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normal-horoscopes · 3 years

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REVIEWING OCCULT TEXTS I FIND IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BOOK STORES:

The Alchemy of Nine Dimensions, Decoding The Vertical Axis, Crop Circles, and the Mayan Calendar by Barbara Hand Clow and Gerry Clow

Welcome to 2004. The towers have fallen, Y2K turned out to be kinda boring, and a teenager named Mark Zuckerburg just invented a thing he called Facebook. The dreams of the 90s are making themselves manifest. The future is here! But it is nothing like what we imagined.

The early 2000s are the head of a sea change for occult history. Harsh reality has drawn back the veil of Lady Night and many the new-agers did not like what they found. Mysticism of the new millennium is both more fearful and more sober, more attentive and more ignorant. It is obsessed with news feeds and with chat forums. Faded were the days of malevolent babylonian gods trapped in the quartz of the car radio. Gone were the councils of intergalactic energy beings speaking to midwestern dads on the toilet. The millennial occult was serious. Grounded. It was secretive groups of all-too-human men in suits puppeting the world on strings woven from headlines.

But not for Barbara.

A veritable battering ram of 90s techno-mysticism, Barbara Hand Clow chugs into the 2000’s laden with tales of psychic alien holograms from Space-India, undaunted by the cynicism of the post-9/11 world. In many ways she is the link, the trans-continential railroad between the UFO obsessed 80s and the Ancient Aliens resurgence of the 2010′s.

In The Alchemy of Nine Dimensions, Barbara Hand Clow promises to help us discover multidimensionality in our daily lives. Now, dear readers, I know how much you’ve always wanted to discover multidimensionality in your lives. Its all you ever talk about. But you know what? I like you. You’ve got moxie. So tell you what: Over the course of this review, I will detail each of the nine dimensions described. I will decode the vertical axis, crop circles, and the Mayan Calendar. For you.

A warning: This book gets antisemitic, reader discretion is advised.

Prelude: The Vertical Axis

“In late fall of 1994, a hologram of light appeared in my head, which was familiar to me as a reception of consciousness from unseen dimensions. I call these “thought atoms” or “monads,” and they have initiated my previous books.”

A strong start from Barbara. This was familiar to her. She receives consciousness from unseen dimensions all the time. Its not a big deal. It should be said, this text is actually the sequel to a fairly well-known text called “The Pleiadian Agenda: A New Cosmology for the Age of Light” in which Barbara was contacted by a Psychic Alien Goddess named Satya. The premise of this text is that Satya is back again, and this time the bars will be hotter, the beats will be doper, and the supremacy even whiter. You can mark off “Magic White People From Space” on your bingo cards.

So what is the Vertical Axis? Well, according to Barbara: “The way it works is simple. “While we are alive, we exist in linear space and time -3D- which is a plane; 2D is shown as an isosceles triangle with one side as the 3d plane, and the bottom point is 1D-the iron core crystal in the center of the earth.”

Now, even from an occult perspective, none of that makes sense. The way that Barbara talks about “dimensions“ doesn't mean dimensions in the sense that normal people understand them. To Barbara, a “dimension” is a thing of perception, a lens through which we see the world. When Barbara says “we exist in 3D” that basically means “We are able to perceive the physical concepts of height, width, and depth.” If you are confused, please study this diagram.

Her cosmology is a bizarre mix of 14th century Christian alchemy and vague Taoism. She references concepts like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's “Archytypical Realm” alongside ideas of “denser” lower dimensions existing on a ladder to up to “lighter” dimensions. In her cosmology, humans are fundamentally dense and sinful, the psychic trash of the world converges on the earth due to its heavy and dense iron core, causing us incredible psychic trauma that blocks us from higher dimensions of perception. However, through meditation and psychic healing, we too can ascend up the Vertical Axis.

Dimension 1: Gerry, and the Iron Core.

“I began teaching with Barbara in Crete in 1996. I was one of nine men in a group of forty women; we men were celebrated by the women for our bravery, and the women deeply enjoying being feminine in this goddess-rich landscape. I love Crete”

Meet Barbara’s husband. This is presumably the man in the previous diagram.

This chapter begins with a short meditation on feeling ones physicality with specific attention brought to the feet. This book has an audio version. I am sure this section would be entertaining.

Naturally, we shift into a discussion of the earths iron core. It is a fairly realistic description of how the earth is structured, with said dense core of iron. However, Barbara talks about it as if it is an extremely sacred megastructure accessible by humans through prayer, and not an impossibly dense ball of plasmic metal. The structure of this chapter is actually quite smart. Barbara gives us a prayer we can perform ourselves, then frontloads us with actual scientific information to make her claims seem credible by association. In reality all she does is list some facts about the earth’s core, then lists some new-age bullshit as if it follows logically.

“Also, according to Satya, because we have iron in our blood, we are wired to vibrate with Gaia in our blood. The blood coursing through our veins pulses with the iron core crystal because it has crystalline iron components.”

I am unsure if Barbara knows that Iron cannot form crystals at 5200 degrees C. In fact, the pressure at the earths core is so great that the iron is considered to be a plasma behaving as a solid. I am sure Gaia doesn’t mind though.

Also in this section she describes how the Pleiadians have access to additional spiritual powers because their planet doesn't have an iron core. You can mark off “Secret Chakras Only White People Have” on your bingo cards.

Dimension 2: The Telluric World and Barely Disguised Antisemitism

We begin with another meditation, this time focusing on attempting to sense other creatures with your psychic mind. Sure. Whatever.

The second dimension appears to be what we consider the physical world. The thing made of rocks and trees and birds, which Barbara calls the “Telluric World.” The term “Telluric” comes from a real-world scientific phenomenon of Telluric Current, the natural electrical current that passes through the earths crust. This section is interesting, but also where we run into some barely veiled antisemitism.

“The Pleiadians also warn that the power group that works to control the world of politics and finances -The Global Elite- is trying to harness 2D so it can control the world. A crisis looms for Earth’s inhabitants because the telluric realm will erupt in response to humans using and abiding its sacred powers. It always does.”

For those that don’t know, “Wealthy Elite '' and especially “Global Elite” are both dogwhistles for Jewish people, and harkens back to centuries old conspiracy theories about Jewish people attempting to control the world through financial means. This quote also mirrors some conspiracy theories from the 14th century in which Christians claimed that the Black Plague was the result of god punishing Christendom for allowing Judaism to exist. I cannot say for sure if Barbara is intentionally referencing this, but regardless the result is still the repetition of a narrative with an incredible amount of blood on its hands.

“Humanity has been taught to fear and be alienated from 2D by the Roman Catholic Church, a union of politics and religion - Caesar and the Church. Around 500 A.D. The Church was run by a cabal of ambitious alchemists and geomancers, who wanted to turn the people into dreaming sheep. The controllers of Judeo-Christian systems have been using alchemy and geomancy for thousands of years while they've murdered those who dared to use these powers for themselves, such as the Cathars and the Templar Knights.”

In texts like this, the term “Judeo-Christian” is a massive red flag. The anti-catholic as well as antisemitic sentiment is a uniquely american protestant bent on “We are the one true church and all those who came before us, especially Jewish people, have been punished by god for their heretical magic.” Barbara even extends this idea to things like modern science, stating that many cell phone users are getting cancer because the technology for cell phones is the result of semi-sentient higher-dimensional magic punishing humans for misusing it for profit.

As silly as this all might sound, it is a vessel for ancient hatred. These books are extremely effective at taking reasonable concerns about political corruption and transforming them into full-fledged spiritualized bigotry without the reader ever realizing. I hope I can help my readers recognize these narratives in the wild.

Dimension 3: Linear Spacetime

You know how some people talk about “The Lizard Brain?” Barbra takes this incredibly literally. The meditation at the head of this chapter is organized around ideas about accessing older versions of the self. There are vague references to a Cherokee grandfather and reincarnation. Barbara instructs us in how to construct an altar to access our “Centers” which refers to some ancient and primordial form of the self. What this means or why it is important to Barbara is illuminated by this quote:

“Various people and forces draw to manipulate you, to take your power away, or harm you cannot affect you while you are in your center. For example, Homeland Security cannot reach into your heart, even if it impressions our culture. If you are in prison reading this, create altars in your jail cell to access freedom.”

There are also references to the Pleiadians saying things like “These skills will be needed in the coming days.” The evangelical influences in preparing for an apocalypse are clear. The tone of the text becomes notably more colored by fear and panic as it progresses. What seemed like it began as a simple meditation guide is slowly becoming more consumed by ideas about some vague and rapidly approaching danger. There is always profit in selling preparation for the apocalypse, especially in America, and it seems that Barbara is no exception. The directness of the quote is also notable. She posits the Illuminati as a personal danger to the reader. They are here to manipulate you personally, to personally take your specific powers away.

This is insidious from a marketing perspective. On one hand, Barbara offers transcendence, a spiritual escape from the doldrums of living a normal middle class life. But on the other hand, any spiritual progress can can be taken away at any moment by a vague and all-encompassing threat. It places a time constraint on the reader. They must reach the ninth dimension before the Illuminati seals their bonus-chakras forever.

Dimension 4: The World of Myths and Archetypes.

This text is already turning out to be much denser than initially expected, and Barbra just opened one of the largest cans of worms millennial occultism has to offer and mentioned the Annunaki and Nibiru in the same sentence. I will be back, dear readers, this is a topic that will require a post all its own.

#Book Reviews #tw antisemitism #conspiracy

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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Some additional points about that grave find in Finland that you may or may not find interesting. And that may or may not be dated, because I studied history 20 years ago. That said, I'm not sure if 1000 years ago is firmly middle-ages in this context? At least back in my uni days, they told us that here middle ages got going slowly during 1100's and 1200's when Sweden started converting the population to Christianity and the prehistorical era gradually ended. Maybe they teach differently now.

More about the grave. I don't know why The Guardian would talk about Vikings in this context at all, because the erstwhile population of current day Finland is not considered to have been Vikings, afaik. They were similarly warlike, and the graves from that era have a lot of weapons, and they certainly encountered Vikings, but they never participated in the raiding, and isn't that what makes Vikings Vikings? Their language and religion was also different. But anyway. I don't mean to correct you because the larger point stands. When I saw the headline in a Finnish news paper about that grave and traditional gender roles my first thought was, well, maybe the gender roles hadn't become traditional then yet. Just some additional context, which could be illuminating or could be totally dated.

