Zero Ayanamsa
Constantine and the Zero Ayanamsa estimates
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia

Introduction

Known to western astronomers and astrologers as the precession of the equinoxes, and to the Indian astronomers and astrologers, as ayanamsa, it was apparent to the ancients that the sky and the seasons did not perfectly align, but that the vernal equinox appeared to slowly drift backwards through the natural background of the stars of the zodiac, at the approximate rate of 1 degree every 72 years.

Knowledge of this precession is evident in the lineage of the astronomers/astrologers who provided advice to the Roman emperors, and other parties. Sosigenes advised Julius Caesar at the time of calendar reform in the first century BCE, when the basis of our present 365.25 day calendar was implemented. Two hundred years before this time, Aristarchus is generally cited as the earliest astronomer/astrologer to have mentioned the drifting of the seasons with respect to the background stars. Two hundred years after the time of the calendar reform, the geographer, mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy is known to have written of this movement. Thus, one would have expected that by the fourth century, this knowledge would have been revered.

However it is clear that the "early christian intellectuals" such as Origen (whom elsewhere we explicate to be a non-de-plume for the fourth century historian Eusebius) thought otherwise. Eusebius reports that Origen, in his Commentary on Genesis, says:

"The consequence of this doctrine would be to annihilate completely our freedom of action, which, in this system, would no longer be worthy of either praise or blame, nor of being encouraged or reproved. If it is so, everything one lets resound about God's judgment is senseless (...) faith would be in vain, the coming of Jesus Christ to earth would have accomplished nothing, all the value of the law and the prophets would become worthless (...) A further effect of this atheistic and impious discourse would be to assign the faith of those acknowledged as believers in God as a result only of the power of the stars."

--- Eusebius Pamphilus (PE 6.2)




Constantine's ill-informed Law of 325 CE

It would certainly seem probable that Constantine rejected the advice of non-christian astrologers when he decided to chain "Easter" to the Vernal equinox at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. Not a good thing. This had totally disasterous effects for the entire concept of "astrology" and "astronomy". As one commentator puts it ....
Sosigenes was, undoubtedly, aware of precession as were the early fathers of the Church. Precession was known around 200 AD (See, Origen, early Christian scholar and theologian) but denied by the early fathers of the Christian church. One reason for the denial of precession is because 'precession' suggested a Sun Centered solar system which was considered heresy (See, Galileo). Sosigenes secretly, (it seems) included precession in his calculations but did not discuss the matter. Anyhow, they (Council of Nicaea) changed the Vernal Equinox rather than disrupting the evolving church doctrine. This act of changing the Vernal Equinox also changed the zodiac because the resulting 4-day change (rather than admit to precession and heresy) shifted the place of 1° Aries by 4 degrees on top of any original zodiac errors (?) from The Julian Reform in 46 BC. This event was also the beginning of the end for astrology as a legitmate activity (religion) because 'astrology' then went from the actual positions of heavenly bodies to the tropical fiction of the calendar, not to metion the continually scrambled zodiac because of calendar changes.

SOURCE

From this time epoch the sideral zodiac and the tropical zodiac have slowly diverged by the rate of the precession or ayanamsa. Today, if you follow popular astrology, you will be disappointed that your entire chart needs to be rotated 24.5 degrees backwards, due to the accumulated divergence between these two zodiacs, essentially from the epoch around the Council of Nicaea.

The most popular sidereal zodiacs today are within one degree of each other. Each of these therfore offers a separate estimate for the "zero ayanamsa" date. That is "How long have these two zodiacs been drifting apart?" These estimates are as follows ...

221 CE (Fagan-Bradley) 
291 CE (Krishnamurti) 
285 CE (Lahiri ayanamsa)

For anyone reading this, and thinking this is not science and/or astronomy, think again. Our calendar does not take into account precession agaist the stars. All our calendar represents is an invention by which the vernal equinox is constrained to coincide with a regularity within a certain tolerance.

Although there is only one sky filled with stars, there are two zodiacs. The sidereal (which is the realtime one) and the tropical. The tropical and the sideral zodiac last coincided around about the time of the Council of Nicaea - Constantine's very military ("Wall of Swords" = Eusebius) supremacy party. Since that time, the real sideral view of the stars has drifted away from what we call the tropical zodiac. The tropical zodiac is essentially a thing frozen in time back in 325 CE, when it was decreed that Easter was to be the first Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox. Think about that next time you look at the popular (tropical zodiac) astrology in the papers, mags or the net. The restoration of the knowledge of the appropriateness of using the sideral zodiac when dealing with the stars was performed by Fagan, and posthumously published in the 1970's.

