http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thoth.1997.01.txt
_SATURN THEORY OVERVIEW _By David Talbott
_THE FOLLOWING IS EXCERPTED FROM A SUMMARY-IN- PROGRESS ON A PRIVATE EMAIL GROUP
_I _The origins of ancient mythology; the birth of the first civilizations; a violent history of the solar system: these are the primary themes of what has been called the "Saturn Theory." In the broadest sense, what I have proposed is an explanation of the myth-making epoch as a whole. Astronomers and astrophysicists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and students of ancient myth and religion are asked to reconsider the most common assumptions about ancient history, including many that have rarely if ever been doubted. _The underlying principles of the theory are these: _1. Major changes in the planetary order, some involving Earth- threatening catastrophes, have occurred within human memory. _2. Through myth, ritual and symbol around the world, our ancestors preserved a global record of these tumultuous events. _3. The first civilizations arose from ritual practices honoring, imitating and memorializing these events and the planetary powers involved. _It should go without saying that if these principles are correct, there is an extraordinary evidential value to the mythical-cosmological underpinnings of the first civilizations. Hence, the communications challenge: this evidential value is virtually never acknowledged by conventional schools. Nevertheless, the model I have offered holds one advantage that prior catastrophist notions based on ancient testimony have lacked. It is specific enough to be easily disproved on its own ground if wrong. Whatever else one may think of the thesis, it meets this test of a good theory.
_THE POLAR CONFIGURATION _The theory holds that a unique congregation of planets preceded the planetary system familiar to us today. For earthbound witnesses, the result was a spectacular, at times highly unified apparition in the heavens, the obsessive focus of human attention around the world. For more than 20 years, I have claimed that this fear-inspiring image once stretched across the northern sky, towering over ancient starworshippers. I termed this planetary arrangement the polar configuration because it was centered on the north celestial Pole. And I have proposed that the history of this configuration is the history of the ancient gods, recorded in the fantastic stories, pictographs and ritual reenactments of the first star worshippers. A vast field of data is therefore available to the investigator. **Remarkably similar pictures of a "sun" in the sky, revealing no similarity to our sun today. A pictographic crescent placed on the orb of the "sun" and a radiant "star" placed squarely in its center. The universal chronicles of a cosmic mountain, a pillar of fire and light rising along the world axis. The myth of a central sun or motionless sun at the celestial pole. Identification of this ancient "sun" with the planet Saturn in early astronomies. A radiant city or temple of heaven, providing the prototype for the sacred habitation on earth. Global memories of a star-goddess with long-flowing hair. An angry goddess raging across the sky with wildly disheveled hair, threatening to destroy the world. A flaming serpent or dragon disturbing the celestial motions or attacking the land. An ancestral warrior or hero, born from the womb of the star-goddess to vanquish the chaos-serpent or dragon. Is it even possible that such diverse motifs could have a unified explanation? Well, one fact remains uncontested after many years of publishing on this subject. The hypothesized planetary configuration does predict or account for hundreds of ancient themes never before explained--and at a level of detail or specificity that could not be denied. Indeed, I have gone so far as to brashly claim that not a single general motif of ancient myth, ritual or symbolism is left unexplained in the most straightforward way by the model. And that's what I mean when I say the model supports a general theory of ancient symbolism as a whole. It needs to be emphasized, therefore, that the historical argument for the polar configuration is fully testable against a massive historical record. And I would hope that this will provide some assurance to those unnerved by the source material (ancient testimony): if the model is fundamentally incorrect, the experts on ancient myth and symbolism will have no trouble whatsoever refuting it. _Vine Deloria, author of the recently-published book, *Red Earth, White Lies*, has asked a couple of questions which I would like to address. But not in one shot, because the questions are too fundamental for that. I'd like to see if I can divide the issues into segments that could make for useful discussion. _The Saturn theory arose from a "historical argument," in the sense that the argument relates to the human past, as implied by the details of human memory in ancient times and by human artifacts. I shall offer this series of summaries as an exercise in clarifying the historical argument, without the aid of visual presentation. One obvious and immediate question is whether something as ambiguous as myth could actually qualify as "evidence"? The historical argument focuses on *points of agreement* in the memories of widespread races, suggesting levels of coherence often missed by historians and anthropologists, and raising the possibility that this coherence arises from a core of human experience that has been missed as well. There is an overarching idea in this argument. We've not only misunderstood the past, we've failed to recognize the consistency of ancient memory in pointing to extraordinary events never considered by modern science. Remarkably, every motive of our early ancestors directs our attention to experiences impossible to comprehend in terms of any natural phenomena occurring today. This consistency will be seen even at the most fundamental levels of human memory, in the most deeply-rooted themes of the first civilizations-- The universal memory of a former age of the gods. The universal memory of an ancestral Golden Age, inaugurating the age of the gods. The universal memory of a celestial "king of the world" whose life inspired the ancestral leap into civilization. Descriptions of the gods as luminaries of immense size and power, wielding weapons of thunder and stone. The universal claim that the ancient world evolved by critical phases or cycles, punctuated by sweeping catastrophe. Global traditions of gods and heroes ruling for a time, then departing amid terrifying spectacles and upheavals. The frequently-stated transfiguration of the departed gods into distant "stars". The identification of these ruling gods with planets in the first astronomies. The relentless urge of starworshippers to draw pictures of celestial forms never seen in our sky. Their desperate yearning to recover the semblance of a lost cosmic order. Their collective efforts to replicate, in architecture, the towering forms claimed to have existed in primeval times. Their festive recreations, through mystery plays and symbolic rites, of cosmic violence and disorder. Their repetition, through ritual sacrifice, of the deaths or ordeals of the gods. Their brutal and ritualistic wars of expansion, celebrated as a repetition of the cosmic devastation wrought in the wars of the gods. Such motives as these constitute, in fact, the most readily verifiable underpinnings of ancient ritual, myth and symbol. How strange that in their incessant glance backwards, the builders of the first civilizations never remembered anything resembling the natural world in which we live! What is needed in the face of unusual but widely repeated memories is brutal intellectual honesty. How did human consciousness, emerging from the womb of nature, converge on the same improbable ideas *contradicting* nature? For centuries we've lived under the illusion that our ancestors simply made up explanations of natural phenomena they didn't understand. But that's not the problem. What the myth-makers interpreted or explained through stories and symbols and ritual re- enactments is an unrecognizable world, a world of alien sights and sounds, of celestial forms, of cosmic spectacles and earth-shaking events that do not occur in our world. *That* is the problem.
_From an evaluation of the global themes of ancient cultures, we have hypothesized a world order never imagined by mainstream theory--a world in which *planets* moved on different courses, appearing huge in the sky. Heaven-spanning celestial forms dominated human imagination to the point of obsession at the time of civilization's birth.
_Our contention will be that hundreds of ancient themes speak for a unified experience, an experience more specific in context and detail than any of us had ever imagined when we started our research. No universal theme stands alone or in isolation from any of the others. All are connected. All speak for the presence of a coherent memory beneath the surface of seemingly random detail. In offering these summaries, I am not asking or expecting anyone to embrace the extraordinary theory of planetary history involved, only to consider highly interesting evidence. One of the values of this re- interpretation of evidence is that the model *works*. It explains the subject matter. Even if you do not for an instant believe that the suggested events occurred, merely discovering the active memory will throw remarkable new light on the ancient structures of human consciousness. In the course of these summaries, questions and challenges will be welcome, and wherever possible I will try to incorporate these into the narrative as we go along. ---
http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thoth.1997.02.txt
_SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (2) _By David Talbott. Vine Deloria, one of the most enjoyable speakers I've ever had the pleasure of listening to, has provided a catalyst here. I'd like to respond in discrete steps, to avoid getting ahead of myself.
_ As to myth interpretation--if we have some scenario that suggests unusual physical activities and then find in so-called myths FACTS that must connect to the storyline we are in good shape. I think basically that is what Talbott is doing. I only wish it was clearer.
_Vine is certainly not the only one. But there's a dilemma here. Unlike many competing catastrophist models, the "Saturn theory" involves explicit pictures showing *exactly* what we are proposing the ancients saw. And the claimed celestial images relate specifically to the positions of *planets* in the sky, planets that are *named*. Moreover, the proposed celestial forms behave in an incredibly precise way. Hence, this behavior can be tested against all domains of evidence globally. A picture of one phase in the hypothesized planetary configuration is shown on the Kronia Communications website. [See listing of websites at the end of this newsletter.] The claimed celestial form is very specific, as I'm sure all will agree. Readers of this submission who are unaware of the proposed collinear planetary arrangement are referred to either the video documentary, "Remembering the End of the World," or the first overview article in AEON: A Journal of Myth and Science (IV:3). But there is also an issue of methodology. How can we prove something we are claiming was remembered and celebrated above all else around the world? In the methodology I am suggesting, nothing counts as ground floor evidence except *points of agreement* between widely disbursed cultures. To follow this methodology religiously is to have--well, a religious experience. Suddenly, it becomes crystal clear that ancient races really *did* remember things which, under the spell of the now-uneventful solar system, we have forgotten. I listed several fundamental and universal principles in my first submission. But it occurs to me that, in working from the general to the specific, I did not start at the *most* elementary level. For example, Vine asked the question, How many mythical themes are there? Well, it all depends. At one level--the most fundamental level of all--there is only one story, told with a thousand symbols.
_Here is rough paraphrase of "THE ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD." Once the world was quite a different place. In the beginning, we were ruled by the central luminary of the sky, the motionless sun, presiding over an age of natural abundance and cosmic harmony. Creator-king, father of kings, founder of the kingship rites. And this earliest remembered time was the *exemplary* epoch, the Golden Age, the standard for all later generations. But the ancient order was disrupted and the entire cosmos fell into confusion, when the Universal Monarch tumbled from his appointed station. Then the hordes of chaos were set loose and all of creation slipped into a cosmic night, the gods themselves battling furiously in the heavens. And yet, from this descent into chaos, a new world emerged, now re-configured, but with the Universal Monarch himself, rejuvenated and transformed, assuming his rightful place in the heavens.
_THE END _Is it really possible that this *one story*--a story so pristine and elementary--was remembered around the world? Is it really possible that all of the recurring storylines of world mythology are only a part of this singular story? Yes, I will swear by this. In fact I am eager for a challenge to this sweeping and seemingly outrageous statement. (A challenge will often help me to clarify such statements, in a context of interest to the one issuing the challenge.) But remember: I DID NOT SAY THAT I GAVE YOU THE WHOLE STORY. For example, I did not mention the mother goddess, and I did not mention the ancestral warrior-hero. Both are inseparable linked to this one story. But we're going for simplicity here. Now let's go back to the most pervasive motivations of early civilizations, a topic I noted in my earlier submission. Is it possible to reduce the cited motives of ancient cultures to more elementary principles, without falling into the reductionist fallacy? I think it is, indeed, possible. There is a singular principle, for example, that is beyond dispute: the builders of the first civilizations were incessantly looking backwards. In the first expressions of civilization, human imagination was dominated entirely by *things remembered*. Moreover, two contradictory impulses will be discerned in this alignment to the past, and neither will make any sense in terms of conventional assumptions about human history. One impulse is nostalgia, a yearning for something remembered above all else, but lost. The second impulse is terror: the pervasive, ever-present fear that something terrible that happened in the past will happen again. No civilization in the ancient world failed to express these contrasting motives, reflected in monument-building, commemorative rites, hymns and prayers to the gods, kingship rites, ritual sacrifice, and holy war. How is this to be explained? One possibility has been consistently overlooked by the specialists--the possibility that celestial events of an unimaginable scale cast their shadow over all of civilization. But why do nostalgia and terror exist side by side in such a paradoxical relationship? A comparative approach will show that this is no accident, that a unified memory lies behind both of the expressions--the memory of an ancient "paradisal" condition, the mythical "Golden Age," giving way to overwhelming catastrophe, universal darkness, cosmic tumult, and wars of the gods. Look at the deepest yearning of civilization's builders, and you will see the yearning for paradise, a desperate longing to recover the lost Golden Age. For the Egyptians this was the revered Golden Age of Ra, and for the ancient Sumerians it was the Golden Age of An--a theme reverberating around the world. But now look at the deepest fears of the same peoples, and you will see the Doomsday anxiety, the terror of the great catastrophe. This is not an isolated memory, but a memory inseparably linked to the theme of the ancestral paradise. The remembered events were not just catastrophic; they were the events that brought the Golden Age to an end, when the sky was overrun by chaos. Two seemingly incompatible motives trace to a common experience, and both bring us back to the ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Hence, the implication cannot be avoided. Something extraordinary was remembered by the first skywatchers, something profound and yet unexplained. ---
http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thoth.1997.03.txt
_SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (3) _By David Talbott. _In the course of these submissions, I'll attempt to engage various comments by others, trying to maintain a sense of direction at the same time.
_In response to my previous notes, Vine Deloria wrote-- _ OK - then all we need is to establish the various sequences of interaction with earth and try to get some dates down - even approximations - and some idea of the disruption of our strata here plus whatever was "dumped" from the other planets and we have something to work with. We can now ... ask the question - how did human society and/or civilizations get off the ground ..., etc
_Chronology. Physical Evidence. Dynamics. All of these issues intertwine. Moreover, various individuals exploring catastrophist ideas will work from different perspectives, and will hold different ideas as to what constitutes the most solid ground for a starting point. The solid ground in my own orientation to these things is the substratum of human memory. It is this substratum that raises the deepest historical questions and sends us scurrying about to find answers, even if the answers upset various specialists, asking them to reconsider the most fundamental assumptions of their discipline. My own conclusion came as a great surprise: the substratum of human memory is incredibly dependable. But others would consider that to be a losing proposition out of the gate. So there's an immediate problem of communication here. (A definition just to avoid misunderstanding: By the "substratum of human memory" I don't mean Jungian collective memory, though Jungian archetypes may indeed come into the equation in the bigger picture. For now, I mean the common mythical, symbolic and ritual themes of widely separate cultures. Another way of putting it might be, "Points of agreement concerning remembered events.") In this inquiry, I think there are certain things we can all agree on. Truth is unifying, because it eliminates contradictions. When you are looking for the truth of a matter, any significant and incontrovertible fact is good news, because it can save you from heading in the wrong direction. It's particularly good news if it compels you to change your mind, because in doing so it has liberated you from a burden that could only grow. When it comes to the more fundamental errors, a whole life time could be spent on a dead-end course. Physical data and physical theory will be involved--and implicated-- at every step. Whatever happened is not impossible. What is impossible didn't happen. There will be no unified theory in the sense we are all looking for, until what was remembered can be comprehended. Not just comprehended as a set of anciently- supported images, but comprehended in terms of what is possible, and in terms of the physical signature of the events involved. But before I wander off, let's return to THE ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Since we are claiming this to be one memory reflected in the myth-making adventure as a whole, I had better republish the story. (Already my second printing. It's not long, you will recall): Once the world was quite a different place. In the beginning, we were ruled by the central luminary of the sky, the motionless sun, presiding over an age of natural abundance and cosmic harmony. *Creator*-king, father of kings, founder of the kingship rites. And this earliest remembered time was the *exemplary* epoch, the Golden Age, the standard for all later generations. But the ancient order was disrupted and the entire cosmos fell into confusion, when the Universal Monarch tumbled from his appointed station. Then the hordes of chaos were set loose and all of creation slipped into a cosmic night, the gods themselves battling furiously in the heavens. And yet, from this descent into chaos, a new world emerged, now re-configured, but with the Universal Monarch himself, rejuvenated and transformed, assuming his rightful place in the heavens.
_THE END _What an outrageous claim to make--to suggest that there are no domains of ancient myth that can be isolated from this singular story! But I am not just arguing by proclamation here. I am contending that the truth can be demonstrated by following certain rules. Call these the RULES FOR RE-ENVISIONING HUMAN HISTORY. Our first rule is: we will always work from the general motif to the specific. A second is: only broadly recurring themes count as evidence, particularly in the early stages of the reconstruction. And there is a third rule: Earlier-recorded versions of the recurring themes must be permitted to explain later variants. Okay, just one more rule: we must allow ancient drawings to illuminate the myths and rites, while permitting the myths and rites to illuminate the drawings. This last rule is crucial because, around the world, ancient skygazers drew remarkably similar pictures of things that do not exist in our sky. And the things depicted are the *subjects* of the myths and rites, though this vital truth has not been generally recognized, either by catastrophists or by mainstream scholars. Now let's take the ONE STORY a step further, in response to Vine's question: how many archetypal figures of myth are there? There are SEVEN, I say with smug assurance. Well there *are* just seven! But it all depends how you count these guys (and gals). For openers, we know there is at least one archetypal figure, because he is the god whose ancient name was "ONE", the primeval, all-encompassing "Unity". This figure is, of course, the Universal Monarch, the subject of our ONE STORY (So our ONE STORY might be subtitled the "The Story of ONE'"). Examples would include: Egyptian Atum and Ra, Sumerian An and Utu, Akkadian Anu and Shamash, Hindu Varuna and Brahma, Greek Ouranos and Kronos, Aztec Ometeotl and Quetzalcoatl, to name a few. Our claim is that all others stories, all other archetypal figures, when investigated at the core, lead back to the ONE STORY, intersecting with this story in the most remarkable and explicit ways.
_Here are the other figures: _QUEEN OF HEAVEN _Wherever you find the Universal Monarch you will find close at hand the ancient mother goddess, the goddess whom the Sumerians called Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, and the Babylonians Ishtar, and the Egyptians Isis, Hathor, and Sekhmet, each with numerous counterparts in their own and in other lands, and virtually all of them viewed symbolically as daughter or spouse of the creator- king, and the mother of another, equally prominent figure. _WARRIOR-HERO _This is the great national hero, originally the Demiurge, the servant of the creator-king, but passing into later myth as the laboring warrior, messenger or servant of a great chief or regional ruler. He is the Hercules archetype, a figure combining knowledge and brutish strength, quick wit and episodic foolishness. He defeats the chaos monsters in primordial times, and he reconfigures the world. With a personality clearly dominating the later mythical chronicles, the warrior-hero is the prototype of the famous tricksters and buffoons of later myth and folklore, flowering into thousands of tribal variations. Egyptian Shu, Horus and Sept, Akkadian Nergal, Hindu Indra, Norse Thor, Greek Ares and Hercules, Aztec Huitzilopochtli. Also, in North America: Coyote and Raven. But countless others as well, because the warrior- hero is far and away the most active figure in the myths.
_PRIMEVAL SEVEN _These satellite figures are presented in a variety of contexts, as wise men, patriarchs, seers, children, dwarves, stones of fate, stars, orbs, heads of the chaos monster. They are the first reason for the sanctity of the number seven in ancient symbolism.
_CHAOS MONSTER _Here we meet the darker, more menacing powers, possessing an often-hidden link to aspects of the mother goddess or warrior-hero type. Of these darker creatures none is more prominent than the cosmic serpent or dragon, a monster that descends on the world to preside over the twilight of the gods, and whose ultimate defeat signals the birth of a new age or, symbolically, a new year. Babylonian Tiamat. Egyptian dragon of Apep. Greek Typhon. But within every culture, endless variations will be found: hundreds of monsters repeating the primeval catastrophe, each providing a different nuance, a different accent, a different way of remembering the cosmic agent of Doomsday.
_CHAOS HORDES _These are the companions of the monster figures. They are the swarming powers of disorder and calamity, the fiends of darkness--flaming, devouring demons which so many magical rites were contrived to ward off. From the Norse Valkyries to the Greek Erinyes, from the Babylonian Pazuzu-demons to the Egyptian "Fiends of Set." Every culture remembered the onslaught of these chaos demons, moving across the heavens as a sky-darkening cloud and ushering in the cosmic night. In their earliest expressions, they do not just announce the primeval catastrophe, they *are* the catastrophe.
_REJUVENATED CREATOR-KING _And lastly, there is the compelling personality of the dying god- king, often a resurrected or transformed figure, whose springing back to life is reflected in the dramas of the New Year, symbolically the passing from one age to another. Though his identity is inseparably tied to the Universal Monarch, he nevertheless emerges in distinction from that god as his *son*, the younger version, or *rejuvenated* form of his own father. Examples would include: Egyptian Osiris, Akkadian Marduk; Persian Ahura Mazda; Norse Balder; Hebrew Yahweh; Phoenician Bel, Greek Zeus. So there are just seven archetypal personalities of myth, if you count them in this way. We are not separating the chaos monster into it's male and female aspects, so we count only one monster. We *are* separating the Universal Monarch into his elder and younger versions, however. We arrive, therefore, at our first critical juncture. An acid test. Can a mere seven categories actually encompass all of world mythology? While there are numerous complexities and ambiguities to slow us down periodically, the vast majority of well-documented regional figures of myth can be readily identified in terms of these archetypes. And the implications are quite astounding if you set this principle beside the different theories offered to explain myth in the past. NOT A SINGLE THEORY PROPOSED BEFORE VELIKOVSKY OPENED THE DOOR WILL ACCOUNT FOR THE ARCHETYPES, THE BEDROCK OF MYTH. But the implications become all the more astounding when you begin to see that each of the archetypal figures is linked in no uncertain terms to the ONE STORY. (I'll give some key examples in the next few submissions.) A *universal structure* to ancient memory is present. The six additional biographies re-tell the "story of ONE", but each with a slight turn of the prism, putting the focus on a particular aspect of the story and providing more colorful action and detail. What an amazing principle, if true. Of all the skills that the independent researcher might bring to this inquiry, none will prove more crucial than that of pattern recognition. There is structure to myth. Structure that has never been sufficiently acknowledged. Structure implies coherence, an integrity between the parts. Clearly human imagination must have gone wild to have produced the incredible vistas of the ancient mythscape. But structure is there too, and structure means that human imagination was not operating in a vacuum. What could have unleashed human imagination in this way, while yet inspiring a universal myth? Nothing less than the most awesome and traumatic experiences in human history, I would say. ---
http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thoth.1997.04.txt
_SATURN THEORY, OVERVIEW (3) _By David Talbott. _In seeking out the roots of ancient experience, one will continually face an issue concerning the use of ancient testimony as evidence. How can the disparate threads of memory, expressed in seemingly contradictory symbols, through stories that are often barely intelligible, and in archaic words of uncertain meaning, ever provide a dependable guide for reconstructing cosmic events? The first essential is to expose the *substratum* of memory, and this can only be accomplished by limiting what counts as evidence. Only broadly-repeated themes are to be included in the early phases of the inquiry, and only the clearest facts, or undisputed principles, qualify as building blocks in the reconstruction. When I speak of the "historical argument" for the Saturn theory, I am referring to all sources of evidence suggesting *things remembered*. Before the Egyptians, Sumerians, Hindus, or Greeks ever raised a temple, they would consciously and deliberately look backwards to a remembered event. The foundation ceremonies would *reenact* an archetypal occasion in the lives of the gods--the construction of a vast dwelling in primeval times, a "temple" brought forth by the Universal Monarch, a temple "floating on the clouds." Similarly, when the warrior-kings of Egypt and Assyria and numerous other lands launched their campaigns against neighboring peoples, they summoned memories of cosmic catastrophe, when the gods themselves battled in the heavens. Symbolically, foreign armies meant "the fiends of darkness," and were to be dealt with accordingly. The warrior-kings saw themselves defeating neighboring forces in the same way that, in primeval times, the great gods devastated and controlled the Chaos Hordes, when these dark powers overwhelmed the cosmic order. It is a remarkable fact that the builders of civilization declared, with one voice, that the first cities and first kingdoms organized in the ancient world, the first pictographs drawn on rock or on temple walls, the vast complexes of sacred festivals and rites, had their prototypes in dramatic events occurring in the age of the gods. Ancient art and architecture, hymns and prayers, the origins of writing, the rise of kingship, nationalistic wars of expansion, ritual sacrifice, the first athletic competition, the roots of drama, tragedy, and comedy--and all other forms of collective activity associated with the flowering of civilization--were commemorative in nature, remembering, re-enacting, re-living, and honoring above all else the archetypal events, when the gods themselves ruled the world. Such an idea may seem incomprehensible to us, but there is no escaping the festive and commemorative aspects of emerging civilizations, all pointing *backwards* to remembered events. Hence, the field of evidence we must draw upon includes literally every feature distinguishing these civilizations from the prior, more pastoral epoch of human history. That is a huge library of evidence! Moreover, there is a taproot feeding the explosive, upward movement of the first civilizations. That taproot is the ONE STORY TOLD AROUND THE WORLD. Every recurring cultural theme, in truth, is linked in the most explicit ways to this global memory. But don't forget that the memory is at once pristinely simple and highly complex, depending on which level you are looking at. To the figure of the Universal Monarch, the subject of the ONE STORY, I added six additional archetypal figures of myth, brashly asserting that these personalities all intersect with the ONE STORY in highly specific ways, and claiming that the myth-making epoch has not presented us with any other elementary types. If true, this will mean that the pervasive motives of the first civilizations, cited above, must bear a direct relationship to the *remembered activities* of the seven archetypal figures. Hence, this is a testable hypothesis. If it is incorrect, it can and will be easily disproved under the ground rules we have proposed. This leaves two other issues relating to the foundations of a theory. What are the relationships of these root personalities to *planets*? And what is their relationship to the illustration presented on the Kronia website as a starting point for this discussion? It needs to be emphasized that the planetary identifications suggested here did not fall off the wall. They are the result of a patient reconstruction of ancient astronomical traditions over many years. Portions of the material have already been published either in *The Saturn Myth*, or in AEON articles. So let's go back to the beginning. But to do so I must refer readers to the illustration (see the Kronia website directory under of the "Saturn Theory).
_The Universal Monarch, the true subject of the ONE STORY, is the planet Saturn. In the illustration, this is the large sphere visually dominating the sky from its fixed position at the celestial pole. The Mother Goddess is the planet Venus, the luminous, central orb seen squarely in the center of Saturn and from which radiating streams of material course outward. The Warrior-Hero is the planet Mars, the small red orb seen inside the sphere of Venus. Our subject, in other words, is a *collinear* configuration of planets, with each planet stationed at its own equilibrium position, and all sharing the same period of revolution. The Primeval Seven, though not shown in the oversimplified illustration, should be considered as seven smaller orbs revolving in the vicinity of Saturn.
_The Chaos Monster denotes the interacting forms of Mars and Venus in periods of instability or cosmic *disorder*, as gas and dust (or other material) stretched between planets, giving shape to the evolving forms of the monster in different phases of the configuration. The Chaos Hordes mean the material stretching between planets. Hence, they constitute both the retinue and the *form* of the Chaos Monster. (This latter identification is complicated by the fact that, in the illustrated phase, the material is not chaotic. Whatever this stuff is, it moves in the vicinity of the participating planets, with a complex (stable and unstable) history going far, far beyond the illustrated phase.)
_The Rejuvenated Creator-King is the planet Jupiter, not visible in the illustrated phase because it was hidden behind Saturn, but becoming visible with the disruption of the collinear system.
