According to Prof. Joscelyn Godwin (Arktos: The Polar Myth) the ancient histories of all the major nations and religions—as told through religious seers, wise men, poet-visionaries, shamanic storytellers, and priestly star-gazers—record a time on Earth when the several races of mankind lived in a temperate arctic paradise at what is now the North Pole. These accounts tell us that in pre-history, in an antediluvian time, the North Pole was surrounded by arctic continents; the Imperishable Sacred Land, the first continent; and somewhat farther south was the second continent, the so-called Hyperborean.
What Prof. Godwin calls the ÒPolar MythÓ is the name for an ancient tradition of esoteric knowledge, past down from generation to generation, that spoke of a geographically real Golden-Age arctic paradise situated in a perpetually temperate North Pole of eternal spring (c. 62,000-36,880 BCE). Prof. Godwin reports that numerous authorities on the subject claim that in primordial times the Earth was not tilted, but spun perfectly upright with its equator in the same plane as the ecliptic; its axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit around the sun. They also maintain that because of this the Earth then orbited the sun in exactly 360 days. Under these circumstances, there would be no seasons, and vegetation would provide food all year round. This would amount to a time of perpetual spring of equal days and nights, like on our present spring and autumn equinoxes.
Therefore, the author concludes
(from the writings of a host of occultists, scholars, and scientists) that the
Greek legend of Hyberborea and the Hebrew myth of Eden are geologically true.
But this Golden Age arctic paradise comes to an end with the cosmic event of a
pole shift that tilted the earthÕs axis and devolved to a Silver Age (36,000-17,440
BCE), when the Hyperborean culture was forced to leave their ÒGarden of
the HesperidesÓ at the North Pole and disperse
southward into Asia and Europe. It was these Hyperboreans, reputed to be a blessed, long-lived race free
of war, hard toil, and the ravages of old age, who supposedly have left
evidence of their once happy existence in the fossil flora and fauna of the
Arctic Circle. This alteration of the ÒPrimordial
tradition of HyperboreaÓ marked a change in cosmic orientation; that is, a
change from a polar to a solar cosmology, which in turn brings in the precession of equinoxes and the seasons
and establishes the sun-based zodiac. Before this, there is no movement and tracking of the sun at the North Pole;
the need only arises as the original peoples migrated from north to south.
With the coming of the zodiac, the Egyptians had discovered the precession of equinoxes. The Egyptian Dendera zodiac gives evidence of that the procession of equinoxes was known to the ancient Egyptians thousands of years before the Greek astronomer, Hipparchus, who is credited with the discovery somewhere around 146-130 BCE. From this Egyptian sky-chart can be seen early astronomical representations of the awareness of the cosmic phenomenon of procession through the ages.
From here, humankind begins reading the sky story in the constellations and
their stars, particularly the North Star. Priestly star-gazers (proto-astronomers),
mapped the heavens, tracked the cosmic ages by the signs of the zodiac, storytelling about gods and
constellations that symbolically depict a great astro-cosmological mystery. These
celestial luminaries represented a coded story about humankindÕs reflection in
the zodiac. (This later became an elaborate system of esoteric knowledge oriented
around the northern constellations, like the Great and Little Bears.) Hence a cosmic story, from the Egyptians to the Sumerians
to the Greeks, begins to take shape through the constellations,
especially in the constellation of the Great Bear, or ÒArthurÕs Chariot.Ó (We
should also remember that the Great Bear, or Ursa Major, is the constellation
in the region of the north celestial pole near Draco and Leo, containing the
seven stars that form the Big Dipper. The two stars at the front of the bowl of
the dipper are called pointers, because a line joining them points to Polaris,
the North Star. Ursa Minor or the Little
Bear is well known for being the host of Polaris, the North Star.).
With the Egyptians, this cosmic
sky story not only encodes the discovery of the procession of equinoxes but also gives hints of a pre-processional
lost Golden Age and paradise at the North Pole, oriented by the Pole Star. This
astral storytelling features a lion-man,
a king, a giant, and even a knight or warrior in the cosmic battle of light
versus darkness.