I did the stupid thing and sent you asks about the Suontaka burial before reading the Cambridge article about it: I'm reading it now, and my comments seem fairly useless. Feel free to ignore with extreme prejudice. We're in agreement on the guardian article.

Aha, well, we all make mistakes from time to time, so no worries! However, since you do touch on a few points that I would like to discuss, I'm going to go ahead and answer, whether for you or anyone else who might find it useful. (It's the teacher in me, I'm afraid.)

First, I have to say that I had a definite "eeegh" moment at the idea that the eleventh/twelfth century isn't "medieval" in Finland just because it (at least prior to the Baltic/Northern crusades, if we're considering them to begin with the Wendish Crusade in 1147) wasn't yet fully Christianized. Scholars pretty universally accept "medieval history" as referring to the time period between 500--1500 CE (the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance). These, of course, are horribly Eurocentric frames of reference, but there you have it. Any event or culture taking place within that span of dates, no matter where in the world it is or what its socio-political circumstances may be, is medieval. We have to call out the pernicious equivalence of "medieval" with "Western Christian European," since that seems to be the underlying assumption. This is also what makes people mistakenly think that the medieval world (which, y'know, was just as big as it is now) is exclusively about white Christian Europe, and that no other global regions have a medieval history. Either way, the eleventh/twelfth century is actually closer to the end of the medieval era than it is to the start. I'm certainly not suggesting that you were consciously implying this; I have no trouble believing that that is indeed how they taught it twenty years ago. But yeah, the idea that still-largely-pagan eleventh-century Finland couldn't be "medieval" until it's Christian is definitely not the case as understood now.

The idea that anywhere in eleventh-century Europe is still "prehistorical" in any sense of the word is likewise a little baffling, tbh. Once more, it associates "history" only with "Christianity," and that would get quite a bit of pushback if included in a paper on medieval studies today. That is what also annoys me deeply when I see people describing the pre-Columbian Americas as "prehistoric" (read: pre-white-people-historic). If the chief marker of "history" is "written history," sure, there is a very narrow pedagogical argument to be made that these societies don't have narratives or chronicles in the standard historiographical sense. But also, uh, European colonialism and conquest destroyed vast swathes of records that we have never been able to read, understand, or even access, because they're just not there anymore. There is ample evidence that the ancient (and I do mean ANCIENT, up to thousands of years BCE) and early-to-late-medieval Mesoamerican societies had complex systems of writing, astronomy, calendar-keeping, and other history-recording practices, right up until 1492. There are something like four (FOUR) pre-Columbian Mayan scrolls still in existence, out of probably thousands and thousands, because the Spanish destroyed the rest. So "prehistoric," unless you're literally referring to the Stone Age, is never a politically neutral word or a word to use uncritically...

...and speaking of the Stone Age, we actually have histories for that too! Or rather (iirc) the Ice Age, because for example, Aboriginal Australians transmit their history orally and require each new generation to memorize it, word for word, exactly as taught to them. Some of these histories stretch back over ten thousand years, which means that we actually have first-person accounts of life during the end of the Ice Age, and scientists recently discovered that these traditional narratives accurately reflected the archaeological and geological record of Australia during the time period in question. (Indigenous people know what they're talking about and should be listened to, example number 85,000.) Of course, the Western-white-supremacist model of historiography calls these just "legends" or "myths" or "folktales" rather than history, because I guess not writing it down in a chronicle as a monk in a European Christian monastery in the year 1015 or whatever doesn't qualify as history for some people. (I don't have strong opinions about this or anything. Welp.)

I likewise don't know why the Guardian article brought up the Vikings, aside from the fact that they were quoting someone who explicitly used the Vikings in a hypothetical scenario about "traditional gender roles." This person expressed surprise that an intersex person living in a medieval Scandinavian society could rise to a high social role, by citing the widespread belief that "Vikings" were all dedicated to being very manly at all times and nobody with feminine qualities/feminine-coded social power could rule over them. I don't know if this was just a bad phrasing (plus, it obviously overlooks the often-egalitarian nature of medieval Scandinavian societies and plays into the favored white supremacist stereotype of the Vikings as some Master Aryan Race Where Men Were Men, etc) or what, but yeah, it's wrong across the board. Viking is the name of an occupation, not an ethnicity. It comes from the word wicing, meaning "seafarer" or "sea raider," and referred only to those guys who went out on their longships and stole a lot of stuff from their neighbors, most notably in the eighth to eleventh centuries. Their families back at home were part of the exact same society and benefited from those raids, but strictly speaking, they weren't vikings. We use the word "Viking" to describe any member of a medieval Scandinavian society, but it's similar to describing everyone living in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, no matter who they were or their social status or ethnic background, as "pirates," which is obviously inaccurate.

As you correctly point out, the Finns aren't considered quite the same as the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes (as anyone can tell from looking at their written language; N/D/S are mutually intelligible and derive from the same linguistic family, while Finnish is COMPLETELY different and comes from an altogether separate branch of the tree) and therefore it's even more baffling that the person quoted in the Guardian article would cite them as an example of a "Viking" society. Likewise as you note, the whole phrase "traditional gender roles" is intensely problematic in most contexts, and especially here. It assumes that modern Western ideals of sex and gender have been static and unchanging throughout history, and that means that we tend to read our own (biased) assumptions onto the historical record and then get surprised when, shock of shock, they don't fit. The burial at Suontaka seems to have been of a biologically intersex person (i.e. someone with Klinefelter syndrome), but this is also the case when it comes to people assigned the usual male or female at birth, without any complicating genetic conditions. I'm working on a book review for an entire edited volume that discusses the intense gender-fluidity and proto-transgenderism in some medieval saints' lives, and how obviously the fact that they have been held up as a holy example, while explicitly subverting the so-called Traditional Gender Roles of the Middle Ages, means that it was (and is) a lot more complicated than shallow stereotypes and Bad Medievalism would have it.

Anyway, this is long enough (especially considering that you graciously offered me the chance to ignore it) so I think we'll stop here for now. But yes, there you have it. :)

#history #ancient history #medieval history #queer history #anonymous #ask

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hyperbanal · 3 years

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INTERVIEWER : You see hope for the human race, but at the same time you arc alarmed as the instruments of control become more sophisticated.

BURROUGHS : Well, whereas they become more sophisticated they also become more vulnerable. Time-Life-Fortune applies a more complex, effective control system than the Mayan calendar, but it also is much more vulnerable because it is so vast and mechanized. Not even Henry Luce understands what's going on in the system now. Well, a machine can be redirected. One technical sergeant can fuck up the whole works. Nobody can control the whole operation. It's too complex. The captain comes in and says, "All right, boys, we're moving up.'' Now, who knows what buttons to push? Who knows how to get the cases of Spam up to where they're going, and how to fill out the forms? The sergeant does. The captain doesn't know. As long as there're sergeants around, the machine can be dismantled, and we may get out of all this alive yet.

—William S. Burroughs, Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, Third Series (1967)

#william s burroughs #william burroughs #The Paris Review Interviews

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ghostcultmagazine · 3 years

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GIVEAWAY TIME! Win Ticket's to @Puscifer's livestream this weekend, 4/17/2021! Drop a comment with your favorite song by the band to enter! Tag a friend and share on your profile for more entries. Puscifer, led by Maynard James Keenan of Tool and A Perfect Circle, has announced their next livestream event, following their incredible “Existential Reckoning” Live At the Arcosanti” (review here) stream. “Billy D and The Hall of Feathered Serpents featuring Money $hot by Puscifer” debuts on Keenan’s April 17 birthday, and reprises the Luchador-infused performances surrounding the band’s 2016 album, Money $hot (which will be played in its entirety). The production is once again presented as a collaboration with Danny Wimmer Presents (Sonic Temple, Louder Than Life, Aftershock Sacramento, Welcome To Rockville) will take place at The Mayan Theater, Los Angeles’ historic 1920s era revivalist theater featuring original artwork by Mexican painter and sculptor Francisco Cornejo, serves as the backdrop to the one-time outing. The elaborate cultural landmark, with its jaw-dropping Mayan calendar infused chandelier and a lobby dedicated to the bird-meets-reptilian deity Quetzalcoatl, gave birth to the performance’s title. Giveaway rules at our site. — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/3te7lyu

#Instagram #IFTTT

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cjwinnay · 2 years

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Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: VTG Mayan Calendar Carved Stone Beaded Large Medallion Pendant Necklace Agate.

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bookloveravenue · 4 years

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A Storm Runner novel (book 3): The Shadow Crosser by J.C. Cervantes

Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents J.C. Cervantes' epic finale to the Storm Runner trilogy, a tale of mystery, magic, and mayhem featuring gods from both Maya and Aztec mythology.

Zane Obispo has been looking forward to his training at the Shaman Institute for Higher Order Magic, and not only because it means he'll be reunited with his best friend, Brooks. Anything would be better than how he has spent the last three months: searching for the remaining godborns with a nasty demon who can sniff them out (literally). But when Zane tracks down the last kid on his list, he's in for a surprise: the ""one"" is actually a pair of twins, and they're trying to prevent a mysterious object from falling into the wrong hands.

After a shocking betrayal, Zane finds himself at SHIHOM sooner than expected. Even more shocking is the news that the Maya gods have gone missing. The bat god, Camazotz, and Ixkik' (aka Blood Moon) have taken them out of commission . . . and the godborns are their next target. The only thing the villains need now? The object that the twins possess.

Zane knows the godborns aren't strong enough yet to stand up to Zotz, Ixkik', and their army. There might be a way to save the gods, but it involves locating a magical calendar that can see across time and space . . . not to mention traveling more than thirty years into the past.

In The Shadow Crosser, Zane and his friends embark on their most treacherous mission yet--a mission that, with one blunder, could change history as we know it, and worse, destroy the universe.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49293602-the-shadow-crosser

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September 7, 2020

My Review: 5/5 Stars

A fantastic conclusion to this trilogy! I loved this series since I picked up book one and the third book did not disappoint. Zane and his friends are back and now it is time to defeat Camazotz and Ixkik once and for all. His mission to gather the godborns is just about complete. Though tracking down the last one, which turns out to be twins, is tricky, he makes it out of there in one piece. But their plans are quickly derailed when after the godborns are claimed by parents, the gods are taken! As Zane and his friends find a solution to try and find the missing gods they find out there are a lot more twists and turns they could ever imagine. And the biggest twist of all is where the gods are exactly. Nothing is ever easy for Zane. And this is his biggest and most dangerous mission yet. Like I said earlier, I loved this book. I couldn't put it down. There were a lot of plot twists that kept me on my toes. And the ending was great too. Especially that it left it with the possibility of more books from this world. Which I learned it looks like we are getting two more books, but from Ren's point of view as she tackles an issue that was brought up at the end of this book. So excited! I loved reading these stories and learning more about the Mayan gods. Definitely a neat branch of mythology. Can't wait to read more from this author!

