update: March 2009

Home

INTRODUCTION

A mong the great mysteries of the universe, few have exerted so strange a
fascination upon the mind of man as that of time. Indeed, time is not a mere
enigma. Unfathomable at its deepest core, time is, in its own right, a mystery of
mysteries.
Over the centuries, this mystery has persisted and captivated the world’s greatest
intellects: Solomon, Pythagoras, Plato, St. Augustine, Newton, Descartes, each fell
in turn irresistibly attracted to it. Even in recent times, it troubled great scientists
like Einstein and his “successor,” Stephen Hawkin.
Regarding this, however, we are struck by wonder. For it appears that Einstein was
not the first, nor was he the only, to discover that time is relative to space. From
time immemorial, such knowledge has been in the possession of the ancient Hindu
people, as some of their most sacred texts – particularly the Puranas – corroborate
(this is a point upon which I will elaborate later on). As to Hawkin, he was not long
ago wondering whether time merely advances in a linear fashion, as the orthodox
physics has always postulated, or it rather does it by circles – as has always been
conceived by the Eastern traditional doctrines.
We will do well, therefore, to review two of our deepest-rooted notions – namely,
that it is only in the last two centuries that the greatest scientific discoveries have
been made… and that the ancient peoples had absolutely no scientific knowledge
of the world.
A third example will help us reinforce this point. Based on radioactive
measurements, the modern science has for some time been estimating the age of
the Earth as approximately 4,500 millions of years since it was formed within the
solar system. More recently, the analysis of stones from the Moon has produced an
even more accurate – and apparently definitive – length of time: 4,310 millions of
years, a figure I unfortunately have not been able to verify though it certainly
matches the former. Well now, this length is nearly identical to that of 4,320

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million years which, according to the Puranas and some Indian astronomical
treatises, is the duration of what the Hindus call a “Brahma’s day” (or kalpa)
within the immense cycle of cosmic manifestation.
It may, indeed, be argued that the Hindus came by this figure by mere accident or
that it simply was invented, as also was invented everything related to the ages and
cosmic cycles. To refute such objections we would need to determine whether the
whole of these notions is backed up by other sacred writings of the world – i.e.
whether there is agreement on these issues between the Hindu scriptures and other
sacred books of the world – and then, as a collateral evidence, to establish whether
the remaining information the said scriptures contain is reliable enough; all this
with a view, at least at a preliminary stage, to cloak them with a certain degree of
respectability when faced to the most obstinate skeptics – those who plainly make
fun of these theories.
To begin with, from the last century onwards, remarkable coincidences have been
observed between the Bible and certain texts of the Western tradition, on the one
hand, and certain Eastern sacred books, mainly Hindus, on the other. To mention
the best known, the Bible speaks of a Universal Flood that takes place at the end of
a period of sheer degradation of the human race, and the Puranas and other sacred
texts, both from the East and West, talk about periodical, partial devastations of the
universe by water. (Actually, memories of one or several “universal floods” remain
alive in old traditions throughout the world.) But there are many other
coincidences, as will be seen below.
For example, the Book of Genesis (1:2) relates how, in the beginning, “the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters”; Bhagavata Purana (5, 25: 1, ff), in turn,
says that at the beginning of creation, Vishnu (God) is lying over the Causal Ocean.
In the Gospel of St John (John, 14:2), Jesus states: “In my Father’s house there are
many mansions.” Brahma–samhita (5:40), in turn, says God’s glow, the
brahmajyoti, contains countless planets.
Again, in a passage of the “Gnostic” gospel of Thomas (77), says Jesus: “I am all:
from me all came forth, and to me all attained.” Svetasvatara Upanishad (4:11),
another well–known sacred Hindu book, states: “He [God] governs all the sources
of creation; the universe emanates from Him, and to Him it comes back in the end.”
On the other hand – and here we are getting further into matter – the book of
Genesis (3:23, etc.) describes the “fall” and exile of man from Paradise, a recurring
topic in the scriptures and traditions from all around the world that is closely
associated to the idea of world ages and cosmic cycles. While not that obviously,
also in John 14:3, 15, 19, 15, and in his announcements of the end of time, Jesus
would be referring to them; also Daniel 2:21, 29 ff, 7:1 ff, other prophets from the
Old Testament, St John’s Revelation, etc.
Last but not least, some authors have observed remarkable concordances on these
issues between certain Eastern scriptures, like the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu and the
Hindu Upanishads, on the one hand, and several stoic, hermetic, and neo–platonic
treatises on the other.
The modern science has in turn validated various passages from the Bible. Some of
the best-known examples, like the predominance of an evolutionary order in the
creation of species (fish – birds – beasts), accurately reflected in Genesis 1: 20 ff,
and the fact that in the last ten or twelve thousand years there might indeed have
occurred such a great disaster as to produce a “universal flood,” as evidenced both
by the rings of the Californian sequoias and the fossils and corpses deposited and
preserved in frozen mud, are just a few of them. Other examples include a

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knowledge of the spherical shape of the Earth in Isaiah 40:22, where the Hebrew
word chugh, commonly translated as “circle” or “orb,” may also mean “sphere;” of
the Earth floating in space, in Job 26:7; of a primitive Earth cloaked in darkness
and in a watery steam, in Genesis 2:6; and of the very steps of the Creation in
Genesis 1: 3 ff, whose sequence – if considered from the viewpoint of a terrestrial
observer, as well as that each “evening” with its corresponding “morning”
represent vast periods of time – perfectly harmonizes with the one postulated by
the most recent cosmological theories.
However, it is among the Eastern scriptures that can be found extraordinary
examples of scientific information.
Bhagavata Purana (9, 3:30–34), for example, recounts the trip of king Kakudmi to
Brahmaloka, the highest planet in the universe, governed by the powerful demigod
Brahma, the creator of the world, to ask for his advice on a good husband for his
daughter Revati. When the king reaches Brahma’s palace, the god is hearing
musical recitals by the Gandharvas, the celestial musicians, and Kakudmi waits in
the anteroom; when the music is over, he expresses his desire. Brahma breaks in
laughter: “O King, he answers, whoever might have been thought of by you have
been swept off by Time. Twenty–seven chatur–yugas [27 x 4’320,000 terrestrial
years] have rolled by and we hear no more even of the races of their sons,
grandsons and great grandsons…”
Now, although a space–time bend as the one exemplified by this story may result
from the different translation velocities of the “higher” and “lower” planets around
the Sun according to the Hindu tradition, it still remains illustrative of the well-
known paradox anticipated by the theory of relativity for interstellar traveling at
1
close to light–speed velocities.
While curiously inverse, a similar story from the Islamic tradition adds force to our
case: Muhammad visits the seventh heaven riding the resplendent mare Alburak.
At the moment that the mare takes flight, she overturns a jar filled with water. On
Muhammad’s return after countless eons, the Prophet reaches down to lift the jar
from the ground... and lo, not a single drop has been spilt!
In another passage from Bhagavata Purana (3, 29:43) it is stated, with astounding
ease, that the complete universal body is expanding. This fact, only in recent times
confirmed by astronomical observation supporting the ‘Big–Bang’ theory, could
hardly be described as a product of either chance or imagination even by the most
obstinate skeptics; and on the other hand, such theory does not exclude the
possibility of a recurring expansion – contraction of the universe through immense
periods of time, a derivation that in turn perfectly fits with the framework of the
Hindu doctrine of cosmic cycles and many other similar concepts. In effect, this
idea is found in the majority of the traditional doctrines. In Taoism, for example,
the Tao has a reverting motion of withdrawal and return to the origin (See Tao The
Ching of Lao Tzu, particularly Chapters XXV and XL). Hermetism, in turn, asserts
that the world “begins from where it ceases.” (Corpus Hermeticum I, 11, 10.7).
Again, according to the Neo-Platonist Proclus: ...Everything moves on and returns,
has a cyclical activity... unites the end with the principle.” And also the Stoicism
attributes this motion to its Logos.
We can see the list is lengthy. But let us focus now on history, where modern
archaeology has repeatedly confirmed information from the Bible and other
Western texts. For example, Assyrian king Sargon II was for long known only
from the narration in Isaiah 8:1 and the critics rejected this reference as devoid of

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any historical value. Later on, archaeological excavations shed light on the
magnificent palace of Sargon at Korsabad and on numerous inscriptions alluding to
his reign, such as the siege and conquer of Samaria and the subsequent exile of the
Israelite people. Similarly, not long ago was confirmed Sennacherib’s expedition to
Israel which, according to the Old Testament version (2 Kings 6:13 ff, 7:36; Isaiah
36: 1, 37: 37), ended in failure and the subsequent return of the Assyrian king to
his own country. (While this piece of information is not found on the mural
inscriptions within the royal palace, such exclusion is perfectly understandable
from a natural reluctance to admit one’s own defeats.)
A special mention deserve, for their great significance, the dramatic discoveries
made by amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann from 1870 onwards. As is
widely known, this remarkable German archaeologist, defying the general view
that would see in the Iliad but an imaginary story, started excavations at the site
designated by the poem as the seat of old Troy and found not one, but nine
superimposed cities, with the sixth, counted from below, being the one sung by the
epics. And then in Mycenae, described by the same poem as “most superior
materially to Troy,” brought to light huge stone walls, carved lions and the
fabulous treasure of Atraeus – all of them wonders which, were it not for him,
would most likely be regarded as legendary until our days.
From these examples – the likes of which could actually go on indefinitely – it
would seem that where it comes to science, and to a certain extent history, the great
scriptures and sacred texts of the world are indeed reliable; in this sense, not only
can we conclude that “the Bible was right”, as was the title of a famous book, but
also that other ancient texts and writings from all over the world were right as well;
similarly, based on the same examples, it might be inferred that the Hindu texts
appear to be valid for the longer periods of time, of millions and trillions of years,
while the Bible and other Western texts would be valid for the “shorter” periods of
thousands or, perhaps, hundreds of thousand of years. Of course this is not accurate
as, for one thing, some passages of the Bible, notably the first verses of Genesis,
obviously cover immense periods of time; but at least for the purposes of our
present query, we can very well afford this generalization.
As to the Hindu texts, we will have many an opportunity to learn the intricacies of
their elaborate doctrine. I will just say right now that, as occurs with many other
traditions, the word millennium – as well as other similar terms like “great year,”
century, etc – is synonymous with any great cosmic cycle and not only one
thousand years, as might be thought, and is usually applied to them by properly
using it in the sense of any “indefinite” length of time. This should be stressed out
not only by reason of the fact itself, essential to the study of the doctrine, but
because it is in some way consubstantial with the existence of all sorts of
correspondences and assimilations between cycles of various orders and
magnitudes, so that such expressions as “day” and “night,” where it comes to
2
immense periods of time, sound perfectly natural.
A question naturally arises from the above: if it was not purely and simply
invented, or was not the result of mere fortunate speculation, where did the
compilers of these Scriptures obtain such information, whose origin vanishes back
into the night of time? That the various cultures were spontaneously and
simultaneously born around the world, all sharing a strangely similar lore, is hard
to accept; the numerous analogies rather suggest an unknown common origin and,
in fact, it would appear to be more logical, or at least more plausible, that there

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previously existed an older civilization that was the depository of the knowledge
based on such information, and that all other cultures received from it such
knowledge, which was then modified and, for the most part, distorted by the
particular circumstances of time and place. This notion of a common ancestral
culture, which would account for the universality of a certain “hidden” lore, has
been widely supported and developed by renowned researchers such as René
Guénon and others, according to whom, in the apparently chaotic assortment of
most ancient myths and legends that describe the nature and origin of the universe,
traditionally handed down by societies throughout the world, there is evidence of
such primeval civilization. This archaic society would be prior to all ancient known
civilizations, including those from Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and India, not to
mention the American continent; and so, stories whose original meaning has been
lost, but have otherwise been preserved in a fragmentary and distorted form, might
provide genuine, essential information about the great mysteries of the universe.
By way of example, I will quote but one of such stories: The Sioux Nation in North
America speak of a cycle of four eras; there is a buffalo that loses a leg during each
era; now we are in the last era, which is of great degradation, and the buffalo has
but one leg left. In Bhagavata Purana (1, 16: 18 ff) the same story is told about the
bull Dharma. We are currently in the last age – the Age of Kali, an era of quarrel
3
and hypocrisy – and Dharma is supported by only one leg…

In the course of this study, after briefly dealing with the likely origins of the
doctrine, the Four Ages of Man of the classic tradition will be described and,
within the same context, the “divine year” of the Egyptians will be succinctly
explained along with its divisions and sub-divisions. Then, after considering some
interesting numerical relations, an equally brief description of the Hindu cycles and
eras will be presented together with some preliminary remarks. Next an attempt
will be made to reconcile both systems on the basis of existing works, after which
some considerations will be offered regarding the disturbing characteristics of the
current era. Then a review will be made of the doctrine of cycles in other parts and
traditions of the world in order to demonstrate its universality, and existing traces
of the primeval civilization will be discussed with a view to determine its origin.
Finally, an analysis and recapitulation of the above will be made and general
conclusions drawn which may be valid for the doctrine as a whole, all supported by
the largest possible number of historical evidence.

NOTES

1
For most of the traditional cultures, the universe consists of “higher,” “intermediate,” and
“inferior” planets. Since the former are assumed to be huge, their rotations and translations
should be proportionally longer than those of the Earth (which is a “intermediate” planet)
thus creating relatively longer “days” and “years.”

2
The same applies to the first verses of the Book of Genesis, where a “late” and a
“tomorrow” are mentioned in relation to each of the “days” of the world creation.

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3
RICHARD L. THOMPSON: Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy, Bhaktivedanta Book
Trust, 1989, p. 65.

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CHAPTER 1

THE FOUR AGES OF MANKIND

«They lived like gods without sorrow of heart… when they died, it was as though they
were overcome with sleep…
The fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly... while they dwelt in ease and peace
upon their lands, rich in flocks...»
(Hesiod: Works and Days)

I n strict sense, the “myth” of the Four Ages of the World is assumed to have
originated in Greece around the eighteenth century BC, back in the days when the
country was plunged into desolation by the Doric people’s invasion. Around that
time the poet Hesiod, probably influenced by obscure legends about past
cataclysms and the happier times that preceded them, is said to have set to the task
of composing, in the solitude of the countryside, his Works and Days, the most
intriguing of the two famous poems attributed to him – the other being his famous
Theogony.
In the former, Hesiod relates how, up until his time, the human race had lived four
main ages – the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age,
with an additional age, that of the Heroes, apparently inserted between the Bronze
and Iron ages only to accommodate the great heroes of the Iliad.
Within the same tradition but many centuries later, the Latin poet Ovid (43 BC –
18 AD), in his Metamorphoses, additionally alludes to the deluge that ensued at the
end of the Iron Age and from which were spared Deucalion and Pyrrha, who gave
birth to a new humanity.
This much for the classical version. In a broader sense, however, the tradition
would have an older, possibly Oriental origin. According to scholars, it would have
originated in the primitive peoples’ longing for a natural life, which coupled with
considerations about the recurrence and regularity of the disasters that afflict the
world, as well as the speculation inspired in such quaternary cycles as the four
yearly seasons, four phases of the Moon, four stages in the life of man, and so on,
would have crystallized in the “myth” of the Four Ages of Mankind brought to
light by Hesiod.
As to the place of origin itself, some are inclined to believe it was India,
considering the manifest identity between the four ages of the Greek tradition and
the descending cycle of four yugas of the Hindustan tradition.
In this connection, however, we would still need to determine whether this is also

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the origin of many other myths in which the notion of four ages is equally
prominent, such as the Maya and Inca and many other traditions; and even of all
other “myths of return” where – irrespective of the number of ages – there stands
out the universal, most ancient belief in the “fall” of man, a tradition that evokes
the decline and alienation of mankind from a golden, paradisiacal condition to one
of total degradation – usually ending in a catastrophic deluge – a most familiar and
characteristic version of which can be read in the first pages of the Bible, from the
“fall” of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Paradise to the events that led to
the Flood.
Curiously enough, these multiple coincidences seem to have gone unnoticed to the
majority of the Western scholars – not to mention the layman, the common man of
our times. So it comes as no surprise that the notion of four descending ages, or for
that matter of any number of them, may sound unintelligible and absurd to the
latter; and not out of sheer ignorance, for he is sure to have read those biblical
passages, but because he has from his childhood been instilled the idea, exactly
opposite, of a sustained progress of mankind throughout history – and also because
it has always been confronted and fought by the Church. For example Origen the
patriarch of Alexandria (185 – 254 AC), a man of deeply-rooted Gnosticism and
seemingly familiar with the idea that the floods and conflagrations caused by
planetary influences can be calculated beforehand, wrote in Against Celso: “We do
not refer the flood or the burning of the world to the planetary cycles and periods,
but we declare that their cause is the widespread prevalence of evil and its
eradication by a deluge or conflagration.” (Actually Origen assumed that the
worlds follow one another in time just like an equal number of schools in which
decadent beings are reeducated, a process which would have started with the “fall”
of man, which was then followed by the material world.) And in turn Saint
Augustine, in the 12th book of his City of God, questions the doctrine of cycles as a
whole based on the futility of an eternal wheel of creations and the absurdity of an
1
endless death of the Logos.
But let us take a look into the tradition of the Four Ages in its most familiar
version, that of the Greek poet Hesiod. According to him, in the Golden Age man
lived in an ideal condition of perfection and justice. An eternal spring prevailed,
and so there were no extremes of heat and cold. The fields, always green and
flowery, yielded spontaneously golden corn throughout the year and from the trees,
perennially vigorous, hung delicious, mature fruits, so that men were oblivious of
hard work. There was no evil and injustice, envy and greed, crime and depravation,
war and hatred. Life was an endless carnival and men were perfectly happy at the
feet of their gods, who in exchange for their blessings received veneration and
obedience. Yet evil manages to creep into this paradise and men turn their backs to
the gods. They pay no attention to their precepts, praise and sacrifice cease: the
Golden Age draws to an end.
The Silver Age, which follows the Golden Age, reflects, in the view of some
authors, the matriarchal society of remote times when women were the centre of
society and men worked the fields on their side; it would, at any rate, signal a time
when humanity was beginning to focus on agriculture. In the Greek myth, it is in
this age that men begin to differentiate the seasons: to the spring, previously eternal
and now limited to short months, there follows a burning sun that dries and withers
everything on its passage. After the heat dissipates, pastures turn yellowish and die,
and the tree tops drop all their leaves. Heavy snow finally falls covering the Earth

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with desolation, while freezing winds relentlessly yell on the wilderness. No longer
do the fields give food for free. To survive, men learn to do painful work, and to
shelter from the stormy weather they have to build their own houses, as the caves
in which they dwelled during the Golden Age have become uninhabitable for them.
Youth, previously eternal, ends; happiness belongs to but a few; death arrives
unannounced. And since mankind has gone on degrading, Zeus, from the Olympus,
resolves to exterminate it. The Earth is left silent and empty.
Let us now look into the next or Bronze Age. According to the specialists, it
probably corresponds to the earliest Aegean conquerors whose last representatives
were the warrior kings from Mycenae, and would therefore signal the start of the
first great civilizations of Greece, including the Cretan and Mycenaean. In the
Greek story, when the gods get bored for lack of prayers or insults from men, they
opt for creating a new race, courageous and strong, a race of bronze, which will
populate the world and reverence them. Their trade will be war, Ares (Mars) their
main god, fighting their highest aspiration. These are times of war, of incessant
clash of swords, of wild struggle. Yet the tributes expected from men do not
materialize, and the gods resolve to wipe this race away from the memory of the
world.
Finally, the Iron Age would match the period of supremacy of the Doric people –
the Greek society that begins towards the twelfth century BC, who already were
familiar with iron and destroyed the Mycenae civilization. According to Hesiod,
the men of this time were the worst that inhabited the Earth. Force, ambition, and
excessive violence are omnipresent now. A new metal emerges stronger than all
others, iron, useful to forge weapons and open the earth to remove the treasures
hidden in it by the gods – gold and silver, still more precious than iron, and the
origin of all dissension. Ambition for wealth and power respects nothing. No
honor, honesty, loyalty exist anymore: lying, violence and cunning are the only
means used by men to achieve their goals. The Earth is divided and marked;
everyone wants their part, and all attack one another to increase their possessions.
Brutal wars collect thousands of lives: the world is covered by blood. Fear spreads
everywhere; no one is safe; anguish precludes sleep. Division prevails: husband
and wife betray each other, brothers raise their hands against their brother, sons kill
their own father... From Mount Olympus, Zeus, beset with wrath, resolves to do
away with suffering by exterminating all that lives and breathes upon the world.
And the deluge comes to cleanse the Earth from such abomination...
This much for a description of the ages. Let us now see the next logical step, i.e.
determine their lengths. In his Timaeus, Plato asserts that the seven planets, once
the time to balance their respective speeds has elapsed, return to their point of
departure. This revolution is a “perfect year” and, considering the great
significance it has for different traditions, it must somehow influence the total
length of a cycle of four ages. In turn Cicero, while recognizing the difficulty in
estimating the length of this vast celestial period, rates it as 12,954 common years,
although the precise length appears to be 12,960 years (180 x 72) as certain
concurring data suggest. And in effect, this latter period, also called “great year” by
both Greeks and Persians, is the exact half of the great astronomical cycle known
as the precession of equinoxes (or “Zodiacal Year”), the length of which has been
traditionally calculated as 25,920 common years (360 x 72) and, as is widely
known, is the one during which the projection of the Earth’s axis, responding to the
motions of rotation and oscillation or “wobbling” of the planet along its orbit,
makes a full circle at a rate of one degree every 72 years and returns to the exact

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point of departure in relation to the Zodiac constellations so that the equinoctial

point, one of the two times of the year in which the night lasts exactly as the day
does, turns out to be the same again as it was at the beginning of the period.

