On
Empirical Meteorology (Meteorognomy)
Introduction.
Origins. Meteorognomy in
Spanish: the oral and written tradition. Concept
of time in ancient mentalities. Usefulness and actual importance of
Astrometeorology and Meteorognomy.
Introduction
It
is amazing that in the National Library of Madrid there is no a single entrance
under the denomination “Meteorognomy”, when
The
monumental Espasa-Calpe encyclopedia is the only work where we have found a
reference to this ancient and almost extinguished science:
Meteorognomy:
Part
of the meteorological Astrology. Empirical
knowledge of the phenomena and meteorological laws.
Basically
this definition is correct, and it locates Meteorognomy in the knowledge level
that corresponds to it: it is an
observation science, therefore it belongs to one of the first stages of the
development of Meteorology.
Nevertheless,
our interest by Meteorognomy is not negligible.
We have worked it, and somehow reconstructed, because still it is a
predictive tool of great power in the long terms.
There
where mathematical models fail or they are insufficient, Meteorognomy combined
with Astrometeorology, applied accurately, obtains results that we can describe
as satisfactory. It is not a
gratuitous affirmation: it is the
success the test required by scientific methodology in observation sciences.
Meteorognomy
was very well-known in rural environments, because there it was born.
And there it died, with the loss of rural culture along century XX.
Origins
Meteorognomy
arose in Neolithic cultures, with the drastic climatic change that forced
humanity to practise agriculture and pasturing.
Both activities require a precise knowlwdge of time to seed and to make
workings at the suitable moments, to lead the flocks to more propitious zones at
precise times of the year, etc.
In
Neolithic, to establish a trustworthy calendar was not only a problem without
solving, but was then when the necessity to determine time patrons who allowed
satisfactorily to know the dating precise in every moment of the annual cycle.
In
rural cultures, the only patterns to locate the man in the time are the Sun, the
Moon and the planets moving along of fixed stars.
In the attempt to date cyclical climate events and to settle down
calendars adapted to the post-neolithic societies, the man found out the
astrological fact.
The
first clock-calendar was the Moon, sufficient to locate in the time the hunting
and collectors societies of the Paleolithic. By means of the Moon and their
phases, as well as by it course on the starred sky of the nights, guided the
individuals to meet in soqs, to hunt, to celebrate their fair and worship, etc.
Probably, the system of lunar Mansions (
The
work of lands and the care of the cattle demanded to change the lunar clock by
the solar. The first societies we see systematically study and determine the
course of the Sun are mesopotamic cultures.
The priest-astronomers Babylonian discovered the oblique circle of the
Sun (the Ecliptic), and elaborated the Zodiac of 12 equal signs based on fixed
stars as reference. They also systematized the course of planets on the zodiacal
band, and from all these observations they dicovered that not only the Sun, but
also the Moon and the planets had visible effects on the Earth climate and life
of the people.
Mesopotamic
cultures divided the year into four seasons, as now we know them, although for
them, the phenomenon of solstices and equinoxes did not have excessive interest.
Their major reference continued being the fixed stars. From the discovery of the
precession of the equinoxes the Greeks centred the Zodiac of the signs, already
known in Babylonia, on the intersections of Celestial Equator with the Ecliptic
(equinoctial points) and the places of maxim and minim declination of the Sun,
when our star changes the course of risings and settings in the horizon (solstices).
The development of Greek Geometry led them to take virtual references in
the heavens, that today follow effectives.
But
at the time of classic
The
solstices are more difficult to determine, by the slow advance of the Sun in
those days, and require of greater geometric refinements of observation.
But
in the
The
first correlations between the appearances and disappearances of stars and the
flowering of the species, the fall in fervour of the animals, the arrival of
rains or the heats, the moment for seeding, harvesting, grape harvest, etc. were
settled down by means of star observations. We can see this establishment in
ancient texts; and discussions about if they are the stars those that cause the
phenomena or only the signal that announces them.
Stars,
planets, the Sun and the Moon were worshiped as Gods in the
We
can see it in Aries, the sheep: the
Jews killed a lamb for the Full Moon in Aries, first of the spring, that is when
they celebrate his Passover (passage
of the Sun from South hemisphere to the North). Or in Taurus, when hecatombs and
“taurobolios” were celebrated (sacrifices of bulls, to see in the classic
authors, here we can the origin of present bullfights).
Or in Virgo, with its main star, Spica, “The
Ear”: its rising indicated the celebrations to Ceres, Cibeles, etc.
In that constellation we can see Vendimiatrix,
(The Herald of the Grape Harvest), that announced the harvest of grapes in the
Mediterranean cultures.
