PRESENTATION OF 

"THE SHORT-LIVED AND THE EVERLASTING"
THE SUPREME REGULARITY OF RHYTHMS IN UNIVERSAL HISTORY

by
JEAN BRUYAS
Professor emeritus at the University of Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne

EDITIONS L’HARMATTAN, 2004
ISBN : 2-7475-5592-5
274 pages, 23  €

http://www.rythmeshistoire.fr

At the end of the 20th century, a prevailing fact is the boom of sciences and technologies, unequalled in the past. Each day, discoveries are made in an increasing variety of areas, from Physics to Chemistry, from Medicine to Biology, from Cosmology to Computer Science …

It is a major fact, as everybody realises, which has had a huge impact on our human lives. Yet, beyond this fact, there is an enigma which will become more and more vital to us, as the life of ever-increasing number of people becomes so difficult that a total regeneration of thought shall be necessary, as at the beginning of the Christian era. So what is this ENIGMA?

The world, as we said – or the “Universe” if you prefer – is at its highest “coherent” level… The hundreds of different branches of scientific knowledge do not contradict each other. If they do not seem to us to be harmonious, our educated contemporaries spontaneously assume our knowledge,… or at least some of it … to still be insufficient. Better yet: we are convinced, at present, that in science, the results cannot contradict each other … if, sometimes, they seem to do so, we must undertake new research, like Einstein, until we are able to explain how, in truth, the results are harmonious.
We would not let men be sent into the infinity of space if we were not convinced that, except for extremely rare accidents, much rarer than those on roads full of holiday traffic, they would come back to us, safe and sound.
So what does this Great Enigma consist of?
Our superior research tool, whose efficiency is demonstrated to every one of us, each day, through so much scientific progress, is rational reasoning. This was identified and taught to the western world by Socrates and his pupils and notoriously Aristotle, as an ensemble of closely-intertwined terms and precepts which enable, by putting them to use, to reach certain conclusions: indeed, they lead to observations which are definitely true for us, as they are and appear as being always verifiable. New analyses (the results of which shall in turn be shown as verified and always verifiable) shall enable to further widen the scope of knowledge. This is the key to our immense scientific progress, and to the conviction, which is now common, that science is true. 

For several centuries, “philosophers” have attempted, from the most general reflections, to progress towards increasingly encompassing syntheses. They have prepared various doctrines which have managed to convince a certain number of followers. But none, from generation to generation, have managed to obtain the reasoned adherence of all men, as science has done.
There are even a certain number of problems for which science itself has not managed to obtain results: it, too, seems to have failed in such matters. However, within these problems, there are some that have not ceased, since the beginning of time, to be considered by many as fundamentally essential.
How are we convinced of our existence and of our wish to keep it? What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What shall we become? What is life in society? How do we harmonise it? These problems concern the destiny of us all… Which person has never asked himself such questions? Several have wanted to solve them, and are aggrieved as they realise that their rational thought cannot provide an answer.
The great enigma remains: we can master surprisingly well innumerable complexities, but when we attempt to return towards these fundamental questions, our rational thought becomes muddled or blocked.
How can we accept that such thought suddenly falls silent when faced with the major interrogations of our life?
How does such a powerful strength – reason – on which we depend with all our conviction to guide us towards the truth, cease to speak, suddenly, when we raise problems which affect us so deeply?
It is with the hope of meditating further on this great ENIGMA, that we have undertaken this pilgrimage.
***

