Andy Lloyd's Dark Star Theory

Planet X before and after 2012

In recent years, discussions of the Return of Planet X have become increasingly Apocalyptic in tone.  This essay addresses the reasons for this, and analyses whether we should anticipate an approaching disaster.  I also look at Planet X symbolism in the ceremonial Catholic rites of Easter, and probe the possible connection between Planet X and the Mayan End of the Age in 2012.

The suggestion that the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia knew about a Planet X body was first proposed by Zecharia Sitchin in 1976.  He analysed their ancient cuneiform texts and came to some staggering conclusions.  He put forward the theory that these ancient texts, if taken literally, described the arrival of flesh and blood gods on Earth, who adapted humans genetically to become a useful slave work force.  The gods came from Nibiru, the Sumerian name, explained Sitchin, for a Planet X body whose elongated orbit brought it back towards Earth every 3600 years [Sitchin, 1976].

The gods were capable of space flight, argued Sitchin, and could transit to and from our world during these passages of their planet through the solar system. Each passage of Nibiru would bring about a marked leap in the evolutionary progress of humans on Earth.  Occasionally, a Nibiruan passage would bring calamity, a particular example of which was the Biblical Flood. 

Rather like a fortune-teller with her pack of Tarot cards, the gods, or ‘Anunnaki’, stationed on Earth could foretell whether a passage of their home world through the planetary zone of the solar system would bring great joy, or great destruction.  Their absence on the Earth during modern times might be read as an indication that the next return passage of Nibiru would indeed be Apocalyptic.  Alternatively, one might argue that the exponential propagation of the human species drove the gods away.  Some even argue that they are still here, among us, steering the course of our own species’ history.

It is clear that most people would be very concerned if they heard that a planet-sized body was moving along an unpredictable path through the solar system.  Whether such a body would actually present a real threat is a moot point.  The thought of such an event would be terrifying enough, particularly if Planet X turned out to be a colossal world, of gas giant proportions. 

My work in this field has focussed upon the idea that Planet X is tied in with a second ‘sun’ orbiting Sol, which I term the ‘Dark Star’.  This celestial entity is a sub-brown dwarf, of equivalent size to mighty Jupiter.  It lies well beyond the furthest known planets of the solar system, and its presence can be deduced from a number of anomalies and clues in the solar system [Lloyd, 1999, 2005].

It is natural to think in terms of impending disaster when considering the Return of Planet X.  Around the return of the Millennium there was widespread anxiety about what the new century, or possibly the astrological New Age, would bring.  These fears have become entwined, both in the research efforts of several authors, and more generally in the minds of the alternative knowledge community.

As arbitrary as our calendar system may sometimes appear on an academic level, the numbers which control our lives have a magical effect upon us.  The appearance of several zeros closely grouped together created a fever of speculation, unhindered by the potential digital disaster that our computerised world might have suffered.  Thankfully, as we slipped uneventfully into the Noughties, the late Nineties fears proved unfounded.  But that did not mean that we could entirely relax.

Millennium Angst shifted to the year 2003. These fears coalesced around the return of the planet Nibiru.

Popular Internet websites offered channelled information about a coming destruction, alongside alleged images of the ‘brown dwarf Planet X’ [Nancy Lieder, 2001].  Books fashioned along similar lines, warning of the Return, proved popular [Hazlewood, 2001].  A large swath of people believed that Nibiru was moving, unseen, among our neighbouring planets.  It was heading directly for Earth, scheduled to meet its destiny, and ours, in the summer of 2003.  It never happened.

The arguments made for the return date of 2003 were extremely precise.  They were based upon a particular version of the timing of Nibiru which centred upon a previous arrival during the Israelite Exodus from Egypt.  The maverick scholar Immanuel Velikovsky had argued decades ago that certain Biblical passages could be only be properly understood in the context of astronomical events, and accompanying physical catastrophes [Velikovsky, 1950].  His readings of ancient myths and Biblical stories suggested that a great red comet appeared in the sky during the Exodus.  Velikovsky preceded Sitchin, and was not advocating a Planet X body.  But his interpretations have been used by some to reconfigure this Exodus timing for Sitchin’s Nibiru.

Velikovsky also created a new chronology for the history of the ancient world, including various events described in the Old Testament [Velikovsky, 1952].  The upshot of this is that there appears to be a 3600 year gap between Velikovsky’s (controversial) timing of the Exodus and the year 2003 CE.  The advocates of 2003 doom refined the timing still further, with their dire warnings from the Zetas, or the Galactic Federation, or whoever it may have been.  The suggestion was wrong on a number of levels, and most of the supporting evidence was easily refuted.