Fig. 1 – The cycle of precession of the equinoxes

Although this cycle is said to have been discovered in 139 BC by the Greek
astronomer Hipparchus, some authors believe the first to calculate its duration as
25,920 common years were the ancient Egyptians, who would have come by this
figure by matching the equinox with the same Zodiacal sign during 2,160 years;
and still others say the first to know about it were the old Brahmins of India, which
knowledge would have been spread to Iran and Sumer and then to Egypt, where it
was picked up by the Greek Hipparchus. Be it as it may, the Egyptians, according
to the hermetic tradition, were trying to establish the length of the Divine Year,
which was then fixed as approximately 168 Zodiacal years (or “creation days,” as
they used to call them). This itself is extremely suggestive, as 168 times 25,920 is
4’354,560 common years, virtually the length of a Hindu cycle of four yugas
(4’320,000 common years), with a difference of “only” 34,560 years; however,
since the consideration of such a remarkable coincidence would take too long, for
the moment I will just elaborate a bit on the Egyptian Divine Year.
Like most of the old traditional cultures, the ancient Egyptians are known to have
conceived a universe built on mysterious numerical relationships in which the
various orders of magnitude matched each other both quantitatively and
qualitatively. In this way, they believed that the Divine Year of 168 zodiacal years
consisted of three “divine times of work” each divided in 56 zodiacal years (168 :
3); each “divine time of work” consisted of four “seminal seasons” of 14 zodiacal
years each (56 : 4); each “seminal season” consisted of two “divine conception
weeks” – equivalent to Day and Night – of seven zodiacal years each (2 : 2); and
each “divine conception week” consisted of seven “creation days” of 25,920
common years each (7 : 7), this being, as we have just seen, the duration of a cycle
of precession of the equinoxes or Zodiacal Year. Thus was established a first
analogy between the Zodiacal Year and a “creation day.”
Additionally, they divided the “creation day” of 25,920 common years in 12
“differential hours” – equivalent to 12 zodiacal months – of 2,160 common years
each (25,920 : 12), i.e. the period during which the equinox coincides with the
same sign of the Zodiac.
Now, since the ascent of every new sign is considered to be escorted by events that
are catastrophic or in some other way crucial to the Earth, this “differential hour”
or zodiacal month of 2,160 common years has received particular attention from
the hermetic tradition. For example, it is said that when the Age of Leo was coming
to an end and the one of Cancer was about to arrive, some 10,000 years ago, there

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took place the downfall of Atlantis. In turn, the shift from Cancer to Gemini would
have witnessed the passage of an enormous comet that shook up the Earth. The
shift from Gemini to Taurus, about 6,000 years ago, is supposed to have marked
the start of new civilizations and the beginning of the worship of the bull – and the
goat – at several places of the world: the ox Apis in Egypt, the winged bulls in
Babylon and Assyria, as well as holidays associated to the spring and procreation.
In turn, the arrival of Aries, about 4,000 years ago, is known to have concurred
with the appearance of the paschal lamb, a symbol of Judaism. Finally, the shift
from Aries to Pisces would have heralded the appearance and propagation of
Christianity, the main symbol of which, at least at its beginning, was, as we know,
the fish.
Be it as it may, as a “differential hour” within the “creative day” of 25,920
common years, and continuing with the hourly analogy, the Egyptians divided the
period of 2,160 years into 60 “minutes” of 36 common years each (2,160 : 60) and
the “minute” of 36 common years into 36 “specific tasks” of one common year
each (36 : 36), thus establishing two important hourly analogies by matching, first,
the common hour with the “zodiacal month”; and secondly, each minute of that
“hour” with a cycle of 36 common years, equivalent to a half of a degree of the
zodiac circle. Finally, they divided the “specific task” or common year into seven
“creative aptitudes” of 52 weeks and fraction each (365 : 7) and the “creative
aptitude” into seven “human virtues” of seven days and fraction each (52: 7),
which established a correspondence between the common week and the Divine
Year of 168 Zodiacal Years and fundamentally, although in this case by resorting
to imperfect divisions and fractions, between the common week and the seven
“creation days” of 25,920 common years each.
Whatever the practical value of these latter calculations, it is clear that the ancient
Egyptians, as well as the Greeks, Persian and Chaldeans, dispensed a most special
relevance to this cycle of 25,920 years (or its half of 12,960 years), which would
very likely represent the length of a full cycle of four ages. If so, what would be the
length of each age?
According to the hermetic tradition, the “Adamic race,” which we belong to, would
have evolved through four ages of 6,480 years each and would now be nearing the
end of the full cycle. These four ages, naturally equivalent to the same number of
“zodiacal seasons” of three “zodiacal months” each, would have been marked by
four key events: (I) Formation, from the start of the Zodiacal Year to the Sin or
“fall down” of man; (II) Sin, from the expulsion from the Garden of Eden to
Tribulation, which began with the Flood; (III) Tribulation, from the Flood to
Redemption; and IV) Redemption, consummated by Christ. Thus, while the sun
draws about to enter the first degrees of the Aquarius constellation – after
retrograding past the Taurus, Aries and Pisces constellations – the Zodiacal Year
would be about to complete its last cycle, and the “Adamic race” that of its
redemption and deliverance.
I would like to make some remarks here. These periods or “seasons” – the
description of which certainly sounds a little bit fanciful – which some traditions
automatically round up as six thousand years, clearly correspond to a more general,
and therefore more extensive, cycle than the one made up by the ages depicted by
Hesiod, who was clearly talking about more local and contingent periods and about
cycles already concluded in his time. On the other hand, they strongly crash, both
in their magnitude and by their equal lengths, with the four yugas of the Hindu
tradition, which are of an incredible elaboration and whose lengths, proportional to

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the scale 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10, are amazingly 1’728.000, 1’296.000, 864,000 and

432,000 common years respectively, equaling a total length of 4’320,000 years for
the full cycle. Incidentally, it is most significant that this scale, although reversed,
is the same as the Pythagorean Tetraktys expressed as 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. Let me
briefly address the latter.
Among the Greeks who exposed on the doctrine of cosmic cycles – great
philosophers like Anaximander, Empedocle, Heraclitus, and subsequently Plato
and the Stoics – there clearly stands out Pythagoras, whose intellectual interests
were primarily mathematic. It is said that his most transcendental discovery, which
would signify a sort of disclosure of the nature of the universe, was that certain
intervals of the musical scale can be arithmetically expressed as relationships
among the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4, which combined sum up 10, a symbol of the
Supreme. Originated – according to legend – in the pitch of the sounds issued by
an anvil on which hammers of different sizes were beating, this discovery
demonstrated the existence of an inherent order in the nature of sound and,
moreover, a mathematical organization in the formation of the universe, of whose
structure, harmonious and beautiful as music itself, time participates as a key
element.
Now, in times of Pythagoras, as well as later on, the Greek scholars used to make
study journeys to various countries, mainly Egypt and Mesopotamia, and even
beyond, to India itself, considered throughout history as the ultimate goal of the
lovers of knowledge. It is uncertain whether Pythagoras undertook such journey;
but if he did, it could explain the real origin of his famous Tetraktys, the “Hindu
version” of which I will deal with in the next chapter.

NOTE

1
In this way the Church, almost from its inception, would systematically oppose the
doctrine of the Four Ages – among other reasons, because it affected the Augustinian view
of a history divided in three main parts or periods (in which men live, first without laws;
then under the laws, and finally in the time of grace). Then in the course of the centuries,
and in midst of a virtual conspiracy of silence, the timeless doctrine gradually fell into
oblivion as in the West at least, and contrarily to what almost all the ancient traditions had
taught, the notion of a linear time indefinitely extending into the future gathered strength.

Home

CHAPTER 2

KALPAS AND YUGAS

«Those Yogis who know from realization Brahma’s day as covering a thousand maha-

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yugas, and so his night as extending to another thousand maha-yugas, know the reality
about Time.»
(Bhagavad–gita, 8:17)

I n essence, the Hindu doctrine of cosmic cycles conceives a circular, qualitative

time that cyclically affects our universe and everything in it. A universe that on its
part is eternal, without beginning or end, and which manifests itself, along with
other billions of universes, from a state of development to another of equilibrium,
and then to another of decadence, after which there occurs its dissolution – or
pralaya – and back to start again, forever. A universe, in sum, governed by
recurrence, in which, from manifestation to pralaya, there flow in countless
numbers the immensely vast Brahma’s days, or kalpas, preceded by their
corresponding nights; and where within each kalpa there follow one another one
thousand “human cycles,” or maha–yugas – a study of which, reversing the order, I
will attempt in the first place.
Let us begin by noting that each maha–yuga consists of four cyclic ages or yugas,
of decreasing length, which mark an equal number of gradual stages of degradation
of mankind and so correspond exactly with those ages that the Classical tradition
has designated always as the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Iron ages – except for one
aspect of the doctrine: the magnitude of the durations involved. In effect, the length
ascribed to the maha–yuga, 4’320,000 common years, is in appearance so
disproportionate to represent a human cycle, that it usually startles the Westerner
unfamiliar with these matters; because even without mentioning that we are talking
about cycles – of which there are as many as one thousand in a Brahma’s day –,
such length exceeds that of the existence of mankind on Earth, a span of time
which, while in a very broad sense can be traced back some millions of years into
the past, in a more strict sense – i.e. in relation to modern man, or Sapiens Sapiens
– is, nevertheless, estimated at best as 50,000 – 100,000 years. On the other hand,
why should the lengths of the yugas be proportional to the scale 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10
and not rather equal, as are the four ages of the Classical tradition? We will see
very soon, however, that these difficulties are not unsolvable as might be thought,
nor is the problem as a whole as complex as it appears to be. So for the moment
and without further delay, we will take a look into those lengths as can be deduced
from the relevant texts.

Table 1 – The maha–yuga or cycle of four yugas

Apart from the proportion by which the lengths decrease, here we can immediately
see that the total length in “divine years”, if translated into “human years”, is the
product of the first by 360 – according to the statement in Bhagavata Purana 3,
11:12 that “a day of the demigods is like a year of human beings”. A careful study

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reveals, however, what is perhaps the most significant fact in all of this analysis
(and a perfectly logic one at that): at least in “human years”, all the lengths are
“circular” – that is, not only are they divisible, by reason of their ending in two or
more zeros, by 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 15, 20, etc, but they also are divisible, because the
sum of their digits is nine, by 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 72, 108, 144, 180, 360, etc, all
of them “sacred” numbers for most traditions. This essential feature not only fits in
perfectly with any numerical system based on the circle of 360 degrees, which is
most suitable for a circular time as it makes it possible to produce exact divisions,
but it also enables the “human” lengths to be related to the period of precession of
the equinoxes of 25,920 common years – the sum of whose digits is also nine.
Thus, 72 x 60 = 4,320 and 72 x 360 = 25,920 (the total length of the cycle of
precession of the equinoxes, and remember the equinox precessions by one degree
every 72 years), and again, 4,320 x 6 = 25,920, all of which is actually not
surprising, as the division of the circle is naturally effected by multiples of three,
six, or nine – the latter being the one that affords the greatest possibilities.
Now, in connection with these two key numbers, 72 and 25,920, there are
extremely suggestive coincidences which evidence a perfect correspondence
between the life of man, the “microcosms,” and that of our universe or
“macrocosms.” For one thing, 72 corresponds to the average beats of the human
heart in a minute, and a quarter of 72, or 18, to the human breathings in the same
period, so that in one day a man will have breathed 18 x 60 x 24 = 25,920 times.
On the other hand, after 72 years, which is the average length of life of man at
present, a man will have lived a total 25,920 days (assuming an ideal year of 360
days), while the Earth’s axis will have barely traveled a degree of the equinoctial
circle of 360 degrees or 25,920 common years. In other words: from a cosmic view,
man’s life lasts only one day.
In the other hand, the number 72 appears very frequently in connection with
cosmic cycles. For example, it appears in the Chinese magical square and
corresponded, in the Far-Eastern tradition, to the division of the year in five parts
(5 x 72 = 360), out of which three (3 x 72 = 216) were “Yang” or masculine, and
1
two (2 x 72 = 144) “Yin” or feminine. I will mention, in passing, that this division
of the year was also used by the ancient Incas. Among the ancient Egyptians, in
turn, 72 are the plotters who stand by Seth in his scheme to kill Osiris.
Again, remember that 72 were the disciples of Jesus, 72 the members of the Jewish
Sanhedrin and, in the Middle Ages, the articles of the Rule of the Order of the
Temple were also 72. But however interesting all of these numerical considerations
are – and they could certainly multiply to tedium -– I will leave them at this point
so as to turn back again to the maha–yuga.
Perhaps the most vivid description of this important cycle is the one provided by
the story of the bull Dharma, narrated elsewhere in Bhagavata Purana (1, 4:17 and
ff). There is depicted how Dharma, “Religion,” steadily loses, one by one, his four
legs at every successive age: In Satya–yuga, the primeval age in which mankind
fully keeps the religious principles, and which is characterized by virtue and
wisdom, he is supported by the four principles of austerity, cleanliness,
truthfulness, and mercy; in Treta–yuga, the era in which vice appears, he loses
austerity; in Dvapara–yuga, as vice increases, he loses cleanliness; and in Kali–
yuga, the era of quarrel and hypocrisy and of the biggest degradation and spiritual
darkness of all four, in which we are now, he additionally loses veracity and is only
supported by mercy, which declines gradually as the time of devastation closes by.

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This devastation occurs at the end of a final, ghastly period in which men become
like dwarves, have extremely short lives, and decay to unimaginable extremes of
abomination. The description of this last period, which appears on the Twelfth
Canto of Bhagavata Purana, usually arouses disbelief and rejection from Western
readers, although such daunting images are by far not uncommon in the Western
tradition (as attested, for example, on biblical texts such as Deuteronomy 28: 53,
57; 2 Kings 6:28–29; Ezekiel 5:10; Lamentation 4:10, etc.). For the rest, in the
current cycle such devastation would still take place about four hundred twenty
thousand years from now, a date that awaits reassuringly remote in the future – at
least from our limited historical perspective – and which greatly differs from those
that other traditions – the Jewish and Persian for example – establish, within the
current era, for the end of time – although, as we will see in subsequent chapters,
on the earthly-and-human proper levels the end of this cycle could very well be, so
to speak, as close-by as around the corner.
Additionally, the Supreme Lord himself, as the avatara Kalki, is said to appear at
the end of the Kali–yuga to destroy the demons, save his devotees and inaugurate
another Satya–yuga, thus starting a new cycle of four yugas.
As to the beginning of the Kali–yuga, a crucial date in our study as it should let us
calculate, once established its actual length, its ending date, Surya–siddhanta,
perhaps the oldest astronomical treatise in the world, establishes it at midnight of
the day that corresponds in our calendar to the 18th February of 3102 BC, when the
2
seven traditional planets, including the sun and moon, were aligned in relation to
the star Zeta Piscium. While this date certainly sounds implausible, as it contradicts
all our notions about the known history, plus raises an apparently insoluble
problem, i.e. the obvious incompatibility between the existence of multiple human
cycles on the one hand, and a single human cycle on the other (an issue that will be
addressed in the next chapter), for the moment I will just mention that such
conjunction has been confirmed by astronomical calculations made by computer
3
software published in the United States by Duffet-Smith.
Let us take a look into the bigger cycles now. As has been said at the beginning of
this chapter, a Brahma’s day consists of one thousand maha–yugas, and his night
of an equal number of them. The “day” and “night” therefore are 4’320,000 x
1,000 x 2 = 8,640’000,000 common years long. Now, since Brahma lives one
hundred of his years (of 360 “days” each), a simple calculation (8,640’000,000 x
100 x 360) unveils the total length of the immense cycle of cosmic manifestation:
311’040,000’000,000 common years – a duration that theoretically is just that of a
breathing period of the Maha–Vishnu, the Great Universal Form, and symbolically
corresponds to the two complementary phases into which each cycle of
manifestation is divided – in this case a dual, alternating movement of expansion
and contraction, exhalation and inhalation, systole and diastole.
Some preliminary remarks are in order here. Regarding cosmic cycles, the Hindu
tradition, like the Chinese and other ancient traditions, has always expressed their
lengths mainly by symbolic numbers so as to conceal a certain knowledge that is
considered confidential. Thus, in some cases, some figures may have been
“disguised” by either multiplying or dividing them by a factor, or by adding to
them a greater or lesser number of zeros – which does not modify their respective
proportions; such may well be the case with the maha–yuga of 4’320,000 common
years. For those Hindus who would not dare to question them, however, the plain,
literal yuga lengths should perhaps be considered not so much strictly referred to

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the Earth but rather to the cosmic level; and in fact, all the difficulties inherent in
the problem would be solved by including within the framework of the doctrine
different planetary systems in which the cycles of four yugas unfolded
successively. This hypothesis raises, however, metaphysical issues that are beyond
the scope of this study, so while not excluding that in the next chapter I may deal
with this cycle more extensively, I have limited here to mention it.
As to the kalpa of 4,320 millions of years – an appropriate study of which would
need a whole chapter – it should be noted that its usual association by Western
scholars with the total cosmic manifestation has been overrun by today’s
estimation of the age of the universe by modern science, an age that would place it
rather on a planetary or, at best, galactic level. And in effect, according to the
orthodox Hindus for whom the kalpa is simply synonymous with a Brahma’s day
without its corresponding night, the end of the kalpa comes with a partial
4
dissolution of the universe by water; and as regards its duration, the doctrine
abides strictly by the aforementioned figure. Now, the fact that this length of time
virtually matches the 4,500 millions of years estimated by modern science for the
Earth’s age (let alone the “ultimate” figure of 4,310 millions mentioned in the
introduction), certainly points to the possibility that it represents the lifetime of our
planetary system; if so, it would not be unlikely that the Earth were currently very
close to the end of a Brahma’s day and that its corresponding night was now
approaching, even if it takes ten or twelve millions of years yet to arrive. However,
all this is not by far that simple: For one thing, the related texts are in some cases
quite enigmatic, as suggested, for example, by the reiteration of the phrase “Those
who know...” (Bhagavad–gita 8:17), so the possibility remains that the 4,320
millions of years do not actually mean the daytime but the full Brahma’s day, so
that the length of the daytime would be 2,160 millions of years, and an equal
number of years that of the night. So here again, the possibility that the figures may
have been somehow disguised should be taken into account.
Finally, the enormous length of 311’040,000’000,000 common years that the texts
implicitly assign to the great cycle of cosmic manifestation accommodates indeed
very comfortably the 15 billions of years estimated by modern physics as the age
of the universe; and even if such length were deemed exaggerate – say it was a
thousand times lesser, i.e. the actual figure was only 311,040’000,000 years, which
is certainly not impossible if we stick to the foregoing remarks – even so the 15
billions of years would fit very comfortably within that period. At any rate, it
would mean that our universe is still very young and that we are now, within the
immense cycle of universal manifestation, virtually at the beginning of an
expansion period.
And indeed, it is amazing that it took literally millennia for the modern scientific
circles to again conceive this ancient notion of a universe that “breathes,” i.e. a
universe that has two phases, one in which it expands and the other in which it
contracts; two phases which, by virtue of the correspondences to which cycles of
any order of magnitude are subject, can be respectively assimilated to a Brahma’s
day and its corresponding night, as well as to both phases of what the Hindus call a
Manvantara – an old Hindu measure of time which, in my effort to integrate what I
may call the Western and Eastern sides of the doctrine, I will deal with in some
detail in the next chapter.

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NOTES

1
ONORIO FERRERO: El Tao te ching de Lao tzu, Ignacio Prado Pastor, Lima, 1972, p.
12, note.

2
The traditional astrology used to list the following seven planets, including as such the
sun and moon: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon.

3
RICHARD L. THOMPSON, op. cit., p. 20. It is important to mention that other
siddhantas make almost identical calculations.

4
Such dissolution constitutes a pralaya proper, as opposed to the maha–pralaya or “great”
pralaya that occurs at the end of the total cosmic manifestation.

