Witness of Venus Calendar Design

by John P. Pratt
29 Apr 2021, 1 Birth (V), 1 Birth (M)

©2021 by John P. Pratt. All rights Reserved.

Index, Home

Contents

1. History 2. Design 2.1 Mayan Clues 2.2 Fractal Patterns 2.3 Witness of Design 3. Conclusion Notes

The amazing design of the Venus Calendar is a compelling witness of God!

This article summarizes the newly discovered overall plan of intercalating the Venus Calendar. The detailed organization is amazing, being perhaps the most compelling witness of Intelligent Design by the Creator of any one sacred calendar discovered in my work.[1] The technical details are included only in the endnotes for those who might wish to reproduce a computer model of this calendar. This article is designed for all readers to better appreciate that creation of our solar system to be a huge celestial timepiece, which is both elegant and accurate.

Fig. 1. The 9 phases of the Venus Cycle.

The article which announced the discovery of the Venus Calendar was published two decades ago.[2] Since that time several refinements have been made[3] but the underlying design has never been understood until now. That is, while the details of one single Venus Cycle have been known with certainty for many years (see Figure 1 and Table 1), the details of exactly when the adjustments should be made to fit the 585-day Venus Cycle to the actual cycle time of 583.92166 days ("intercalation") have totally eluded me. No work has even been attempted on that problem for the last 8 years because a computer program had been written to produce the many known right answers, as witnessed by several other sacred calendars, but there has never been an understanding until now of God's design of just when to intercalate. In other words, my program was clearly not the model which God was using. In all of the other sacred calendars, the intercalation method is elegant and none such was known for the Venus Calendar.

2.1 Mayan Clues

There are some clues left for us from the Mayans of Mesoamerica that link the Venus Calendar not just to the 13-day trecena, but also to the 20-day veintena. One big hint, which has been overlooked in my work for decades as unimportant, is their "discovery" that after 61 Venus cycles, the phase of Venus returns to the same day of the Sacred Round. One of the very few Mayan books (called "codices") which survived being burned by the Catholic Priests, is called the Dresden Codex. It includes a famous Venus Table which shows exactly how they counted 61 cycles of Venus starting the rising of Venus as the Morning Star on the Sacred Round day 1 Flower (trecena day 1 and veintena day Flower) until it again arose as the Morning Star on 1 Flower, 61 cycles(about 97.5 years) later.[4]

This astronomical discovery is usually hailed as a great Mayan achievement,[5] but what if it is a remnant of the knowledge of the details of the Venus Calendar as taught to their ancestors when they were visited by the white, bearded god Kulkukan, the Feathered Serpent, also called Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs. Two decades ago the possibility that the 61-cycle Venus alignment with the Sacred Round might be important in the Venus Calendar was researched in my work, but the theory was dismissed because it was not clear how to produce a long-term calendar which gave the right answers.

Fig. 3. The Sacred Round.

Now it turns out that the 61-cycle period is the heart of the Venus Calendar! There are ways to correct its inaccuracies of about ¾ day per cycle. The calendar aligns the rising of the Evening Star (representing birth) with the Sacred Round day 1 Temple (also representing birth). In other words when the Evening Star first rises on the day 1 Temple, it will again rise on 1 Temple 61 Venus cycles later. That is nearly a century later! This alone shows a high degree of design because those are the only two days representing "birth" on the 260-day Sacred Round and 585-day Venus Cycle.[6]

Thus, the two big clues from the Mayans are that (1) the Venus Calendar is linked to the Sacred Round by having the beginning of its cycles begin at the rising of Venus on the same day of the Sacred Round, and (2) the periods of 57 and 61 cycles of Venus can be strung together indefinitely to make this calendar work.

Now let us consider why the overall pattern of the Venus Calendar testifies of a Creator!

2.2 Fractal Patterns

Fig. 4. Dresden Codex Venus Table.[8]

So far all that has been shown in this article is that ancient Mayans had made tables of just how to construct a Venus Calendar which can be used indefinitely. Although this was known to me at the outset of my work nearly forty years ago, that information was only useful to know that the Mayans knew how to construct a calendar to track the motions of Venus through the heavens. There was no evidence at all that God was using such a calendar, much less that the Creator had designed it. For that reason, the Venus Table in the Dresden Codex has never been mentioned in my articles, other than they indicate the beginning point of the Venus Cycle.[7]

Now the evidence will now be discussed that the Venus Calendar does indeed testify of a Creator! The evidence is that the precise way in which one can link the 57- and 61-cycle periods together forms larger and larger Venus Cycle patterns. Let's see just how that works.

