13 Years!

This post is part 8 of a series about Venus and the Jaredites. To start at the beginning, click here.

“Like the Dacotah, we [the Cheyenne] use twenty-six poles in our teepees, … The twenty-six poles are for each of the twins of the morning-evening star, giving each thirteen, which is its number.”¹

The foregoing quote is recorded in the book He Walked the Americas by L. Taylor Hansen. The book is a collection of indigenous stories about a Christ-like man visiting the various tribes of the Americas and Pacific, but it mentions the Morning Star, or the Dawn Star, as they call it, many times. It draws a connection between the Christ-figure and the Dawn Star, at one point saying that He and His twelve disciples make thirteen in total, thus making 13 the number of the Star.

But I think there’s more to it than that. 

In the previous article, I ran the numbers in the Venus-Jaredite model of Ether chapters 12 through 15, assuming each of the 4 wars began on a heliacal rise of the Morning Star, and found that it spans a time period of around 13 years, or 8 synodic periods of Venus. This amount of time–13 years–when it concerns Venus is highly significant and adds incredible support to the hypothesis that the Late Jaredites were timing their wars according to the movements of Venus.

I think that 13 is the number of the Dawn Star for many Native cultures precisely because of what happened to the Jaredites (their ancestors²) in Ether 12-15… and I have astronomy, math, Mayan calendars, and human sacrifices as evidence to support it.

Astronomy

As we’ve already covered, Venus has an interesting 8-year cycle. What I didn’t tell you was that the reason this is so is because 8 years on Earth is almost exactly 13 years on Venus.³ The math is pretty wild… A Venus year is 224.8 days, and an Earth year is 365.25 days, so…

13 x 224.8 = 2922.4 and 8 x 365.25 = 2922

This is why Venus’ position in the sky on your 8th birthday was the very same as on your 16th birthday. Every 8 years, Venus has completed yet another 13 trips around the Sun, and is right back where it started. This 8-year period can also be called an octaeteris, which I suggest is yet another clue as to why Ether got his name… The Venus cycle clearly includes an octa-ETER-is, and I believe the book of ETHER is about Venus… See the similarities?

This could explain why 13 is the number of Venus, but it doesn’t explain why 13 Earth years is so significant. So, to help with that, let’s look at the Mayans.

Mayan Calendar

The calendrical system of the Mayans was fundamentally connected to Venus. It would take 52 years for their 260-day, 13-month Venus-based calendar to synchronize again with their 365-day solar calendar (which I have written about here). The Mayans feared the end of a 52-year cycle–which they called a Calendar Round–because they thought the sun might no longer rise and the world might end.⁴ Turns out that 52 is divisible by 13. 52 years is four 13-year periods!

They also had a larger 104-year cycle called the Venus Round,⁵ which they also feared. Why was this cycle so important? I’m not sure, but perhaps the math can give us a clue.

104 years is eight 13-year periods!! 8 and 13, together again!

You can see examples of this system of year counting in the Dresden Codex, which is all about Venus and 13 years, apparently.⁶

Why did the Mayans think that groups of 13 Earth years was such a big deal?… Don’t know, but consider this crazy set of facts:

When I ran the Venus-Jaredite model, it produced a timespan of 8 complete synodic periods of Venus between Ether 13:15 and Ether 15:31. Eight synodic periods of Venus is 4672 days, which is almost exactly 13 years (4745 days). In other words, 8 synodic periods is 73 days short of 13 years.⁷

The number 73 is actually quite significant to the Venus cycle because Venus reaches its maximum elongation around 73 days before and after inferior conjunction.⁸ And surprisingly, 73 days is exactly one eighth of Venus’ 584-day synodic period (73/584 = 1/8). 

This means that 13 years is precisely 8 and 1/8 synodic periods of Venus. This unspoken fact seems to me to be what the Mayans were secretly playing with in their calendar. Their 52-year Calendar Round was four 13-year periods, or 32 and 4/8 synodic periods; and their 104-year Venus Round was eight 13-year periods, or 64 and 8/8 synodic periods—that’s eight groups of 8 full synodic periods and eight groups of one-eighth of a synodic period (8 x 8 + 8/8)… …. See all the eights in there??

Remember how there are a ton of hidden eights in the book of Ether?

According to one website, the number 13 had to do with prophecy in Mayan culture.¹⁰ In the Dresden Codex, Venus is used as a means to make predictions.¹¹ And in He Walked the Americas, the Christ-figure is often quoted using “the cycles of the Dawn Star” to prophesy… I propose that the prophet Ether used the Venus cycle and 13 years to prophesy the destruction of the Jaredite civilization.

