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The Oldest Magick
Thirteen: Two Beginnings
Lew Paxton Price
The stars shone coldly in the eastern sky as the people waited expectantly, their instruments ready, their hands beneath folds of clothing, their ceremonies of the old year complete. They waited on a huge mound topped with fire-hardened clay and huge stones which their ancestors had laboriously dragged into place. The giant (Hercules) was almost overheard now and the great ram was on the horizon. Time passed with occasional shufflings and low murmurs.
The landscape below was still dark as the first rays of light fell upon the dust of the upper air. The high pipes began trilling at a signal from the high priestess. Amru shivered slightly from the chill that seemed to run along his spine, causing the hair on his body to rise. His mate, sitting beside him squeezed his waist and snuggled closer. He remembered how, in his early youth, this ceremony of resurrection was delayed until the fifth day, when the astrologers could be certain that the Giver of Life was again climbing upward. People today took too much for granted by prematurely celebrating the rising before it could be adequately confirmed. But the youth of today called Amru a doubter and ridiculed him for his lack of faith. The Face of the Creator has always risen," they would say, and it always shall."
The light came lower and now the lower pipes and the strings joined in. Then the landscape was bathed in light and shadow as the upper part of the Face of the Creator, the Provider of Energy, rose above the horizon. The drums thundered and a great shout of adoration and thanksgiving rose towards the heavens as the Children of Lightgiver expressed gratitude for another resurrection. Amru watched the astrologers confirm the position of rising and the first hymn began. The cycle of the Lightgiver had begun once again and there would be warmth and light as the Bright One moved again through the twelve signs. Every year Lightgiver rose higher in the sky after its resurrection and fell again to its lowest before it's death," just as people on this earth plane. Its cycle could be described as a circle with Lightgiver passing through the twelve signs, consecutively focusing its energy within each. And the effect of its light within a sign gave that sign power for the duration of Lightgiver's passage. Now Lightgiver would be the first of the twelve signs; and the people would play only in the first of the twelve keys for as long as Lightgiver remained here. For the first key was the extension of the first note and first note was that of the first sign.
Amru shouted exultantly with the rest and joined in singing the first hymn in the first key. The flaming disc rose higher until it no longer touched the horizon.
The earliest civilization seems to have begun in the Northern Hemisphere, where the winter solstice is the time when the sun dies (reaches its lowest point) and is resurrected or reborn to provide another growing season. The celebration of Yule, or Christmas (Christ meaning light"), is a tradition carried down through many centuries and originating in the celebration of the rebirth of the sun. The sun appears to move around the earth, passing through a sign in a period of about four weeks. In times past, months were known as signs (as in the book of Genesis," for instance). Each sign had its own note, beginning with the note we call `A' in the sign we call Capricorn. (Due to the precession of the equinoxes, Capricorn was not the first sign when this custom began.) Today we use this beginning note as the first in what we call the natural minor scale. It is a scale used commonly in the Middle East but seldom in the West.
The sun has had many names. Some early cultures considered the sun to be female. Most later cultures considered it male," the analog of conscious knowledge; while they considered the moon to be female," the analog of oft hidden subconscious knowledge. Humans very early recognized the sun as the provider of warmth, light and energy—the key to seasonal activity. Because the wise ones of many cultures looked upon the sun as the Face of the Creator (the openly visible portion, while the larger part remained hidden), calling the sun It" is proper from the viewpoint of Amru. Indeed, the Creator was considered an It" with both a female and male portion which, through their attraction to one another and their interaction, caused all things. Although, in many ways the ancient cultures considered the moon to be more powerful than the sun (for magickal purpose it was the lens" of the sun), the sun was the key to the seasons and the musical scale.
Amru was of the older people, and thought, as had they, of yearly beginning from Lightgiver's lowest point. However, many years ago, some of the northern people had migrated down to join the older people. These northerners had a musical scale that was balanced," and they considered the year to begin with the new growing season (which they chose to recognize as the time precisely between the Lightgiver's lowest and highest points in the sky).
The northerners' musical pipes followed an octave pattern of four pipes below and four above. Above was as below and below was as above in pattern. The lower pipes had three intervals between, two whole intervals followed by a half interval. The same was true of the higher pipes. These intervals were clearly visible in the difference of the lengths of the pipes. There was a whole interval between the lower and the higher pipes.
The northern people had chosen a particular note as their beginning by equating it to the sacred number thirteen. One of their ancient ancestors, a wisewoman, had noticed that a musical pipe of approximately double the length of another would be one octave lower. And a pipe of approximately half the length of another would be one octave higher. She also noticed that any pipe with an inside length of twelve times its inside diameter could be played with exceptional ease.
By experimenting, she found that each note had a certain fundamental length that was different from the inside pipe length. If one used this fundamental length as a standard and subtracted a pipe's inside diameter (making the inside pipe length (from upper edge of plug to upper edge of pipe) equal to the number that remained), the pipe would play the proper note perfectly. This principle also applied to pipes of the same note in other octaves. She wanted a standard note that would be sacred—the sacred number thirteen seemed a good choice. So she chose the note whose standard length was thirteen thumb-widths (inches) and this was the note that became the beginning of the sacred octave.
When the northerners blended with Amrud's people, a compromise eventually developed. Labeling its note with the first letter recognized the beginning of the year. The beginning of the year that the northerners preferred was recognized by using the note of the northerners' beginning length—and their balanced pipes would remain unchanged. This meant that their note, whose length was thirteen thumb-widths, was designated by the third letter.
In middle and lower Europe, the year was recognized as beginning with the vernal equinox, the time when the sun as halfway up from the winter solstice (low point) to the summer solstice (high point). The people of the lower Tigris-Euphrates area preferred a year beginning with the winter solstice.
The number thirteen was sacred because the moon made thirteen revolutions past a fixed star in one year (thirteen sidereal months). It made only twelve revolutions past the sun in this time (twelve of what we call months—from moonths). This was particularly tempting to use as a standard because, on an ideal pipe, the inside length of twelve inside diameters led to a fundamental length (for the note played) of thirteen diameters. The twelve visible diameters were analogous to the twelve months visible by the phases of the moon.
Two Beginnings
The real length of thirteen diameters was analogous to the real, but invisible, thirteen passages of the moon past a fixed star.
A pipe of a fundamental length of thirteen thumb-widths has a wavelength of 52 inches (four times thirteen). Fifty-two are the numbers of weeks in one year that may or may not be more than a coincidence. Also, there are twelve notes in one octave of the developed chromatic musical scale, but by including the octave note there are thirteen notes.
The inch we use today is almost exactly the same as the inch used in ancient times in most cultures. A wavelength of 52 inches is that of the old middle `C,' the center notes of the piano keyboard and the beginning of our natural major octave (which consists of two four-note sequences called tetrachords," a lower and a higher, separated by a whole interval—as above, so below). Yet we begin our note scale with `A,' not `C,' for what is called the natural minor scale. It seems very likely that the piano keyboard evolved from the old compromise scale of two people with two separate starting points. It also seems very likely that the panpipes, beginning in `A' below middle `C' and ending in the `C' two octaves above, is the oldest instrument to use this scale.
Today we can look at the keyboard of a piano, organ, or synthesizer, and see this ancient scale, with letters assigned to the white notes and sharps or flats assigned to the black notes. Between the ancient panpipes and the synthesizer keyboard were many other instruments to use this scale. The next one we will examine is the nay of the Middle East.
1989 by Lew Paxton Price | 
