{Left: Apple of Eye <blue Saturn with crescent, lime Venus, apple Mars; Right: Pentagram in Apple; Middle: Eye Goddess, Hathor <from pinterest.com/pin/376121006350787507/>}
This is a working paper in which I’m trying to piece together an accurate chronology of ancient cataclysms and ancient history on Earth and in Earth’s travels in the Solar System, i.e. in the Saturn Train of Planets. Here’s my best guess on Saturn Train history at the moment. (Plus, +, means at the same time; the greater-than sign, >, means before on the left and after on the right of the > symbol.) DarkAge+DimSaturn+PolCol > PolColRetract > Nova > Spiral > Rings > Aten=Ouroboros > Labyrinth=Intestines > Swastika > BrightGen+PolCol > PolConfig > OvalVenus<MarsAtmos > GiantMars > VenusDove>Hand > SaturnDeath > MarsReviveSaturn > MarsLoveVenus > WarOfGods > JupiterReplaceSaturn > MoonArrive > MarsMeetMoon > PlanetsDepart
From the following excerpts of Talbott’s article, I’m collecting some of his statements about which events preceded which, so that I can improve the above chronology with a sequence of events that makes maximum sense. Talbott’s ideas improved after he was interviewed for this article, but mainly just replacing the phrase “collinear system” with “train” should suffice.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM TALBOTT'S 1995 SATURN THESIS
The Saturn Thesis [Aeon]
Interview with David Talbott: The Saturn Thesis Aeon IV:3 (Dec 1995)
https://www.aeonjournal.com/articles/talbott/talbott.html
SCIENCE PROTOCOL
What is needed now is a clearer sense of ground rules for assessing unusual ideas, but the traditional protocol has to be changed. Given the fundamental level of the challenges to mainstream theory today, the "peer review" - or should we say "jeer review"? - system often becomes an absurdity in actual practice.
WASTED SCIENCE
Just consider the money we've spent on the space program, predicated on theoretical frameworks that will never survive. Or the incalculable sums we invest annually in tools of learning - books and institutions and teachers, all passing on tenets about the past, the nature of the solar system, the evolution of the earth, the origins of man, the emergence of civilization, the birth of the first ritual, literary and artistic traditions - all fundamentally rooted in uniformitarian error. Or the billions in funding of research institutions around the world seeking to penetrate the mysteries of the past, institutions that are, in fact, chasing chimeras. They are asking the wrong questions, and they have no framework for understanding the answers even when these answers stare them in the face. But that's only the beginning. A reinterpretation of planetary history will push outward the existing theoretical boundaries. It's impossible to explore these things without strengthening new possibilities within other fields of study. It will help us to see that beliefs are not necessarily true just because they've been held for a long time and are taken for granted by great crowds of people. Deeper still, I believe, will be certain insights arising from an honest consideration of the myth making age and the distinctive forms of civilization arising from that unique epoch. What one confronts, in terms too explicit to be denied, is the image of the "separated self"-consciousness aware of having been torn from a primordial unity, projecting its own fears onto capricious and vengeful gods; nations violently warring against their neighbors, hoping to recapture a lost order; massive labors in earth and stone, motivated by a collective yearning for the splendors of the age of the gods. I believe that a proper understanding of myth can open a window to the human condition, in the sense that the roots of that condition are presented in the most explicit terms, therefore making it almost impossible to miss the point.
INTERPLANETARY DEBRIS
4) Interplanetary Fields of Debris. At various junctures in the evolution of the configuration, streams of gas, ice, dust, rock or other material, alternately stretched between planets or spiraled around planets, contributing significantly to the unique forms of the evolving configuration. In periods of apparent dynamic instability, this comet-like material constituted a sky-darkening, at times Earth-threatening, cloud.
VENUS VOLCANISM, MARS AIR LOSS
So when we see the clear-cut evidence of a catastrophic, planet-wide volcanism on Venus - in fact, the sudden re-surfacing of the entire planet - we would urge that large-scale planetary interactions be considered. Similarly in the case of the missing atmosphere and oceans of Mars. We would claim that the stripping away of these constituents involved extremely close interactions between Mars and both Venus and Earth. But the problem we face here is that conventional theorists have never entertained such questions as even remote possibilities.