#book #books #i love books #my review #book review #storm runner #the shadow crosser #jc cervantes

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normal-horoscopes · 3 years

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In response to my most recent occult book review:

Honesty, these texts go pretty quick when you know the lore and the vocab. If y'all enjoy them, I'll keep doing em. Actually, here lemme hold a poll, do any of these sound interesting?

The Alchemy of Nine Dimensions, Decoding the Vertical Axis, Crop Circles, and the Mayan Calendar by Barbara Clow, a sequel to The Pleiadian Agenda. More wacky Techno-Theosophy. If the last book was a 6 this is a 9.

The Complete Illustrated Book of the Psychic Sciences by Walter B. Gibson. Largely just a well-organized encyclopedia that might have some interesting divination methods.

Pyramid Power by Pat Flanagan. A guy attempting to explain how the Egyptian pyramids are actually psychic energy dynamos.

The English Kabbalah Vol 1. Mysteries of Pi by William Eisen. Written by another guy at the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Lab, this dude tries to apply Kabbalistic math to the English alphabet using the major arcana as a sort of enochian key, which is a stretch even for 1970s occultist standards. This is the thickest book by far and even the basic math doesn't check out.

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charlottefree · 6 years

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The Yuga Cycle doctrine tells us that we are now living in the Kali Yuga; the age of darkness, when moral virtue and mental capabilities reach their lowest point in the cycle. The Indian epic The Mahabharata describes the Kali Yuga as the period when the “World Soul” is Black in hue; only one quarter of virtue remains, which slowly dwindles to zero at the end of the Kali Yuga. Men turn to wickedness; disease, lethargy, anger, natural calamities, anguish and fear of scarcity dominate. Penance, sacrifices and religious observances fall into disuse. All creatures degenerate. Change passes over all things, without exception.The Kali Yuga (Iron Age) was preceded by three others Yugas: Satya or Krita Yuga (Golden Age), Treta Yuga (Silver Age) and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age). In theMahabharata, Hanuman gives the following description of the Yuga Cycle to the Pandava prince Bhima:

Part 1: Unraveling the Yuga Cycle Timeline

"The Krita Yuga was so named because there was but one religion, and all men were saintly: therefore they were not required to perform religious ceremonies… Men neither bought nor sold; there were no poor and no rich; there was no need to labour, because all that men required was obtained by the power of will…The Krita Yuga was without disease; there was no lessening with the years; there was no hatred, or vanity, or evil thought whatsoever; no sorrow, no fear. All mankind could attain to supreme blessedness. The universal soul was White… the identification of self with the universal soul was the whole religion of the Perfect Age. In the Treta Yuga sacrifices began, and the World Soul became Red; virtue lessened a quarter. Mankind sought truth and performed religious ceremonies; they obtained what they desired by giving and by doing. In the Dwapara Yuga the aspect of the World Soul was Yellow: religion lessened one-half. The Veda was divided into four parts, and although some had knowledge of the four Vedas, others knew but three or one. Mind lessened, Truth declined, and there came desire and diseases and calamities; because of these men had to undergo penances. It was a decadent Age by reason of the prevalence of sin.”[1]

And now we are living in the dark times of the Kali Yuga, when goodness and virtue has all but disappeared from the world. But when did the Kali Yuga begin? And when does it end? In spite of the elaborate theological framework which describes the characteristics of this age, the start and end dates of the Kali Yuga remain shrouded in mystery. The popularly accepted date for the beginning of the Kali Yuga is 3102 BC, thirty-five years after the conclusion of the great battle of the Mahabharata. This is remarkably close to the proposed beginning of the current “Great Cycle” of the Mayan Long Count Calendar in 3114 BC. It is of interest to note that in both of these cases the beginning dates of the respective cycles were calculated retrospectively. The Mayans had recomputed their ancient calendars sometime between 400 BC to 50 CE, at the ceremonial center of Izapa in Mexico, and fixed the starting date of the current Great Cycle of their Long Count Calendar. And in India, sometime around 500 CE, a major review of the Indian calendric systems had taken place. It was during this time that the renowned astronomer Aryabhatta had identified the beginning date of the Kali Yuga as 3102 BC. Why was it suddenly necessary for two ancient civilizations to re-calculate dates that should have been an integral part of their calendric systems?How did such important time-markers slip out of their collective memory? We will revisit these questions later.

It is generally believed that Aryabhatta had calculated the start date of the Kali Yuga on the basis of the information in the Sanskrit astronomical treatise, the Surya Siddhanta, according to which the five “geocentric planets” (i.e. the planets visible to the naked eye) – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – were aligned to 0° of Aries (near the star zeta Piscium) at the beginning of the Kali Yuga. He, thus, arrived at the date of 17/18 February, 3102 BC as the starting point of the Kali Yuga. However, modern simulations carried out by Richard Thompson show that on 17/18 February, 3102 BC, the five geocentric planets occupied an arc of roughly 42° in the sky and were scattered over three zodiacal signs – Aries, Pisces and Aquarius. This cannot be considered as a conjunction by any means. Far more spectacular ‘alignment’ of planets has occurred in the preceding and succeeding centuries. In other words, the conjunction of geocentric planets at 0° of Aries that was supposedly targeted by Aryabhatta did not take place in 3102 BC.

Does this mean Aryabhatta made an error in his back calculations? Not really. For, the Surya Siddhanta does not ever specify that such an alignment of planets took place at the beginning of the Kali Yuga. On the contrary, the Surya Siddhanta explicitly states that this conjunction of planets at 0° of Aries takes place at the end of the Golden Age(Satya / Krita Yuga). The text states: “Now, at the end of the Golden Age (Krita Yuga), all the planets, by their mean motion – excepting however their nodes and apsides – are in conjunction in the first of Aries”[2] Unfortunately, however, this simple statement was misrepresented by some of the early commentators, in their eagerness to find an astronomical rationale for the 3102 BC date, and it has subsequently been promulgated as a fact.

The general understanding in ancient Hindu astronomy was that at the beginning of the present order of things, all the planets commenced their movement together at 0° of Aries; and all the planets return to the same position in the heavens, at certain fixed intervals, resulting in a universal conjunction. The Surya Siddhanta states that this conjunction takes place at the end of the Golden Age. However, there is also a prevailing belief in Hindu astronomy that this conjunction takes place at the beginning of a Day and Night of Brahma, comprising of a 1000 Yuga Cycles.

Similar information regarding the conjunction of planets is also present in the ancient Greek texts. In the Timaeus, Plato refers to a “Perfect Year” which elapses at that moment when the sun, moon and the planets all return to the same relative position despite all their intervening reversals.[3] This idea was echoed by the 3rd century Roman writer Censorinus, who said that the orbits of the sun, moon and the five wandering planets complete one “Great Year of Heraclitus”, when they are brought back together at the same time to the same sign where once they were.[4] This “Great Year” which is known by various other names – “Perfect Year”, “Platonic Year”, “Supreme Year of Aristotle” etc. – was variously represented as being of 12,954 years (Cicero) or 10,800 years (Heraclitus) duration.

There can be no doubt that the 3102 BC date for the Kali Yuga was not based on any information in the Surya Siddhanta or any other Sanskrit text. The date virtually pops out of nowhere. Before 500 CE, this date was not mentioned in any Sanskrit text. From where, then, did Aryabhatta obtain this date? There seems to be no indication that Aryabhatta had computed this date himself. There is a single, stray reference to this date in the Sanskrit text Aryabhatiya, where Aryabhatta mentions that the text was composed 3,600 years into the Kali Yuga, when he was 23 years old. Since the Aryabhatiya was composed in 499 CE, the beginning of the Kali Yuga can be traced back to 3102 BC. The statement, by itself, does not reveal any information about the astronomical basis on which the date was calculated, or whether the calculation was performed by Aryabhatta himself. It is possible that this date was adopted by Aryabhatta from some other source. The vagueness surrounding the origin of this date makes its validity highly suspect.

The task of figuring out this date from the ancient Sanskrit texts, however, is fraught with difficulties, since a number of inaccuracies have crept into the Yuga Cycle information contained within them. As pointed out by Sri Yukteswar, in many Sanskrit texts the 12,000 year duration of the Yuga Cycle was artificially inflated to an abnormally high value of 4,320,000 years by introducing a multiplication factor of “360”, which was represented as the number of “human years” which constitutes a “divine year”. However, certain texts, such as the Mahabharata and the Laws of Manu, still retain the original value of the Yuga Cycle as 12,000 years. Many other ancient cultures – the Chaldeans, Zoroastrians and Greeks – also believed in a 12,000 year Cycle of the Ages. The renowned Sanskrit scholar and nationalist leader of India, B.G.Tilak had mentioned in his book, The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903), that:

“The writers of the Puranas, many of which appear to have been written during the first few centuries of the Christian, era, were naturally unwilling to believe that the Kali Yuga had passed away…An attempt was, therefore, made to extend the duration of the Kali Yuga by converting 1000 (or 1200) ordinary human years thereof into as many divine years, a single divine year, or a year of the gods, being equal to 360 human years…this solution of the difficulty was universally adopted, and a Kali of 1200 ordinary years was at once changed, by this ingenious artifice, into a magnificent cycle of as many divine, or 360 × 1200 = 432,000 ordinary years.”[5]

Yukteswar also clarified in the book The Holy Science (1894), that a complete Yuga Cycle takes 24,000 years, and is comprised of an ascending cycle of 12,000 years when virtue gradually increases and a descending cycle of another 12,000 years, in which virtue gradually decreases. Hence, after we complete a 12,000 year descending cycle from Satya Yuga -> Kali Yuga, the sequence reverses itself, and an ascending cycle of 12,000 years begins which goes from Kali Yuga -> Satya Yuga. Yukteswar states that, “Each of these periods of 12,000 years brings a complete change, both externally in the material world, and internally in the intellectual or electric world, and is called one of the Daiva Yugas or Electric Couple.”[6] The 24,000 year duration of the complete Yuga Cycle closely approximates the Precessional Year of 25,765 years, which is the time taken by the sun to “precess” i.e. move backwards, through the 12 zodiac constellations. Interestingly, the Surya Siddhanta specifies a value of 54 arc seconds per year for precession, as against the current value of 50.29 arc seconds per year. This translates into a Precessional Year of exactly 24,000 years! This raises the possibility that the current observed value of precession may simply be a temporary deviation from the mean.