Home

CHAPTER 3

THE MANVANTARA

«At the close of night the creation of the three worlds commences again and continues for
the livelong day of Brahma, which embraces the regimen of the fourteen Manus (…) At the
close of day, the powerful manifestation of the universe merges in the darkness of night,
and everything is silent. »
(Bhagavata Purana 3,11:23,28)

I have previously alluded to the dramatic contrast between the Zodiacal Year of
25,920 common years, which for the hermetic tradition would match a human
cycle of four ages, and the length of 4’320,000 years that the Hindu tradition in
turn assigns to the cycle of four yugas – a length that might appear to be excessive
and even arbitrary at first sight as, unlike the former, bears no relation with any
known astronomical cycle. However, I have already suggested that the key to this
issue would be to consider the latter symbolically, at least in connection with the
human proper cycle – i.e. the one of the most recent humanity, or Homo Sapiens
Sapiens.
With this in mind, in the present chapter I will try to bring both ends together and
establish the real length of the human cycle thus considered by approaching the
problem from a new point of view: that of the so-called Manvantara, or “shift” of
Manu (the “Father of Mankind”), an ancient Hindu measure of time that in spite of
its being primarily septenary and having a length which, as derived from the texts,
would be nearly 72 maha–yugas – which apparently increases the difficulty –
actually is for the scholarly, with the exception of those who insist on taking these

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data literally, identical to what I have described as a single maha–yuga.

In effect, the connection with the duration of the human cycle is obvious: the term
Manvantara more precisely means “the shift to a new humanity,” in this case our
humanity, apart from the fact that from the related word Manusya, which literally
means “mankind”, derive the Latin humanitas, the German mann, the English man,
etc., Man being, on its part, “Mankind” proper, the Universal Father, the Adam of
the Nordic legends.
On the other hand, it is interesting that in the world history there exist variations of
the name, Manu, applied to founders of diverse cultures such as the Egyptian
(Menes), the Cretan (Minos) and even the Inca, whose first monarch, Manco
Capac, was the head of a lineage which extended over fourteen kings – that is, the
same number of Manus appearing in a Brahma’s day. For the rest, it is important to
1
note, with René Guénon, that a Manu is not a mythic, legendary or historical
character but the “prototype of Man” for any cosmic cycle or state of existence to
which he gives his Law.
All this sheds light over one of the most impenetrable issues in relation to the cycle
of four yugas, i.e. the apparent incongruence between a sequence of multiple
human cycles, on the one hand, and a single human cycle on the other – a problem
that was pending solution in the previous chapter. I can say now that as concerns at
least our planet, it is not accurate to speak of a succession of human cycles but of a
great “general” human cycle, that of the present humanity, which encompasses all
other human cycles whatever their order or magnitude.
Now, since we are assuming that this “general” human cycle – the length of which
I intend now to determine – approximately represents the age of the present earthly
humanity, and not that of its more or less remote ancestors, the best course will be
to previously establish which astronomical cycles are likely to influence it. The
problem identified in such terms, such cycles can only be the following:
(I) The Earth’s eccentricity cycle, which results in ice age cycles that
approximately occur every 100,000 years and are separated by interglacial periods
of 10,000 years. This cycle, which appears to be the main framework within which
the present mankind has evolved on Earth, is produced by the lengthening of our
planet’s orbit around the sun, which changes every 90,000 to 100,000 years from a
circular shape to a more elliptic one and back to start again. When the orbit is
circular, the distribution of heat over the Earth during the year is uniform, and
when it is more elliptic the Earth is closer to the sun and therefore warmer at some
times of the year, the seasons accentuating on a hemisphere and waning on the
other due to the modulating effect of the two cycles that are mentioned below.

(II) The cycle of precession of the equinoxes or Zodiacal Year, the length of which
is usually rounded as 26,000 years but, as we know, has traditionally been
calculated as 25,920 years. What makes this cycle particularly important as a most
likely trigger of the human phenomenon on our planet is the fact that when a half
of a wobbling period of the Earth’s axis has elapsed, i.e. after 13,000 years
approximately, the seasons become reversed: for example, 10,000 years ago, when
the Earth was at its farthest from the Sun, in the northern hemisphere it was
summer and not winter, as is today (and vice versa).

(III) The cycle of variation of the Earth’s axis tilt in the course of approximately
40,000 years from a minimum of 21.5 degrees to a maximum 24.5 degrees, a

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variation that obviously accentuates or moderates the overall effect of the

precessional period; currently the angle of tilt is 23.4 degrees and decreasing, thus
attenuating the difference between summer and winter (see Figure 2).

Fig. 2 – The three great astronomical cycles

Acting coordinately, these three great astronomical cycles – named “Milancovitch

cycles” after the Yugoslavian astronomer who first studied them – subject the
Earth to a very complex astronomical pattern that has produced the ice fluctuations
throughout the ages, albeit out of all three it is the period of precession of
equinoxes the one which, by leveraging the combined effect of the other two,
seems to have played the main role in the development of the current earthly
humanity. Thus, some scientists believe that approximately 40,000 years ago, when
the southern hemisphere was the nearer one from the Sun, and as ice gravitated on
the North, there appeared at various places, probably in Central Asia, tribes united
by their need to face the hard geophysical conditions that prevailed at that time;
and thirteen thousand years later, when the northern and southern hemispheres
exchanged their positions before the Sun, some tribes appeared also in the southern
hemisphere.
Approximately 18,000 ago, on the other hand, the Earth began to come out of the
last ice age responding to a combination of all three astronomical factors, although
the inter-glacial proper did not commence until approximately 10,000 years ago.
Now, there is every reason to believe that this inter-glacial period is about to end,
and many scientists claim that within a span of time that may range from a few to a
thousand years from now, the Earth will have entered a new ice age of 100,000
years; to trigger the process there will only be required a summer with a very weak
solar glow, unable to defrost the Northern hemisphere glaciers. And irrespective of
the signs of an imminent catastrophic defrost caused by the so-called “greenhouse
effect” – the planet warming caused in turn by the excess of industrial emissions –
the predominant view appears to be at best (maybe I should say at worst) that this
factor would only lengthen the process.
Be it as it may, at this point it should be obvious that, by interlacing and
influencing one another, all three great astronomical cycles exert a decisive impact
on the life on Earth, an effect that at times can be beneficial and at other times
devastating. At times, for example, the end of one of them will match the end of
another, which will make it particularly severe. Of course, the scenario is even
more complicated, for it includes the effect of other minor cycles such as the so-
called “small ice ages” or cycles of very strong winters occurring unexpectedly
every approximately 180 years, which are apparently caused by the so-called
“planetary synods” – the grouping of all the planets on one side of the sun while
the Earth is on the other – which occur every equal number of years approximately;

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or like those cycles of great solar activity that occur every 11 and 80 years mainly
(the 11-year cycle has later on been specified at 11 years and 29 days), which
appear to influence markedly on the occurrence of draughts, volcano activity and
the shifts in the Earth’s magnetism; or again, like the maximum and minimum
solar cycles of 500 years each, mentioned in some recent works, which would have
furthered the emergence by turn of the great historical civilizations. All this
without doubt is an engrossing subject, a study of which would require, however, a
lengthy space; so for the moment, we will just see how it all can help us to
determine the length of the human cycle.
Let us therefore consider the Manvantara, in as much as a strictly human earthly
cycle governed by a particular Manu, as a small-scale image of the maha–yuga of
4’320,000 common years. Irrespective of the number of zeros that complement this
figure, the symbolic length of the Manvantara will then be 4320 and, always
following the proportion 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10, those of the corresponding yugas will
be 1728, 1296, 864 and 432 respectively, all of them circular numbers – for the
sum of their digits is also nine – and therefore submultiples of 25,920 – which
likewise is a circular number.
In the other hand, if we additionally consider that on the cosmic level it is precisely
the precession of the equinoxes which most strongly influences the length of the
human cycle, it will be legitimate to assume that this length should comprise a
whole number of such cycles. The question that arises then is: which can be that
number?
2
In his extraordinary article Some Remarks on the Doctrine of Cosmic Cycles
originally published in French in 1937, René Guénon suggests an answer.
Assuming that rather than the cycle of precession of equinoxes it is its half, or
“great year” of 12,960 common years which, given the particular importance it has
for such traditions as the Greek and the Persian, makes up the main foundation for
the cyclic ages, Guénon suggests that such number should be five, mainly by virtue
of its relationship with the duration of the reign of Xisuthrus (the biblical Sisera, a
character manifestly identical to Vaivasvata, the Manu for the present Era), a
duration that the Chaldeans established as 64,800 common years (5 x 12,960). To
support this thesis, Guénon, on top of noting that a duration of 64,800 years may
well represent the real age of the Earth’s present humanity, proposes quite
reasonable correspondences for five such as the five bhutas or elements of the
material world, etc.
Now, although this sort of calculation has never been encouraged by tradition, let
me dissent on the number of periods. For if we accepted 64,800 common years as
the total length of the present Manvantara, the length of the Kali–yuga would be
6,480 years, or a tenth of that; and if we stick to 3102 BC as its starting point, then
a simple subtraction (6,480 – 3,102) would produce the year 3378 AD as its ending
date – without doubt a reassuring deadline in times of severe global crisis as those
we are living now (though not quite so as the one anticipated by the orthodox
Hinduism in about four hundred twenty thousand years from now), but which does
not agree at all with certain data from other traditions which, as mentioned in the
prologue, announce an imminent end for our troubled civilization.
It should be noted that these calculations are all subordinated to admitting the year
3102 BC as the starting date of the present Kali–yuga, which actually, in spite of
all the arguments put forward for it, will hardly be by many critics. Even so, let us
accept such date for a moment and go on with our speculation: Assuming the yugas

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to be four and not five, would it not be more natural that the duration in question
should comprise four equal periods, that is, to multiply 12,960 by four? After all,
the arguments for five periods are not conclusive, as the material proper elements
are only four (as the fifth, ether, is non material). And on the other hand, should we
use four – the number of seasons in a year -– as a factor, the total length of the
Manvantara would then be 51,840 years (4 x 12,960), therefore encompassing two
full precessional periods, which can respectively be assimilated to Day and Night.
Again, 4,320 being a third of 12,960, the real lengths of each yuga would then be
given by the product of the symbolic durations by twelve, which is the number of
months of the year and of the signs of the Zodiac, so that in a way, we would be
converting the symbolic durations – based on the linear scale 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10 –
into circular proper, that is, based on a twelve-month cycle. In either case, the
length of the Kali–yuga would become 5,184 years (72 x 72), whether we divide
51,840 by ten or multiply 432 by twelve; and so, by means of a subtraction similar
to the one above (5,184 – 3,102) we would get the year 2082 as the final point of
the present human cycle, a date which unfortunately is more akin than the previous
one with the ominous course of the world’s current events and the severe, all-
pervading climatic disturbances in our days that might be announcing a global,
profound, irreversible, and perhaps not very distant, disruption.
And although I do not pretend to play the soothsayer as I am certainly aware that
such forecasts can do more harm than good, it may not be superfluous to insist that
the end of an astronomical cycle can overlap that of another and strongly influence
it, maybe attracting it towards itself, thus rendering the date for border line events
3
even closer.

NOTES

1
Cf. RENE GUENON: Introducción general al estudio de las doctrinas hindúes, Losada,
Buenos Aires, 1945, Chapter 5.

2
As collected in RENÉ GUÉNON: Formas tradicionales y ciclos cósmicos, Obelisco,
Barcelona, 1984, p. 12–23.

3
Such shortening could amount to a full precessional degree, i.e. seventy-two common
years, which would establish the year 2010 AC as a brought-forward end of the present
Manvantara. This date, quite close indeed from now, ceased to be a mere possibility to
become actual data to consider as I started to review these cycles of 72 years from a
historical perspective (see Chapter 7) and curiously enough, it is very close to the end time
of the Maya, calculated at 2012 AC, and other end-of-cycle dates anticipated by various
traditions from all over the world.

Home

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CHAPTER 4

THE AGE OF KALI

«… in this Age of Kali people are mostly short-lived, slothful, most dull-witted, unlucky
and tormented with diseases and other evils.»

(Bhagavata Purana 1, 1:7-10)

A ccording to Bhagavata Purana (1, 14:1 ff), the advent of the present Kali–
yuga was heralded by portents of a fearful nature: the sacred images in temples
seemed to weep and mourn, deception and misunderstanding polluted all dealings
among relatives, and everywhere people were turning increasingly greedy and
violent. Above all this, there prevailed severe disruptions in the characteristics of
the seasons.
This would have occurred in 3102 BC as the Dvapara–yuga, or third yuga, of the
twenty-eighth “millennium” of the seventh and present Manu, Vaivasvata, came to
an end.
Confirming the starting date, Aryabhata, a famous Hindu astronomer born in 476
BC, writes he was 23 years old when 3,600 years of the present Kali–yuga had
elapsed, which yields 3,600 – 23 – 476 = 3101 BC. The use of a “zero” year in the
conversion to the Western calendar can account for the difference of one year.
Now as was said in Chapter 2, the precise start, on the midnight of the 18th
February of 3102 BC, was presided by an alignment of the seven traditional planets
(including the Sun and Moon). According to the jyotisha–shastras, the texts of
astronomy of the old Hindus, this is perfectly normal: the Surya–siddhanta, for
example, which measures the time in days from the beginning of the Kali–yuga,
assumes that the positions of all planets, in their two cycles, are aligned at “zero”
day in relation to the star Zeta–Piscium, which is used by the said shastras to
measure the celestial longitudes. Such alignment would have had minimal
deviations and anyway, it would be a very rare phenomenon, as from that date to
our days there only were found three intervals of ten years in which there had been
1
such an exact alignment.
Here the question arises: why should the passage from one age to the next be
determined by an alignment like the one depicted, if it is rather the cycle of
precession of equinoxes the key factor for determining the length of the human
cycle? To give a precise answer is not very easy; but if we consider that the
circumference described by the Earth’s axis does not have an actual starting point
(since, as in a common year, it is actually conventional), then it is very likely that
there is some triggering factor, like the planetary synods described in Chapter 2,
which might have caused additional climatic disturbances so as to precipitate the
passage from one yuga to the next one. There is, regarding this, a suggestive
connection with the fact that the El Niño phenomenon, which such dreadful
disorders caused in recent years, appears to have begun in the year 3100 BC
approximately; and we may also remember the concept of a “perfect year,” the

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time the planets take to align themselves back again at their startup point, which
2
coincides with the “great year” of 12,960 common years.
In connection with the likely starting point of the present Kali–yuga, some authors
have highlighted the fact that, at some time in the sixth century BC, the traditional
doctrines experienced diverse re-adaptations and reformulations in several key
areas of the world: in Greece by Pythagoras, in Persia by Zarathustra, in China by
Confucius, etc., re-adaptations which, considering the universality of the
phenomenon, would have been a sort of preparation for the start of a new Era. I
must admit that this date around the sixth century BC, while imprecise, sounds
more plausible as a starting point than 3102 BC, which crashes frontally with the
believe in an uninterrupted progress of humanity from the development of
agriculture and the invention of writing onwards. Yet in favor of 3102 BC can be
argued, apart from the unusual planetary alignment depicted, the singular
coincidence with the “zero year” of the start of the Mayan and Egyptian
civilizations (in 3113 BC the former, around 3100 the latter), without a doubt
significant as such start coincides with the beginning of writing around the world
and seems to draw, for the same reason, a veil between history proper – the written
history – and pre-history, about which virtually nothing is known with absolute
certainty. In the other hand, it has been suggested, based on astronomical
calculations, that the great epics Mahabharata would date back from 3100 BC as it
would be partially contemporary of Satapatha Brahmana, where it is said that the
Krittikas (the Pleiades) «do not turn from the East» – i.e. they were on the celestial
Equator. Add to all this the persistent allusions, both in oral and written tradition,
to ancient, highly sophisticated civilizations spiritually more advanced than ours
that disappeared as a consequence of dreadful cataclysms which erased all traces of
their passage on Earth, and the picture becomes more complete: if one or more of
these civilizations existed before our written history, then it would push the
specific weight of history back by several millennia and turn the year 3102 BC into
a comparatively recent date.
But let us deal with the difficulty that is obviously central in our study: Are we
really in the Kali–yuga, the age of quarrel and hypocrisy? If so, in which phase of
it? And, is it possible that we have been in it so long (more than 5,000 years)?
As a matter of fact, giving answer to each of these questions will depend on the
point of view that we take. We are dealing with directly opposite perceptions of a
vast problem that also implies, considering the long time involved – virtually the
whole history of our so-called civilization – such additional questions as: Were the
Greeks and Romans really greater than the Egyptians, the builders of huge
pyramids and majestic temples several thousands of years before the Greeks made
their appearance in the world? Among the Greeks themselves, were the
contemporaries of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle wiser than Pythagoras, Heraclitus
and Tales’ colleagues? And – skipping the broad time span – were the European
Middle-Ages really inferior to the Renaissance, and if so, in what sense? What can
be said, for example, of the Empire of Charlemagne, the earlier Romanic churches,
and of Gothic art, which was an entirely original art and not an imitation of classic
art as that of the so-called Renaissance was?
Again, is the present time an age of immense progress as depicted by the
technocrats, or rather a progression into chasm in every sense?
As is commonly known, India is at present probably the only country in the world
where the traditional spiritual values have been kept almost in their entirety. So it is

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only natural that, from an eminently spiritual perspective, the traditionalist Hindus
view the whole of the last 5,000 years of history as a process of gradual
deterioration in all orders and life conditions, a process in which the nefarious
atmosphere of the Kali-yuga has finally spread through everything and
materialism, real or disguised, has set its supremacy on the world. This is
particularly due to the fact that, not existing a qualified priesthood anymore, the
administration of society has fallen on the hands of the lower-class people whose
sole motivation is personal gain. As a consequence, there exist a growing anxiety
in the minds of men, increasingly impatient, greedy and violent, and a mounting
degradation of customs that ends out in family disintegration and a disorderly
sexual conduct which will inevitably result in a large part of the world population
being “unwanted,” that is, born from illicit coupling, including sexual assault, or
simply “by accident.” As if all this were not enough, there is an increasing
deterioration in the quality of everything, even food; and there appear awful and
previously unknown diseases that result from the increase of artificial needs and
the proliferation of the most pernicious habits. It is in sum, for those Hindus that
have not been seduced by the false glow of Western progress, an atheistic, violent
and degraded Era in which goodness virtually does not exist anymore (according to
Varaha Purana, “demonic beings take their birth in it”), an Era which can only
lead to a final cataclysm.
For the rest, such symptoms have not gone unnoticed to some Western reputed
scholars, among them Oswald Spengler, the famous author of The Decline of the
West, and Alexis Carrel, the author of the notorious and most controversial
L'Homme, cet inconnu (“Man, The Unknown”); but above all to René Guénon, for
whom we are essentially dealing with a process whose ultimate cause merely
resides in the increasing estrangement from the principle from which the whole
manifestation derives, a situation that has become irreversible and is primarily
characterized by a progressive secularization and materialization of the world – in
other words, by a gradual darkening of the primeval spirituality. This fatally
results in a total reversion of the universal values, a reversion that aggravates as we
move toward the end of the cycle and which is nourished by the fallacy of an
unrelenting evolution and progress. Actually Guénon distinguishes a fifth cyclic
phase within the Kali–yuga which he refers to as “the age of increasing
corruption,” which entails the risk of total annihilation of mankind. We would be
now in the dreadful times announced by the sacred books of India where «all castes
will be intermingled», where «family itself will no longer exist». Disorder and
chaos prevail in all orders and have reached a point that exceeds by far all that had
been previously seen; a stop would no longer be possible, since according to the
warnings from the traditional doctrines, we have indeed entered the final phase of
3
the Kali-yuga, «the darkest period of the Dark Age.»
It is amazing that this accurate diagnosis of the epoch was formulated nearly one
century ago, at a time when many voices predicted scientific and technical
advances that would “very soon put an end to of all the worlds’ evils”, a progress
that would bring “unlimited happiness” to humankind. Well, since then there have
only been atrocious wars, the nuclear threat got started, unknown diseases
appeared, and moral, social and political decay has reached extreme levels
throughout the world to such an extent, that the entire society would seem to
relentlessly drift toward anarchy. Violence has become common to an unheard-of
extent particularly in the large cities, which are literally submerged in drugs and

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pornography, and where it shows up in atrocious modes like urban terrorism.

Actually we only need to open the papers to become horrified at the profusion of
news on religious and racial slaughter and unbelievably brutal terrorist deeds and,
on the other hand, to be appalled by the gradual, increasingly accelerated
deterioration of the environment, the growing contamination of rivers, seas and
lakes, the extinction of forests and whole animal species by the hand of man, the
more and more frequent natural disasters which, caused basically by the current
global warming (in turn forced by a disproportionate boom of the industrial
activity) include the progressive desertification of the Earth, atmospheric
exhaustion, draughts, floods, earthquakes and cataclysms resulting in casualties by
4
the millions every year… do I need to continue? Indeed, there is every reason to
believe that we are in the last days of the present cycle and that the end of our
civilization, as we know it, is very close at hand, irrespective of what the believers
in a “future of material and moral progress” of the human race may claim. This
admitted, we would only need to deal with how that end would be like.
According to Bhagavata Purana (3, 11:29 ff), at the end of the “millennium” the
devastation is produced, at an early stage, by the «fire that is emitted by the mouth
of Sankarsana», which wreaks havoc on the “three inferior worlds” during one
hundred years of the demigods (36,000 human years). This version matches exactly
a Nordic tradition according to which at the time of the world destruction (the
ragnarok), from the mouth of Surt, “the Black One”, radiate devastating flames. Of
course, the allusions to fire may refer to great volcanic eruptions or to the
increasingly frequent forest fires that are currently taking place around the world.
Then, during other 36,000 years, there are gales and torrential rains accompanied
by raging waves that cause the seas to overflow, a devastation which, in the view
of the experts in the Hindu scriptures, occurs at the end of the period of each Manu.
Of course, on the human level, the afore-mentioned figures are to be considered
symbolic; in connection with the Manvantara as has been previously defined, the
72,000 years of devastation, which in the context correspond to the 4,320 millions
of years of a Brahma’s day, very likely are only equivalent to 72 years, so that
what I have referred to as “the beginning of end” would be actually situated around
the year 2010 AC, a border line suggested at the end of the previous chapter.
Moreover, if some other factors that would take too long to detail would be brought
into the calculation, we would see that such “beginning” might already be
occurring, as is unfortunately clear from the unprecedented rise in the climatic
disorders of our days – one of whose most visible manifestations is the recurring
onslaught of the “El Niño” phenomenon – which would be announcing an
imminent disaster of universal proportions.