_But what is the most efficient way to clarify and to test the hypothesis as a whole? The only way to prove a theory is to demonstrate its explanatory power. And what I believe we can demonstrate through rigorous testing is that the Saturn theory does indeed account for, or predict, the recurring themes of myth, ritual, and symbol, down to hundreds of extraordinary details. This testing procedure will show that there was a *myth-making* epoch, involving a natural environment and intense human experiences unlike anything known in our own time. We can achieve this testing by simply granting the hypothesized condition, then asking if that condition leaves any aspect of a particular theme unexplained. Then we can go to the next theme, then another, until we have explored every general theme of myth (if our endurance holds up that long). This kind of testing can be very explicit and will remove subjective interpretation and selective use of evidence altogether, because only acknowledged or indisputable, broadly recurring themes count as evidence, and once the question is asked, the answers will tend to be self-evident. We need interpret nothing for the skeptic, simply note the acknowledged themes so that he can determine for himself whether the predictive ability is as complete as we have claimed. Let me explain what I mean by this. While the theory suggests events never entertained by modern science, no one would dispute that *if* Saturn hung immense in the sky, the identity of Saturn as the dominant luminary or "sun" god in most ancient times is explained. *If* the gas giant did indeed occupy the summit of the world axis, there can be no surprise in finding that diverse traditions actually placed the ancient Saturn at this astronomically absurd location. And no one would dispute that *if* Venus formerly appeared as a radiant "star" in the center of Saturn, the worldwide "sun" pictographs depicting precisely this relationship are explained. Similarly, no one would deny that *if* light from the solar orb placed a crescent on Saturn, the enigmatic crescent wrapped around the ancient, Saturnian "sun" god is explained. And how could anyone claim that, *if* a collinear planetary system once towered above ancient stargazers, the mystery of the Great Conjunction of Saturn's Golden Age would remain unsolved? Through a comprehensive testing process of this sort, I believe it can be made clear that the Saturn theory does, in fact, achieve what could not be achieved by a fundamentally incorrect hypothesis. Successful predictions in one or another case will never validate such an unusual theory. But the ability to predict *all* of the global themes of the myth-making age--and all of the indisputable, concretely-defined relationships *between* these forms--could not be an accident. ---
http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thoth.1997.05.txt
_THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE _By David Talbott. _In this and several submissions to follow, I will offer some background notes on a few mythological themes that are integral to the historical argument of the Saturn theory-- Golden Age/Ancestral Paradise Universal Monarch/King of the World Saturn as Ancient Sun God Myth of the Polar Sun Saturn at the Pole _GOLDEN AGE _When the world began, according to the biblical account and other Hebrew myths, Adam, the first man and prototype of man, occupied a garden of abundance, in communion with God Himself--a deathless realm, free of sickness and any need for human labor. Loss of that original paradise was nothing less than a cosmic rupture, and never, since that rupture, has man experienced a comparable terrestrial condition. The Eden story is filled with interesting and familiar images. Four rivers of paradise, tree of Life and tree of the Knowledge, devious serpent, Adam's rib, temptress Eve, flaming sword at the gate, and more. But what immediately concerns us is a single underlying theme, a theme clearly linked to a myth preserved on every habitable continent. A global myth declares that the world has not always been as it is experienced now. In a former time, man lived in a kind of paradise, close to the gods. It was the Golden Age. Throughout an eternal spring, the earth produced abundantly, free from the seasonal cycles of decay and rebirth. And under this remarkable cosmic order, man experienced neither war nor sickness, neither hunger nor any requirement of human labor. This recurring and unexplained myth was carried into modern times by primitive races the world over. In Mexico native legends spoke of an ancestral generation whose every need was met, without cost. There was no sickness or hunger no poverty or sadness, and the gods dwelt among men. But this harmonious age didn't last, eventually succumbing to an overwhelming catastrophe. According to the Cheyenne of North America the original race roamed naked, innocent and free, enjoying the natural abundance of an eternal spring. What followed, however, was an age of flood, war, and famine. The Caribs of Surinam have a poignant memory of this fortunate epoch. "In a time long past, so long past that even the grandmothers of our grandmothers were not yet born," they say, "the world was quite other than what it is today: the trees were forever in fruit; the animals lived in perfect harmony, and the little agouti played fearlessly with the beard of the jaguar " The South American Indians of Gran Chaco and Amazonia recall this as the Happy Place, where work was unknown because the fields produced abundance of their own accord. The Hopi Indians proclaim that in the earliest time they were a marvelously contented race, at peace with their brothers. They knew nothing of sickness or conflict, and all things were provided by Mother Earth without any requirement of labor. But these are just the American Indian versions of the story. The aborigines of Australia insist that their first ancestors enjoyed a Golden Age, a Paradise of abundant game and without conflict of any kind. Northern Europeans once celebrated this earliest age as the "Peace of Frodi," a mythical Danish king. Throughout this peaceful epoch no man injured another and a magical mill ground out peace and plenty for the entire land. Memories of a Golden Age pervade the myths of Africa. The distinguished folklorist Herman Baumann reported that "Everything that happened in the primal age was different from today. People understood the language of animals and lived at peace with them; they knew no labor and had food in plenitude." Sacred texts of ancient India recall this as the Krita Yuga or "Perfect Age," without disease, labor, suffering or war. The Iranians called it the age of the brilliant Yima, an age with "neither cold nor heat," an eternal spring. According to ancient Chinese lore, the purest pleasure and tranquility once reigned throughout the world. Mythical histories called it "the Age of Perfect Virtue" and declared that "the whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness. . . all things grew without labor; and a universal fertility prevailed." How old, then, is this ancient memory of a lost paradise? It is this question we will take up in our next installment. --
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_THE MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE (PART 2) _By David Talbott. _In their myths, rites and hymns the ancient Sumerians contrasted their own time to the earliest remembered age--what they called "the days of old," or "that day," when the gods "gave man abundance, the day when vegetation flourished." This was when the supreme god An "engendered the year of abundance." To this primeval age, every Sumerian priest looked back as the reference for the preferred order of things, which was lost through later conflict and deluge. In the city of Eridu at the mouth of the Euphrates, the priests recalled a Golden Age prior to familiar history. The predecessors of their race, it was claimed, had formerly reposed in the paradise of Dilmun, called the "Pure Place" of man's genesis. This lost paradise of Dilmun, about which scholars have debated for decades, is strangely reminiscent of the paradise of Eden. "That place was pure, that place was clean. In Dilmun ... the lion mangled not. The wolf ravaged not the lambs," the Sumerian texts read. The inhabitants of this paradise lived in a state of near perfection, in communion with the gods, drinking the waters of life and enjoying unbounded prosperity. Ancient Egypt, an acknowledged cradle of civilization, preserved a remarkably similar memory. Not just in their religious and mythical texts, but in every sacred activity, the Egyptians incessantly looked backwards, to events of the Tep Zepi. The phrase means the "First Time," a time of perfection "before rage or clamor or strife or uproar had come about," as the texts themselves put it. This was the Golden Age of Ra, and the memories of that time echoed through centuries of Egyptian thought. "The land was in abundance," the texts say. "There was no year of hunger. . .Walls did not fall; thorns did not pierce in the time of the Primeval Gods." Or from another text: "there was no unrighteousness in the land, no crocodile seized, no snake bit in the time of the First Gods." Cosmic harmony. Abundance. Paradise. To this Golden Age, according to the great nineteenth century scholar Francois Lenormant, the Egyptians "continually looked back with regret and envy." The golden age of Ra was, for the Egyptians, the Great Example setting a standard for all later ages. A surprising fact emerges. The legend of the Golden Age is as old as civilization. And the implications are well worth pondering. A coherent set of ideas has survived all of the twists and turns of cultural evolution for at least five thousand years--and on every continent. Now that's an astonishing verification of the durability of myth! Many of us had always thought of myth as the outcome of reckless invention--illiterate savages entertaining themselves by contriving magical stories out of nothing. Imagine such a process going on for thousands of years, and ask yourself if any possibility of a universal memory would remain. Remember that the myth-makers did not just recount a charming tale; they strove desperately to recover what was lost. In the infancy of civilization collective activity reflects a singular reference to the age of the gods--the honoring of the gods through celebration, representation, reenactment, codification, and massive construction activity. In fact, there are numerous grounds for saying that civilization itself was the outcome of this fundamentally religious activity. Perhaps the most accomplished analyst of mythology in modern times was the late Mircea Eliade, chairman of the Department of History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion. From his meticulous, lifelong survey of the subject, professor Eliade drew a stunning conclusion: literally every component of early civilizations--from religion to art and architecture--expressed symbolically the desire to recover and to re- live the lost Golden Age. That which symbolically transported the participant back to the First Time, the Golden Age, was sacred. That which did not was transient and mundane, of no interest. Around the world, early man yearned for a return to paradise. Every coronation of a king, every New Year's festival, monumental construction, every recitation of temple hymns and prayers, every holy war, every sacrifice to the gods was motivated by a desire to recapture some aspect of the Golden Age, to live, if only for a symbolic moment, in the original age of the gods. ---
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_THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (1) _By David Talbott. _It's amazing how frequently the earliest- remembered events occur on a mythscape of uncertain location! Where *was* the ancient paradise? Where did the gods and goddesses and heroes of the mythical epoch actually live? Beyond the north wind? Atop the world's highest mountain? In the land of the rising sun? On a lost island in the middle of the sea? If anything has been proven by the flood of ancient texts that have come to light in the past hundred and fifty years, it is that the central personalities of myth did not, in the original concepts, dwell on earth. The theater in which the great mythical events were first played out was the sky. Here is an indisputable fact: If you will trace the claimed history of any ancient nation backwards, you will, in every instance, reach a point at which man lives in the shadow of the gods. This distant epoch--what the Egyptians called the "time of the primeval gods"--cries out for clarification. Originally, the gods rule the world. First in an age of gold, but this age is followed by catastrophe and cosmic disharmony. That is the archetypal memory repeated around the world. In their earliest historical expressions, the gods are celestial through and through. As the stories are told and re- told across the centuries, however, these celestial powers are progressively localized, re-entering the chronicles in increasingly human guise. All of the profound cosmic events expressed in the earliest ritual, symbol, and myth are eventually brought down to earth. In the typical instance, through a relentless process of identification, the gods eventually emerge as legendary *ancestors* of the nation telling the story. Each of the nations recalling the Golden Age, for example, insisted that their own forefathers had descended from the gods. At first glance, this pervasive claim will appear as sheer arrogance, a nationalistic pride carried to absurd extremes. But the origins of the idea have never been adequately appreciated. In truth, this worldwide racial claim, that "we are descended from the gods," or that "our race was originally divine," or "we were the favored children of the gods," offers a key to the primitive experience: it confirms early man's unqualified sense of connection to the enigmatic celestial powers so vividly portrayed in the myths. And one cannot afford to ignore the equally significant principle: that these celestial powers are *no longer present*, no longer visible and active in the world. Our subject, in other words, is far more than an enchanting idea. To explore the mythical age of the gods is to confront the driving force of the first civilizations--the most powerful memory in human history Some of the particulars of this myth are remarkable. All of the well-preserved myths of the Golden Age, for example, say that this magical epoch was distinguished by the rule of a Universal Monarch, a celestial king of the world. On every continent, it was declared that before a king ever ruled on earth, a prototype of kings arose in heaven, and it was this "best of kings" who had founded the original paradise. For the Egyptians it was the creator-king Ra, for the Sumerians it was the high god An, from whom kingship descended. Similarly, the Hindu Brahma, the Chinese Huang-ti, Mexican Quetzalcoatl, Mayan Itzam Na and numerous counterparts among other nations, all preside over the Golden Age, while establishing the ideals and principles of kingship. In Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, China, Greece, Italy, northern Europe, pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America--in fact, wherever the institution of kingship arose--the royal genealogies lead backwards to this exemplary ruler, celebrated as the first in a sacred line of kings. The different myths recount in rich detail how the god built a great temple or city in primeval times, invented the alphabet, or taught a new language to a pre-literate race. They say it was he who invented the wheel, introduced the science of agriculture, instituted laws, and taught the true religion--in short, brought to a barbarous race all of the arts of civilization. There is also a crucial connection here. This "ancestor-king" is so completely identified with the Golden Age that it is impossible to separate the one myth from the other. There is no Golden Age without a founding king, no founding king without a Golden Age! The fabulous chronology of Egyptian kings or pharaohs offers a telling example. In his sweeping history of ancient Egypt, the Greek historian Herodotus enumerates the early lineage of kings. He tells us that there was a first king of Egypt, and his name was Helios. This first king of Egypt was not a mere mortal! He was a celestial power. Of course Herodotus was simply translating an Egyptian name into Greek. For the Egyptians, the institution of kingship began with the rule of the primeval sun god Atum or Ra, who, prior to his retirement from the world, founded the Tep Zepi, the First Time, or Golden Age. In Egypt all of the kingship rites point backwards to the age of Ra, a supreme god celebrated from one end of Egypt to the other as the prototype of kings. Indeed, every historical king's or pharaoh's authority derived from a connection to the ancestral king, for as the best Egyptologists have pointed out, the pharaoh was *accredited as such* by the claim that the blood of Atum-Ra coursed through his veins. In rites deeply rooted in Egyptian cosmology, each new king symbolically ascended the throne of Ra, took as spouse Ra's own mistress, the mother goddess, wielded Ra's scepter, built temples and cities modeled after Ra's temple or city in the sky, adorned himself with the beard of the god, wore the crown of Ra as his own, and defeated neighboring enemies in just the way that Ra had defeated the hordes of darkness or chaos in the Tep Zepi. Identification of local king and celestial prototype was absolute. Such is the universal tradition: every king was, in a magical way, the Universal Monarch reborn. And this is why, among all ancient nations, the chroniclers of kingship took such pains to establish the unbroken line of kings: Only by proclaiming that the local king carried the blood of his predecessor, the Universal Monarch, could they certify his suitability for the prescribed function of kings. ---
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_THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (2) _By David Talbott. _The ancient Sumerians repeatedly proclaimed that kingship had descended directly from the creator-king An, the most ancient and highest god of the pantheon, and the revered founder of the Golden Age. Consider the myths and images of the Hindu Brahma, Manu or Yama, the Iranian Yima, Danish Frodhi, or Chinese Huang- Ti--all models of the good king, ruling over a primitive paradise. The respective cultures esteemed these mythical figures as *prototypes*. In later ages the chroniclers have such figures ruling on earth. But in the earliest traditions the kingdom is in the sky, and this ancient kingdom of the Universal Monarch is one of the most pervasive archetypes of world mythology. Natives of Mexico insisted that the great god Quetzalcoatl, a sun god who ruled before the present sun, was their first king and founder of the kingship rites. He not only introduced all of the arts of civilization, but presided over the Golden Age. The ancient Maya proclaimed that their once- spectacular civilization had its origins in the rule of the creator-king and god of the Golden Age, Itzam Na. At the center of Mayan culture, stood the sovereign chief, announcing himself as something like "the King of Kings and ruler of the world, regent on earth of the great Itzam Na." The leading Mayan expert, J. Eric Thompson, saw this an "inflated notion of grandeur," "a sort of divine right of kings which would have turned James I green with envy." And yet throughout the ancient world, one encounters this divine "grandeur" of kings at every turn. The original concept may appear as self-flattery, but it actually has more to do with a *burden* of kings: the requirement that the king live up to the mythical aura of kings. Never was there a king in early times that did not wear the dress of a mythical god-- the model of the good ruler. Whatever the celestial, founding king had achieved, it was the duty of the present king, pharaoh, or emperor to duplicate, at least through symbolic repetition. For such was the first test of a *good* king. This historical burden of kings will explain why every king was expected to renew the primeval era of peace and plenty. Why, for example, was the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III so eager to announce that he had restored conditions "as they were in the beginning", in the Tep Zepi or Golden Age of Ra? Or why did the Pharaoh Amenhotep III congratulate himself so for having made the country "flourish as in primeval times..."? The Pharaoh was expected to repeat the achievements of the celestial prototype! In the same way, when the Sumerian king Dungi ascended the throne, it was declared that a champion had arisen to restore the original Paradise.. Indeed, every Sumerian king was expected to reproduce the wonders of "That Day," or the "Year of Abundance"--the Golden Age of An. When the famous Assyrian king Assurbanipal took the throne, the chroniclers proclaimed that "the harvest was plentiful, the corn was abundant. . .the cattle multiplied exceedingly." For such was the accreditation of a good king. Among the Hebrews, the expectation was continually expressed that the king would introduce a new Golden Age. The Irish King, according to the respected expert J. A. MacCulloch, ruled under the same expectation: "Prosperity was supposed to characterize every good king's reign in Ireland," MacCulloch writes, and "the result is precisely that which everywhere marked the golden age." This is, of course, a very familiar idea. The ancient king was, in the words of the eminent psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, "the magical source of welfare and prosperity." It's interesting how often scholars have noticed the theme, without explaining it. How did this universal idea arise--that the earth is *fruitful* under the good king? The ideals of kingship, according to the myths themselves, were a mirror of the life and personality of the great celestial king whose rule brought abundance and cosmic harmony. Hence, the same state of things should accompany that king's successors who share in the blood-line and charisma of the great predecessor, whether that predecessor is called Ra or An, Quetzalcoatl or Itzam Na. Perhaps it will seem a bit strange that an ancient god identified as the creator would be so intimately associated with the idea of kingship, or remembered as having ruled on earth during the Golden Age. There is a fascinating paradox here: In the earliest traditions, as we've already noted, the Universal Monarch is a celestial power through and through. He is, in fact, the central light of heaven. But as we've also noted, in the course of time the creator- king's domain is progressively localized and the god takes on an increasingly human countenance as the "first king" of the particular nation telling the story. In certain lands such as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, we are able to observe the process over many centuries. In the earliest memories, Ra and An rule the sky, but later chroniclers in both lands depict them as *terrestrial* rulers. This localization of the creator-king is simply one part of a larger evolutionary process. As the myths evolve over time, the gods and heroes are brought down to earth, one nation after another claiming these divine powers as *ancestors*. And how could it be otherwise? Remember that all sacred activity within the respective cultures arose from the same collective links to the past, to the beauty and terror of the primeval age. "The further we go back in history," observed Carl Jung, "the more evident does the king's divinity become..." And when you trace the royal lineage backwards, you eventually confront the radiant figure at the head of the line. Since the story of this creator-king is as old as the myth of the Golden Age--it is older than the institution of kingship! Historians have always claimed that the myths of celestial kings were nothing more than images of local kings and kingship rites projected onto the sky. But comparative analysis will demonstrate that the reverse is true. The memory of the creator-king came first, and it was this remarkable memory which provided the mythical aura supporting and legitimizing kings the world over. Who, then--or what--was the source of this worldwide theme, this universally-remembered and profoundly charismatic power behind the rule of kings? ---
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_THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (3) _By David Talbott. _In exploring ancient images of the Universal Monarch, we now enter the realm of classical thought. Our own civilization owes its greatest debt to Greek and Latin poets, philosophers and historians, who received and interpreted countless mythical traditions of nations throughout the Mediterranean and beyond, often drawing on literary sources that were later lost and are now unavailable to us. According to the Greek poet Hesiod, the present age is but a shadow of a former epoch--called the Golden Age of Kronos. "First of all," Hesiod writes, "the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Kronos, when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: Miserable age rested not on them. . . The fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint." Kronos was the father of beginnings; in the words of the Orphic poet--the "Lord of the World, First Father." But this harmonious and peaceful epoch, founded by the god-king, gave way to world-ending disaster and devastating wars of the gods (the Clash of the Titans). In honor of the Age of Kronos, the Greeks celebrated an annual festival called the Kronia, during which the celebrants symbolically renewed the epoch of peace and plenty. Each year, according to Lucius Accius, the Greeks held large feasts throughout the towns and countryside, reversing the normal social order, exchanging gifts, enjoying merrymaking free from the normal restraints, with each man waiting on his slaves In this way the Kronia festival symbolically transported the celebrants back in time to a mythic period before law and cultural constraints, when Kronos first ruled the world. According to Plato in his often-studied work, *The Statesman*, man formerly lived in a paradise, under the rule of the creator himself. But the mortal realm, Plato declared, was later separated from the creator, and that was the cause of the evils descending upon the world. So the Greeks, in accord with the universal tradition, remembered the age of Kronos as the *model* for later generation. In *The Laws*, Plato writes that 'we must do all we can to imitate the life which is said to have existed in the days of Kronos ... both in private and public life." In the third century B.C. the neoplatonist Porphyry, drawing on the work of the Greek philosopher Dicaearchus, offered a simple explanation for the human yearning for paradise. The source of this yearning is the memory of the Age of Kronos, he wrote, when men "lived a life of leisure, without care or toil, and also--if the doctrine of the most eminent medical men is to be accepted--without disease... And there were no wars or feuds between them. Consequently, this manner of life of theirs naturally came to be longed for by men of later times." Like his many counterparts in the ancient world, Kronos was the acknowledged prototype of kings, his rule in heaven providing the standards for rule on earth. Every Greek king thus bore the universal burden of royalty, for the Greeks applied exactly the same test of the just or good ruler as did other peoples. Homer, most famous of the Greek poets, announced as the ideal "a blameless king whose fame goes up to the wide heaven, maintaining right, and the black earth bears wheat and barley and the trees are laden with fruit ... and the people prosper." It was the duty of the king, as the First Father's successor, to renew the Golden Age! One additional aspect of the Kronos image draws our attention. It seems that the former ruler of the sky entered later traditions as a renowned terrestrial king. For in later times it was claimed that Kronos had actually dwelt on earth. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for example, in remembering the Golden Age, was emphatic on the point: "Kronos ruled on this very earth," he insisted. The same idea was proclaimed in Orphic tradition. The correspondence with the global myth and its evolution over time (as the gods were brought down to earth), is indeed remarkable. But the Greek myth of Kronos brings us to a critical juncture. For this celestial power is identified, and the identity leads inexorably to a series of far-reaching discoveries. All Greek astronomical traditions agreed that Kronos was the planet Saturn. What is now the sixth planet from the Sun stands at the center of the Greek paradise myth. Kronos, the planet Saturn, ruled the heavens for a period, presiding over the Golden Age, then departed as the heavens fell into confusion. How did it happen that a remote planet, now a bare speck in the sky, found its way into such an improbable, yet deeply-rooted memory? Our own names for the planets came from the Romans who gave the outermost visible planet the name Saturn. Latin poets, philosophers, and historians, including Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca, preserved an archaic legend about Saturn. In unison they insisted that long, long ago the now-distant star had ruled as god-king, founding an ancient kingdom, a paradise on earth. The Chronicler Virgil remembered "the life golden Saturn lived on earth, while yet none had heard the clarion blare, none the sword-blades ring." Saturn, the poet proclaimed, "gathered together the unruly race, scattered over mountain heights, and gave them laws, and chose that the land be called Latium...Under his reign were the golden ages men tell of, in such perfect peace he ruled the nations..." The Latin naturalist Seneca repeated the idea more than once: "No wars the nations knew, no trumpets threatening blasts ... and the glad Earth herself willingly laid bare her fruitful breast, a mother happy and safe amid such duteous nurslings. But perhaps the most eloquent expressions came from the poet and historian Ovid: "The first millennium was the age of gold . . .No brass-lipped trumpets called, nor clanging swords ... and seasons traveled through the years of peace. The innocent earth learned neither spade nor plough; she gave her riches as fruit hangs from the tree ... Springtide the single season of the year." What the Greeks called the Kronia, celebrating the fortunate era of Kronos, the Romans termed the Saturnalia, a symbolic renewal of the Saturnia regna or reign of the great god Saturn. As in the Greek festival, the rules of social standing and obligation were temporarily suspended, with all things reverting to the primeval state, as master and slave took their place at one table In remarkable agreement with the myths of other peoples, the Romans regarded Saturn as the model and source of cherished national customs. Tracing their ancestry and national identity to this very god-king, the chroniclers claimed that, in an earlier time, the Latins deemed themselves "Saturnians". "Be not unaware, Virgil writes, "that the Latins are Saturn's race, righteous not by bond or laws, but self-controlled of their own free will and by the custom of their ancient god." Nothing symbolized this ancient tie to Saturn more dramatically than the mythical ancestry of kings. It was for a very clear purpose that the chroniclers exerted themselves on the subject, announcing that the early Latin kings were part of an *unbroken line* leading back through mythical history straight to the god-king Saturn. From the mythical king Latinus the line led upward to Faunus, then to Picus. As Virgil puts it, "Faunus' sire was Picus, and he boasts thee, O Saturn, as his father; thou art first founder of the line. To him by heaven's decree was no son or male descent, cut off..." Since the line of descent was unbroken, Virgil could insist that Augustus Caesar himself be honored as the son of a god, destined to repeat the accomplishments of the founding king-- _"Here is Caesar, and all Iulus' seed, destined to pass beneath the sky's mighty vault. This, this is he whom thou so oft hearest promised to thee, Augustus Caesar, son of a god, who shall again set up the Golden Age amid the fields where Saturn once reigned." Just as we have observed among other peoples, Roman mythology preserved the myth of Saturn on two levels. On the one hand, there was the tradition of the celestial Saturn ruling in the sky. "When ancient Saturn had his kingdom in the sky," Virgil wrote, "the deep earth held lucre all in its dark embrace." But the same god was also localized by the Romans as the legendary first king of Latium--a glaring contradiction the chroniclers overcame by asserting that, after the celestial ruler's exile or flight, he had taken up residence in Latium. "I remember how Saturn was received in this land," Ovid wrote. "He had been driven by Jupiter from the celestial realms. From that time the folk long retained the name of Saturnian." At every level, the Roman memory of Saturn resonates with a global tradition of the Universal Monarch. In the very fashion we have observed in other lands, we see the god entering local history as the primeval founding king, ruling an ancestral kingdom. And with the same result: that the nation telling the story then claimed to have *descended* from the god-king himself. The message couldn't be more clear. Long after the mythical age of the gods, every ancient culture continued to honor the great luminary remembered as the king of the world. ---
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_SATURN: THE ANCIENT SUN GOD _By David Talbott. _Many threads of Greek and Roman astronomy appear to lead back to a priestly astronomy arising in Mesopotamia some time in the first millennium B.C. The Babylonians were apparently the first to develop systematic observations of the planets, and they recorded the celestial motions with considerable skill. But in laying the foundations of later astronomy, they also preserved a crucial link with the past. Again and again they asserted a claim that could only appear preposterous to the modern translator. They declared that the distant planets were the *gods* of former times. Sumerian myths, we noted earlier, say that the rites and standards of "kingship" descended from the central luminary An, founder of the Golden Age. In Babylonian myth the Sumerian An appears as Anu, first in the line of gods and kings. And according to the best authorities on Babylonian astronomy, the god Anu was mysteriously linked to *the planet Saturn*. The association was stated most bluntly by the renowned expert on Babylonian astronomy, Peter Jensen, in *Die Kosmologie der Babylonier*: Anu was Saturn. What makes this identity stand out is the degree to which one nation after another repeated the same connection. It's an interesting fact, not often noticed, that the ancient Hebrews regarded their race as having been "Saturnian" in the beginning, when they lived under the rule of the creator El. That is, the Hebrews honored the same ancestral tie to Saturn as did the Romans. Indeed, the consistency with which early astronomies identity Saturn as the former creator-king is extraordinary. The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia knew Saturn as the heaven-sustaining Zurvãn, "the King and Lord of the Long Dominion." The Iranian god-king Yima, a transcript of the Hindu Yama, founder of the Golden Age, was also linked to Saturn. The Chinese mythical emperor Huang-ti, first in a great dynasty of kings and mythical founder of the Taoist religion, was identified astronomically as the planet Saturn. Even the Tahitians recall of the god Fetu-tea, the planet Saturn, that he "was the King." Many ancient nations commemorated the era before the fall, the harmonious condition of the "first time," by designating one day of the week as a holy day, the Sabbath. But is it significant that originally the Hebrew Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, was the day of Saturn? So was the seventh and most sacred day of the Babylonian and Phoenician weeks. For the Romans this commemorative day was Saturni dies, "Saturn's day." The same day passed into the Anglo-Saxon calendar as the "day of Seater [Saturn]," which, became our own Saturday. When scholars today look back at this esoteric connection of the Sabbath and Saturn, they see little more than an oddity of minor significance. That is because historians as a whole have missed the ancient link of Saturn to kingship, to the origins of civilization, and to the roots of ancient myth and symbol. But there is an even more significant aspect of the Saturn mystery. Here is a remarkable fact: though numerous figures of the Universal Monarch are translated conventionally as the "sun" god, the celestial power invoked by the world's first religions is not the body we call sun today. In fact the star-worshippers specifically distinguished it from our Sun by calling it best sun, the primeval sun, the central sun. Natives of Mexico recall that prior to the present age, an exemplary sun ruled the world, but this was not the sun of today. His name was Quetzalcoatl. The Maya maintained essentially the same idea, calling the primeval sun god Huracan. The Incas of Peru spoke of a former sun superior to the present sun. To the ancient Egyptians, the sun god Atum-Ra, the model ruler, reigned over the fortunate era for a time, then retired from the world. The Sumerian An, ruling with "terrifying splendor," was the central luminary of the sky, but not our sun, and later departed to a more remote domain. When it comes to the well-known sun gods of early man, nothing in the mythical record seems to have unnerved the experts. As to the original solar character of the Greek Helios, Latin Sol, Assyrian Shamash, or Egyptian Ra, scholars have maintained an unwavering confidence. And surely you can see why: could it really be doubted that Helios, radiating light from his brow, is our sun? In Egypt, countless hymns to the god Ra extol him as the divine power opening the "day." "The lords of all lands. . . praise Ra when he riseth at the beginning of each day." Ra is the "great Light who shinest in the heavens. . . Thou art glorious by reason of thy splendours. . ." In the same way, Assyrian and Babylonian texts depict the god Shamash as the supreme light of the sky, governing the cycle of day and night. Such images would seem to leave no question as to the solar character of these gods. And yet the profile of the great "sun" gods presents a fascinating dilemma. During the past century several authorities noticed that Greek and Latin astronomical texts show a mysterious confusion of the "Sun"--Greek Helios, Latin Sol--with the outermost planet, Saturn. Though the designation seems bizarre, the expression "star of Helios" or "star of Sol" was applied to Saturn! Of the Babylonian star-worshippers the chronicler Diodorus writes: "To the one we call Saturn they give a special name, 'Sun-Star.'" Similarly, the Greek historian Nonnus gives Kronos as the Arab name of the "sun," though Kronos meant only Saturn and no other celestial body. Hyginus, in listing the planets, names first Jupiter, then the planet "of Sol, others say of Saturn." A Greek ostrakon, cited by the eminent classicist, Franz Boll, identifies the Egyptian sun god Ra, not with our sun, but with the planet Saturn. This repeated confusion of the Sun and Saturn seems to make no sense at all. Can you imagine any difficulty in separating the two bodies, or distinguishing the one from the other? One fact beyond dispute is that the word Helios did become the Greek word for our Sun, just as the Latin Sol gave his name to our Sun. The same can be said for the older Shamash and Ra: the names of these gods became the names for the solar orb. But that's where the connection with our Sun ends and the mystery of Saturn, the Universal Monarch, begins. In seeking to explain the curious confusion of the sun and Saturn, late nineteenth century linguists came up with a simple explanation: The confusion, they said, was the result of the similarity of the Greek name Helios to the Greek rendering of the Phoenician god El, a god identified with Kronos, the planet Saturn. So it was all just a misunderstanding of language. But this explanation could not survive more than a few decades. For as the leading expert Franz Boll soon pointed out, the identification of the "sun" god as Saturn was more widespread and more archaic than previously acknowledged. In the Epinomis of Plato (who lived in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.) , there is an enumeration of the planets, which, as customarily translated, entails this unstartling statement: "There remain, then, three stars (planets), one of which is preeminent among them for slowness, and some call him after Kronos." Yet the original reading is not Kronos but Helios--which is to say that the original text gave the name Helios to Saturn. But later copyists, who could not believe that Helios was anything other than the sun, "corrected" the reading to "Kronos." Moreover, as Boll discovered, this practice of "correcting" the name of Saturn, from Helios to Kronos, was quite common among later copyists. Based on his reading of the most original Greek manuscripts, Boll drew a startling conclusion: the sun god Helios and the planet-god Saturn were "one and the same god." Now if this only seems to accentuate the puzzle, there is more. Hindu astronomical lore deemed the planet Saturn as Arka, the star "of the sun." And certain wise men of India often asserted that the "true sun" Brahma, the central light of heaven, was none other than Saturn. This in turn, reminds us of a rarely-noted teaching of the alchemists, preservers of so many ancient mysteries. The planet Saturn, they recalled, was not just a planet; it was "the best sun"! Such language--true sun, best sun--is strangely reminiscent of that language used by native Americans when describing the superior sun, who had presided over the era of peace and plenty. Among the Assyrians and Babylonians, the "sun"- god par excellence was the well-known figure Shamash, the "light of the gods" In countless texts and symbolic representations Shamash is depicted as the ruling light and god of the day. Most familiar is the image of the god standing in the cleft of a mountain, a curved, notched sword in hand, introducing the dawn. Or, alternatively, he is shown holding or turning a great celestial wheel. Apart from a few experts on Babylonian astronomy, historians and mythologists as a whole seem to be unaware that in Babylonian astronomical texts, the sun god Shamash and the planet Saturn merge in a most unexpected way. Where one would expect references to the Sun, one finds instead the name of the planet Saturn! In the nineteenth century, the pioneering archaeologist and historian, George Rawlinson, noting that Shamash was repeatedly associated with the planet Saturn, put an exclamation point to the mystery. "How is it possible," Rawlinson asked, "that the dark and distant planet Saturn can answer to the luminary who 'irradiates the nations like the sun, the light of the gods?'" In 1909, the leading expert Morris Jastrow brought this anomaly to the attention of others in a fascinating article entitled "Sun and Saturn." According to Jastrow, Babylonian astrological texts could not have presented the equation of Saturn and the sun more boldly: "The planet Saturn is Shamash," they say. As strange as it may seem, as difficult as it may be to comprehend, the ancient sun god is not the body we call "Sun" today. But how could such a strange identity have attached itself to the now-distant planet [It must be emphasized that we are not claiming our Sun was absent. What should become clear in the course of this investigation is that the Sun was simply not a subject of ancient myth, or the Age of the Gods. The celestial drama takes place at a particular location far removed from the path of the Sun.] A first, crucial step is to distinguish the original meanings of "day" and "night." Many hymns to Shamash and Ra--the celebrated suns of Mesopotamia and Egypt--describe these gods coming forth at the beginning of the ritual day, and the terminology will appear to signify our sun rising in the East. One of the chapters of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, for example, is "The Chapter of Coming Forth by Day." The sun gods of both Egypt and Mesopotamia turn darkness into day, inaugurate the day, appear as lord of the day, and so on. The language is *so strong* it may seem to make any interpretation other than the solar interpretation appear preposterous, since in our sky only the Sun could ever answer to such images. But there is a profound enigma here. It turns out that the "day" actually began with what we would call the "night"--at sunset, with the darkening of the sky, and the coming out, or growing bright of other celestial bodies. It is widely acknowledged that the Egyptian day once began at sunset. The same is true of the Babylonian and Western Semitic days. We know the Athenians originally computed the space of a day from sunset to sunset, and the habit appears to have prevailed among northern European peoples as well. Who, then, is the great god--the god of terrifying radiance--whose coming out or coming forth inaugurates the day? This god of the archaic day, beginning at sunset, is in fact called Shamash, Ra, Helios, and Sol--the very god explicitly identified with the planet Saturn. ---
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_THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (1) _By David Talbott. _Our next step is particularly vital because it will bring us to the threshold of a reconstruction, a concrete way to begin re-envisioning the past. In any investigation of the ancient sun god you will inevitably run into a theme of profound influence on ancient thought: You will confront the myth of the central sun--the motionless sun, the sun that did not rise or set, but stood firmly in one place. There is, in fact, a decisive difference between the great luminary celebrated as the king of the world, and the body we call the Sun today: unlike our rising and setting Sun, the archaic sun-god did not move. Perhaps the idea of a giant but visually stationary body in the sky will seem not just bizarre but impossible to visualize in any practical sense, given a rotating earth. There is an answer to that issue, arising from the ancient traditions themselves, but that answer will only raise other questions, so we've reached a point at which we have to be most attentive to the witnesses themselves. From the first stirrings of civilization in the Nile Valley, all of the tribes of Egypt celebrated the memory of Atum or Ra, father of kings, founder of the Tep Zepi or Golden Age. Without exception Egyptologists have identified Atum-Ra as the rising and setting sun. And that's the first challenge we must meet, because there's a world of difference between the literal meanings of the texts and the familiar translations. In the Egyptian religious system, the ruler of the sky occupies a designated place, presiding over what the priests remembered as "the age of the primeval gods." The Egyptian sun god gives motion to the heavens, but he does not himself move. It is said of Atum, for example, that he "gives motion to all things." But his domain is, emphatically, the cosmic center, a place of motionlessness or "rest." The texts say of Atum-- _The Great God lives Fixed in the middle of the sky _Atum occupies, and is the cosmic center, the "place par excellence," to use the expression of one of the most perceptive Egyptologists, the late T. Rundle Clark. Thus one text proclaims Atum to be the "Firm Heart of the Sky." Other sources describe this cosmic center as the celestial "resting place" achieved by Atum. In the Egyptian chronicles this place of rest, the motionless center and summit of the sky, becomes the focus of the great celestial events of the First Time. Nothing misrepresents original meanings more profoundly than the common translations of Egyptian texts relative to the daily cycle of the sun god. In the language of the Egyptians themselves, the god does not rise and set, but grows bright and dims. He shines brightly, then his light recedes. The most frequently-used Egyptian words for the this occasion are "uben". and "pert". The first word, "uben", means "to grow bright." The second, "pert", means "to come forth." Now the truth of the matter is that neither these, nor any other Egyptian words translated as the sun rising on the eastern horizon actually carry such a meaning. When Egyptian sources speak of the sun god coming out, or coming forth, the meaning is precisely what you would intend in saying that "the Moon comes out at night", or "the stars come out." You would not mean that the moon or stars rise. You would mean that they "grow bright." And that is the literal meaning of the Egyptian words usually translated as "to rise": Related hieroglyphs mean to grow strong, to awaken, to come to life, and so on. It is the resting, stationary god who comes forth at the beginning of the day. But remember what we've already learned. The ancient day began at sunset, as the sky darkened. So we need to be very clear on this. The planetary components were vastly more dramatic and unlike anything appearing in the sky today. It was the planetary bodies that occupied the center stage in the mythmaking era. As the sky darkened, the large planetary bodies--extremely close to the earth--began to put on a spectacular display. Then, at sunrise, as the sky lightened, the radiance of these planetary bodies began to recede. That's the fundamental character of the ancient daily cycle, and the mythmakers endlessly recorded images of the contrasting phases, as we will see. One of the most common Egyptian expressions combined with words for "growing bright" or "coming forth" is the phrase "em hetep". The sun god "comes forth "em hetep"." As usually translated the words mean "in peace." Now in what sense might we say that "Ra comes forth in peace."? Well, the root meaning is far more concrete. The words mean "to be at rest," or what is the same thing, "to stand in one spot." In other words, the phrase "em hetep" directly complements the idea of the creator-king occupying his "resting place" in the sky. Literally, the Egyptian sun god "comes forth" or "grows bright" at the stationary "resting place"--again, the center and summit of the sky. [A note of caution, however, is needed here,. There is also a great deal of evidence suggesting that the great sphere revolves through phases and that these phases are inseparably tied to the cycle of day and night. A sphere turning in the sky is much different than a rising and setting sphere.] The principles of the central sun appear to hold far beyond Egypt--even in cases where scholars have never doubted the god's solar identity. No cuneiform specialist has questioned the identity of the Babylonian "sun" god Shamash. Yet the texts describe Shamash "suspended from the midst of heaven." "Like the midst of heaven may he shine!" they say. "O Sun-god, in the midst of heaven..." His place in the sky is "the summit house," called also "the fixed house" and the "house of rest." In the cuneiform language these are not abstract phrases, but designations of very specific attributes and a very specific place in the sky. Center and summit (or "zenith" in many translations) are one and the same place: "In the center he made the zenith," states one text. The language makes clear that Shamash was a precise Assyrian and Babylonian counterpart of the Egyptian sun god Ra. The equation of center and summit--the cosmic place from which the sun god ruled in both the Egyptian and Mesopotamian systems-- points to an archetypal idea. We will find that the idea pervades the myths of India, of China, the great native cultures of the Americas, and numerous other cultures as well. The conclusion is revolutionary: the first stargazers did not care about the body we call Sun today, while there was nothing in the world they cared about more than the exemplary life of the primeval, central sun. How could people on a rotating earth see a huge planetary body as stationary in the sky? For an earthbound observer, there is only one stationary spot in the revolving sky. It is the celestial pole--for those of us in the northern hemisphere, the north celestial pole, roughly identified in our night sky today with the star Polaris. Close by you see the constellation of Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, most familiar to us as the Big Dipper. When you look at the northern sky at night, the stars you see are actually cutting a circle around a motionless point. This wheeling of circumpolar stars around the visual center is, of course, due to the rotation of the Earth. As the earth rotates, the Great Bear will revolve visually around the motionless Polaris. [Since the Earth wobbles very slowly over thousands of years, the celestial pole has not always been Polaris, of course.] You can see this motion through a time lapse photograph of the circumpolar region. That stationary point, in the ancient religious and astronomical systems, is the sacred center and summit. Resting place, motionless site, axis, pivot, still place, silent region, the fixed or stable center of the turning heavens, the zenith, summit, top of the world--a rigorous, comparative approach will leave no doubt that this very spot is the remembered station of the primeval sun. Of course from the vantage point of modern astronomy the entire idea is outrageous. So our next step must be to look carefully at the language of the cosmic center in the different cultures. ---
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_THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (2) _David Talbott. _LANGUAGE OF THE POLE _In the sixth century B.C. Xenophanes of Colophon offered this definition of the true god: "There is one God, greatest among gods and men, neither in shape nor in thought like unto mortals. He abides ever in the same place motionless, and it befits him not to wander hither and thither." I think it will become clear to anyone who takes up this subject with any seriousness that Xenophanes was expressing, not a new abstract philosophy, but a very ancient tradition elevated to a philosophical principle. A remarkable parallel occurs in the Hindu Upanishads: "There is only one Being who exists Unmoved yet moving swifter than the mind Who far outstrips the senses, though as gods They strive to reach him, who, himself at rest ... Supports all vital action He moves, yet moves not." As more than once scholar has pointed out, such images arose from the idea that the ruler of the sky stood motionless at the polar center, while yet turning the heavens. Which is to say that the philosopher's Unmoved Mover had an ancient mythical prototype in the central sun, the founder of the Golden Age. So one step in the reasoning here is simply to note the language applied by the first astronomers to the celestial pole and to compare that terminology to the earlier language applied to the great rulers of the sky. Consider the image of the pole in Shakespeare-- "... I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament" The speaker here is Shakespeare's Caesar--whom tradition regarded as the supreme ruler on earth, a replica of the celestial power. Is it significant that he locates this supreme power at the celestial pole? Many centuries before Shakespeare, Hipparchus spoke of "a certain star remaining ever at the same place. And this star is the pivot of the Cosmos." That language turns out to be the very language used by the ancient Chinese in describing the pole star as the "star of the pivot." And this was anything but an abstraction, for Chinese astronomy insisted with one voice that the pivot was the ancient location of the celestial emperor Shang-ti, the ruler of beginnings. To the Polynesians the pole is the station of the "Immovable One." The Pawnee call it "the star that stands still" and regard it as the governor of the sky. This star, they say, "is different from other stars, because it never moves." To the Hindus, the star is Dhruva, meaning "firm," while the region of the pole is esteemed as the "motionless site," the celestial "resting place" of gods and heroes.
