Using the stars to date events in the history of mankind is not without peril of making errors. Scholars and historians (particularly Egyptologists) have developed a Sothic dating method that “over-interprets”, in my opinion, the astronomical significance and the symbolic meaning of Sirius.

So many volumes have been devoted to this subject that it has become nearly impossible to extract the authentic sacred ancient teachings and to examine them in their original form.

It is also my strong conviction that if such teachings still exist, they would always remain hidden to the eyes of the profane. An example is offered in the western scholarship on the teachings and oral traditions of the Dogon tribe in West Africa.

While much has been written about the Dogon’s creation myth and their profound astronomical knowledge - especially about the Sirius system - it seems that little of the Dogon wisdom has been truly understood.

Or as a great scientist once put it: “In trying to grasp the so-called ‘primitive’, we receive as much as we are able to give.”

For centuries the Dogon have observed, analyzed and studied everything that surrounds them and developed an internally consistent and detailed cosmology expressed in mythic terms. They do not require textbooks or sophisticated instruments to understand reality.

While the Dogon may have had no need for theories such as Precession or Yugas, they do possess an astonishing clear perception of mankind’s place in the universe which centers, so to speak, on the invisible stars of the Sirius system.

For example, we learn from the Dogon that "two systems, that are sometimes linked together, intervene, and are at the origin of various calendars, giving a rhythm to the life and activities of man.… One of them, nearest to the Earth, will have the sun as an axis … and another, further away, Sirius … monitor of the Universe”.

“The primitive location of the star in the sky is the one in which the sun is found today … Sirius was also there but he moved away like it. Like the other stars it moved away from the Earth, for only the sun remained close to her. It therefore moved & now is located in the middle of the sky, but it is a center of movement… The movements of the 'po tolo' (which is the first companion of Sirius) maintain all the other stars in their respective places; indeed, it is said that without this movement, none of them would “hold up”. It is the 'po tolo' that forces them to keep in their trajectories: it regulates Sirius’s trajectory, Sirius is the only star that doesn’t follow a regular curve which it separates from the other stars by surrounding it with its own trajectory. That is why it is called “the pillar of the stars”. … 'po tolo' is the axis of the world.

Evidently, the Dogon’s “Weltanschauung” offers a number of perspectives that differ dramatically from the better-known religious, philosophical and scientific systems in the world.

Their way of thinking accepts the universe as an orderly whole, in which the determination of "laws" is less essential than the apperception of a pre-established harmony that is endlessly troubled, and continually reorganized. Every part of the entirety is a summary of the whole.

The Dogon view does not emphasize the immaterial world or liberation from existence, nor does it embrace the values of the material world.

Rather, it evokes a picture of man that gives meaning to our earthly existence and its impermanence.

If today we can realize that the fundamental purpose of all astronomical quests might transcend the mere measurement of cosmic cycles we may regain the potential to comprehend the same messages that the ancients saw in the motions of the stars.

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