NOTES

1
RICHARD L. THOMPSON, op. cit., pp. 20–21.

2
Actually, studies of this sort have been made in the past, although with more limited
means. Kepler is said to have discovered, in 1603–1604, the conjunction of Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn, and calculated that it occurs every 805 years; and an exact alignment of
Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn was predicted in some books for year 2000, information
that our means unfortunately would not let us verify.

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3
RENE GUENON: La crisis del mundo moderno, Mosca Azul, Lima, 1975, p. 41. See
also by the same author : Le régne de la quantité et les signes des temps, Gallimard, Paris,
1972.

4
There is a serious study by the Red Cross, probably the most important that this entity has
ever undertaken, whose main conclusion is that the situation depicted is absolutely real,
global, and – even worse – irreversible, as it has become a cyclic process of huge
dimension. Initiated mainly with the irresponsible tree chopping y excessive industrial
emissions, this destructive cycle would seem to have been started not only to the effect of
destroying all life on our planet, but also to end its very existence by rising the sea levels,
therefore thoroughly changing the weather and seasons plus causing major landslides and
draughts and all the other phenomena described. As to the likely date of the imminent
collapse – or “rupture”, as it is called – that entity has calculated it as approximately 2010
AD.

Home

CHAPTER 5

THE UNIVERSAL DOCTRINE

«So what does natural history tells us? The destruction of the earthly things, not all but a
very big number of them, it attributes to two main causes, the tremendous onslaughts of fire
and water. These two Heaven-sent punishments, we are told, descend by turns after very
long cycles of years.»
(Philo, On the Eternity of the World, XVII [147])

T he notion of Ages or Eras ended by violent cataclysms is common to the

traditional cultures from all around the world, from the most primitive to those that
reached a high level of civilization. They may differ in number, length, and in the
characteristics of the evoked catastrophes, but at the same time the coincidences
are extremely significant: in the majority of cases, as seen below, the Eras are four
or seven, their lengths are “circular”, and the disasters that finish them are usually
floods and conflagrations that occur in alternate fashion and are attributed to
planetary influences.
Thus, for instance, according to Latin scholar Varro (116 BC – 27 AD), the
Etruscan annals recorded seven preterit ages whose ends had been announced to
men by diverse celestial prodigies. On its part, “Bhaman Yast”, one of the books
from the Avesta, talks about seven World ages or millennia; according to
Zoroaster, the prophet of Mazdeism, at the end of each there are signs, wonders
and a great chaos all over the World. A Buddhist text, Visuddhi–Magga, in its
Chapter “Cycles of the World”, says there are seven ages separated by global
catastrophes of three kinds – by water, fire, and wind – at the end of which there

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appears a new Sun; after the seventh Sun, the World bursts in flames. Curiously
enough, this notion of seven “Suns” also appears on the Sibylline books, where it is
said that we are now in the seventh Sun (though yet two more are prophesized to
come), on the Mexican Annals of Cuauhtitlan, written in Nahuatl tongue around
1570 on archaic sources, which likewise allude to seven epochs or “Suns” (the
“Chicon–Tonatiuh”); and among the aborigines at North Borneo, who assert that
the six previous Suns having now perished, the present one is the seventh to light
up the World.
On the other side of the World, in North America, the legends of the Hopis, who
from old were apparently familiar with the fact that the Earth rotates on its axis,
speak rather of four ages or “worlds”. Having the three previous ones succumbed
to fire, snow, and water, the current World would be the fourth (another version
says the fifth), which will in turn be consummated when the Earth stumbles on its
own axis as a great blue star, referred to as “Sasquasohum”, precipitates upon it.
Apparently, however, the humankind will have to go through seven worlds in total.
The scheme of seven ages or Eras is also predominant in the mysterious Chaldean
legends about seven “kings of kings,” the last of whom, the elsewhere-mentioned
Xisuthros, saves his kin from the great flood (the six previous kings are Alorus,
Alaparus, Amilaros, Ammenon, Megalarus and Obastes); in the seven Manus of
the Hindu tradition, in which the last one also, Satyavrat, with the name Vaivasvat,
saves a few chosen from the flood; and in the seven “Edomite Kings” from the
Hebraic Cabbala, who like the previous ones govern by turn upon seven “Earths”
which may be taken both in a temporal and spatial sense. Seven “Earths” appear as
well in the Islamist esoterism, in this case governed by seven “Poles” (in a
presumable allusion to the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes), a
reference which also appears among the ancient Egyptians, who seemingly
recorded seven successive Pole Stars; and on its part the Rabbinical tradition,
which crystallized on the post Hebrew Exile, asserts that there have been six
successive re-creations of the Earth, after an equal number of global catastrophes;
on the fourth Earth lived the generation of the Babel Tower, and now we are on the
seventh. According to Philo, the Jew philosopher born around 20 BC, some
perished by floods, others by conflagrations.
On the other hand, in an obvious correspondence with the seven “days” of the
biblical Creation, we have elsewhere seen that the Hermetic tradition refers to
seven “creation days” of 25,920 years each – the length of a precessional cycle.
As can be seen, the notion of seven ages or Eras is common throughout the World,
which manifests an almost absolute concordance on this matter among most
traditions. There are, however, exceptions: the Icelandic Edda rather refer to nine
ages, such as the Sibylline books (yet preterit ones) and the Hawaiian and
Polynesian legends do. As to the Chinese tradition, it mentions ten kis or ages since
the beginning of the World until Confucius times, and the Sing–li–ta–tsiuen–chou,
an ancient encyclopedia that deals with the periodicity of the convulsions of nature,
refers to the very long periods of time between each other – though without
specifying their number – as “great years”; the same is true of texts by Sse Ma–
chien and Mo–tzu, which allude to large floods and long periods in which order
and cataclysms alternate on Earth.
By contrast, other traditions, like the Greek (derived partially from the Hindu), the
Tibetan, and particularly those from Central and South America, which will be
touched later on, stick more strictly to a scheme of four ages.
We have seen, for instance, that the Greek and Roman traditions speak of four

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preterit Ages of Mankind, equivalent to the four yugas of the Hindu tradition; and
in India itself, apart from Bhagavata Purana and other Puranas, other sacred
books like the Rig and Yajur Veda allude as well to four preterit ages, though
differing in the lengths of each. Also, it is not unlikely that the Buddhist tradition
according to which out of the one thousand Buddas who appear on a kalpa, only
four have manifested till now, may be related to the four yugas that make a maha–
yuga and to the one thousand maha–yugas that make a kalpa; as to the Buddha
Maitreya, who is to appear at the end of the cycle to inaugurate a new
“millennium”, he is clearly identical with the avatara Kalki of Hinduism and with
other inaugurators of the coming “millennium”, such as the “Christ of Glory” of
Christianity and the Messiah of Judaism and even the Mahdi, “the Guided One”, of
Islam. And here is another remarkable coincidence: both the avatara Kalki and the
Christ of Glory from Revelation 19:20ff are supposed to appear riding a white
horse.
On the other hand, the quaternary scheme correlates very closely with certain
universal archetypical forms which, while dramatically separated from one another
in space and time, do not vary in their innermost essence.
For example, according to the Hopi people, since the arrival of the white man in
North America we are on a fifth and final “World”, worse than the four previous
ones, which will aggravate with the desertion of the four “cosmic guards” who are
supposed to look after the columns that support the universe. On their part, the
Mayas believed in four bacabs who played a similar role and were identical to
Atlas of the Greeks, who copied it in turn from the Orientals. (Atlas actually
supports the heavenly vault, not our planet.) In turn, the Egyptians received from
the Sumerian people the tradition of four giants who supported the heaven’s cover,
and who were correlated to four great mountains (one was Mount Ida, in Greece,
another stood on the Atlas mountain range in Morocco). In China there also existed
this tradition: four guardians look after the World, surrounding a fifth element
(identified with the Emperor); when Kung-kung, an evil spirit, broke one of the
columns with his head, taking advantage of the guardian’s negligence, all water
from heaven fell down, causing a tremendous deluge. Again, the Scandinavians
believed in four guardians correlated in turn with the swástika, another universal
symbol (yet of unpleasant connotation because of Nazism), which is the same as
that of the Hindus and Greeks and the Olin of the Aztecs (the “Sun” of
Earthquakes) who in turn took it over from the Toltecs; and here we have another
archetypical form that spread out all over the World in a virtually identical manner.
Another common symbol to all of the World’s cultures and civilizations is that of a
“Cosmic Egg” which, in as much as an image of the perpetual dissolution and
rebirth of the universe, bears a close resemblance with the “myth” of Phoenix,
which is similarly found in civilizations ranging from the Hindu to the Chinese –
where it appears as the myth of Pan-ku –, the Egyptian, and even the Inca: for
example, it is known that on the main wall of the Ccoricancha temple, in Cuzco,
there was a representation of the Cosmic Egg that would later on be replaced with
the Sun’s image that met the Spaniards’ eyes.
But we are deviating from the versions related to the scheme of four ages, among
which the most typical probably are the Mesoamerican accounts preserved in
sacred texts such as the Popol Vuh and the “Quiche Manuscript” where, as above,
they are consistently referred to as “Suns” – although this time they are four, not
seven. The Aztecs, for example, who apparently collected these traditions from the
Teotihuacans, who in turn would have received them from the Olmecs,

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differentiated four “Suns” that ended in an equal number of destructions of the

World: the first by jaguars that devoured all men (another version says by the “God
of Night”), who at the time were giants; the second by hurricanes, the third by a
shower of fire (or by the “God of Fire”), and the fourth by a great deluge. Though
with slight variations, mainly in the order of “Suns”, this tradition was
disseminated throughout the Mayan world, and there is a significant fact: the four
destructions in all cases are correlated to the four traditional elements.
Also the Incas, farther South, believed that time unfolds by cycles and that every so
often the universe was challenged by great upheavals, times of distress referred to
as “Pachacuti”. Chroniclers of the conquest of America, like Fray Buenaventura
Salinas, transmit the tradition of the four ages previous to the Inca Empire. The last
age would have lasted 3,600 years, an emblematic “circular” figure that if divided
by ten becomes the number of the circle degrees and that of the priestly days of the
year: 360, an exceptionally sacred number to the majority of traditions from all
over the World.
And here we enter the area of lengths – which, most significantly, not only are
consistently circular but even show amazing coincidences among each other.
Particularly suggestive are those that center on the “great year” of 12,960 common
years, a half of the Zodiacal Year. According to Latin author Censorinus (third
century AD), who was Varro’s compilator, in this “great year”, also called
“Platonic Year” and “Supreme Year of Aristotle,” there is a great winter or
kataklysmos (which means “deluge”) and a great summer or ekpyrosis (which
means “combustion of the world”). Now, at some point in history this “great year”
was rounded up by Persians and Chaldeans as 12,000 years – a period of time
which, to the former, came to be the totality of time. (To the present-day Persians,
the year 2000 was the year 11,630 of that time.) And it is not unlikely that the
Jews, in contact with those cultures, may have taken this “great year” and divided
it by two, for religious reasons, to establish in turn their “World’s total duration” as
6,000 years.
In this connection, however, according to the aforementioned Rabbinical tradition,
each of the World’s Seven Eras would have a length of 1,656 years – a circular
figure that multiplied by seven yields a total sum closer to 12,000 than to 6,000
years: 11,952 years.
In addition to the “great year” of 12,960 common years, other “Greek” cycles,
similarly connected to global catastrophes, are known to have suggestive
correspondences in the Hindu tradition. According to philosopher Heraclitus of
Efesus (540–475 BC), for instance, the period between two great conflagrations
such as the one that would have submerged Atlantis, thousands of years before his
1
time, is 10,800 years, a “circular” period of time which divided by one hundred
becomes 108: a number which for Hinduists and Buddhists is an object of special
veneration, as it is the number of Upanishads in the Buddhist canon and is placed
before the name of the venerable acharyas or teachers of the great disciplic lines,
apart from the fact that it is the number of stone figures along the lanes at the
temple of Angkor in Camboya, etcetera; and whose basic form, 18, which
corresponds, as we have seen in a previous chapter, to the number of breaths of a
human being in one minute, is, among other many “coincidences”, equal to the
total number of Puranas and of Bhagavad–gita chapters. For the rest, it should be
noted that the total number of the Rig Veda verses is 10,800 and those of
Bhagavata Purana 18,000, distributed into twelve “Cantos” or chapters; and that

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within the Judean–Christian esoterism, the number of chapters of the enigmatic

Book of Enoch is, again, 108.
At this point we will better make a pause, as it is impossible that this copious
reiteration of numbers is only owed to the fact that they are all cyclic or “circular”,
and therefore readily divisible among each other; the coincidences are too
numerous to be just the product of chance, particularly when they derive from
places and traditions so distant from one another. There is obviously something
else, maybe a wish to draw attention – although in a veiled fashion – towards a
mysterious, awe-inspiring fact that would allow to penetrate the very essence of the
mechanism of cycles so as to anticipate their starting and ending dates.
2
For example, according to certain sources, the sinking of Atlantis would have
occurred 7,200 years before the year 720 of the present Kali–yuga – which
corresponds, if its starting date is considered to be 3102 BC, to 9582 BC. And this
date is perfectly reasonable in spite of its being a product of obviously symbolic
figures, i.e. based on 72 which, as we know, is the key element in the context of a
circular time. We would certainly need to be blind to see a mere product of chance
in all this.
Another cycle that would span between two consecutive destructions of the Earth
is the one calculated by Aristarchus of Samos (310–230 BC), a few centuries after
Heraclitus, as 2,484 years, a number that is also circular – yet considerably smaller
than the ones previously mentioned. And here we can see yet another clue: the
newer the calculation, the lesser the calculated period. This hypothesis is supported
by a curious fact narrated by historian Herodotus (c.480 – c.420 BC): the Teban
priests would have shown him 341 colossal statues, each representing a generation
of priests from 11,340 years before – a period also “circular” but much closer to
the “great year” of 12,960 common years.
So it comes as no surprise that also in the Bible, in whose first chapters there is an
account of the two best known and most emblematic catastrophes ever to occur on
the Earth – the Flood and the conflagration that destroyed Sodom and Gomorra –
are many references to rather short, “circular” periods of time. For example, in the
New Testament (Revelation 11:3, 12:6) is mentioned a mysterious period of 1,260
“days”, and the enigmatic references to “time, two times, and a half time” in Daniel
12:7 and Revelation 12:14 obviously allude to the same period if, as is undoubtedly
the case, each “time” consists of 360 “days”. For the rest, in Daniel 12:11, 12 are
mentioned two equally enigmatic periods: 1,290 and 1,335 “days”, numbers whose
digits, even though they do not sum up nine, do sum up three, which also makes
them circular.
However, it is in the larger cycles that we find the most significant correlations
with the Hindu tradition. For instance, it is known that in the Library of Alexandria
there was a World History written by the Chaldean priest Berosus (c. 250 BC), in
three volumes, the first of which comprised a period of 432,000 years from the
Creation to the Flood – exactly one tenth of the Hindu maha–yuga. And a
fascinating coincidence: according to the Scandinavian legends, 432,000 was the
number of warriors parked on Asgard, the home of the gods.
Similar correlations are found on the other side of the World, among the ancient
Mayas. For example, in Tikal, in present-day Guatemala, there is a stela – the
number 10 – that records a period of 5'040,000 years, a circular number that
divided by ten is that of Manus in a total universal manifestation. As to the
liturgical calendar, in addition to the tuns or years of 360 days, consisting of 18

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uinals or months of 20 days, the Mayas’ count was by katuns (7,200 days), baktuns
(144,000 days), etc., all of them “sacred” circular numbers whose importance I
have emphasized repeatedly – with the exception of 144,000, which incidentally is
the number of saints ascended to Heaven at Revelation 7, 7.
As to the Xiumolpili, or periods of 52 years used by the Aztecs for the computation
of the four ages or “Suns” by multiplying them by certain factors (apparently 13, 7,
6 and 13, even though, confirming the aforementioned tendency, the factors are
bigger on the earlier versions), it is believed that they originated with the Olmecs,
who had discovered that the Solar, sacred and Venusian calendars coincided every
37,960 days, equivalent to 104 years (or two times 52). In fact, although these
cycles were so important that it is believed they required from the Mayas the
remodeling of all their sacred structures at their beginning or end, at any rate we
are dealing here with an anomaly – the exception that confirms the rule. However,
there is an interesting correlation with the great celebrations that the Dogon in
Mali, Africa, make every 52 years, rites intended, according to them, to “regenerate
the World” and which apparently correspond to the cycle made by Sirius “B”, a
white dwarf, around Sirius. But apart from these likely connections, it can be noted
that 52 is four times 13, this number being, according to scholars, a particularly
auspicious one throughout the Mayans’ world – unlike elsewhere in the World,
where it is particularly ill-omened. However, what definitely links this
“anomalous” system with the “orthodox” circular one is, in my opinion, the fact
that after 52 years of the liturgical calendar of 360 days, there appears to have
elapsed exactly 72 years of the magical calendar of 260 days, i.e. a total 18,720
days – a circular number by excellence, as it is made up of 18 and 72.
And with this I will close this overview during the course of which we have been
able to glimpse, through the assortment of data and figures presented, a sort of
needlework of Four Ages of Mankind, of varying lengths according to the different
traditions, but always circular, interwoven in the fabric of a more general scheme
of Seven Eras of the World, in turn somehow correlated to the precession of the
equinoxes. In the middle of it all we have glimpsed at the third and most dramatic
element in the problem: the dreadful catastrophes at the beginning and end of every
cycle, out of which the most emblematic is undoubtedly the Flood that usually
separates the Eras from each other, and which is a favorite and specially recurring
topic in the myths and legends from all over the World. In the following chapters I
will try to recapitulate all the information provided and draw as many conclusions
as possible, which will hopefully let us get a deeper insight and, at the same time, a
wider view of the problem in its entirety.

NOTES

1
In turn the Greek astronomer Hipparcus, who spread out over the Western world the
knowledge of the precession of equinoxes, made a catalogue of 1,080 fixed stars. In the
reiteration of these numbers by both Greeks can be seen further evidence of the existing
nexus between the Greek world and India.

2
RENE GUENON: Formas tradicionales y ciclos cósmicos, p. 41 (note).

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Home

CHAPTER 6

THE PRIMORDIAL CIVILIZATION

«Off the Celts’ country and on the ocean that surrounds it, there to the North is an island
that is not smaller than Sicily. Its dwellers are called Hyperboreans, for they live beyond
the area where the North winds blow. There, in the island, is a magnificent forest
consecrated to the Sun god and a strange temple of circular shape.»

