Celestial pole

This wisdom traced the Orient of pure light to the celestial pole, the double constellation of the Bear and Pole Stars. In an important Sufi vision, oil collected from the constellation of the Bear is a pure spiritual substance given as initiation into the mystical rank of Ecclesia Spiritualis, the seven masters of initiation and intercessors. ... 

The supreme Arcanum or Arcanum arcanorum of Sufism is the celestial pole and the Most High is the God of the Polestar. " He sits at the North Pole of the Heavens, which is the highest celestial spot of the Cosmos. His floor is made of meteoric iron. " The floor is rectangular... 

As we saw in Chapter 17, an initiate must pass through the luminous darkness that surrounds the Pole to achieve a reunion with his own dimension of light. Then he must look vertically upwards from the terrestrial toward the celestial pole. The stairway to heaven is a Jacob s ladder. It leads to the constellation of the Bear, Ursus Major. This same stairway to heaven existed in Dilmun for the Sumerians and Pharaohs of Egypt. 

Very true, Miss Muxdroozol. Also note that the art of navigation would have developed more slowly in the Southern Hemisphere since there is no equivalent to Polaris, the North Star, in the southern skies.6 Polaris appears to stand still, while other stars rotate around it, because it is almost exactly aligned along the celestial North Pole. This property is useful to navigators, because the star always lies in the direction of north. ... 

However, the theory with CPT and Lorentz violation involves spatial components in a celestial frame of reference, and since the laboratory rotates with the earth, these spatial components vary with time, and consequently the experimentally observed 1/42 and P34 may oscillate about a mean value at the earth s sidereal frequency fi = 27t/23 hr 56 rn with amplitudes 81/42 and 81/34. No such signal would be obtained from the standard model. In the non-rotating celestial frame of reference with equatorial axes x, Y,Z where Z is oriented along the earth s rotational North Pole, an experimental constraint on 81/12 implies [4]... 

The celestial sphere is a fixed sphere of infinite radius, concentric with the center of the earth. The celestial North and South poles (Pjv and P ) are an extension of the earth s North and South poles to infinity. The celestial equator is the great circle whose poles are Pn and Ps. The (local) zenith point Z is the point vertically above an observer at some arbitrary point on the earth s... 

We have noted that the function of shamanic initiation in the primitive society is to effect the transformation of the shaman from a profane, human condition to a superhuman, sacred one. But while the shaman may carry out activities such as divining and prophesying, and occasionally sorcery, these are not his major functions, and often fall within the province of other types of practitioners. The shaman s primary functions are those of healer and psychopomp. This is related to the specific nature of the shamanic ecstasy not all forms of mystical ecstasy are shamanic, for this, like initiation, has its own peculiar nature. The shamanic ecstasy is one in which the shaman is supposed to leave his physical body and journey to the Center of the World, which connects the earthly realm with the celestial world above and the infernal regions below. This axis mundi may be symbolized as a tree, mountain, tent pole, ladder, liana, or something similar the shaman is able to make the journey and return safely because he is a master of ecstasy and possesses the guidance of helping spirits along... 

The discovery of precession of the equinoxes by Hip-parchos (second century b.c.) provoked little theoretical activity until the eleventh century. A1 Bitruji introduced the trepidation, a mechanism that permitted the multiple periodicity that appeared to be required to explain the variation in the rate of precession. The mechanism, repeated in Copernicus, derives from the erroneous determination of the period of precession in which the rate of precession of the poles varied with time from about 1° per century to 0.75° per century. The mechanism demanded something like an equant in the polar motion. As retained by Copernicus, this introduced a substantial complication into the theory of rotation of the earth and also the calculation of celestial motions and the correction of star catalogs. It was not until the seventeenth century that the error was recognized and quietly suppressed, but the trepidation represents one of the few innovations in the basic dynamical theory of the heavens in the period between the Alexandrian school of astronomy and the early Renaissance. 

The South Pole is a unique location for astronomy and infrared astronomy in particular. Both pole regions have long periods of darkness and the opportunity to track celestial objects continuously. Only the South Pole, however, is on solid land, which allows a stable observatory to be established. Even more importantly the South Pole is quite high. The combination of the high altitude and extremely cold temperatures reduces the water vapor to very low levels. This means that the South Pole has the lowest attenuation of infrared and particularly of submillimeter radiation of any earth-based observatory. There are, of course. 

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