The concept of an ascending and descending cycle of Yugas is not a proposition that Yukteswar conjured out of thin air. This idea is still prevalent among the Jains of India, who are one of the oldest religious sects of the country. The Jains believe that a complete Time Cycle (Kalachakra) has a progressive and a regressive half. During the progressive half of the cycle (Utsarpini), there is a gradual increase in knowledge, happiness, health, ethics, and spirituality, while during the regressive half of the cycle (Avasarpini) there is a gradual reduction in these qualities. Each half cycle is comprised of six smaller periods, and together these two half cycles constitute a complete Time Cycle. These two half cycles follow each other in an unbroken succession for eternity, just like the cycles of day and night or the waxing and waning of the moon. It is possible that Yukteswar may have been influenced by the belief system of the ancient Jains; or he may have based his ideas on ancient oral traditions that are not a part of the mainstream documented knowledge.

The idea of an ascending and descending Cycle of Ages was also prevalent in Greek myths. The Greek poet Hesiod (c. 750 BC – 650 BC) had given an account of the World Ages in the Works and Days, in which he had inserted a fifth age called the “Age of Heroes”, between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. In Hesiod’s Cosmos, Jenny Strauss Clay writes:

“Drawing on the myth in Plato’s Statesman, Vernant also claimed that the temporal framework of Hesiodic myth, that is, the succession of races, is not linear but cyclical; at the end of the age of iron, which he divides into two, the cycle of races starts again with a new golden age or, more likely, a new age of heroes, as the sequence reverses itself…Vernant himself offers a solution when he remarks that ‘there is not in reality one age of iron but two types of human existence.’ ”[7]

This is highly interesting. Jean-Pierre Vernant, who is a highly acclaimed specialist in ancient Greek culture, clearly believes that the Cycle of the Ages reverses itself as per Hesiod’s account. Not only that, he states that the Iron Age has two parts, which corresponds exactly to Yukteswar’s interpretation in which the descending Kali Yuga is followed by the ascending Kali Yuga. We can surmise, in this context, that the “Age of Heroes”, which immediately followed the Bronze Age in Hesiod’s account, must be the name ascribed by Hesiod to the descending Kali Yuga.

The evidence from different sources supports the notion of a complete Yuga Cycle of 24,000 years, comprised of an ascending and descending cycle of 12,000 years each. This brings us to the question of the relative durations of the different Yugas in the Yuga Cycle, and the transitional periods, which occur at the beginning and end of each Yuga, and are known as Sandhya (dawn) and Sandhyansa (twilight) respectively. The following values are provided in the Sanskrit texts for the duration of the Yugas and their respective dawns and twilights.

Satya Yuga (Golden Age): 4000 years + 400 years dawn + 400 years twilight =4800 years

Treta Yuga (Silver Age): 3000 years + 300 years dawn + 300 years twilight =3600 years

Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age): 2000 years + 200 years dawn + 200 years twilight = 2400 years

Kali Yuga (Iron Age): 1000 years + 100 years dawn + 100 years twilight = 1200 years

Since so many inaccuracies have crept into the Yuga Cycle doctrine, as pointed out by Yukteswar and Tilak, we also need to question the accuracy of the relative durations of the Yugas mentioned in the Sanskrit texts. Although the Yuga Cycle is mentioned in the mythic accounts of around thirty ancient cultures, as described by Giorgio de Santillana, professor of the history of science at MIT, in the book Hamlet’s Mill (1969), we find very little information regarding the relative durations of the different ages within this cycle. This is quite surprising. Nearly all the accounts tell us that virtue and righteousness decreases as we move from the Golden Age to the subsequent ages. Some of them specifically mention that virtue decreases by a quarter in every age. However, there appears to be scant mention of the durations of the ages themselves.If the duration of each Yuga decreased from one Yuga to the next, shouldn’t this important point also have been mentioned in these accounts?

In the few accounts where the durations of the Yuga are specified, we find that each age in the Yuga Cycle is of the same duration. For instance, the Zoroastrians believe that the world lasts for 12,000 years, which is divided into four equal ages of 3,000 years each. A Mexican source known as the Codex Rios (also referred to as Codex 3738 and Codex Vaticanus A) states that each age lasts for 4008, 4010, 4801 and 5042 years respectively for a total of 17,861 years. We can see that in this case also the duration of each age is nearly the same.

Therefore, the durations of the four Yugas mentioned in the Sanskrit texts (i.e. 4800, 3600, 2400, and 1200 years) deviate from the norm. The duration of each Yuga, in this sequence, decreases by 1200 years from the previous one. This is an arithmetic progression which is rarely, if ever, found in natural cycles. This seemingly unnatural sequence raises the question whether the Yuga durations were deliberately altered at some point in the past, in order to give the impression that the duration of each Yuga decreases in tandem with the decrease in virtue from one Yuga to the next. It is important to note that the ratio’s of the durations of the four Yugas in this sequence is 4:3:2:1. This gives the superficial impression that the duration of each Yuga is reducing by a quarter from one to the next. But that is actually not the case. They are decreasing by a fixed number of years i.e. 1200 years.

Here is the most startling fact: Two of the most famous astronomers of ancient India, Aryabhatta and Paulisa, both believed that the Yuga Cycle is comprised of Yugas of equal duration! In the 11th century, the medieval scholar Al-Beruni had travelled across India for 13 years, questioning and conversing with learned men, reading the Sanskrit texts, observing the religious rites and customs, and had compiled a comprehensive commentary on Indian philosophy, sciences and culture. In Alberuni’s India, Al-Beruni mentions that the Yuga Cycle doctrine was based on the derivations of the Indian astronomer Brahmagupta, who in turn derived his knowledge from the Sanskrit Smriti texts. He makes an interesting statement in this regard:

“Further, Brahmagupta says that “Aryabhatta considers the four yugas as the four equal parts of the caturyuga (Yuga Cycle). Thus he differs from the doctrine of the book Smriti, just mentioned, and he who differs from us is an opponent”.[8]

The fact that Aryabhatta believed the four yugas to be of equal duration is extremely pertinent! Al-Beruni reasserts this in no uncertain terms: “Therefore, according to Aryabhatta, the Kali Yuga has 3000 divya years….each two yugas has 6000 divya years…each three years has 9000 divya years.” Why would Aryabhatta subscribe to such a belief? Did he have access to sources of information that are lost to us now?

Surprisingly, it was not only Aryabhatta, who held this point of view. Another celebrated astronomer of ancient India was Paulisa, who had apparently earned Brahmagupta’s favor by supporting the 4:3:2:1 ratio for the duration of the yugas. According to Al-Beruni, however, “it is possible that Paulisa simply mentions this method as one among others, and that it is not that one in particular which he himself adopted.”[9] This is evident from Paulisa’s belief regarding the caturyuga, as documented by Al-Beruni: “Of the current caturyuga (Yuga Cycle), there have elapsed three yugas i.e. according to him 3,240,000 years i.e. 9000 divya-years. The latter number represents three-fourths of the years of a caturyuga.”[10] This indicates that Paulisa believed that each Yuga was of 3000 divine years’ duration. He uses the same method while presenting his calculations for the duration of a kalpa where “he (Pulisa) has not changed the caturyugas into exact yugas, but simply changed them into fourth parts, and multiplied these fourth parts by the number of years of a single fourth part.”[11]

This clearly indicates that two of the most respected astronomers of ancient India, Aryabhatta and Paulisa, believed in a Yuga Cycle that comprised of 4 Yugas of equal duration of 3,000 divine-years each. However, their opinion was overshadowed by the contradictory view held by Brahmagupta. He railed against Aryabhatta and the other astronomers who held differing opinions, and even abused them. Al-Beruni says about Brahmagupta:

“He is rude enough to compare Aryabhatta to a worm which, eating the wood, by chance describes certain characters in it without understanding them and without intending to draw them. “He, however, who knows these things thoroughly, stands opposed to Aryabhatta, Srishena, and Vishnucandra like the lion against gazelles. They are not capable of letting him see their faces. ” In such offensive terms he attacks Aryabhatta and maltreats him.”[12]

We can now understand why Brahmagupta’s opinion finally prevailed over that of the other astronomers of his time, and it certainly did not have anything to do with the inherent soundness of his logic, or the authenticity of his sources.

It is time for us to stop standing in opposition to Aryabhatta, Paulisa, Srishena, Vishnucandra and others like the “lion against gazelles”, and instead take cognizance of the very real possibility that the Yugas in the Yuga Cycle are of equal duration, and the 4:3:2:1 sequence of the Yugas may have been a mathematical manipulation that crept into the Yuga Cycle doctrine sometime prior to 500 CE. It is possible that this manipulation was introduced because people were inclined to believe that the duration of a Yuga should decrease in tandem with the decrease in virtue and human longetivity from one Yuga to the next. A neat formula was devised in which the total duration of the Yugas added up to 12,000 years. However, there was one problem. If the Kali Yuga is of 1,200 years duration, then it should have been completed many times over, since its proposed beginning in 3102 BC. In order to circumvent this potentially embarrassing situation, another complexity was introduced. Each “year” of the Yuga Cycle became a “divine year” comprised of 360 human years. The Yuga Cycle became inflated to 4,320,000 years (12,000*360) and the Kali Yuga became equal to 432,000 years (1,200*360). Humanity became consigned to an interminable duration of darkness.

The original Yuga Cycle doctrine appears to have been very simple: A Yuga Cycle duration of 12,000 years, with each Yuga lasting for 3,000 years. This cycle is encoded in the “Saptarsi Calendar” which has been used in India for thousands of years. It was used extensively during the Maurya period in the 4th century BC, and is still in use in some parts of India. The term “Saptarsi” refers to the “Seven Rishis” or the “Seven Sages” representing the seven stars of the Great Bear constellation (Ursa Major). They are regarded as the enlightened rishis who appear at the beginning of every Yuga to spread the laws of civilization. The Saptarsi Calendar used in India had a cycle of 2,700 years; it is said that the Great Bear constellation stays for 100 years in each of the 27 “Nakshatras” (lunar asterisms) which adds up to a cycle of 2,700 years.[13] The 2,700 year cycle was also referred to as a “Saptarsi Era” or a “Saptarsi Yuga”.