(Manifest of Hecateus, as quoted by Diodorus)

W hen I took to studying the ages and cosmic cycles, I started from the renewed
interest of modern astrophysics in the behavior of time, a subject matter that
embraces innumerable disciplines (mainly metaphysics but also philosophy,
religion, archeology, astronomy, geology, and many more) and a mystery whose
solution, even partial, could help us unravel, almost in their entirety, the great
enigmas that have intrigued science since it became interested in them again.
Concerning this, an enigma which does not belong in the field of astrophysics, but
is to me as meaningful as the ones above, is the fact that the ancient civilizations
were all familiar with the knowledge that time unfolds in a circular way. This poses
the first and most important question in relation to the problem: namely, how could
these civilizations also know, for instance, about the space–time relativity or the
current expansion of the universe, when it is generally believed, particularly in the
“advanced” countries, that ancient people were ignorant and superstitious – while
science itself has fully corroborated so many other historical and scientific data
contained in old treatises?
Already in the introduction I have suggested that the numerous correlations and
analogies among the various traditions, as well as the universality of a certain
esoteric knowledge, can only be explained if a common origin is admitted for them
all; and in the previous chapter I have reviewed the countless coincidences among
different traditions in the matter of ages and cycles, all of them elements whose
study, along with the study of certain archetypical universal forms, could help us
trace back such origin.
To this end, I will start the study with the scheme of seven eras or “Worlds”, earths
that become manifest in a successive or chronological way but offer a connotation
that is at the same time, and primarily, spatial. This can easily be appreciated in the
correlations, for example, with the seven dvipas o “continents” (literally “islands”)
of the Hindu tradition, regions that manifest themselves consecutively without the
remaining six – which wait, so to speak, in a dormant state – disappearing because
of it. (An interesting analogy may help clarify this point: within the cycle of cell
renovation of the human body, which as a whole develops along seven years, not
all cells are born at the beginning of that cycle, nor do they die at the end thereof;

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but some, mainly due to their diverse life spans, do so while the others await their
turn to appear.)
I have also mentioned another very important connotation: this one with the Pole
Star, as suggested by the Islamic tradition, which refer to seven Qutbs or “Poles”
that would have ruled seven successive skies. This tradition is obviously related to
the one quoted by historian Berosus – whom I have referred to in the previous
chapter – according to which several generations before the Flood – which would
be the Mesopotamic one, in about 4000 BC – there emerged from the ocean seven
beings of great wisdom, «animals endowed with reason», the first of which was
Oannes, the Babylonian Noah, a instructor of the people.
The earliest known precedent of this tradition, which actually is 2,000 or 4,000
years older, would be certain Assyrian cylindrical seals that date back from 1000 to
800 BC, very possibly associated to the Ursa Minor constellation; wherewith it
appears that we are getting somewhere in our quest, as these very sages are found
in Egypt: they are the seven wise men of the goddess Mehurt, or Hetep-sekhus,
who came out of the water and, like falcons, ascended to heaven to preside the
sciences and literature along with Toth, who counts the stars and measures and
numbers the Earth. Now Toth, or Hermes, is the «savior of the knowledge existing
prior to the cataclysm»; at times he is identified with Enoch, who in turn is equated
to Tenoch, the founder of Tenochtitlan, deified by his people; and on the other
hand, both of them, Enoch and Tenoch, are supposed to have been the progenitors
o populators of the Earth, like Brahma, Abraham, the different Manus, etc.
Furthermore, the seven Egyptian wise men are said to represent the Ursa Major.
Finally, the seven stars mentioned at the beginning of Saint John’s Revelation (I,
16 and 20) are considered as well to very likely represent the said constellation.
Let me refer now to the “sapta–rksha” of the Hindu tradition, a Sanskrit term that
means “seven bears”, although “rksha” also means “star”, “light”, and “sapta–
rksha” might therefore be translated as “the dwelling of the seven rishis or “wise
men”, the seven “lights” by which the wisdom of the preceding cycles was passed
down to the current cycle. Now, the fact that such term was not applied later on to
the Ursa Minor but to the Pleiades, also seven, considered as deities by various
cultures – e.g. the Incas – denotes, according to Guénon, that at a given moment
the tradition was transferred from a polar constellation to a zodiacal one; and here
we have another clue toward solving the problem. But anyway, it is clear that what
is designated as the seven successive “Poles” or “Earths” are the seven stars of the
Ursa Major, to which at a certain epoch the projection of the Earth axis would have
successively pointed as the period of the precession of the equinoxes progressed
over its circular course, thus especially favoring certain regions of the Earth or
dvipas. An example will help us understand this: some 13,000 years ago, the
celestial position of the North Pole was occupied by Vega, and exactly the same
will occur 13,000 years from now; at present such position is occupied by Polaris,
although due to the greater tilt of the Earth axis, the current path is through the
stars of the Ursa Minor.
Continuing our quest, which will ideally take us back to the primeval origin of the
doctrine, we will deal now with the other great scheme: the quaternary cycle,
considerably more frequent and of an eminently temporal nature – although it also
shows spatial correlations, basically with the four cardinal points. Omnipresent in
our study, its main feature is its variable length. In effect, it is a cycle that appears
in all orders of existence, from the total universal manifestation to those of any
historical peoples or societies, each with their own chronology and their own

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starting date.
One of the better known examples of these particular applications is the famous
dream interpreted by the prophet Daniel (2, 1 ff), which he refers to four
civilizations that he identifies with the traditional ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze and
Iron (they are actually five, but the last one is irrelevant). However, it would not be
difficult to find many other similar examples in all of which we will be dealing
with cycles of a descending nature, where every phase is worse than the previous
one; although only the Hindu tradition, the one alone that has received the primeval
knowledge in one piece from the original center, has preserved that of the
proportion by which the respective lengths decrease, whatever the total length of
the corresponding cycle.
This latter fact carries an additional and most important conclusion itself: namely,
if the length of the last period of the quaternary series is, by definition, a tenth of
the total length, then such period can obviously be sub-divided into other four ages
which follow the same proportion (and in fact not only the last period, but any of
them). For example, if the Kali-yuga really has an effective length of 5,184
common years or a tenth of 51,840 common years, then we can safely assume that
it will consist in turn, always following the corresponding proportions, of four
periods whose lengths will approximately be 2,074, 1,555, 1,037 and 518 years. In
other words, we are talking about cycles within cycles so that one may refer, say,
to the kali-yuga of the current Kali-yuga – that is, the darkest phase of the Dark
Age. Naturally, this is a hypothesis that must be demonstrated, and in the following
chapters I will do my best to do so. Meanwhile, I will face an objection that is
usually presented with regard to the doctrine as a whole: namely, whether we are
not dealing with mere “numerological” speculation; for, were not the ancient so
ignorant that they merely possessed some basic technical knowledge?
Without referring yet to the possibility that in remote times entire civilizations may
have disappeared without leaving a trace, I will try, in what follows, to refute such
objection: quite simply, I will prove that the ancient cultures possessed, among
other advanced scientific information, a most precise knowledge of the chronology
and calendar computation, probably born of their liking for the great observation of
stars in the case of the Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations, and, particularly
among the Mayas and Aztecs, for the accurate measurement of huge lapses of time.
Even more, we will see that the ancient had such advanced knowledge in
mathematics and astronomy that only recently, after long and dark millennia, it
have been equaled or improved – yet not always.
Such is the case, for instance, of India, whose knowledge in astronomy was so
advanced that it became the ultimate goal for wisdom seekers. A very old jyotisha,
Brahma–gupta, deals among others issues with such topics as the motion of the
planets around the Sun, the ecliptic obliquity, the spherical shape of the Earth, the
light reflected from the Moon, the Earth revolution on its axis, the presence of stars
in the Milky Way, the law of gravitation – all of which would not see the light in
Europe until the time of Copernicus and Newton.
In turn, Surya–siddhanta informs us that the Earth, a globe that moves through
space, has a diameter length equivalent to 12,617 present-day kilometers, an extent
fairly approximate to the one calculated in our days.
Now, while there exist most advanced conceptions of the space–time dislocation
and the current expansion of the Universe, all data pertaining to the period of
precession of the equinoxes seem to have been disguised by means of a most
peculiar symbolic language, even though a careful inspection of certain texts – for

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example, Bhagavata Purana 5, 21:4 – will let us discern its length approximately.
Anyway, I have already said that it was probably in India where Hipparcus
obtained his knowledge of this phenomenon, in the same way that Aristarchus of
Samos received a much less sophisticated one but which scandalized his
generation, even though it was shared by other philosophers like Zenon of Elea,
Anaxagoras and Democritus: that of the sphericity of the Earth and its orbiting,
together with all the other planets, around the Sun.
As to Democritus, the origin of his famous atomistic theory will very likely have to
be found also in India, in the so-called Vaisheshika philosophic system of the
legendary sage Kanada.
But long before the Greeks themselves emerged to history, it seems all this, or little
less, was known in ancient Egypt. A manuscript by one Abdul Hassan Ma’sudi,
preserved in the Oxford Bodleian Library, recounts for example that «Surid, king
of Egypt before the great Flood, ordered the building of the pyramids and had his
priests deposit the knowledge of sciences in them»; and that «he had the data
pertaining to the spheres and their positions put into the biggest one, in order to
perpetuate them».
In this connection, it is a proven fact that the pyramid of Kheops contained both the
knowledge of the value of pi – as given by the sum of its four sides divided by the
double of its height – and the golden ratio, 1.618 – obtained by dividing the surface
of its base by the lateral surface and the surface of this one by the total surface –
plus many other data like the mean distance from the Sun, etcetera.
In addition, eclipses were predicted, and an agricultural calendar was developed
that was so advanced, that it announced the exact time of the Nile inundations. All
this made Egypt, like India, the ultimate goal of all seekers for knowledge.
According to Diogenes Laertius, it was here that the Greek philosophers Thales
and Democritus learned geometry and astronomy, and for his part Porphyry, in his
Life of Pythagoras, insists on an Egyptian origin of Thales’ ideas and, therefore, of
those of Pythagoras. As to the latter, it seems his famous theorem was of common
use in Egypt as early as 2500 BC.
However, it surely was in Babylon, according to recent studies, where the said
theorem was known not only in its practical use but also in its theoretical
formulation as early as 2000 BC, and there even is a possibility that this knowledge
dates back from the old Sumerians, which in fact would place it in prehistoric
times. Be it as it may, it is said that the old Babylonians invented the circle divided
into 360 degrees, although this “invention” seems to have been made in many
places and at different times. What is sure is that like the Egyptians, the
Babylonians established an accurate agricultural calendar that not only predicted
floods but also eclipses, all of which made Babylon, like Egypt and India, a great
culture-radiating center.
As to China, a single example will suffice to show the extent of the advance it
reached from old in the area of astronomy: An archaic manuscript describes, in the
peculiar Chinese poetic stile, a “inharmonic” meeting of the Sun and Moon in
Fang, a portion of the ski of China which would correspond to four stars in the
Scorpio constellation. Well, calculations made by contemporary astronomers have
revealed that this eclipse did occur on the 22nd October of 2137 BC – more than
4000 years ago!
Back to this side of the World, one can see the remains of magnificent pyramids
whose builders, the old Mayas, developed so accurate a calendar that it established
the year of 365.2422 days – a lot more precise than the Julian of 365.2500 and

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even the Gregorian of 365.2425 days, in use until now. The Mayas also developed
a numbering system based on the position of values, whose use would only become
general in Europe from the Fifteenth Century onwards, and which implied the
conception and use of zero.
As to the Toltecs and Aztecs, great builders of pyramids, and the mysterious, much
older Teotihuacans and Olmecs, I have already mentioned that they apparently
were the first to develop a most advanced astronomy and an accurate calendar,
probable so accurate as that of the Incas, which was altogether astronomical and
agricultural and so sophisticated, that it included the biological cycles of some
plants and animals. Also, I need not say that all these cultures determined with
utmost precision the dates of the equinoxes and solstices; this was made, for
example, in the South of Peru, by the Pre-Inca compound which features the
mysterious “lines of Nazca”, regarded as the world’s largest astronomical calendar,
and the Inca monolith known as Intihuatana (“Sun-Hitching Stone”), a clock or
astronomical instrument preserved on the highest spot at the citadel of Machu
Picchu, near Cusco.
Other witnesses of the great advances made all over the world from remote times
can be seen, even today, in the ruins of ancient cities whose existence was
legendary or unknown, like Mohenho–Daro and Harappa, in India, so advanced
that their streets had canalizations and their houses bathrooms, and a meaningful
fact: their inhabitants apparently did not wear any offensive weapons. Here too,
mysterious engraved inscriptions were found that even now can be seen in
Mesopotamia where, by the way, from a deep Sumerian layer pertaining to 3000
BC or before, a statuette of Shiva meditating in Yogic stance – identical to another
found in the ruins of the Mohenho–daro citadel, obviously indicating that it was
made before that date – was unearthed. These findings not only suggest that
already in remote times there were relationships among civilizations, but also – as
further claimed by some people – that the Sumerian civilization originated in that
city-state, which in fact would be a lot older than is officially accepted.
There even are traces of a vast civilization that would have encompassed the whole
North of Europe, from Ireland and Britain to the Scandinavian countries, and
which would date back from as early as 9000 BC. It is very possible that the
builders of the great stone observatories of Stonehenge in England and Carnac in
France, as well as the gigantic zodiacal circle of Glastonbury, in England, of 30
miles in circumference, which would date back from 3000 BC, came from it.
Modern analysis has shown that such builders, on top of possessing a most
advanced astronomical knowledge, were great geometers who, for example, knew
that a triangle whose sides are proportional to 3, 4 and 5 will always contain a right
angle, a property whose discovery is attributed to Pythagoras (who formulated the
famous theorem) but which, in all justice, should be attributed to them; in like
manner, it is known that by means of an approach that not for being simple was
less advanced, they could draw huge, almost perfect circles.
From these and other enigmatic vestiges, some authors have concluded that some
of the posterior cultures, like the Sumerian and Egyptian in the Old World, and the
Mayan and Aztec in the New, were in their respective prosperous times, and after
the disappearance of some technological culture about which nothing is known at
present, climbing down, and not up, the world’s civilization ladder. This notion has
been reinforced by the discovery of certain documents, including the famous map
of Piri–Reis, with characteristics of 12,000 – 13,000 years ago: the Antarctic coast
free of ice, rivers and mountains on the Queen Maud Land, and an ocean level

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lower than it is currently; the map of Zenon, which shows Greenland free of ice
such as it was 14,000 years ago; that of Hadji Hamed, with the land bridge of the
Ice Age between Alaska y Siberia visible; that of Finaens, showing the Sea of Ross
as it was 6,000 years ago, etc – and also by references to remote cataclysms which,
upon extinguishing whole cities, even civilizations, would have caused a cultural
reversal to various degrees of barbarianism. Such would be the case, for example,
of the biblical Flood, which would have to be placed between 8000 and 10000 BC,
and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, which is supposed to have occurred
around 3000 BC, to mention but two of the better-known examples, capable to
create conditions like the ones depicted. After that there would have been a slow,
painful material progress of mankind toward present-day civilization, which does
not remember a thing about the primordial civilization, and whose decline and
imminent disappearance are predicted in turn by many scholars.
Once a common origin is admitted for such great, enigmatic cultures like the
Sumerian and the Egyptian in the Old World, and the Mayan and Aztec in the
New, the question naturally arises: where could such common origin be? Many
people will immediately say that it could only be in Atlantis.
However, at the risk of disappointing Atlantis’ many thousands of fans, it must be
said from the start that it could not be in that emblematic island-continent. For
while massive evidence has been presented for its existence, mainly in the several
thousands of books that have been written about this matter over the years, a
careful consideration of all the existing data, particularly the timeframe involved,
will show that Atlantis was at best a secondary center that radiated, like many other
worldwide culture–radiating centers at different times, at a moment when the
current Manvantara was fairly advanced, i.e. when the primeval tradition, being
Polar by nature and therefore centered around the Ursa Mayor, had already
changed into zodiacal and was oriented to the Pleiades – a fact that becomes
specially relevant if we remember that the Pleiades were Atlas’ daughters, from
which they were called “the Atlantides”.
On the other hand, there is no doubt at all that the Atlantis civilization existed, and
perhaps the best evidence for it are the countless geographical names on both sides
of the Atlantic Ocean that obviously derive from the same source, for example
Aztlan, a mythical island which the Aztecs claimed to be their original country (and
curiously enough, Atl is the word for water both in the old Mexico and the Semitic
countries); and there are a lot more.
Another evidence would be what has been called the great paradox of the ancient
Egypt, which seems to have passed, from as early as the Old Empire times, from a
simple union of proto–historic clans to a most refined civilization capable of
building huge pyramids – an immense achievement which favors the hypothesis
that it originated in some other part of the world, which would not be other than
Atlantis.
However, it is precisely as a consequence of the catastrophic sinking of the island–
continent that the biblical Flood would have occurred, which, by placing both
events around the same epoch, would make Atlantis an even more unlikely place as
a common cultural origin for the current humanity – all the more when, according
to certain traditional data, its lifespan would have not exceeded a “great year”, i.e.
a half of a precessional period.
So to find the supreme center we must disregard any secondary and relatively
recent centers and look farther back to the very start of the present Manvantara,
then ruled by the Manu Vaivasvata of the Hindu tradition, the father of the current

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humanity, whom the avatara Matsya, the fish, a pre-figuration of the Babylonian
Oannes, is said to have saved from the great deluge that «covered the three
worlds». Such epoch would be previous to the biblical Flood by at least 40,000
years and would date back to the times of the Hyperborean Thule, located on the
North Pole, where – in Homer’s words – the «Sun’s revolutions», the home of the
Celtic or Hyperborean Apollo are. In effect, this is a place of delight evoked by
many traditions, even the Chinese, where the Pole Star, and in general the Ursa
Mayor, “the crank”, play a most significant role; but mainly by all that have an
Indo-European origin, and which would be the most remote precedent of the
Garden of Eden of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
That the Garden of Eden had the Hyperborean Thule for its most remote precedent
is proven by the fact that from time immemorial to as late as the European Middle
Ages, it used to be represented as a paradisiacal place located on the top of an
inaccessible mountain surrounded by the sea – a most ancient image that is found
everywhere throughout history, and a representation of the Earth that appears even
on the Mercator maps, where the ocean is depicted as a torrent which, through four
mouths, precipitates into the North Pole’s Gulf to be absorbed by the Earth’s
bowels; and on which the Pole itself, as the supreme center, is represented as a
black rock that rises to a prodigious height.
Along the same lines, the fact that many of these centers have been represented as
a cavern, an island, a citadel, a palace, a temple, or a pyramid, only indicates that
later on there was a proclivity to evoke, by means of secondary “images”, the
primeval center by excellence: Mount Meru of the Hindus, depicted in Surya–
siddhanta as a small mountain located in the North Pole, and a prototype that has
survived mainly in the sacred mountains of Central Asia – believed by many to be
the cradle of humanity – by such names as Sumer, Sumber or Sumur – all of them
clearly identical to the Sanskrit Sumeru.
I will mention in passing that if the biblical paradise is usually believed to be
located in this latter area is because it became, in the course of time, a secondary
tradition from the Hyperborean; and also because the references to a paradise in the
book of Genesis are essentially symbolic, and certainly subordinated to the area in
which the book was compiled. On the other hand, the fact that all these
representations gave rise, in different cultures, to beautiful, evocative legends only
reveals the intention to keep, over the centuries, a remembrance of such supreme
center alive.
Such is the case, among the Celts, of mythical Avalon of the legends of King
Arthur, an emblematic image of the perfect king whose knights, numbering twelve,
had twelve seats – a usual representation of the twelve constellations – set aside
around a table whose center, as a symbol of the supreme center, was held in reserve
to be occupied by the Holy Grail. This in turn was a symbol of the perfect
knowledge or, rather, of the place where this knowledge is safely stored all through
the vicissitudes of a full human cycle – as is also the case, for example, with soma
among the Hindus or the elixir of gods among the Greeks.
For the rest, it is obvious that only in one of the two Poles could exist such ideal
conditions as to make it possible an “eternal spring” – the season that rules
throughout the Golden Age. And in effect, in Bhagavata Purana, 5, 20:30, the Sun
is depicted as revolving over the horizon during the whole year – and not just
during a part of it as currently – around Mount Meru, the archetypical image of the
original center. This original center is located at the core of Bhu–mandala, a
schematic, most ancient representation of the Earth (and probably of the solar

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system, the galaxy, and the entire universe) consisting of six concentric rings
separated by seas which altogether form, by surrounding the center, the seven
dvipas – “islands” or continents – of the Hindu tradition. All of this would appear
to ultimately take us back to a time when the plane of the ecliptic, the Equator, and
the Earth horizon all coincided approximately – probably 50,000 years ago, when
1
the orbit of our planet was more circular and its axis was not as tilted as is today.
I am certainly aware that this hypothesis rather rises difficulties than solves them,
not the least of which is the fact that around the timeframe thus established the
Northern polar region was most probably covered by a thick snow layer, a
condition that does not match the one that should prevail in a “paradise”; even so,
according to René Guénon and others, certain traditional data indicate that the tilt
of the Earth’s axis has not always existed – rather, it would be a consequence of
2
what is known as the “fall of man”. And while it is most unlikely that such was
the case at that time, such circumstance would immediately solve the problem.
Yet another possible solution would be to push the Hyperborean times back to over
100,000 years ago, i.e. twice as much as the combined length of two precessional
periods (2 x 51,840 years), and this by virtue of the existing analogies with the day
and night of Brahma, which appear to occur for cycles of all orders and so would
be perfectly applicable to the case. Even so, science deprives us of such possibility,
for it appears that the last ice age, that of Wurm (130,000 years ago) had already
started by that time, which would force us to look further back on to the previous
one, that of Riss – which in turn would have spanned from 230,000 to 180,000
years ago – and the prolonged inter-glacial period of time that followed, of about
50,000 years (from 180,000 to 130,000 BC): here the facts do appear to fit, for this
one epoch, in which more favorable conditions would have prevailed (perhaps the
tilt of the earth’s axis was null, and its oscillation minimal), approximately
corresponds to that of the man of Neanderthal’s appearance and, in another order
of things, to the winter solstice and mainly to the North within the analogical
correlation with the four seasons of the year, as well as to the Hyperborean Apollo,
the white race and, among the elements, water.
Of course, in this case the “fall” would not be that of Adam and Eve but that of
3
Lucifer himself, as stated in the famous Biblical passage of Isaiah. All this as
opposed to the epoch that we may call “Adamic”, which would correspond to the
Cro-Magnon’s appearance and, in the respective analogical order, to the Autumn
equinox and to the West, as well as to the red race and the element earth – in all of
which there are included even linguistic considerations, as the word Adam is
related to both meanings, “earth” and “red”. However, approaching such diverse
issues would require a detailed study. For one thing, with this particular method we
would be exceeding the timeframe of the present Manvantara, which I have
established as 51,840 common years, and the sphere of modern man, whom I don’t
consider to be a “relative” of the Neanderthal but rather of the Cro-Magnon. Also,
we must not lose sight of the fact that some scientists place the appearance of the
earliest organized tribes in about 40,000 or 50,000 years ago, and probably in
Central Asia, which parallels even the afore-mentioned Biblical exegesis.
Well, I must admit that it is extremely difficult to ultimately solve these issues, as
is also to be satisfied that my calculation of the total length of the Manvantara is
accurate. We may remember that, according to Guénon, such length would not be
51,840 years (or 12,960 x 4) but rather 64,800 years (12,960 x 5), and I absolutely

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cannot challenge his knowledge of these matters, nor can I pretend to be able to
establish with absolute certainty the starting point of the Hyperborean tradition at
the date I have mentioned, something that he, to my knowledge, did not even
attempt, nor did he ever attempt to trace its path in detail back to any date
whatsoever. As to specifically predicting future events, it is something he always
avoided, let alone establishing any date for them. In other words, nothing ensures
that my calculations are not wholly or partially wrong; and if I have made them –
and, for that matter, if I started this work at all – it is because I felt the time was
ripe for it, even contravening certain precepts of the esoteric doctrines that do
absolutely not support this kind of speculation. Either way, it will be the
recapitulation in the following chapters which will establish to what extent the data
and figures as considered mainly from Chapter 3 onwards are valid, both in my
determination of the length of the whole current Manvantara, and of its starting
and closing dates.

