and 5 days she is an evening star, the same amount is a morning star, and in the intervals she disappears from the sky altogether. The Phrygian "great mother of the gods" Cybele and the Phoenician Ashtoreth – symbols of this planet – were depicted with eight rays. Shintoists and Buddhists know the "eight corners of the world". Hindus in the teaching of yoga have developed eight steps leading to spiritual perfection. Something similar occurs in Homer. True, he counts the day not with eights, but with nines ("Suddenly on the tenth day the coast of the motherland appeared to us"), but the idea is the same – a "lunar" week. He was undoubtedly familiar with the "mythological time", where the year was eight. Returning to Lichtenberg's observations, one more thing can be noted: in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, German, Gothic, Lithuanian, the word "nine" sounds almost the same as "new", that is, the nine opened a new group of numbers. Astronomical observations of the Indians convinced them that the lunar cycle fits into the solar year exactly 12 times. So twelve months appeared, and this number also became sacred. It is not difficult to guess that the number 108 is the product of a dozen and a nine, a combination of elements of the lunar and solar cycles. (By the way, the Pahlavi – Parthian – texts of ancient Iran mention two varieties of the "big year" – 9,000 and 12,000 years) But that wasn't the only thing that drew attention to him. The number 108 is convenient for its extraordinary flexibility, adaptability to any occasions of life – the fact that it is divided without remainder into ten numbers, not counting one and itself, and the sum of its digits gives the sacred nine. Undoubtedly, it was born in India and spread from there to the west and east. According to Indian concepts, for example, the life of the supreme creator god Brahma is 311,040,000,000,000 years (and this number is a multiple of 108). In ancient India, there was also a period of time called muhurta – the thirtieth part of the day, that is, 48 minutes. Why such a strange dimension? Because 48 is, firstly, the quotient of dividing 10,800 by 225, and secondly, it is itself divisible by 12. The Indians developed the category of time closely linked to the creation of the world in detail and turned it into a harmonious scale, combining decimal and duodecimal systems in it: the second of Brahma (10,000 years), the minute of Brahma (600,000 years), the hour of Brahma (36,000,000 years) and, finally, the day of Brahma – kalpa (8 640,000,000 years). Kalpa – the time of existence of this world – consists of two thousand mahayugas (great centuries) of 4320,000 years each. The mahayugas, in turn, break up into four hinayugas (small ages), symbolizing epochs: sathyuga, or kritayuga (golden age) – 1,728,000 years, tretayuga (silver age) – 1,296,000 years, dvaparayuga (copper age) – 864,000 years and kaliyuga (iron Age) – 432 000 years. Such is the cyclical nature of the world. It is not difficult to see that all hinayugs are the number 10,800 with uniformly increasing multipliers and that the sum of the digits of all these numbers is either a "pure" or a doubled nine. From the book by A. Snisarenko "The Third belt of Wisdom". In French: 70 – soixante-dix, 80 – quatre-vingts, 90 – quatre-vingt-dix. Magic numbers, expressed in a different number of ornaments found by archaeologists in Palestine, are also found in the oldest epic songs of the Edda (a monument of ancient Scandinavian culture): "Then Giaflag, sister of Giuki, said: 8 for me is the most unlucky number on earth. I have lost at least 5 husbands, 2 daughters, 3 sisters and 8 brothers; I live alone now." After all, "jubilee" – (from the Hebrew, "long, trumpet sound") – according to the Law of Moses, every 50th year. Every 7th year was called Saturday (non-working), after 7 Sabbath years (7*7 = 49), the next, 50th year was called jubilee. Thus, the "magic of numbers" goes back to the associative celestial "office", that is, on earth they imitated what was happening in heaven. Santa Claus is also from the north. "Santa Claus" can be translated from Latin as "sacred, closed place" from "sanctus" – "sacred, inviolable, indestructible", "clausum" – "closed locked place, lock, bolt". And Santa Claus (Santa Claus) rides a sleigh and lives at the North Pole. A sleigh is older than a wheeled cart; they were known to the peoples of not only northern, but also southern countries. Most likely, the sleigh was born in the Arctic regions and served as the main means of transportation in winter. In off-road areas in the Far North, and in places in Siberia, sledges often replaced a wheeled cart in the summer. In rural areas of those countries where the winter is snowy, sledges retain their importance; among the peoples of the Far North, they still serve as the main means of transportation. Santa Claus with a Snow Maiden in a sleigh drawn by four reindeer, who brings gifts to children, was obviously the prototype of the northern peoples, where frost, taiga and deer, and who came in a sleigh to Europe with their goods. Then this image was transformed into the image of St. Nicholas. According to the decree of Pope Paul VI (1963-1978), St. Nicholas ceased to be considered a "saint". The starry sky is a collection of luminaries visible at night in the firmament. During the day, almost all the heavenly bodies, except the Sun, disappear against the light blue background of the sunlit air, which creates the impression of a flattened vault spread over the horizon plane, which is why ancient people believed that there was a certain vault above them, where the "celestials" live. Only such bright luminaries as the Moon and the planet Venus are visible to the naked eye in a clear sky during the day. The sun and stars are simultaneously visible in the sky at sunrise and sunset. According to them, the ecliptic is determined, that is, in fact, by the annual movement of the Earth in orbit around the Sun, in which constellation the Sun is located, and hence the signs of the zodiac. Such studies must be carried out for a very long time, since there are no stars in the sky during the day, and the Sun at night. In addition, clouds, fog, wind, temperature fluctuations, etc. constantly interfere with astronomical observations. It is believed that the ancient astronomer-priests could also know the precession, predict eclipses and thereby frighten the population with "higher powers". Precession (precession of the equinoxes) is the slow movement of the points of the spring and autumn equinoxes due to the movement of the planes of the Earth's equator and the ecliptic, passing from east to west, that is, towards the apparent annual movement of the Sun. The period of complete rotation of the axis of rotation is about 26 thousand years. As the Sun moves along the ecliptic, the stars change – the stars that were above the horizon at dawn in the morning and remained invisible appear from behind the Sun, while other stars that were visible disappear at dawn in the evening.