_POLAR SUN _The worldwide astronomical designations of the celestial pole become crucial pieces in a puzzle, for this reason: the language establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that the pole is the remembered location of the archaic sun god Saturn. In modern astronomical terms, a planet at the celestial pole is a preposterous idea. All of the planets in our sky, together with the Earth, move on a common plane around the Sun, so that from Earth we see the planets moving on roughly the same arc across the sky as the Sun. The paradox is glaring. No planet today approaches Earth's celestial pole! And yet the ancient tradition of the polar sun confronts us everywhere. In ancient Egyptian cosmology, possibly the oldest known thought-system, one finds a mystifying connection of the sun god Atum with the pole. The French scholar Jacques Enel, in his study of Egyptian imagery, for example, assures us that the Egyptians remembered Atum's station as "the single, immovable point around which the movement of the stars occurred." To the Egyptians, states Enel, "Atum was the chief or center of the movement of the universe at the pole." Much the same language is used by the eminent Egyptologist, T. Rundle Clark, who tells us the pole was the place par excellence. Atum, according to Clark, is "the arbiter of destiny perched on the top of the world pole." So when the text declare that "the great god lives, fixed in the middle of the sky," the reference is to the polar station, according to Clark. Clark writes that "the celestial pole is 'that place,' or 'the great city.' The various designation show how deeply it impressed the Egyptian imagination. If god is the governor of the universe and it revolves around an axis, then god must preside over the axis." That the Egyptians would remember a former sun god at the celestial pole may seem hard to digest. And yet the preeminence of the celestial pole as the resting place of Atum is both emphatic and unequivocal. Clark writes: "No other people was so deeply affected by the eternal circuit of the stars around a point in the northern sky. Here must be the node of the universe, the center of regulation." (Our only disagreement here is with Clark's assumption that ancient nations outside his own area of expertise--Egypt--were less preoccupied with the celestial pole.) Atum, the first form of the sun god Ra, was thus the 'Unmoved Mover" described in Egyptian texts many centuries before Aristotle offered the phrase as a definition of the supreme power. The Egyptian hieroglyph for Atum is a primitive sledge, signifying "to move." To the god of the cosmic revolutions, the Book of the Dead proclaims "Hail to thee, Tmu [Atum] Lord of Heaven, who givest motion to all things." But while moving the heavens Atum remained "em hetep", "at rest" or "in one spot." Throughout all of Egypt this "resting place" of Atum was remembered as the site of the First Occasion, the drama of cosmic beginnings. Remember that the sun god Atum and the sun god Ra were one and the same, though the Egyptians insisted that the god himself evolved with the unfolding events. The god who was Atum became Ra in the course of his own unfolding, as the originally formless god began to acquire certain distinct attributes. Thus Atum's counterpart Ra, according to the sources themselves, "rests on his high place." He does not roam about the sky. Like Atum, Ra is the pivot, with the lesser lights revolving around him. These are, as the texts say, the "stars who surround Ra." "These gods shall revolve round about him." "The satellites of Ra make their round." Again, the picture is of a stationary god serving as the pivot of celestial motions. As I have already noted the ancient Sumerian counterpart of Atum was the creator-king An, the Akkadian Anu, whose "terrifying glory" was a repeated subject of the hymns and rites. This was "the terror of the splendour of Anu in the midst of heaven," and the starworshippers did not mean by the "midst" of heaven some vague and unfamiliar metaphor. The "midst" (kirib sami, Kabal sami, meant, very concretely, the cosmic center), making the polar god, according to Robert Brown, Jr., a nocturnal sun. The words translated as the "midst" mean, according to Brown, "that central point where Polaris sat enthroned." Both Sumerian and Akkadian texts are replete with references to the "firm" and "steadfast" or "motionless" character of the dominant gods. The great god Enki of Eridu is "the motionless lord," and god of "stability." A broken Sumerian hymn, in reference to Ninurash, a form of Ninurta, reads: "Whom the 'god of the steady star' upon a foundation/ To ... cause to repose in years of plenty." [AUTHOR'S NOTE: AS WE WILL SEE THE "POLAR" GODS INCLUDE NOT JUST THE SUN GOD SATURN, BUT OTHER FIGURES AS WELL. NO CONCLUSIONS SHOULD BE DRAWN HERE WITH RESPECT TO PLANETARY IDENTIFICATIONS, EXCEPT WHERE SUCH IDENTIFICATIONS HAVE BEEN STATED IN PRIOR NOTES.] Failing to perceive the concrete meaning of such terms, solar mythologists like to think of the place of "repose" as a hidden "underworld" beneath the earth, a dark region visited by the sun after it has set. But the place of repose is no underworld. It is: "The lofty residence... The lofty place... The place of lofty repose..." What, then, of the famous Assyrian and Babylonian god Shamash, the sun god whom we now recognize as Saturn? A remarkable fact is that Shamash "comes forth" ·(shines) and "goes in" (declines, diminishes) at one spot, the "firm," "stable" or motionless station of supreme "rest". This place par excellence was symbolized by the top of the ziggurats the famous Babylonian axis-towers constructed as symbolic models of the Cosmos. Hence, the uppermost level was deemed the "light of Shamash," and the "heart of Shamash," denoting (in the words of E.G. King) the pivot "around which the highest heaven or sphere of the fixed stars revolved." " The Babylonian tradition of the polar sun has been preserved up to the twentieth century in the tradition of the Mandaeans of Iraq. In their midnight ceremonies these people invoked the celestial pole as Olma l'nhoara, "the world of light." It is therefore not surprising to find that chroniclers of the Mandaean rituals call the polar power the "primitive sun of the star-worshippers." The recurring concepts are these: a stationary location, the celestial place of rest, the place round which the heavens turn, and the cosmic center, the place where the myths begin. Firmness, stability, pivot, axis, center, and summit or zenith. The imagery is both archetypal and universal. To the Hindus the sacred celestial spot, the province of the creator-king, was the place of "supreme rest," called also "the motionless site." The Hindu Dhruva, whose name means "firm," stands on this very spot--"a Spot blazing with splendor ... and which subsists motionless." In the Sanskrit texts, Dhruva means the celestial pole. What remains to be explained by mythologists is that the sun god Surya "stands firmly on this safe resting place." Surya, states the Sanskrit authority V.S. Agrawala, "is himself at rest, being the immovable center of his system." Just as the Egyptian and Mesopotamian sun gods "rise and set" in one place, Surya occupies samanam dhama--"the same place of rising and setting." The words translated as "rising" and "setting" can only mean the phase of brightness followed by the phase of receding light. Another name for the stationary sun, according to Agrawala, is Prajapati. "The sun in the center is Prajapati: he is the horse that imparts movement to everything," The motionless Dhruva, Surya, and Prajapati compare with the light of Brahma, called the "true sun." This is the ancient sun, the texts say, which "after having risen thence upwards ... rises and sets no more. It remains alone in the center." Here, too, center and summit are synonymous. Brahma, observes Rene Guenon, is "the pivot around which the world accomplishes it revolution, the immutable center which directs and regulates cosmic movement." Moreover, this stationary and axial character of the greatest gods seems to be common to all of the primary celestial figures in Hindu myth, with its diverse pantheon gathered from so many cultural traditions. The god Varuna, "seated in the midst of heaven," is the "Recumbent," and called the "axis of the universe." "Firm is the seat of Varuna," declares one of the Vedic hymns. In him "all wisdom centres, as the nave is set within the wheel." One of Varuna's forms is Savitar, the "impeller." While the rest of the universe revolves, the impeller stands firm. "Firm shalt thou stand, like Savitar desirable." Also occupying the stationary center is the popular god Vishnu--who takes a firm stand in that resting place in the sky." The location is the celestial pole, called "the exalted seat of Vishnu, round which the starry spheres forever wander." Vishnu is the polar sun or central fire: "Fiery indeed is the name of this steadfast god," states one Vedic text. To the Buddhists this is the center of the cosmic wheel, the throne of the Buddha himself. It is acalatthana, the "unmoving site," or the "unconquerable seat of "firm" séance." Thus, as noted by Coomaraswamy, the Buddha throne crowned the world axis. Given the great variety of mythical figures pointing to the same underlying concepts, it is crucial that we recognize where Hindu and Buddhist myth located this cosmic center, the celestial resting place. It was, according to the most widely respected Sanskrit authorities such as Ananda Coomaraswamy, the celestial pole, the axis of the turning heavens, a verdict repeated again and again by Rene Guenon, Mircea Eliade, and others. According to ancient Chinese astronomy the revered Emperor on High, prototype of kings, stood at the celestial pole. Chinese astrologers, according to Gustav Schlegel, regarded the polar god as "the Arch-Premier ... the most venerated of all the celestial divinities. In fact the Pole star, around which the entire firmament appears to turn, should be considered as the Sovereign of the Sky." It was thus proclaimed that the celestial pole was the seat of the supreme ruler Shang-ti, mythically, the first king of a great dynasty in the remote past. His seat was "the Pivot," and all the heavens turned upon his exclusive power. Raised to a first principle, the polar power became the mystic Tao, the motor of the Cosmos. The essential idea is contained in the Chinese word for Tao, which combines the sign for "to stand still" with the sign for "to go" and "head" The Tao is the Unmoved Mover, the supreme ruler, who "goes," or "moves" while yet remaining in one place--revealing a striking correspondence with the images of the polar power in other lands. Chinese sources proclaim the Tao to be the "light of heaven" and "the heart of heaven." "Action is reversed into non-action," states Jung. "Everything peripheral is subordinated to the command of the centre." Thus the Tao, in the words of Erwin Pousselle, rules the "golden center, which is the Axis of the World." Significantly, these same overlapping images of a polar sun or sovereign luminary at the pole occur in the Americas. In southern Peru the Inca Yupanqui raised a temple at Cuzco to the creator god who was superior to the sun we know. Unlike the solar orb, he was able to "rest" and "to light the world from one spot." As the pioneering Mesoamerican scholar, Zelia Nuttal, noted many years ago, the only reasonable position in the sky for fulfilling this requirement is the celestial Pole. "It is an extremely important and significant fact," writes Nuttall, "that the principal doorway of this temple opened to the north." (Since the north celestial pole is not visible from Cuzco, 14° below the equator, Nuttall assumed that this tradition of a polar sun was carried southward.) It seems that the memory of the central sun established itself around the world. Other reflections of the polar power in the Americas are noteworthy. Cottie Burland tells us that, among the Mexicans, "the nearest approach to the idea of a true universal god was Xiuhtecuhtli, recalled as the Old, Old One who enabled the first ancestors to rise from barbarism. Xiuhtecuhtli appears as the Central Fire and "the heart of the Universe." "Xiuhtecuhtli was a very special deity. He was not only the Lord of Fire which burnt in front of every temple and in the middle of every hut in Mexico, but also Lord of the Pole Star. He was the pivot of the universe and one of the forms of the Supreme Deity." An apparent counterpart of this central fire is the Maya creator god Huracan, the "Heart of Heaven" at the celestial pole. The Pawnee locate the "star chief of the skies" at the pole. He is the "star that stands still." Of this supreme power they say, "Its light is the radiance of the "Sun god" shining through." ---
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_THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (3) _David Talbott. _To the traditions of a polar power, previously cited, should be added the following: In the Persian Zend Avesta the creator-king Ahura Mazda rules from atop the world axis, the fixed station "around which the many stars revolve." Iranian cosmology, as reported by Leopold de Saussure, esteemed the celestial pole as the center and summit of heaven, where resided Kevan, the sovereign power of heaven, called "the Great One in the middle of the sky." Throughout the ancient Near East, according to the comprehensive research of H. P. L'Orange, the "King of the Universe" appears as a central sun, "the Axis and the Pole of the World." These archaic traditions can help us re- interpret the images of the sun god kept alive by Greek and Roman symbolists. In astrological representations, the primeval "sun" occupies the central, axial position while the other planets or stars revolve around him. The definitive celestial profile of Helios is as Basileus, the Royal Sun, recognized by Franz Cumont as the prototype of terrestrial kings or princes surrounded by their guards. In the time of the Roman emperor Nero, the sun-god was still remembered as the axis, the genius loci, the center of the cosmos, and presented as such in astrological depictions, with the emperor himself serving as the terrestrial image of the original sun god. It is significant too that, as noted by John Perry (Lord of the Four Quarters), the Etruscans--predecessors of the Romans--claimed there was one supreme deity, held to be the axial "Pole" Star. "According to Jewish and Muslim Cosmology," wrote the eminent authority on Semitic religions, A.J. Wensinck, "the divine throne is exactly above the seventh heaven, consequently it is the pole of the Universe." (An echo of the ancient tradition will be found in the words of the prophet Isaiah, who locates the throne of El in the farthest reaches of the north.) Amongst Finno Ugric peoples, the supreme ruler of the sky is Ukko. As stated in the Finnish Kalevala the seat of Ukko was at the Pole. And this assertion, according to the prominent chronicler Uno Holmberrg, was part of a pervasive tradition of the creator-king seated atop the world pole. A remarkable counterpart is provided by the Ashanti of Ghana, who remembered the old sun god as "the dynamic center of the Universe, from which lines of force radiate to all quarters of the heaven." Thus, according to the Ashanti, this former sun god is "the center around which everything revolves." This idea of an ancient sun god ruling from the axial center stands in dramatic contest to the common suppositions of mythologists and historians. To the modern mind nothing could be more absurd than a polar sun. Yet the unmoving sun is the ancient tradition, as noted by E.A.S. Butterworth in his insightful work, The Tree at the Navel o the Earth. Upon evaluating the archaic images of Helios and other ancient sun gods, Butterworth concluded that this luminary "is not the natural sun of heaven, for it neither rises nor sets, but is, as it seems, ever at the zenith... There are signs of an ambiguity between the pole star and the sun." How could such an improbable "ambiguity" have dominated the cosmological thought of ancient star worshippers--in every corner of the world? Butterworth's insights have a considerable history behind them. The precedence of the cosmic center among the great ancient cultures has been noted and documented by others. Almost a hundred years ago, William F. Warren, in his groundbreaking work, Paradise Found, identified the celestial pole as the home of the supreme god of ancient races. "The religions of all ancient nations ... associate the abode of the supreme God with the North Pole, the centre of heaven; or with the celestial space immediately surrounding it. [Yet] no writer on comparative theology has ever brought out the facts which establish this assertion." In the following years a number of scholars, each focusing on different bodies of evidence, reached the same Conclusion. The controversial and erratic Gerald Massey, in two large works (The Natural Genesis and Ancient Egypt), claimed that the religion and mythology of a polar god was first formulated by the priest-astronomers of ancient Egypt and spread from Egypt to the rest of the world. In a general survey of ancient language, symbolism, and mythology, John O'Neill (Night of the Gods, two volumes) insisted that mankind's oldest religions centered on a god of the celestial pole. The renowned Mesoamerican authority, Zelia Nuttall, in Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilization, undertook an extensive review of New World astronomical themes, concluding that the highest god was polar. From Mexico she shifted to other civilizations, finding the same unexpected role of a polar god. Reinforcing the surprising conclusions of these researchers was the subsequent work of others, among them the noted Finno-Ugric authority, Uno Holmberg (Der Baum Des Lebens), who documented the preeminence of the polar god in the ritual of Altaic and neighboring peoples, suggesting ancient origins in Hindu and Mesopotamian cosmologies; Léopold de Saussure (Les Origines de l;'Astronomie Chinoise), who showed that primitive Chinese religion and astronomy honor the celestial pole as the home of the supreme "monarch" of the sky; René Guenon (Le Roi du Monde and Le Symbolisme de la Croix), who sought to outline a universal doctrine centering on the polar gods and principles of ancient man. In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century these revelations were viewed as highly unorthodox and generally given little attention. But more recently the pioneering historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, together with many of his colleagues, has documented numerous traditions of the cosmic center--the place where it all began--and noted again and again the relations of the cosmic center to the celestial pole. Most of the writers cited above possessed a common--if unspoken-faith in the ceaseless regularity of the solar system, seeking to explain the polar god in strictly familiar terms: the center of our revolving heavens is the celestial pole; the great god of the center and summit, in view of his role as axis, must have been the star closes to this cosmic pivot. But then, as we have seen, it's simply impossible to separate the tradition of the polar power from that of the former sun god, the central sun, lighting the world from one spot. So it is not just a matter of ancient star worshippers looking up at the pole and noticing that the circumpolar stars slowly wheel around that center. The mystery is the location of the supreme luminary, the power many nations called "sun", at this improbable station in the sky. How did an idea contradicting all natural experience today, establish itself around the world? ---
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_THE MYTH OF THE CENTRAL SUN (4) _David Talbott. _In this investigation we will see that many threads of evidence lead to the same unified conclusions. In preceding segments we have reviewed these unexplained associations-- € Helios as Saturn; Helios as central sun, and Helios as axis of the celestial revolutions. € Assyrian Shamash as Saturn, Shamash as central sun, Shamash at the polar "midst" and "zenith." € Egyptian Atum-Ra as central sun, Atum-Ra as Saturn, Atum-Ra atop the world pole. There is a way to test the integrity of the ancient ideas we have reviewed. Are there any independent astronomical traditions enigmatically connecting the outermost visible planet to the celestial pole? This would be particularly significant because nothing in the appearance of Saturn today could conceivably suggest such a connection? And it would show a coherence of the collective memory beyond anything historians would have thought possible. The answer is clear, and it is stunning. Wherever ancient astronomies preserved detailed images of the planet Saturn, it seems that Saturn was declared to have formerly occupied the celestial pole! The priestly astronomy of Zoroastrianism knew the planet Saturn as Kevan, called "the Great One in the middle of the sky," and they located the primeval seat of Kevan at the celestial Pole. In neo-Platonist symbolism of the planets, Kronos-Saturn is claimed to rule the celestial Pole, or is placed "over the Pole." It is also known that Latin poets remembered Saturn as god of "the steadfast star," the very phrase used for the pole star in virtually every ancient astronomy. Thus Manilius recounts that Saturn, in his fall, toppled to the "opposite end of the world axis." Hence his original throne could only have been atop the world axis. A stunning example of the polar Saturn is provided in Chinese astronomy, where the distant planet was called "the genie of the pivot." Saturn was believed to have his station at the pole, according to the eminent authority on Chinese astronomy, Gustav Schlegel. In the words of Leopold deSaussure, Saturn was "the planet of the center, corresponding to the emperor on earth, thus to the polar star of heaven." Interestingly, the theme also appears to have passed into the mystic traditions of numerous secret societies (Rosicrucian, Masonic, Cabalistic, Hermetic, and others rooted in an unknown past). The greatest authority on such societies was Manly P. Hall, who published numerous volumes on the related belief systems. In the general traditions reviewed by Hall, the god Saturn is "the old man who lives at the north pole." Even today, it seems that in our celebration of Christmas we live under the influence of the polar Saturn, for as Hall observes, "Saturn, the old man who lives at the north pole, and brings with him to the children of men a sprig of evergreen (the Christmas tree), is familiar to the little folks under the name of Santa Claus." Santa Claus, descending yearly from his polar home to distribute gifts around the world, is a muffled echo of the Universal Monarch spreading miraculous good fortune. But while the earlier traditions place his prototype, the Universal Monarch, at the celestial pole, popular tradition now locates Santa Claus at the geographical pole--a telling example of originally celestial gods being brought down to earth A planet at the celestial pole? The consistency of the message cannot be denied, and it is anything but the message anticipated by conventional models of the ancient sky. As odd as this tradition of Saturn at the pole may appear, it has been acknowledged by more than one authority, including Leopold de Saussure. The principle also figured prominently in the recent work of the historian of science, Giorgio de Santillana and the ethnologist Hertha von Dechend, authors of "Hamlet's Mill". According to an ancient astronomical tradition, the authors suggest, Saturn originally ruled from the celestial pole! As for the rationale of Saturn's polar station, the authors could only suggest that the concept arose as a "figure of speech" or astral allegory whose meaning remains to be penetrated. "What has Saturn, the far-out planet to do with the Pole?" they asked. "It is not in the line of modern astronomy to establish any link connecting the planets with Polaris, or with any star, indeed, out of reach of the members of the zodiacal system. Yet such figures of speech were an essential part of the technical idiom of archaic astrology." It seems that the primordial age, as chronicled in accounts around the world, stands in radical contrast to our own era. One can no more explain Saturn's ancient connection with the pole by reference to the present arrangements of the planets than one can explain, within conventional frameworks, Saturn's image as the Universal Monarch, as founder of the Golden Age, or as primeval sun god. Yet the fact remains that throughout the ancient world these images of Saturn constituted a pervasive memory which many centuries of cultural evolution could not obliterate. Separate threads of evidence, each posing its own mystery for the specialists, thus suggest a remarkably unified memory: myth of the Golden Age, myth of the creator-king or celestial prototype of kings, reverence for a former sun god, the archaic day beginning at sunset, placement of the sun god at the cosmic center and summit, identification of the cosmic center with the axis of the turning sky, Saturn as founder of the Golden Age, Saturn as creator-king, Saturn as primeval sun or best sun, Saturn as god of the day (the day beginning at sunset), Saturn as resting god or god ruling the "day of rest," Saturn at the cosmic center and summit, Saturn ruling from the celestial pole. In attempting to comprehend such enigmatic threads, we can no longer afford to ignore the most fundamental of questions: Is the sky we observe today the same sky experienced by the first stargazers? ---
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_VELIKOVSKY AND PLANETARY CATASTROPHE _David Talbott. _In confronting the strange consistency of planetary mythology one must ultimately ask the question asked more than 45 years ago by Immanuel Velikovsky, author of "World in Collision". At the heart of Velikovsky's controversial thesis was a seemingly outrageous idea. He claimed that "planets", moving on quite different courses than observed today, formerly disturbed the motions of the Earth and caused great destruction to ancient nations. These extraordinary events, Velikovsky claimed, are recorded in ancient chronicles, myths and rites around the world, sources that are simply incomprehensible in terms of celestial motions today. Velikovsky contended that the planet Venus, just a few thousand years ago, possessed a spectacular, comet-like "tail" , and its orbit intersected that of the Earth. .Though Velikovsky's interest in the subject began with a reading of biblical accounts of the Exodus period, the plagues of Egypt, and the spectacles of the wandering in the desert, what led to his startling conclusions was a thorough cross- referencing with global myths of disaster--stories in which the agent of catastrophe takes the form of a great comet or flaming dragon, a body consistently identified with the "planet" Venus. Velikovsky also argued that the planet Mars, in the eighth and seventh centuries before the present era, moved on an erratic course, disrupting the Earth. Celestial upheavals caused by the unstable movements of Mars, according to Velikovsky, are the true reason why Mars appears in ancient records as a great war god, shaking the heavens and producing general pestilence and devastation. Additionally, in a brief unpublished manuscript, Velikovsky made an extraordinary claim about the planet Saturn. He claimed that during a remote epoch remembered around the world as the Golden Age, the planet Saturn was the dominant body in the sky of the terrestrial observer. For the simple answer to the question of Velikovsky's place in the history of science, you can ignore almost everything else you may have heard about the heretic. Why? Because, if Velikovsky was as wrong on the fundamentals as critics would have us believe, then nothing could be more wasteful than spending any time at all on the subject. But if Velikovsky was even "close" in his discernment of planetary instability and catastrophe, he is one of the true intellectual pioneers of the twentieth century. It really is that simple. Of course the stakes are high here, because if Velikovsky was right in any fundamental sense, then the treatment of Velikovsky by an arrogant and thoughtless scientific elite will be exposed as exactly what Velikovsky's supporters have claimed--a horrifying picture of business as usual within the scientific establishment. The fact that major theoretical edifices would collapse under the impact of anything resembling Velikovsky's revelations is not a small matter either--a consideration one could hardly ignore in examining the rampant psychology of denial in conventional treatments of Velikovsky. So who was Velikovsky? Here's a common-sense suggestion. When someone claiming knowledge on the subject issues a sweeping dismissal of Velikovsky, the first thing you might ask yourself is whether the speaker could be an ignoramus or fool masquerading as a historian. It's a fact: Velikovsky commanded the respect of intellectual giants of the twentieth century, a respect clearly demonstrated by his friendship and scholarly discourses with the likes of Claude Schaeffer, one of the deans of modern archaeology; the eminent geologist, Harry Hess of Princeton University; Horace Kallen, founder of the respected New School for Social Research in New York; the esteemed Robert Pfeiffer of Harvard University; the pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud; and of course Albert Einstein, who edited the physics and mathematics sections of Velikovsky's publication "Scriptas Universitatis". But was Velikovsky himself a physicist or astronomer? No. His training was in law, economics, history and medicine. Did he pretend to be a physicist or astronomer? No. But intensive historical research did lead him to believe that physicists and astronomers have failed to understand the history of the solar system. Moreover, as stated by the leading astronomers Archie Roy, Lloyd Motz and Valentin Bargmann--and more recently by Victor Clube (Oxford department of astrophysics) and the astronomer Tom Van Flandern--Velikovsky did show a remarkable ability to converse with specialists outside his own field, even the ability to expose certain weaknesses or anticipate unexpected discoveries in other fields. Not one of these astronomers, it must be added, embraced Velikovsky's comet Venus or anything like the planetary instability claimed by Velikovsky, but in no case did any of them engage in the kind of belittling commentary that seems always to lead the way when the dimmer lights of science begin to expound on Velikovsky. In the years since publication of Worlds in Collision a relatively small group of researchers--some well-accredited academically and some working entirely as outsiders, but all inspired to investigate questions first raised by Velikovsky--has produced interesting and highly significant results. The work ranges from the study of physical markers consistent with interplanetary upheavals, to the systematic exploration of the great ritual and symbolic traditions of the ancient world. All told, the work raises issues that urgently need to be addressed in a forum free of prejudicial rhetoric and posturing. Keep in mind that not just Velikovsky's conclusions, but his entire theoretical approach, challenged conventional ideas. He insisted that events remembered by ancient peoples "count as evidence". When far flung cultures preserve the same distinct, but highly unusual memory, or employ quite different symbols to tell the "same" extraordinary story, there must be an explanation we have overlooked . Velikovsky saw in ancient literature, with its pervasive imagery of cosmic disaster and improbable monsters in the sky, a story of planets out of control, and he claimed that the collective records of early man will permit a reconstruction of the crucial events, if only we will suspend our judgment long enough to rigorously assess the material from a new vantage point. And keep in mind as well that Velikovsky's argument for large-scale catastrophe was offered in 1950, at a time when astronomers and geologists were entirely captivated by uniformitarian models, in which catastrophes played virtually no significant role in the history of the solar system, in the history of the Earth, or man's own past. So we have to ask ourselves: under the weight of space age discovery, has it been Velikovsky, or his critics, that have had to give the most ground? Who could deny that, by comparison with the intellectual environment of 1950, the affected sciences have moved dramatically toward more catastrophist models, sounding more Velikovskian every year? But what about Velikovsky's use of ancient mythical, religious and historical material--a body of evidence the scientific elite, in the 1950's, considered to be ludicrous? Well it seems that even this remaining chasm between Velikovsky and established science is closing. Consider, for example, the work of the British astronomers, Victor Clube and Bill Napier, authors of The Cosmic Serpent, and Cosmic Winter, offering a theory of cometary catastrophe that not only sounds a lot like Velikovsky, but is Velikovskian in more ways than one--even in its broad use of ancient myth and symbolism as "evidence". These respected astronomers bring to their argument a great deal of scientific credibility. Recently, for example, the eminent astronomer, Fred Hoyle, expressed personal support for the Clube and Napier general thesis. What Clube and Napier have done is write a Velikovskian thesis of cometary catastrophe in historical times while replacing the comet Venus with the known comet Encke, thereby removing the potential embarrassment posed by Velikovsky's "planetary" "comet." In the process they have created for themselves a different set of unanswered questions: 1) why do ancient sources repeatedly identify the intruder with the planet Venus? and 2) why do so many "global" aspects of the story refuse to fit a theory based on the comet Encke? (Much has already been published outlining universal imagery of the "Great Comet" that simply cannot be explained by the comet Encke, under any conceivable scenario. I can only urge the intellectually curious to begin with the publication AEON: A Journal on Myth and Science.) Issues of this sort are moving science inexorably toward a final reckoning on the Velikovsky question. If Clube and Napier's use of previously forbidden evidence (ancient chronicles) is accepted, there will be just one core issue remaining. And if that issue is answered in Velikovsky's favor--as I am certain it will be--the final victory will be Velikovsky's even if, on the way to victory, he erred a hundred times and more. This issue is: did the planet Venus, only a few thousand years ago, appear as a comet-like form in the sky, moving close to the earth and contributing to "remembered" upheavals? All that is needed here is an appropriate methodology allowing the researcher to apply common-sense rules of logic and demonstration. If Venus' did, in fact, once roam the skies in anything like the fashion Velikovsky suggested, this attribute would-- beyond a shadow of a doubt--show up in the ancient language and mythical images of Venus, even though the images would have no relationship to Venus' appearance in our sky today. What a fascinating juncture this is! After more than forty five years, the challenge sparked by Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision has come down to an issue on which the evidence is overwhelming. If I speak with assurance on this, it is because I have (along with fellow researcher Ev Cochrane) spent many years examining the images of Venus around the world. And I can say without the slightest equivocation that wherever astronomical traditions of Venus are preserved in any detail, Venus is the mythical Great Comet, appearing in the sky at a time of world-destroying catastrophe. You will find this identity confirmed from Mexico and Peru to ancient Greece and Rome, from ancient China to even more ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Long-haired star. Bearded Star. Smoking star. Torch star. Feathered star. Cosmic serpent or dragon. In fact, literally all of the astronomical hieroglyphs for "the comet" are "simultaneously" attached to Venus and to the revered great goddess, who "is" Venus in the first astronomies. To apply common-sense rules of logic, one should start with the obvious: _1) the symbols cited above are the acknowledged, most frequently- employed hieroglyphs for the comet in the ancient world, and _2) the "only" astronomical phenomenon answering to these glyphs is the comet. Additionally, as a matter of simple logic, the attachment of these distinct comet glyphs to Venus must be considered alongside the "convergence" of these glyphs on a biologically impossible monster-- the bearded serpent, long-haired serpent, flaming serpent, fire-breathing serpent, and feathered serpent. In none of these instances could phenomena observed today account for the incongruous motifs, which occur again and again throughout the ancient world. But let the comet glyphs mean what they meant in the ancient languages themselves, and the incongruity vanishes. Should it surprise us that one acknowledged comet glyph would be brought into conjunction with another comet glyph? And will anyone propose with a straight face that these universal comet images could have found their inspiration in the quiet and regular motions of Venus today? (Just in case the point is missed: the comet as celestial serpent or dragon, and the comet as long-haired star leads to the simple and undeniable identity of the comet as the long- haired serpent, etc. If, as a matter of curiosity, you will investigate the incredible extent to which ancient language, in seeming denial of nature, combined words and images for "serpent" and for "hair", you will begin to sense how deeply the roots of civilization itself were shaped by experiences the modern world failed to understand. In the Egyptian language, for example, numerous, words mean, at once, "hair" and "serpent", a fact which the conventional schools could only explain as a ridiculous coincidence. And by such an explanation they must ignore the "worldwide" juxtaposition of hair and serpent in myth, language and religious symbolism. Try as you may, you will never find an explanation for this apart from the global identity of the "long-haired star"/Great Comet with the cosmic serpent/Great Comet) To see the integrity in the ancient profile of the Great Comet is to simply take the first step. Even more stunning is the inseparable link of these Venus images to the larger themes of ancient myth and ritual. Velikovsky's comet Venus is, in fact, a key to the substructure, enabling us to re-envision human history and the history of the solar system in ways never anticipated by established science. In the end, many revisions in Velikovsky's reconstruction will be necessary, but none of these revisions will diminish the stature of the pioneer. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS _David Talbott. _In "Worlds in Collision", Velikovsky noted many tales of disaster and upheaval in which the agent of destruction possesses cometary attributes, even as it is identified with the "planet" Venus. The anomalous "cometary" traits of Venus in world mythology thus became key pieces of the argument, and the strength of the argument derived from the breadth of sources. Velikovsky did not rely on traditions of one region only, but drew on key evidences from every ancient civilization. He noted, for example, that in Mexican record, Venus was "the smoking star" the very phrase natives employed for a "comet." He noted in both the Americas and the Near East, a recurring association of Venus with celestial "hair" and with a celestial "beard," two of the most common hieroglyphs for the comet in the ancient world. But another popular glyph for the "comet" was the serpent or dragon, a form taken by the planet Venus in virtually every land. And the same planet, among the Babylonians and other races, was called the "flame," or "torch of heaven," a widespread symbol of a comet among ancient peoples. According to Velikovsky, the history of the comet Venus, inspiring the most powerful themes of ancient myth and ritual, speaks for a collective memory of global upheaval: earthshaking battles in the sky, decimation of nations on earth, an extended period of darkness, the end of one world age and the birth of another.