Fig 1: The Great Bear constellation (Ursa Major) is clearly visible in the northern sky throughout the year. The seven prominent stars represent the Seven Sages (Saptarshi). The Great Bear constellation figures prominently in the mythology of many cultures.

If the 2,700 year cycle of the Saptarsi Calendar represents the actual duration of a Yuga, then the remaining 300 years out of the total Yuga duration of 3,000 years (representing 1/10th of the Yuga duration), automatically represents the “transitional period”, before the qualities of the subsequent Yuga are fully manifested. In accordance with the current convention, this intervening period can be broken up into two separate periods of 150 years each, one occurring at the beginning of the Yuga, known as Sandhya (i.e. dawn), and the other at its termination, known asSandhyansa (i.e. twilight). The total duration of the Yuga Cycle, excluding the transitional periods, is equal to (2700*4) i.e. 10,800 years, which is same as the duration of the “Great Year of Heraclitus” in the Hellenic tradition!

It is agreed by historians that the Saptarsi Calendar that was in use during the Maurya period in the 4th century BC, started in 6676 BC. In the book, “Traditions of the Seven Rsis”, Dr.J.E. Mitchiner confirms this: “We may conclude that the older and original version of the Era of the Seven Rsis commenced with the Seven Rsis in Krttika in 6676 BC…This version was in use in northern India from at least the 4th century BC, as witnessed by the statements of Greek and Roman writers; it was also the version used by Vrddha Garga, at around the start of the Christian era.”[14]

In fact, the recorded choronology of Indian kings goes back further than 6676 BC as documented by the Greek and Roman historians Pliny and Arrian. Pliny states that, “From Father Liber [Roman Bacchus or Greek Dionysus] to Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC), Indians reckon 154 kings, and they reckon (the time as) 6451 years and 3 months.”[15] Arrian puts 153 kings and 6462 years between Dionysus and Sandrokottos (Chandragupta Maurya), to whose court a Greek embassy was sent in 314 BC.[16] Both indications add up to a date of roughly c.6776 BC, which is a 100 years prior to the beginning of the Saptarsi Calendar in 6676 BC.

It is obvious from the accounts of Pliny and Arrian that they must have identified aspecific king in the Indian kings list, who corresponded to the Greek Dionysus or Roman Bacchus, and whose reign had ended at around c.6776 BC. Who could that have been? According to the renowned scholar and Orientalist Sir William Jones, Dionysus or Bacchus was none other than the Indian monarch Rama. In his essay “On the Gods of Greece, Italy and India” (1784), Sir William Jones “deems Rama to be the same as the Grecian Dionysos, who is said to have conquered India with an army of satyrs, commanded by Pan; and Rama was also a mighty conqueror, and had an army of large monkeys or satyrs, commanded by Maruty (Hanuman), son of Pavan. Rama is also found, in other points, to resemble the Indian Bacchus.”[17] Sir William Jones also points out that, “Meros is said by the Greeks to have been a mountain of India, on which their Dionysus was born, and that Meru is also a mountain near the city of Naishada, or Nysa, called by the Grecian geographers Dionysopolis, and universally celebrated in the Sanskrit poems.”[18]

Both Pliny and Arrian were aware of these associations. Pliny had placed the Dionysian satyrs “in the tropical mountains of India”, while “we learn from Arrian (Hist.Ind. p 318, 321) that the worship of Bacchus, or Dionysus, was common in India and that his votaries observed a number of rites similar to those of Greece…On this account, when Alexander entered India, the natives considered the Greeks as belonging to the same family with themselves; and when the people of Nysa sent the principal person of their city to solicit their freedom of the Grecian conqueror, they conjured him by the well-known name of Dionysus, as the most effectual means of obtaining their purpose. ‘O King, the Nyssaeans entreat thee to allow them to enjoy their liberties and their laws, out of respect to Dionysus .’”[19]

The identification of Dionysus with Rama provides us with fresh perspectives. According to the Indian tradition, Rama had lived towards the end of the Treta Yuga (Silver Age), and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) had started soon after his demise. This implies that the 6676 BC date for the beginning of the Saptarsi Calendar, which is a 100 years after Dionysus i.e. Rama, indicates the beginning of the Dwapara Yuga in the descending cycle.

A later Saptarsi Calendar, still in use in India, began from 3076 BC. But, as Dr. Subhash Kak points out, “the new count that goes back to 3076 BC was started later to make it as close to the start of the Kali era as possible”[20]. This modification can be easily identified, since in 3076 BC, the Great Bear were in the “Magha” nakshatra (lunar asterism) as mentioned by Varahamihira in Brihat-Samhita (Brs. 13-3). But Subhash Kak points out that, “By the time of the Greeks, the naksatras were listed starting with Asvin (Surya Siddhanta 8.9). As Magha is the tenth naksatra in a count beginning with Asvin, one needs to add 900 years to find the epoch for the beginning of the cycle. This takes one to 3976 BC. One more complete Saptarsi Cycle of 2,700 years before that brings us to 6676 BC.”[21] Since the Dwapara Yuga immediately precedes the Kali Yuga, we are once again led to the conclusion that the Saptarsi Calendar with a start date of 6676 BC was counting time from the Dwapara Yuga.

Fig 2: The List of the 27 Nakshatras. The Great Bear was in Magha in 3076 BC and in Ashvini in 3976 BC / 6676 BC

We also know that the Saptarsi Calendar used during the Mauryan period was used for tracking the genealogical records of the Mahabharata war kings. Since the Mahabharata describes events that transpired in the Dwapara Yuga, there cannot be any doubt that the Saptarsi Cycle beginning 6676 BC marks the beginning of the descending Dwapara Yuga. If we use this date as the anchor point, and the Saptarsi Calendar as the basis for the Yuga Cycle durations (i.e. Yuga duration of 2,700 years, with transitional periods of 300 years), then the entire timeline of the Yuga Cycle gets unraveled:

Fig 3: Yuga Cycle Timeline.

This Yuga Cycle timeline takes the beginning of the Golden Age to 12676 BC, more than 14,500 years before present, when the Great Bear was in the “Shravana” nakshatra (the Great Bear will advance by 3 nakshtras in every Yuga because of the 300 year transitional period). This agrees very well with the Indian tradition, since theMahabharata mentions that in the ancient tradition the Shravana nakshatra was given the first place in the Nakshatra cycle. The timeline also indicates that the ascending Kali Yuga, which is the current epoch in which we are living, will end in 2025 CE. The full manifestation of the next Yuga – the ascending Dwapara – will take place in 2325 CE, after a transitional period of 300 years. The ascending Dwapara Yuga will then be followed by two more Yugas: the ascending Treta Yuga and the ascending Satya Yuga, which will complete the 12,000 year ascending cycle. The Sanskrit textBrahma-vaivarta Purana describes a dialogue between Lord Krishna and the Goddess Ganges. Here, Krishna says that after 5,000 years of Kali Yuga there will be a dawn of a new Golden Age which will last for 10,000 years (Text 50, 59). This can be immediately understood in the context of the Yuga Cycle timeline described here. We are now ending the Kali Yuga, nearly 5,700 years since its beginning in 3676 BC. And the end of the Kali Yuga will be followed by three more Yugas spanning 9,000 years, before the ascending cycle ends.

Part 2: The archaeological and historical evidence

According to the Yuga Cycle doctrine, the transitional periods between Yugas arealways associated with a worldwide collapse of civilizations and severe environmental catastrophes, which wipe out virtually every trace of any human civilization. The new civilization that emerges in the new Yuga is guided by a few survivors of the cataclysm, who carry with them the technical and spiritual knowledge of the previous epoch. Many ancient sources tell us of the enigmatic group of “Seven Sages” (“Saptarsi”) who are said to appear at the beginning of every Yuga and promulgate the arts of civilization. We find them in myths from across the world – in Sumeria, India, Polynesia, South America and North America. They possessed infinite wisdom and power, could travel over land and water, and took on various forms at will. Were they the survivors of the previous Yuga or visitors from outer space? Opinions differ on this point, but surely neither option can be discarded without proper scrutiny. In any case, the main point is that the transitional periods between Yugas must necessarily correlate with the severe cataclysmic events that regularly impact our planet, as reflected in the archeological records. As we shall see, the Yuga Cycle timeline proposed here correlates with these catastrophic events with a stunning accuracy. In addition, the transitional periods can also be correlated with dates recorded in various ancient calendars and traditions.

The first transitional period in the 12,000 year descending Yuga Cycle is the 300 year period at the end of the Golden Age from 9976 BC – 9676 BC. This is the time when the last Ice Age came to a sudden end; the climate became very warm quite abruptly, and several large mammalian species such as the woolly mammoth became extinct. A number of scientific studies show that a devastating global flood occurred at around 9600 BC.[22] This is in accordance with many ancient traditions and legends. In theTimaeus, Plato talks of the mythical island of Atlantis, which was swallowed up by the sea in a “single day and night of misfortune” in c.9600 BC. This event has also been recorded in the flood myths of many ancient cultures, which almost uniformly talk of enormous walls of water that submerged the entire land to the highest mountain tops, accompanied by heavy rain, fireballs from the sky, intense cold and long periods of darkness. In the Indian tradition, this flood took place at the end of the Satya Yuga (Golden Age). The survivor of this great deluge was Manu, the progenitor of mankind, who is placed at the head of the genealogy of Indian kings.

What could have led to this sudden worldwide deluge? Archaeologist Bruce Masse of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico had examined a sample of 175 flood myths from different cultures around the world and concluded that the environmental aspects described in these events, which is also consistent with the archaeological and geophysical data, could have only been precipitated by a destructive, deep-water, oceanic comet impact.[23] In 2008, a team of Danish geologists from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI) in Copenhagen studied the ice core data from Greenland, and concluded that the ice age ended exactly in 9703 BC. Researcher Jorgen Peder Steffensen said that, “in the transition from the ice age to our current warm, interglacial period the climate shift is so sudden that it is as if a button was pressed”[24]. More recently, in 2012, an international team of scientists concluded that the earth was bombarded by a meteorite storm nearly 12,000 years ago, which effectively ended the ice age, and led to the end of a prehistoric civilization and the extinction of many animal species.[25] It is interesting to note that the 9703 BC date for the sudden climate shift falls within the 300 year transitional period at the end of the Golden Age from 9976 BC – 9676 BC, and as such, it provides the first important validation of the Yuga Cycle timeline identified here.

