From https://echoesinthemist.com › tag › history-of-the-zodiac history of the zodiac | Echoes in the Mist
- <<Collins points out what seem to be a number of celestial correspondences between the stone pillars and the stars, and he mentions that the Sabaeans, who were star worshippers living in the city of Harran, right near Gobekli Tepe, are known to have held an annual celebration, the Mystery of the North, during which they revered the northern direction as the source of life. These people, living around 8,000 BC were most likely the direct descendants of the people of Gobekli Tepe, who may have passed on to them their worship of the direction North.>>
From http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Gobekli_Mandaean.htm <<The City of Harran … The Bronze Age city at Harran almost certainly superseded a much earlier Neolithic settlement located on the same site. Excavations since 2005 at a nearby mound named Tell Idris (the Hill of Idris, the Arab name for both the Greek god Hermes and the patriarch Enoch) have revealed a series of occupational layers going back to the Neolithic age, c. 8000-6000 BC (Yardimci, 2008, 362-364). These are overlaid by occupational levels belonging to the Halaf culture, c. 6000-5000 BC, and the Ubaid culture, c. 5000-4100 BC, showing a continuous occupation of nearly 4,000 years. Tell Idris was the first place inhabited in the Harran district. Yet following its abandonment, the population shifted their attentions to Harran itself, which now became the main occupation site, even though it had existed in its own right since the Halaf period.2
Sabaean Star-worshippers It is extremely possible that aspects of the beliefs and practices expressed by the Göbekli builders persisted in the region and eventually found their way into the religion of the Harranites, who from the ninth century onwards were known as Sabaeans, from the Arabic saba’a, meaning “to change, to come out, to convert, to return”. Various medieval Arab writers visited Harran and wrote about the strange and highly exotic religion of the Sabaean star-worshippers, which revolved around a personification of the sun, moon and planets as angels or spirit intelligences. Their chosen qibla, or direction of prayer, was said to have been the north,3 the direction of the Pole Star, and every year the “Mystery of the North” was celebrated with a grand festival. The Harranites’ obsession with the north as the direction of the Primal Cause was something inherited by their latter day descendants the Mandaeans, who, like the Harranites, are referred to as both Sabaeans and star-worshippers. ….The Mandaeans practice a complex blend of Magian angelology, Gnostic Christianity, and Babylonian astrology involving the seven planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Like their forerunners the Harranites, the Mandaeans venerate the Pole Star, which they see as a visible manifestation of the Supreme Being, as well as the access point to the abode of the righteous, and the destination of the pious in death. Offerings are made to the north, while the dead are buried with their feet in the north and their heads in the south, so “that the north star (i.e. the Pole Star) may be in front of the eyes”, since the north is “the abode of Avather (the angel of the scales, judge of the dead and guardian of paradise) and there, too, is Olmi-Danhuro (paradise)”. That a link existed between the Harranites’ and Mandaeans’ veneration of the Pole Star and the beliefs and practices associated with the sanctuaries at Göbekli Tepe is tantalizing. This seems especially so in the knowledge that other religious groups that once thrived in the region also saw the north as the principal direction of prayer. They include the angel-worshipping Yezidi, who once thrived in SE Turkey, and the Shi’ite sect known as the Isma’ili Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa’), whose centre was at Bosra in Syria (Collins, 2006). Yet can we take the matter further?
