"Like the Argonauts' golden fleece, which was guarded by a dragon, a mystery of heaven lies wrapped in the coils of Draco. Fixed eternally in its place in the depths of the sky, its location is almost impossible to detect within one or many lifetimes. Modern astronomers call it the 'ecliptic north pole'. It is entirely separate and just 23.5 degrees distant from the 'celestial north pole' - an extension into the heavens of the earth's axis which, as every schoolchild knows, is tilted away from the vertical by 23.5 degrees.

Imagine an extremely long pencil passed through the centre of the tilted earth, entering at the south pole, exiting at the north pole and then continuing onwards. The 'celestial north pole' is the 'mark' that such a pencil would make on the vault of the northern half of the sky. In our epoch it lies close to a convenient star - Polaris - which we call the 'north star' or 'pole star'. But because of the precessional wobble of the earth's axis the pencil point will not always coincide with Polaris. Instead, over the cycle of 25,920 years, it will gradually trace out a vast circle in the heavens, passing close to some stars and far away from others.

The 'ecliptic north pole' is the still, fixed point at the centre of this circle, the pole around which even the celestial pole revolves. Poised in space at an infinite distance above the exact centre of the earth's orbital plane, it is, in a sense, the pole of the gods. It may well have been what the ancient Egyptians had in mind when they spoke in their rebirth texts of a 'great mooring post' in heaven. And its location, for all eternity, is in the heart of Draco, behind the hood of the Naga, between the stars Grumium and Chi Draconis."

"The ancient Egyptians did not depict Draco as a snake or dragon but as another reptilian monster, the crocodile, which they oddly conflated with various parts of a hippopotamus and of a lion. The result was a composite astronomical deity named Taweret who is referred to in the Pyramid Texts, who appears frequently in the Book of the Dead and who takes centre stage in the remarkable 'circular zodiac' of the temple of Dendera in Upper Egypt. [hyperlink to picture]

A matter of particular interest about this deceptively simple star-map ... is that it not only correctly locates Draco in relation to other northern constellations such as Ursa Minor (which the ancient Egyptians knew as 'the Jackal') and Ursa Major ('the Thigh') but also, according to the French mathematician R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, that it 'shows the pole of the ecliptic, located in the breast of the hippopotamus, or constellation of Draco'. Schwaller points out that the mythological figures at Dendera which represents the zodiacal constellations are not arranged in a single circle, as we might expect, but instead 'are entwined in two circles - one around the celestial north pole and one around the ecliptic north pole - in a noticeably off-centre spiral flow. In this way, argues Schwaller, the zodiac expresses a clear knowledge of what happens in the sky as the celestial north pole gradually precesses around the pole of the ecliptic.

A number of scholars have observed that Taweret's crocodile-hippo-lion characteristics are identical to those of Ammit, the terrible 'Eater of the Dead' who attends the weighing of the heart in the Judgment Hall of Osiris. This hybrid, confirms Dr Stephen Quirke, Curator of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, incorporates: 'the three animals of voraciousness who could be depicted in Egyptian formal art, the crocodile for the head, lion for the forepart and hippopotamus for the rear'.

To all extents and purposes, therefore, the monster of the Judgement Scene is Draco, standing for the annihilation of the soul just as Osiris stands for rebirth and resurrection. But there is a strange ambiguity, very similar to the ambiguity that we find in ancient Indian texts concering Naga serpents - which were sometimes dangerous and sometimes benevolent. Thus, although Draco in the form of Ammit was viewed by the ancient Egyptians as a voracious and unpitying destroyer, Draco in the form of Taweret was seen as a benign guide and protector of souls and as the patron of childbirth. Indeed, so strong was this more positive perception of Draco that amulets of Taweret were frequently placed in ancient Egyptian tombs so as to 'protect the rebirth of the deceased into the {Osirian}kindom of the dead'.

The sense of a subtle link between the functions of Orion-Osiris and Draco-Taweret-Ammit is enhanced by Egyptian traditions in which a crocodile is said to have swum to Osiris in the Nile (after his drowning by Set) and to have carried his corpse on 'its back safely to land'. In some accounts Osiris himself is mysteriously described as a 'great Dragon' lying on sand, while in others more closely related to the symbology of Angkor we read that the god transformed into a serpent when he passed into the Netherworld. In the Book of the Dead we are even told that Osiris, as 'Lord of the Duat', resides in a palace whose walls are 'living cobras'.

Such images transpose very well to the sky of the spring equinox in 10,500 BC - a sky that has about it the sense of a strange, heraldic device:

* At the moment of sunrise, if we look due west, our computer shows us that Aquarius has set and that 'the Fishes' - Pisces - are following.

* Due east Leo the lion is on the rise, seemingly drawing up the sun beneath him.

* Straddling the meridian due south stands the giant figure of Orion-Osiris, known in ancient India as Kal-Purush, 'Time Man', who states in the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead: 'I am time and Osiris. I have made my transformations into the likeness of divers serpents'.

* Straddling the meridian due north, facing Orion, is Draco the celestial dragon - or serpent, or crocodile or hippopotamus - the secret guardian of the ecliptic north pole.

It is easy to see how the behaviour of Orion and Draco, and thus their cosmic functions, could have come to be seen as linked by the ancients. Indeed, as scientific observations have confirmed, they are linked, by the cycle of precession, in a great cosmic see-saw which swings up and down like the pendulum of time itself. Computer simulations covering thousands of years show us that as Orion's altitude at the south meridian steadily rises Draco's altitude at the north meridian steadily falls. When Draco reaches its lowest point, Orion reaches its highest point. Then the opposite side of the cycle begins with Draco steadily rising and Orion steadily falling. The 'up' motion takes just under 13,000 years. The 'down' motion takes just under 13,000 years. And so it proceeds, up for 13,000 years, down for 13,000 years - to all extents and purposes for ever.

What is particularly intriguing is that the sky-ground plans of Angkor and Giza have succeeded in capturing the highest point in Draco's trajectory and the lowest point in Orion's - the end in other words, of one half-cycle of precession and thus the beginning of the next. This happened, we know, around the year 10,500 BC, in which epoch the ecliptic north pole lay due north of the celestial north pole at dawn on the spring equinox and the pattern of the stars in the sky was taken as the template for the pattern on the ground of the monuments of Angkor and Giza.

Since that golden age, rotated by the churn of precession, the celestial pole has travelled a full half-circuit around the pole of the ecliptic. The pendulum of Orion and Draco has likewise swung back almost as far as it can go - with Draco now at its lowest point and Orion at its highest.

As in 10,500 BC, in other words, the time-keepers of the sky, who stand at the gates of immortality, are poised to go into reverse again. Any initiate steeped in the Hermetic dictum 'as above so below' would be bound to interpret this configuration as a sign that some great change is imminent - a change that could be for the better, or greatly for the worse, depending on humanity's own choices and behaviour."

(Hancock 3)