_BOB FORREST _When it comes to debunking Velikovsky's historical argument, no critic has applied himself more energetically than Bob Forrest of England. In a six volume work, "Velikovsky's Sources", Forrest undertook to analyze virtually every historical reference employed by Velikovsky, concluding that, when taken in their actual context, the data brought forth by Velikovsky simply do not support the thesis of "Worlds in Collision". Forrest's work was later updated, corrected and summarized in a very readable volume called A Guide to "Velikovksy's Sources". which is the source we will use in this overview. Since publication of the latter work in 1985, Forrest's critique has been frequently cited by scientific skeptics as a definitive blow to Velikovsky, delivered on Velikovsky's own turf (ancient myth and history). And whatever one's opinion on the merits of Forrest's analysis, it is to his credit that, in the forty years since publication of Worlds in Collision, his work is the only substantial critique of Velikovsky's use of myth. "Despite the scholarly appearance of Velikovsky's work," Forrest writes, "I think the theories put forward in Worlds in Collision are wrong at an elementary and common sense level." And what, at an "elementary level," does Forrest object to? "The gist of the objection to it is that one will nowhere find anything like a direct historical reference to catastrophic bombardments by the planets Venus and Mars." Having devoted more than twenty years to the exploration of myth, I find the objection particularly interesting because my own conclusion is quite the opposite. The planetary subjects of Worlds in Collision are Venus and Mars, and the catastrophic roles of these planets in ancient times are not only evident, but provable through normal rules of logic and demonstration. (For the sake of focus, these brief submissions will consider only the cometary Venus.) It is not only possible to answer the question--was Venus formerly a "comet"?--but to answer the question in overwhelming detail, with verifiable data and an inescapable conclusion: Velikovsky's comet Venus lies very close to the center of ancient religious, artistic and literary traditions. How can it be that two researchers, approaching the same field of data, can draw such incompatible conclusions? The heart of the issue, I suggest, has to do with one's approach to the subject matter. In penetrating to the core of ancient celestial imagery, methodology is everything. _VELIKOVSKIAN RESEARCH AND CATASTROPHISM _The gap separating the mainstream sciences and social sciences from Velikovsky's revolutionary approach to myth needs to be appreciated: The Velikovskian investigator has discovered that none of the primary themes of myth answers to our familiar sky. Hence, to focus on recurring themes is to focus on the recurring anomalies of myth. But rather than confront the issue of recurring anomalies, Forrest descends into a swamp of marginal details, picking at virtually every paragraph of "Worlds in Collision", while rigorously avoiding cross-referencing. As a result, the author consistently fails to see past the veil in which modern perception has wrapped ancient myth. It is as if general patterns and connections are of no interest. In every case of an anomaly noted by Velikovsky, Forrest's "answer" is simply to cite someone else's guess at an explanation (and I DO mean guess)--though many of the cited authorities offered their guesses prior to Velikovsky's novel interpretation, and none of these authorities seems aware of the larger pattern. In this way, Forrest reverses Velikovsky's approach, for Velikovsky connects anomalous Venus images of one land with corresponding anomalies from other parts of the world. Recurring anomalies, as correctly perceived by Velikovsky, are the key to discovery. Let me say at the outset that I have no interest in defending Velikovsky's every word. More than once, Velikovsky did misuse his sources. (I had stated this emphatically to others perhaps ten years before Bob Forrest's published criticisms) And my own opinion is that Velikovsky placed the events in the wrong time. Additionally, I think that many mythical-heroic figures Velikovsky assumed to have been historical were in fact part of a mythical tradition having nothing at all to do with men of flesh an blood.) Can globally-experienced events account for the recurring "catastrophe myths," or must they all be explained by wholly separate, localized disasters? If one resorts to the latter explanation, then no underlying integrity of catastrophe myths is even possible in significant detail. But the inescapable counterpart of this observation is that, if the myths of widespread cultures present the same improbable story in significant detail, then it is the localized explanation that becomes impossible. A reasonable methodology cannot ignore the convergence of recurring themes on an underlying idea, even if that idea stands outside modern perception. To make this point it will be helpful to start with a single example in one region, then work toward a comparison with the Venus symbolism of other lands. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (2) _David Talbott. _SMOKING STAR _In arguing for the cometary character of Venus, Velikovsky cited Aztec records suggesting that the planet Venus shared the same title given a comet. The early traditions of the peoples of Mexico, written down in pre-Columbian days, relate that Venus smoked. "The star that smoked, la estrella que humeava, was Sitlal Choloha, which the Spaniards called Venus." "Now, I ask," says Alexander Humboldt, "what optical illusion could give Venus the appearance of a star throwing out smoke?" Sahagun, the sixteenth century Spanish authority on Mexico, wrote that the Mexicans called a comet "a star that smoked." It may thus be concluded that since the Mexicans called Venus "a star that smoked," they considered it a comet. In Bob Forrest's mind, the Aztec references could have nothing to do with "what may or may not have happened back in the mid second millennium BC" --because the references to Venus "smoking" come from the sixteenth century A.D. In a number of instances Aztec records say that the earth shook and the star sitlal choloha (Venus) smoked. To account for the curiosity Forrest simply accepts the guess of Alexander von Humboldt, "who suggested that the 'smoke' related to the volcano Orizaba, situated to the east of the city Cholula, and whose glow, when seen in the distance, resembled or was symbolically related to the rising Morning Star." Forrest was apparently satisfied with the first guess he uncovered. "All we have are some sixteenth century records which say, every so often, that the star smoked, but since the smoking seems frequently to be intertwined with earthquake activityŠHumboldt's assumption seems reasonable." With that stated, Forrest moved on, never returning to the issue of the Aztec "smoking star." A quite different approach would have been to explore the possibility of a broader Venus-comet association to see where the available evidence leads. Guided by this intent, Forrest would have quickly found, for example, that Aztec association of "earthquake activity" with "smoking stars" belonged to the general mythology of the comet among the Aztecs. Thus, with respect to the comets portrayed in the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Telleriano-Remensis, the respected authority on Mexican astronomy, Anthony Aveni, writes: Comets (citlalimpopoca, or the stars that smoke) are represented frequently by the surviving historical documents, usually by a stellar image on a blue background with emanating streams of smokeŠThese usually signify that a person of nobility will die; for example [one picture] tells of the death of the ruler of Tenochtitlan following the apparition of a comet; later another comet occurs, then an earthquake, all of nature's events being connected in the Aztec cosmic view. As I hope to demonstrate fully in this series of articles, the connectedness of these images derives from a universal substratum of myth. Appearance of a comet, death of a great ruler, quaking earth--not in Mexico alone, but in one ancient culture after another, the skywatchers repeatedly placed these unusual themes in juxtaposition, despite this crucial fact: no comet observed by science has ever justified the symbolic connection. But Forrest seems unaware that the language employed in astrological texts and omens is drawn from ancient mythical images. Following his methodological ground rules, therefore, no records of "portents" in the sky recorded in the last three millennia would be of any relevance to Velikovsky's argument, even when repeatedly attaching explicit cometary images to Venus! With respect to the image of the planet Venus as the "smoking star" in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Aveni offers his own attempt at an explanation: "Perhaps a cometary object appeared near the planet." Of course, Forrest could just as easily have cited this guess, then dropped the whole issue. But is there something more worth investigating here? Throughout the Americas, including Mexico, natives called a comet the "star with hair," or a "long-haired star," or a "maned star," an appellation that fits comfortably with the global language of the comet. In fact, the "long-haired star" is the single most common phrase for the comet around the world, and our own word for comet comes from the Greek kometes, the "long-haired star" . Yucatec Maya dictionaries give as a gloss for "smoke star" the "maned comet". But curiously, the Aztecs used this very language for Venus. As noted by Velikovsky, they called the planet Tzonte-Mocque, meaning the "mane"-star, or "long-haired" star. And not the Aztecs alone: for one finds among the Maya the same enigmatic association of the planet Venus with long flowing hair. A commonly observed Maya hieroglyph is the Caban- curl, a flowing tassel or lock of hair repeatedly attached to acknowledged Venus symbols, including the glyph-name of Venus itself. To encounter the long flowing locks of Venus, one need only consult available sources. Turn to the Incan language of Venus, for example. I can remember, in the first few days of investigating images of Venus, looking through a standard summary of Incan mythology and encountering the name of Venus as Chasca, translated as the "long-haired star"--the precise phrase for the comet in the global lexicon. It was instances such as this that continued to fuel my own interests in learning more. According to William Prescott, Venus was "known to the Peruvians by the name of Chasca, or the 'youth with the long and curling locks.'" Burr Cartwright Brundage tells us that among the Inca, Venus was "the Radiant Star with the Flowing Hair." "The morning star, Chasca (The Disheveled One), dispensed stores of freshness and loveliness upon flowers, princesses, and virgins below. She was the deity of the rosy cloud rack of morning, and when she shook out her long hair she scattered the dew upon the earth." The point here is that Forrest's "explanation" of the Aztec Venus/smoking star association fails to acknowledge converging lines of evidence: Aztec comet as smoking star, Aztec Venus as smoking star, Aztec and Mayan long-haired star as comet; Aztec Venus as long-haired star, Mayan Venus with or as flowing lock or tassel, Incan Venus as long- haired star. Hence, the methodological issue is placed in sharp relief. Here is another way of looking at the issue logically: Around the world there are only a small number of pre- astronomical hieroglyphs for the "comet." You could, in fact, count the primary glyphs on the fingers of one hand: heart-soul of a deceased god-king or great leader rising in the sky. long-haired star (star with flowing locks, mane, tresses, disheveled hair, beard, hairy tail); torch-star (ember, flame, smoke, smoking star, train of fire, spark, or train of sparks); celestial feather (winged star, soul-bird, bright feathers, feathered headdress, shining bird's tail); cosmic serpent, dragon, or similar monster. The remaining general hieroglyphs for the comet could be counted on the fingers of your second hand! They include: a sword, a bundle of grass or straw (whisk, broom), or a spiraling rope (cord, tie, or knot). At what point, then, does a "coincidence" or seemingly irrational use of language (comet-words or glyphs attached to Venus) become an anomaly worth pursuing? Forrest not only sidesteps the implications of parallel cometary images of Venus in other lands, he ignores the convergence of such images in Mexico. As a methodology, the approach is disastrous, because there is much, much more.
_QUETZALCOATL _In the popular Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, the Venus-comet anomaly grows by leaps and bounds. And in this case, the completeness of the cometary motifs leaves no room for ad hoc explanations. Whether remembered by the Aztecs as a former great king and founder of the golden age, or a former sun god ruling a primordial epoch, Quetzalcoatl was a cultural hero without equal in the Aztec pantheon, his countenance adorning temple walls and the stucco bases of pyramids, painted on countless frescoes and codices, and engraved on sarcophagi and monoliths strewn across Mexico. The climactic event in the Quetzalcoatl myth is the god's catastrophic death and transformation in an overwhelming disaster--an event endlessly repeated in sacrificial rites and supplying the cornerstone of Aztec calendar rituals and astronomical symbolism. In a pervasive version of the myth, at the death of Quetzalcoatl the god's heart or soul rose in the sky as a great spark or ember, trailing smoke and fire- a "star" whose fiery train the Aztecs portrayed as the streaming tail of a quetzal-bird. Was this flaming star a "comet"? One notes that the Quiché Maya called a comet uje ch'umil, "tail of the star," and Aztec artists often drew comets as stars with quetzal tails, the bright and luminous plumes of the quetzal providing a particularly well-suited hieroglyph for a comet. The symbolism accords well with that of other peoples. The Pawnee gave to the comet the name u: pirikis kuhka, "feathered headdress" (an appellation that proves telling; see later discussion of the plumed headdress in our next installment). In Africa, the streaming comet's tail was identified as the feathers of the nightjar, and the natives say of a comet, "it is wearing streaming feathers." Astronomer Carl Sagan, in his review of worldwide comet motifs, notes that comets are called "tail stars" and "stars with long feathers." Germanic races called a comet the peacock's tail, while in China a comet was seen as both a peacock's tail and a pheasant's tail. That Quetzalcoatl's "flaming" or "plumed" heart-soul meant a comet-like star is substantiated by converging lines of evidence. Its cometary character, for example, would agree with a general tradition among the Aztecs that comets were the ascending souls of great chiefs. That Quetzalcoatl was the model of the good king gives perfect sense to the symbolic motif. But Quetzalcoatl was also the prototype of the Aztec shaman (that is, he was the celestial figure whose biography provided the general myth and symbolism of the shaman). It is thus worth noting that in South American lore, the soul of a shaman was believed to depart in the form of a comet. Noteworthy as well is the fact that a comet appearing some time prior to the conquest of the Aztecs by Cortez was "reckoned as a positive sign that Quetzalcoatl would eventually return to Mexico." To suggest that the heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl rose as a comet is simply to place the Aztec symbolism alongside a universal tradition: cultures around the world proclaim the comet to be the soul of a dying king. Thus, we have listed this significant theme as number one in our short list of comet symbols above. (See discussion to follow.) But there is a problem here. While several variations on the story of Quetzalcoatl's death have been preserved, one of the central elements is the identification of the heart- soul as the planet Venus. Burr Cartwright Brundage gives this summary: "The god's heart, like a great spark, flies up to become a new and splendid divinity, the Morning Star." Thus a native source declares, "Then the heart of Quetzalcoatl rose into heaven and according to the elders, was transformed into the Morning Star, and Quetzalcoatl was called the Lord of Dawn." We shall have more to say about this transformation. The fact at hand is that in their myths and rites the Aztecs say the separated heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl, following a period of darkened sky and cosmic upheaval, rose as the planet Venus. If the story has roots in any celestial occurrence (as explicitly claimed in the myths), the "death" of Quetzalcoatl must have involved a cosmic disaster of unprecedented scale, for no mythical-historical event left a deeper impression on Aztec thought and culture. Upon this traumatic episode, the Aztecs evolved their collective sense of cyclical time, including a calendar of world ages: the death of Quetzalcoatl, the onset of celestial confusion, and the transformation of his heart-soul into the planet Venus meant nothing less than the end of one world age and the beginning of another. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (3) _David Talbott. _SOUL-BIRD, WINGED STAR _In connection with the departure of the god- king's heart- soul as a "plumed" or "burning" star, one notes that Mesoamerican traditions produced many variations on the underlying idea. One influential variant was the idea of the heart-soul sprouting wings and soaring away. "On the death of a great noble, his soul was thought of as taking flight like a bird or a butterfly. At such a time he was addressed by those attending: Awaken, it has reddened, dawn has set in. Already, the flame-colored **** has sung, the flame-colored swallow, already the flame-colored butterfly flies. The most popular form of the "soul-bird" appears to have been the quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala. My friend Phil Peters, who lived for several years among the Quiche Maya of the Guatemala lowlands, recounts the story of the famous hero, Tecúm-Umám, who lived at the time of the Spanish invasion. On the plains of Xelaju, the story goes, Tecúm-Umám was killed by Pedro de Alverado, of Cortez' army. "Then the quetzal bird that was in his headdress took flight, and since that tragic occasion, the quetzal no longer sings." What is crucial in any study hoping to comprehend such ideas is the ability of the celestial reference--the mythical archetype--to give meaning to the symbol. In the Vienna Codex, or Vindobonensis, the planet Venus is depicted with wing-like appendages. Can the "wings" of Venus--said to represent Venus' "radiance" or "greatest brilliancy"-be separated from the global myth of Venus as the soul-bird? Though we cannot here stop and review the countless parallels in other lands, we would be remiss if we failed to observe that the avian flight of the heart-soul is a world-wide theme. The earliest instances will be found in Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the Venus goddesses Inanna, Ishtar, Isis and Hathor (to name only the most prominent instances) all represent the "soul" in the form of a bird taking flight. Thus, the great god-kings, whose heart-souls are the star Venus, customarily depart in the form of a dove, partridge, or swallow, virtually universal symbols of Venus, of transformation, and of the departing "soul". (The reader will find many examples in the remaining installments.) Are these widely dispersed recollections of Venus as soul-bird different from the universal myth declaring that the great king's or chief's soul appeared in the sky as a comet? Though the issue will not be resolved in a few paragraphs, cross referencing will suggest potentially fruitful lines of inquiry. It is certainly of interest, for example, that the Babylonians employed the phrase "winged star" for the comet. Additionally, as we will see, it is when Venus as soul-bird spreads its wings that the cometary images are most emphatic. _FEATHERED SERPENT _In our brief list of comet glyphs cited earlier we have also listed the cosmic serpent or dragon, and in Mexico this fascinating theme proves to be crucial. Once the researcher has learned that Mesoamerican stargazers considered a comet to be the ascending heart-soul of a great chief, he can no longer ignore the full range of related symbols: the planet Venus, the rising heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl, is not just portrayed as an ember-like star (= comet), not just depicted as a star with quetzal-tail ( = comet), but is said to have taken the form of a great cosmic serpent (= comet both in Mexico and in the universal language of comets). The name Quetzalcoatl itself is simply a combination of two Nahuatl terms--that for the quetzal-bird, known for its long brilliant turquoise tail, and the serpent or coatl." Thus two of our listed five most common comet glyphs are brought together in the name of the god. And the combined hieroglyphs clearly have a long history. The earliest known version of the plumed serpent pre-dates the Aztecs by many centuries, appearing on monuments of the Formative Olmecs. Conceptually, the avian serpent reached significantly beyond Aztec culture. The Maya name for the same god, Kulkulkan, carries an equivalent meaning, as does the Quiché figure, Gucumatz. The same figure appears to have entered Zuni ritual as the plumed serpent Kolowisi and Hopi ritual as the plumed serpent Palulukong. Though the figure of Quetzalcoatl is complex and appears to combine originally distinct traditions, the identification of the spiraling serpent itself (the transformed heart-soul) with Venus has survived even into modern times. Some of the Tzotzil groups, for example, still describe Venus as "the Big Serpent" (Mukta Ch'on.) Among the Chichimec tribes, Venus is still remembered as the "Serpent Cloud." Is it significant, then, that Aztec manuscripts depict a comet as a fiery serpent or dragon-like creature descending from the stars? The priest-astronomers knew the comet as "the star serpent." In his exploration of comet symbolism, Peter Lancaster Brown observed that the natives of Mexico represented comets "by the plumed serpent depicted in various forms." But what does this say about the acknowledged identification of the plumed serpent with the planet Venus, the ascending heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl? "It seems very likely that the white and bearded god who appeared in the east associated with the Quetzalcoatl (Serpent God) legends of pre-Columbian Middle America relates to the apparitions of spectacular comets in the morning sky and not to the planet Venus," Brown writes. Here again we see an author attempting to rationalize a clearly stated Venus-comet connection, offering his own explanation. But in this instance the "explanation" involves nothing less than a rewriting of the Aztec religion: for the identity of the transformed heart-soul of Quetzalcoatl as the planet Venus was an unshakable tenet of the myths and rites. With respect to the Mesoamerican celestial serpents and dragons, there is also the issue of attached streamers that often look more like long-flowing, spiraling locks of hair than like feathers. This unique feature is particularly significant since the disheveled "mane" of the celestial serpent-dragon is a worldwide motif. And yet, remembering that pre-Columbian astronomy depicted the comet as both a celestial serpent and a "mane-star," should it surprise us that the serpentine form of Venus possesses streamers suggestive of the flowing "hair" of countless celestial serpents and dragons in other lands? Since Venus was itself the "mane" or long-haired star in widely dispersed cultures, the underlying integrity is undeniable. In fact, no stretch at all is needed to establish the equation of flowing mane and serpent-dragon or chaos monster. The Aztec Tzonte-Mocque, identified with the planet Venus, and whose name Brasseur translated as "mane," was depicted as a dragon-like monster approaching the Earth in periods of eclipse or universal darkness. (As we will discover, every eclipse of the Sun and Moon became a symbol or reminder of the primeval cometary disaster and the arrival of the world-ending night). A counterpart of this chaos- or eclipse-demon is the Aztec Tzitzimitl, with "madly disheveled hair," descending upon a darkened world. This is, of course, precisely the image of the raging comet in numerous other lands. "A comet was supposed to be a tendril of the Great Mother's hair appearing in the sky as the world was slowly overshadowed by her twilight shadow of doomsday," writes the noted student of world mythology, Barbara Walker. But the interconnected comet glyphs attached to the chaos monsters range far beyond these instances. A symbolic counterpart of this streaming "hair" is the enigmatic, but frequently depicted beard of the Mesoamerican serpent- dragon. The Aztec Plumed Serpent, the Mayan Great Bearded Dragon and numerous counterparts of these celestial monsters are distinguished by flowing beards that are every bit as preposterous, on the face of it, as their streaming "manes". The reader will recall the celestial beard or bearded star in our short list of comet symbols, as a logical extension of the "long-haired star". (Thus the Greek "pogonias", the beard-star, means "comet".) While a bearded serpent is a biological absurdity, the anomalous beard is immediately explained if the Venusian serpent is a long- haired star or comet. If the celestial beard did not mirror a comet-like form in the sky, then the bearded serpent is one more anomaly left unanswered, despite a consistent pattern that seems to cry out for recognition. To keep all of this in perspective it needs to be remembered that Quetzalcoatl--whose heart-soul became the plumed serpent--was himself the white and bearded god, with many counterparts spread across pre-Columbian America--one more anomaly to add to the equation. Thus Frank Waters, surprised at the prevalence of this unusual figure among the dark-skinned natives of the New World (typified by Quetzalcoatl and the Incan Viracocha), assures us the myth was "so common throughout all of pre-Columbian America that we can regard it as arising from a concept in the unconscious." A relationship with the planet Venus is clear, though not without wide-ranging interpretations by the specialists. According to Thompson, the Maya described Venus as being "very ugly with a heavy beard," and the Aztecs preserved a similar tradition: of Ehecatl, whom most authorities identify with Venus, it was said that "his beard was exceedingly long." Lastly, on the matter of the flowing hair, mane, or beard of the celestial serpent or dragon, I should like to register an opinion on one additional oddity--that of the Mesoamerican feline dragon. Here, too, we are dealing with an image begging for a comparative study, since the "outlandish" merging of cat, lion, jaguar, tiger, or lynx with a celestial serpent seems to have occurred in all major cultures. Since noticing the oddity in Mesoamerica, I have noted as well the general disinterest of the specialists in accounting for such an incongruous monster. A cat and a serpent? Here, nature itself provides not a clue as to how anyone (much less skywatchers around the world) could think of the one when confronted with the other. But an analysis of this mythic creature can be advanced dramatically by the Velikovskian methodology. What one looks for is an underlying shared attribute (not of the terrestrial symbols, which offer no shared attribute, but of the celestial reference inspiring the symbols), and in this instance there can be no doubt that it is the mane of the celestial feline figure and the twisting body or tail of the celestial serpent. While this is not the place to attempt a summary of evidence I shall present in future installments, I will simply mention the Egyptian instance of the goddess Tefnut, the Eye (= heart-soul) of the former sun god Ra. The Eye of Ra, on its departure, becomes the raging Uraeus serpent. But in the account of the goddess Tefnut as departing Eye, the raging goddess (serpent) is also depicted as a lion head with flaming, smoking mane. Of course it is not one instance, but the repeated instances of such motifs that will make the case secure. I register the supposition now to prepare the way for a comparative test. _XIUHCOATL _Throughout Mesoamerica one will find numerous variations on the theme of the celestial serpent and just as many connections with the planet Venus. A particularly fascinating instance is the so-called "Fire Dragon" , whose name, translated literally, means Turquoise Dragon. Significantly, Xiuhcoatl was described as a "heavenly torch". "In mythology he becomes the fiery weapon hurled by the victorious sun at his enemies, the stars," writes Brundage. Perhaps there is more here than the reader will immediately recognize. A torch or flame in the sky, only a minor variation on the "smoking star," belongs to the universal comet myth--item three in our list of the five most common comet glyphs. Moreover, as I intend to demonstrate, one of the repeated themes in the myth of the prototypical comet is that it appears as a divine weapon hurled against rebelling powers. Consider the lines of Shakespeare, in Henry VI--I.I.1: Comets, importing change of times and states Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky And with them scourge the bad revolting stars. That have consented unto Henry's death. The motifs are: death of the king, celestial rebellion, and appearance of the comet as both a sign of world change (passing of world ages) and a weapon launched against the rebels. Similarly, the Aztec dragon Xiuhcoatl, the flaming serpent, appears as the "fire stick" wielded by the celestial hero Huitzilopochtli when the heavens were overrun by the demons of darkness. Was the comet-like Turquoise Dragon, then, linked to the planet Venus? "In Teotihuacan the dragon is plainly portrayed as an overarching sky motif, a path for stellar objects," writes Brundage. "He is a plumed rattlesnake [i.e., a counterpart of the plumed serpent of the Quetzalcoatl myth]... He can be identified, from the quincunx (the five points that together form the emblem of the morning star) that adorns him, as the planet Venus." ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (4) _By David Talbott. _THE GREAT COMET _In seeking out the general patterns of the Mesoamerican Venus as serpent-dragon, we cannot fail to observe that our listed "cometary" symbols are not just present, but prominent, that they are enigmatically but self-evidently connected, that they do not direct us to any present forms either in the sky or in the natural world today (rather, they contradict all natural forms at every level), and that they remain unexplained, despite decades of microscopic examination by the best experts. One conclusion is inescapable, even if interpretations will differ: the Mesoamerican symbolism of the planet Venus--in that planet's guise as serpent-dragon or chaos- monster--is a compendium of globally-recognized comet symbols, representing in one mythical form all five of the most frequently employed cometary glyphs! Yet in more than forty years since Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision", no mainstream scholar has even acknowledged this stunning fact. Of course, no comet admitted by modern science has ever justified the lines of Shakespeare previously cited, or the Aztec image of a comet-like "weapon" in the form of a fiery dragon. But our appreciation for the symbolism changes dramatically once we entertain a new possibility--that in earlier times mankind experienced a far more spectacular and devastating comet than ever experienced in more recent times, a cometary archetype that could fully account for the later symbols. It was said of the great fire serpent Xiuhcoatl that it spewed forth comets. That is exactly the language we should expect if Xiuhcoatl was not just a comet, but the parent of comets, the concrete source of a mythical archetype, from which arose the entire reservoir of comet images. Every cometary apparition, taking its symbolism from the cosmic original, would then be considered a child of the primeval, flaming serpent or dragon remembered in the myths.