Like the boy who cried ‘Wolf!’ the idea of a Planet X body lost a certain amount of credibility in the subsequent years.  But, crucially, there really is a wolf out there.  It might not be prowling around the camp at night, but its baying at the Moon can be dimly heard way off in the forest. 

I have presented the case for the existence of a sub-brown dwarf in the solar system, in my book, website and in previous articles for Paranoia [Lloyd, 1999, 2001, 2005].  Other highly credible researchers have produced scientifically balanced work along similar lines [Warmkessel, 1997; Cruttenden 2005].  Our work stems from the ‘Nemesis’ theory, which was proposed by serious astronomers hoping to explain cyclical extinction events on Earth [Muller, 1988; Dauber & Muller 1996].

This baby is still in danger of being thrown out with the bath water.  In the next few years, history will repeat itself.  I can confidently predict this because of the advent of the End of the Mayan Age on the 21st/22nd December 2012.  This remarkable calendar event is just perfect for a new tie-in with Planet X.  Indeed, this connection has already been made by several authors [Van der Worp et al, 2007; Rand 2007].  Rand expects a Planet X fly-by as early as 2009, and concurs with Marshall Masters’ research team that it will then make a highly eventful return in 2012 [Masters, 2007].

As before, the prediction for the return of Planet X in 2012 rests upon a particular interpretation of the Book of Exodus.  Marshall Masters’ team also cite information presented in the ‘Kolbrin Bible’, a collection of supposedly ancient documents which chronicle, amongst other things, the Egyptian version of the Exodus [Masters & Manning, 2006].  To my mind, the Egyptian and Celtic documents which make up this work have yet to be reliably authenticated.  The ‘Kolbrin Bible’ presents accounts of the ‘Destroyer’, a great red comet which is said to have appeared during the Exodus.  Its similarity with the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky is clear, and its supposed timing seems to rest squarely with the work of this late maverick scholar.

From a sceptical point of view, this material should be considered with great caution.  The timing of the Exodus, which is quite often placed around 1440BCE, is by no means certain.  Despite the effort of many scholars, it remains unclear which Pharoah oversaw the events of the Exodus.  Indeed, as things currently stand, scholars are unable to agree on which century it occurred. 

There is a paucity of archaeological evidence to tie in with the Biblical narrative, leaving much room for speculation.  To pinpoint the event described in the Bible to a particular year, like 1447BCE, is either very brave, or foolish. 

This may bring the current 2012 argument for the Return of Planet X into some perspective.  At the end of this article I will explore this issue more deeply.

I remain open-minded about the Timing of Nibiru.  There are many possible scenarios hinging on historical dates of great significance.  I suspect that the ancient calendars may have been set according to the appearance of this red star in the sky, and I have explored the possibility that Nibiru was the Messianic Star for some years.  Like the Exodus, this event contains a mixture of historical fact, and mythical symbolism.  It is beyond the scope of this essay to explore the various issues with the Nativity here, but suffice it to say that my initial belief that Nibiru physically returned at the start of the Christian Era has gradually eroded [see Vermes, 2006; Roberts, 2007]. 

Although I still don’t entirely rule out such a scenario, I have grown increasingly interested in the true focus of the Christian religion, i.e. the Passion.

Zecharia Sitchin has noted that the sign of Nibiru, the home planet of the Anunnaki, is a Mesopotamian Cross [Sitchin, 1993].  Variations on this theme include various Winged Disks, the symbolism of which spills over into Egyptian iconography too.  So it is with the Christian symbol of the Cross.  One can see an evolution of this symbol down the Ages, and there may be a link with the return of a Celestial Lord, taking the form of the Planet of the Gods.

The artist Jean Cocteau was an esoteric master, and was allegedly a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion [Picknett & Prince, 1997]. He created a heretical mural which resides in the church of Notre-Dame de France in central London.  It shows a highly unusual depiction of the Crucifixion, which features a Dark Star.  There is good reason to believe that certain esoteric orders hold valuable information about the existence of Planet X, and I have been in contact with a highly arcane Masonic Order whose symbolism relates directly to that of the Dark Star.  The Freemasons themselves seem interested in this connection.

Was Cocteau alluding to an astronomical significance in the Passion?  My belief that that may have been so is strengthened by an analysis of ritual used by a very credible source indeed, namely, the Roman Catholic Church! 