NOTES

1
For simplicity, the possibility that the primeval center was in the South Pole has not been
considered. However, it is as valid an option as the one of the North Pole and even, for
reasons both astronomical and historical-geographical, a more viable one: for one thing,
there is no difference between “up” and “down” astronomically; the magnetic pole is
known to have inverted several times in the past, and there even is talk of an overturning of
the Earth axis coinciding, incidentally, with the “fall” of man. On the other hand, it is
known than Antarctic was a paradisiacal place, and its shape, even now that it is almost
fully covered by ice, is virtually identical to that of Asgard, the dwelling of the
Scandinavian gods. But all this poses new, obvious possibilities that I cannot address here.

2
RENE GUENON: Formas tradicionales y ciclos cósmicos, op. cit., p. 30.

3
Isaiah 14: 12–15: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [...]
For thou hast said in thine heart [...]: I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the
side of the North...”

Home

CHAPTER 7

THE CIRCULAR TIME

«The Universe is built on the power of numbers.»

«The essence of everything real is in numbers.»
«Time is the sphere of the World as everything is in Time.»

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(Pythagoras)

I n the course of the present work we have seen in passing some issues which,
while broadly treated by some authors, are nevertheless essential to our study and
therefore require a thorough examination from us. An example that may seem
extemporaneous, now that we are nearing the end of this work, is the probability
that time influences cyclically the development of humanity both along brief lapses
of a few years or decades, etc. and over longer periods, and either by itself or
through the stars’ motions.
Note that I am not talking about two different things, as between time and the stars
there is so close a relationship that it can perfectly be said that they create each
other. In effect, if on the one hand it is by means of time that the celestial bodies
are created, on the other hand it is motion – mostly circular motion – of the latter
that somehow creates time (and in fact, time is, in terms of physics, inconceivable
in the absence of motion of some kind).
Is not the Earth’s circular motion on its axis which creates the day, and is it not its
almost circular orbiting around the Sun which creates the year? And what is true of
these two basic “lesser” cycles, is true as well of the greater ones. Is it not the circle
drawn by the ideal projection of the Earth’s axis over the imaginary plane of the
constellations which creates the period of the precession of the equinoxes, of a
decisive significance to the history of mankind? This fact, which would itself be a
definite proof for a circular time, and which even throws new light on fundamental
sacred texts like that of the fourth “day” in the creation of the World, should make
reflect both modern scientists and the representatives of the western churches, who
conceive time as linear. For modern civilization has forgotten things that all of the
past cultures, based in a lesser or higher degree on the primordial tradition, used to
regard as evident in themselves.
On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that just as there is nothing in the world
that is not subject to the action of time, so there is also nothing on Earth that is not
somehow influenced by the Sun, the Moon and even our own planet, so it would be
absurd to think of the human being as the one alone that is not influenced by them
to some extent as well. And in effect, the more we study the rhythms of nature, the
more we understand that man is not an isolated entity but is part of an immensely
more vast mechanism. He is influenced by the slow rotation of the Earth on its
axis, the elliptic curve drawn by the Moon around Earth, the Sun’s electromagnetic
energy – and so, we see certain natural rhythms in him that parallel the twenty-four
hours’ cycle, like the changes in body temperature, hormonal levels and the
awareness state every three hours, plus a well-known cycle in Yoga: the alternation
between the right and left nostrils. As to the lunar cycle, its influence on the female
menstrual cycle is so widely known that I will not mention other kinds of effects
about which there is some controversy. Nor will I press on physical and mental
biorhythms, etc., or on certain cyclic motions of various durations whose reality is
unquestioned but whose dependence on the stars is not entirely clear. Also, it is not
clear how the stars influence the well-known seven-year cycles that we all seem to
be subjected to: the first at seven, coinciding with the first dentition and the
transition from infancy to boyhood, the second at fourteenth as adolescence and
second dentition are reached, the third at twenty-one with adulthood, and so on, so
forth. However, in dealing with longer cycles, it has statistically been proven that

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the stars influence agriculture as well as the existence of periods of 3.5 and 6.5
years which regulate life evolution on Earth and, particularly, of certain biological
phenomena like the world production of furs; which is not irrelevant because the
same statistics, gathered over centuries, have helped to establish the well-known
incidence of the cycle of solar spots, with a length of approximately 11 years, on
the psychological reaction of the masses and certain social disturbances as
revolutions, etc., apart from ecological disturbances related to draughts and floods
which obviously influence the evolution of human society in dramatic fashion.
As to the still longer cycles (and here we are drawing further into matter), great
philosophers like Toynbee have generalized certain favorable circumstances
produced by the environment, either in the form of adverse changes or of climatic
challenges, as triggering factors in the emergence of civilizations which force
societies to behave differently by transforming themselves from static to dynamic
-– and vice versa, I might add. Examples of these cycles would be the planetary
synods occurring every 179–180 years – which are mentioned in chapter 3 – whose
influence on the last 12,000 years is well known. It is, for instance, accepted that
after 10000 BC, following the ice withdrawal, there ensued the warmest time in all
of the inter–glacial period, which reached its maximum between 7,000 and 5,000
years ago. Then followed a time of great cold that climaxed 3,000 and 2,300 years
ago approximately, and later on an “optimum secondary climatic” which
culminated in the early Middle Ages, between 1000 and 1200 AD approximately.
During this period, as the artic ice pack melted, new routes were opened to the
Scandinavians who settled in Iceland and Greenland and visited North America.
From then on, there is what is known as the “small glacial era”, a reversion to the
hard conditions that ended in Europe along the seventeenth century and which are
probably not yet over.
Another example of these major cycles are the periods of maximum/minimum
solar activity apparently occurring every 500 years approximately and which were
studied by astronomer John Eddy from the Observatory of Boulder, Colorado
(USA), based on the analysis of the amounts of carbon 14 deposited on the annual
rings of certain trees (the study was published in the late 1977 Smithsonian
Institute’s reports). An interesting feature of these cycles, alluded to also in chapter
3, is that at times of maximum activity, relevance was granted to the so-called
“solar myths” (Aton, Lugh, Mitra and Christ), while at those of minimum to the
telluric ones (Isis, Lusina and Black Virgins), so that from 3000 BC three
maximums would have respectively occurred: a Sumerian, a “pyramidal Egyptian”,
and that of Stonehenge. After that, from 1500 BC, three minimums: Egyptian,
Homeric and Greek; then a Roman maximum at about year “Zero”, and then, by
order, a mediaeval minimum, a mediaeval maximum coincident with the times of
the Crusades, starting from 1000 AD, and after two minimums – respectively
called “of Sporer” and “of Maunder” – approximately from 1500 to 1750 AD, a
current maximum that was to end around 2000 AD.
There is no doubt, however, concerning the development of humankind as a whole,
that among the major cycles the most important are the three great astronomical
cycles that we have studied in more detail in chapter 3, and that the most important
one among them, and which in a sense is the central element in our study, is the
cycle of precession of the equinoxes or Zodiacal year of 25,920 common years. In
chapter 1 we have given preferential attention to it by placing particularly emphasis
in the fact that 168 of them (which amount to a “Divine Year”) are equivalent to a
Hindu maha–yuga, as well as in the divisions and sub-divisions that the old

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Egyptians, according to the Hermetic tradition, would have subjected this cycle to
for the purpose of correlating it with the daily cycle of twenty-four hours. On the
other hand, it is interesting that these correspondences also occur with other Hindu
cycles, as evidenced not only by this fact but also by the one that I will mention as
follows: for the Pythagoreans, a “World’s day” was to the common day as one day
is to a second; and in effect, in one day there are 24 x 60 x 60 = 86,400 seconds,
which with five added zeros becomes, in common years and as per the orthodox
version of the Hindu doctrine, the duration of a Brahma’s day with its
corresponding night.
In turn, I have devoted chapter 2 to the study of the maha–yuga and its huge
multiple, the kalpa of 4,320 million years, detaching us from all known
astronomical cycles. Still, there are possible connections here with present-day
science, like the fact that the most remote ancestor of the human species, the
recently discovered Australopitecus ramidus, may have lived 4.4 millions of years
ago – a figure that is virtually identical to that of the length of the maha–yuga. On
the other hand, that to many qualified schollars the maha–yuga simply represents a
Manvantara, an eminently septenary period, evidences that there are analogical
correspondences between cycles of most diverse order, and of course not only
between the Manvantara and the maha–yuga, which is basically quaternary, but
also between the former and the kalpa, of an essentially binary nature and divided
into Day and Night – or better the opposite way, for it must be remembered that for
most traditions, Night precedes Day. This in turn allows an additional inference:
namely, that any cycle can be regarded as consisting of these two parts of day; and
here it is possible to see yet another confirmation of the scientific – and at the same
time symbolic – validity of these figures taken literally, for the Homo habilis, who
no longer was an hominid but a human being almost in the full sense of the word,
would have made his appearance on Earth about 2.2 millions of years ago, i.e.
when the Night was just ending and the Day of the current maha–yuga was
beginning.
As to my calculation in chapter 3 of the real length of the current Manvantara as
51,840 common years, or two Zodiacal Years, it should be regarded as preliminary
and subject to demonstration, which will be attempted later on with the help from
historical data. Prior to that, I would like to mention two relatively recent
discoveries connected to circular numbers, especially 72, which provide new
approaches to the close relationship between space and time.
The first one was divulged by the magazine Geomundo (Vol. 5, No. 2, February
1981). In essence, it reveals that the ancient Teotihuacans knew, with astounding
accuracy, the mean distances from the planets to the Sun. In fact, according to US
engineer Hugh Harleston Jr., the author of the discovery, Teotihuacan would have
not only been a great astronomical observatory but also, and mainly, a scale model
of our solar system, an assertion supported by the distances measured between the
stone tumuli punctuating the Street of the Dead from the Temple of Quetzalcoatl to
the Pyramid of the Moon.
In effect, between the Sun on the one hand, and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto on the other, the distances measured in hunabs – the
standard unit of 1.0594(6) m determined by the researcher – multiplied by a certain
factor, are 36, 72, 144, 520, 1,845, 2,880 and 3,780 respectively. Compare with the
distances currently established in astronomical units, equivalent to the mean
distance from the Earth to the Sun and which, in the same order, are 0.387, 0.723,
1.524, 5.203, 19.247, 30.220 and 39.642, and all possibility of their being a product

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of chance can be ruled out. But there is the additional, significant fact that all of
the distances are perfect circular numbers, i.e. numbers whose digits add up to
nine, with the only exception of the distance from Jupiter, whose digits add up to
seven – a “sacred” number which, while somehow anomalous, we have had the
opportunity to see frequently in the course of this work.
The second discovery, reviewed by the magazine Año Cero (Year 6, Nº 10 –
01963) may be summed up like this: Within the current expansion of the universe,
it is widely known that the greater the distance from a galaxy to the Earth, the
greater the velocity with which the latter speeds away from the former. However,
only now is it known that in this speeding away there are no intermediate
velocities, but the galaxies travel at a given velocity and suddenly skip to another:
in fact, they move like subatomic particles, or in speed packs, exactly by leaps of
72 kilometers per second or of some multiple of this velocity, such as 216, 432,
etc., all of them figures we are most familiar with by now; all of which evidences
what we might call the magic character in the universe functioning and grants a
renewed validity to the old hermetic saying that, «As is above, so is below.»
And here we are treading on symbolic field again, for the length of the current
Manvantara – as established in chapter 3 – is precisely the product of 72 x 720;
this, however, which might be a preliminary confirmation that I was not led astray
in my calculation of such length, and in spite of its being in agreement with a
certain arcane knowledge like, for instance, the Brahmanic tradition according to
which civilization appeared on our planet about 50,000 years ago, can hardly be
regarded as conclusive proof of its accuracy. Nor is it the fact that 51,840 years
well may represent, as per all of the scientific information available, the antiquity
of Homo sapiens on Earth. We need, then, more tangible evidence – evidence
which is able to endure the skeptics’ scrutiny; and the only such evidence is the one
supported by historical data, precisely what is missing in this case. In order to get
it, therefore, other means are needed. Now, what can be these means?
To begin with, we have seen that the proposed length offers various angles, and so
a first approach would be to regard it in its most visible parts, that is, in the two
Zodiacal Years that length consists of. Thus, by comparing the first Year to the
Night and the second to the Day, we would be focusing only on the latter, which
would let us judge, through inference, whether the full length has at least a real
basis. But here the question arises: What would be the starting and ending dates of
this second part?

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Fig.3 – The present Manvantara divided into the last two Zodiacal Years of
25,920 common years each, assimilated respectively to Night and Day and
focused mainly on the last “great year” of 12,960 common years.

A first approach to this specific issue would be to find a “benchmark” from which
to build such dates. This might be the year 9582 BC, which would correspond to
the sinking of Atlantis – a disaster that in addition to coinciding in time with the
biblical Flood would have marked the transition from Leo to Cancer. However,
here also the symbolic character of the figures on which the calculation is based
(7,200 years before the year 720 of the current Kali–yuga) throws on it a veil of
suspicion, not to mention the already stated fact that it is not possible to ultimately
prove that the Kali–yuga actually started in 3102 BC. Therefore, the best course
might be to look for such benchmark at the ending date of the present Manvantara
(which in chapter 3 has tentatively been established, in as much as the “beginning
of end”, in the year 2010 AD, a date that could coincide with the transition from
Pisces to Aquarius) plus concentrate our focus, for the same reasons exposed for
the Manvantara as a whole, on the last two “zodiacal seasons” only (the shadowed
areas in Fig 3), i.e. those consisting of Leo, Cancer and Gemini in the first place,
and of Taurus, Aries and Pisces in the second; so that in practice, we would be
covering a “great year” of 12,960 common years.
In this way, the first date established would be the year 10950 BC, which would
approximately coincide with the end of the last Ice Age, when agriculture was
being born and the Paleolithic art would seem to have faded away. The second one,
8790 BC, which got Cancer started, would correspond to the biblical Flood and the
sinking of Atlantis, which would thus be displaced 792 years from the previously
indicated date – actually a not very significant difference (9,582 – 8,790). The third
date, 6630 BC, between Cancer and Gemini, would mark the founding year of the
first city ever known – Jericho, at a moment the civilization was painfully
recovering from the biblical Flood.

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Now, though the transition from Gemini to Taurus in 4470 BC does not tell us very
much (remember that before 3100 BC it is virtually impossible to date any event to
any degree of accuracy), it very likely indicates the date of the Babylonian – or
“Gilgamesh’s” – deluge, which left such deep cultural traces on the region that
would originate an abundant literature. In turn, the passing from Taurus to Aries in
2310 BC would have been presided by the so-called “Deucalion’s deluge”, which
was not limited to the Mediterranean area but apparently inundated China, where
an inscription owed to emperor Yao, alluding to an eclipse observed at the time,
has made it possible to confirm the date of the catastrophe. In Egypt, in turn, the
catastrophe would have coincided with the beginning of a period of political
fragmentation after the death of Pharaoh Pepi II, while in Mesopotamia the Guti
invasion was followed by the destruction of Sargon of Akkad’s empire.
Finally, the shift from Aries to Pisces, in 150 BC, would similarly be marked by
transcendental events – yet this time for the Roman civilization – like the Third
Punic War and the establishment of a direct government on Greece (which is left
divided into provinces), therefore eliminating the last obstacles to its dramatic
ulterior expansion.
So far, it can rightly be objected that our review looks rather vague and imprecise,
especially if what it is all about is demonstrating that our calculation of the
beginning and end of the present Manvantara is right. Well, if we consider a 72
year period – equivalent, if we remember, to one degree of the Zodiacal Circle – to
represent a “day” within the great Zodiacal Year of 25,920 common years, then we
may try to further corroborate whether or not it is so by reducing, to that end, our
focus so as to see whether during the transition from one “day” to another – as an
image of the transition from one great cycle to another – there have been any key
events in history, even though for chronological reasons we need to limit our
review to the last “month“ of 2,160 common years and, in order to not incur in
tediousness, to overlook some “days”.
In this way, just two “days” after 150 BC, in the year 6 BC, we find the birth of
Jesus Christ, an event most transcendental to Christianity and the Western World
and a year when, according to Kepler, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were aligned at the
constellation of Pisces; and one “day” later, around 66 AD, the great fire of Rome
and the start of the Christians’ persecution by Nero as well as the deaths of Seneca
and Petronious ordered by him, in addition to the rebellion of the Jews and the
destruction of the Q’umram monastery and, ultimately, that of the whole Jerusalem
by Titus (in 70 AD). Exactly a “week” later, in 570 AD (readers are invited to
make the calculation) Prophet Muhammad is born – an event, if you will, as
transcendental as the above-mentioned one yet this time to Islam and the Eastern
World; and one “day” later, around 642 AD, two similar and strangely synchronic
events occur: the fall of the Sassanid empire in Asia and, on the other side of the
world, in the American continent, the ruin of Teotihuacan.
Skipping another week, exactly in 1146 AD Morocco is conquered by the
Almohads and Lisbon by the Christians; and preparations for the Second Crusade,
which is launched in the following year, begin. Exactly five “days” later, in 1506,
Christopher Columbus dies and two “days” later, around 1650 AD, the Thirty
Years’ War is brought to its end with the Peace of Westphalia, the Fronde revolts
break out in France, and the Dnieper Cossacks rebel; a little before, in 1649,
Charles I of England is executed, wherewith Cromwell’s dictatorship begins. In
turn the year 1794, just two “days” later, finds France immerse in the Terror; and a
“day” later, around 1866 AD, Lincoln is killed and Maximilian of Mexico shot, the

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anti-Bourbon revolution breaks out in Spain, the Ku–Klux–Klan begin their

activities in the United States and, in yet another order of things, Alfred Nobel
invents dynamite. Finally, exactly one “day” later, in year 1938, actions take place
that get the II World War started, an event with which we arrive at the beginning of
the last “day” of the “month” reviewed.
Naturally, in reviewing history in this way we have just made a simple summary,
overlooking some “days” and, in order to expedite the study, sacrificing many
significant events – yet not so much as the ones presented – and to a high degree
unfortunate – although some, mainly in the cultural field, were absolutely not. But
what has been achieved in expeditiousness has been missed in thoroughness, an
insufficiency that I intend to correct by broadening somehow the scope of the
review. In effect, if we consider that the shift from one “day” to another is, in as
much as an image of the transition from one great cycle to another, at all
significant, then it will be licit to think that the full part of each “day” will be as
well. To corroborate this we will focus now, in the same limited way, on some
“noons” of the last zodiacal “month” – with which in practice we will be
examining cycles of 36 years each.
Incidentally, I will mention that these 36-year cycles have already been studied,
from a more “astrological” point of view if you will, by some authors who have
regarded each cycle as ruled by a given planet. It is said, for example – and this is
an extremely suggestive piece of information – that Mars was the ruler from 1919
to 1945, a period of time which encompassed the two World Wars. However, this
is an aspect we cannot stop at for too long, so we will go on with our review along
the established path.
In this way, we see that approximately in the year 114 BC the astronomer
Hipparchus of Nicea dies, an event that becomes relevant if we remember that it is
precisely he who is attributed with spreading the knowledge of the precession of
the equinoxes in the Western World. Then follow some cultural deeds, like the
building three “days” later, around the year 102 AD, of the ceremonial city of
Teotihuacan in America and, most importantly, the invention of paper in China.
The appearance of the first printed text will have to wait approximately one more
“day”, that is until year 174 AD. At the following “noon”, that is about 246 AD, a
dreadful plague spreads out around the Mediterranean Sea, and Decius decrees the
first general persecution of Christians; and after another “day”, about 318 AD but
with a difference of “hours”, the defeat of Majencius by Constantine takes place
and the Decree of Milan is issued, while the first councils of the Christian Church
are celebrated. Exactly on the next “noon”, in 390 AD, a tragic event for universal
culture takes place: the fire of the Alexandria Library.
Let us take now a leap of four “days” (or 288 years) to arrive at 678 AD, around
which date the first Arabian onslaught on Constantinople (which will afford a
pretext to use the so-called black fire on the blockaders) takes place and exactly
one “day” later, in 750 AD, a famine breaks out in Spain which forces thousands of
Berbers to return to North Africa. One more “day” and the Iconoclastic rebellion in
Byzantium, the Khmer expansion in Cambodia (around 822 AD), and the
widespread use of the long military bow, occur.
We must wait for another “week”, the year 1326 AD, to see the first canyon, and
for yet another, i.e. exactly the year 1830, to witness the inauguration of the first
railroad (Liverpool–Manchester), as well as some noteworthy events as the
resignation and death of Bolivar, the bourgeois revolution in France, the Polish
insurrection, the French conquest of Argel, etc. One “day” after this, around 1902,