_ON EVIDENCE AND LOGIC _In all of this there is a fundamental issue of logic. How does one properly weigh the lines of evidence, the repeated convergence of comet words and symbols upon Venus? Having had many opportunities to muse over the way the experts skirt the issue, I am convinced the real question never enters their minds. Until one asks the question-did Venus formerly present itself as a spectacular "comet"?--even the most obvious evidence will be seen as something else, as confirmation of the recklessness and confusion of myth, another reason not to take myth seriously. The question is not asked because the "Velikovskian" field of study lacks all credibility in the eyes of mainstream authorities. Thus the Mayan scholar Peter Joralemon explained the highly unnatural convergence of symbols on the celestial dragon-- The primary concern of Olmec art is the representation of creatures that are biologically impossible. Such mythological beings exist in the mind of man, not in the world of nature. It's easy to see how one might draw this conclusion. But if the symbolism lacks any roots in "the world of nature" and is simply the result of chaotic imagination, then an even greater issue arises: Why do the same symbols continually occur in juxtaposition? Once the critic resorts to unbridled imagination as an explanation of highly specific forms, he is left with nothing but coincidence to account for the convergence. But when it comes to the convergence of all five of the world's most common cometary symbols on one celestial creature, is it reasonable to expect sheer imagination and "coincidence" to account for the situation? In truth, virtually all respected authorities continually look for natural references, because no one could seriously believe that such dramatic images as the plumed serpent could dominate an entire civilization without a link to natural experience. Only the rarest of specialists would suggest that the primitive mind conjured its primary mythical forms out of a wholesale denial of the world. In truth, if they can find even the most remote natural explanation, the experts will use it. Miguel León-Portilla, for example, offers a picturesque explanation of the Venus- Quetzalcoatl relationship-- The association of Venus and Quetzalcoatl can probably be attributed to the fact that when this planet sets upon the moving waters of the Pacific, its reflection seems not unlike a serpent with brilliant scales and plumes. Here is a "natural explanation" that would fit easily into Bob Forrest's analysis, as if there is nothing in the plumed serpent crying out for a comparison with the highly improbable yet similar images of other peoples--and as if the combined cometary associations need not concern us. How, then, does one break through the vicious circle? Go back to the list of the five most frequently- employed comet images, each of them occurring not only in Mexico but in the global symbolism of the comet. How does one weigh the fact that all five comet glyphs are attached to the Mexican Venus? Indeed not only the general motifs, but virtually all of the listed variations are attached to Venus. Is sheer coincidence even possible in such an extreme case as this? For starters, it needs to be understood that we are not dealing with a "multiple choice" when it comes to possible interpretations. If one is permitted to include in the lexicon of comets the "shooting star," whose mythical image is drawn from the same reservoir, then the only known and provable celestial phenomenon called a "long- haired star" is a comet; the only celestial phenomenon known to have been called a torch star or a flaming star is a comet; the only celestial phenomenon known to have been represented as a star with streaming "tail feathers" is a comet. The only celestial phenomenon known to have been represented as a star with a serpentine tail is a comet. That these very glyphs are consistently attached to Venus cannot be explained away by ad hoc reasoning. Now add the mythical role of the comet as the ascending soul of a former great king, together with the explicit role of Venus as the ascending soul of the prototypical king Quetzalcoatl, and you will begin to see what is at issue here. If nothing else the stunning convergence of cometary images should make clear that Humboldt's guess about the "smoking star" Venus and a local volcano is not a sufficient answer! The juxtaposition of cometary motifs with the now- peaceful planet--a planet whose appearance today could not begin to explain these associations--forces us to confront the logical alternative: if Venus did appear as a comet, the entire assembly of improbable "coincidences" disappears.
_THE MYTH OF THE COMET VENUS _To establish the coincidence of cometary themes relating to Venus is not to end the subject, but simply to open the door to a new vantage point, one in which the researcher enjoys the freedom to consider unusual possibilities. Do the Aztec and Mayan codices, the inscriptions on stone, the oral histories, and the towering monuments speak for events no longer occurring in the skies? The unexpected symbolic parallels give the researcher a new way of perceiving his subject. Grant the possibility of a world-threatening comet Venus--frightening enough and destructive enough to substantiate man1s deepest fears--and the culture will no longer look the same. Re- envisioning the ancient world in this way will not remove the role of magic and superstition in the myths; nor will it soften the profoundly barbaric components of native rituals; nor will it give to the myths and rites that loftier wisdom we so often seek in ancient words. What it will do is lend the missing perspective, providing new frameworks for understanding the experiential roots of the culture. The candid researcher must first admit that even the most capable authorities, when considering the core of pre- Columbian thought and culture, find that convincing explanations elude them. Can modern scholars, for example, really claim to understand the cloud of anxiety that hung over Mexican cultures, an anxiety only heightened by the arrival of the Spaniards? Nothing in that civilization's monumental splendor could hide this apprehension. But to expose its roots the researcher must be willing to follow the clues, rather than dismiss them just because they seem so out of touch with the world we know. These clues will lead--inescapably--past the cover of cultural anxiety to its roots in celestial terror. The sensitive chronicler, Fray Diego Duran, writing just a generation after Columbus, recounted a story about the great emperor Moctezuma, concerning an experience prior to arrival of the conquistadors. It happened that Moctezuma had received word of a comet hanging over Mexico at sunrise. Though the report did not come from his personal astrologers, "he was so filled with fear that he thought his death would arrive within the hour." Moctezuma then asked the king of neighboring Texcoco to tell him what the comet meant. The answer was as Moctezuma must have feared-- It is an ill-omen for our kingdoms; terrible, frightful things will come upon them. In all our lands and provinces there will be great calamities and misfortunes, not a thing will be left standing. Death will dominate the land! All our dominion will be lostŠ On hearing this news, Moctezuma-- wept bitterly, saying "O Lord of All Created Things! O mighty gods who gives life or death! Why have you decreed that many kings shall have reigned proudly but that my fate is to witness the unhappy destruction of Mexico?" It would be senseless to attempt to isolate or explain Moctezuma's fears outside a cultural tradition far more telling than the individual biographies of kings. No king in earlier times could free himself from the mythical and ritual contexts of kingship. And in the overarching symbols of the power and fate of kings one encounters invariably the archaic language of the comet. Of the comet in Moctezuma's day, Duran's modern translators write: "Šit is curious to note that the Aztecs looked upon comets as ill omens, just as the contemporary Europeans regarded them as signs of war, famine and pestilence." Among the Aztecs, "Comets and earthquakes, which were always carefully marked down each year in the hieroglyphic manuscripts, were always considered omens of misfortune," notes Jacques Soustell. In our investigation we have grouped comet and meteor symbolism together because mythically the two are synonymous. "Comets are referred to in Quiché [highlands Maya] as uje ch1umil, 'tail of the star,' and are considered omens of massive pestilence," observes Barbara Tedlock. "Throughout the Mayan area, meteors are thought to be evil omens forecasting sickness, war, and death." The Mesoamerican theme resonates with a global fear that no comparative study can ignore: around the world, the comet signaled the approach of doomsday. And it mattered not how quietly and unobtrusively the visitor made its appearance, because the archetypal image did not originate in the little wisps of gas that periodically adorn our sky. With the rarest of exceptions, the cometary "omen" was "ominous" (the two English words being derived from the same Latin root). For the ancient stargazers, the comet was the fear-inspiring portent of disaster, the "ill-omened star". And thus does our word "dis-aster" (evil star) echo the ancient fear of a star (comet) presiding over universal "catastrophe" (another word reflecting the evil aster or star, the comet of world mythology). But this brief note on language of the evil star does not even scratch the surface when it comes to the depth of man1s memory of a world-ending cometary disaster. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (5) _By David Talbott. _METHODOLOGY AND OUTCOME _We have previously observed that, in seeking out Velikovsky's comet, "methodology is everything." A useful methodology will not dismiss a widespread theme just because it appears highly irrational or incapable of explanation. In Bob Forrest's critique he acknowledges such "comet" themes as the death of a king or great leader at the appearance of a comet, good wine in the year of a comet, and the comet signaling outbreaks of war. As to the roots of such odd ideas, "heaven only knows," he exclaims. So why should we accept only those comet ideas that support Velikovsky's thesis? Here Forrest missed each and every opportunity to account for what he assumed could never be explained. If worldwide comet symbolism originated in the experience of a truly terrifying intruder, it is simply impossible to know which portions of comet lore are relevant prior to reconstructing the story from the global evidence. And in truth, ALL of the comet themes cited by Forrest are illuminated by the biography of the Great Comet, as I intend to demonstrate with more than sufficient evidence in this series. First there is the matter of pervasive fear; for when it comes to "irrational" terror carried as luggage from the past, little else compares to the universal fear of THE COMET. Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, in their book "Comet", find the fear to be virtually universal: Rarely have so many diverse cultures, all over the planet, agreed so well. In the history of the world, more societies have advocated incest or infanticide than have taught that comets were benign, or even neutral. Everywhere on Earth, with only a few exceptions, comets were harbingers of change, ill fortune, evil. It was common knowledge. Most of us are, in fact, so accustomed to the common expressions of this fear that we fall into a trap of illogic: "Comets, of course, were always regarded in antiquity as omens of disaster," wrote the esteemed authority on comparative religion, Theodore Gaster. It sounds as if ("of course") the overwhelming fear is completely natural and needs no explanation BECAUSE it is so universal. The trap also caught author David Ritchie: "For thousands of years comets have been associated with all manners of disasters and misfortune. This association is easy to understand." But the pervasiveness of an irrational fear is not an explanation. I find it of interest that Fred Whipple, one of the deans of modern astronomy, did not find an easy explanation for the hysteria. "Why should comets--those graceful, sometimes majestic, creatures of the sky--frighten people? They move very slowly, without startling changes in shape or aspect. They make no sounds and emit no dazzling flashes of light. In short, they do nothing that seems to me to be threatening. Yet comets have terrified people as long as there have been people to terrify." The ancient and poorly understood fear aroused by the appearance of a comet continued through the Middle Ages and even (in a more tempered expression) into the twentieth century, with the arrival of Halley's Comet in 1910. "We may all die laughing when the comet [Halley] comes," the French astronomer Camille Flammarion was quoted as saying, with language that fed a widespread pre-existing apprehension of the fin du monde. In earlier times the extent of comet fear was deadly. On the arrival of the comet of 1528, the famous French surgeon Ambroise Paré described the public reaction: "This comet was so horrible and so frightful and it produced such great terror in the vulgar that some died of fear and others fell sick." The range of comet fears is impressive. According to Aristotle, the comet brings wind and drought. Among both the Greeks and Romans, "The comet was inevitably the presage of some cataclysmic event," states A. Barret. Josephus reports in his History of the Jews that prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies, "a comet shaped like a sword" hung over the city for an entire year. (While Carl Sagan hastens to point out the impossibility of the literal occurrence, it effectively mirrors the mythical role of the comet.) According to Servius, the ancient and infamous comet Typhon produced terrible famine. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle recorded "firedrakes"--fiery dragons--"seen flying in the air" at the time of a great famine in 779, observing as well that a great comet appeared at the time of famine in 975. And so too does a comet bring great famine in the traditions of the Masai of East Africa. In Byrhtferth's Manual, published in the year 1011, occurs this description of a comet: "There is a star called a comet. When it appears it betokens famine or pestilence or war or the destruction of the earth or fearful storms." Similarly the Eghap of Nigeria say that pestilence is the regular companion of the feared comet. Even the historian Isidor Bishop of Seville (602-636), a well known skeptic when it came to astrology, could not set aside the belief that the comet presaged "revolutions, wars, and pestilence." Gregory of Tours (c. 541-594), writing in De Cursu Stellarum, tells us that when a comet "spreads its hair abroad darkly, it announces rain to the country." Nor is it surprising to find the rumor that the Great Plague of London was due to the appearance of a comet; or that a comet is also said to have accompanied the great earthquake at Lima, Peru, in 1746. While the association of the comet and wide- ranging disaster is worldwide, the pattern may initially seem diffuse, with insufficient coherence to support any unified theory of comet fears. Funk and Wagnall's encyclopedia, for example, included the following description under the heading "comet": Not only in antiquity, but through the centuries among all peoples, comets have aroused in man a feeling of terror and foreboding. These mysterious visitors in the heavens have been thought to be connected with war, famine, the plague, the downfall of kings and monarchs, the end of the world, universal suffering, ill-luck, and sickness. How, then, did this curious profile of the comet arise? The darkly pessimistic ideas about comets inspired Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan to muse-- There is an overwhelming sadness to the literature of comets. With melancholy consistency we discover that disaster has always been a commonplace; that any comet at any time viewed from anywhere on Earth is assured of some tragedy for which it can be held accountable. Such is the logic of efforts to explain mythical ideas through experiences familiar to our own day: the commentator simply assumes that when a comet appeared the undisciplined primitive mind freely associated it with one or another disaster occurring around the same time. But this suggested habit will not explain why the first instinct of stargazers was to look for a COMET to account for the occurrence of great disasters. Nor will the stargazer's haste to connect the comet and disaster explain the deeper theme of the WORLD-ENDING apocalypse. If one looks at comet lore more closely, it will be realized that what the stargazers feared most was no local calamity. Ancient Chinese comet lore held that "Comets are vile stars. Every time they appear in the south, something happens to wipe out the old and establish the new." In the language of myth that means the end of the world. Both the Sibylline Oracles and a Dead Sea Scroll (War of the Sons of Light and Darkness) present the comet as a sign of the Last Days--all of which sounds very much like the Aztec's comet-like plumed serpent presiding over the end of one world age and beginning of another. Consider, for example, why it is that the comet soars into prominence as our own calendar approaches a "critical moment," at the end of a millennium. (Yes, it seems that round numbers and "critical moments" go hand in hand, fed by the sense of cyclical time and the global myth of a world age ending in sweeping catastrophe.) Mary Proctor tells us that as the year 1000 approached "even the most simple phenomena assumed terrible proportions." And this included, not surprisingly, "reports of earth-quakes, and a comet visible for nine days." Here again is the earthquake-comet association despite the failure of any known comet to redeem the association. The role of an archetypal myth in influencing reports of ostensibly historical comets will be clearly seen in the following chronicle of the year 1000, cited by Proctor-- The heavens having opened, a kind of burning torch fell upon the earth, leaving behind a long train of light similar to a flash of lightning ... as this opening in the heavens closed, imperceptibly there became visible the figure of a dragon, whose feet were blue, and whose head seemed continually to increase. Even the world-famous dragon finds its way into the story, when the calendar calls for it! But let us not forget the distinction between the symbol and the thing symbolized. Every break in the natural order was a reminder (symbol) of what world mythology presents as a universal disaster; in this sense, the local pestilence needed a comet to find its place in the mythically-defined scheme, particularly at the end of the millennium. Even today, as we approach a new millennium, the apocalyptic fear expresses itself with every local catastrophe, offering a "sign" of the anticipated end of the world-- just as, century after century, virtually every wisp of a comet played its required part in the psychological drama. How the underlying story and its symbols originated is an entirely different matter, involving patterns that could never be explained by any local disaster or any local experience whatsoever. That many of the most significant patterns are poorly recognized is due almost entirely to the methodology and suppositions of the investigators. The result is a heap of evidential fragments-- more than sufficient to illustrate the global fear of comets, but with little or no comprehension of the remembered events from which the patterns emerged. The "portentous" news brought by the comet can be summarized as follows: € the comet foretells the fall of the kingdom; € the comet predicts the arrival of plague, famine, earthquake, pestilence; € the comet means the end of a world age, the arrival of universal darkness or night, the occlusion of the sun by chaos monsters, a victory (though temporary) of rebelling powers. € the comet forecasts the death of kings or great rulers; € the comet heralds cataclysmic wars. For the present discussion, I shall simply cite enough instances to illustrate the key ideas. These recurring motifs do not explain themselves! Why the repeated idea that a comet means the death of kings? It is the archetype and nothing else that will explain the symbol. (As we will see, appearance of the Great Comet was synonymous with the death of the Universal Monarch, the PROTOTYPE of kings.) While the unobtrusive comets observed in our time only accent the irrationality of ancient fears, the worldwide portent symbolism of the comet answers so completely to the Great Comet (Venus) as to logically preclude the customary, localized explanations of these fears. The things which ancient nations believed about comets are, in every case, inseparably tied to the story of one heaven-shattering, universally-remembered comet, an archetype in every sense of the word. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (6) _By David Talbott. _THE GREAT COMET AND THE DEATH OF KINGS _We began this section with a note on the Aztec emperor Moctezuma's terror on the arrival of a comet. The focus of this fear is significant because it was shared by emperors and kings and tribal chiefs the world over. The comet means the death of great leaders. The idea appears to be as old as Babylonian astronomy, which associates a comet with the death of kings. The Roman poet Lucan offers a vivid description of cometary disaster, when the skies, "blazing fire," bring forth the "hair of the baleful star--the comet which portends changes to monarchs." So too did the Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy connect the comet with the death of kings. The profound fears of royalty at the appearance of the comet continued well into the present era. The third century Christian theologian Origen cites the comet as heralding a change in dynasties. It was a common "belief that the comet of AD 336 had announced the death of the great emperor Constantine." In connection with the assassination of Julius Caesar, it was said, a comet had appeared in the sky. On learning of a comet Nero was seized with fear, and chroniclers assure us that a comet preceded the death of the Emperor Macrinus in A.D. 218, and of Attila in A.D. 451. According to Synesius, writing in the fourth century A.D., a comet means great disaster: "And whenever these comets appear, they are an evil portent, which the diviners and soothsayers appease. They assuredly foretell public disasters, enslavements of nations, desolations of cities, deaths of kings." The Frankish bishop and historian Gregory of Tours, writing in the sixth century, reports that the "flaming diadem" of a comet portends the death of kings. Geoffrey of Monmouth connected the death of Aurelius Ambrosius with the appearance of a spectacular comet whose political symbolism was said to have been explained by Merlin. Even the brilliant astronomer Tycho Brahe, several centuries later, was unable to free himself from the idea that the comet brought overwhelming pestilence, war, and the death of kings. When Halley's Comet appeared in April 1066, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gave this report: ... In this year King Harald came from York to Westminster at Easter, which was after the mid winter in which the king (Edward the Confessor) died. Then was seen over all England such a sign in the heaven as no man ever before saw; some say it was the star Cometa. Among the ancient Germanic peoples, according to Grimm, the belief persisted that a comet's "appearance betokens events fraught with peril, especially the death of a king." The memory of the comet is well preserved in the song of German schoolchildren in the time of Martin Luther-- [These] things a comet brings ... Storm, plague, famine, death of kings, War, earthquake, flood, and upheaval. A drawing of a comet in the Chinese cometary atlas from the tomb at Mawangdui is accompanied by the simple statement: "There will be deaths of kings." The Chinese Record of the World Changes, by Li Ch'un Feng, (602-667 AD) warns of dire consequences: "When a comet travels into the Constellation Taurus ... within three years the emperor dies and the country is in chaos." So, too, do the Luba of Africa say that comet means the death of a leader. And in the same way, natives of the Polynesian Islands, claimed that a comet signified the death of a chief. Here, then, is the universal mythical context in which we must understand Moctezuma's fears. In the global tradition it is as if the comet bore particularly ominous news for heads of state, and the Aztec world view was no exception. Aveni, noting the intense interest in cometary phenomena among Mesoamerican peoples, tells us that illustrations of comets are frequently accompanied by interpretations of these portents: "These usually signify that a person of nobility will die." The paradox is accented in Shakespeare's famous lines-- When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Of course kings knew very well the special perils of comets. When a comet in 837 drew the attention of King Louis the Pious of France, "The king went into a veritable **** of prayers and devotions, ordering churches and shrines built to appease the imagined wrath of God." The Carthaginian general Hannibal in 184 B.C. was warned that a "recently- discovered comet meant he would die soon." He answered the comet by committing suicide. Is there something to be explained in the comets threat to kings? When Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan encountered the "death of kings" idea, they offered the usual explanation, calling such ideas "the triumph of superstition" and assuming the fear arose from the random coincidence of certain kings dying at the time comets appeared. Velikovsky's critic Bob Forrest was even less impressed with the strange idea. While noting that the death of kings is "perhaps the commonest" theme of all, he adds-- Certainly I see no pressing need to postulate cometary "collisions" on the basis of the "evil" reputation of comets any more than I need to invoke cometary/planetary exhalations to explain good wine years. But again the critic has drawn his conclusion prematurely, and we are left only with what amounts to a guess as to whether there is a connection with planetary upheaval. What happens, on the other hand, if instead of setting the fragments aside once gathered, we look for connecting links? In summarizing the curious theme of the comet and the death of kings, Mary Proctor adds a telling observation. The comet of A.D. 451 or A.D. 453 announced the death of Attila, and the comet of A.D. 455 that of the Emperor Valentinian. So widely spread was the belief in the connection between the death of the great and those menacing signs in the heavens that the chroniclers of old appear to have recorded comets which were never seen, such as the comet of A.D. 814, which was supposed to have presaged the death of Charlemagne. The note concerning the death of Charlemagne is significant. Can one really believe that localized, random, and disconnected events caused the same theme to arise on every continent--and with such oppressive influence that a comet would be invented when the expected visitor failed to materialize at the death of a powerful ruler? According to Peter Lancaster Brown, "Every bright comet which appeared during the medieval period, the Middle Ages, and even the Renaissance had itself affixed to the death or misfortune of a prominent historical figure. These beliefs were so widespread that (according to Pingre) the chronicles recorded in good faith comets which were never actually seen." This suggests that the death of kings motif, rather than reflecting random local events, conditioned man's perception of local events for century upon century. For those familiar with the way core mythical ideas work their way down through history, this is a key indicator of a very ancient and well-rooted idea. The chroniclers would happily re-write history to bring it into accord with the great mythical traditions of kingship and the gods. To the modern reader it may appear as if the ideas dropped randomly out of the sky, but a closer look will eliminate that impression completely. The patterns are the key. One fascinating idea about comets, for example, provides a unifying thread, while directing our attention to earlier mythical sources. A comet was frequently claimed to be the soul of a great ruler rising in the sky (certainly a good reason for loyalists to find a comet on the death of a ruler, even if the sky is not cooperating). Consider the famous case of Julius Caesar. On the death of that ruler, according to the Latin poet Ovid and others, a great cometary spectacle occurred in the sky, as Caesar's soul itself rose as a comet. And from Ovid's reverent description it seems that it could not have been otherwise for a leader of such stature. Clearly, the mythically-rooted story--celebrating the cometary "soul" of a great leader--preceded Ovid's poetic license! Aristotle, not given to celebrate the mythical tradition, tells us that the Greek philosopher Democritus held that comets were the souls of men of renown. Among the Polynesian Islanders, according to Williams, a comet did not just signify the death of a king, a comet meant the flight of the soul. Similarly, the eminent student of comparative myth and religion, James Frazer, produced extensive proof that "a widespread superstition ... associates meteors or falling stars with the souls of the dead. Often they are believed to be the spirits of the departed on their way to the other world." With respect to the departing cometary soul of Caesar, which I shall take up in a summary of the Greek and Roman material, I cannot resist passing on to the reader one fascinating detail. When Robert Schilling, perhaps the world's leading authority on the Latin goddess Venus, gathered the references to Caesar's apotheosis, he noticed a curious blend of two ideas: one that the soul rose as a comet, the other that the soul rose as the planet Venus. And the two ideas were actually joined as one, for the poet Ovid describes the soul as a flaming comet CARRIED ALOFT BY VENUS. In more than one instance the soul itself is celebrated as Venus. A curiosity indeed. "What general conspiracy," Schilling asks, "seems to have tacitly excluded the comet to the profit of the star [Venus]?" That the specialist did not discern the connection to a larger pattern (Venus = comet in a global tradition) is why the comparative study is so crucial.
