A brief history of the Dog Days of summer and other vaguely related things:
As any of you who take the time to surf the internet are likely to know, there is a dearth of information out there for you to page through: Quite a bit of it is rubbish. Fortunately some of my best sources are rubbish and I (ahem) refuse to let that get in the way of a story. The following is a composite based on much of the nonsense I have read and perused over the years, and some other stuff I made up just because I felt like it.
The Dog Days get their names in our current culture by virtue of the Dog Star, Sirius, part of the Canis Majoris (Big Dog) constellation which can be found in the Alpha Centauri system, our closest celestial neighbor. Sirius, being the brightest star in the sky, aside from our own Sun (although in reality Sirius shines over 20 times brighter, its just 8.7 light years away), gets the distinction of being recognized this time of year because it is the one time of year when you cant actually see it. You see, during the Dog Days, Sirius is whats known as in conjunction with the Sun, which means to non-astronomer types that we cant see it. Sirius rises and sets at the same time as the Sun, in the same part of the sky. Years ago folks believed that the joined forces of the two stars radiation created the hotter weather we usually experience during their days of travel together. We now know, of course, that their reasoning is hogwash. We know it to be hot because of the aliens.
Lets dig deeper: The Dogon tribe of Mali has been around since at least 3200 B.C., dwelling in cliffs and farming the desert. They are believed to have come from Egypt, and by default can be assumed to have carried some of the Egyptian lore with them. Sirius was prominent to the Egyptians as the harbinger of summer and the flooding season of the Nile, as the conjunction occurred earlier in the year 5000 years ago, closer to June 25. For the Dogons, the Dog Star was close to the home of the Nommo, an amphibious race of hideous looking aliens that landed just north of the Dogon homeland, who told the Dogons all about Sirius and her Dark Star companion (I thought that might wake up the Deadheads in the audience).
Sirius A, as the Dog Star has been rechristened, apparently does have a Dark Star companion, affectionately known as Sirius B. Swags like Carl Sagan, who seems to take great pleasure in debunking anything ideas that anyone else comes up with, have posited that the Dogon learned all of their history of the universe from some western astronomer who just happened to be wandering in the deserts of Mali looking for a really good conversation. The Dogon, who at worst have a 400 year-old artifact that testifies to their version of the universe and knowledge of this star, claim to have known this for thousands of years, lessons they learned from the Nommo. In fact the Dogons had a heliocentric view of the universe long before Western scientists got busy being burned at the stake trying to convince the rest of us enlightened folks about it. Heliocentric means we spin around the sun, instead of the other way around, as was such a popular notion with so many other cultures. I bet they even thought the world was round!
Modern scientists first suspected the existence of Sirius B in 1844, first saw the star via telescope in 1862, and first photographed it in 1970. The Dogon knew the following about this star that could not be seen with the naked eye: its period of rotation is 50 years; they knew it to be very heavy; they knew it to rotate on its axis. In the 1930s, scientists figured out that Sirius B is a White Dwarf, an incredibly dense star of which a spoonful would weigh approximately five tons. But lets get back to the aliens.
In numerous of ancient traditions, aside from your obligatory Great Flood myth, you also get a series of part human, part fish gods. The Chinese believe that their civilization was founded by an amphibious race. An entity named Fuxi had the head of a man and the body of a fish. The Philistines had Dagon (pretty close to Dogon!), also both man and fish; the Babylonians had had Oannes, who came from a Great Egg, and spent his days on land and his nights in the sea. Add to this the Nommos from the Dogon, similar to the Babylonian repulsive ones, who could live on land and sea, and Ill say you have a pretty fishy package in your hands. Of course I can take it one step further: Jesus the Christ, whose secret symbol, the one the early Christians used to identify themselves to each other, was the fish, maybe you have one on your car. The Dogon similarly believe that the Nommo were saviors and spiritual guardians, and that the Nommo divided his body among men to feed them, and that as the universe had drunk of his body, so must men drink of his body. Also, the Nommo was crucified and resurrected, and would later visit the Earth in a human form, and then again return later to rule the Earth from the sea in his amphibious form.
So here I am, having just been given to read what very well may be a crackpot book on aliens and the JFK murder, and for my article this week I decide to dig into the Dog Days and run into the Nommos again, an alien race, and then I remember the dream I wrote about the other week, and I wonder If I should just quit while Im ahead, lest I get a fitting for one of those cozy white jackets with all the buckles and really long sleeves. I dreamt about dolphins trying to inform me in about our common ancestry, and then here come the Nommo, part fish and part man, hinting to me what our common ancestor just may have been. Well it doesnt take much more than a cup of coffee for me to start thinking I want no mo of the Nommo.
What am I getting at? Well, Id say more than a thousand words by now. I just wanted to talk about the weather without really talking about it, and it is always fun to bring aliens into anything; then I need to tie it back to this article somehow, which is really supposed to be about music, and lo and behold, I am almost there. So remember, as Jack Horkheimer likes to say, Look to the skies! And keep your nose out those conspiracy theory books! Okay you dont have to. Email me, and Ill recommend you some: junebug@circle5.org.