Until
us they have arrived Greek Parapegmta.
In classic Literature exits a series of studies dedicated to this form of
calendarics subjects, in rhyme or prose. Those
texts describe the annual climate related to the rises and settings of the stars,
agricultural and marine activity, migrations of birds, etc. We
can also see a similar Literature, the one of anwá, in the Arab culture.
Here we are forms written and literary of the first grammarians and
mathematicians, but they gather proverbs rhyming
of nomads of steppes. Thus,
the oral tradition of those societies was hoarded in the texts, that also have
been able to arrive until us (in this respect, to consult the bibliography
entering in the main page of this Web page).
During
the Middle Ages, all this knowledge arrived at
Monks
recovered old agricultural techniques, that together with those that came from
the Arabs changed the aspect of the fields of the rising
With
the Christian reconquest of the occupied territories by Muslims, the ancient
calendar of risings and settings of stars were replaced by the corresponding
Christian saints. The May rains, that in the past came with the morning setting
of Syrius, arrived then nearby of Saint Isidore. Sowing, that before was
finished in Andalusian countrysides before the setting of the Pleiades, began to
be finished before
We
could think that this way of dating has been used only in cultures of the
In
Meteorognomy
in Spanish: the oral and written tradition
But,
returning to
The
sentences of the collections of proverbs have been alive culture during
centuries, and they were transmitted in peasant milieus of parents to children,
independently that most of them were illiterate.
Sentences about to seed, to water, to plow, to know when they should stay
at home or to start off for safe refuge when bad weather approached.
The
complete annual climatic cycle of the Sun is described in our proverbs, not only
in the Castilian, but also, mainly, in Catalan aphorisms. Luckyly, those
sentences have had their compilers at the time of decay of rural culture, as all
those sparkles of the Middle Ages have been losing all their glow. Our work has
only been question of systematize them, to find out the closest possible sense
to original.
The
tradition of “cabañuelas” in all variants, also comprises of the oral
transmitted legacy, generation after generation.
Nothing had been written on the subject, until in 1995
Several
types of “cabañuelas” always take as reference important points from the
annual climatic cycle, and have a numerical base that connects with elements of
pythagoricism and hermeticism. To
project a day on a month, and twelve days on a year, comprises a technique of
ancient science that at present we could call similarity of cycles. Another
characteristic of the system is that, in many cases, they take as key-period
a setting of dates that in the past have been beginning of civil or
religious year: Passover, the Advent, Incarnation, solstices and equinoxes,
October moon, Christmas, etc.
In
the andalusian legacy we found a rich and dispersed meteorognomic tradition of
calendars, as well as in treatises of anwá. In
order to accomplish our task we have taken in consideration The andalusian
anonymous Calendar, The Calendar of Cordova,
Liber Regius and other
that we mentioned in the bibliography. Also
we have reviewed the Greek and Roman sources: Natural History of
Pliny the Elder, Natural Questions of
Seneca, Phenomena of
Aratus, Introduction to Phenomena and
Parapegma of Geminus, De
dies natalis of Censorinus,
etc. We have tried to regroup the diverse meteorognomic elements to give them
coherence and a structure that allow us to understand the ancient vision of the
world, as well as its value and actual significance.
And
closely to them, the more refined forms of Astrology, central column or axis for
the rest of sciences until century XVII. Any
cultured person, before the rupture with Antiquity considered the facts happened
in the Earth inseparable of those of the sky.
It was rather even a religious question, in times in which science and
religion comprised of a same common body. In the firmament, they were God and
the angels, the saints, the souls of dead, the Virgin Maria, etc. That the sky
governed the Earth was a fact that nobody put in doubt: the doctrine of the
planetary spheres was exposed in all treatises of Astronomy until end of century
XVII, and still we can see it represented in facades of diverse medieval
churches.
In
this cosmological scheme, the great calamities were previously announced by the
movement of the planets: droughts and floods, the unusual rigors of summer and
winter, plagues and hail stones. From
prognosis of all these “accidents” was in charge of astrologers, paid by
nobility and kings.
Concept
of the time in ancient mentalities
Another
fundamental part of that ancient knowledge was the location of the “knots”
of the annual time. Today we know
key-dates, some traditions and even beliefs hidden between folklore, that lead
us into a concept of time very different from ours.
To the dry variable t of our Physics, where a moment of time is
equal to another, the ancients put in front a cyclical concept of time in which
the world was created and then destroyed, regenerating periodically an Age after
another - those of Copper, Iron, Gold, etc., of Plato, those of Mayan and Aztecs,
those of Yugas of India -, but also in shorter periods of time as the marked by
the cycle of conjunctions Jupiter-Saturn, the cycle of the Saros (solilunar) or
by the solar or lunar year, the day, the week, etc.