Five thousand years of History … since the invention of written accounts … have been gradually revealed by the admirable archaeological efforts of half a century. Today, they present us with enlightening evidence: the order that reigned over the course of lived time and which governs, in all areas, the evolution of our societies, is no less structural or majestic than that which governs innumerable worlds, throughout the immensities of space. It must be demonstrated as expressed in figures, in quantifiable elements, thus meeting the strictest rational demands for proof. Laws exist for a duration that man can conceive, and are not less coordinated than those of physical science.  These laws are shown by a rhythmical undulating pattern: being aware of this may enable us to shed great light on the evolution of the future centuries. However, establishing these laws can also reflect our most current affairs, as a forerunner of the freedom of thought that we must undertake. Indeed, the certainty of their existence frees us from the two premises which imprisoned us and which now stifle us:
The premise which attempts, in the name of rationalism or so-called “existentialism”, by claiming an ill-defined humanism, to convince us that the freedom of man makes the future radically unpredictable and that we are therefore compelled to move forward in obscurity.
The premise which attempts, in the name of determinism or historical materialism, by claiming an ill-digested science, to convince us that time, as any other phenomenon, is subject to the physical laws of space – those which govern the matter – and that, therefore, freedom can only be an illusion or a lie for man’s self-interest.

***

“Remember constantly that all events that occur today, occurred in a similar way in the past, and remember that they will reoccur in the future” Marcus Aurelius: Meditations Book X – 27. Knowledge of the laws of regular spiralling growth (see diagram 1) enables us to shed great light on the present time and to enter clearly into the depths of the future. But this knowledge bears other fruit … Indeed, its nature is to use time itself and the diverse multitude of events, to escape from the ephemeral, to go towards the essential, the coherent, the eternal. Each event in lived time, apparently fleeting as all physical phenomena, is a precise moment in “duration”: a Sign, that is the revelation of an aspect of the Whole, which, by such, becomes partially known. And it is only through all of the Signs that the truth may be fully accessible to man.

Throughout the course of the centuries, there are innumerable stages to our analysis; and yet we must still discover them, and catalogue them in order to understand how we can link them together profitably … in order to enrich our vision of human destiny. Going back to the keystone that commands global unity, that guarantees and assumes the structure as a whole: that is what our desire to know longs for, in the dark depths of its subconscious … The time has come to show it the way.
History, when quantified, becomes human science: Leonardo da Vinci notes that: “No human investigation can call itself true science, if it does not meet with mathematical demonstrations”. The centuries are punctuated by the great months of the “Great Year” of 25,920 years. A new thought, destined to all peoples of the earth, will be able to form in the ground prepared by the illusions of our industrial societies: constantly nourished by the rapidly increasing decomposition of what has been, over the centuries, for the western world, its prestigious heritage and glowing culture. Better still than Science, quantified History can inspire Wisdom. Our technology provides us, over the centuries, with the means to greatly increase our wealth and our power on nature, and to create an urbanisation without precedent in all continents. But such technology will never satisfy either our need for coherence or our need for love. It is therefore not capable, in itself, of giving a meaning to life. There is no greater pleasure than in certainty, but we cannot acquire such certainty if we are unaware of the presence of the Universe around us … and also of what we are as men. The first two steps required, so that the “Civilisation Crisis” may become an act of conscience and a new departure, are to discover the imperious rhythms of History which surround our destiny, and to know ourselves, according to the precept of the Ancient Greeks.
***

In History, six large Groups, have managed to be fulfilled by their destiny. We shall call them the “Historical Megalopolis” (see diagram 2). Between them, they have three characteristics in common:
*They have all drawn up written accounts without which they would not have been able to become adult; - as each human being who has reached old age, they have regularly gone through – and they alone – all ages of life.
* As large cultures, they have become “communities”, “civitas” in Latin, and have finally culminated in large “towns”. The three most ancient civilisations – the grandmothers – Egypt, Mesopotamia (= Babylon) and Indus (oldest civilisation in India formed in what is now Pakistan)… heeded the Greco-roman and Chinese civilisations… the mothers – and finally the modern civilisation, the traditionally so-called western civilisation.
*The zodiacal succession of 25,920 years sees the earth, within our constellation, take the same place in our heaven. Inside this cycle, each of the six civilisations is recorded in a period of a long month: 25,920 / 12 = 2160 years. After centuries of growth culminating in brilliance, each of the six civilisations fell into decline.
All of these cultures have followed the same path.  The analysis shows how, at extremely regular intervals, all the stages of their evolution are checked, from birth to death. Although our knowledge remains incomplete for the three most ancient civilisations, the stages of evolution can be checked for the others, in all areas; in the same way as all human beings, whoever they are, go through, with very few variants, the same ages of life. These phenomena are so regular in their dates that it cannot be a simple coincidence. It is therefore extremely interesting to demonstrate the mechanisms of this, to shed light on its reasons, and, hence, to understand History as a vast laboratory of human elaboration and actions.