As any of you who take the time to surf the internet are likely to know, there is a dearth of information out there for you to page through: Quite a bit of it is rubbish. Fortunately some of my best sources are rubbish and I (ahem) refuse to let that get in the way of a story. The following is a composite based on much of the nonsense I have read and perused over the years, and some other stuff I made up just because I felt like it.
The Dog Days get their names in our current culture by virtue of the Dog Star, Sirius, part of the Canis Majoris (Big Dog) constellation which can be found in the Alpha Centauri system, our closest celestial neighbor. Sirius, being the brightest star in the sky, aside from our own Sun (although in reality Sirius shines over 20 times brighter, its just 8.7 light years away), gets the distinction of being recognized this time of year because it is the one time of year when you cant actually see it. You see, during the Dog Days, Sirius is whats known as in conjunction with the Sun, which means to non-astronomer types that we cant see it. Sirius rises and sets at the same time as the Sun, in the same part of the sky. Years ago folks believed that the joined forces of the two stars radiation created the hotter weather we usually experience during their days of travel together. We now know, of course, that their reasoning is hogwash. We know it to be hot because of the aliens.
Lets dig deeper: The Dogon tribe of Mali has been around since at least 3200 B.C., dwelling in cliffs and farming the desert. They are believed to have come from Egypt, and by default can be assumed to have carried some of the Egyptian lore with them. Sirius was prominent to the Egyptians as the harbinger of summer and the flooding season of the Nile, as the conjunction occurred earlier in the year 5000 years ago, closer to June 25. For the Dogons, the Dog Star was close to the home of the Nommo, an amphibious race of hideous looking aliens that landed just north of the Dogon homeland, who told the Dogons all about Sirius and her Dark Star companion (I thought that might wake up the Deadheads in the audience).
Sirius A, as the Dog Star has been rechristened, apparently does have a Dark Star companion, affectionately known as Sirius B. Swags like Carl Sagan, who seems to take great pleasure in debunking anything ideas that anyone else comes up with, have posited that the Dogon learned all of their history of the universe from some western astronomer who just happened to be wandering in the deserts of Mali looking for a really good conversation. The Dogon, who at worst have a 400 year-old artifact that testifies to their version of the universe and knowledge of this star, claim to have known this for thousands of years, lessons they learned from the Nommo. In fact the Dogons had a heliocentric view of the universe long before Western scientists got busy being burned at the stake trying to convince the rest of us enlightened folks about it. Heliocentric means we spin around the sun, instead of the other way around, as was such a popular notion with so many other cultures. I bet they even thought the world was round!
Modern scientists first suspected the existence of Sirius B in 1844, first saw the star via telescope in 1862, and first photographed it in 1970. The Dogon knew the following about this star that could not be seen with the naked eye: its period of rotation is 50 years; they knew it to be very heavy; they knew it to rotate on its axis. In the 1930s, scientists figured out that Sirius B is a White Dwarf, an incredibly dense star of which a spoonful would weigh approximately five tons. But lets get back to the aliens.
In numerous of ancient traditions, aside from your obligatory Great Flood myth, you also get a series of part human, part fish gods. The Chinese believe that their civilization was founded by an amphibious race. An entity named Fuxi had the head of a man and the body of a fish. The Philistines had Dagon (pretty close to Dogon!), also both man and fish; the Babylonians had had Oannes, who came from a Great Egg, and spent his days on land and his nights in the sea. Add to this the Nommos from the Dogon, similar to the Babylonian repulsive ones, who could live on land and sea, and Ill say you have a pretty fishy package in your hands. Of course I can take it one step further: Jesus the Christ, whose secret symbol, the one the early Christians used to identify themselves to each other, was the fish, maybe you have one on your car. The Dogon similarly believe that the Nommo were saviors and spiritual guardians, and that the Nommo divided his body among men to feed them, and that as the universe had drunk of his body, so must men drink of his body. Also, the Nommo was crucified and resurrected, and would later visit the Earth in a human form, and then again return later to rule the Earth from the sea in his amphibious form.
So here I am, having just been given to read what very well may be a crackpot book on aliens and the JFK murder, and for my article this week I decide to dig into the Dog Days and run into the Nommos again, an alien race, and then I remember the dream I wrote about the other week, and I wonder If I should just quit while Im ahead, lest I get a fitting for one of those cozy white jackets with all the buckles and really long sleeves. I dreamt about dolphins trying to inform me in about our common ancestry, and then here come the Nommo, part fish and part man, hinting to me what our common ancestor just may have been. Well it doesnt take much more than a cup of coffee for me to start thinking I want no mo of the Nommo.
What am I getting at? Well, Id say more than a thousand words by now. I just wanted to talk about the weather without really talking about it, and it is always fun to bring aliens into anything; then I need to tie it back to this article somehow, which is really supposed to be about music, and lo and behold, I am almost there. So remember, as Jack Horkheimer likes to say, Look to the skies! And keep your nose out those conspiracy theory books! Okay you dont have to. Email me, and Ill recommend you some: junebug@circle5.org.