The Indians have always used a sideral zodiac, as did the Babylonians (a fact demonstrated by Fagan). However, the Indians also have had problems in agreeing between themselves on the actual value of this ayanamsa (precession). In 1953 the Indian government tried to stepin and standardise this.

To exemplfy the various current estimates of the extent of the difference between various estimates for the ayanamsa, or precessional difference, here is a comprehensive table taken from the Ayanamsa Statistical Study, Buz Overbeck, 2007 located here. The table includes the source of the ayanamsa, the reference (SE = Swiss Ephemeris, PC = Personal Communications), the Year of Coincidence and the values for the ayanamsas and the moon calculated for 6:46:04 PM on 27 October 2006 at 32±N 150, 97±W 460, TZ +5.




Overbeck's comparison of 23 Ayanamsa Values at 27 October 2006
SOURCE	REF.	AYANAMSA	Y.O.C.	MOON
Fagan/Bradley	SE	-24 d 50 m 10 s	221 AD	16d Sag 0 m
Lahiri	SE	-23 d 57 m 10 s	285 AD	16d Sag 14 m
De Luce	SE	-27 d 54 m 19 s	1 BC	12d Sag 56 m
Raman	SE	-22 d 30 m 24 s	389 AD	18d Sag 20 m
Sassanian	SE	-20 d 05 m 20 s	564 AD	20d Sag 45 m
Ushashashi	SE	-20 d 09 m 11 s	559 AD	20d Sag 41 m
Hipparchos	SE	-20 d 20 m 34 s	545 AD	20d Sag 30 m
Djwhal Khool	SE	-28 d 27 m 19 s	41 BC	12d Sag 23 m
Yukteshwar	SE	-22 d 34 m 28 s	292 AD	18d Sag 16 m
JN Bhasin	SE	-22 d 51 m 28 s	364 AD	17d Sag 59 m
Babylonian, Huber	SE	-24 d 43 m 43 s	229 AD	16d Sag 07 m
Babylonian, Kugler 1	SE	-25 d 55 m 43 s	143 AD	14d Sag 55 m
Babylonian, Kugler 2	SE	-24 d 31 m 43 s	243 AD	16d Sag 19 m
Babylonian, Kugler 3	SE	-23 d 40 m 43 s	305 AD	17d Sag 10 m
Babylonian, Mercier	SE	-24 d 37 m 03 s	237 AD	16d Sag 13 m
Galactic Center	SE	-26 d 56 m 55 s	69 AD	13d Sag 53 m
Krishnamurti	SE	-23 d 51 m 22 s	292 AD	16d Sag 59 m
Aldebaran at 15 Taurus	SE	-24 d 51 m 16 s	220 AD	15d Sag 59 m
Chandra-Hiri8	PC	-24 d 40 m 43 s	233 AD	16d Sag 10 m
Tarun Chopra9	PC	-11 d 53 m 43 s	1153 AD	28d Sag 57 m
Dhira10	PC	-23 d 09 m 48 s	342 AD	17d Sag 41 m
Krushna11	PC	-23 d 02 m 54 s	350 AD	17d Sag 47 m
Wilhelm Ardra12	PC	-23 d 30 m 16 s	317 AD	17d Sag 20 m

The knowledge of the movement of the sideral zodiac against the cycle of terrestrial seasons passed from western civilisation despite brief mentions in the fifth century. Towards the end of sixteenth century, the Gregorian Calendar Reform standardised the coincidence of the vernal equinox with the celebration of easter by an algorithm that does away with certain leap years, and with the loss of a series of days. The only problem with the calendar is that it tells us nothing about the stars.

Western astrologers, until Fagan (1970), continued to use the tropical zodiac, a picture of the sky as it was at some point in antiquity. There has been, as a response to this knowledge, a renewed interest in Sideral Astrology, by which the stars that are above our heads are pictured as they are, rather than as they were, back then, before the seasons and the stars began to drift apart.

The question then, thatmight be asked, is which single event in ancient history, might be associated with this state of affairs by which the astrological knowledge associated with the (true and real-time) sideral zodiac became "frozen" in time. A glance at the above table of estimated zero ayanamsa dates reveals that the Council of Nicaea, 325 CE, is situated in this impact zone.

The edict of Constantine concerning Easter and the Vernal Equinox has been codified by algorithm in thousands of computer programs which use a standard western Gregorian calendar. Followers of western tropical zodiac astrology are seeing themselves as the stars were in the fourth century -- an image frozen in time. It is an intriguing state of affairs.

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