There is a strong cross-over between esoteric mystery and Catholicism visible at the famous cathedral at Chartres, France.  A Zodiac within the cathedral appears to show the Dark Star’s position in the heavens, and worship at the shrine of the Black Madonna there contains a great deal of stellar symbolism, which, again, alludes directly to the Dark Star [Lloyd, 2004].

On Good Friday his year, I attended their Solemn Liturgy, the one ritual in their calendar which is not a Mass.  As you might expect, the service focussed its attention on the Crucifixion, and particularly on the Cross, which was venerated, in time-honoured tradition, by Catholic members of the congregation.  During the service, I was struck by the symbolism employed.

Clearly, the Cross is equivalent to that of the ancient Mesopotamians, and finds expression in the form of the Winged Disk.  This may be understood as a solar symbol, or as the symbol of a returning planet, or both!  The symbolism of a resurrection from death is particularly apt, because a Planet X body disappears into the void from millennia, only to reappear for a relatively brief duration.  Its cycle is extremely lengthy on a human timescale, and any cult devoted to it would have trained generations of priests to wait through the Ages for its expected return.  Such an expectation is much like that of the Second Coming of Christ.

In the Liturgy, the Cross is physically held by the Priest, and two other priests stood to either side holding candles.  Perhaps these candles represented the souls of the two other victim of the Roman torture of the Crucifixion that day. But, they also relate directly to the Uraei, the snake-like emblems that often appear with Winged Disks.  These Uraei are often crowned with disks themselves.  They may be representative of accompanying planets journeying with the Dark Star, which I believe is the true source of the Cross and Winged Disk emblems.

The Catholic Liturgy contains a highly significant Procession around the church.  The attention of the Congregation is drawn to 14 paintings which run around the walls of the church.  Each displays an image of the Passion.  This Procession seemed to mark the journey of Christ with the Cross.  In astronomical terms, it might represent the movement of Nibiru through the heavens.  Christ falters three times during this tortuous journey, and this could readily be accounted for by a perceived retrograde motion of Planet X, as its relative position alters due to the parallax effect caused by the movement of the Earth.

As Christ dies, and is eventually entombed, one could imagine the symbolism related to the Planet of the Lord disappearing back into the void.  Followers of the original cult of Christ, as a rising and dying god, would feel the same level of anticipation as those of a cult focussed on the return of a celestial body of some religious significance.  This is a vitally important connection.

What I found most telling of all was one further detail.  During the Easter vigils, the statues of Christ are temporarily covered in the church, symbolising his period of absence from Earth. The statue covers, and, indeed, the colour of the clothes he wears when declared ‘King of the Jews’, are purple.  This has deep significance for me, because purple is the likely colour of the Dark Star.

Brown dwarfs are red in colour.  The smallest versions of these celestial objects become increasingly purple.  Our Dark Star would be very old, and comparatively small for its class.  It would, therefore, be either magenta or purple.  This is apt, considering how that colour has been associated with royalty across generations and cultures.  The Dark Star is Lord, and, if Christ represented the return of this celestial body, then it would be right that he is associated with this colour, as well as with the Cross.

So, as I stood in the church, I imagined its walls to represent the heavens, enclosing the congregation on Earth. The procession of the Stations of the Cross took a parabolic path around the heavens, its focal point being Christ and the Cross.  Its significance is the crux of Christian faith.

If the Return of Planet X is symbolised by the Second Coming of Christ (and there is a lot of suggestion of this in the Book of Revelation) then one can readily see why the Western mind projects Apocalypse onto the event.  It makes sense of the books and websites which speak of a coming Day of Judgement. Their work may have the flavour of New Age writing, but the core teaching here is built around traditional Christian doctrine, and Evangelical expectation. 

The more fire and brimstone, the better!

However, there is a problem with this idea.  According to Sumerologists, the ancient Mesopotamians didn’t actually have a word for Apocalypse.  If the knowledge of Nibiru stems from the cities bordering the Tigris and Euphrates, then there is little reason to suppose that the return of Planet X will bring disaster.  That may simply be spin that was attached to the Return by the writers and editors of the early Christian Church.

The Christian idea of Apocalypse sits well with the Mayan notion of the End of Ages.  Their calendars appear to mark the coming and going of Ages over vast periods of time.  Their Long Count, a “refinement of a much longer-running measuring system”, encompassed 1,872,000 days.  The last calendar marker was dated back to 11th August 3114BCE [Phillips 2004].  That is back to the very beginning of Egyptian civilisation, to place that date in historical context. 

The current Mayan Age has lasted more than 5100 years, and is about to end. 