Festival of the Pole Star The answer is yes, for I have come across a remarkable account of a new year festival conducted by the Mandaeans on the banks of the Euphrates river in the late nineteenth century that throws considerable new light on the subject. It highlights the sect’s absolute veneration of the Pole Star, which is described as “Olma d’nhoora, ‘the world of light’, Dayan-samê, ‘The Judge-of-heaven'”, and also as the “primitive sun of the Star-worshippers’ theogony, the paradise of the elect, and the abode of the pious hereafter’. Significantly, the account-published in the London Standard of 19th October, 1894 under the headline “A Prayer Meeting of the Star Worshippers”, and later included in Robert Brown’s Researches into the Origin of the Primitive Constellations of the Greeks, Phoenicians and Babylonians (Brown, 1900, 177-179)-provides a vivid picture of the construction and use of a cult hut called the “Mishkna”, referred to also as the bit manda or bit mashkna. This, as we shall see, bears striking similarities to the layout of early Neolithic cult buildings, including those at Göbekli Tepe and Çayönü, located around 160km (100 miles) north-northeast of Harran. The location of the new year festival is given as Sook-es-Shookh (modern Suq al-Shuyukh), a small township near the city of Basra in what is today southern Iraq. The date is presumably 1894, with the time of year being “late September”. I will let the narrator take up the story (with some paraphrasing from Robert Brown):‘The stars are beginning to twinkle overhead, but there is still sufficient light to note the strange white-robed figures moving stealthily about in the semi-gloom down by the river side … “Their fathers were burned,” cries our Persian guide in disgust . . . thus delicately hinting that they are not followers of Islam; and a Jew who accompanies our party, on his way to the tomb of Ezekiel, spits upon the ground, and exclaims in pure Hebrew, Obde kokhabim umazaloth’ [‘Servants of the stars and Signs of the Zodiac’]. When we first meet them the white-robed Mandaeans are in the process of completing the Mishkna, or ‘tabernacle’, which will play a crucial role in the upcoming “grand annual festival”:An oblong space is marked out, about 16 feet long and 12 feet broad by stouter reeds, which are driven firmly into the ground close together, and then tied with strong cord. To these the squares of woven reeds and wattles are securely attached forming the outer containing walls of the tabernacle. The side walls run from north to south, and are not more than 7 feet high. Two windows, or rather openings for windows, are left east and west, and space for a door is made on the southern side, so that the priest when entering the edifice has the North Star, the great object of their adoration, immediately facing him. An altar of beaten earth is raised in the centre of the reed-encircled enclosure, and the interstices of the walls well daubed with clay and soft earth, which speedily hardens. Although not made clear, the Mishkna’s two longest sides are aligned east-west (see Figs. 1, 2, 3 & 5). The windows are placed in the two narrow walls, aligned north-south. White curtains are placed over the windows, although the structure itself remains open to the sky. The Mishkna’s entrance is created midway along the southern wall, exactly like the Pre-Pottery Neolithic cult buildings. Indeed, the shape, layout and orientation of the Mishkna greatly resembles the cult buildings at Çayönü, two of which (the Terrazzo Building and Flagstone Building) also have wider east-west aligned walls with south-facing doorways (see Fig. 4). As we shall see, the express purpose of the Mishkna’s southerly placed entrance is in order for the Ganzivro, the spiritual head of the sect, to fix his gaze on the Pole Star as he enters the tabernacle. Two smaller cubicles, just big enough to hold a single person, are then constructed of reeds immediately beyond the cult hut’s south wall. One cubicle is reserved for the use of the Ganzivro, and once completed no one other than him is allowed to even touch its walls. A circular baptismal pool is also created close to the southern entrance. This is filled with water channeled directly from the river (see Fig. 1). Mandaeans arriving for the festival use the second cubicle to disrobe before plunging themselves into the baptismal pool, an act presided over by a tarmido priest who pronounces a blessing as the immersion takes place. Thereafter each person covers themselves in clean white garments, which reach almost to the ground.
As the night progresses around twenty rows of white-robed figures, all ranked in an orderly array, gather on the riverside. They sit patiently facing the Mishkna awaiting the arrival of the priests who will conduct the much anticipated ceremony. Two guards stand by the entrance:… (they) keep their eyes fixed upon the pointers of the Great Bear. As soon as these attain the position indicating midnight.’ a signal is given, and a procession of priests, including … the Ganzivro moves to the Mishkna. One ‘deacon’ ‘holds aloft the large wooden tau-cross.’ A second bears ‘the sacred scriptures of the Star-worshippers.’ A third ‘carries two live pigeons in a cage,’ and a fourth has ‘a measure of barley and of sesame seeds.’ So not only does the Pole Star feature in the ceremony, but the stars making up the Big Dipper or Plough in the constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, are watched in order to mark the moment of midnight. In many ancient cultures, the seven main stars of Ursa Major were seen as the turning mechanism of the heavens, as well as time-keeping devices for those engaged in nocturnal activities.