_SOUL OF THE CREATOR-KING _We are thus brought back to Moctezuma's terror. One "explanation" for his fear of the comet asks unidentified local experiences to account for it and asks coincidence to account for parallel comet fears around the world. But another explanation is possible, in terms of an ancient story known to every native of Mexico and reflected in the most powerful cosmic images of Aztec culture. I refer to the myth of Quetzalcoatl, whose soul rose as the comet-like Venus. If Quetzalcoatl's departing heart-soul provided a prototype of the comet myth, we do not need to look further for an explanation of the comet's relation to the "death of kings" . In this case, the relationship is self-evident: the comet means the death of the king because tradition proclaimed that on the death of GREAT KING (the god remembered as the PROTOTYPE of kings) his soul departed from him in a cosmic disaster. And the comet brings the end of the world because, in the death of the god-king and the departure of his heart-soul as a comet, a former world age ended catastrophically. Having raised the question rhetorically, I do not expect the critic to accept the suggested explanation of comet symbolism apart from the complete presentation of evidence in this series. Nevertheless, for the sake of saving time, it may be helpful to give the gist of the idea I intend to develop and substantiate with each future installment-- Within human memory extraordinary changes have occurred in the solar system. Planets now remote from the Earth once moved in much, much closer proximity to our planet, appearing as gigantic powers looming over man. Hence, we cannot understand the mythical age of the gods without confronting the "gods" as visible forms in the sky, forms that are no longer present. In all mythical systems the gods rule for a time, then depart amid celestial upheaval. Mythically, there was once a founding king, a celestial model of the good king. But neither this charismatic figure, nor his celestial progeny will answer to familiar references in a now-settled sky. Nor will the mythical powers of darkness, in their monstrous dress, find any explanation in our experienced world. Inherent in the myths of the gods is the collective human experience of extraordinary trauma. An idyllic world, a paradisal condition, a Golden Age ruled by a former "great king" (the CREATOR-king, the Universal Monarch), came crashing down in a world-ending disaster: wars of the gods, earthquake, famine, wind and flood, the arrival of universal night. Of this world-ending catastrophe the Great Comet Venus--the departing heart-soul of the creator-king--was remembered as both symbol and agent. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (7) _By David Talbott. _QUETZALCOATL AND THE FEARS OF KINGS _The apprehension of Moctezuma, mentioned in our previous submission, can be illuminated by a sweeping mythical tradition concerning the life and death of Quetzalcoatl, the celestial prototype of kings. Quetzalcoatl was called the "sun," but the mythical and ritual sources remind us that this does not mean the light we call Sun today. The most revered figure of Mexican myth, Quetzalcoatl ruled for a time, then disembarked for other realms. As the great "teacher," the exemplary ruler, his life and death defined the duties and expectations of kings. But as we will see, it also substantiated a pervasive fear, and this fear always rose to the surface on the appearance of a COMET. Moctezuma's fear of the comet, the fear of the neighboring king of Texcoco, and the fear of every emperor when a comet appeared must be understood in terms of a cosmic crisis at the center not just of the Quetzalcoatl myth but of a universal tradition. When the celestial king or prototype of kings died or departed, a world cycle ended catastrophically--AND THE "GREAT COMET" WAS SEEN RAGING IN THE SKY. To amplify this crucial point: it was not just the myth of Quetzalcoatl that reminded rulers of their tenuous hold on the kingdom and on life itself. Such is the message of universal myth, which affirms two intimately connected principles-- _1) AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. This theme couldn't be more clearly stated throughout Mesoamerica: the terrestrial king lives in the shadow of the former celestial king, the Great Example for later kings. The death of Quetzalcoatl and the collapse of his kingdom (or world age) contained signposts and warnings which no terrestrial king could ignore. _2) AS BEFORE, SO AGAIN. This is the key to all mythically-rooted fear. What happened before will happen in the future. Quite apart from their interesting mathematics, for example, the mythical context of the Mesoamerican calendar system was the periodic cataclysm. But that deeply-embedded fear reached far beyond the calendar and into every expression of culture from war, to sacrifice, to such seemingly mundane practices as ritual sweeping. The collective goal was to reckon with divine caprice, to bargain for a new lease on life, to avoid the recurring disaster. Though Immanuel Velikovsky did not give substantial attention to the myth of Quetzalcoatl, he did observe the relationship to Venus, and the catastrophic nature of the god's death and transformation. To which Bob Forrest replied with considerable skepticism, claiming that in the life and death of Quetzalcoatl he found-- ... no reference to the planets in a Velikovskian sense. True, Quetzalcoatl ... was symbolically related to the Morning Star, but this is a far cry from being told that the planet Venus brought about the End of the World with a cosmic hurricane! Quetzalcoatl is here a Great Teacher, rather than a rampant super-comet." Notice the critic's reasoning: if Quetzalcoatl was a "great teacher," his story could not involve an account of Velikovsky's comet Venus. It seems that Forrest could not imagine a celestial form filling the role of exemplary model in the myths, nor could he imagine the "death" of this charismatic personality in terms of a sweeping natural catastrophe. But this is precisely where comparative study becomes so essential. Had he known that virtually all of the celestial, "founding kings" of myth suffer some variation on the fate of Quetzalcoatl, he might have noticed as well a recurring corollary: the god-king's "heart-soul"--the planet Venus-- departs to join in a celestial conflagration. (On such a grand claim as this, I can only ask the reader's indulgence as the evidence unfolds.) Forrest's concluding exclamation mark only emphasizes the gap that separates conventional students of myth from the world of the earliest skywatchers. Coherent motives disappear before the eyes of the researcher, and the primary cultural symbols dissolve into dust under the specialist's microscope. Then it becomes possible to believe that it was merely a chaotic mixture of ambiguous and UNRELATED experiences came together as the doomsday anxiety, or gave rise to pervasive ritual sacrifice, or provided the impetus for relentless, fear-driven observations of Venus. This is where Velikovsky's comet will help to rescue ancient myth and ritual from a theoretical vacuum. It will do so by providing a coherent reference, sufficient to substantiate an entirely new approach to the subject matter. The comet Venus enters ancient myth as the celestial agent of disaster, and its emergence is synonymous with the DEATH OF THE CREATOR KING. In the story we will reconstruct, we will see the now-peaceful Venus again and again appearing in ancient times as the great god's heart-soul, departing from him (or removed violently, or flung into the ensuing holocaust) to become a comet-like flaming star, then presiding over the re-establishment of celestial order, the dawn of a new world age. It will take time to tell this story with sufficient color and detail, but I can assure every reader that we ARE dealing here with a coherent and universal theme--a theme completely ignored by specialist too preoccupied with their own narrow turf to discern the definitive patterns of human memory. To see Velikovsky's comet in its globally- defined and catastrophic role is to realize something overlooked by the specialists: that a planetary history we have forgotten will do more to explain the pervasive fears of ancient cultures than all of the more fashionable speculations combined. How are we to understand the unending ritual wars and sacrifices in which rulers remembered, honored and satisfied the gods, hoping to hold the heavens together? How do we interpret the complex calendars of world ages, anticipating the return of doomsday with every completion of a Venus cycle? Or the endless preoccupation with catastrophic omens and portents tied to the planet? For centuries the priest-astronomers reacted with terror to any natural phenomenon that might suggest the return to world chaos. In what experience did this fear arise? Surely one way of illuminating the symbols of celestial TERROR is to consider the possibility of TERRIFYING EVENTS. To make this point completely clear it will be useful to look at a few of the Mesoamerican symbols of the doomsday fear, asking the reader at each stage whether we are considering randomly- evolved absurdities, or the coherent reflections of a traumatic experience remembered around the world.
_MESOAMERICAN ASTRONOMY _Velikovsky reminded us that to the natives of Mexico the planet Venus bore a very special significance. No celestial body loomed more centrally in their meticulous observations of the sky. To emphasize the point, Velikovsky noted the Augustinian friar Ramón Y Zamora's report that the Mexican tribes held Venus in great esteem and kept a precise record of its appearance. "So exact was the book-record of the day when it appeared and when it concealed itself, that they never made mistakes," stated Zamora. In Velikovsky's interpretation, the carefully recorded observations of Venus by the Mexicans, Babylonians, Chinese and other cultures arose in direct response to Venus' cometary past. And for many centuries after the cometary disaster, the astronomers perceived closer approaches of Venus as a grave potential threat. If Velikovsky was correct, astronomy arose in response to UNPREDICTABLE planetary powers, but could only flower as a science after planets achieved their present predictable orbits. Then the new observational science strove to bring the movements into a comprehensible system, enabling the priest to reckon with the gods and, by reading ancient signs properly, to ANTICIPATE divine behavior. The special place of astronomy in Mesoamerican myths and rites is acknowledged by the best authorities, though the origins of this culture-wide theme appear lost in a gray past. "It has been clear to all serious students of Mesoamerican culture," writes David Kelley, "that there was an intimate relationship between astronomical knowledge, the calendar, and religious beliefs and rituals." Or, as Anthony Aveni puts it, "... Quite unlike our modern astronomy, the raison d'être of Mesoamerican, particularly Mayan astronomy, was ritualistic and divinatory in nature." But what were the roots of the religious motive, placing such an emphasis on astronomy? The intense interest Venus is noted by Burr Cartwright Brundage-- The true role of the planet Venus in the development of the Mesoamerican cultures is not understood. It might not be far wrong to look upon the Mesoamerican's great skill in numeration as a child of that planet and to state that their intellectual life pulsed to its periods. Certainly a significant portion of their mythology involved that planet... To observers approaching the Mesoamerican cultures from an interdisciplinary vantage point, the cultural preoccupation with Venus immediately stands out. E. C. Krupp, a popularizer of modern archaeoastronomy, was impressed with the Venus profile in Mesoamerica, noting that the priest-astronomers computed portentous moments "based upon their calendar and the behavior of Venus. They installed their kings, sacrificed prisoners and went to war by these omens." But why? Must we assume unhesitatingly that the anxiety over Venus' movements arose under a tranquil sky? This unquestioned presumption of cosmic regularity is surely the single greatest obstacle to our comprehension of ancient fears. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (8) _By David Talbott. _VENUS AND COSMIC UPHEAVAL _Across Mesoamerica Venus was celebrated as the radiant heart and soul of the great cultural hero whom the Aztecs called Quetzalcoatl. Yet enigmatically, the appearances of the star after periods of absence stirred extraordinary fear. The noted archaeoastronomer, Anthony Aveni, observes: Evidently, the reappearance of Venus in different quarters after a prolonged absence carried various evil connotations for the people of Yucatan.... Obviously, they were deeply concerned about where and when Venus might appear to reverse their fortunes. Expressions of this fear will be found at all levels of the culture. There is the general association with death, as noted by Thompson and others, but also the more specific association with the death of kings. Thus the Mayan date name of Venus, Hun Ahau was a day of "death" and "darkness." But more specifically, the same day among the Aztecs signified the death of Quetzalcoatl and the transformation of his "heart-soul" into Venus. "There seems to be no doubt that unlucky days were associated with the heliacal rise of Venus (its first appearance as morning star, after a period of absence), each to be regarded with appropriate ritual," Aveni writes. The fear engendered by the heliacal rising of Venus was noted centuries ago by one of the earliest European chroniclers, Sahagun: And when it (Venus) newly emerged, much fear came over them; all were frightened. Everywhere the outlets and openings of [houses] were closed up. It was said that perchance [the light] might bring a cause of sickness, something evil when it came to emerge. In response to the new and bright appearance of Venus, kings called for sacrifices of captives to please the gods, for it seems that the planet's appearance could invite great calamities--from the outbreak of war to famine and flood. Could this be a key to understanding the mysteries of Venus- portents? As will become clear, the perils of Venus are the perils of the COMET in the global lexicon. We have already noted that, throughout the ancient world, the comet portended the death of great kings. But interestingly, the heliacal rising of Venus conveyed the same celestial message, as reported by Brundage. It is curious that the Mesoamerican peoples thought of the morning star so consistently as malign. He was to them, whether they were Aztec or Mayan, the very father of calamity. The dates of his heliacal rising were forecast so that the dooms ahead could be adequately read and prepared for... Significantly, his malice could also be directed at rulers, for if he arose on the trecana opened by one-reed, then great lords sickened and died. Thus, the Anales de Quahtitlan, a chronicle from the Mexican highlands (colonial times), describes the perils of the "piercing rays" of Venus. On the day One Reed, (the day of Quetzalcoatl's birth, and the day of the same god-king's death), the rising of Venus is deadly: "It shoots the kings," the texts say. Notice here that an underlying logic is at work, running from the specific to the general, from the archetype to the symbol. Quetzalcoatl died at a critical moment in cosmic history, a moment signified by both the end and the beginning of the time- reckoning cycle, mythically the end of one world age and the beginning of another. In the calendar system and in the sacred rites, the cyclical principle established by the life and death of Quetzalcoatl is both repeated and generalized: as above, so below; as before, so again. Hence, kings will die on the day One Reed, the day that Quetzalcoatl's heart-soul departed to become the planet Venus. What, then, is the significance of the fact that the symbolism of Venus replicates so precisely the global symbolism of the comet? The new appearance of Venus as morning star is a moment of great peril for the kingdom (the "world"), as is the appearance of the comet. It harkens back to the death of the god-king, as does the comet. It is the heart-soul of the god-king rising in the sky, as is the comet. Is this, then, just another "coincidence" to add to all of the others previously noted? The further one descends into the various cultural levels at which the fear was expressed, the more clear becomes the equation: the fear of Venus' rising was, in every way, identical to the fear instilled by the arrival of a COMET.
_VENUS AND THE END OF THE WORLD _Immanuel Velikovsky, in developing the theme of cometary disaster, noticed that one ancient culture after another spoke of former catastrophes so devastating that the "world" came to an end. This collective memory, in turn, seems to have given rise to the general notion of recurring cycles, or world ages. While Velikovsky noticed surprising parallels among far-flung nations, including the Babylonians, Greeks, Hebrews, Chinese, and Polynesians, he was particularly fascinated with the Mexican ideas: An old tradition, and a very persistent one, of world ages that went down in cosmic catastrophes was found in the Americas among the Incas, the Aztecs, and the Mayas. A major part of stone inscriptions found in Yucatan refer to world catastrophes. "The most ancient of these fragments [katuns, or calendar stones of Yucatan] refer, in general, to great catastrophes which, at intervals and repeatedly, convulsed the American continent, and of which all nations of this continent have preserved a more or less distinct memory." Codices of Mexico and Indian authors who composed the annals of their past give a prominent place to the tradition of world catastrophes that decimated humankind and changed the face of the earth. In the chronicles of the Mexican kingdom it is said: "The ancients knew that before the present sky and earth were formed, man was already created and life had manifested itself four times." To Velikovsky, this language sounded remarkably close to that of the Greeks and other ancient peoples, who similarly recounted the passing of former ages and destruction by water, fire, wind or flood. For some nations, he said, the transition from one age to another meant a new "sun" in the sky. An oft-repeated occurrence in the traditions of the world ages is the advent of a new sun in the sky at the beginnings of every age. The word "sun" is substituted for the word "age" in the cosmogonic traditions of many peoples all over the world. The Mayas counted their ages by the names of their consecutive suns. These were called Water Sun, Earthquake Sun, Hurricane Sun, Fire Sun. "These suns mark the epochs to which are attributed the various catastrophes the world has suffered." "The nations of Culhua or Mexico," Humboldt quoted Gómara, the Spanish writer of the sixteenth century, "believe according to their hieroglyphic paintings, that, previous to the sun which now enlightens them, four had already been successively extinguished. These four suns are as many ages, in which our species has been annihilated by inundations, by earthquakes, by a general conflagration, and by the effect of destroying tempests." ... Symbols of the successive suns are painted on the pre- Columbian literary documents of Mexico. "Cinco soles que son edades," or "five suns that are epochs," wrote Gómara in his description of the conquest of Mexico. To Velikovsky, the idea of former "world ages" or "suns" belonged to a collective memory of upheaval and world- changing shifts in the order of the solar system. The earth was disturbed in its rotation, its axis tilted, the path of its revolution around the sun changed, and vast nations were devastated. Then, from the ensuing chaos, the world was born anew under an altered celestial order.
_CALENDAR _Sacred astronomy throughout Mesoamerica was particularly conscious of the heliacal rising of Venus, the planet's first annual pre-dawn appearance (beginning its phase of greatest brilliance due to its proximity to the Earth). According to Aveni, this first appearance as Morning Star "was probably the most important single event in Maya astronomy." One of the extraordinary "coincidences" of Venus' present behavior is the resonance of its observed cycle with our year of 365 1/4 days. Like clockwork, due to the synchronous movements of Venus and Earth we noted earlier, Venus first appears as morning star on the same calendar day every eight years, and during that span of time it rises heliacally a total of five times. This synchronous relationship of Earth and Venus is reflected in the Mesoamerican calendar rites. Many centuries ago, a sacred calendar system was perfected within a cultural environment that is not yet clear to archaeoastronomers. The original system is unknown. What we do know is that at the time of the Spanish invasion, all of the primary Mesoamerican cultures shared a common calendar structure, an outgrowth of the unidentified "original system," in which the Venus-cycle played a crucial role, but not one that appears fully comprehensible to the scholars seeking to understand it. The calendar combined two time-keeping systems: one based on the familiar solar year, which was divided into 18 "months" of 20 days, to which five "unlucky" days were added at the end of the year, rounding out a 365-day year. In their veintena festivals, the Aztecs celebrated the end of each 20-day cycle of the solar year, making sacrifices and offerings to the gods in the hope that the sun and stars would continue their orderly movement across the heavens. The other calendar was based on a 260-day cycle whose original meaning is still being debated. Enigmatically, this ritual calendar appears to have no self- evident logic in terms of the natural cycles one would expect to find reflected in calendar phases. And yet, for ritual reasons, the sacred 260-day calendar dominated the solar calendar. This, Robert and Peter Markman tell us, was "a sacred calendar tied directly to no single cycle observable in the world of nature." Rather, "it embodied and celebrated the essence of cyclicity abstracted from its occurrence in natural phenomena. This was the calendar used for prophecy and divination since in its workings it allowed man his closest approach to the world of spirit." How, then, did it connect mankind with the world of the gods? The 260-day ritual calendar combined two different sequences, one a series of 20 days-signs, the other a sequence of 13 day-numbers, so that there were a total of 260 combinations of the two sequences to complete a sacred calendrical period. Since each day and each number had its own gods and associations, every day in the 260 -day cycle had a different ritual significance. The Markmans write-- Understanding calendrical lore allowed a special group of priests to understand the implications of the signs of the calendar and to divine the future... These periods could determine the augury of each of the days, since the essence of the day (kin among the Maya) was itself the prophecy (also kin). Possibly, the authors say, there was a connection of the 260-day cycle with Venus: "The interval between the appearance of Venus as morning and evening star is close to 260 days." The mystery is heightened by another fact that rarely receives attention: in the Maya calendrical ritual the listed movements of Venus do not accord with the planet's observed movements today. The synodical revolution of Venus divides into four periods: _1) after inferior conjunction Venus appears as Morning Star for an average of 263 days; _2) during superior conjunction the planet disappears for an average of 50 days; _3) the planet reappears as Evening Star for an average of 263 days; _4) Venus then disappears again for 8 days during inferior conjunction; after which it reappears as Morning Star, to complete the synodical period. But these are not the values in the Maya Venus cycles, which seem to follow an unfamiliar logic of their own. The considerable discrepancy is emphasized by Aveni-- They assigned an eight day period to the disappearance at inferior conjunction, which is close to that observed today. But, peculiarly, their manuscripts recorded a disappearance interval of 90 days at superior conjunction, nearly double the true value. Furthermore, they assigned unequal values to the intervals as morning and evening star: 250 and 236 days, respectively. In fact, the true intervals are equivalent at approximately 263 days. Since we know that the Maya were careful and exacting timekeepers, there may have been ritualistic reasons for these changes which overrode the observations. It seems as if another anomaly rears its head: the ancient Mesoamerican astronomers, so admired for their accurate record keeping of Venus' motions, do not have Venus moving on its present course. Yet Aveni assures us that the Maya developed the observational precision and reasoning power to predict eclipses and to determine "the length of the Venus year and the lunar month to accuracies of less than a day in several centuries." Thus, the calendar discrepancy, to say the least, should draw one's attention! In considering this mystery, we well to remember Velikovsky's admonition on the subject of recurring anomalies--the true key to discovery. It is a fact that the recorded anomalous motions of Venus in the ritual calendar- a calendar originating in an undefined period preceding any of the known cultural variants--has a significant and more ancient Near Eastern parallel. As Velikovksy himself observed almost 45 years ago, the Babylonian astronomers, in the famous Venus tablets of Ammizaduga, recorded extensive observations of Venus' movements. Like their Mesoamerican counterparts, these founders of astronomy were revered for their observational skills and mathematical accuracy. Nevertheless, the Ammizaduga records of Venus' appearances and disappearances are filled with "errors" suggesting that (in the minds of the stargazers, at least) Venus did not move on its present visual path. And speaking of recurring anomalies, the seemingly preposterous 90-day disappearance of Venus at superior conjunction may prove to be more of a headache for orthodox archaeoastronomers than they have bargained for. In the "erroneous" Babylonian records of Venus, one encounters a 90-day disappearance as well! Aveni reports-- It is curious that the Babylonians also counted a three- month disappearance interval, indicating that the planet would move approximately one-fourth of the way around its cycle in the tropical year. While an anomalous variance in the movement of Venus may frustrate mainstream investigators, for anyone believing that Velikovsky's comet participated in Earth- disturbing events as recently as a few thousand years ago, the troublesome records of Venus' motions are more likely to bring a bemused smile. Following the great cometary catastrophe recorded in the myths, nothing would seem more reasonable to the Velikovskian researcher than a transitional period-perhaps millennia--in which Venus did not move on its present path as seen from the earth. The larger issue, of course, is that posed by the very existence of the sacred 260-day calendar. How could it be that a calendar with no firm basis in an observed natural cycle could have had such a broad cultural influence? Even as late as 1940, the ethnologist J.S. Lincoln was able to confirm that the Ixil peoples of northwest Guatemala continued to use this calendar. Ethnologist J.A. Remington, living among the Quiché and Cakchiquel peoples of the Guatemala highlands, found that the 260-day cycle was still practiced for purposes of forecasting, with this "unnatural" calendar still dominating the time- keeping rituals. When it comes to ancient calendars, one of the possibilities that should be considered--but never is considered--is that of a shifting length of the year. Velikovsky argued, for example, that in former times a calendar of 360 days prevailed throughout much of the ancient world, and that the five added days (called "nothing days" by the Aztecs) came only after a disruption of the earth's motions. Though I have some doubt about this, there is no reason in the world to exclude such possibilities in advance of serious consideration. But whether or not calendar changes are indicated, one can be certain that the 260-day ritual calendar bore an extremely significant relationship to the myth of collapsing world ages, as we shall see. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (9) _By David Talbott. _52-YEAR CALENDAR ROUND _Across Mesoamerica, the combination of two calendars, the solar or seasonal calendar and the 260-day ritual calendar, produced an extended sequence of sacred time, in which the two calendars concluded on the same day only once every 52 solar years--a cosmic cycle of extreme import. This 52-year cycle the Maya called the Calendar Round and the Aztecs a "bundle of years" or "Perfect Circle" of years. Interestingly, to Sylvanus Morley observes that the Maya "never indicated dates in hieroglyphic texts or historical documents by the solar year designation alone. Most often the date was specified by its designation in the Calendar Round." Among the Aztecs this extended cycle was intimately tied to the myth of Quetzalcoatl, who was born on the day ce acatl ("One Reed") and departed on the day ce acatl 52 years later. He will return, the Aztecs claimed, on a future day ce acatl. It is only reasonable to assume, therefore, a close relationship between the symbolism of the Calendar Round and the symbolism of the founding god-king. Mesoamerican timekeepers show an extreme ambivalence about this extended calendar period. Its conclusion was both a renewal- the end of the old cycle and the beginning of a new cycle--and a potential moment of disaster, since the Aztecs believed that the entire world order was then in jeopardy. At that critical moment the astronomer priests anticipated world destruction by fire, wind, or water, repeating the great cataclysm that ended the golden age of Quetzalcoatl. The synchronous Earth-Venus movements appear to have figured prominently in the calendar, enabling priest astronomers to draw on the mathematics of Venus cycles to anticipate the recurrence of doomsday. For example, 65 Venus cycles were equivalent to 104 solar years, or two 52-year cycles, which the Aztecs called "huehueliztli", an old age or "long-period." To Velikovsky, this role of Venus in calculations of world ages was, at the very least, evidence to be considered in assessing Venus' catastrophic role in the past. The works of Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, the early Mexican scholar (circa 1568-1648) who was able to read old Mexican texts, preserve the ancient tradition according to which the multiple of fifty-two-year periods played an important role in the recurrence of world catastrophes. He asserts also that only fifty-two years elapsed between two great catastrophes, each of which terminated a world age. Now there exists a remarkable fact: the natives of pre- Columbian Mexico expected a new catastrophe at the end of every period of fifty-two years and congregated to await the event. "When the night of this ceremony arrived, all the people were seized with fear and waited in anxiety for what might take place." They were afraid that "it would be the end of the human race and that the darkness of the night may become permanent: the sun may not rise anymore." It happened that the end of a cycle occurred in mid-November, 1507, and available records give us a good sense of the collective fears embedded in the symbolic rites of renewal. It is said that five priests moved in procession with a captive warrior out of the city of Tenochtitlan to the great ceremonial center on the Hill of the Star. The occasion was proceeded by ritual extinction of fires across Mexico, the casting of statues and hearthstones into the water, and rites of sweeping- -all of these gestures bearing a significant symbolic tie to an ancient cultural memory of catastrophic transition. We are also told that on this frightening occasion women were locked in granaries to avoid being turned into man- eating monsters, pregnant women donned masks of maguey leaves, and children were kept awake to keep them from turning into mice while asleep. (That these fears trace to the cosmic night and the associated chaos hordes should become clear in the course of this series.) David Carrasco writes, For on this one night in the calendar round of 18,980 nights the Aztec fire priests celebrated "when the night was divided in half": the New Fire Ceremony that ensured the rebirth of the sun and the movement of the cosmos for another fifty-two years. This rebirth was achieved symbolically through the heart sacrifice of a brave, captured warrior specifically chosen by the king. We are told that when the procession arrived "in the deep night" at the Hill of the Star the populace climbed onto their roofs. With unwavering attention and necks craned toward the hill they became filled with dread that the sun would be destroyed forever. When the priest astronomers did confirm that the heavens were still in order, the country broke into celebration, the Sacred Fire was rekindled, houses, roads and walkways were swept clean and normal life resumed, the gods having granted man another 52-year cycle. As in the case of disaster portents, the fears implicit in the calendar symbolism flowed from a core idea of recurrence. In the same way that the appearance of a comet OR the rising of Venus recalled the world-ending catastrophe, the calendar system (which undeniably related to observed Venus cycles) rested on a memory of former upheaval, when heaven fell into confusion. Could the terrestrial king, whose life always mirrored that of the founding god-king, escape the fate of the great predecessor, whose death ENDED a cosmic cycle? Would the world itself survive a full turn of time's wheel? It's too easy for archaeoastronomers, when chronicling the calendar symbolism, to slip into a state of enchantment over the system's mathematical symmetry, forgetting that there is a far more vital question: what were the experiential origins of the collective fear--the fear of a world falling out of control? And why did the planet Venus figure so prominently in the calculations of world ages? Perhaps the answer lies with the famous Calendar Stone, on which the time-keeping hieroglyphs are recorded. Enclosing the stone, and thus encompassing the entire cycle or world age is the two-fold form of the great serpent Xiuhcoatl, the mythical parent of comets, the great celestial torch launched against the rebel powers when the world was overrun by demons of chaos. That the archetypal comet should define the great cycle of time does not surprise us. For it seems that bringing one world age to an end and inaugurating another is, in the universal tradition, the comet's most distinctive role.