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the Ford factory is created and the Wright brothers make the first flight ever on a
motor plane; and the following “noon”, i.e. in 1974, a general economic recession
and world rise in food prices, at the same time that a severe draught in Sahel, a
great famine in Africa, and a cruel epidemic of cholera in India, break out. (In the
USA, one year after the retreat from Vietnam, Watergate affaire and Nixon’s
resignation take place.)
Thus far my review of the present Manvantara from the “Western” point of view. I
am certainly conscious that with this analysis, even reviewing some “zodiacal
days” individually, the possibilities of studying this cycle have not been exhausted,
which is evidenced by the fact that in the last zodiacal month of 2,160 common
years there have occurred events of greater significance than those that have been
showing up here – like the discovery of America by Columbus, to mention but one
that is undoubtedly the most emblematic and transcendental in the historical sense.
Hence I have mentioned other possible approaches which will be put to test below.
So let us consider the Manvantara in its fundamental aspect, that is, as an
eminently septenary cycle. I will start by saying that seven, which in as much as
the sum of four and three symbolizes the union of Heaven, as represented by three,
and Earth, as represented by four, embodies, particularly inside the Hindu Cosmo
vision, rather the spatial than the temporal aspect of things, even though it
1
somehow may serve as a nexus between the two of them. And in effect, even
though its temporal aspect is not at all absent in the septenary symbolism, it is with
the spatial one that it shows the main correspondences, notably with the seven
dvipas or continents of the Hindustan tradition and, in ascending order, with the
seven traditional planets and the seven worlds recognized by tradition as forming
the entire order of manifestation – three superior worlds, three inferior worlds, and
the Earth as the intermediate world – a model of the universe which is shared by
the majority of the ancient traditions, including the American. On the other hand,
however, the first thing that comes to mind in connection with this number is the
seven days of the week and fundamentally, within the Western tradition, the Seven
Days of Creation, equivalent to the seven Manus of Hinduism and the seven
“creative days” of Hermetism, the favorite symbols of the temporal aspect; apart
from a scarcely observed, but not because of it less real, fact: Within the annual
cycle, after the Winter Solstice, which occurs six months after the Summer Solstice
– on late December in the Northern hemisphere – there comes the seventh month,
which is when it can be said in all property that the end of the long winter night
and, with it, nature’s rebirth, is already close at hand. So there is a well-marked
relationship between the septenary symbolism and the annual cycle. In fact, the use
and connotations of this enigmatic prime number, only divisible by itself and by
one, are innumerable and universal: among many referents, there can be mentioned
the seven arms of the Jewish Candelabrum, the seven stars and seven angels of the
Book of Revelation, the seven Hindu rishis or sages (and their Egyptian
equivalents), the seven chakras or energetic centers of human body (as a
counterpart of the seven worlds or cosmic planes), the seven cardinal sins and
seven theologian virtues of Christianity, etc. Other significant correspondences are
the seven colors of the rainbow and above all the musical diatonic or seven-note
scale of the Pythagorean (3 + 4), which would originate multiple and varied
applications in mathematics and other disciplines, as opposed to the relationship
between the duodenary cycles as the common year or Zodiacal Year and the
chromatic twelve-note scale (3 x 4). Now, in the diatonic or seven-note scale it is

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the eighth note, i.e. the one that culminates on the nearest higher octave, the note
which completes the cycle. Which takes us to the point that I wanted to reach: that
is, that in the case studied, and by virtue of the analogical correlation that must
exist between the Manvantara as a whole and the complete diatonic scale, it is
possible to approach this cycle as such, i.e. to break it down into eight parts, which
in practice will make it consist of eight zodiacal seasons of 6,480 years each.
An indication that this approach is not arbitrary at all is given by the fact that such
duration is a half of a “great year” of 12,960 common years – and an extremely
important period for the Mesopotamian traditions, which frequently round it up as
6,000 or 7,000 years – as well as a tenth of the length of the reign of Xisuthros, the
Chaldean Manu. However, it is not with this particular approach that we will find
additional proof about the starting and final dates of the present Manvantara, nor
will we obtain new dates for “key” events of history, as these still are basically the
same as the ones obtained with the first review, at least as regards the beginning of
every zodiacal season (even though in the present case it may be more appropriate
to move the end of the whole period to 2082 AD: in practice, a circle degree or 72
common years). Even so, here too we can concentrate our focus onto the last
period, the one that represents the octave (the darker section in Fig. 3), and break it
down again into the same number of periods, in this case of 6,480 : 8 = 810 years
2
each. This is no arbitrary procedure either, as it is based on the same analogical
correspondences among cycles of the most diverse order to which I have
repeatedly alluded, as well as on other considerations of too complex a nature to be
dealt with here, but which have to do with the fact that each Manvantara actually
consists of two septenary series, one of which refers to the past, with the present as
its immediate resultant – which can be regarded as a small-scale image of the first
series – and the other to the future.
This novel approach do provide us with some new, meaningful dates. In effect, if
we start from year 4470 BC (which in Fig. 3 corresponds to the transition from
Gemini to Taurus within the last Zodiacal Year), we see that the second date,
which would be 3660 BC, corresponds to a time that may well mark the earliest
beginnings of the Sumerian civilization. Yet it is around the third one, which would
be 2850 BC, where we will find more meaningful events like the Egyptian Third
Dynasty foundation by Pharaoh Zozer – whose famous prime minister Imhotep is
credited with building the step pyramid in Saqqara –, as well as the foundation of
the first dynasties of Kish and Uruk and the erection of the latter city-state walls
(supposedly by Gilgamesh), all of it in Mesopotamia. Next would come year 2040
BC, around which date the Third Dynasty of Ur collapses and the document known
as “Ipuwer’s Papyrus” is written down in Egypt, all of which, in all likelihood, is a
sequel of a catastrophic event: the so-called “Deucalion’s Flood”. Next a date, the
year 1230 BC, around which there appear to multiply key events for history, like
the War of Troy, the Aegean migration – probably connected with the
displacements of the so-called “Sea Peoples” – and the beginning of Assyria as a
potency, etc. Then, in 420 BC, as Rome’s ascent is ongoing and the great
Peloponnesian War breaks out between Sparta and Athens, a dreadful epidemic
wreaks havoc in the latter city; Herodotus dies in the same year, and in 421 BC the
Peace of Nicias, which ends the said war for a short time, 50 years, is signed. I
have already referred to the next date, year 390 AD, which witnesses the triumph
of Christianity by Emperor Theodosius – a ferocious opponent to any “deviation”
from orthodoxy, the apex of the Barbarian invasions in Europe and, above all, the

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fire of the Alexandria library. The last date, 1200 AD, witnesses the end of the
Crusades and King Richard Lionheart’s death (and his brother John Landless’
ascent to the throne bringing along the “Magna Carta” promulgation), while in
Asia the rise of Genghis Khan, and in America the destruction of Chichen Itza,
take place.
Thus we may conclude this second approach to the problem, which has provided us
with a bit of what we were seeking – yet not enough of it. In the next chapter we
will focus on the full cycle as a descending quaternary cycle, or maha–yuga, whose
study from the historical point of view should motivate us to continue this
recapitulation.

NOTES

1
The readers interested in deepening into the septenary symbolism, and particularly in its
relationship with the seven note scale, may consult the work of P. D. OUSPENSKY:
Fragmentos de una enseñanza desconocida, Hachette, Buenos Aires (2ª Edición)

2
Curiously enough, if the cycle is regarded as ending in 2082 AD then the total length
becomes 6,552 years, a figure that although a multiple of seven, in producing partial cycles
of 936 years each yields irrelevant dates; in other words, it leads to a dead end.

Home

CHAPTER 8

THE CIRCULAR HISTORY

«For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former
shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.»
(Book of Isaiah 65:17)

I n the previous chapter the Manvantara has been studied firstly as a cycle
consisting merely of two zodiacal years of 25,920 common years, and then as
preferred by the Hindu tradition, namely, as a septenary cycle by excellence, even
though, considering the little space available here for a work of mere divulgation as
this is, I have limited to a brief commentary. In the present chapter I will approach
it as a descending quaternary cycle, that is, as a maha–yuga subject to the scale 4 +
3 + 2 + 1 = 10, which not only will help us bring other key dates in history to light,
but also elaborate upon some major concerns of the doctrine whose analysis was
still pending.
To that end, and in order to go from the particular to the general, we will study in

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the first place some historical cases where the scale has been fundamental, even
though given the scarcity of cultures that offer accurate enough chronological data,
as well as of societies whose relative isolation guarantees their authenticity, we
need to be selective. Even so, the few examples that we will be limiting ourselves
to should be enough to demonstrate that the scale is applicable to the four periods
of time into which the history of any people or culture can be divided.
Bearing this in mind, in the first case selected, the ancient Egypt, we will limit
ourselves to the strictly dynastic periods and leave out the post-imperial phase,
which no longer can be regarded as genuinely Egyptian. Thus we will obtain a first
phase, or “Golden Age”, which goes from the First Dynasty, in around 3100 BC, to
the so-called First Intermediate Period, about 2300 BC – that is, a length of 200 x 4
= 800 years.

Fig. 4 – The strictly dynastic Egypt broken down

into four ages or “yugas”

Of this phase, in which writing is suddenly born, I will only say that its material
realizations stand out by their honest, simple grandiosity and exquisite care, the
great pyramids of the third and fourth dynasties being a perfect demonstration that
the only truly creative period of the ancient Egyptians is that of the beginnings of
their civilization, for they are indeed most superior in technical perfection to the
posterior ones.
The second period, or “Silver Age”, would span from about 2300 to 1700 BC – a
length of 200 x 3 = 600 years – the latter being the date around which the so-called
Second Intermediate Period is to be found. Over the course of this phase, whose
germ must actually be traced to approximately one hundred years before, there is a
weakening of royalty in the face of a decentralization which culminates, after Pepi
II’s death (around 2180 BC), in violence and anarchy; the so-called “Ipuwer
papyrus” provides eerie insight into this period, strangely reminiscent of the
Puranic descriptions of the Kali-yuga end and the Gospels’ announcements of the
end of the times. And while there follows the Middle Kingdom, with somewhat
admirable achievements, shortly after 1800 BC the so-called “great humiliation”
ensues: the state sinks and, around 1700 BC, the Hyksos invade Egypt.
The third period goes from approximately this date to 1300 BC – a length of 200 x
2 = 400 years – and although it shows big apparent achievements like Egypt’s
trading expeditions to the Land of Punt, and, among other great architectural works

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the building of the obelisks at Karnak and the temple of Luxor as well as literary
and artistic creations of great refinement like The Book of the Dead, it actually
marks the beginning of end: General Horemheb is forced to stop the Libyan
penetration of Egypt and proclaim himself Pharaoh after the reign of Akhenaton,
the famous “heretic Pharaoh” who antagonizes the Memphis priesthood, and
Ramses II is forced to sign a peace treaty with the Hittite King Hattusil III in 1283
BC. So it may be around the end of this time that the Syrian enter and sack
Memphis, defiling the streets and beheading and enslaving the people, yet of this
event, called “the Syrian interregnum”, there are, for obvious reasons, no major
records extant.
Lastly, the fourth period, from approximately 1300 to 1100 BC – a length of 200
years, or a tenth of the total period considered – marks the nearness of disaster:
After Ramesses III saves Egypt from the Libyan and the “Sea Peoples”’ pressure
(and incidentally loses his life as a consequence of a harem’s plot), scandals break
out everywhere: the laborers of Thebes workshops rebel out, corruption prevails on
all levels, the people suffer from hunger, the royal tombs are sacked. After a period
of general chaos, a high priest of Amun, Herihor, rises in rebellion and relegates
Ramesses XI to a subordinate position and, about 1085 BC, puts an end to the XX
dynasty. Around the same time an old viceroy, Smendes, seizes the power in the
Delta, wherefore Egypt is divided between Upper Egypt in the hands of the Army,
and Lower Egypt in those of the military aristocracy. From then on, feudal
dismembering will increase until it culminates in the Ethiopian empire, which in
turn will give way under the Assyrian invasion: Never more will Egypt be the
master of its own destiny.

Fig. 5 – The Sumerian Cycle broken down into

four ages or “yugas”

Though I should have presented it chronologically first, our second example, due
to the insufficient available data and in order to follow the standard usage, will be
the Sumerian civilization (see figure 5). In this, the first period or “Golden Age”
spans from approximately 3500 to 2800 BC, i.e. over some 700 years (175 x 4). At
the start of this period, the Sumerians appear suddenly in Lower Mesopotamia
bringing copper and, as early as then, tablets with ideographic inscriptions. Their
provenance is uncertain, though it is very possible that they came from India, most
likely as a remnant of the Mohenho–Daro and Harappa civilization as suggested by

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the remains found in the earliest strata of these cities by archeologists and the sea
deities present in the oldest legends and even the very name of this culture,
Sumeru, surely derived from the famous Mount Meru of the Hindu tradition. This
earliest civilization first flourishes in Uruk, approximately between 3100 and 2800
BC.
The phase that may be called “Silver Age” goes from the latter date to 2275 BC, i.
e. some 525 years (175 x 3); a period of time in which the Sumerians plainly enter
into History. It consists of the so-called Proto dynastic period of which abundant
tablets with cuneiform inscriptions are preserved, and as urban, developed states
emerge together with a religious and civilian administration and the use of slaves.
This phase concludes in an invasion by a Semitic people, the Akkadian, whose
leader Sargon of Akkad, after defeating the famous Lugalzaggesi, inaugurates the
first Mesopotamic Empire and whose grandson, Naram–Sin, renowned for his
commemorative stela, must face in turn an invasion by the Guti, who will control
the area for long centuries. This whole period spans from 2275 to 1925 BC, that is
lasts some 300 years (175 x 2) and would belong to the “Bronze Age” of this
culture.
Finally, around the latter date (1925 BC) there is a “rebirth” of Sumer with the
third dynasty of Ur, which lasts some 175 years – a phase of great apparent
splendor which ends up catastrophically about 1750 BC after an invasion by the
Amorrites and the Elamites, who cause the ruin of the city. From then on history,
which has ceased to belong to the Sumerian civilization, will continue with the
Amorrites’ period of Mesopotamia.
Our third example deals with the history of Israel. It covers from the departure of
patriarch Abram from Ur of Chaldea in about 1950 BC to the moment that
Jerusalem surrenders to the Romans, who around 60 AD destroy the temple – thus
spanning over a full 2,000 years (see Fig 6).
The first phase, which may be called pastoral, is that of the Hebrean patriarchs – a
Golden Age which comes to an end with the so-called captivity in Egypt. It spans
from 1950 BC to 1150BC, that is, some 800 years (200 x 4).

Fig 6 – The Hebrean cycle from Abraham

to the fall of Jerusalem

The second period or “Silver Age”, from the latter date to 550 BC (a duration of
200 x 3 = 600 years), begins dramatically with the so-called “plagues of Egypt”
and goes from the Exodus of the Hebrean people and their crossing of the Red Sea,

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possibly parallel to the great flood known as “Ogygian deluge”, to the exile in
Babylon – with their entering into Canaan (the Promised Land), the period of the
Judges, and the glorious reigns of David y Solomon in between.
The third phase or “Bronze Age”, which goes from 550 BC to 150 BC (a duration
of 200 x 2 = 400 years), ends up, after the rebuilding of the temple and other
events, in Alexander the Great’s conquests – a period of servitude for the
Hebrean, yet at the same time a period which is not lacking in episodes of
grandeur like, for instance, the Maccabeans rebellion just before its end.
Last comes the “Iron Age”, with approximately 200 years in length, which may
be considered at best as a time of half-freedom, and in which the Romans get the
control of Palestine – a phase which, after the occupation of Jerusalem by Titus,
ends up in the Jews’ Diaspora.
Thus ends this study of a few concrete cases through which I have wanted to
show, at least in the case of the peoples which have remained relatively isolated
from any foreign interference, that the phases of their history are not only
naturally reduced to four, but also that they decay gradually and in all aspects,
even the material one; and that as concerns their duration, it always decreases by
the scale 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10. Naturally I would have liked to include a greater
number of cases, for example, those of the Aegean and Roman civilizations; but
the uncertain character of the phases and dates, in the first case, and the
difficulties inherent in determine the precise time of their start and end in the
second, prevented my doing so.
Let us go now to the main purpose in this part of the study as we approach the
whole Manvantara from the same point of view; but this time, based on 3102 BC
as the starting year of the Kali–yuga, by marking again the year 2082 AD as the
final date of the whole cycle. This yields the year 49758 BC (51,840 – 2,082) as
the starting point of the first phase or Satya–yuga; 29022 BC as that of the second
one or Treta–yuga (49,758 – 5,184 x 4), a period which will witness the apogee of
the Atlantis civilization; 13470 BC as that of the third phase or Dvapara–yuga
(29,022 – 5,184 x 3), the likely epoch recreated by the stories narrated in
Ramayana; and 3102 BC as that of the fourth and last phase or Kali–yuga, this
being the one alone that can tell us anything in a historical proper sense. So if we
want to demonstrate that the Manvantara broken down like this has any
chronological validity at all, we will have to again resort to the expedient used in
the previous chapter in relation to the same cycle, regarded as a “dual” zodiacal
year: namely, to consider the Kali–yuga as a small-scale image of the whole cycle,
and break it down into the same number of phases according to the same
proportions (see Fig 7).