The 300 year transitional period between the Treta Yuga (Silver Age) and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) from 6976 BC – 6676 BC also coincides with a significant environmental event – the Black Sea Catastrophe which has recently been dated to 6700 BC. The Black Sea once used to be a freshwater lake. That is, until the Mediterranean Sea, swollen with melted glacial waters, breached a natural dam, and cut through the narrow Bosphorous Strait, catastrophically flooding the Black Sea. This raised the water levels of the Black Sea by several hundred feet, flooded more than 60,000 square miles of land, and significantly expanded the Black Sea shoreline (by around 30%).[26] This event fundamentally changed the course of civilization in Southeastern Europe and western Anatolia. Geologists Bill Ryan and Walter Pitman of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, who had first proposed the Black Sea Catastrophe hypothesis, have gone to the extent of comparing it to Noah’s Flood.

Similar major flooding events were taking place in many parts of the world, as massive glacial lakes, swelled by the waters of the melting ice, breached their ice barriers, and rushed into the surrounding areas. In the book Underworld, Graham Hancock has described some of the terrible events that ravaged the planet during that time. Sometime between 6900 BC – 6200 BC the Laurentide ice-sheet disintegrated in the Hudson Bay and an enormous quantity of glacial waters from the inland Lake Agassiz/Ojibway discharged into the Labrador Sea. This was possibly the “single largest flood of the Quarternary Period”, which may have single-handedly raised global sea-level by half a metre.[27] The period between 7000 BC – 6000 BC was also characterized by the occurrences of gigantic earthquakes in Europe. In northern Sweden, some of these earthquakes caused “waves on the ground”, 10 metres high, referred to as “rock tsunamis”. It is possible that the global chain of cataclysmic events during this transitional period may have been triggered by a single underlying cause, which we are yet to find out.

Fig 5: The Black Sea catastrophe, before and after. The water from the Mediterranean (Aegean) Sea, cut through a narrow Gorge (now known as the Bosphorous Strait), and plunged into the Black Sea (whose water level was 80 m below sea level) creating a gigantic waterfall. Every day for two years, 42 cubic km of sea water cut through the narrow channel and plunged into the lake — more than 200 times the flow over Niagara Falls. Source: NASA

The transitional period between the Dwapara Yuga and Kali Yuga, from 3976 BC – 3676 BC was again marked by a series of environmental cataclysms, whose exact nature remains a mystery. It is referred to in geology as the 5.9 kiloyear event, and it is considered as one of the most intense aridification events during the Holocene period. It occurred around 3900 BC, ending the Neolithic Subpluvial and initiated the most recent desiccation of the Sahara desert. At the same time, between 4000 BC – 3500 BC, the coastal plains of Sumer experienced severe flooding, which “was the local effect of a worldwide episode of rapid, relatively short-term flooding known as the Flandrian transgression – which had a significant impact not only along the shores of the Gulf but in many other parts of Asia as well.”[28] This catastrophic flooding event led to the end of the Ubaid period in Mesopotemia, and triggered a worldwide migration to river valleys.

This transitional period between the Yugas is recorded in many ancient calendars, as we find a clustering of important dates around this epoch. For a very long time, there was a prevalent belief in the western world that the world was created in 4004 BC. This date comes to us from the genealogies of the Old Testament. This date is just 28 years prior to the end of the Dwapara and the beginning of the transitional period. A Saptarsi Calendar, still in use in India, counted time in the Kali Yuga starting from 3976 BC, which coincides with the beginning of the transitional period. The year of world creation in the Jewish religious calendar is 3761 BC, which is in the middle of the transitional period.

The famous Mahabharata War of the Indian subcontinent, which took place during the transitional period between Yugas, 35 years prior to the beginning of the Kali Yuga, can now be dated to 3711 BC. The Mahabharata mentions that the Dwapara Yuga ended and the Kali Yuga started as soon as Krishna left this world; and then the seas swelled up and submerged the island-city of Dwarka, which was located off the coast of western India. In 2002, the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIO), India, discovered two cities submerged in the Gulf of Cambay, at a depth of 120 feet. These mysterious submerged cities were laid out in a grid, had towering walls, massive geometrical buildings and huge engineering works such as dams, and they stood entirely above water around 7,000 years ago. Nearly 2,000 man-made artifacts were recovered from the sites, some of which have been carbon dated to 6500 BC – 7500 BC, indicating their existence in the Dwapara Yuga.

Fig 6: The underwater ruins of the fabled city of Dwarka, off the coast of western India, at a depth of 170 feet below the Arabian Sea.

Source:

The Lost City of Dvaraka – By S.R. Rao

As per the ancient traditions, the descending Kali Yuga, which was referred to by Hesiod as the “Age of Heroes”, came to an end with the battle fought on the plains of Troy. The Yuga Cycle timeline indicates that the 300 year intervening period between the descending and ascending Kali Yuga extended from 976 BC – 676 BC; and very interestingly, this overlaps with the 300 year period from 1100 BC to 800 BC which is referred to by historians as the Greek Dark Ages! The archaeological evidence shows that tremendous destruction visited the Greek isles at this time. The great Mycenaean cities and palaces collapsed. Villages and towns were burnt, destroyed and abandoned. The population of the cities reduced drastically, there was widespread famine and people lived in isolated, small settlements. Such was the magnitude of the cataclysms that ancient Greeks entirely forgot the art of writing which they had to re-learn from the Phoenicians in the 8th century! The ancient trade networks were disrupted and came to a grinding halt.

However, this was not just a collapse of the ancient Greek civilization; there was a worldwide collapse of civilizations during this period. The Hittites suffered serious disruption and cities from Troy to Gaza were destroyed. Egypt too lost control over its kingdom. The period from 1070 BC – 664 BC is known as the “Third Intermediate Period” of Egypt, during which time Egypt was run over and ruled by foreign rulers, and there was political and social disintegration and chaos. Egypt was increasingly beset by a series of droughts, below-normal flooding of the Nile, and famine. In India, the Indus Valley civilization finally ended at around 1000 BC. Catastrophe also struck the ancient Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica at this time. The first Olmec center, San Lorenzo, was abandoned at around 900 BC. A wholesale destruction of many San Lorenzo monuments also occurred in c.950 BC, and scholars believe that drastic environmental changes may have been responsible for this shift in Olmec centers, with certain important rivers changing course.

Once again we don’t know what may have triggered this calamitous turn of events across the world. Historians speculate about a combination of catastrophic climatic events. Egyptian accounts tell us that, “something in the air prevented much sunlight from reaching the ground and also arrested global tree growth for almost two full decades until 1140 BC.”[29] One proposed cause is the Hekla 3 eruption of the Hekla volcano in Iceland, but the dating of that event remains in dispute. However, since the descending and ascending Kali Yuga are not so different in terms of their qualitative aspects, the level of devastation during this transitional period was perhaps not as severe as the previous one, as a result of which some aspects of civilization survived.

When the ascending Kali Yuga began in 676 BC, much of the knowledge, traditions and skills from the descending Kali Yuga were lost. In Greece, the construction of monumental architecture ceased. The cavalry was replaced by foot soldiers. Pottery styles were simplified. In India, the use of Sanskrit as the means of communication was replaced by the language of the common masses – Pali and Prakrit. Knowledge of the ancient scriptures, sciences and arts had been all but forgotten. Possibly in response to this grave social crisis, a number of philosophers and prophets appeared at this time, trying to re-discover the lost wisdom, and spread it amongst the ignorant masses. Among them were Buddha (623 BC), Pythagoras (570 BC), Zoroaster (600 BC), and Mahavir Jain (599 BC).

People were so perturbed by the calamities of the previous centuries that they began a vigorous attempt to finally document the ancient scriptures, which were till then being transmitted in a purely oral fashion. It was in this grave social and cultural milieu that the Mayans re-calculated and re-calibrated their calendric system at Izapa sometime after 400 BC. And a few centuries later Aryabhatta and others attempted to fix the beginnings of the Kali Yuga. Such an effort would have been quite un-necessary if the cataclysms of the previous centuries had not disrupted the flow of the rich oral traditions. However, much of the knowledge from the previous epoch was irretrievably lost. For instance, the original Vedas were comprised of 1,180 sakhas (i.e. branches), of which only 7 or 8 sakhas (less than 1 %) are remembered now. As a result, it is only natural to expect that even within the texts that were finally documented, various errors and omissions had crept in. The mistakes in the Yuga Cycle doctrine were some of them.

The Yuga Cycle timelines proposed here accurately mirrors the worldwide environmental catastrophes that accompanies the transitional periods between Yugas. The four key transitional periods, since the end of the Golden Age, have been summarized here:

Fig 7: The Transitional Periods between Yugas

This recurrent pattern of devastation is clearly discernible in the archaeological records. Every 2,700 years our planet is impacted by a series of cataclysmic events for a period of a few hundred years, which brings about a total or near total collapse of civilizations across the world. In all the cases, however, we find that civilization restarts immediately after the period of destruction.

In recent years, many independent historians and researchers have realized that the concept of a Yuga Cycle is a far better descriptor of ancient history, than the model of linear progress favored by mainstream historians. Egyptologist John Anthony West, whose seminal work on the dating of the Sphinx has won him worldwide acclaim, mentions in his article “Consider the Kali Yuga” that:

“Since Egypt’s Old Kingdom, up until very recently…civilization has been going down, not up; simple as that. We can follow that degenerative process physically in Egypt; it is written into the stones and it is unmistakable. The same tale is told in the mythologies and legends of virtually all other societies and civilizations the world over…Progress does not go in a straight line from primitive ancestors to smart old us with our bobblehead dolls and weapons of mass destruction; our traffic jams and our polluted seas, skies and lands. There is another, and far more realistic, way to view history. Plato talked about a cycle of Ages: Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron (or Dark) Age; a cycle, a wave form – not a straight line. A similar understanding is reflected by virtually all other ancient accounts. The best known, and by far the most elaborately developed of these systems, is the Hindu, with its Yuga Cycle, which corresponds to the Platonic idea of four definable Ages.”[30]

It is evident that the original Yuga Cycle was based on the Saptarsi Calendar. It was of 12,000 years duration, comprised of four Yugas of equal duration of 2,700 years each, separated by transitional periods of 300 years. The complete Yuga Cycle of 24,000 years was comprised of an ascending and descending Yuga cycle, which followed each other for eternity like the cycles of day and night. For the past 2,700 years we have been evolving through the ascending Kali Yuga, and this Yuga is coming to an end in 2025. The end of the Yuga will inevitably be followed by cataclysmic earth changes and civilization collapses, as is characteristic of the transitional periods. The Dwapara Yuga is fundamentally different from the Kali in its spiritual and material dimensions, as can be gleaned from the ancient texts. Hence, we may anticipate far-reaching changes in our environment, and possibly in our cosmic neighborhood, as we transition to this period of enhanced consciousness. The current upswing in tectonic activities and the increased incidence of extreme weather phenomena may be indicative of the fact that we are slowly entering into a period of volatile earth changes. We need to be aware of these greater cycles of time that govern human civilization, and the changes that are looming in the horizon.