_ONE FEAR, MANY EXPRESSIONS _Due to the progressive fragmentation of evidence over time, the experts have missed the most significant fact of all. Mesoamerican cultures as a whole expressed the doomsday anxiety in pervasive ritual practices which themselves offer vital keys to the nature of the original events: the rites of sweeping practiced in every sacred precinct; the great festivals reckoning with critical moments in the calendar and repeating memorable episodes in the age of the gods; the virtually endless rites of sacrifice, by which tens of thousands died in a culture-wide bargaining with celestial powers; and the ritually-ordained wars by which the city's bravest and strongest repeated the catastrophic interlude between two world ages. Together with the available information on disaster portents, these mythically-rooted themes provide a great reservoir of evidence as to the character of the remembered catastrophe. (See sections to follow.) The repeated ritual patterns re-enacted on every scale (from household sweeping rites to nation-wide celebrations of the 52- year cycle) a world falling into darkness; the death of the creator-king, whose heart-soul was torn from him to soar aloft as a comet-like "spark"; the end of the kingdom (symbol of the "world"); a sky filled with celestial dust and cometary debris- -the feared chaos-hordes; the gathering of great armies in the heavens to wage celestial combat; and overwhelming commotion: reverberating shouts and cries, the earthshaking moans of the great goddess, the shrieks of whistles, trumpets blaring, the beating of drums, and--in the very midst of this world-ending havoc--a smoking star (the prototypical comet of the Aztecs and Maya, the planet Venus) announcing the disaster in the most literal, causative sense, and presiding over the recovery of order, as if sweeping clear the darkened and cloud-filled sky. To see how these vivid memories of cometary disaster found expression in the local rites, we shall next turn to the role of the feared chaos hordes in the remembered events. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (10) _By David Talbott. _DEMONS OF DARKNESS _Let us now consider the role of darkness in the myths of the Great Comet. Throughout Mesoamerica, the arrival of the cosmic night was a pervasive subject of ritual re-enactment, from macrocosm to microcosm; the darkness into which the world sank symbolically at the end of the 52-year cycle was the same darkness remembered with each setting of the sun, as every household recalled the dangers of the greater darkness in primeval times. But the doomsday fears of Mesoamerican peoples do not just reflect the ancient experience of a darkened world. At the root of these fears is a memory of the "chaos-hordes" let loose, the great cometary cloud which overtook the world in the mother of all catastrophes. Numerous ritual celebrations represented this swarming cometary debris by crowds of warriors and other participants adding through their dress and gestures the elements of commotion, disarray, darkness, and mock combat--these frenzied crowds being as much a part of the ritual occasion as the officiating priests or sacrificial victims. The panoply of images involved here will provide countless details about an event far more terrifying than historians have dared imagine. The crucial principle is the connection between ritual symbols and remembered events: the local rites commemorated death and disaster on a COSMIC scale. Thus, all of the components of the "darkness" theme are significant--throngs of people shouting in confusion or running about; the feathered ornaments; paper streamers waving in the wind; a pervasive fear that their children will be turned into mice; the fear that monsters with disheveled hair (a global cometary motif) will rise out of the darkness to devour them. Indeed, such themes constitute a tapestry of ancient cometary myths and symbols. And the repeated fears and gestures are not fixed to a single rite or to just one symbolic occasion, but to every level at which the darkness theme occurs. Symbolically, for example, every setting of the sun contained an aspect of the former disaster. When dusk arrived it came as a reminder of the cosmic night--the twilight of the gods. Natives of pre-Columbian Mexico retired to their own dwellings and covered themselves. At night the chaos-demons were out, and children could be turned into mice (a mythical form of the swarming celestial debris with cometary tails, the "children" of the comet- goddess). And while the people slept, it was the priest astronomer's duty to monitor the heavens at dusk, midnight and dawn, to "divine the course of events." In the shadow of the remembered catastrophe, every form of darkness contained a seed of uncertainty and terror. Then, in the morning, the obligatory sweeping of patios and walkways occurred--symbolically, the sweeping away of the night. Not just the darkness, but the gathered dust and clutter filled a special role in Mesoamerican daily life and ritual, as symbols of the great dust-cloud which overtook the world in ancestral times. So in the sweeping rites, we see the dust as an analog of this cloud--the chaos hordes--together with the symbolism of the female head of the house as "sweeper," a role defined by the mother goddess Toci herself, whose "broom" is a prominent feature in the commemorative rites (see discussion of Toci and sweeping rites in discussion to follow; also later discussion of the "broom" as universal comet glyph; in the form of a "broom," "flail," "fan," or "whisk," the Great Comet itself "scatters" the chaos-cloud.) No doubt such symbolism at the daily, microcosmic level was diluted over time and progressively gave way to the growing complexities of culture and practical necessity, but the residue of an ancient and unrecognized experience was still there at the time of the Conquest. Of course, the recollection of the cosmic night appears in more dramatic forms when an UNUSUAL occurrence of darkness breaks the normal pattern. Consider Sahagun's description of the people's response to an eclipse-- Then there were a tumult and disorder. All were disquieted, unnerved, frightened. Then there was weeping. The common folk raised a cup, lifting their voices, making a great din, calling out, shrieking. There was shouting everywhere. People of light complexion were slain [as sacrifices]; captives were killed. All offered their blood, they drew straws through the lobes of their ears, which had been pierced. And in all the temples there was the singing of fitting chants, there was an uproar, there were war cries. It was thus said: "If the eclipse of the sun is complete, it will be dark forever! The demons of darkness will come down, they will eat men!" In these fleeting moments of the eclipse, the people relived the unforgettable night, repeating the great din of the world-ending catastrophe and venting their fears of the devouring chaos hordes. Were these fears, in origin, different from the (tempered) fear of dusk, or different from the terror aroused by the conclusion of the 52-year cycle (noted in our previous submission)? An examination of the different contexts will show that the entire complex of "darkness" fears always recalls the same comet-like cloud descending upon the world. It should not surprise us, therefore, that the very same fear is seen in relation to the eclipse of the moon. When the moon was eclipsed, his face grew dark and sooty, blackness and darkness spread. When this came to pass, women with child feared evil; they thought it portentous; they were terrified [lest], perchance, their [unborn] children might be changed into mice; each of their children might turn into a mouse. Such fears are rooted in myths and memories the modern world has failed to comprehend. There is an ARCHETYPE of cosmic "darkness," with deeper and broader meaning than could be extracted from any single commemorative occasion. Alone, the symbols can only point ambiguously backwards to unrecognized trauma. But in combination, the symbols will provide a rich profile of the world-ending catastrophe, accessible to any researcher willing to break free from a methodology that sees only fragments and asks the fragments to explain themselves in isolation from the whole. Of course, the planet Venus would seem an unlikely source of sky-darkening clouds (or of sky-clearing "sweeping," for that matter). And yet the remarkable Mesoamerican association of Venus with the eclipse and darkness has been documented by the vigorous research of Ev Cochrane. "Like most ancient peoples, the Maya considered eclipses of the sun to be a time of dire peril," Cochrane writes. "It was commonly believed, in fact, that the world might end during a solar eclipse. In the eclipse tables contained within the Dresden Codex, an eclipse is symbolized by the figure of a dragon descending from the glyph of the sun." On the relationship of the "eclipse"-dragon to Venus, Cochrane gives us the verdict of the eminent Mayan scholar, Sir Eric Thompson: The head of the monster is hidden by a large glyph of the planet Venus. One is instantly reminded of the Aztec belief that during eclipses the monsters called Tzitzimime or Tzontemoc (head down) plunged earthwards from the sky. These monsters include Tlauizcalpanteculti, the god of Venus as morning star. It is therefore highly probable that the picture represents a Tzitzimitl plunging head down toward earth during the darkness of an eclipse. A glyph immediately above the picture appears to confirm this identification, for it shows the glyph of Venus with a prefix which is a picture of a person placed upside down. A remote star could darken the entire sky? Here we see, in a clear profile, the dilemma for conventional study. Under the standard approach to this subject, the images are far too incredible to have any foundation in natural experience. Hence, they must be entirely fanciful. And hence, any attempt to see natural experience in these hieroglyphs must be preposterous. That is the fundamental circular reasoning on which the modern understanding of myth and symbol has been constructed. As a result, the patterns suggesting deeper levels of coherence are not even noticed. What is unthinkable is of no interest. So we do not realize that the fear of darkness is not just the fear of being unable to see clearly. As concretely expressed in myths and rites, it speaks for a collective memory; and even the lesser expressions of this fear are but shadows cast by a far greater terror, when the whole sky became the theater for the twilight of the gods. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (10) _By David Talbott. _RITES OF SACRIFICE _Both the Aztecs and Maya are known to have practiced sacrifice on a horrendous scale, in intimate correspondence with the gods. To honor the gods and heroes of former times, the priests performed rites ordained by these divine ancestors, with a meticulous reverence for the way things happened in ancestral times (the age of the gods). Critical events in the gods' own lives provided the ritual drama, and in these biographical rituals, sacrifice was usually the central episode. In the Mesoamerican world view, it was a sacrifice of cosmic proportions that preceded the dawning of the present world age. As noted by Carrasco, the role of cosmic sacrifice in regenerating the world "was at the basis of the extraordinary practice of bloodletting and sacrifice throughout Mesoamerica." The present age was created out of the sacrifice of a large number of deities in Teotihuacan, or elsewhere, depending on the tradition. It was believed that this age would end in earthquakes and famine. What is clear is that cosmic order is achieved in the Aztec universe out of conflict, sacrifice, and the death of humans and gods. In addition to the calendrically ordained sacrifices, there were many other occasions on which the gods themselves seemed to call for sacrifice. For minor challenges in the course of daily life, offerings of food or ornaments might be sufficient, but in times of greater common need, particularly when the kingdom was beset by drought, or hurricanes, or plagues of locusts, the gods called for human victims. It does not appear that scholars as a whole appreciate the reason for this, however. It is through sacrifice "that two realms of time, the time of the gods and the time of humans, are linked together and renewed," states Carrasco. But why did sacrifice fulfill the divine requirement? And why at strategic calendar moments, or on occasions of distress? Again, it is imperative that one distinguish between the archetype and the symbol. Numerous contexts in which we observe the ritual response will suggest that a drought was not seen as a thing in itself, but a SYMBOL of the greater ordeal in more ancient times, the archetypal "drought" which gave meaning to the symbols. In the same way, every hurricane became a symbol of the irresistible cosmic wind that once overcame the world; or a plague of locusts referred back to the devastating chaos hordes which had overtaken the world in the great cometary disaster. A symbol is a reflection of some aspect of a prior experience. As such it does not, on its own, disclose the full character of that experience. Thus the researcher, to gain any sense of the true reference, must draw upon patterns revealed through the CONJUNCTION of symbols. Under the conventional analysis, however, the regional drought or the regional hurricane is the worst thing the analyst can imagine, so there is no prior reference for the symbol, only the symbol itself. Students of the culture are left, therefore, with a madhouse of symbols and meaningless, unexplained, barbaric practices and superstitions. Here, the ritual sacrifice has no broader significance than an apparent "bargaining with the gods" because the researcher does not see a relationship between the sacrifice and the events (drought, plague, storm) "calling" for it. And yet, the mythical context of sacrifice leaves no question as to a connection. When the creator-king Quetzalcoatl died, his heart was removed from him. The primeval "sacrifice," in the various traditions, occurred at a time of cosmic upheaval, of great wind and drought, of darkness, earthquake and flood, with the god's own heart--the smoking star--presiding over the regeneration of the world. Mythically speaking, the rites of sacrifice CAME INTO BEING through the critical events in the life, the death, and the transformation of the god- king. Why, then, did a drought or plague call forth a sacrifice? Because the sacrificial rites replayed, on a microcosmic scale, the overarching celestial drama, honoring the gods through remembrance, not just repeating the divine ordeal, but repeating the RESOLUTION. The followers of Quetzalcoatl, as noted by Carrasco, insisted that "all ceremonies and rites, building temples and altars ... imitated the ways of that holy man." That is what the Aztecs meant by the repeated statement that Quetzalcoatl was the exemplary king, the model upon which kingship arose. And more than one sacrificial rite served to mirror essential episodes in the god's life and death. Citing a native informant, Duran summarizes a commemorative ritual involving a mock king, a captured enemy warrior chosen for his beauty and physical perfection and dressed in the attire of the founding king himself. For 40 days this human symbol of Quetzalcoatl was honored in feasts and celebration. "This living man was bought to represent the god for forty days, and he was served and revered as such," Duran writes. At the conclusion of his "reign," and with great ceremony, the assistants to the officiating priest laid the mock king on the sacrificial stone. Then the priest, with a crude stone knife, tore his heart from his body. Removal of the heart was, in fact, the most common form of human sacrifice throughout Mesoamerica, a recurring pattern recalling a celestial power's own "sacrifice" in the age of the gods. Interestingly, the officiating priests at the Templo Mayor bore the name quequetzalcoa, after Quetzalcoatl himself --suggesting that priest and sacrificial victim were, in their respective capacities, representing one and the same cosmic power. In the common pattern of the sacrifice, when the priest tore the heart from the victim, he raised it, still steaming, before the sun--the sacred "steam" of the removed heart offering a poignant reminder of the COMET-LIKE, smoking "heart" of the great god himself "The high priest then opened the chest and with amazing swiftness tore out the heart, ripping it out with his own hands. Thus steaming, the heart was lifted toward the sun, and the fumes were offered up to the sun." Or again, "they opened his chest and took out the heart, and holding it up, they presented it to the Sun until its steam had cooled." Then, as if to re-play the mythic flight of the heart-soul, the priest turned and flung the heart toward the image of the god. The "steam" of the removed heart thus stood in symbolic correspondence with the "plumes" of the transformed heart-soul as plumed star, and with the "smoke" of the heart- soul as smoking star. In illustrations of these events, we see the Aztec priest raising the removed heart of the victim, with the "steam" rising before the sun. But elsewhere it is rather the PLUMES that rise from the heart, while still other contexts involve a SMOKING HEART. In a widespread ritual counterpart to human sacrifice, the celebrants formed a model of the heart from copal or pom, a resin derived from the copal tree, and set it burning as incense. The dark smoke rising from the ritual "heart" thus provided a vivid reminder of Quetzalcoatl's burning heart-soul, the smoking star Venus, which we have recognized as the GREAT COMET. A conjunction of three symbols--steaming heart, plumed heart and smoking heart- meaningless in themselves, derives a self- evident and spectacular significance when referred to the celestial prototype, the ascending, comet-like heart-soul removed from the ancient sun god Quetzalcoatl. The relentless practice of human sacrifice in every well- documented Mesoamerican culture, a source of horror to the conquering Spaniards, can produce great ambivalence in the treatments by historians, archaeologists and ethnologists. But what is really missing is the sense of context. How did such a widespread practice come to rule an entire civilization? Seeing the role of collective apprehension will bring the dark and fearful motives into the light of day, for the ceaseless acts of "remembering" and bargaining with the gods do become intelligible when referred to a world-shattering catastrophe, symbolically recalled every time a priest raised the sacrificial knife. In sacrifice the practitioners remembered and "nourished" the gods, and the two aspects of the practice seemed to go hand in hand, fueled by the memory of the all-devouring, smoking star. Why were the Aztecs so "deeply concerned about where and when Venus might appear to reverse their fortunes" (Aveni's words)? Why was sacrifice so frequently regulated by the rising of Venus? Sahagun tells us that "Captives were slain when it emerged that it might be nourished. They sprinkled blood toward it, flipping the middle finger from the thumb, they cast the blood as an offering." Seen from one vantage point, there is only meaninglessness in these rampant practices, by which whole nations responded to uncertainties large and small. Seen from another, there is the long shadow of celestial terror, when planets moved out of control and affected the fate of mankind. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (12) _By David Talbott. _VENUS, THE GREAT COMET, AND THE WARS OF THE GODS _A powerful conjunction of Venus symbolism and comet symbolism will be seen in the vast tribal wars and conquests that fed the rise of empires in Mesoamerica--a conjunction that will only grow in significance as we find the same nexus of symbols in other major cultures as well. What is not sufficiently recognized by the experts is that, in mythical terms, the "first" sacrifice and "first" war occurred in the lives of the gods themselves. Ancient beliefs, symbols, and expectations concerning sacrifice and war were rooted in something REMEMBERED. Only the remembered, prototypal Great Comet will explain the recurring patterns of belief about comets in general, the planet Venus in particular, and the mythically-rooted "signs" heralding or calling for war and sacrifice. Around the world, comets were seen as harbingers of devastating invasion, war, and conquest. A comet, according to the Chinese, could mean that "there are uprisings and war continues for several years." "When a comet travels into the Constellation Taurus, in the middle of the double month, blood is shed ... [and] dead bodies lie on the ground. Within three years the emperor dies and the country is in chaos." The Roman poet Tibullus cites the comet as "the evil sign of war." Pliny, treating comets in his Natural History, tells us they bring war and commotion, while the Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy associates them with foreign invasion. The third century Christian writer Origen saw the comet as heralding war and the collapse of dynasties. Centuries later (1011), Byrhtferth's Manual lists war as one of the disastrous effects of a comet's appearance." The extraordinary power of the mythic tradition will explain why many of early history's most brutal wars had affixed to them the appearance of a comet, even in cases in which the actual arrival of a comet may be in doubt. A comet and shooting stars are said to have appeared before the battle of Pharsalus in central Greece, heralding Caesar's defeat of Pompey. Josephus mentions in his History of the Jews that a comet in the form of a "sword" hung over Jerusalem for a whole year, foretelling the destruction of the city in the reign of the Emperor Vespasian. "The belief persisted into medieval and later ages," writes Theodor Gaster. "A comet heralded the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066. Disasters suffered by the Christians at the hands of the Turks in 1456 were popularly attributed to the appearance of a comet." In 1456 a comet described as having a "fan- shaped tail like that of a peacock" is said to have stretched across half the sky. With the Turkish army at the gates of Belgrade, Pope Calixtus III feared a domino effect from a Mohammedan victory. Thus a Vatican historian wrote: A hairy and fiery star ... made [an] appearance for several days, [and] mathematicians declared that there would follow ... great calamity. Calixtus [ordered] prayers, beseeching God that if this meant impending evils for mankind, God would turn them all upon the Turks, the enemies of Christendom. The Zulu of South Africa also say that a comet brings war. And the same portentous significance of the comet seems to have prevailed in the Americas. In 1835, the warrior-chief Osecola, leader of the Seminole tribe in Florida, "saw an appearance of Halley's Comet as an omen, and called on his people to launch a war against white settlers. The Seminoles overwhelmed the army garrison at Fort King and killed every last soldier. Osecola personally scalped the fort's commander, General Wiley Thompson." In the light of the general tradition, the retrospective accounts of Mesoamerican chroniclers, remembering that a comet preceded the Spanish invasion, take on greater meaning for us. The motif is strikingly familiar in an Aztec poem-- I foresaw, being a Mexican, that our rule began to be destroyed, I went forth weeping that it was to bow down and be destroyed. Let me not be angry that the grandeur of Mexico is to be destroyed. The smoking stars gather together against it. One of the principles I intend to establish in this series of articles is that, in the earlier expressions of comet imagery, the fiery star did not just "herald" war; it was itself an agent of celestial upheaval, an active participant in the remembered WARS OF CELESTIAL POWERS, whose battles produced deep archetypal images subsequently reflected in ALL war. The flaming sphere of the comet was hurled into the midst of a great conflagration in the sky. In the original system of thought, every war on earth was an echo of the primeval disturbance, involving both celestial upheaval and the sacrifice of gods and heroes. Thus every local war needed not just rites of sacrifice, but a COMET to ratify a symbolic accord between current event and ancient memory. Of course the peaceful celestial visitors of a later age would never achieve the violent and world-changing impact of the prototype, and over time this could only accentuate the distance between the archetype and the later symbols referring back to it. Originally, the comet shook heaven and earth, summoning celestial armies and inspiring a clash of opposing forces in the sky. Latin poets seemed to have remembered the tradition well when, on the death of Caesar, they sought to portray a recurrence of the world- threatening tempest. When Caesar died, Virgil recounted, the sun "veiled his shining face and an evil age dreaded eternal night." Then "Germany heard the clash of armor fill the sky; the Alps quaked with unwonted shocks. Moreover a voice was heard of many among silent groves, crying aloud, and phantoms pallid in wonderful wise were seen when night was dim... Never elsewhere did more lightnings fall from clear skies, or ghastly comets so often blaze." The poet is here asking history to accommodate a more ancient tradition, in which the clash of armor, the cries of heaven, the appearance of "phantoms" (as in the Mexican counterpart), and the bursts of "lightning" all accompanied the appearance of the Great Comet and its flaming retinue, the chaos hordes. As can be seen in the words of the poet Manilius, the memory of a destructive comet is inseparable from the idea of devastating WAR -- Such are the disasters which the glowing comets oft proclaim. Death comes with these celestial torches, which threaten earth with the blaze of pyres unceasing, since heaven and nature's self are stricken and seem doomed to share men's tomb. Wars, too, the fires portend, and sudden insurrection, and arms uplifted in stealthy treachery. When, in their wars with "barbarous Germany," the enemy made away with the Roman commander Varus, the poet was quick to assert a COMET'S presence. Then "did menacing lights burn in every quarter of the skies; nature herself waged war with fire marshaling her forces against us and threatening our destruction." That the great wars of early civilizations had a ritual character and purpose is often stated, though the connection with REMEMBERED tumult in the sky is rarely confronted. One of the underlying attributes of ritual is its commemorative function--repeating the "exemplary" actions of gods and celestial heroes, with special emphasis on the catastrophic junctures in the biographies of the gods. The motive was announced repeatedly by warrior kings, who saw themselves as extending the "glory" of the ancestral gods, and repeating the devastation that the gods themselves had wrought upon the world. And the gods desired that their ancient deeds be remembered. Remembering through re-enactment was thus the essential nature of ritual combat. It is significant, therefore, that the great wars of early nations, in their ritualistic aspect, involved a deliberate repetition of earthshaking noise and havoc, endlessly blended with the motives of sacrifice. In the general mythic tradition, sacrifice and war belong to one and the same cosmic sequence. In Olmec times, according to Carrasco, "war was the place 'where the jaguars roar,' where 'feathered war bonnets heave about like foam in the waves.'" The original reference is not to a terrestrial engagement but to the contest of the gods, in which jaguar warriors (including Quetzalcoatl's jaguar form) engaged each other on the celestial battlefield. The great havoc of that conflagration meant nothing other than the cosmic night, the occasion of the god king's own death or sacrifice, when the god's heart- soul (Venus) was seen in the sky trailing fire and smoke, and the chaos- powers were set loose upon the world. The model for both the ritual war and the closely related sacrificial rites was the life of the great initiate Quetzalcoatl, as noted by Carrasco. "Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was born into a world of war. According to many primary sources the gods were periodically at war with one another during the mythic eras... In the vivid creation story of the Historia de los Mexicanos por Sus Pinturas, the gods created the Chichimec people in order to gain sacrificial blood through human warfare and the ritual sacrifice of captive warriors." Ritual repetition honored and glorified the gods through REMEMBRANCE. There is an interesting battlefield account by the Spanish soldier Bernal Díaz del Castillo, depicting a scene in the wake of a Spanish retreat near the Great Temple. A number of Spanish soldiers had been captured alive during the engagement, and the chronicler gazed back at the ensuing spectacle. There was sounded the dismal drum of Huichilobos and many other shells and horns and things like trumpets and the sound of them was terrifying, and we all looked toward the lofty Pyramid where they were being sounded, and saw that our comrades whom they had captured when they defeated Cortés were being carried by force up the steps, and they were taking them to be sacrificed. Sacrifice and war here merge as overlapping symbols, together with the "terrifying" sounds of a more ancient holocaust. Through sacrifice and war the divine ordeals were re-lived and the nation brought into more intimate correspondence with the gods. According to Duran, the Aztec priests periodically "approached the rulers, telling them that the gods were famished and wished to be REMEMBERED." The rulers then consulted among themselves regarding the hunger of the gods, and told their neighbors, the Tlaxcalans, to prepare for war--clearly a ritual occasion with agreed ground rules and calendar. "When the men were placed in formation and the troops set in order, the squadrons departed toward the plains of Tepepulco, where the armies met. The whole contest, the entire battle, was a struggle whose aim it was to capture prisoners for sacrifice." At the risk of redundancy, we must emphasize again the crucial distinction between archetype and symbol. The challenge to the investigator is this: the gods demanded sacrifice and remembrance, but the prevailing theoretical frameworks cannot answer the most fundamental question. What is the nature of the events which the gods demanded mankind remember? It is the countless RE-ENACTMENTS that answer this question, and in these re- enactments, a collective finger is pointed directly at the planet Venus, the now-settled star of the Great Comet. According to Floyd Lounsbury, one of the most respected authorities on Maya religion, the warrior kings synchronized their wars to the movements of Venus. The point is stated more than once by Linda Schele: the appearance of Venus "after superior conjunction, when Venus passes behind the sun and disappears from view, was often the occasion of war between Maya cites." Thus the Maya kings "believed that Venus played a tremendous role in war, and it appears that they invoked its assistance," looking for the day "augured by Venus as appropriate for battle." But is this not the very role of the comet in the universal lexicon? Archaeoastronomers have come to call the bloody wars sanctioned by Venus the "Star War events," a very fitting title. Citing studies by leading Maya experts, Carlson notes that 'the Maya conducted certain battles, raids or martial contests timed for significant stations in the Venus cycle, such as first appearances as Morning Star and Evening Star." Thus the Star War events were "Venus regulated." What is there about the speck of light we call Venus that could account for this power over war and warriors? And is it only a coincidence that, as the herald of war, Venus here offers us one more convergence with the celebrated Great Comet? My intent in this series of articles will be not just to demonstrate the full alignment of cometary symbols with Venus symbols, but to expose that planet's original character AS the Great Comet. In truth, Venus was remembered around the world as the flaming tempest in the heavens--the very tempest to which all of the great warrior-kings looked back again and again. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (13) _By David Talbott. _SWEEPING AWAY THE NIGHT _Discerning the relationship of archetype and symbol is particularly crucial when the symbol, in its familiar associations in daily life, cannot convey the extraordinary power of the archetype. By "archetype" we mean the original experience or idea giving meaning to a symbol. Without that relationship in view, the symbol can only appear random and absurd, because there is nothing standing behind it. A recurring symbol among the Aztecs is that of the broom. In this case the symbol may seem so far removed from our subject as to have no place in this analysis. Yet since this very symbol does recur in ritual contexts of darkness and upheaval, it is only appropriate that we seek out the underlying idea. The broom plays a part, for example, in the myth of Cihuacoatl, or "Woman Snake," the chief advisor to the Aztec ruler. Cihuacoatl stands in close but enigmatic association with both the horrifying serpentine goddess Coatlicue and the revered mother goddess Toci. But strangely, Cihuacoatl's relationships and symbols suggest two extremes, with no apparent bridge between them. In her most familiar role, she speaks for "domestic" responsibilities (she holds a broom and was remembered in the daily sweeping of the household shrine); but she was equally "at home" in her Terrible Aspect, the man-eating mistress of chaos. We must remember what Mircea Eliade and other perceptive students of comparative religion have taught us about the motives of myth and ritual. Inherent in the idea of correspondence with the gods was the idea of sacred moments, sacred domains, and sacred gestures, distinguished from the insignificant and "profane" by their connection with the great events and deeds of the gods. The principle applied at all levels of activity, not just the publicly visible centers of collective ritual. Every household had its sacred aspect, as did the kingdom. "Women had care of the household shrines, and the presentation of the little broom at birth signaled their sacred responsibility to keep the home zone well swept, and so free from potentially dangerous contamination," writes Inga Clendinnen, in her book AZTECS. In this single statement lies the key--the relationship of macrocosm and microcosm. "Dangerous contamination" operates at all levels and the words take their meaning from the myths of gods and heroes. The sacred domestic role of the broom is defined by a "broom's" role in an earlier cosmic drama the modern world has failed to understand. It may be hard for many of us today to fully appreciate that the morning sweeping of the household shrine was a commemorative occasion, symbolically tied to the sweeping away of DARKNESS. Symbolically, the localized "disorder," the gathered dust and debris, referred back to the vastly greater disorder of the COSMIC night. And this elementary symbolic relationship is the bridge between microcosm and macrocosm--the "domestic" goddess, and the all- devouring, raging hag with disheveled hair, rushing across the sky when the world had fallen into chaos. With "broom" in hand, the raging goddess pursued the chaos hordes, "sweeping" away the celestial debris of the world-ending cataclysm. Every household was an extension of the sacred order defined in ancestral times. In each household was thus kept the sacred fire, symbol of the animating light of heaven, ritually extinguished at the end of every 52-year world cycle, then re- ignited with the dawn of the new cycle. Every 52 years, the household re- lived a cosmic disaster. Then, on the following morning, as a symbol of the same events, the ritually-ordained sweeping occurred, to the sounds of a beating drum. This reverberating drumbeat meant nothing other than the voice of Ehecatl, the Dawn Bringer, avatar of Quetzalcoatl. In the words of Jacques Soustelle, "The morning star shines with the brilliance of a gem and to greet it the wooden gongs beat on the temple-tops and the conchs wail." The dawn was thus an echo of the COSMIC morning when the world was "set in order" after the great cataclysm. Ritual sweeping repeated the ancient event of cosmic renewal, the defeat of the fiends of darkness. For these "fiends" WERE the celestial debris or cometary cloud descending upon the world, symbolized in later rites by the gathered dust in shrines and on pathways. In ritual symbolism, matters of degree and scale cannot change original meanings. Goddess, broom, sweeping, drumbeat--the clearing of the cosmic night was remembered with each dawn of day. The holder of the household broom, therefore, fills the symbolic role of the goddess. And though broom and celestial conflagration may not seem compatible, the mythical memory does place them side by side. A hymn to the "broom"-goddess celebrates Cihuacoatl-- plumed with eagle feathers, with the crest of eagles, painted with serpents blood with a broom in her hands ... goddess of drum beating... She is our mother, a goddess of war, our mother a goddess of war, an example and a companion from the home of our ancestors... She comes forth, she appears when war is waged, she protects us in war that we shall not be destroyed... She comes adorned in the ancient manner with the eagle crest. The hymn makes our point for us. The goddess provides the EXEMPLARY figure to explain the later rites. The symbols of disaster, of war, and of drum beating combine with those of the broom and of protection. A goddess who "appears when war is waged" has a now-familiar sound. That is precisely the mythical role of the comet, as we have seen, and precisely the role of Venus in Mesoamerican astrology. It seems as if the commentators have failed to notice that a broom or whisk, be it constituted from straw or feathers, is a COMETARY symbol. (See our brief list supplementing the five major comet symbols noted earlier.) A bundle of straw is an old European symbol of the comet. As we will discover also in our discussion of the world- destroying hag, the famous flying broom of the European witch stands alongside the witch's disheveled, flaming hair and her serpent-dragon apotheosis as a cometary image. In China comets were remembered above all else as "brooms" sweeping away one kingdom (world age) and introducing a new order--the very function of the broom in Mesoamerican ritual. In fact, the broom plays a symbolically crucial role in more than one Aztec rite. A major celebration of the mother goddess Toci fell on the sixteenth of September, which was also a special day in the calendar of world ages. The name of the feast was Ochpaniztli, which means "Sweeping of the Roads." The chronicler Duran calls it "the Feast of Sweeping." The feast, as reported by Duran, was marked by human sacrifice, terrible commotion and feigned skirmishes in which the goddess Toci herself participated. In the ritual celebration, the goddess was personified by a warrior who, donning the skin of a sacrificed female victim and ARMED WITH A BROOM, pursued a chaotic mob of warriors. At her descent (i.e., the descent of the impersonator), and in response to the moans of Toci, "the earth moved and quaked at that moment." (The images are reminiscent of the moans in the air when Caesar died, his soul to rise as a COMET above the quaking earth.) Hearing this report Duran was highly incredulous-- I tried to investigate this and attempted to laugh off and mock this absurd belief. But I was assured that this part, this area of the temple, trembled and shook at that moment. Imagination may have served them well in this case, and the devil, always present, undoubtedly aided the imagination. Such is the power of archetypes. The integrated motifs are: commotion in the sky, moaning heavens, quaking earth, goddess with a "broom" pursuing the hordes of darkness. In these rites, the sky-darkening armies themselves were personified by warriors "armed" with brooms and appareled with colored streamers and plumed ornaments. "A bloody fray then took place among them. With sticks and stones countless men came to the combat and fight, something awesome to see..." In such manner was the havoc of the cosmic night re-enacted every year. The harsh sounds, the great din of clashing arms, the comet-like brooms and streamers of the unleashed mobs--themselves a dramatic personification of the swarming chaos powers in the sky--all accented by hurled stones and debris. Could one concoct a more vivid portrait of the cosmic upheaval terminating a former world age? A cometary disaster, involving vast "armies" or clouds and debris in the vicinity of earth, pitted against the PARENT OF COMETS, the dragon-like Venus "sweeping away" the cosmic night, provides us with a Velikovskian scenario par excellence. Clendinnen has given us an intensely dramatic account of the "sweeping" festival and its key ritual components, noting again and again the role of darkness and terror, and emphasizing the paradox of the "domestic" goddess hurled into a fray with the best warriors of the city. "These men, who scorned to turn their back in battle, fled through the dark streets ... as Toci and her followers pursued them with brooms, the' domestic' female symbol par excellence, speaking of the tireless cleansing of the human zone, but now sodden with human blood." It was Toci herself, "in her paper regalia and her great bannered headdress" and her symbolic broom, who inaugurated the ritual slaying of captives. Then she confronted the warrior-mob again, "driving them ahead of her with war cries" and her broom, the hordes scattering as she chased them, until Toci was alone and victorious, having swept away the warriors of darkness--"triumphant as the pitiless mistress of war, insatiable eater of men." The great sweeping festival, says Clendinnen, was "a brilliantly constructed horror event, in its abrupt changes of pace and its teasing of the imagination through the exploitation of darkness." Here we see "the image of the women's broom dipped into human blood and so become a weapon of terror, before which warriors famed for their courage were driven like leaves." A paradox indeed! The broom wielded as a "weapon of terror." But let us be clear on this: a broom on its own instills no fear. Only as a mirror of the COMETARY "broom," the terrifying "weapon" hurled against celestial armies of darkness, can the symbol make sense. And then the paradox dissolves before our eyes. Duran tells us that on the day of the feast to Toci, the people swept their houses and pathways, guided by some ancient belief he is unable to illuminate. Significantly, community roads and highways were also swept on this day, according to Duran, particularly the road passing by the shrine to the goddess Toci. The feast itself, as we have noted, was called "The Sweeping of the Roads," and this too is a key, for it enables us to complete the circle with respect to the sweeping rites. In Evon Vogt's book ZINACANTAN, the author gives a poetic tale from the Highlands of Chiapas concerning the planet Venus. It seems that the people remember Venus as a GIRL WITH A BROOM, for the folk tale "describes the Morning Star (Venus), who is believed to have been a Chamula girl transformed into a 'Sweeper of the Path' for the Sun." It is the astronomical association, then--the connection with celestial sweeping, the clearing of the way for the new "sun" or world age--that finds the planet Venus in the very guise we should expect. Even in the wake of vast cultural evolution and fragmentation, the nations of Mesoamerica kept alive the ancient link of the Great Comet to the planet Venus, in the symbolic form of the girl and her broom. ---
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_VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (14) _By David Talbott. _THE MYTH OF THE GREAT COMET _In these brief articles we have asked whether Immanuel Velikovsky's comet Venus finds support among Mesoamerican cultures. Our conclusion is that, to a stunning degree, the symbols or hieroglyphs of comets stand in an unexplained conjunction with the planet Venus in Mesoamerica. Not only the five most frequently-occurring hieroglyphs for the comet around the world, but virtually all of the variations on these symbols are attached to each other and to the planet Venus. On their own, the symbols do not provide any basis for the observed merging. But grant the proposed history of a COMET Venus, and all of the enigmas are removed in a single stroke. In support of this conjunction, we have also cross-referenced the Mesoamerican traditions with more general traditions about comets in other cultures, and found an underlying consistency far too broad to be explained by chance. Additionally, we have seen that the deepest fears of Mesoamerican culture turn out to be the specific fears which ancient astronomies associated SIMULTANEOUSLY with the arrival of a comet and the risings of Venus, as we should expect: the end of the world, death of kings, overwhelming wars, plague, pestilence, drought. Those who are familiar with our larger thesis will recognize that these fears are not random, but inseparably tied to a more fundamental story: that of the ancient god-king--the celestial "father" of kings--whose death or ordeal brought a former world age to a catastrophic end, and whose "heart-soul" took flight as a comet-like star. This prototypical, cometary heart-soul is nothing other than the planet Venus. One discovers this equivalence of Venus- and comet-fears in all of the symbolic and ritual contexts by which Mesoamerican cultures expressed their deepest anxieties: we see it in calendars of world ages, in superstitions associated with unexpected disruptions of natural cycles (eclipses, etc.) , in massive ritual sacrifice, in relentless war, and in a never-ending stream of commemorative festivals and rites. Repeatedly, the stargazers looked to VENUS as the cause or sign of the very disorder that world myth ascribes to the feared GREAT COMET. It has long been assumed that the great civilizations of the past oriented themselves to a sky appearing almost exactly like our sky today. I have suggested, however, that an entirely new approach to ancient myth and religion is warranted. Early races were obsessed with a prior "age of the gods," a time unlike any period of human history to follow. It is the living memories of this epoch that reveal the true source of collective fear, as generation after generation anxiously followed the movements of PLANETS. Driven by fear and guilt, the starworshippers incessantly re-enacted the critical junctures in that prior age, when planets moved out of control. There is a reason why the myth of the comet Venus is so deeply entwined with a more general memory of planetary upheaval. In truth, the evidence for an UNFAMILIAR sky is massive. But to appreciate even the first levels of that evidence one must break the trance of prior teaching and beliefs Evidence must be seen AS evidence, rather than as witness to the absurdity and contradictions of the star worshippers. When clearly-defined patterns of memory are impossible to explain under prevailing assumptions, those assumptions must be re-evaluated. To comprehend the equation of comet symbols and Venus symbols, one need only ask what we should expect to find if Velikovsky's thesis was fundamentally correct. (I do not accept Velikovsky's Venus chronology or his detailed scenario.) If Venus formerly appeared as a world- threatening comet, but subsequently lost its cometary aspect, should we not find that later fears of comets attached themselves BOTH to the now-peaceful planet Venus and to the wisps of gas periodically coming into view? Wherever systematic, empirical astronomy kept alive the Great Comet's connection with Venus, we should EXPECT that the symbols of comets would pervade the culture's images of that planet. If the thesis is correct, it could not have been otherwise. So we can hardly be surprised to find that, in Mexico, the five universal glyphs of the comet are attached to the planet Venus! That a comet is the ONLY known astronomical reference for these symbols makes the point all the more emphatic. In terms of our larger thesis, it should not surprise us either that the planet Venus was, in a hundred different ways, the regulator of the fate of kings and kingdoms in Mexico. (The Great Comet DID "determine" the fate of the king's celestial prototype; see earlier discussion of the Saturn theory.) A compelling logic will thus be seen in Venus' definitive mythical role--in regulating the cosmic cycles, ordaining festivals pointing backward to the age of the gods, sending the kingdom's strongest men to war, and sending the victims of war to the sacrificial stone. Given the full story of the Great Comet, we should expect nothing else. And even in the more tempered rituals of daily life, the keeping of the sacred fire, the morning sweeping of the shrine, and other rites too numerous to mention here, one discerns the ever-present memory of a world falling into confusion, but subsequently renewed to the drumbeat of the Dawn Bringer. When Bob Forrest said that he could find "no direct historical reference" to the Venus-comet, I believe he spoke from conviction. But the language of the first civilizations was not "historical;" it was mythical, having its reference in events no longer occurring. Thus, no civilization could meet Forrest's test. There are no "direct historical references" to the age of the gods, because that age precedes earthbound, historical chronicles. Did the underlying events implied by the myths and by the ritual acts of remembering actually occur? Given the nature of the language involved, the sheer scale of evidence is stunning; and one might wonder how the Mexican star worshippers were supposed to have told us something more about the remembered catastrophes, without a crash course in the language of modern science. In taking up such issues, cross referencing is imperative. No approach that isolates each evidential fragment, "explaining" that fragment without explaining parallel evidence pointing to the same unusual conclusion, can diminish the case for a remembered Venus-comet. No self-respecting scholar will lack the imagination to conjure an "explanation" of a particular comet symbol attached to Venus: it is simply too easy to claim that an ancient tribe or race may have accidentally confused a comet tradition with a Venus tradition. But it is the CONSISTENCY of the comet images of Venus that makes the case, and in this sense Forrest's analysis breaks down completely with the very first instance cited. The comet Venus is a global myth, and the one credible explanation of the myth is that Venus DID look like a comet--that it did participate in literally earthshaking events, not that long ago. One only has to follow the evidence to know that this is so. ---
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_MORE THAN ONE TYPHON _By Dwardu Cardona _DEDavis asks: What is the current thinking on the Exodus story, then? _CARDONA REPLIES: I'll answer this one cautiously. Most historians today will tell you thatthe Exodus never happened, and this includes many an Israeli historian. For reasons which I cannot quite go into here, I tend to disagree. However, that said, I must also report that in all the years since WORLDS IN COLLISION was written, AND DESPITE WHAT WAS SAID IN IT, I have not been able to discover one single bit of evidence that would tie the planet Venus to the event. All that can be said with SOME certainty, is: (1) that a comet does seem to have made its appearance in the sky during the Exodus; (2) that this comet was NOT the comet Venus; and (3) that an earthquake also occurred just before the Israelites left Egypt. At this point, I dare not say more.