The Mayan system of counting did not include the Mesopotamian figure of 3600 as one of any significance. Maurice Cotterell has suggested that their mathematical systems may be tied in with solar activity cycles.  He argues that there is a reversal of the solar system’s entire magnetic field every 3760 years [Gilbert & Cotterell, 1995].  This may be connected with the movement of the Dark Star.

When you are dealing with time periods of this length, it is natural to assume that they relate to astronomical events in some way.  Cycles on Earth are unlikely to recur over this period of time.  But in the heavens they might.  A particular example might be that of a comet, which return after 5000 years, for example.

If that comet is in fact a very substantial planet, then its return would be a remarkable event, and observers of the phenomenon played out in the heavens would certainly venerate it.  Religions would begin, devoted to the event, and calendars would start after its passage.

But, we must temper that quite reasonable thought with the understanding that a returning planet would certainly be observable by astronomers well before it became visible in our skies.  Astronomers, even the back-yard variety, would have seen it long ago, catalogued it, and then grown increasingly excited as its true nature became plain over time.  For a Planet X body to return within the next five years, we would all very much be aware of it by now.

However, there is another possibility, at least in terms of a Mayan connection.  Let us assume that the Dark Star follows an invisible course through the heavens that moves roughly along the ecliptic, like the other planets.  That is, it moves through the constellations of the Zodiac.  If that is so, then it would take many centuries, possibly even millennia to move through just one constellation.

A cult, or religion, devoted to this invisible heavenly god might make a point of marking the passage of the Dark Star through one constellation and into another. We are familiar with this idea, because it is at the core of astrology.  The Sun moves through the Houses of the Zodiac, and we attach meaning to it.  It is not a great step to write that big in the heavens with a second sun much further away.

If, and I say if with some caution, the Maya had knowledge of the Dark Star, then their calendar system might provide clues to its movement through the sky. 

There is some reason to support this idea.  Zecharia Sitchin devoted one of his books to the correlation between the traditions of the indigenous populations of South and Meso-America and the Mesopotamians [Sitchin, 1990].  In particular, he highlighted the Aztec god Quetzaloatl, who, according to myth, brought great learning to the peoples of ancient Mexico from across the sea. The Maya had an equivalent god in Kukulkan [Willis, 1993]. 

Quetzalcoatl took the form of feathered serpent, which was equivalent to the Winged Disk symbol of the Levant. His double, Xólotl, “travelled with the Plumed Serpent to the underworld when he went to outwit the underworld lords and launch the current world-age” [Phillips, 2004].

Each Mayan Age might correlate with the motion of the Dark Star through just one constellation.  In which case, 2012 may be the symbolic point at which the Dark Star moves into a new constellation, representing the beginning of a New Age.  This would have great astrological significance.  Scholars disagree over whether the Maya had a zodiac of constellations, but a damaged page of the Paris Codex firmly suggests that they did.

There will be no disaster accompanying such an event, of course.  It would have no effect on our world at all.  But it would have very deep astrological meaning.  It often makes me smile to think that astrologers would have to rewrite their entire system if the Dark Star was to be discovered.  A planet of that size and significance would create a huge effect on their charts.  Its motion through to a new constellation would certainly define an Age.

If this idea was correct, it would tell us a lot about the Dark Star itself.  By definition, it would currently reside on the border between two constellations (and I favour Sagittarius as one of them, as I explain in my book ‘Dark Star’).  Assuming the Maya had twelve constellations in their zodiac, the Dark Star would then have a total orbital path of 12 times that of a Mayan Long Count, which would be about 60,000 years.  This is considerably greater than Zecharia Sitchin’s own formula of 3600 years. 

An orbital period of 60,000 years would place the Dark Star some 1500 times further away from the Sun than the Earth.  This mighty distance places it in the gap between two distinct areas in the solar system; the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud.  That there is a gap there would itself fit well with the positioning of this body, because its very presence would eliminate the debris of comets in the area.  Its great distance also would increase the likelihood that it has simply been overlooked in the surveys of the heavens. 

I think it is an elegant idea, and I have it as one of the ideas explored in my novel, “Ezekiel One”.  But it is just one of several scenarios.  It may well be that our own Western calendar, or the Jewish/Sumerian calendars before it, accurately date the arrival of Nibiru in our skies, and that its cycles is nearer to 3600 years, as Sitchin suggests. Until we actually discover this great celestial body, we will never really know for sure.

Lloyd, Andy, “The Dark Star: The Planet X Evidence”, Timeless Voyager Press, 2005

Masters, Marshall, & Manning, Janice, “The Kolbrin Bible” Your Own World Books, 2006

Muller, Richard A., “Nemesis: The Death Star”, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1988