The key to how certain calendars of God work is given by the Lord:

And again, verily I say unto you, he hath given a law unto all things, by which they move in their times and their seasons;

And their courses are fixed, even the courses of the heavens and the earth, which comprehend the earth and all the planets.

And they give light to each other in their times and in their seasons, in their minutes, in their hours, in their days, in their weeks, in their months, in their years — all these are one year with God, but not with man. — D&C 88:42-44

Fig. 5. Jubilee fractal patterns.
(Click for various size periods.)

What does that mean that all of the courses of the planets, with all of their seaons, days, weeks, months and years are "one year with God, but not with man"?

In an earlier article, it was assumed in my work that the solution to that enigmatic saying had been found. It was discovered that the pattern of the entire history of Adam's family, about 7,200 years, being 7,000 years (D&C 77:6) plus a little season (Rev. 12:3) of about 200 years, was mapped out by the Jubilee Calendar as having the same pattern as one year. That is, the Jubilee year is divided into seven equal seasons and the history since Adam is also divided into seven equal millennia totalling about 7,200 years.[9]

Clicking on Figure 5 shows the fractal jubilee pattern. "Fractal" refers to the same pattern being used for similar structures of varying sizes. In the case of the Jubilee Calendar, 7 days are collected into a week, 7 weeks into a season, 7 seasons into a year, seven years into a week of years, 7 weeks of years into a jubilee, seven jubilees into a Great Jubilee of 343 years, of which three of those are grouped into a millennium, and seven millennia constitute all of history. Hence all of those "days", "weeks", "seasons" and "years" are grouped into the same pattern of seven, so they are all "one year with God, but not with man."

As an example of how God uses the fractal patterns of the Jubilee Calendar, the Great Flood occurred in the Watering millennium, the Water Great Jubilee within that millennium, and also its jubilee is named Watering![10]

Fig. 6. The nine phases of Venus.

Now for the new results about the fractal patterns of the Venus Calendar. Figure 6 illustrates the 9 phases of the Venus cycle (compare to Figures 1 and 2). They represent steps in the cycle of life. The cycle starts in the upper left with Creation, representing the moment of conception. That is at the end of being the Morning Star in the east before sunrise. The spirit is still in heaven, the realm of the Morning Star. Then the spirit enters the darkness of the womb at Quickening, which is a dark phase of Venus after it has set as the Morning Star. It then rises at Birth in the west as the Evening Star. It then rises higher each night into the Adult phase, and finally enters its Prime phase when it is highest and brightest. Then it dies (symbolic of Jesus dying in his prime) as it sets in the west and is then out of sight in the underworld in Death. It then rises in the east as the bright Morning Star, even as Jesus said that He is the "bright and morning star" (Rev. 22:16). Venus then rises to its Fulness, being brightest as Morning Star, and then becomes one with God at Lord. Thus, there are nine phases of Venus, seven visible and two invisible.

The proposed Venus calendar model begins on the day Sun 7 Aug 4097 BC, which was the day 1 Temple on the Sacred Round and also the day 1 Birth on the Venus Cycle. The cycles are numbered from a start date on 1 Birth, although they technically begin before at Creation, even as a human's lifetime is reckoned from birth.

Fig. 7. The Venus Great Round.

From that point in time, periods of 61 or 57 Venus cycles begin to be counted, which will continue all through history in the patterns now to be described. In order to facilitate referring to these periods when the Venus Cycle comes out even in Sacred Rounds, these two intervals shall be called "Venus Rounds" in my work, referring to either the period of 61 or 57 Venus cycles. The "long" (61-cycle) Venus Round consists of 35,620 days, which is 61 Venus cycles of 585 days, corrected by skipping five 13-day trecenas at various places. The "short" Venus Round (57-cycle) comprises 33,280 days, which includes skipping the five trecenas.[11] One long Venus Round of 61 Venus Cycles is nearly a century, lasting about 97.5 years.

These long and short Venus Rounds are grouped together in sets of nine to form a Great Venus Round. Each contains nine "phases", consisting of seven long Venus Rounds, representing the visible phases, and two short Venus Rounds, symbolizing the 2 invisible phases. These nine phases of the Great Venus Round are arranged in the same pattern as the Venus Cycle (see Figure 7). One such Great Venus Round consists of 315,900 days, being about 865 years long.