Behind
all this there an undulatory concept of each observable phenomena, and therefore
of the space and the time in which it takes place. They though that a certain
moment of the year would be determinant, as much in the life of the individuals
or the terrestrial ecosystems. What
happened in it, would be decisive in the development of later events.
There
we see the origin and the sense of the celebrations of birthday, as well as the
beginnings of year: to enjoy and be
happy, so that it continues in the same way the rest of the year. Identical
foundation we find in the so called “onion calendar”, that still practices
in new year’s eve, or to watch the wind that blows at Saint Jhon night, or in
the Ofertory of the mass of Sunday Branches, all of them moments in which at
some time the civil or religious year has begun.
In
fact, chronological and
meteorological time are grouped in some languages under the same word (French,
Catalan, Spanish, etc.). In others,
as Valencian or English, is possible to distinguish one of another: temps and
oratge, time and weather,
etc. From the same Latin root tempus
-, also comes "
temperature ", " témpora ", “time ", etc. Temperature has
been called for years, or still is understood in countryside by elder people,
the type of weather or climate that does at a certain moment. Here we are a term
that has its origin in Meteorognomy, before being adopted by physicists.
We
find the attachment between weather and its celestial causes in a local
Castilian term, although María Moliner did not gather in its Dictionary of
use of the Spanish: “astro”
(star) and “tiempo” (weather) are synonymous in
Utility
and actual importance of Astrometeorology
and Meteorognomy
We
have said that Astrometeorology is a science more refined and cultured than
modest Meteorognomy; but it is not less certain that, until the present,
Astrometeorology has not known to make accurate weather forecasts with the
single aid of the sky judgment and horoscopes. Kepler lamented itself of the
fact that in rainy years the smaller planetary aspect excited the humidity of
the atmosphere, whereas in droughts the most powerful aspects hardly raised some
clouds (thesis
Here,
I do not reject the observations of our agriculturists, which draw conclusions
on the future weather from the annual risings of the stars and phases of the
Moon, at the time they observe these phenomena (not a long time beforehand) …
[Tesis 50]
We
are in this paragraph in front of the main point of meteorognomical science: to locate those critical periods in which a cycle dies and is
inaugurated a new one. The ancients
represented those knots of time by means of a serpent that bites its tail and
Janus, the roman God with two faces (one watching the past, the other the
future).
But
between the set of points of the annual cycle, each of them do not have the same
predictive importance. Some are, in the language of the Arab texts that we have
found, females able to give birth, that
is to say, they are decoy of climatic events that will repeat along weeks or
months. The collections of proverbs
conserves east knowledge, although veiled in his rhymes, and is precise to
reinterpret it with very distant mental keys in the time to those with which we
handled ourselves daily.
We
must update and reformulate all this knowledge from the point of view of
scientific models. We know that the
atmosphere has a global climatic behaviour, and that the great alterations
respect to the averages standard of meteorological cycles comprise great
phenomena of universal incidence. Thus,
the droughts in some zones implies floods in others, according to zonal
circulation or meridian of disturbances, ascends o descends of latitude,
alternate its positions with anticyclones, etc.
Meteorologists talk in these cases of teleconnections. Thus,
for example, there are studies that relate the water levels of the lagoon of
Gallocanta, in Aragón (
But
these great deviations of the average climatic cycle – phases of droughts and
floods, high or low thermal averages -, have their preludes at critical moments
of the local cycles, when the normal thing is that it rains and does not, or on
the contrary, when having to be warm, it is cold, or vice versa.
Those points of the meteorological cycles were well known before Christ,
we have many texts about the subject. Farmers
from the time of our grandparents, and even our parents, knew those privileged
moments of the year, and also to interpret the facts and signals observed in the
sky and the atmosphere at such moments.
To
recover this knowledge and update it has been our work for years.
And not only by the fact to rescue a lost knowledge to give back it to
the patrimony of the humanity. The
long term weather forecast is a problem no solved for present Meteorology.
In weather forecasts for three, four, five or six days, the different
models diverge, they only are illustrative.
In the long terms - seasonal, monthly, annual -, its reliability is
rather utopian.
Here
it is when the practical utility of the Meteorogmomy can enter into action. In a previous stage along many years (since 1967), the
expectations of our works have surpassed the phase of experimental prognosis of
long term weather forecast.
The
problem, of course, is not resolute in a totally satisfactory way. But we expect
that, likely, the stretch crossed until now will allow us to approach a
sufficient solution. At least, we
are attempting to open a door that leads to it.