The Real Meaning Of Hamlet

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DARK LADY PLAYERS WORKING PAPER (2009) NUMBER 3

THE REAL MEANING OF HAMLET: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM HAMLET’S MILL

By looking at how the astronomical allegory inter-works with the religious allegory in the play we can comprehend the author’s real meanings. For instance in the Virgin Mary allegory in the play Ophelia is in her closet when suddenly Hamlet appears. She is frightened, and Hamlet continually looks at her, his eyes “bended their LIGHT” on her. Later there is a reference to the sun god kissing carrion--which was how maggots magically appeared from nowhere--which some theologians used as an allegory for how Mary conceived Christ. Polonius is told not to let her too much in the sun, for she may conceive. Knowing that Hamlet is the sun god Helios, the lights from his eyes are like the sun beams of light that in Renaissance art were used to depict the conception of the Virgin Mary. In other words the astronomical allegory confirms that this is a revolutionary parody of Ophelia as the Virgin Mary. THE ASTRONOMICAL BACKGROUND Every 2,200 years the polar axis of the Earth moves to point at another sign of the zodiac, rotating through all of them in an Aeon or great year. This is technically known as the ‘precession of the equinoxes’, and in ancient times the movement from one zodiacal age to another was thought of great significance. Sometime in the first century the zodiacal age of Aries the Lamb finished, and the new zodiacal sign was that of Pisces, which has now moved to the new Age of Aquarius that we are entering. In mythology in many different nations this gave rise to myths of a giant who uprooted and replanted a doorpost, or who had a great set of millstones spinning around an axle. See for instance the chapters on Amlodhi http://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/santillana.htm http://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/santillana4.htm#Ch6 in Hamlet’s Mill which trace dozens of these myths.

AMLODHI

AMLETH

HAMLET

The mythical Amlodhi (meaning simpleton) was used by Saxo in the 12th century in his History of the Danes (1514) to write his account of Amleth. Thus Amleth’s reference to how the sand on the seashore is flour/meal

and was ground up by the sea comes from a 9th century reference to the sea-maidens grinding Amlodhi’s mill. Shakespeare scholars see this story of Amleth as a major source of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (see for instance pgs.85 to 89 of the Jenkins Arden edition). What scholars have not appreciated is that Shakespeare’s Hamlet, like Amlodhi is a cosmological character, who is also trying to uproot the polar axis and shift the world into a new age of the Zodiac. In his book Hamlet’s Universe, astronomer Peter Usher comes the nearest to identifying the astronomical allegory in the play. He rightly identifies Ophelia as the MOON (she is Op-helia, or opposite to the sun, is referred to as a star, is supposedly chaste like Diana the moon goddess, and is a moist star because the moon governs the tides). Named after the geo-centric astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, Claudius represents the EARTH. He is surrounded by 10,000 fixed stars which he thinks circle around him “a massy wheel Fixed on the summit of the highest mount” which has “huge spokes” to which are adjoined “ten thousand lesser things”. Hamlet who is too much in the sun, and moves in a way that is retrograde (an astronomical term), and who is the child of a man he equates with Hyperion, is thus Helios, the SUN god. Guilderstern is a GOLDEN STAR. So at one level the astronomy in the play represents the overthrow of geo-centric models of the universe and the new helio-centric models. The supernova that is seen right at the beginning of the play is the one noticed by astronomer Tycho Brahe which could not be explained in terms of the seven crystal spheres of the heavens, and shattered the old geo-centric model. But there is more. We are told that in an angry parle (quarrel) on the ice Hamlet senior smote the “sledded Polacks” (1,i.66) (Q1), otherwise described as the "sleaded pollax," (Q2) and in the Folio the "sledded Pollax”. The phrase is actually referring to the POLAR AXIS that runs through the planet from one icy Pole to another. The reason the axis is “sleaded” or weighted down as if with lead, is that it is carrying the weight of the whole earth. Later, the young Hamlet will kill the man who in the first Quarto was called Corambis, two hearted-- and thus a satire on Lord Burghley’s family motto. Burghley was addressed by Petrus Bizzarus as controlling the ‘Polus’ the axis of the world. (It was a common conceit at Court, Essex describes the windows of the Queen's bedroom as the polar axis around which his entire world revolved). So Hamlet is allegorically striking down the polar axis around which the Elizabethan world revolved, in order to bring the country into a new age. email; [email protected]

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