Fig. 8. The Venus Eternal Round.
(Click for Venus Great Round and Venus Cycle.)

Again following the fractal pattern of nine phases to a unit, these Venus Great Rounds are also grouped into sets of nine to form what could be called "one Round with God, but not with man", to paraphrase D&C 88:44 quoted above. That revelation did not refer to only the sun and moon, as in the Jubilee Calendar, but to all of the planets. This huge round which covers all of our history shall be called the Venus Eternal Round, in the sense that "eternal" can mean "God-like" (D&C 19:10-12) because all history is like one Venus Cycle with God.

In order to follow the Venus Cycle and Venus Great Round patterns, two different Venus Great Cycles lengths are required, one for visible phases and one for invisible. The long Venus Great Round is the one just described, whereas the short Great Venus Cycle consists of seven long Venus Rounds, lasting 249,340 days = 7 x 35,620 days. The Venus Eternal Round is composed of 7 long Great Rounds and 2 short Great Rounds, arranged in the Venus Cycle pattern as shown in Figure 8.

The accuracy of this Eternal Venus Round of about 7,420 years is astounding, having a total error after all of history of only 0.4 days!

2.3 Witness of Design

The reason that the Mayan Venus cycle periods of 57 and 61 cycles can be strung together is that the one has a positive error and the other a negative error, so they can be used to make a continuous chain that is always close to accurate. That process can, however, be done to create a calendar for tracking any different random periods, so that alone is not a witness of God. There is a program on my website which calculates the realignment intervals of several different cycles. The results of such calculations to realign the true Venus Cycle of 583.92166 days with the Sacred Round are shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Venus Realignment Intervals.

In that table, the periods of 57 and 61 cycles are shown as mathematically best up to that point. A better period of 301 cycles, meaning it has a smaller error, of only -0.42 days, and one of 362 cycles, and one of 663 cycles can all be formed by stringing together the 57- and 61-cycle periods. That last one has an error of only -0.06 days. It is about 1,060 years, so using seven such millennial periods would cover 7,420 years perfectly with an error of only 7 x -0.06 = -0.4 days!

Thus, an extremely accurate calendar can be constructed to cover 7,420 years by simply repeating periods of 663 cycles, and it would follow the pattern used by the Mayans. There is only one problem with that for our purposes. God is not using that calendar! That can be proven by showing that just two known dates from religious history are incompatible with that calendar.[12]

The breakthrough to solve this problem came with the realization that the same accurate period of 7,420 years could be divided up in a more complicated way,[13] to create the two nested fractal patterns of the Venus Cycle described above. That is one proof of design because it is almost impossible to have nested fractal patterns with random realignment intervals. Nested patterns are compelling evidence of design of the Venus orbit itself.

Table 3. Venus Great Rounds.

Table 3 shows the resultant divisions of our nine Great Rounds of history, viewed as phases one Venus Eternal Round. Notice that these divisions also testify of design: the entire Eternal Round begins just before Adam in the Birth phase, Jesus comes at the end of the Resurrection phase, the Christian Church begins in the Fulness phase, and that Church is restored near the beginning of the Creation phase. Finally, this Eternal Round ends just after the little season after the Millennium during which Satan is released. The divisions fit religious history extremely well!

There is a second compelling proof that this proposed calendar was designed by God and is being used by Him. It was just described that only two known Venus Calendar dates can disprove that God is using any given model of the Venus Calendar. This proposed calendar correctly calculates over 100 known major holy Venus Calendar dates which have already been published in my Religious Chronology and/or Complete Chronology. They have a wide range of actual Venus phases measured in days. Because the 13-day trecena is used to intercalate, one expects the minimum range of the starting phase of Birth to be at least 13 days, because the Venus Cycle can only begin on a day numbered "1" (trecena). It is easy to construct a Venus calendar that has a range of only about 15 days. But the range used by the Lord is much greater, being about 20 days. For example, ideally the Evening star would first rise on day 316 of its cycle, as measured from an inferior conjunction, just before rising as the Morning Star. The phase of Venus on 1 Birth in the cycle of Enoch's birth is indeed 316 days, about the earliest possible day. But in the cycle when the manna ceased to appear, it was on day 335, requiring a total range of 19 days. Thus, there are large swings of highs and lows. In order to match all of 100 known dates perfectly requires actually having the same pattern that God is using.