***

Our sciences may only exist because the Universe respects permanents laws and a unique order. Kepler (1571-1630) set forth the laws of the solar system, and Newton (1642 – 1727) those of universal gravitation, then Einstein (1879 – 1955) came to the conclusions of the law of relativity. These laws show the matter as a source of energy: the spatial Energy that commands the movements of all physical bodies (that is composed of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen or other elements), whether they be inanimate bodies (such as a mineral), animate (animal, plant) or that of a human being.
However, experience reveals two other “dimensions” of man’s being, to which two other forms of Energy relate:
* psyche source of all of our discoveries and inventions
* lived time, “duration”, as Bergson called it, that is radically distinct from physical time (the two must never be confused between, as we shall prove).
The ability to think, precisely and clearly (concrete or abstract), and to link such thoughts closely, has created rules of “logic”. This psychic facility, highlighted by Socrates (470 – 399 A.D.), and clarified by his pupils and followers, can only be found – out of the millions of living creatures known to us – in mankind. This simple fact forbids us from thinking – as several, even reputed, “intellectuals” do so still each day! – that the human race is nothing more than yet another unspecified line of living creatures lost among the billions of individuals of the innumerable species observed.
In the two areas of life and the psyche, there are still several doctrines that teach that freedom and unpredictability reign, and that there cannot be any strict rules or true “science” surrounding them. On the contrary, Marxism materialism underlines that in these areas, events are determined by laws, and that these laws are the same as those studied by our physical sciences, that is the laws of the physical world, of the spatial Universe. This ignores the original characteristics, in relation to space, of lived time (or “duration”) as identified by Henri Bergson.

***

At the dawn of the 20th century, man’s fundamental vision of the world experienced two major events, forerunners of an extraordinary transformation.  Space and time had been previously conceived, in the style of Aristotle, as abstract notions known to man. Kant defines them as two “a priori facts of the conscience, fundamental realities, objects of thought, conceived by man as the starting blocks required for any reflection, and essential to his mind; themselves the foundations of knowledge that man should identify and admit, from which a clear and firm vision may and should take off.
A major turning point of scientific conceptions, after the discoveries of Henri Becquerel, and the couple Pierre and Marie Curie (1898), was that space came to be presented, no longer as an abstract concept, but as a fundamental source of energy that we now call atomic or nuclear.
At the same period, the philosophical work of Henri Bergson aimed at removing a confusion that is unfortunately still present in certain minds… between the physical time, known and punctuated by the visible course of the stars… and the lived duration. In actual fact, teachers barely dare to enlighten young people on this subject. For the founders of our sciences, the word “time” had been very closely united with the extent of the world … “Spatialised time”, broken down in the same way as space, used the measures applied to space according to the various peoples, and, practically speaking, referred to the decimal system in the western world: decades, centuries, millenniums. 
Bergson discovered and taught the original characteristics of time in relation to space.  In order to describe these specific characteristics, he liked to use the words “duration” or “lived time” …
His analyses showed that the traditional concepts of space and time, conceived as two different but closely linked realities, could no longer be used.  Duration is an autonomous and independent reality which should not be confused with a dimension of space… and this has challenged the bases of “philosophy” taught over the last centuries.
The notion of “spatialised time”, a creation of the human mind, which was of such a large importance in discussions on space, could not be applied to the realities of lived duration, as the latter completely rejected the application of such notion.
Fabre d’Eglantine and the French Revolution claimed to set up a decimal calendar, which was bestowed with wonderful names of months.  However, these were only remembered for referring to the major turning points of this period (…9 Thermidor… 18 Brumaire). This practice of identifying time and space in calculations was particularly attractive for man: it satisfied his feeling of having unified the Universe rationally, that is by logical deductions only. Thus, man believed himself to be glorified, as it was his mind that had fashioned this immense harmony of the world … It was, however, simply an illusion, and this calendar was soon to be abandoned …