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biscuitreviews · 6 years

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Biscuit Reviews Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

When Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood came out, I honestly didn’t know what to think of it at first. Is it a sequel? Is it a side story? What’s the significance? Will I not understand Assassin’s Creed III if I don’t play this one? All of these questions just going through my mind and after being burned by the Kingdom Hearts series and its shenanigans I decided to get Brotherhood and find out for myself.

The answer…

...it was a sequel, a canonical sequel that you would need to know what transpired if you want to understand Assassin’s Creed III.

I want to go ahead and add that I’m going to spoil the ending for Assassin’s Creed II so if you haven’t played Assassin’s Creed II yet, I’d recommend playing the entire campaign before going into this review.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood takes places immediately after Assassin’s Creed II. Ezio is escaping the Vatican after his boxing match with the Pope and finding the vault from the First Civilization. After the escape, he returns to Monteriggioni with the intention to relax thinking his job is done. The next day, Cesare Borgia attacks in retaliation of Ezio’s attack on the Pope and kills Ezio’s uncle. After escaping the attack, Ezio makes his way to Rome to avenge his uncle’s death and to defeat the Borgia family once and for all. Personally, I wasn’t too impressed that Ubisoft used another family death to motivate Ezio.

As for the modern day plot, Desmond and gang leave their warehouse hideout and move to the ruins of the Monteriggioni villa. The modern day Assassins are trying to locate where Ezio hid the Apple of Eden he acquired during the events of Assassin’s Creed II so that Abstergo does not get their hands on it. They’re also looking for other clues on how to prevent an oncoming solar flare that is said to occur on December 21, 2012 and if that date sounds familiar, that was the date where the Mayan Calendar ended. The reason it was significant was because Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood came out in 2009 and 2010 respectively and the Mayan Calendar highly discussed topic throughout the world as the date was coming close, so pretty interesting way to make part of your game topical, especially one riddled with a lot of historical events with alterations to suit its lore.

Gameplay for Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is pretty much the same as Assassin’s Creed II, with a couple additions. Ezio can now use a crossbow to dispatch enemies from afar which allows for a more silent option compared to the hidden wrist gun. Ezio can also call upon fellow Assassins to aid him in battle. You can recruit these Assassins throughout Rome and send them on missions to make them stronger, as well as acquire money and items. However, if you have these Assassins on missions, then they can’t be called to help Ezio. When you have six Assassins and your Assassin call meter is completely filled, you can unleash an Arrow Storm attack which can dispatch of a group of enemies with ease.

Now, you would think that your Assassins would need to be leveled up to have the ability to call upon them to use Arrow Storm, but no, all you need is six Assassins to use them. So why level them up? Well, you could call on them to help you in a fight, but again, why would you do that if you can just not engage in a fight by shooting them with your crossbow, or just wait and use Arrow Storm if you do get engaged in a fight.

Between this and the crossbow, the game offers very little challenge as these two things can clear every obstacle in your way. Notoriety also works the same as Assassin’s Creed II as well, you kill in the open, pickpocket, or just be an overall nuisance, your notoriety meter will go up, meaning guards will pay more attention to your actions. Getting rid of notoriety is also the same with taking down posters, bribing heralds, or killing high level officials.

There are more side missions such as Thief and Courtesans Guild missions, that have their own side plots. Templar agent assassinations which give the multiplayer characters some backstory (Yeah, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood introduced multiplayer to the series and to my knowledge, the servers are still online.) There is also Cristina Missions which tell the story of what happened to Ezio’s girlfriend in the beginning of Assassin’s Creed II after Ezio left Florence.

Finally you have Borgia Towers, towers that Ezio must kill the captain and set the top of tower on fire to rid the influence of the Borgia family in that section of Rome. This side activity did have potential, but again, with how easily you can access the previously mentioned Assassins and crossbow, finding and killing the captain and any other guards you encounter offers no challenge. So what’s the purpose of taking down these towers? To gain more recruitable Assassins and repair shops in the area to make money.

I think the no challenge comes to how you make money. It’s really easy to make money in this game. You would think it would be hard, because you have to repair shops and buy landmarks to make money, but surprisingly it’s not. You can loot bodies for money, find chests for money and items, and even sell items to shops. You could use some of those items to turn in for shop quests, but honestly, it’s not necessary as you’ll get stronger version of some of items at a later point in the game. With all of these avenues to acquire money, it’s fairly easy to buy the crossbow.

The only challenge the game offers is completing missions in certain ways. If you’re going for 100% synchronization, simply doings tasks and side missions won’t cut it, you have to complete objectives within story missions to reach 100%. These objectives can range from, reaching a place in a certain amount of time, using only a specific weapon, using a specific tool, not killing any enemies, not alerting enemies, not losing health, or not losing a certain amount of health.

Rome looks more detailed than the cities of the previous two games. I think since the majority of the game takes place in one central area, the developers and artists were able to give Rome some extra detail that wasn’t possible before because there was multiple cities. Facial animations and character models look much cleaner as well and have aged far better than Assassin’s Creed II.

There’s also an open playable modern-day Monteriggioni, but it’s just to get a few collectables, it doesn’t add anything to the overall plot.

As far as actual Assassinations go, again you’ll get your fill of that with the Assassination contracts and the previously mentioned Templar missions. There a few moments in the story that do require stealth and one story target that allows you to use the environment to your advantage, but that’s it for the most part. Compared to Assassin’s Creed II, it does give more of a feeling that you are a sneaky Assassin, but similar to Assassin’s Creed II, it’s more open world adventure.

With this I have to say, the game does add a few new additions to be a sequel, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like a sequel. If anything it feels more like an expansion to Assassin’s Creed II, another chapter to Ezio’s story and honestly, I think this is what Ubisoft was going for, hence why it’s not Assassin’s Creed III.

As far as how Xbox One backwards compatibility goes, I experienced no disappearing bodies or walls this go around. I did however, experience two hard crashes.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is a fine game, it does fix some of the small issues that Assassin’s Creed II had making it a more refined experience. However, by fixing those issues, it created its own issues with the new additions it added.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood receives a 3 out of 5

#Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood #Assassin's Creed #Ezio Auditore #video games #gaming #video game review #game review #gaming review #biscuit review #xbox 360 #ubisoft #ac:brotherhood

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talesofdisinterest · 6 years

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What we’ve learnt one year after releasing our first game on Nintendo Switch.

July 13th 2017. That was the day. De Mambo launched on Nintendo Switch in the west—well, June 29th in Japan but for the sake of being topical, lets just disregard that little fact and swiftly move on!

De Mambo was made by The Dangerous Kitchen, (myself and two others originally, but now with two extra humans) and was our first game. We were (are) very inexperienced and had to learn how to do everything ourselves; from learning Unity, to making sprites and even learning how to write a press release! It was incredibly tough, but also really, really fun.

The fact that we somehow managed to release De Mambo in the launch period of a new Nintendo console and considering that we were one of, if not the least experienced indie team that had launched at the time, was a ridiculous feat for us and worthy of going on our epitaphs, but I digress.

We must thank all of you people who’ve helped us reach this point. Whether you be Kickstarter backers, business partners, people who’ve helped us at events etc, or simply those of you who purchased De Mambo. We’re eternally grateful.

So, what have we learnt from releasing De Mambo on Nintendo Switch one year later? That’s simple…

Timing. Timing is everything.

(The following thoughts are probably the most useful for very small teams like us, starting out in the industry with little to no previous industry experience and are aiming for release on Nintendo Switch).

We were incredibly lucky to launch when we did, which was just about the time the ‘indie gold rush’ revved its relentless engine. From anecdotal evidence of speaking to other developers and such, it seems as though we would not have sold as much as we did if we had launched later on—that’s not to say we sold millions of copies (our desolate bank account is testament to that), but we’ve sold well enough to keep us going.

The timing of your launch is important, but to land at this point with the least amount of bruises, you’ll need a lot of laser-focused planning. We here at The Dangerous Kitchen are a bit… well, let’s just say the eleventh hour is when we usually think about beginning a task, so our tardiness has limited us a few times in the past, (not aided by our lack of wo/man-power). You should plan everything as much as possible in advance, like a Mayan Priest tending to their precious calendars, to ensure you don’t miss out on anything that will help your game.

If you have limited funds, you can bypass marketing/PR agencies if you can plan and time everything yourself! It is possible!

Some of the things we advise planning and beginning to execute well before the release of your game, even if you’re a one-human developer team are:

Look for reasons for people to be interested in your game’s content and find ways to show those things off as best you can.

Write press release copy as early as possible! Your press releases need some time to be approved by Nintendo, so definitely get these sorted and submitted as soon as you can!

Prepare images, gifs and videos of the game and gameplay for the Nintendo Switch News Channel and social media. Begin posting these before launch to generate hype, and definitely make use of scheduling your posts to save you time when it really matters.

Reach out to youtubers, twitchers, the games press and your mother’s aunt’s best friend’s cat with promotional game codes and/or the optional bribe.

Go to events, but crucially, don’t go to too many events as this will eat from your development time and your limited funds! We would recommend looking for events with audiences that would benefit your game the most and balance these with cost.

Leave time for multiple resubmissions of your game! It’s super common and normal to not pass submission first time round, (or so we’ve been led to believe by well-wishers) so definitely give yourself and/or your team some breathing space where that mythical creature known as sleep may be possible.

Plan some buffer time for the petulant panic that ensues due to major bug discovery after launch.

