Mystery solved: The Star of Bethlehem

Ahem,
I would like to make the insane claim that I've figured out exactly what the Star of Bethlehem was. To completely justify my claim will require solving many other mysteries in future posts, so if you have questions about my explanation, write me or wait for future posts.

By Way of Introduction

Academic scholarship is blind to one important fact: the original gods of neolithic man were the stars themselves. They operated as their only clock, timing, by the rising and setting of stars, various tasks important to their survival in the local environment. Neolithic man lived very close to the land and was acutely tuned to the rhythms of nature as they pertained to the survival of the clan. Stars, when viewed by someone who has closely studied their relationship to other natural phenomena in a culture that has developed a body of lore based on previous observations, in other words, a modern human with the college degree equivalent of starwatching, when that person looks at the stars, he will immediately be oriented as to the compass points, he will know the season and month of the year, and will associate those stars with that season and its associated activities. As humans underwent the development of civilization following the domestication of grains and livestock and the development of irrigation and metallurgy, this old lore became ossified into mythology. These frozen neolithic artifacts are the symbolic substrate of the modern world religions. Since serious archaeology has been underway, the star symbolism of the ancients has been largely ignored by academics because of its unsavory associations with modern astrology and the lunatic fringe. Recently, however, archaeoastronomy has entered the academic scene, so such discussions are no longer off the table.

Divisions of the Sky
Putting on our neolithic mask, what do we see when we observe the stars over time?

Milky Way
Anyone who has gone into the desert and looked at the night sky when the brightest part of the Milky Way is visible will understand the power this display must have had for the ancients. Our night skies in the United States have been obscured significantly, even in remote places, so the ancients were able to see the Milky Way even more clearly, mapping its course through the star field. One of the most enduring neolithic images of the Milky Way is the worm Ouroboros that its own tail. The widest part of the Milky Way, in the constellation Saggitarius is the worm's head. This is the location of the center of the galaxy (a word derived from the Greek word for milk).

Never setting stars
First we may note that there are some stars to the north that never set. How large an area of the sky this is depends on the observer's latitude. Knowing these stars can immediately orient an observer to the north. Today this task is so easy we've forgotten that Polaris hasn't always been the pole star. It has slowly moved into that position and only got close enough to be effective for navigation around the time of European exploration of the globe. It will reach its closest proximity to the pole in the year 2100.

As with Polaris, the stars in the never-setting zone change over time: some move into the zone and some move out. Knowing the stars in the never-setting zone is vital to orientation and over the ~700 year period that a given set of rules is useful, there will be many stories told about those stars. One day, though, one of the never-setting stars dips below the horizon. New stories are told to account for this event. Gods are born and gods die.

Planets and ecliptic
Among the stars are five that move around along the same track the sun and moon take across the sky. This track (called the ecliptic) changes its course across the sky during the year. In the spring and winter the planets rise directly east, but the exact place they rise changes slightly every day moving north for summer and south for winter. Our word "orientation" means to locate the eastern point, and as the never-setting stars showed where north was, the planets and the sun showed where east was.

The meridian
We have identified two imaginary lines that go across the sky: the centerline of the milky way and the track of the planets. There is a third important line imagined by the ancients that is the key to solving the Bethlehem Star mystery: the line linking the stars that rise exactly in the east. Astronomers call this the meridian and it corresponds to the earth's equator.

Precession
As the never-setting stars move in and out of position, the stars that rise exactly in the east also change. Some stars move to the south and some to the north. The closer a star is to the north the longer it is in the sky, so stars that move across the meridian (when they take on special importance) toward the north are gaining life and those moving toward the south are losing life. The meridian marks the boundary between the land of the living (the northern side of the sky) and the land of the dead (the southern part of the sky). Some stars can move so far south that they are never seen again. The time a star spends in the northern or southern part of the sky is half a precession cycle (~12 000 y).

The Star of Bethlehem Mystery Solved
In the year 1BC, the star Spica crossed the meridian from the north to the south. This marked the end of Spica's 12 000 years in the northern hempisphere (The Land of the Living). The importance of Spica can be understood by considering the autumn sky in 12000 BC. As Spica moved into the northern hemisphere, Vega, another very bright star, was moving into the pole position. Vega made a much more dazzling display as pole star than Polaris does. On the autumnal equinox, one of two days a year when the sun rises exactly in the east, Spica would rise just at sunset. It was from this time that Spica became associated with a sprig of wheat (hence its name). Before cultivated grains, neolithic man learned to harvest the wild grasses of the area. When Spica rose in the east at sunset, it was time for the harvest. Over time, the star became associated with the other stars around it as the constellation Virgo: a virgin presenting a sprig of wheat. Virgo is the sign opposite Pisces (which was rising into the north as Virgo was setting) and one not need be a theologian to understand the importance of the Virgin and of fish to Christian symbology.

So the Bible tells us that at the birth of Jesus, Magi (that is, astrologers) saw Jesus' star (why they made this identification is a further mystery to be explained later) "rising in the east". If we take these words literally (a method that works surprisingly well sometimes) they saw a star rising EXACTLY in the east. And exactly at that time, Spica was crossing the meridian, an event that marked the age transition from Aries to Pisces (from the Lamb to the Fish) and from Libra to Virgo (from the Scales of Justice to the Virgin).

Mystery solved.