***

It is worth specifying here that the mind itself – in any case, the “understanding” to coin Kant’s term and the power to understand – cannot be identified with the two “a priori facts” that are space and time. Its originality is expressed by several features.
Its dimension cannot be measured.
Linked, at first, to duration, and essential in the years from youth to maturity, it is not bound to it. It can, at any time, go back along the course of its memories; it can, at any time, move from one thought to another completely different one: personal emotions, scientific reflections and calculations; memorisation of different periods or places … It can also accomplish leaps in thought, as was the case for great religious, scientific, technical and other discoveries … which were often the work of one person alone or a few people. The three aspects of the psychic human being – psyche, duration, space – are thus distinctly separated in all situations.
Man is capable of developing a creative activity that no other being belonging to another living species can do.
Man is blessed – and he alone in the earthly world as we know it – with reason, that is with this powerful intellectual capacity which has enabled him to accomplish marvels. But Socrates and his followers had established that the creative work of reason can only progress by the elaboration and combination of concepts, that is of defined and precise ideas, which means clearly distinct.
The Greek thinkers had again shown that concepts may be linked to each other, according to strict rules: those of logic, discovered and taught by Aristotle and his followers.
To define himself, Yahweh, the Eternal of the Hebrews, said to Moses: “I am”. He was not a concept that could be taken into consideration in the chain of logical reasoning. He “Existed”, as all men, in possession of such powers, are conscious of existing.
The fact that a being exists does not imply that he has conceptual capacities: animals are devoid of such devices. On the contrary, the fact of possessing conceptual capacities necessarily implies that we exist. Saint Augustine established this (“On the Trinity” XV – XII 21; “On the City of God” XI – XXVI). Descartes set it out in more concise terms: “I think, therefore I am”.
Once again, the Greeks (in particular Plato in the “Parmenides”) had shown that our rational thought cannot go back to the unity of the Being by global synthesis: the quest of our thought in the direction of the One, never narrows down to less than three manifestations. Christianity called them “persons”, an expression which refers to the most complete beings known to us, the only ones blessed in particular with rational capacities. It referred to them by terms understood by all men: the Father, the Son. Finally, the Spirit: an expression already familiar in the very ancient human cultures, which all know and praise “Spirits”.
Christianity has always attempted to remain faithful, in principle, to this trinity vision of the world. However, at present, it ceases, in current thought, to successfully reject, as its great Doctors had done previously, the dualism that the “Manichaeism” had precisely, yet vainly wanted to promote. Too often, we are given to affirm that man is composed of a body (physical) and a soul (spiritual), by semantic contraction between animus (the spirit) and anima (the duration). In such affirmation, thought has lacked solidity in its reflection, and courage in its criticism of the main errors of the modern era, by accepting to sidestep this essential issue with the basic doctrine: thus, man was presented as “one in two” and no longer as “one in three”, “in the image and after the likeness of God” (Genesis Chapter I, verse 26).
The specific characteristics of “lived duration” enable to clearly distinguish it both from space and from spatialised time, and to specify it in its own principles.
Spatialised time can be counted “in both ways”: t + 1, t + 2… but also t – 1, t – 2.  It makes very efficient use of the “decimal system” (France: metric system 1795).
