'The Lost Star of Myth and Time' by Walter Cruttenden, St Lynn's Press, Pittsburgh:2006 … is based on the idea there is a binary system that links the orbit of Sirius with that of our Sun. Since the space age kicked in, and powerful telescopes began to scan the universe, it has been realised up to 80 per cent of observable stars form one of a binary pair (or one of a more complicated system involving more than two stars). Hence, the idea we live in a binary system is not of itself controversial – or shouldn't be.
Cruttenden has his own web site – see www.loststarbook.com and www.binaryresearchinstitute.org … but appears to have made little impression on mainstream. This might be as a result of the big numbers involved as he associates the affects of Sirius with precession, and brings in the Vedic Yuga cycle, Hamlet's Mill, and various other ideas. Swami Sri Yogamanda wrote The Holy Science (1894) in an attempt to merge India cycles with modern Western science and this is integrated into the hypothesis – and may have set it all in motion in the first instance. In this, 1150BC is supposed to have ushered in a Golden Age (just after the Younger Dryas kicked in), and such big numbers also crop up in Hancock and Bauval and the dating of the Sphinx and various other calculations made from an assumption the axis of rotation has remained constant since the year dot. Reference is also made to the Sumerian sky object, Niberu (as popularised by Z Sitchin not too long ago). This is supposed to be the star Marduk but according to Cruttenden it is the companion of our Sun – and not the comet that is central to Clube and Napier's theory, the planet Saturn of the Thunderbolts and EU hypothesis, or Planet X of various doomsayings. Much the same can be said about Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery (which is discussed on page 160) – was it a red companion of Sirius A or was it the red comet personified as Enkidu in the Sumerian myth (variously Esau who came forth hairy and ruddy) etc. Cruttenden begins with a credible theory and then aligns himself with others marginalised by mainstream. What is the truth here is difficult to see but we might imagine all these ideas may add up to problems with mainstream and the strict parameters that bind the consensus together.