The Golden Age of the North Pole and the Fall Of Man

The Golden Age of the North Pole and the Fall Of Man

The effect of ‘outside’ forces on nature and humanity is undeniably real. The Moon controls the tides as well as women’s menstrual cycles, for example. Could the ancient tilting of the Earth’s axis — which subsequently created the seasonal cycles — have initiated an ‘imbalance’ in human psychology and physiology as well?

“As one can see from the simplest globe, the earth does not sit erect in its orbit around the sun, but tilts at an awkward angle of about 23.5 degrees from the perpendicular. Yet there is an oft-repeated story that our planet’s situation was once far different; that it was a catastrophe that brought about its present state, and that some day it will be reinstated in the geometrical perfection of its origin. Whether literally or only symbolically true, this aspect of the polar archetype constellates the mythology of Fall and Redemption, Lost Eden and New Jerusalem. Its branches link with the ideas of cyclical development, evolutionary change, and every other effort to make sense of the course of history and prehistory.

Numerous authorities assure us that in primordial times the earth was not tilted, but spun perfectly upright with its equator in the same plane as the ecliptic; or, which comes to the same thing, with its axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit around the sun. They add, moreover, that the earth then orbited the sun in exactly 360 days. Under these circumstances there would be no seasons of summer or winter, spring or fall; all days would be alike. Near the equator, the climate would always be hot; near the poles, always cold. The distribution of sea and land (surely far different from today’s) might affect the temperatures of certain regions, as the gulf stream now makes the climate of Northern Europe milder than that of other places in the same latitude, such as Newfoundland or Moscow. Lands high above sea-level, likewise, would be cold, as mountains always are. But the climate of every zone would be uniform throughout the year. Plants would sprout, blossom, seed, and die in obedience only to their innate rhythms. The characteristic vegetation of every land would always be present, in every state of its life-cycle, thus providing food all year round for whatever creatures might need it.

At the equator, the sun would appear at six o’clock each morning precisely in the east, rise vertically to reach the zenith at noon, and continue its journey to set due west at six p.m. Further to the north or south, it would rise at an angle to the horizon and reach less high at its noontime limit. Towards the poles, its angle would be so narrow that its twelve-hour journey would carry it no more than a few degrees above the horizon. But its rising and setting places would never vary, and the lengths of night and day would invariably be equal. For that reason, one might well call this a time of perpetual spring, since it is only at today’s spring and autumn equinoxes that equal day and night occur.

Unusual celestial conditions would transpire at the poles themselves. Assuming that the landscape was fairly even, the sun there would neither rise nor set, but half of its disc would be visible all the time, circling the horizon once a day. These areas, warmed by only half a sun, would necessarily be chilly and unwelcoming to animal life. Even if the earth produced its own heat, as in the volcanic springs that now warm Iceland, no food plants could flourish in a region so poor in the light needed for photosynthesis. Now, it is hard to imagine the legendary land of Hyperborea (the “land beyond the North Wind”) ever inhabited by humans like ourselves. Nevertheless, the absence of seasons would make the earth habitable, and even comfortable, to much higher latitudes than is the case today. With heat and cold alternating daily but not annually, there would be no months-long night in the Arctic or Antarctic regions, during which all life now becomes dormant. Aided as might be by ocean currents and by the inner heat of the earth, twelve hours of sunlight would permit fertility to a very high latitude. Even today, the low sun of the Arctic spring brings forth an astonishing variety of vegetable, insect, and animal life, while the Antarctic seas swarm with krill and the creatures that live on it directly and indirectly. With the upright axis, this would be the norm all year round. There would be no need for energy to be spent on migrations; animal young could be raised at any time of the year, and the food for it would never be wanting. As for the rest of the earth, from temperate to tropical zones, it would indeed enjoy a Golden Age. 

If the annual cycle had no consequences for the earth’s climate, the year would be purely a cosmic phenomenon. The sun would rise and set each day against a slightly different background of stars, and after 360 days would complete the circle of the zodiac. More noticeable would be the annual changes in the night sky. Each night the stars would rise, and each morning they would set, moving in a trajectory exactly matching that of the sun. At the equator, the whole bowl of heaven would swing up and overhead as if it were pivoting on the northern and southern horizons. In the temperate zones, the motionless pivot might be visible if it happened to coincide with a polar star; the swing of the other stars would be at an angle to the horizon. Nearer the poles the angle would diminish, and the pivotal point rise higher and higher, until at the poles themselves the pivot would be directly overhead, and the stars would move around it like a bowl spun on a finger. 

The keen observer, however, would notice that each day a different star first became visible above the eastern horizon as the sun set in the West. The daily cycle of the stars would seem to be suffering a slight slippage, amounting to one degree. By the end of 360 days, the slippages would have added up to one entire circle, and the next annual cycle would begin. Yet with no solstices or equinoxes to punctuate the year, its “beginning” would be no fixed point, but merely the reappearance at dusk of whatever star was chosen as an aid to reckoning. 

There is no telling how the moon would have behaved at this time: whether its orbit was also in the equatorial plane, whether its period of revolution around the earth was a mathematically satisfying 30 days, or, as some of our authorities will question, whether the moon was there at all. If it shared the same plane as the earth, each month would be marked, at the dark of the moon, by an eclipse of the sun, and each full moon would disappear for a few hours into the shadow of the earth. In a world without seasons, these monthly eclipses would be the most prominent markers of the course of time. 

Time itself would have little meaning in this primordial Paradise as Jean Phaure writes in The Cycle of Adamic Humanity: 

    In the Golden Age, “Time” in all its plenitude was closer to eternity than to duration. On coming out of Paradise, we fell into time, and our ongoing flight is merely our Fall, gradually accelerating. Our measuring instruments are the signs of our anguish. A being that lives in harmony with the environment in which it flourishes has no need for a wristwatch: the courses of the stars are enough. It experiences growing old only as a happy ripening; it participates in the music of the spheres.”

• Source: Chapter One of Arktos – The Polar Myth In Science And Symbolism by Joscelyn Godwin

• Thanks to TheSourceInTheSahara.com for pointing me to this information in the first place.