As for duration, it always runs from the present towards the future: it never goes back on itself. If I navigate in a very fast machine, I will be able to see the sun “going back on its course” … but I will continue to grow older. Decimal spatialised time, which is so useful in calculations regarding spatial realities, is inapplicable to duration. We can even say that its application to lived time has largely contributed to obscuring, in the extreme, our idea of it.
Lived duration, an organic reality, is a matter for the duodecimal calculation on the basis of 12 (2 x 6).
The numbers 2 and 6 are the two fundamental bases of a gyratory movement. The 2 because the mobile part of such a movement leaves the departure point to go towards the opposite “pole”; then it comes back to regain the original pole. The 6 because the radius, whatever the length chosen for drawing the circle, will always divide the circumference into 6 equal parts.
To a wider extent, duration takes place within the “zodiacal year” (25,920 / 12 = 2160; 2160 / 12 = 180 …).
In practical terms, the western culture has divided the year into 12 months: the dial of a watch into 12 hours; an hour into twelve periods of 5 minutes; a minute into 12 periods of 5 seconds … The “great year” is divided into 12 periods of 2160 years … (i.e. 25,920 years in all)…
The moments of the spatialised time used for physical Sciences are conceived linearly and with egalitarianism: the moments of lived time are cumulative with those that come before them. Finally, the moments of lived time are separated by rhythms that are beyond man’s control, as the beatings of the heart or the lungs; times of cell renewal … ; and, in the same way, in the societies called upon to reach maturity (the Historical Megalopolis), the “great Seasons of History”.
It is therefore vital to reveal the existence of these regular rhythms of lived time which punctuate social life, and in particular by showing the periods of History.
As the six Historical Megalopolis had all drawn up written accounts, they were able, later, to develop abstract thought in general (mathematical, physical, philosophical …). All of these cultures then went through the same stages. The analysis shows how they follow each other, at extremely regular intervals, constructed by the astronomical rhythms set out above. These parallelisms in their evolution shall be shown. They are compared in all areas: political, economical, literary, philosophical … and also in architecture, sciences and technology …
Over longer periods of time, great developments have left their mark, by periods of 2160 years, on the progress of mankind in moving from a more general meditation to researching the meaning of life. At each stage, progress is made towards the concentration of linking thought, generally known as “religious”. The polytheism of the ancient historical cultures (at most around twelve gods) followed animism (the cult of thousands of spirits, still venerated in deepest Black Africa, today).
Abraham spoke of a Unique Being excluding the existence of any other god, that is a being who guarantees universal coherence.
Socrates (five centuries before the Christian era) founded rational philosophy. On the premise of the thought of Jesus, Christianity taught at the time of Justin Martyr, Clément d’Alexandrie and Augustine (2nd – 4th century of our era) the very scholarly, and rigorously structured doctrines that gathered together the intellectual progress already accomplished by man in his reflection on the Universe.
The rhythms of duration – that is of lived time – are just as clear, general, coordinated as those which, in space, govern the movements of the celestial bodies and which were highlighted by Kepler and Newton. They are not, however, like these in a mechanical way, but in an organic way, like biorhythms which are common to members of a same living race: although very regular as a whole, they allow, however, for room for variation.

