Arcaneya

Category: Arcane things

  • The Astronomical Interpretation on the Nativity

    I’ve always liked the Nativity story of Jesus’ birth. It carries a warmth and depth that a purely astronomical explanation just doesn’t capture. It also works beautifully when we’re young—when we’re naturally drawn to vivid stories and symbols. For children, it’s often the simplest way to introduce meaning.

    The problem is that many people are never offered a deeper layer as they grow older. The story remains the same, but the listener changes. So sooner or later we begin to question it on our own, and we may feel that something doesn’t quite add up. If we want to mature—not by discarding the story, but by understanding it more fully—we have to be willing to shine a light on its symbolic and allegorical dimensions.

    The connection is the relationship between the Nativity season and the Sun’s yearly turning point. Around the winter solstice (today dated to about December 21), the sunrise point along the horizon reaches its southernmost position. To the naked eye, the Sun’s rising position appears to “stand still” for a few days, and then begin shifting back northward. In popular and traditional perception, that “turning” is associated with December 25—a return of light after the deepest part of winter. Read symbolically, this fits the theme of death and renewal: darkness reaches its limit, then the light begins to rise again.

    In the same symbolic spirit, the “three days” motif can be read alongside this seasonal pause—those days when the Sun seems not to move before it “returns.” This doesn’t replace the spiritual meaning of the story, but it adds another layer: a natural rhythm that mirrors the religious language of death and resurrection.

    It is also worth mentioning that from the vantage point of the Vatican, the winter solstice azimuth of the sunrise points towards the “Holy land”.

    Holy land azimuth
    Winter solstice azimuth of the sunrise seen from Rome (suncalc.org)

    The Magi (later tradition calls them “three kings”) can also be approached symbolically through the sky. The three bright stars of Orion’s Belt form a clear, memorable trio that has carried meaning in many cultures. Orion is prominent in the winter night sky, and the belt’s line helps orient the eye toward key directions in the sky. Over the course of the year, the sky’s patterns—especially in winter—can serve as a kind of clock and compass, pointing toward where the Sun rises in the colder season.

    Orion's belt direction
    Orion’s belt points towards South-East (theskylive.com)
    Winter solstice Sunrise
    On winter solstice, Sun rises near south-east (theskylive.com)

    Seen this way, the Nativity story can be read on two levels at once: as a sacred narrative that speaks to the heart, and as a astronomical story that echoes the cycle of the heavens—light diminishing, pausing, and returning.

    Thanks,

    Ira

    p.s. I would like to thank late great Jordan Maxwell, who originally pointed out the connection between Jesus and the Sun.

  • When Experience Is Spoken as Fact, the Listener Disappears

    There is a familiar moment when someone begins describing a trip they’ve taken. The place, the people, the impressions are delivered confidently, almost instructional. This is what it was like. This is how things are there. The story unfolds as if the speaker has returned with a report from reality itself.

    And something quietly shuts down.

    The listener drifts, not because they are uninterested, but because they are no longer being addressed. The story is no longer a conversation—it has become a declaration. The speaker is not speaking to anyone; they are speaking at an imagined audience that is expected to receive their experience as truth.

    What disappears in that moment is not attention, but mutual presence.

    Experience Without Acknowledgment Becomes Monologue

    Every human being is their own universe. Each person carries a unique history, emotional structure, belief system, and way of meeting the world. Two people standing side by side are not inhabiting the same reality, even if the setting is identical.

    When someone speaks about their experience as fact, they fail to acknowledge this. They speak as if the listener would have seen the same things, felt the same way, drawn the same conclusions. The possibility that the listener might have lived an entirely different reality is silently erased.

    This is why unconscious storytelling feels oddly excluding. The speaker is not recognizing the listener as a parallel universe—another center of perception with its own valid encounter with reality. Instead, the listener is reduced to a passive container for someone else’s truth.

    Zoning out, in this sense, is not disinterest. It’s a natural response to being unacknowledged.

    The World Responds to Who You Are, Not Where You Go

    No one meets the world directly. Every experience is shaped by the inner state of the person having it. The world responds to mood, expectation, self-image, openness, fear, and countless invisible factors that travel with us wherever we go.

    The same place can feel welcoming or hostile, profound or empty, depending on who arrives. In this way, the universe behaves like a mirror. It does not show itself objectively; it reflects the consciousness that stands before it.

    Wherever you go, you just meet yourself.

    When this is forgotten, people speak as if their experience reveals the place itself. But what they are actually describing is a relationship—between their inner world and an external environment. Without naming that relationship, the story becomes misleading, even if it is sincere.

    More importantly, it leaves no room for the listener’s reality to exist alongside it.

    Conscious Storytelling as Recognition

    An experience becomes meaningful to others only when it is shared consciously. Conscious storytelling begins with a simple acknowledgment: this is my experience, from my position in the world.

    When someone says, “This is how I encountered that place,” instead of “This is what that place is like,” something subtle but essential happens. The listener is recognized. Their potential experience—different, contradictory, equally valid—is implicitly honored.

    For example: “I was lost, drinking heavily, disconnected from myself when I traveled there, and this is how the world responded to me in that state.” Or just as honestly, “I was open, grounded, and curious, and this is what unfolded.”

    Now the story is no longer a claim about reality. It’s an offering. A description of a meeting between a person and the world. The listener is no longer asked to accept or reject it, only to witness it.

    In that recognition, attention returns. Presence returns. Conversation becomes possible again.

    Because to acknowledge another person as a parallel universe is not just spiritually accurate—it is relationally respectful. And without that acknowledgment, even the most vivid experience will quietly fail to reach anyone else.

    Thanks!

    Ira