Ether’s Prophecy

I believe that during the first year, Ether prophesied to the people that if they didn’t repent they’d be destroyed in 13 years (Ether 12:3, 13:13). I believe that he said something like this to them:

“If you guys don’t repent, the Morning Star will not rise more than eight times before this people is completely destroyed.” 

And I believe he was rejected by them and cast out exactly 73 days before the first Venus rise, while the Evening Star was at maximum eastern elongation… thus making this statement and/or his rejection exactly 13 years to the day before the last Jaredites were slain in the final battle, on the last day of the eighth synodic period, right before the Morning Star rose for the ninth time.

If this is true, that means that the time elapsed between Ether 13:13 and Ether 15:31 was exactly 13 years.

DAY	EVENT
-72	Evening star at maximum eastern elongation. Ether is cast out (13:13)12
1	A: First morning star rise. Many rise up (13:15)
585	B: Second morning star rise. Shared rises up (13:23)
1169	C: Third morning star rise.
1753	D: Fourth morning star rise. The brother of Shared rises up (14:3)
2337	E: Fifth morning star rise.
2921	F: Sixth morning star rise. Coriantumr comes up to Moron (14:11)
3505	G: Seventh morning star rise. (people still gathering)
4089	H: Eighth morning star rise. (people still gathering)
4673	I: Ninth morning star rise. Coriantumr beheads Shiz. (15:30-31)

Is this why the Mayans built their calendar and prophecies around 13-year chunks and Venus? Is this why 13 was the number of Venus among the plains tribes of indians? Because their mother civilization, the Late Jaredites, was obliterated in 13 years BECAUSE of Venus? I mean, the model we’ve been building in this series could have given us any number of years for what happened in Ether 12-15, but it had to give us thirteen years and precisely eight synodic periods of Venus?! This is insane.

But I haven’t even mentioned the craziest correlation yet— 

The Pawnee Morning Star Ceremony (human sacrifice)

The most interesting example of 13 years being connected to Venus comes from the Pawnee tribe. I’ll let another author explain it in his own words:

“Venus formed a centerpiece to the culture of the Pawnee people of North America, who probably inherited their fear [of the Morning Star] during contact that they had with the Aztecs in the 16th century. Their world was created with the mating of the Morning star (male) and the Evening star (female), both of which we know to be Venus, to produce a girl.

“The Pawnee’s reverence of the astronomical body culminated in a rather brutal sacrifice, the practice of which ended some time in the early 19th century. To appease the Morning Star, they would sacrifice a 13 year old girl to him, because, by receiving back the first girl to be placed on Earth, the Morning Star would continue to watch over the Pawnees through their endeavors in war and peace.”¹³

So to appease the angry Morning Star, the Pawnee would sacrifice a girl of THIRTEEN YEARS of age.¹⁵

Now, why would the Pawnee want to specifically sacrifice a girl that was 13 years of age to the Morning Star? What was so special about ’13 years?’ Thirteen years, when it concerns Venus, is of course implying 8 synodic periods–as we’ve discussed. Without the underlying knowledge that 13 years produces 8 complete cycles of morning and evening star, sacrificing a girl of that specific age makes absolutely no sense at all. 

Further, to say that this sacrificed girl was “the first girl to be placed on Earth” after the Morning Star mated with the Evening Star requires that the Pawnee were looking 8 synodic periods into the past. Why would they do that? What made such a time period so dreadful and fearsome for them?

Well, I’ve got an idea…. I think the Venus-Jaredite theory explains it. I believe this gruesome practice of the Pawnees was a vestige, a preserved memory of the horrors of their Jaredite ancestors who were destroyed in 8 Venus cycles under the wrath of the Morning Star. 

What else might it be?

When the calculations of my model spit out a 13-year period for the events of Ether 12-15, I initially thought it was significant because of the unlucky reputation of the number 13. But when I dug deeper into ancient Native American cultures, I started seeing the number 13, and more specifically, thirteen-year periods being connected with Venus, doom, war, etc. I’m sure there are other possible explanations for it all, but it sure is interesting when you consider the plight of the Late Jaredites, and how their civilization was likely an ancestor to many later cultures throughout the Americas. Their forefathers had been warned to repent, but instead of repenting they timed their bloody, power-seeking wars with the Great Star and it ultimately led to their downfall, just like Ether had predicted.