***

A historical period of some 5000 years since the creation of written accounts (“History”) is obviously only a very small part of the past. But the rigorous demonstration of the fact that there are actually rhythms is, in itself, of major importance. It means that lived time, a fundamental reality of the living world, is subject, as space, to rules, to laws which may also be the subject of rational studies and scientific and assessed predictions. But these laws are specific to such notion; they are therefore, also, alongside the physical laws that apply to space, the first distinctive data that defines and surrounds the human condition.

Once this first step is taken, other research may enable to generalise reasoning – as Newton or Einstein did for space – and to define the larger rhythms, according to which, beyond the brief historical period, temporal Energy was and is carried out, throughout the immense duration represented by the Prehistory of men, and even further beyond that, the evolution of life throughout the Universe. No doubt it will become conceivable, afterwards, to discover the rates – known as “tempo” in Italian – of such rhythms, and then to analyse the fundamental structures of the Universe, of which man himself is an integral part, in its three elements (physical body, lived duration, psyche): it will be worth noting which aspects appear to be unalterable in these rates, and which can evolve, according to the rules to be discovered with the rigour of rational thought. 

If these views are accurate, the “scientific” effort shall cease to be allocated solely to one of the three areas – spatiality– which is, in sum, the most external, least significant, aspect of our individual destiny.
The fact that, over almost two centuries, the study of the phenomena of spatiality (physical and chemical sciences) has increasingly taken over – and almost, sometimes, monopolised the efforts of human global thought to the extent of precisely claiming to apply the same methods to realities which are not concerned by space – is a major cause of the great weakening of thought.

At a time when a system of relations, on a worldwide scale, is being built, two questions dominate the major problems of the destiny of our race. They shall dominate both History and Philosophy:
- What is man? – What is the Universe?
The most intelligent mind amongst the Christian Doctors of the early Middle Ages, Saint Augustine (354-430), taking on the deep meditations of the Greek thinkers, both ancient and Christian, attempted, in his various works, to shed light on the definition of “man” achieved by Christianity, when its founding thought was at its utmost.

“Homo creatura rationalis est in qua conjuncti sunt anima et corpus”. Man is a reasonable creature in which life “anima” (lived duration) and a physical body “corpus” (presence in the spatial reality) are joined: such are the three fundamental facts making up man.
The psyche is the spiritual reality in all its splendour: reason, volition, love, but the aim of these definitions was not to describe the animus in all its aspects. Augustine wanted to specify, as clearly and as accurately as possible, what man is amongst all living creatures. 
Reasonable, that is blessed with reason (ratio) and more generally with psyche (animus), implies the clear and accurate ability of formulating concepts and combining them according to rules of logic.  This ability is specific to man. 
Life, a constant flow of lived time, is, however, a reality that is common to all living creatures and which ceases with death: it is this organic reality “anima” which is only present in duration.

The physical body “corpus” expresses the fact that man is also “physical”. As each of the other living creatures – animals as micro-organisms – and minerals, he takes up, at all times, a part of space, and is composed of the basic chemical elements, set out in Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table of Elements.
Man in our century commonly asserts his concern of being linked only to certain and scientific realities …, but this area, which seemed rather precise in the past, broadens from year to year until infinity and we run the risk of drowning ourselves in it. We will think that we are escaping from a sensation of losing control, by specifying that only the physical realities are true, which is understood as able to be situated in space … This conception of things often predominates today. Our race is already starting to sink into it, and would get bogged down in the future in such a one-dimensional vision: that of a man who only thinks of himself – and admires himself – through the physical and chemical progresses made, that is those that can be situated in space.
Man is born and lives within the Universe: a group of external appearances and manifestations, that he knows by feelings, then by his reflections, which interpret the evidence of his senses.
This Universe is revealed, at the highest level, as a coordinated whole: it is coherent. If it were not coherent, “science” could not exist, as no rigorous reasoning, inductive or deductive, would be conceivable.
But rational thought cannot – as we would so often like – go back, by logical demonstration, to the actual source of this cohesion. This depends on the specific mechanisms of intellectual knowledge which can only pass from clear idea to clear ideas (or as we say in philosophy, from “concept” to “concepts”). In fact, we realise that we may hope, at best, to narrow our syntheses down to three.
Plato, in the line of his master Socrates’ precept “Know thyself”, had raised three aspects in the human being:
- desire, an ensemble of physical appetites (“epithumia”) that he places in the entrails and which goes no further than speculation;
- courage which pushes us to action (this “thumos”) that he places in the chest and which enables us to come to an opinion;
- intelligence (this “noûs”) which he locates in the head and which provides us with ideas. 