VENUS CIRCULAR ORBIT
I've made the tentative assumption that the former planetary system occupied the present region of Earth's or Venus' orbit, perhaps closer to Venus' orbit, so that Venus experienced the least orbital shift following the collapse of the system. That would, perhaps, account for Venus presently possessing the most circular of orbits. The participating planets moved in alignment, with synchronous periods, and they remained in this in-line relationship at least long enough to allow for a series of recorded events, though at certain junctures a departure from perfect alignment becomes+ extremely significant.
PLANET TRAIN INSTABILITY
In addition to the periodic lateral displacement, which had a pronounced effect on what was seen from Earth, the distances between the planets changed, particularly in the case {of} Mars' relationship to Venus and the Earth. Mars seems to have moved progressively on a more elliptical orbit, coming closer to the orbit of the Earth with each cycle. That behavior, in combination with the collinear dynamics and the polar alignment of the Earth, meant that the dominant visual motion of Mars occurred along the polar axis (the periodic displacement from the axis occurring as a secondary effect). This is what I mean by the unique sizes of the planets cooperating in the model. Of the planetary members of the configuration, only Mars is small enough for an observer on Earth's 45th parallel to be able to see "over" the planet so that its approach would appear visually as a descent from the polar center (see color plate on p. 36, Fig. 4). It is also the significantly smaller mass of Mars, according to Grubaugh, that explains its progressive displacement by resonance into a more elliptical orbit. To these apparent motions one must add the presence of material stretching between Venus and Saturn, between Venus and Mars and between Mars and the Earth, something we will want to discuss at length. One of the lines of evidence for the periodic non-alignment of Mars and Venus, for example, will be those images suggesting gas and material being pulled from Mars and spiraling around Venus. Similarly, as Mars moved closer to the Earth, a stream of atmosphere, dust, and ice was pulled toward the Earth and, in a catastrophic episode, apparently reached the earth.
OVOID VENUS
There is reason to believe that, in the dynamic interaction of Venus and Mars, Venus' ovoid shape was due to gases or material being pulled from Mars and moving as a cloud about Venus. But since this egg-shape seems to give way rather quickly to other events, we can devote most of our attention to the more commonly depicted spherical shape. With respect to the third image, considerable evidence suggests that, at certain points, material stretched from Venus toward Saturn, and various symbols of what I am calling the "Radiant Venus" appear to relate directly to that condition. I think we will want to take the time to consider a wide range of variations on the underlying idea. Then there is the issue of planetary colors. The illustrations show Mars as red because that is the color it acquires. I've not found much to suggest that Mars possessed this attribute in the earliest phase. It's in connection with specific events that a deep rusty red comes to dominate. I've presumed, tentatively, that this reddening was related directly to the removal of atmosphere and oceans from Mars early on - an occurrence for which the evidence seems decisive. The original color was something like a light blue or blue-gray, I would suggest, though illumination by the Sun seems to have generated associations with a golden hue as well, gold being a universal glyph for "brilliance." With the evolution of the configuration, then, the colors associated with the participating planets are: Saturn: yellow, gold, ochre; Venus: white, silver, gray, turning to bright turquoise; Mars: blue-gray, growing to deep rusty red; Jupiter: (unseen until displacement of Saturn): brightly ornamented with bands, undulating streams and colorful spots.
SPIRIT PLANET VENUS
_Hence, the departure of the Venus-goddess means the departure of the animating heart-soul, an event often perceived as the death of the Universal Monarch. The ancient belief that the departed heart-soul takes the form of a comet is also universal, reinforcing Venus' archetypal identity as the Great Comet, the Terrible Aspect of the goddess.
_It is by considering this overarching theme substantively, in terms of things remembered, that we come to understand what was meant by the "death" of the Universal Monarch: his soul-star, the radiant Venus, is removed from him. At the same time we will understand the repeated images of the Venus-goddess as a "weapon" hurled against the enemies of the sun god at the time of the Universal Monarch's death or time of cosmic crisis.