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Fig. 7 – The Kali–yuga broken down into

four ages or “yugas”

As can be seen from the figure above, this procedure does enable us to arrive at
dates of great historical significance. In 3102 BC, in effect, there begins what
paradoxically may be regarded as a “small-scale” Golden Age, as the great political
organizations are formed in Egypt and Mesopotamia (and, as has just been
discovered, in Asia and America) and as the monarchy and priesthood are created
as dominating classes on those agricultural societies which have a well-developed
state apparatus. At the same time, major hydraulic works as well as buildings for
political and religious use are erected which, in a way, will never be improved; and
copper, silver, and gold metallurgies are created. On top of all this, the writing
systems of Sumer and Egypt, among others, are developed.
Thus, contrary to what might be thought, the next phase, which can be called
“small Silver Age”, and whose start would be in 1028 BC (3,102 – 518.4 x 4),
represents a reversal from the previous one, even though the opposite may be true
from a material point of view. For example, after the apogee of the Ramessides in
Egypt, there follows the empire’s decadence and final disintegration, as the cruel
threat of the Assyrian expansionism and domination looms on the horizon. In the
area of the Aegean Sea, on its part, it is around this date that the great fortresses of
Mycenae are destroyed and set to fire, and that the Mycenae state collapses.
However, I do not pretend to develop a philosophical discussion on so
controversial an issue, too wide to be studied in only a paragraph. And though it is
all too difficult to generalize on matters of such magnitude, it has already been said
in chapter 4, while examining the present Kali–yuga, that all depends on the point
of view that is taken; and if this is the spiritual one, in spite of the eventual and
contingent periods of seeming grandeur that may have occurred on the second
phase – and I am referring to the booming of such civilizations as the Greek and
the Roman in the Old World, and the Mayan and the pre Inca cultures in the New –
then it is not difficult to see how there around the world takes place a progressive,
general decadence, not so much in the area of morality and customs as in that of
culture, which reaches its lowest precisely at the end of this second “age”, around
527 AD – even though, on the other hand, this is the year when Justinian is
enthroned to rule over the East Roman Empire, a fact which may be regarded as
positive. Even so, there is the curious fact that, in examining the new phase and the
one that follows – which would correspond to the “small” Bronze and Iron ages – it
can be seen that precisely those dates which are “dragged” 72 years back, i.e. the
ones which are based rather on the year 2010 as the final point of the present

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Manvantara, become more relevant, almost as if in some mysterious way, Jesus

Christ’s well-known words concerning his announcement of the end of the times
had to do with it: «And if those days were not shortened, no flesh would live again.
For the sake of the chosen then, those days were shortened.» (Matthew 24: 22) Of
course, a more “scientific” approach to explain this circumstance would resort to
the difference of five days plus fraction between the ideal year of 360 days,
traditionally used in all calculations related to cycles and ages, and the year of a
little over 365 days, which according to some versions, would have started some
five thousand years ago owing to some catastrophe, possibly related to the
beginning of the “El Niño” phenomenon, which would have accelerated the Earth
rotation so that literally, the days would have been shortened; now, since the period
that may be regarded as fundamental to the total manifestation is precisely the day,
it would become necessary to make an adjustment of some 26,000 days or 72
years. Yet the fact is that the cited discrepancy is perceived not so much in the case
just mentioned, in which the year 455 AD, 72 years before 527 AD, abounds in
unfortunate events to the Western Roman Empire – since in it Emperor Valentinian
III is stabbed and Rome is sacked by Genseric – as in the episode that would start a
new era: the discovery of America by Columbus, exactly in 1492 AD, in front of
which 1564 AD – which would be the normal starting date of the “last” age – loses
relevance, even though it does not entirely lack transcendence itself, as it is around
it when the Wars of Religion break out in France.
Be it as it may, between the years 455 y 1492 there ensues a long period that is
usually viewed as inferior to the previous one, so much so that it has been called
“the dark ages”: a term which somehow reflects the image of a “Bronze Age” in
which man, above all those in the higher classes, seems to have been born basically
to fight wars (with the exception of those that are not good at them and are so
destined to some other trade, like clergy) but in which a certain grandeur, moral
principles, and a gentlemanliness and romanticism that constitute his ideal are not
altogether absent; the quest for the holy grail is a beautiful example of it. Even so,
it is near its end that there starts a new decadence, this time mainly in the fields of
morals and customs, a process which through various stages has been accentuating
down to our days until it has ultimately brought about the birth of the movements
known as the Renaissance and the Reformation, which to many mark a time of
great progress in the arts, sciences, and literature, but to others represent the loss of
many things of real, transcendental value. A single example should suffice to
demonstrate this assertion: during the Renaissance, hunting, which previously was
referred to as ars nequissima (“a cruel exercise”) by the Popes, becomes a favorite
pastime for many ecclesiastics – among them Leo X, the first Pope to be a hunter.
However, that which in my opinion represents an irreplaceable loss, is the
disappearance of the traditional philosophy as well as that of the great, authentic art
which is characteristic of the mature epoch of this period and which is best
represented by the Gothic cathedrals, unfortunately later on replaced by an
imitation of ancient art which no longer expresses anything genuine. Which takes
us to the central point: the dissolution of Christianity, a faith with which the
civilization of the Middle Ages essentially identified and around which all human
activities were centered, precisely as a consequence of the Reformation and the
beginning of “humanism”, which ultimately is but the secularism and materialism
that dominate our time. A time when, in spite of everyone’s hope for technology to
help mankind evolve into an ideal society, there are only disappointment and
frustration; and in which history, ever increasingly accelerated, seems to have

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reached a culminant point which foretells its imminent end – the signs of which are
perceived everywhere: a total reversion of values, a “technological revolution”
which is at best a by-product of the industrial revolution and one of whose
consequences, environmental pollution, brings about in turn the planet’s warming
and the disappearance of the ozone layer; the emergence of countless Messiahs
posing as guides and saviors of mankind and announcing the arrival of a “New
Age” whose founders and leaders are, naturally, they themselves; finally, the
proliferation of abortive clinics and of certain practices which, out of an elemental
reserve, I would rather avoid referring to, but which have to do with the use of
dead human bodies…
With this I hope to have given a synthesis of what in good account has been the
present Kali–yuga, as well as briefly discussed its main characteristics. But what
about other significant epochs, such as the one that spans over the sixth century
BC, to which particular attention has been given as another possible starting point
of such period?
Well – and this again corroborates the multiplicity of approaches the Manvantara
may be subjected to -– I have already shown how any cycle can be broken down
according to the scale 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10. This admitted, I will consider only the
“kali–yuga” of the last Zodiacal Year and will likewise divide it in order to obtain
the figure below:

Fig. 8 – The “kali–yuga” of the last Zodiacal Year

Note that in this case, in following the remarks above and since we are dealing
with a period length considerably shorter – a tenth of the previous one – I have
used the year 2010 as its ending date. Other than that we are dealing here, rather
than with the Manvantara as a whole, with a minimal fraction of it – in practice,
with any period length – which somehow justifies the step taken, apart from the
fact that in actuality, at least in what concerns the first of the dates obtained, we are
just dragging them 72 years back.
Thus we see, as early as approximately on the first date, events of great historical
transcendence like the appearance of Taoism in China and the Jew’s captivity in
Babylon. By then too Buddha and Zarathustra, as well as Confucius and
Pythagoras, must have been born – so if Hinduism is excluded, it is about this time
that virtually all the major Eastern doctrines do appear. Now, at the risk of
pestering the readers, I will make a quick review of the dates that would mark the
start of the next periods: Approximately in 452 AD both Attila’s defeat on the
Catalonian Fields (in 451) and his death (in 453) take place. Then, circa 1229 AD,
the death of another scourge of mankind, this time Genghis Khan, takes place,

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while the Sixth Crusade wins Jerusalem by deal and the last remnants of the
Albigensian Heresy are eliminated. Finally, around 1747, the manufacture of
molten iron becomes commonplace and the industry of mechanical weaving looms
is developed, upon which the industrial revolution gets started along with its sequel
of misery for the British laboring class (and, in time, for that of the major part of
the world) announcing its already mentioned by-product: the modern technological
revolution.
And what about the disquieting 52-year cycles that were mentioned in chapter 5, so
revered by the ancient Mesoamerican cultures (and perhaps by the South American
ones as well) that all of their astronomical and calendar calculations centered
around them? Well, in trying to provide historical proof like I did with the cycles
of 72 years, I took as starting point – a little by chance – the year 1977, the one
when the “El Niño” phenomenon turned back again to cause severe damage, which
prolonged into early 1998 and which, curiously enough, fell 52 years after the
atrocious nuclear explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which put horrendous end
to World War II. Other than that, it may be remembered that the startup of the
above-mentioned phenomenon very likely matched the one of the present Kali–
yuga, as has been mentioned in chapter 4; and something extremely suggestive: the
previous Mega “Niño” occurred in 1925, exactly 72 years prior to the one in 1997.
Then I saw that the infamous Opium War had started 104 years before and that
another historical event extremely significant, the French Revolution of 1789, had
taken place exactly 156 years before that. However, as I kept looking back in time,
small discrepancies did occur in the dates of major and in a way always
unfortunate events, so I decided to use a cycle of 51.84 years or a hundredth part of
the actual Kali–yuga duration. And here the dates coincided with astounding
accuracy: in 1738, 51.84 years before the French Revolution, the mechanical
weaving looms were patented, a nefarious fact whose significance I have already
commented; 104 years prior to that, in 1530, Lope de Aguirre, who was viewed as
the Antichrist of his time, was running amok in South America, and 52 years
before, in 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was created. Three cycles before, in 1271,
Saint Louis died, and three before (in 1064 or maybe in 1065) the invasion of
England by William the Conqueror occurred. Also, the year 1012, i.e. 52 years
prior to that, is market by the persecution de heretics in Germany. In order to avoid
being too meticulous, I will overlook some facts less unfortunate and, sticking to
the Western world and the Christian era, will go five centuries back to around 753,
a year during which a great famine breaks out in Spain. Seven centuries prior to
that, exactly in the year 390, occurred an ill-fated event in which date, as viewed
elsewhere, appear to have variously concurred two other cycles’ ends: the fire of
the library of Alexandria, an event so important that not in vain is usually regarded
as marking the end of the Old and the beginning of the Middle Ages. For the rest,
six cycles before, in the year 79, the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum
were destroyed by the Vesuvius’ eruption. And according to some, 52 years before
that, i.e. the year 27, is the most likely date of Jesus Christ’s death.
And here I will end this prolonged historical interlude, with which I expect to have
shown that the cosmic cycles do exert a decisive influence on the evolution of
human kind – both those from the west, somehow represented by the precession of
the equinoxes or Zodiacal Year of 25,920 common years, and the ones from the
east, as represented in particular by the so-called Manvantara and, in general, by
the Hindu maha–yuga based on the scale 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10, to which any period of
whatever length can be assimilated. As to the reason why the latter should be like

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this: apart from the natural influence that the different parts of the precessional
period, in case it is considered a quaternary cycle, must exert as actual zodiacal
seasons (as compared to what occurs, in a much lesser order, with the common
year), it is in the very nature of things that there in due course of time must ensue a
certain decadence in the vitality of any society or culture (and indeed, of any other
order of manifestation), such as occurs with any living organism. This in principle
would account for the fact that any cycle can be assimilated to the Hindu maha–
yuga. Now why should they be four ages, and not a higher or lesser number of
them?
The question is not easy, but I will venture an answer. Apart from the huge
gravitation of numerical symbolism (remember the four seasons of the year, the
four phases of the Moon, etc), the cause would simply reside in the quaternary
being a cycle which appears to be like tailor-made for any temporal phenomenon –
and this because it is based on an even number and so it is divisible by its half, as is
any of its multiples as well. This quality can be easily appreciated, for example, in
the musical compass of four times, which is of a great fluidity and, so to speak,
circular; which, by the way, is opposed to the artificial division of history in three
main parts – a division for which historians seem otherwise to have a great
predilection. However, there remains a big question to be answered: why should
such lengths be decreasing? I have already referred to the influence that, in the case
of the Zodiacal Year of 25,920 common years, must at any rate be exerted by its
four seasons of 6,480 common years each; an influence whose accumulated effect,
owing to a natural multiplying or “avalanche” effect (very possibly stimulated, in
this particular case, by the population increases), produces ever increasing events
in approximately equal periods, or (what is the same) an equal number of events in
ever decreasing periods of time. Naturally, with cycles of any other lengths would
occur the same process, though there would be left to be known what the
“cardinal” moments are that influence their cumulative development; moreover,
these moments could bear no relation at all with any cosmic cycle, plus there
would remain a pending question of what it is that makes the decreasing proportion
to occur within a given total length. It is therefore possible that the problem is
wrongly put and that the final explanation may reside in the total length depending
rather on the duration of the first period or “yuga” – that is, that the former is
produced from the latter, and not vice versa – and that the length of the first period,
once ended (either by a natural wearing process or else suddenly, as a consequence
of some cataclysm) determines, once and for all, the length of the remaining three
successive phases, and therefore that of the full cycle in question – something like
is shown by nature in the shape of a certain snail whose body traces as it grows,
and proportionally to the 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10 scale, the so-called “spiral of four
centers”, in which some people will all but see a mere curiosity; but indeed, it
would be hard to find another element that may give so much strength to the point.

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Figure 9 – The “spiral with four centers”

With this said, there are just a few things left that need to be examined in relation
to the doctrine, some of which are important questions to which there may be no
satisfactory answer. I am, for example, aware that there is a weak point within the
whole structure of my calculations: namely, the starting date of the Kali–yuga in
3102 AD. Even so, I have tried to back it up with arguments that go from the
astronomical and geological to the philosophical fields, as in effect, although
progress in all fields has been virtually uninterrupted for the “official” history and
science from that date to our days (with the only exception of the Middle Ages,
otherwise most unjustly regarded), in the spiritual sense, which is the one alone
that really counts, there has only been retrogression.
But I have said enough about this. An objection can still be raised, that in all that
has been said we have only examined the so-called “historical” times, and that it is
too far-fetched to infer from it that the whole doctrine is true. Well, I still can
present up to two arguments of varied sort in support of my case.
In the first place, if what has been asserted about the maha–yuga is true, we may
likewise turn the matter the other way round and demonstrate that the length of any
period, however vast, must still follow the scale 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10; but to this end
it is necessary to establish to the utmost possible precision the starting and final
dates, which is not always easy. Such is the case, for example, of the geological
eras and above all of the appearance of the animal species, since the dates that are
available usually differ and are once and again modified by the scientists, ever apt
to change their minds. Even so, we still can try and do it simply by means of a
scheme, similar to the previous ones, which represents the progression of the
geological eras from the earliest vertebrates onwards; yet in this case, in order to
conform to the current usage, we will do it in the shape of a “biological clock”,
plus we will take the liberty to introduce an additional era in order to conform it to
what I believe to be closer to the historical reality of our planet. However, it must
be considered to represent only its diurnal part – that is, the last 2,160 millions of
years.

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Fig. 10 – Biological clock of the Earth with an

additional, “Modern” Era

In this way, although the earliest living forms appear, according to paleontologists,
some 2,700 millions of years ago (in the “biologic clock”, about 15 hours ago), it is
only some 600 millions of years ago – that is, only three to four “hours” ago – that
the earliest known vertebrates show up. Well now, if we break this period down
into four parts that follow the scale 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10, we will obtain a length of
240 millions of years for the first era, the Paleozoic; this will end when the
Mesozoic gets started, about 360 millions of years ago (or 600 – 240), as the
earliest reptilians and, in the sea, the cephalopods – already advanced beings –
show up; 180 millions of years later, that is an equal number of years ago (360 –
180) will be the turn of the Cenozoic era, an epoch when the earliest mammals and
angiosperms show up. Finally, some 60 millions of years ago, the time arrives
when, after the extinction of the dinosaurs, mammals begin to branch out and
succeed on Earth.
As to the human species in the broadest sense, i.e. including its most remote
ancestors (presumably the earliest Australopithecus), the subject is too complex to
even attempt its study, not to mention the fact that the anthropologists present a
new fossil fragment, usually accompanied by a new theory and a new chronology
for the intermediate species, almost daily. However, I have already summarized a
bit of what is of real interest to us: namely, that the appearance of our earliest
remote ancestor, the Australopitecus Ramidus, would have occurred about
4’300,000 years ago, and that of the Homo Habilis approximately one half of that
time ago, with the Homo Sapiens Sapiens, as represented by the man of
Cromagnon, emerging some 50,000 years ago and the Neanderthal, unjustly
regarded as only Homo Sapiens, prior to that, possibly some 200,000 years ago –
all dates with which we have become familiar over the course of this work.
And after this long parenthesis, I will conclude my argumentation. To the end of
anticipating, however, objections from the most recalcitrant skeptics, I will
endeavor to extrapolate the foregoing remarks and try to imagine what the times
prior to 3102 BC could be like. In the case of Egypt, for example, experts have
noted that the end of the pre-dynastic period was superior in at least one significant

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feature: in the production of earth and stone pots as well as other vessels, a
decrease is observed in the quality of the earthenware and the boldness of the
shapes and decoration, while the stone pots are definitely less beautiful and no
longer is the stuff always fire-proof. Still more important, as the dynastic period
arrives and the small communities become big states, an “urban revolution” occurs
bringing along a predominance of specialization and a depersonalization of
individuals. Formerly societies were small, homogeneous, self-contained and
strongly traditional, founded upon deep religious and family roots. Now they are
secular and, since trading activities are interdependent, they have become complex
and chaotic. And this, though with little variations, is what has happened
everywhere and in all times, even in our days.
For the rest, if through a similar process and broadening this reality on to the
spatial field, we look to an epoch when society is essentially pastoral and lives in a
state of almost perfect happiness, we will be traveling back from age to age to
ultimately arrive at the primordial civilization that I have located in the
Hyperboreas, a civilization depository of the transcendental knowledge which,
through time and space, has arrived in our days in one piece only by way of the
Hindu tradition, though covered in a symbolic guise so as to preserve its
confidentiality. A knowledge which has been dealt with in this brief work and
whose ultimate origin – which vanishes back in the night of time – can only be
regarded as extra human.
Finally, does the doctrine of cosmic cycles offer a pessimistic view of the world
and of history, as those who hear of it for the first time are apt to believe? Nothing
could be farther from the truth. For if on the one hand the doctrine teaches how our
civilization is to hopelessly end up in an era of such great tribulation as the world
has never seen, on the other hand it also announces new times and a new earth that
are to come immediately after consummation and which will be inaugurated by the
saviors I have briefly alluded to in the course of this exposition, who obviously are
all but different representations of the same Redeemer. Of course, how this
salvation will be carried out can be represented to the reader’s predilection, as we
cannot know at this moment how exactly it will be; and on the other hand, it cannot
be sufficiently emphasized that we are talking about the end of a world, our world
– i.e. an order of things, and not the end of “the world”. For such an end,
announced by all of the world’s scriptures and traditional texts, and which
embodies the hopes of thousands and millions of beings, is to be but the inevitable
and necessary prelude to the restoration of order, after which the earth will know a
new Golden Age where everything will be perfection and happiness as it was in the
beginning, when man lived in perfect harmony with the whole universe and God.

This brief study has not pretended to be exhaustive. Nothing has been said, for
example, about the sandhya, which according to the relevant texts are the three
periods of equal lengths into which any yuga is divided (although, according to
other versions, they are the periods intermediate between two yugas), and which
therefore offer additional possibilities as to key historical dates. Nor has the
information that during the present millennium the third yuga “overlapped” the
second, a fact difficult to explain in its true meaning, been elaborated upon; nor has
the one that 27 maha–yugas of the era of the current Manu – the seventh in his
series – having elapsed, we are now in the fourth yuga of the 28th maha–yuga,
which no doubt has a symbolic meaning (4 x 7 = 28). Nor has the fact been
mentioned that the current mean lifetime of man is affected by the scale 4 + 3 + 2 +

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1 = 10 , though it may still be noted that it is not so much affected by this scale
itself as by its exact reversion, the Pythagorean Tetraktys, according to the
Hermetic maxim that “as above, so is below, but in a reversed way.” As to the
value of my calculations of the present Manvantara’s duration, as well as to that of
my perception of the advanced stage of it in which we are now, the readers are
invited to draw their own conclusions.

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GLOSSARY

Avatara – Sanskrit word that literally means “he who descends”, though they are
usually called “incarnations”. It is said that in the present Manvantara (see below)
there have been eight main incarnations of Vishnu, headed by the avatara Matsya,
the fish incarnation that saved mankind from the deluge just before that period got
started.

Maha–yuga – A series of four ages or yugas, of gradually decreasing lengths,

whose sequence is repeated time and time again. It parallels the Golden, Silver,
Bronze, and Iron ages of the western tradition and its total length, according to the
orthodox Hinduism, is 4'320,000 common years, though as considered in this book
it can be assimilated both to a human cycle, a Manvantara, and any period of time.
The terms divya –yuga y chatur–yuga are also used.

Jyotisha–shastras – Ancient Hindu astronomical treatises.

Kalpa – A series consisting of one thousand maha–yugas. It comprises a

“Brahma’s day” with its corresponding “night”.

Manu – Literally, “The Father of Mankind”. He is the Archetypical Man and at the
same time “the savior”, leader, and legislator of the new humankind after each
partial devastation of the universe. In the western tradition, Noah is an equivalent
character.

Manvantara – Literally, “a shift of Manu”. For the orthodox Hinduism it is a

septenary cycle of immense duration, but in the sense given in this book it is
equivalent to the maha–yuga as referred to the current mankind, i.e. a quaternary
cycle whose length comprises two precessional periods.

Pralaya – An “emptiness” ensuing after the dissolution of each cosmic

manifestation, when the universes are absorbed by the Supreme Being. Actually it
is not a “period” but an outside- of- time phenomenon.

Puranas – Literally, “antiquities” o “ancient stories”. They are eighteen in number

and according to the orthodox Vishnuism, they narrate the history of the universe.

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The Third Canto of Bhagavata Purana, which is one of them, and whose contents
is considered to be wholly authoritative, assigns durations to all cosmic and
biological conceivable cycles, from an atom’s phase to the total universal
manifestation.

Yuga – Each one of the four (“Satya”, “Treta”, “Dvapara”, and “Kali”) cyclical
ages a maha–yuga consists of. For the orthodox Hinduism, their lengths are
1'728,000, 1'296,000, 864,000 and 432,000 terrestrial years.

Home

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GUENON, RENE: Formas tradicionales y ciclos cósmicos, Obelisco, Barcelona,

1984; Introducción general al estudio de las doctrinas hindúes, Losada, Buenos
Aires, 1945; La crisis del mundo moderno, Mosca Azul, Lima, 1975; Le regne de
la quantité et les signes des temps, Gallimard, París, 1972; Símbolos fundamentales
de la ciencia sagrada, EUDEBA, Buenos Aires, 1969.

HARDY, RALPH et. al.: El libro del clima (Vol. III), Hyspamérica, Buenos Aires,
1982.

NOCK, A. D. and FESTUGIERE, A. J. (editors): Corpus Hermeticum, Les Belles

Letres, París, 4 Vol.

OUSPENSKY, P. D.: Fragmentos de una enseñanza desconocida, Hachette,

Buenos Aires, 1972 (2nd ediction).

THOMPSON, RICHARD L.: Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy, Bhaktivedanta

Book Trust, 1989.

NOTE: The quotes from Bhagavata Purana have mostly been taken from
GOBIND VHABAN-KARYALAYA’s version, translated into English by C. L.
GOSWAMI, M.A., SHASTRI: Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana, Gita Press,
Gorakpur - 273005, India, 6th Edition, 2003. A.C. BHAKTIVEDANTA SWAMI
PRABHUPADA’s version has also been used: Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta
Book Trust, 1979 Edition. For the biblical quotes, the updated versions of King
James editions have been mainly used.

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The Wheel of Time - A Study in the Doctrine of Cosmic Cycles

The Book

The English version in this page has been

translated and edited by me from my book "La
rueda del tiempo" (in English, "The Wheel of
Time"), and will hopefully be published in both
hard cover and paperback very soon.

Some excerpts from the book, both in English

and Spanish, can be found here. A good
amount of contents (only in English) may be
found here.

If you have any questions regarding this page or the book,

feel free to email me at
[email protected]

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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