Kant acknowledged that the “understanding”, or man’s ability to know and understand the realities in and around him, stumbles against two a priori “facts”: facts that are imperative to him: the “space” around us and the “time” which is the constant flow of lived reality. Both of these facts are essential for us, but it is impossible to incorporate them by logical reasoning in all of our life experiences.
The highest biblical wisdom taught that Man was created “in the image and after the likeness of God” (Genesis Chapter I verse 26). We have seen that the Christian fundamental dogma has always distinguished between three persons within the Unique … thus preventing any dualism. If man is defined dualistically, he ceases to be “in the image and after the likeness of the Being”. By increasing the rigorous effort of his thought to the two extra-spatial realities of duration (of life) and the psyche (of the spirit), man could leave the current one-dimensional perspective towards which he tends constantly, and no longer think of himself – or admire himself – solely through the physical progress achieved (those that are accomplished in space).
Thus, he will be more capable, by a structural knowledge of the whole of human reality, to rediscover, far from all the nihilistic tendencies which have become so meaningful, all of the laws of his well-being, in order to prepare for the future accomplishments of his race, with enthusiasm and pleasure.

A renovated vision of the world will be capable of providing great light to young generations by introducing them to essential realities of which no-one speaks.
The destinies of the six “Historical Megalopolis” crossed several comparable stages, at surprisingly rigorous intervals, which shall give the study of our own destiny elements of comparison, which are all too often ignored.
1980 hailed the height of urban development of current “industrialised society”, its zenith, which is now starting to experience its very first declines, whereas it must still accomplish a long period, of around five centuries.
1980 was also the time when the vision of the world, inherited from former centuries, was suddenly considered as too rigid, and sadly insufficient to meet man’s requirements adequately.
It was therefore appropriate to explain to new generations, particularly in the United States of America, where the calendar is so closely parallel to that of Rome, that the great enthusiasm of modern thought regarding sciences and technology, was going to have to broaden its scope of action, to head towards higher levels where a very significant civilisation will be found, and which will experience, as in the time of Augustus, the richness of the works of the spirit. Virgil, who died nineteen years before our era, hailed these new times, in a lyrical way – in his IV Eclogue –:
“Ultima cumaei venit jam carminis aetas
Magnus ab integro sqeclorum nascit ur ordo 
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.
Jam nova progenies cqelo demittitur alto.
… et incipient magni procedere menses”.
Now is come the “last age” announced by Cumaen prophecy, the majestic roll of centuries “begins a new”.  Now, said the poem, the Virgin returns from the high heaven (in precisely the years in which the “vernal point” enters Pisces), the “reign of Saturn” – that is of Chronos, time, “chronology” – returns. A new generation is already descending from the highest heavens, and the twelve great months – those of the zodiacal year – enter on their mighty march”.

*

Whereas Jesus’ message increasingly affirmed its ethical and political importance, “Christianity” received, by decision of the Emperor Constantine (Edict of Milan 313), legal, then privileged, and finally official Status.
Thus Virgil’s poem appeared to men of culture, and later to numerous subjects of the Empire as a sign of a turning point in History, and beyond that as the prophetic announcement of the entry into a new Era, the gradually so-called Christian Era. In the 13th century, it is as a prophet that Virgil’s statue is placed on the façade of Chartres Cathedral.
Dante (1265-1321) imagining going through the circles that lead from the hell of the world to the supreme fullness of heaven, thought naturally of Virgil in order to find the way forward.
“Tu duca, tu segnore et tu maestro”.
“You my guide, you my saviour, you my master” (Hell, Canto II v. 140).
Presently, a new “great month” shall begin, when the vernal point shall enter “Aquarius”.
This is traditionally symbolised by Ganymede as “cupbearer to the gods” who pours, without ever drying up, the fertilising water, essential for the development of life, a virtually inexhaustible source of Energy … prefiguring the new time, but on condition that man respects the “great order”, both in space (physics, chemistry, electronics…) but also in duration, through the progression of the millenniums, and finally for man in his psychic development and spiritual fulfilment – the True, the Good, the Beautiful.

***