12-4. The key role of Sirius, creator of the Sothic cycle and the brightest star in the night, and visible close to the Full Moon in day 4 * 91 = 364,
was a fact which surely ought to have influenced the ideas around the stars located at right ascension line *284 (December 30), and then Φ Sagittarii (*284.0) could have played a key role similar to that of Sirius:
Here we can assume the right ascension day fraction .0 of Φ Sagittarii may have generated a function similar to that of the fraction .4 at Bharani (*41.4), i.e. to serve as a point from where to indicate the precise location for counting according to the days of the Sun - to be compared with the precise location for counting the nights according to the Moon.
... Men's spirits were thought to dwell in the Milky Way between incarnations. This conception has been handed down as an Orphic and Pythagorean tradition fitting into the frame of the migration of the soul. Macrobius, who has provided the broadest report on the matter, has it that souls ascend by way of Capricorn, and then, in order to be reborn, descend again through the 'Gate of Cancer'. Macrobius talks of signs; the constellations rising at the solstices in his time (and still in ours) were Gemini and Sagittarius: the 'Gate of Cancer' means Gemini ...
Then, in January 1 (*286, 366), the Sun should be at the Eye of the Archer (Ain al Rami) and this fact implied the Right Foot of Pollux (i.e. Alhena) should be half a year away and visible close to the Full Moon in day 366 - 183 = 183 (July 2):
Perhaps we could say that 161 (June 10, 10 / 6) + 16 (nights before a star would return to visibility) + 6 ('sleeping mats') = 161 + 22 =183 (July 2). ... About Carmenta we know from the historian Dionysus Periergetis that she gave orcales to Hercules and lived to the age of 110 years. 110 was a canonical number, the ideal age which every Egyptian wished to reach and the age at which, for example, the patriarch Joseph died. The 110 years were made up of twenty-two Etruscan lustra of five years each; and 110 years composed the 'cycle' taken over from the Etruscans by the Romans. At the end of each cycle they corrected irregularities in the solar calendar by intercalation and held Secular Games. The secret sense of 22 - sacred numbers were never chosen haphazardly - is that it is the measure of the circumference of the circle when the diameter is 7. This proportion, now known as pi, is no longer a religious secret; and is used today only as a rule-of-thumb formula, the real mathematical value of pi being a decimal figure which nobody has yet been able work out because it goes on without ever ending, as 22 / 7 does, in a neat recurring sequence [3.142857142857 ...]. Seven lustra add up to thirty-five years, and thirty-five at Rome was the age at which a man was held to reach his prime and might be elected Consul. (The same age was fixed upon by a Classically-minded Convention as the earliest at which an American might be elected President of the United States.) ... Similarly April 6 (*16, Revati) + 16 + 6 = April 28 (118 → 4 * 29½) → July 1 (182) - 64:
In December 31 the star named Atlas was culminating (at 21h). ... Allen has documented all his star culminations at 21h, which could be due to an effort of keeping the culminations at their proper places according to the ancients, 24h (spring equinox) - 21h = 3h = 24h / 8 = 45º. 3h corresponds to 366 / 8 = 45.75 of my right ascension days and *366 - *46 = *320 (Dramasa, σ Octantis) ...
The culmination nights could be perceived all through the year and the rays from the Sun did not interfere with such observations. Atlas was the only male star among the 6 + 3 = 9 in the Pleiades.
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