Hence, the elegant design of this calendar, coupled with its accuracy on over 100 known dates from history, is compelling evidence indeed that this model is correct and that God is using it! It is a powerful witness for a Creator, who designed the orbits of the earth and Venus to be used as a sacred celestial calendar to testify of God.

A detailed list of what improvements result from this improved model is not included herein, but one example is especially impressive. In what to me is "the strangest scripture",[14] the Lord told us that Mahalaleel was 496 years and 7 days old when he was ordained (D&C 107:46)! What was the need for such accuracy? In an earlier article a solution was proposed, but the new Venus Calendar model disallows it. In its place a far better solution now appears in which both Mahalaleel's ordination date and death date occur on the same Venus holy day[15]. That provides two witnesses that the dates are correct.

Notes

1. Recently my first book explaining the Lord's use of three sacred calendars to time key Biblical events has been published. It uses the witness of three calendars to make a compelling argument, but now the case is so strong for the design of the Venus Calendar that it alone can now be used as a compelling argument. See The Creator's Magnificent Clock on this website.
2. Pratt, John P., "Venus Resurrects This Easter Sunday" Section 2: Cycles of the Dawn Star Meridian Magazine (27 Feb 2001) announced the discovery, showing six known sacred phases of Venus.
3. Pratt, John P., "Venus and the Beginning of Mortality" Meridian Magazine (9 July 2003) showed how the Lord is using the Venus Calendar for several key religious events in history since the Creation, "Venus Testifies of Christ" Section 1: The Venus Calendar Meridian Magazine (10 Feb 2010) showed eight known phases, and finally "Venus Calendar Patterns Testify of Scriptures" Section 1: Nine Phases Meridian Magazine (26 April 2013) announced the discovery of all nine phases. The pattern in which the Venus Calendar has been discovered also follows the Venus Calendar. That last article, published on 1 Birth (Venus), was the last progress which has been made until now, when the final details were discovered yesterday on 0 Birth (V). Eight Venus Cycles equals nearly exactly 8 years, and that last article was 8 years ago, and this article is again published on 1 Birth (Venus), and even on 1 Birth (Mercury).
4. It was discovered by John E. Teeple in "Maya Inscriptions: the Venus Calendar and Another Correlation", American Anthropology 28:402-408 (1926) that the Dresden Codex reveals the two periods of 57 and 61 Venus cycles, which can be used to predict the heliacal rising of Venus (rising as Morning Star) on the same day of the Sacred Round. That discovery is the heart of the design of the Venus Calendar! After 57 Venus cycles (error of -3.53 days) and 61 Venus cycles (error of +0.78 days). J. Eric S. Thompson, in A Commentary on the Dresden Codex, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1972), p. 62-63, states that those two periods could be be strung together indefinitely: "Teeple (1926) in a brilliant study rediscovered how the Maya had solved the problem ... He noted that the Maya, by subtracting four days at the end of 61 VR [Venus Rounds, herein called Venus cycles — JPP] recovered the lub [alignment] 1 Ahau [1 Lord] but ... an occasional 8-day correction was necessary ... the end of the 57th VR,again recovering the lub 1 Ahau. No correction which failed to recover 1 Ahau was acceptable to the Maya. This table can be extended indefinitely." The Venus table is also well analyzed by Anthony Aveni in Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico (Austin, TX: U. of Austin Press, 1980), "Astronomy in the Mayan Codices, II: Venus", pp. 184-194.
5. See, for example, Science News "Dresden Codex Venus Table Reveals Ancient Mayans Made Major Discovery in Astronomy, Math" (17 Aug 2016).
6. The Venus Cycle used for the Venus Calendar is 585 days rather than the more accurate 584 (actually 583.92166 days) because the calendar can only be intercalated with units of a 13-day trecena, and 585 days equals exactly 45 trecenas. Thus, each Venus cycle, and even each phase thereof, begins on a day "1" on the trecena.
7. Pratt, John P., "Venus Testifies of Christ" Section 1: The Venus Calendar Meridian Magazine (10 Feb 2010): "The beginning point (1) was listed in the Mayan Dresden Codex tables and has remained a mystery to the moderns, who can not see any reason for it. I propose that it was the beginning point of the cycle."
