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The Chariot of the Gods, indeed: According to G. de Santillana and H. von Dechend, the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) was known anciently in Mesopotamia as a four-wheeled chariot or wagon (MAR.GID.DA), and was also known as the Seven Sages (who sit in the Heavenly Council with God and his eternal stars, which never set, Isaiah 14:13), or as the seven wheels of time (in the hymn to Kāla in the Atharva Veda 19:53:1-2). It could also be identified as a two to four-wheeled wagon of Charlemagne = Charles’ Wain (= the Whirlpool), and as the seven threshing oxen (Septemtriones) which keep the millstone (plaga septentrionales) moving, with alpha Ursae Minoris, the Little Bear, as the axle of the millstone, and Kokob/Kochab “Star” (beta Ursae Minoris) as the “millpeg” of the ever-turning and grinding Mill of the Gods.
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Ancient myth held that (due to the precession of the poles) the millstone would go out of kilter at the end of each age, requiring the use of a new Pole Star and the recognition of a new zodiacal sign at the Vernal Equinox (the “fiducial point” of the whole system). It would thus be cast from the sky into the ocean, becoming the cause of a great whirlpool/vortex in the watery abyss, and, like the Brazen Sea in the Temple, the symbol of the entranceway to chaos and death. It is familiar in our mythology as the Norse Maelstrom or Vortex, and as the Charybdis Whirlpool – simply the counterpart to the great millstone in the sky, the Churn of the Gods, which became unhinged and sunk due to the shifting of the planet Earth on its axis.