_Luminous streamers appeared to radiate from the juxtaposed forms of Venus-Mars in all directions across the face of Saturn. Because the observers gazed up the polar axis, they saw the streamers spreading around Venus.
_One of the most dramatic forms of the goddess in her terrible aspect was the Medusa, whose unkempt locks were undulating serpents. And it seems that ancient artists remembered an interesting relationship of the Medusa's head to the triskeleon. Among the most telling examples is that in which the three arms, or legs, extend out from the serpentine locks of the goddess
_It was Aphrodite Comaetho (Venus) who removed the hair-strands, or soul, of the king, thus causing his death. The strands of hair will be the rays of the heart-soul, and removal of the heart soul is the removal of Venus itself. (As I suggested above, the tri-form appears to be the unique form of Venus prior to departure from its position squarely in the center of Saturn.)
MARS APPLE OF EYE
That the child born in the heart of the sun god is called the pupil of the Eye, or little man in the Eye, or (red) apple of his mother's eye simply confirms an equation that is provable by other lines of reasoning as well.
_You cannot detach the radiance of Venus from the "life" the Venus-goddess gives to the Universal Monarch. She is the central, interior light. Visually, her streams of "radiance" animate the body of the creator-king.
_When the Babylonians called Venus the "soul-star," that's exactly what they meant. The reference is to effulgent material viewed as "rivers of life" coursing outward from the planet-goddess to give "life" (illumination, energy, animating light) to the primeval sun. Is this not exactly what we see in the wheel of Shamash?
_the eye goddess is the single eye of the sun god, who is Saturn.
_Let me give an example: The Sumerian eye-goddess Inanna, who is Venus, is said to look upon the king with "the eye of life." Could a conventional approach discern anything more than poetic nonsense here? Yet the pictures tell us everything we need to know. The eye of life means the Radiant Venus, the heart-soul giving "life" to the Universal Monarch, the prototype of kings.
_(Mythically, the same stream was also remembered as a single tooth or thorn, a projecting single horn - as in the unicorn - and the descending, pointed tail of the chaos monster, but we'll get into that later.)
_The material descended from Mars eventually reached the Earth (coming to constitute the polar column), then retreated back up the axis as Mars returns to the Venus womb. In this interpretation, the widespread connection of the fifth ray or fifth direction with the world axis will be seen in a very direct and literal sense.
_The material visually flowing outward in the four streams may literally have originated with the atmosphere and/or oceans of Mars being pulled away by Venus, before moving into the unique fourfold pattern.
VENUS & MARS
_MARS = masculine heart of the female heart, unborn child or impregnating "seed" in the womb, pupil of the eye, navel-born hero, child in the egg, child at the breast, hero emerging from a vase, hero emerging from the mouth of the sun. Though these symbolic equations are entirely contradictory when the symbols are viewed as things in themselves, the claimed meanings and the specific relationship to the archetypal goddess (thus to the central sun as well) can be easily tested by experts in the different ancient languages, and we have offered many examples in previous submissions.