8. At the bottom of the figure the numbers 236 + 90 + 250 + 8 = 584 represent the length of the visibility of Venus as the Morning Star (about 263 days) then its disappearance on the far side of sun (superior conjunction), then its appearance as the Evening Star (about 236 days) and its disappearance in front of the sun (inferior conjunction). While the last two numbers are nearly accurate, it has puzzled astronomers why the first number (236) so far from accurate (263) and also that the time of disappearance is 90 days rather than about 50. Aveni, op. cit. p. 187, states "It is puzzling that the 90-day interval in the table is so different from the true disappearance interval (about 50 days) and that the morning and evening star intervals are represented as being unequal. Were the Maya priests who drew up the table deliberately trying to emphasize the ritualistic or astrological importance of the planet rather than accurate astronomical observations which surely they must have made in composing the rest of the table?" That anomaly in the table gave me the clue that the Venus Cycle actually begins before its "birth" as an evening star, at the point "1 Creation" while Venus is still visible as a Morning Star. Look at Table 1. The "Creation" and "Quickening" phases together amount to 91 days, almost exactly the mysterious 90 days in the Dresden Venus Table! Thus, my answer to Aveni is "Yes, they where indicating the date of the beginning of the Venus Cycle at the day of its "conception" on 1 Creation!
9. See Pratt, John P., "Updated Jubilee Calendar Testifies of Sacred Dates" Section 1: Jubilee Calendar (5 Aug 2018).
10. See Pratt, John P., "Updated Jubilee Calendar Testifies of Sacred Dates" Section 3: New Results (5 Aug 2018).
11. The five leap trecenas are in various locations because some Venus Rounds raise the phase of Venus and others lower it. That is, the long Venus Rounds slightly raise the phase of Venus by .78 days, whereas the short Venus Rounds lower it by 3.53 days. Once the phase is in the desired range, the leap cycles tend to be separated by either 12 or 13 cycles.
12. The date of Adam taking his first breath and of the date of the visit of the angels to announce the exact day of the future birth of Isaac are two of the most solid anchor dates of about 100 known. They are separated by exactly two sets of 663 cycles. Isaac's date must be in a leap cycle and Adam's date must precede a leap cycle, so just those two dates prove that God is not using this calendar, because with that separation, Adam's birth would come after, not before, the leap cycle. That helps show how impossible the task seemed to show that all 100 dates could be made to fit perfectly! As a side point, it appears to me that the entire reason that the angels announced the exact date of Isaac's birth, and that such details are revealed in the Book of Genesis, is that the birth date of Isaac is the single biggest clue needed to unravel the mystery of the Venus Calendar! That is because their visit proves that it was a leap cycle! See my "Venus Calendar Patterns Testify of Scriptures" Section 3.1: Isaac's Birth (26 April 2013).
13. The accurate pattern contains 7 sets of 663 cycles (from Table 2), totalling 4,641 cycles. It is important to know how many 57- and 61-cycles are included, so that can be found as follows (from Table 2): 4,641 = 7 x 663 = 7 x (301 + 362) = 7 x ((4x61 + 57) + (5x61 + 57)) = 63 x 61 + 14 x 57. The number in the Venus Eternal Round is 7 x (7x61 + 2x57) + 2 x (7x61) = 49 x 61 + 14 X 57 + 14 x 61 = 63 x 61 + 14 x 57. That is not only 4,641 cycles, it is also the same number of long and short rounds. Thus, the Venus Eternal Round has exactly the same accuracy of 0.4 days after 7,420 years, because it contains the same number of leap cycles.
14. See Pratt, John P., "Venus Resurrects This Easter Sunday" Section 5.4: A Strange Scripture, Meridian Magazine (27 Feb 2001). At that time only the question was asked about why the Lord would include such a detail. Later it would be discovered that the answer was both to distinguish between two rival candidates and also to show that all of the ordination dates were on holy days on the Venus Calendar.
15. See Pratt, John P., "Venus Calendar Patterns Testify of Scriptures" Section 4.2.3: Strangest Scripture (26 April 2013). There was presented what appeared to be correct, but the new model disallows that proposed date for Mahalaleel's ordination to be on a Venus Calendar holy day. Now it turns that the date just one month later for both his birth and ordination dates fit much better because the ordination date is on 1 Creation (V), matching his already known death date! Most of these proposed dates have two such witnesses to show that they are correct.