The Oldest Magick
Sumer, China and the Zodiac
By Lew Paxton Price
There is a very old tradition that has come down to us in the form of our Western zodiac and musical scale. No one knows exactly where it began; however, the oldest civilization to have had similar things was old Sumer on the shores of the Persian Gulf where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers empty into the sea. The people who settled here seem to have arrived before 4,000 BCE. It is from them that we get the sexagesimal numerical system (based upon the number sixty), the key to our time units of hours, minutes and seconds. It is also from them that we get our circle of 360 degrees and our musical scale. There were other advanced cultures in the Middle East such as the Egyptian, the Assyrian and the Indian, but none so old as that of old Sumer.
In later times the Babylonians developed the most advanced civilization we have ever known. Though not as advanced as ours today in such things as gadgetry and technical information, the Babylonians of the Chaldean Renaissance were far more advanced in other ways which, I believe, were far more important. And these people built their civilization upon the knowledge of old Sumer.
The old zodiac has come down to us from the height of civilization in the Middle East. Undoubtedly other civilizations have altered this zodiac a bit here and there. Also, much knowledge has been lost to lootings and burnings. So we don't know all we would like to know about how it was used. We do know that, like the old Chinese zodiac, there were notes attributed to the signs. We know that there were colors attributed to them as well. And what is a color really?
We hear about ten octaves of sound and see about one octave of visible light. Technically speaking, an octave is a range of frequencies between a reference frequency such as a note and another frequency that is either double the reference frequency (when going up) or half the reference frequency (when going down). Because going up one octave is a doubling, each succeeding octave has a bandwidth (range of frequencies) that is as large as the sum of all the bandwidths of the preceding octaves. This means that the octave of visible light that is 41 octaves above the middle octave of our sound range is an octave with a bandwidth many times greater than the bandwidth of all ten octaves of the hearing range. So the human eye has a rather wide response range even though it sees but one octave. And each color can be likened to a note in a higher octave than those of the sound range.
If we double the frequency for middle C just 41 times, we have the frequency for green. If we double the frequency for E just 41 times, we have the frequency for violet. In like fashion, all the notes are colors as well according to the following chart:
Color:GreenBlue-GreenBlue
Note:CC#D
Blue-Violet Violet Red-Violet Red
D#EFF#
Color:Red-OrangeOrangeYellow-Orange
Note: GG#A
YellowYellow-GreenGreen
A#BC
When an object radiates its own color, the frequency at which its electrons are vibrating in their outer orbits is the same as the color that comes from the object. This is additive color. We can add it to make other colors or shades. For example, blue light and orange light will look white because blue and orange are color complements. Likewise with red and green, or yellow and violet, or any two colors that are diametrically opposite each other on a color wheel.
When an object reflects a color, as does a leaf in the sun, its outer orbit electrons are absorbing red and reflecting what is left over which is green. So a leaf is really red—not green. This is called subtractive color because the red is subtracted from the white, leaving green as the apparent color of the leaf.
In the ancient Middle East the sign we call Aries was given the color red. In China, this sign was given the note F# which is the same as red but in a much lower octave. In the ancient Middle East the sign we call Leo was given the color yellow. In ancient China, this sign was given the note we call A# which is the same as yellow but in a much lower octave. And the same is true of the other signs. The color attributions of the Middle East were the same as the note attributions of the Chinese. This is not only a bit too odd for coincidence, but indicates that somebody back then could tell which color was which note. This may not seem astounding to one who is unfamiliar with the problem. After all, higher octaves of sound can be determined with shorter panpipes. But color wavelengths are so short that they are measured in angstroms and one angstrom is just a one hundred millionth of a centimeter—and that is small.
The color attributions of the Middle East were accompanied by notes also. These notes were notes of the color complements rather than those of the colors themselves. This indicates that the people of the time were aware of the principles of subtractive color and/or balancing with complements.
In both the Middle East and China, the notes, which were considered synonymous with the signs, were given a gender. The same system of gender was used in both areas. The signs/notes/colors that we call Fire and Air were male. The ones we call Water and Earth were female. There may have been other uses for this assigning of genders, but one of them was probably aiding in predicting the sex of an unborn child that is done with the sign genders even today.
Thor Heyerdahl has done much to improve our knowledge of ancient global navigation. From his research, we now understand that reed vessels with up to three masts carried trade goods to all parts of the world before the Sumerians arrived on the Tigris-Euphrates delta. In fact, it may have been a reed vessel or a fleet of them that deposited the first Sumerian on that delta. In any case, the sea was one avenue for spreading the word of the wise throughout the ancient world.
In old Sumer, religion and science were the same; and missionaries went various parts of the globe to teach those who were willing to learn. Imhotep or Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary vizier of Zoser in ancient Egypt, was probably a missionary from Sumer. He was responsible for the sudden rise of advanced civilization in Egypt. The records of the natives of Central and South America indicate that a similar legendary figure was the key to their sudden advancement in the sciences. And there are indications, not so specific, that the old sciences spread from Sumer to the Far East as well, accounting for the similarities in the musical scales and astrologies of China and the Middle East.
The land connecting China with Europe probably accounts for the similar types of flutes found in both places. Although, the sea routes from India may have played a part as well. There are mountain ranges separating China from the rest of Eurasia and mountain tribes of nomads would have formed the link between the Chinese and other cultures. Between the Tien Shan and Altai Mountains is a lower area through which most of the traffic would have come. This may have been the route taken by the Chou late in the second millennium BCE.
1989 by Lew Paxton Price | 