_What is the relationship of the Uraeus to the Ra-sign? And what is the relationship of the Uraeus to the hero? It soon became clear that in reference to the original condition of Ra, the Uraeus, also called the "Eye" of Ra, refers to the circle inside the Ra-sign. (2) And not just a circle, but a sphere. The name of Sekhmet, the Eye-goddess par excellence, comes from a word meaning "little orb." "Little" is a relative term, suggesting a relationship to something else. And in the most explicit sense, the hieroglyphic Eye of Ra meant both a little orb, and "the center." From information of this sort, I deduced that, by the Eye of Ra, the Egyptian symbolists meant a small orb in the center of the much larger orb of Ra (whom the texts describe as possessing the "Sole Eye") - exactly as implied by the Ra-sign. Another Egyptian word for the smaller sphere was the feminine hati-heart of Ra, often symbolized by a stone (meaning an orb, not a circle) inseparably tied to the goddess. After comparing this data with other details of the Eye-goddess (equation of the Eye and the primeval "egg," depiction of the heart as a spherical "vase," and numerous cross-cultural images), only one conclusion was possible: in the remembered "original condition" of Ra, the god's single eye meant an orb. I should also note here that this reasoning was forcing a revision of the model presented in The Saturn Myth, and I certainly had not approached the subject with the intent to undermine a published thesis. But this elementary reasoning led to a further issue bearing directly on the symbolic link of the Egyptian goddess to the warrior-hero. In Egyptian art the Uraeus-Eye is commonly presented in a unique relationship to a red stone or sphere, signifying the sun god's innermost, masculine "heart of carnelian." In this relationship the Uraeus does not look like a sphere but a narrow band. The same form appears in familiar representations of the Aten and of the Shen-bond. But in all three instances the common form is a white, gold or turquoise band around a red disk, stone or orb. This red orb never means "goddess." Hieroglyphically the red disk, the "heart of carnelian," means the warrior hero, the masculine ab-heart of Ra. So the hero was called "the heart of the heart" (ab en hati).
MAYBE VENUS ERUPTED FROM SATURN
A number of years ago, stimulated by some comments from the late Fred Hall, retired engineer at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, I became fascinated with the possibility that Venus may have originated as the rocky core of Saturn. I was musing over the idea that the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn may have interacted gravitationally and electromagnetically in a close binary relationship (not my original idea, but Velikovsky's, of course). I imagined the dominant mass of Saturn moving on its trajectory in this binary relationship, while the solid core of Saturn, under the influence of electromagnetic repulsion, was simply placed on a slightly different trajectory, causing a separation of the two, such that if the Earth were in a prior state of alignment, terrestrial observers would see the rocky core emerge from the center of Saturn, with gases and candescent material spreading out and streaming back toward Saturn. That event, in other words, would present the image of the "Radiant Venus," surrounded by bright comet-like streams. At the time I thought it might also provide a quite poignant backdrop to the ancient images of the heart emerging, or being removed, from the creator-king or sun god. But I say this while reminding our readers that the visual placement of Venus in the center of Saturn - a very well-founded tenet of our thesis - would have been quite sufficient to generate the central heart-soul motif. In his exploration of the issue, Hall reminded me that, today, Saturn is lighter than the other gas giants. It is, in fact, the only planet which, if placed on a larger body of water, would float. The others are slightly heavier than water. His preliminary calculations, however, suggested that if one assumed Venus to have been the solid core of Saturn, the addition of the more dense mass, together with its effect on the density of surrounding gases, would be sufficient to bring the total density of the planet up to the approximate levels of the other gas giants. I am not arguing for such a state of affairs, however, only noting that the possibility would seem worth exploring theoretically.
SATURN HEAVEN
_As we've emphasized more than once in the past, it is much easier to identify the cosmic forms than to determine exactly what was happening to account for them.
_We find the four life-streams emerging in the same events by which the enclosure, or organized land, of the gods is raised from the waters of the deep, as the unformed world gives way to a more defined structure. It does seem clear that these events occur subsequently to the tri-form goddess. When Saturn has founded his kingdom, through the activity of goddess and hero, the four streams are there, dividing the Saturnian realm into symmetrical quarters.
_Every holy land or sacred habitation was constructed with the explicit purpose of honoring the habitation of the gods. And that is why we repeatedly encounter the sacred dwelling symbolically watered by the four rivers, animated by the four winds, founded by the launching of four arrows in the four directions, and held in place (symbolically) by the four pillars of heaven - all meaning exactly the same thing.
THREE, FOUR, FIVE
A virtually universal rule is that the three-rayed star is a goddess archetype, while the four projections of the equal-limbed cross are much more closely associated with the warrior hero, often as his four alter egos - four sons; four arms (or the spread arms and legs, as in the case of the Greek Ixion); four flames; four rivers coursing to the four quarters of heaven; four winds similarly defining the quarters; four pathways; four pillars of heaven; four arrows or streams of arrows launched by the hero in the four directions. This distinction can be explained, I believe, in terms of a direct relationship to the activity of the hero in generating the polar column, a pillar consistently perceived in masculine terms, the four arms of the Venus-cross being considered as extensions of the pillar, with which the hero himself is inseparably identified. This principle is closely related to a more general connection of the four-armed cross to the first forms of the created "world" (mountain and land of the gods). The components are: mountain of the world; created enclosure; and four life-bearing streams.