And for Ether to use the Morning Star to prophesy of their destruction was extremely appropriate because, as you’ll see in the next post, he may have been associated with the Evening Star himself…

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

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Sources and Notes

1. He Walked the Americas, p. 86 ↩︎
2. Moroni, in the title page of the Book of Mormon, states the reason he included the book of Ether: “Which is to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever.” ↩︎
3. https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/five-petals-of-venus/ ↩︎
4. “Central Mexican people regarded the transition from one fifty-two year period to the next as a time of great danger. It was feared that the sun might not rise again at the start of a new period, and that the world would be destroyed… In order to prevent this, to ensure that the sun would rise again at the start of a new 52-year cycle, Central Mexicans performed a ‘New Fire Ceremony.’ This involved a radical cleansing of people’s houses.” http://www.mesolore.org/tutorials/learn/18/Counting-Tomorrow-The-Day-After-Tomorrow/47/The-52-Year-Cycle  ↩︎
5. ”The Mayas envisioned a huge period of 104 years within which the planet Venus would pass through 13 of these eight-year-long sequences. This 104-year period is called a Venus round and it always ends and starts on the Maya date ONE AHAU (Hun-Ahpu).” https://caneycircle.wordpress.com/venussequence1/;  https://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/118777/science/primary_105_year_age_of_seth_and_mayan_104_year_venus_round.html ↩︎
6. The fascination with 13 in the Dresden Codex centers around the use of the 104-year Venus Round and the frequent usage of the number 13: ”The pages [24 & 49-50 of Dresden] deal with the 584-day cycle of the planet Venus over a period of 104 years. When the planet appeared as a morning star, the Maya feared misfortune, which is symbolized on the plates of the Dresden manuscript by 3 pictures each: In the upper picture the reigning Venus deity pours a vessel over a war deity with drawn spears in the middle picture and in the lower picture an animal or a god lies as a hit victim.” https://www.slub-dresden.de/en/explore/manuscripts/the-dresden-maya-codex/content; “Perhaps the idea [in the Dresden Codex] was that the number 13 has in some sense “come full circle.” It might be worth recalling that all number coefficients on tzolk’in dates are painted in red as well… I’ll therefore put forward this idea of the circular 13 as a tentative hunch, hoping it explains the “missing” number on the day sign.” https://mayadecipherment.com/2012/08/25/an-unusual-13-in-the-dresden-codex/; see also https://maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasure-maya-numeration-in-dresden-codex  ↩︎
7. 8 x 584 = 4672; 13 x 365 = 4745; 4745 – 4672 = 73  ↩︎
8. See Appendix 1* ↩︎
9. https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/greatest-elongation-definition-venus-mercury/  ↩︎
10. “Regarding number thirteen, many applications were applied by Mesoamericans in order to predict the future, since the purpose of Maya astronomy was not the study of the universe for scientific purposes, but to understand the past cycles of time, and to project them towards the future with the aim of making prophecies.” https://www.joya.life/en/blog/13-sacred-number-mayas/
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11. ”The Dresden Codex, one of four surviving Maya chronicles, contains an extensive tabulation of the appearances of Venus, and was used to predict the future.” https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/civil/maya/mmc07eng.html 
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12. Interesting coincidence that the verse wherein Ether was cast out, which I believe was 13 years before the Jaredites were destroyed, is Ether chapter 13, verse 13. I’m a nerd. ↩︎
13. Written by Oliver Knevitt in 2012: https://www.science20.com/between_death_and_data/ode_venus-87585  ↩︎
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnee_mythology ↩︎
15. There is some dispute on whether the Morning Star ceremony was directed toward Mars or Venus, both of which appear as Morning and Evening Stars through their respective cycles. The problem with it being Mars though is that Mars’ cycle has no apparent connection to a 13-year period that I can find. I think it had to have been Venus originally, but perhaps evolved into Mars and/or Venus in later stages of Pawnee culture. But that’s just my opinion. If you can figure out how Mars connects to thirteen years, please let me know. Apparently the last recorded ceremony of this kind, in 1838, the sacrifice victim was 15 years old, which may align more with Mars, yet both Mars and Venus were in their Morning Star phases at the time. Wikipedia says this about the reason for this confusion about which planet it was: “The earliest accounts specified Venus as Morning Star, while most ethnographers favored Mars”, given it was said to be red.” Interestingly, one of the names the Maya gave to Venus was Chac Ek, which literally means “red star”. Possibly the Pawnee and the Mayans called Venus “red” for the same reason, whatever that may be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnee_mythology; Thurman, Melburn D.: “The Timing of the Skidi-Pawnee Morning Star Sacrafice.[sic]” Ethnohistory, Vol. 30 (1983), No. 3, pp. 155-163.; https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1277&context=oa_theses  ↩︎
16. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pawnee-people  ↩︎