The Great Year of the World – Sacred Geometry, Cosmic Cycles and Catastrophe

“A cosmic tempo based on Sacred Geometry, encoded in myth & mystical architecture throughout the Earth governs the unfolding of world ages, the rise and fall of civilizations & is ultimately the very basis of apocalyptic prophecy” – Randall Carlson

When I was commencing my studies of geometry in the early 1970s, one of the first books which I consulted was a ragged copy of a self-instruction text entitled Geometry for the Practical Man, first published in 1934. To this day it is still one of my favorites. It has been re-issued multiple times, and, incidentally, is now entitled Geometry for the Practical Person. Anyway, in the introductory material about the history of geometry, the author, J. E. Thompson, had this to say:

“Most of the ancient records show that definite methods and knowledge of measurement arose in connection with land measurement, building and astrology…the forerunner of astronomy. In this connection the Babylonians supposed that the heavens revolved around the earth and that the year consisted of 360 days. This led them to divide the circle into 360 parts and thus probably originated the present degree system of angle measure.” [1]

It was also around this time that I was assiduously studying a variety of sacred traditions, stimulated by a conviction that there was an underlying unity to the world’s systems of spiritual belief. In the ensuing years this conviction, in spite of obvious dissimilarities in outer forms, has been more than amply confirmed to my satisfaction in a general philosophical sense. However, while pursuing these studies I serendipitously encountered a number of details from widely disparate traditions that seemed to specifically confirm a commonality of source, or of experience, at a very fundamental level. As a youth I had loved reading mythology, so was already somewhat familiar with certain ideas that were later to exert a potent influence upon my thinking. One of these ideas was the Greek tradition of four world ages, represented as the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Associated with this concept of world ages was the idea of a decline of humankind from an exalted status in the Golden Age to an increasingly degraded condition through successive ages. As I became more knowledgeable regarding other traditions I realized how extensive were the parallels to this Greek idea.

In the Book of the Hopi, published in 1963, which purported to be the first revelation of the Hopi Indians religious and world views to the public at large, the author, Frank Waters describes their tradition of world ages which are strikingly similar to Greek ideas, with the addition of noteworthy details. As with the Greeks there are described four world ages of declining virtue, but in addition, there are included descriptions of the phenomenon accompanying the transition from one world age to the next. The first world is destroyed by a great conflagration and the survivors of this world do so by taking refuge underground. The second world is destroyed by an event that has all the characteristics of a shift of the Earth’s polar axis, followed by a brutal ice age. The third world comes to an end with the onset of a colossal flood, from which the virtuous people survive by building vessels out of reeds. After the cessation of the deluge the survivors migrate and multiply to repopulate what becomes the present, or fourth world.

The Hopi revelations parallel those of the Mayan and the Aztecs. The Aztecs represent each world age by a Sun, supposing that with each transition the reigning Sun is extinguished to be replaced by a new one.  The Aztecs, who most likely inherited their traditions from the Mayans, describe four world ages prior to the current one, which would make this the fifth age, or fifth Sun.  As with the Hopis each world age is terminated by a great catastrophe: The first world, which was a world of giants, was devoured by Jaguars; the second world succumbed to a mighty hurricane; the third world was reduced to ashes by a rain of fire from the sky; the fourth world was drowned in a mighty deluge, which it is said, was so powerful it washed away mountains and brought down the sky.

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