_In both Old World and New World symbolism, the star of Venus is placed at the one position that is preposterous for any star or planet in relation to the Sun we know.
JUPITER FIVE POINTED STAR
For perhaps fifteen years or so, I've not been able to escape the sense that there is some ancient connection between the number five and the birth, or appearance, of Jupiter, the god who emerges as the rejuvenated form of the sun god - the Universal Monarch transformed, brought back to life, and re-installed as king of the world. It seems that, beginning with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the five-pointed star is associated with the idea of rebirth, regeneration, renewal, re-incarnation, and the New Year. Though I've not had a chance to pursue this issue rigorously, I would not be surprised to find a consistent idea at work, relating the five-rayed star to the transference of the Venus-heart-soul to the younger, Jovian power. I must also insert here one further theoretical possibility quite closely connected to the idea of an axial fifth direction. I have speculated that a stream of material descending from Mars toward the Earth might have appeared as the fifth ray added to the four rays of the four-rayed star.
_I suspect that there was indeed a point in the evolution of the planetary configuration at which the star of Venus did present five rays in some sense, and that this phase was subsequent to the four-fold division of sacred space.
ANCIENT SOURCES
_Since the early Egyptian sources preceded planetary astronomy, they preserved only the original ritual, and do not offer linkage of the gods to the now-settled "planets." These confirmations must therefore come from the astronomies of neighboring peoples in later times: a Greek ostrakon identifying Ra with Kronos-Saturn; later identification of the Egyptian goddess (Isis, Hathor and others) with the popular Venus goddesses of the Mediterranean; identification of such heroes as Shu-Anhur and Horus with the Martian gods Ares and Hercules
CORRECT PLANET SIZES
AEON: Even so, and let's be honest here, when you state that the liklihood of the ancient symbolists getting the relative sizes of the planets right is "one-in-a-thousand," are you not exaggerating a little? Talbott: In calling this a one-in-a-thousand likelihood, I am not speaking rhetorically, but citing the very real improbability involved, given the substantial differences in sizes of the participating planets. I based the statement on a consideration of the actual sizes of the planetary participants in the model, including Mars, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter. I simply performed a thumbnail calculation of theoretically possible sizes using the actual size of Mars as the basic unit, giving (roughly) twenty possibilities. So I used a factor of twenty in assessing the likelihood as to whether ancient astronomers could have gotten the scale right by guessing. With twenty possible sizes, only one size - the smallest - would work for Mars in the context of our model, because the next size on the scale is too large - the body would not descend visually as it approached the Earth. So that's one in twenty. For Venus, only two possible sizes (the next two sizes up the scale) will work given the depicted relationship to both Mars and Saturn. So that's one in ten. And the absolute limit with respect to possible sizes for Saturn would be the four sizes at the upper end of the scale. That's one in five. Twenty times ten times five is a thousand.
JUPITER TOO
And keep in mind, this does not take into account the even larger size of Jupiter. If we include the apparent ancient knowledge that Jupiter was the largest of the planets, a matter emphasized by Velikovsky, the odds grow worse by reducing the possible sizes of Saturn that will work and requiring one to factor in the improbability of an accurate guess about Jupiter's size relative to the others. Moreover, based on observation of our sky, the bright star Venus - certainly not Saturn or Jupiter - would naturally be considered the largest body. Nothing in the little speck of Saturn would suggest that the planet was vastly larger than Venus and Mars, though that is what is depicted. I mention this point to emphasize how quickly probability factors will reach astronomical proportions. A model predicting ancient iconography that is not predicted by currently-observed motions and appearances of the planets must be assessed in terms of probability. It is astronomically improbable that the model could retain its integrity if the relationships implied by ancient depictions were based on sheer imagination rather than observation.