stephan huller

Bur in all fairness, and in defense of Roger, if the evidence isn't there what's the motivation to make a fallacious argument?

andrewcriddle

There are two references in Plutarch Isis and Osiris to the winter solstice.
The problem is that the ancient Egyptian calendar shifted slowly through the seasons. (It was replaced by a fixed calendar in the time of Augustus.)

We have a report from Geminos that there was a widespread Greek belief that the feasts of Isis occurred at the winter solstice although this was currently a month wrong.

This probably means the Seeking for Osiris beginning the 17th of Athyr/Athor which in the fixed Egyptian calendar is the 13th or 14th of November in the Julian calendar.

It is probable that the birth of Harpocrates occurred at the end of the Seeking for Osiris. See octavius by Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix is muddling the search for the dead Osiris and the birth of Horus the child but does imply that Horus the child (Harpocrates) is brought forth as the culmination of the search for Osiris.

If I'm right the birth of Harpocrates was around the winter solstice in the early 2nd century BCE, (the date of Plutarch's source), but was celebrated in late November in the imperial period.

Andrew Criddle

Yellum Notnef

Why does it have to be the evil motives of a broken person? Roger is saying she must be a broken person to believe such nonsense. Roger believes just as much nonsense as she does, is he broken too?

stephan huller

Very interesting Andrew. Thanks

Toto

Acharya S, as she recounted at one point, came out of a southern California subculture that centered around a now closed bookstore called The Bodhi Tree (google it for the full story.) The Bodhi Tree, despite the name, specialized in New Age theories, especially conspiracy theories of various sorts, but also the sort of California woo-woo that involved a mixture of gnosticism, Theosophy, recycled Hinduism, UFO cults, alien abductions, channeling ancient entities -- those were heady days, when California was full of money, drugs, and "seekers" and lots of entrepreneurs who tried to satisfy those seekers in return for a share of that money.

One of the reasons the New Age collapsed on itself was that it adopted the firm conviction that no one should ever criticize anyone else's beliefs, because that just introduced negativity into the room. When I learned that Acharya S got her start at the Bodhi Tree, I felt I understood a bit more about why she reacts to criticism as if it were entirely personal.

But the thing is, for a conspiracy theorist, Acharya S is relatively rational and sane. If she had started out in a different social group, things might have been different.

tanya

No quarrel, here, but, I do wish to add, as already mentioned, a week ago, on another thread, this "Julian" calendar, adopted by Augustus, computed, accurately the dates, misevaluating, however, about 1 day per century, so that by the time of Eusebius et al, the solstice was celebrated on the 25 December, instead of 22 December, as normal.