After you launch the game, don’t naively think it’s all over and now the sleep of a thousand sleeps may begin, like a certain naive little games company who shall not be named. This is where the promotion really kicks in, as your game is available on the eShop and good timekeeping is 100% needed.

Doing sales is paramount to you making money after the initial hype is dead.

Look at the barebones Nintendo Switch eShop. You need your game to keep selling, so being swamped by 20-30 new games every week is like having shovels of earth being constantly thrown over your still-alive corpse. Doing a sale equates to temporary-zombie-reanimation that will grant you exposure, so working out when the best time to do so is again, all down to timing. You don’t want to miss doing that sale that could be very successful for you, so again, plan in advance.

You might be dealing with Japan, the US and Europe simultaneously, which those of you with acute understanding of measuring ordered existence will know, are all in different time zones. The amount of stress will pile up, like an overflowing toilet of despair. You’ll have so much to do around the launch of your game, that any future-help you give your present-self will be mouth-wateringly good.

So to reiterate, you’re going to have to manage going to events, making promotional materials, posting on social media and the News Channel, replying to email enquiries for review, dealing with any emergency bug fixes and planning for sale opportunities while trying to keep yourself moderately healthy. Plan. In. Advance.

It may sound boring, but having some semblance of sanity is pretty good in the grand scheme of things. A clear mind is great for managing the fifty-one things you need to sort out, plus any random things that pop up, like that dreaded slice of burnt toast you fear your toaster might hiss out at you.

We’d like to leave you with one last thought, which is that you should try and celebrate your launch, thoroughly and whole-heartedly, to alleviate post-natal depression! You did it! Even if your bones are forever dust, in a way that perfectly mirrors your bank account, you made it. And someone, somewhere is grateful your game exists.

What we’ve learnt one year after releasing our first game on Nintendo Switch. was originally published on The Dangerous Kitchen

#De Mambo #Dev Diary #Development Update #Nintendo Switch #The Dangerous Kitchen Update

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t-oresama · 6 years

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"A Celebration in Animation: The 100 Greatest Cartoon Characters in Television History" by Marty Gitlin and Joe Wos

Synopsis: Few morose thoughts permeate the brain when Yosemite Sam calls Bugs Bunny a "long-eared galoot"or a frustrated Homer Simpson blurts out his famous catchphrase "D'oh!". A Celebration in Animation explores the best-of-the-best cartoon characters from the 1920s to the twenty-first century. Casting a wide net, it includes characters both serious and humorous and ranging from silly to malevolent. But all the greats gracing this book are sure to trigger nostalgic memories of care-free Saturday mornings or after-school hours with family and friends in front of the TV set.

Published: 2018 (Lyons Press) Genre: Non-fiction, pop culture, ranked list Rating: 3.5 out of 5

WARNING: There are some spoilers in this review (they don't mention the ranking of the shows I'll mention, just the shows themselves). The cover of the book already spoils things in this regard, but just in case you want to read this yourselves, you may want to skip reading this review until then! :D

Reader Review: Okay, so at this point, I'm literally going to start making a new tag/sub-series of reviews called "judging a book by its cover", because yet again, that's what I did. Heck, I'll even go back to my old reviews and tag them as such I went back to my old reviews and tagged them as such. Working at a library is a blessing and a curse in this regard... Anyway, my allure to this book's cover came from Teen Titans' Beast Boy being smack-dab on it. And with my undying love for the original Teen Titans series, I was instantly curious as to what ranking he'd been awarded (THAT, I will spoil; it'll be in the tags). And I've always had a love of both cartoon history and countdown lists, so this book was right up my alley anyway.

Now, as much as the internet likes to make fun of WatchMojo on Youtube ("Top Ten Anime Betrayals" memes, anyone?), you have to admit that you yourself have watched at least one of their countdown lists, or a countdown list from someone else (ScreenRant, Looper, etc). There's something inherently interesting about putting things, specifically things we see in pop culture, in a ranked order, and the possibilities of the subjects of these lists are limitless so there's something for everyone. That being said, it drives me crazy when people get so mad or defensive about the entry order of a top 10/ top whatever number list, whether it's "How could THIS be #1???", "How could this NOT be #1???", "What about ___???", you get it. So going into reading this list of the top 100 cartoon characters in all of cartoon history, you really have to understand that these are the, albeit well-thought-out and industry-knowledgeable, OPINIONS of two people. This is not the Mayan calendar, the end-all be-all of lists. If anything, it prompts a dialogue, inviting you to hop on discussion train and talk about cartoons yourself.

Both Marty Gitlin, a pop culture author, and Joe Wos, a cartoon illustrator, have both the professional and personal insight of the vast history of cartoons. What is very apparent, though, is that these two have come together for more of their personal love of cartoons than anything else. This didn't bother me personally, because no matter how unbiased a ranking list claims to be, there's always a little bit of bias. The two authors try to base their rankings in fact more than personal preference, and for the most part they do stay unbiased, in both obvious and non-obvious ways (for example: there is one Disney character that ranks decently higher on the list than another Disney character, which was backed by reasonings both personal and professional by the authors, since the initial reaction from anyone would probably be "...Wait, really?"). Their choices do a great job in ranging from the dawn of cartoon history with "Crusader Rabbit" and "Astro Boy" to much more recent cartoons like Archer from "Archer", Tina from "Bob's Burgers" and Korra from "The Legend of Korra", all with the same logic applied to each for why they deserved to be recognized in this book, and not necessarily why they deserve spot number whatever (although they do emphasize the rankings DO matter, but it didn't really matter a whole lot outside of the top 20). I genuinely enjoyed learning about cartoons I wasn't too familiar with, getting little blurbs and fun facts out of it, and just generally getting into the heads of Gitlin and Wos. It's clear they did their research and really applied a lot of thought to this list. After all, it's hard with ALL the cartoons characters that have existed since the early 1900s to simply pick 100. Some liberties are taken for duos, like Sylvester and Tweety and Cosmo and Wanda, but it makes sense because some exist as foils of the other to play off of each other, and their partnership is what made them stand out individually in the first place. In that regard, it's more like a top 125-ish list, but again, the authors take care in making the reasonings make sense. Plus there's a foreword from SpongeBob voice and overall voice-acting marvel Tom Kenny, which is a nice treat that whets our appetite for what this book will unveil.

That being said, this book is very much a first draft that should have had some more time to be edited before release. It's enough sometimes to be overlooked; in the beginning of each new ranking, there's a bio for each character (Created by:____ Debuted in: ___ Voiced by: ____), but rather than a new blurb starting on a new line, there are sometimes two blurbs that exist on the same line. Again, not the worst thing ever. But then there are some that are just impossible to let go; there's literally a ranking (within the ranking) of Pinky and the Brain's most ridiculous "Take over the world" schemes, and there's randomly a line about Racer X of "Speed Racer" fame that is clearly not supposed to be in this ranking, let alone in this ranking's ranking. Consistency is also an issue. For a book about cartoons, there's a big lack of them in this book. Every ranked character, I assumed, would have its own picture to visually show the reader who the character is in a "show, don't tell" kind of way, but that was very much not the case for a large amount of characters. The most logical answer to this could've been that there were copyright issues where the authors couldn't obtain permission to use their images, but several Disney characters appear visually in the book, despite Disney being notoriously stingy about sharing their characters in mediums they don't helm themselves. And where we get a cartoon character visually for #1-45, we don't get any pictures at all for a straight 15 rankings afterwards. For a ranked list about a visual medium, I would've loved to have seen who they were talking about, instead of Google image searching who certain characters were (like I had no idea who Beany and Cecil were before this book, and had to provide my own visual representation). It's just an odd choice for a cartoon book to exclude... cartoons. Though what's more odd are some images they did include. There are a couple of weird choices of photos, like the French TV poster for "Pokemon" that says "Le Film" under a screenshot of Pikachu, and the tiniest picture ever of "Crusader Mouse" obscured by the title sequence. Again, Googling these characters myself showed me better results than the book did.

Finally and most importantly, character information is straight-up wrong. I know I said they do their research-- and they do-- and the authors are obviously not expected to know everything about every character offhand, but where they get tiny details and industry notes spot-on, they get the absolute simplest character information so unusually incorrect. There are two notable examples in my copy of the book. The first one is in Fat Albert's entry, where it states "Cosby Kid Tito is killed by a stray bullet intended for his older brother, who had joined a gang" (Uh... Fat Albert spoilers?). But it's actually Tito's younger brother Fernando who is shot and killed because the older brother who joins a gang is "Cosby Kid Tito". I know the piece is about Fat Albert the character and not Tito, but why bring this up if you don't even use the correct character to mention how progressive the show was to justify Fat Albert's place on the list? The second one is for the Powerpuff Girls regarding Blossom's physical description. It reads: "Blossom boasted light brown hair with a large blow and featured a short cape tied behind her pink dress and black belt." UMMMMMMM. I was so absolutely confused by this one line I had to look up various shots of her character model in case I somehow forgot that she had a cape, and to clarify, she absolutely does not have a cape (unless for specific episodes where's she dressing up outside of her normal attire). Did the authors think her hair was a cape? Did they mistake one episode where she wore a cape for the entirety of the series where she doesn't wear one? NO CAPES (CHECK OUT INCREDIBLES 2 IN THEATRES JUNE 15TH). Also... light brown hair? What adds insult to injury, besides the well-established fact that she has RED hair, is that this character description is written RIGHT NEXT TO A PICTURE OF THE POWERPUFF GIRLS TO PROVE THAT THAT IS NOT TRUE. Honestly, I'll give leniency where it's due for taking on the task of ranking and going in-depth on the origins and noteworthy points of a character, but no one prompted them to make this list. If you're going to talk in-depth about a character, fact-checking is your best friend. This is simple research, or simple picture-looking.

Overall, it's a fun book that helps you brush up on your cartoon history and send you into a state of nostalgia. I do wish there were more than the ten or so characters from Japan, Canada or the UK that appear on this list, but again, it's a book written in America that tends to look at the influence of said cartoons in American history, and asking someone to examine every cartoon character in the WORLD is a daunting, if not impossible task. I do also disagree with the fact that the list starts with #1 and descends from there. I find it more fun to build up to that #1 spot, because who really wants to read who #100 is when you know who #1 is already? I actually read this book backwards because of this, and found it much more satisfying to see the #1 spot by the "end". But I don't think there will be any dispute with who the top 30 or so cartoons are, but even if there are, that's the fun of ranked lists like this: if you disagree, just make your own list! It's all in good cartoon fun.

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