Returning to the account of the Mandaean new year festival, we read that:The ecclesiastics file into the Mishkna, and stand ‘to right and left, leaving the Ganzivro standing alone in the centre, in front of the earthen altar facing the North Star, Polaris. The sacred book Sidra Rabba is laid upon the altar folded back where the liturgy of the living is divided from the ritual of the dead. The high priest takes a live pigeon, ‘extends his hands towards the Polar Star, upon which he fixes his eyes, and lets the bird fly, calling aloud, “In the name of the living one, blessed be the primitive light, the ancient light, the Divinity self-created.”‘ Here the Ganzivro approaches the Mishkna’s earthen altar after entering the structure from the south. Once again this brings to mind the layout of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic structures of southeast Turkey, whose own southerly placed entrances perhaps played a similar role, enabling the priest or shaman to face an object of veneration in the northern night sky. The centrally positioned altar in the Mishkna takes the place of the twin central pillars seen in the principal enclosures at Göbekli Tepe, and the twin standing stones erected side-by-side at the centre of two of the cult buildings at Çayönü (the Flagstone Building and Skull Building). The Mishkna has no roof and remains open to the sky in order for the Ganzivro to gaze upon the Pole Star. Yet whether or not the early Neolithic sanctuaries at places like Göbekli Tepe and Çayönü possessed roofs remains a matter of debate. From the marks, cuts and grooves on the top of certain pillars in Göbekli’s Enclosure C (See Fig. 6) this does seem likely, although perhaps a roof was used either partially or at certain times of the year.
Soul Birds and Excarnation ….Excarnation is known to have been important to early Neolithic communities in central and eastern Anatolia, and is even depicted on the walls at Çatal Höyük, the 9,000-year-old Neolithic city on the Konya plain in southern central Turkey. In this manner, the vulture, and thus the bird in general, became the primary symbol of the soul’s journey to the spirit world. In the knowledge that the Mandaeans themselves once exposed their dead to carrion birds (Drower, 1937, 184-5, 200), could the pigeon or dove have replaced more unsightly birds such as the vulture and raven as symbols of the soul’s flight into the next world? Continuing the account, we read next that:The worshippers without, on hearing these words, ‘rise and prostrate themselves upon the ground towards the North Star, on which they have silently been gazing.’ ‘The Ganzivro, who has made a complete renunciation of the world, and is regarded as one dead and in the realms of the blessed.’ after the celebration of a kind of communion in which small cakes, sprinkled with the blood of the second pigeon are partaken of, recites a further service, ‘ever directing his prayers towards the North Star, on which the gaze of the worshippers outside continues fixed throughout the whole of the ceremonial observances.’>>
From https://earthsky.org/?p=3297&fbclid=IwAR10LQoareSQTK-uw8ho22DxwQtoQEmDX2Nbr5uE1evdJUHljQxIukh4aFc <<Tonight, if you have a dark sky, you’ll be able to pick out the constellation Draco the Dragon winding around the North Star, Polaris. The image at the top of this post shows Draco as depicted in an old star atlas by Johannes Hevelius in 1690. See the circle? That circle indicates the changing position of the north celestial pole over a cycle of 26,000 years.
From Tau Herculis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Herculis <<Tau Herculis is located within 1° of the precessional path traced across the celestial sphere by the Earth’s North pole.
It could have served the northern pole star around the year 7400 BCE, a phenomenon which is expected to reoccur in the year 18,400 due to precession.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/pole-star-help.130807/ I was stuck on Vega, because I can find references to it being the Pole Star between 13,000 BC and 11,000 BC.
Tartaria tablets 
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