_Kevin Weinhold wrote: Velikovsky wrote that he at one time was not sure if it was Venus or Jupiter that was the cause of the catastrophe. I suspect he connected Typhon-slain-by-Zeus via the confused connection in mythology: some reported that it was Zeus that fought and killed the monster with his lightning bolts; others reported that "Zeus" sent Venus (lightning bolts or whatnot) to kill the monster ... is such a connection still not acceptable, considering that the ancients described the same event in two ways?
_CARDONA REPLIES: Well, here, the bottom line appears to be simply this: While the comet called Typhon (that is, Comet Set) and the GREEK Typhon were NOT one and the same object, it will turn out that the GREEK Typhon was also a comet. More than that, the GREEK Typhon will turn out to have been cometary Venus in disguise. The comet called Set, on the other hand, which the Greeks also alluded to as Typhon, was NOT Venus. This is why I said the matter is a little bit complicated. The complication, however, arose simply because the Greeks, for reasons of their own, referred to the Egyptian Set as Typhon.
_DEDavis wrote: If I read "Worlds in Collision" right (and it's easy to be dazzled by Velikovsky, and thus get confused as to what is evidence and what is reconstruction...) The chain of reasoning for linking the Exodus events with Venus is: 1.Venus = Athene = Pallas Athene = Typhon 2. Rockenbach said Typhon occurred at the time of the Exodus. Yes?
_CARDONA AGAIN: This is PRECISELY where Velikovsky went wrong. The comet CALLED Typhon and the Typhon of Greek mythology are NOT the same. The comet Typhon of Rockenbach ultimately traces to Pliny, although Hephaestion, Junctinus, Lydus, Servius, Campester, Petosiris, and Joannes Laurentius also wrote about it. What Pliny actually wrote concerning this comet was this: "A terrible comet was seen by the people of Ethiopia and Egypt, to which Typhon, the king of that period, gave his name." As we all know (I hope) there was never a king of Egypt named Typhon, after whom this comet was named. What must be borne in mind here is that Typhon was what the Greeks called the Egyptian Set. Thus the Egyptian king called Typhon would have really been named Seti (of which Egypt knew more than one.) From this it follows that the comet called Typhon, named after King Typhon, would really have been named Set. It is therefore more accurate to refer to this comet as the Comet Set (although this, again, must not be confused with the original god Set.) Yes, I know, it's complicated. However, it should be seen from all this that the comet called Set/Typhon had nothing to do with the Greek demon called Typhon, with whom Athena was NOT at all associated. The Original Greek demon called Typhon was actually slain by Zeus. One other thing to keep in mind: It has never been ascertained on what evidence, if any, Rockenbach associated this comet with the Exodus. All those who also mentioned this connection, like Johann Hevel, got it from Rockenbach. Velikovsky himself was of the opinion that Rockenbach might have had access to ancient documents that might have contained quotations from the writings of Campester and Petosiris. This is doubtful in the case of Campester and purely conjectural in that of Petosiris. Lydus, who quoted Campester on Comet Typhon, would hardly have omitted this most interesting of items had the latter had anything to say about the subject. Fragments from the works of Petosiris have also been published but the information concerning the Exodus is not there contained. All we are left with, therefore, is a comet called Set which Rockenbach, for no reason we can discover, associated with the time of the Exodus. As I said before, there is absolutely no connection between this comet and the planet Venus. ---
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_A BRIEF ORIENTATION _David Talbott. _With the next issue of THOTH, I shall begin a series of articles focused on a single "snapshot" of the planetary configuration which we have claimed dominated human imagination in ancient times. As a prelude to that series, I am submitting the following introductory questions and answers for the benefit of the many new subscribers to this newsletter.
_WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT MYTH? I think there's a very good reason to care about myth, even though myth as a whole may seem to speak a language too obscure for rational, feet-on-the-ground folk. Myth is, I believe, a window to early human history, a more intense period of history than we've realized. The myths have their roots in a time of celestial catastrophe, and more often than not the appearance of confusion results from viewing myth as something other than what it is. In the course of cultural evolution and scientific advance, we left behind the fabled "long ago," whose images seemed wholly out of touch with our own world. Yet my personal conviction is that ancient myth, when seen as a symbolic record of earth-shaking events in the sky, will permanently change man's view of his celestial environment.
_BUT YOUR CONCLUSIONS ARE NOT THOSE OF OTHERS WHO DEVOTED LIFETIMES TO THE STUDY OF MYTH. HOW DOES YOUR APPROACH TO MYTH PRODUCE SUCH SURPRISING CONCLUSIONS? For more than 25 years I've been working to solve a puzzle. Why do ancient chronicles of celestial gods and heroes tell such similar stories? Though the names differ, the various biographies of the gods reveal more parallels than I had ever believed possible. And the deeper I looked the more clear it became that ancient races around the world recorded many identical experiences, even when they used different symbols to tell their stories. Many common themes run through the folklore of diverse cultures. From ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to the Americas, from India to China, Scandinavia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, one finds surprisingly similar accounts: celestial temples and cities, a lost paradise or "Garden of Eden," a cosmic mountain, a flaming serpent or dragon in the sky--and surprisingly similar stories of global calamity ranging from wars of the gods, to a great flood or a devastating rain of fire and gravel. If we'll look at these collective memories carefully, it will change our understanding of the past. Many of the myths concern planets, but the accounts make no sense to us in terms of the movement of these remote bodies today. Why did the planets, these little pinpricks of light, play such a powerful role in the mythical "age of the gods"? Along with others working in this field, I've come to interpret the myths and drawings and ritual practices from a new vantage point. Here is the conclusion in a nutshell: A few thousand years ago, the sky did not look anything like it appears today! Planets hung as gigantic, sometimes terrifying bodies above the ancient stargazers. In periods of stability this involved incredible beauty, but there were also periods of mind-altering catastrophe--the most traumatic experiences in human history. _WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS? The primary evidence comes from ancient pictures and chronicles, submitted to extensive cross-referencing. By comparing accounts from around the world, one can begin to reconstruct the way the sky looked in ancient times. Is it possible that the myths and pictographs recorded, in a language unique to the starworshippers, large- scale events we've forgotten? By keeping that possibility firmly in mind, the researcher will begin to identify crucial themes of myth-- themes found on every continent, but pointing to an alien sky. As one begins to see the past differently, recent space age discoveries will take on a new significance. Our probes of other planets, such as the Mariner explorations of Mars, the Voyager missions to Jupiter and Saturn, and more recently the Magellan mapping of Venus, the Galileo probe of Jupiter, and the Mars Surveyor have produced many stunning images of the planets and their moons, together with undeniable evidence of large-scale catastrophe within the planetary system. Taken as a whole, these stark profiles of our neighbors challenge traditional theories claiming slow and uneventful planetary evolution. Moreover, a new possibility arises from a reconsideration of the historical material: the possibility that at least some of the horrendous scars on our planetary neighbors resulted from events witnessed by man not all that long ago.
_WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THE STATEMENT THAT THE PLANETS APPEARED AS "GIGANTIC BODIES IN THE SKY"? At the core of the argument is the idea that several planets were once joined in a spectacular gathering of planets, together with gases and dust, smaller moons and cosmic debris. For prehistoric man--who witnessed all of this--the effect was a massive celestial display in the northern sky. I've called this celestial assembly "the polar configuration" because in its stable phases it was centered on the north celestial pole. In the beginning, the primary form was the planet Saturn, stationary but immense in the sky. Numerous lines of evidence suggest that Saturn once towered over man and inspired the most dramatic leaps in human imagination the world has ever known. Our work puts a new emphasis on the unusual celestial events reflected in the myths. When you first dive into world mythology, all of your prior training will tell you to dismiss the myth- makers as fabricators or victims of hallucination. But there's another way to see the myths. Ancient man experienced extraordinary events, then strove to remember and to reenact them in every way possible. The result was not only a global mythology, but entirely new forms of human expression. And the whole range of expressions--sacrifices to the gods, wars of conquest, monumental construction, pictographic representations, and endless celebrations of the lost age of the gods--left us a massive reservoir of evidence. These highly novel expressions are, in fact, the distinguishing characteristics of the first civilizations.
_BUT WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE THE SKY HAS CHANGED SO DRASTICALLY? The best I can ask for is a willingness to consider an argument. I could show you, for example, that certain celestial images preoccupied ancient man to the point of an obsession. A great cosmic wheel in the sky. The pyramid of the sun. The eye of heaven. Also the ship of heaven, a spiraling serpent, the raging goddess, and four luminous "winds" of the sky. The problem for conventional perspectives is that these images are far, far removed from anything we see in the heavens today. But that is only the beginning of the theoretical challenge. As soon as you realize that far-flung cultures, though employing different symbols, tell a unified story, all of the previous "explanations" of myth collapse. Of course the point will not be proven in a few sentences, and not in a few pages. But the more you learn on this subject, the more compelling the collective memory becomes.
_SO YOU ARE CHALLENGING THE IDEA THAT THINGS HAVE NOT REALLY CHANGED THAT MUCH WITHIN THE SOLAR SYSTEM. Yes, we are challenging an intellectual system as a whole. What is at stake here are the pillars of the modern world view. How could it be that the sky has completely changed in a few thousand years? Our textbooks do not talk about such a thing. When instructing us on the history of the solar system, the evolution of our planet, the birth of man, the origins of civilization, no one speaks of an unstable solar system, of interplanetary upheaval, or of wholesale changes in the celestial order. When the popular astronomer Carl Sagan presented his impressive exposition on the nature of things, called Cosmos, he didn't ask if we may have misunderstood our past. Rather, Sagan's expressed view--the official view of science for many years--fits comfortably within the textbooks on astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, and ancient history. When we launched the U.S. Space program in the late 50s, then devoted billions of dollars to exploring neighboring planets, no one thought to ask if the planets might have followed different courses in earlier times, whether recent disturbances of the planetary system might have left their tell-tale marks on these remote bodies. So when our cameras and measuring devices reached the planets Mars and Venus, and the Voyager probes provided spectacular glimpses of Jupiter and Saturn--well, we were left with a hundred enigmas and unanswered questions. And yes, there's a certain irony to this. The prevailing view of myth proclaims that, through science, man escaped the bonds of superstition and make believe. But now, in the twentieth century--the age of science and reason--it is myth and symbol that will provide the lost key to the past, the key to a new understanding of the solar system and of human origins. At the heart of this claim is a bedrock principle: the myth-making age arose from the human urge to REMEMBER; hence, the patterns of myth are the patterns of human memory. And if it can be rigorously demonstrated from cross cultural comparison that numerous DIFFERENT words and symbols and mythical themes actually point to the SAME HIGHLY UNUSUAL EVENTS, then the patterns of memory will carry more weight than science has ever considered.
_HOW DO YOU DISTINGUISH THESE IDEAS ABOUT "PLANETARY" MYTH FROM THE IDEAS OF OTHER RESEARCHERS SUCH AS JOSEPH CAMPBELL, CARL JUNG AND MIRCEA ELIADE? Each of these impressive scholars came to discern certain unified layers of myth, layers our traditional cynicism about myth never anticipated. Perhaps the greatest contribution of these pioneers is their acknowledgment that the common view--seeing myth as random absurdity--will not suffice to explain the subject. I think the late Joseph Campbell has done the most to awaken popular interest in myth, and he is one of my own favorites too. Following a comparative approach, Campbell brought to light quite a number of global themes. He noted, for example, the myths of the central sun, the world mountain, the flowering of creation through sacrifice, the birth of the hero, the terrible goddess, and so on. Any one of these themes, when explored in its full context, could open the door to incredible discovery. But Campbell, like so many others, stopped short of asking the most important question of all: if the celestial references of the myths are absent today, is it possible that they were present in a former time?
_WHAT IS THE REAL MESSAGE OF MYTH, IN YOUR VIEW? The mythmakers are telling us we've forgotten the very thing they regarded as most vital--in fact, the source of all meaning to the first starworshippers. We've forgotten the age of the gods. We've assumed that as long as man has journeyed on our planet the world looked and behaved almost exactly as it does today. And that is the fundamental error of modern perception. The answer to that error is to re-envision the past. With the help of the ancient chroniclers, its time to bring the forgotten dramas--both the beauty, and the nightmare scenarios--into the light of day. ---
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_NOTES ON THE COMPARATIVE METHOD _By Ev Cochrane _The science of mythology, as I've come to practice it, has three primary components, each entirely dependent upon the comparative method: (1) the demonstration of parallels between the myths and mythical characters of different cultures; (2) the identification of various mythical characters with the respective planetary bodies (or in some cases, as in that of the Babylonian Sin, with some property of this or that planet); and (3) a reconstruction of the celestial scenario behind the respective myths-specifically, an analysis of the unique behavior or visual phenomena associated with the planets which gave rise to the particular myths/characters in question. Although each of the three components should be considered necessary steps in a comprehensive analysis of myth, it is also true that each of the various stages of analysis may stand on their own. For example, our documentation of the numerous parallels which exist between Heracles, Nergal, and Indra remains valid whether or not one accepts our identification of these particular figures with the planet Mars. Similarly, even if one grants the possibility that Heracles and Indra are mythical twins, each modeled upon the planet Mars, it is always possible that some other explanation besides that of the polar configuration can be found to explain the red planet's peculiar mythical prominence (that of Velikovsky or de Santillana and von Dechend, for example). Although a satisfactory analysis of a particular myth necessarily involves completion of each of these three steps, in actual practice-as in psychoanalysis-one rarely achieves a complete or perfect analysis. As with all historical reconstructions, there are always pieces of the puzzle which remain elusive. There are several reasons for this situation, including the fragmentary nature of the myths themselves; the intrusion of foreign elements into a cult resulting in a modification or confusion of the original myth; problems caused by the faulty transmission and/or translation of a particular myth; gaps in our knowledge regarding the chronology of the events surrounding the formation, evolution, and eventual dissolution of the polar configuration, etc. Fortunately, most of these difficulties can be factored into the methodological equation or overcome/compensated for by the comparative method. For example, the fragmentary nature of the cult of Latin goddess Venus can be compensated for by comparative analysis of the extensive materials provided by the cult of Inanna. The possibility of foreign influence on the Latin cult of Mars, likewise, can be controlled to some extent by comparison with the cults of Babylonian Nergal and Aztec Tezcatlipoca. In actual practice one also finds that there is frequently a discrepancy in the degree of resolution of the respective steps of analysis. Typically step three lags far behind the other two steps as the details and chronology of the formation, evolution, and eventual dissolution of the polar configuration continue to be worked out. In a relatively new field of science this is only to be expected. Comparative mythology, in addition to being the proper starting point of any successful exegesis of myth, is also the most crucial step in the analytic process. It must always take precedence over actual planetary identifications, whether anciently attested or not. Planetary identification, although relatively reliable in the hands of an expert, remains a tricky business in light of the contradictory testimony of the ancients themselves. Not only are the planetary identifications necessarily later than the myths themselves, many cultures never attained proficiency in astronomy and thus their statements-frequently made to modern-day anthropologists and folklorists themselves ignorant of astronomy and the comparative method-can often be misleading. Nor are the most ancient astronomies always to be trusted. Even at the outset of formal astronomy, as it is represented in ancient Babylon, for example, one finds an entirely artificial system whereby various gods are identified with this or that planet or constellation. It would be methodologically unsound to accept these statements at face value. Only by comparing the Babylonian identifications with those from cultures free of its sphere of influence, such as Mesoamerica, is it possible to arrive at reliable equations. A corollary to the first rule: One should never attempt to construct a theory on the basis of a planetary identification. Rather, a planetary identification should only be attempted upon concluding a thorough and detailed comparative analysis of a particular myth, hero, or god. This would appear to be an ironclad rule of mythological exegesis. ---
_VENUS AS THE DOVE _By Robert Lugibihl Thinking about the following passages with the idea of the dove symbolizing Venus, they take on a whole new perspective. . . (D)oesn't Noah himself symbolize Saturn? If so, the line "he put forth his hand, and took her [the dove/Venus], and pulled her in unto him into the ark" is particularly interesting. And when the dove/Venus "returned not again unto him any more", it was then safe to venture out into the world again. "Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; "But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. "And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; "And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. "And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more."
_Comments by DWARDU CARDONA: Precisely. Venus left the ark (the Saturnian crescent) and descended toward Earth, then returned to the ark (the crescent) but, again, left and careened away on its own to cause a series of calamities before slowly moving on to its present orbit. Now, the above mini-scenario is NOT - repeat, NOT - based on the Noah story. It is actually based on a multitude of other records. BUT - and this is the beauty of the entire thing - it DOES fit the Noah story. The unfolding of the event, of course, and as always, is a little bit more complex than the above thumbnail bio. ---
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_GROUNDRULES FOR RECONSTRUCTING ANCIENT EVENTS (1) _By David Talbott. _We must now take up the matter of cross-cultural comparison and the use of evidence drawn from the patterns of human memory. "Ancient testimony is not credible unless it is supported by science" - in one form or another, I've heard that remark again and again. But there is a telling fallacy hidden in that assertion. It ignores the possibility - however remote this possibility may seem - that our ancestors witnessed things unknown to science, events that could force a revision in scientific understanding. As a rule, mainstream science is unfamiliar with the more ancient patterns of memory, and almost all modern perspectives are conditioned by a profound distrust of the ancient world. For centuries, in fact, it has been the mission of science to overcome the "myth and superstition" with which it associates our remote past. But we are challenging this common supposition, and we have claimed that a quite different perspective on the past is possible. In an earlier submission, we addressed the principle of converging testimony. We noted that the more unusual and specific the points of agreement between independent witnesses, the more confident we can be in these discrete memories. The principle was illustrated in the story of "The Unfortunate Peter Smith". Here we used an extreme example, in which the witnesses were prone, respectively, to hallucination, lying, and dyslexia. In this case the convergence was so precise and so out of the ordinary that - despite the general unreliability of the witnesses - the conclusion could not be doubted. In fact, we affirm this principle in our judicial processes all the time, and do not hesitate to employ it even when the life of the accused is at stake and no other body of evidence is available. In relation to the proposed Saturnian reconstruction, here is a way you might approach the issue of evidence. Try an experiment. Just for the fun of it, simply grant the claims of the theory! No need to believe anything, not even to believe that the hypothesized planetary configuration is "possible". This is only an experiment, designed to throw light on the question, WHAT COUNTS AS EVIDENCE? If you are unfamiliar with the general details of the theory, I suggest you let a single "snapshot" of the Saturnian configuration suffice for now. You will find an example on the Kronia website: kronia.com
Go to the Saturn Theory page (it's listed on the menu to the left), and note the image on the top of the page. Though a snapshot of this sort cannot convey the more dynamic components of the story - including both stable and unstable phases of an evolving configuration - it is a useful starting point for an illustration of methodology. Imagine those planetary forms towering above us; three celestial spheres of much different sizes, juxtaposed in the sky, very close to the Earth. The largest of the spheres is the planet Saturn prior to acquisition of any rings. Within that sphere (i.e., in front of Saturn) appears a much smaller, highly luminous orb, the planet Venus, from which brilliant streamers radiate visually across the face of Saturn. And within Venus rests a still smaller reddish body, the planet Mars. Now imagine human communities obsessed with this spectacle in the sky, responding with a mixture of veneration and terror. And observe how, in the wake of the configuration's devastating collapse, human imagination exploded as well, cultures around the world striving relentlessly to remember and to re-enact those events in pictures and words and ritual practices. In this envisioned condition many different "mythical" interpretations would arise. But these interpretations could not fail to reflect the natural drama which inspired them. So you ask the question. If such a world existed, what would be the value of ancient testimony - of all those cultural records celebrating the dominating forms in the sky, or re-enacting those terrifying events? And would you not expect to find a vast range of words and symbols consistently pointing to the SAME celestial forms, no longer present? Or let us put it another way. In evaluating a new theory, does it make any sense to exclude what would clearly be the most crucial source of evidence if the theory is either correct, or on the right track? I know it will be easy for some to hear these words as a dismissal of conventional science, though this is not my intent. One does not have to draw any conclusions in order to see the dangers of circular reasoning when new possibilities arise. I am only suggesting that historical evidence must be allowed to speak for itself. If the evidence is weak, then it will be easily overruled by contrary opinions of science. If the conclusions are well supported by the evidence cited, then there is a basis for re-considering contrary scientific opinion. And if some of the conclusions are INESCAPABLE, as I believe some are, then one can be confident that there will be no conflict with physical facts as the specialists comes to interpret the facts correctly. By all means, let the scientists among us express every doubt. As we've said many times, the remembered events could not have occurred without leaving a vast trail of physical evidence. (I intend to suggest several lines of inquiry in the present series.) But all true explorers, whatever their background, will welcome a rigorous investigation of cultural memories from a new vantage point. They do not need to be told that the scientific mainstream has not always gotten the picture right. ---
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_RESPONDING TO A CRITIC _By David Talbott. _Almost 25 years ago an article by James Pitton appeared in the first and only issue of a journal called CHIRON. In that article, Pitton critiqued Immanuel Velikovsky's use of sources in WORLD'S IN COLLISION. Much more recently, a well-known critic resurrected the article, wondering why catastrophists had "ignored" Pitton's criticism of Velikovsky. Since we are discussing memory as evidence, perhaps this is an appropriate place to insert a review of Pitton's comments.
_[ALL INDENTED QUOTES ARE FROM PITTON]: "It is surprising that, although Dr. Velikovsky's use of myths is one of the most important foundations of his work, it has received almost no attention from the experts. By contrast, the hostility of many members of the scientific community seems almost a healthy reaction. The purpose of this paper, then, is to make some preliminary criticisms of Velikovsky's methodology, and to indicate some approaches to specific issues, particularly in regards to "Worlds in Collision" (1950)....
_Ancient myth is, indeed, "one of the most important foundations" of Velikovsky's work. In truth, it is the global memories embedded in myth that made possible a coherent new way of seeing human history and planetary history. Of course, Velikovsky and all who have mined this field of evidence have faced a huge obstacle in the modern idea of myth as sheer fiction. How could anything as elusive or "untrustworthy" as myth count as evidence powerful enough to challenge science? At issue are two different ways of seeing myth. In one perception, myth is an outpouring of human imagination as humankind looked out at an ancient sky very much like our own. In the other perception, myth is an outpouring of imagination in response to extraordinary celestial events-- earthshaking dramas unlike anything occurring in our sky today. The good news is that one can apply certain principles of reasoning to the patterns of human memory. Though these rules are employed all the time in judicial proceedings, the vast majority of scholars have ignored them, fostering a madhouse of competing interpretations and further discrediting myth as a source of evidence.
_ "When we come to exact historical material from the myths we find many difficulties. The stories appear in endless variations. Each writer has his own version. sometimes the names are different, sometimes the sequence of events, sometimes the actual events themselves. We are, moreover, at the mercy of the individual authors. One of our earliest sources for Greek myths is Pindar, who considered himself under no obligation to tell the story as he knew it. Like the modern government censor, Pindar defended his right to change any parts of the story he thought objectionable. The earlier, of course, the purer the tradition. Conversely, many later versions of individual myths show considerable embellishment....
_Virtually everything Pitton says here is correct except the overstatement of Pindar's assumed "right to change any part of the story". There is an observable degradation of human memories over time, through localization, fragmentation, elaboration, and embellishment, including various forms of "political correctness" within the different cultures. But Pitton does not really address the implications of these evolutionary tendencies, or say how we might deal with them in a comparative approach. For example, amending a story or adding a detail will always create a contradiction between one version of a story and another. But there is more to it than this. In addition to observing the accumulation of contradictions, one must also confront the underlying points of agreement between broadly distributed cultures. Most significant are those points of agreement on details so SPECIFIC that the agreement could not be the result of accident or any suspected general tendencies of the human mind. But this principle, absolutely crucial to the comparative approach, is not even addressed by Pitton. The critic does, however, acknowledge one key which, on it own, can resolve many contradictions. The earlier the traditions, the more pure their content. This principle is of vast import, and it can be easily verified by simply observing the evolution of mythical themes and personalities over time within particular regions. One will note, for example, that countless figures originally worshipped as dominating forms in the sky are, in later times, described as LOCAL kings, queens and warriors. The Egyptian Ra was the creator-king, the central sun. But later myths depict him as an aged and venerable ruler of Heliopolis. The Greek Kronos (Latin Saturn) was also the creator and central luminary of the sky, though later traditions recalled the god as a former king, ruling for a time on earth before being forcibly removed from his throne. The Akkadian war-god Ninurta emerges in later myths as the terrestrial warrior Nimrod, and countless other celestial warriors show the same evolution. Greek chronicles describe Heracles wandering across a vast landscape, though his exploits are clearly those of the Egyptian Shu, Anhur, Sept, and Horus, with whom Heracles was, in fact, identified. The original celestial character of these Egyptian gods is beyond question, despite the fact that in later times chroniclers could point to the very places ON EARTH where the heroes' greatest exploits occurred. I mention this particular evolutionary principle because it is the single, most common basis of misunderstanding, first by ancient storytellers, then by modern-day critics. Every localization of a god in later chronicles involves a contradiction at two levels. It is a contradiction, first, because the earlier traditions do not depict a local figure, but a cosmic figure. And it is a contradiction also because each localization stands in opposition to all other localizations of the same figure, each forcing geographically- based variations into a story that originally had no connection whatsoever to geography. The roots of this evolutionary tendency in COMMEMORATIVE practices need to be appreciated. It is a fact that numerous ritual celebrations or re-enactments had the effect, over time, of placing originally CELESTIAL gods on plots of earth. In commemoration of the gods and their attributes, ancient artists and architects fashioned thousands of terrestrial symbols-- temples, cities, and kingdoms patterned after, and NAMED after, the dwelling of the gods. They constructed artificial mounds, pillars, pyramids and towers, reflecting earlier memories of the world mountain or pillar of the sky. So too, they founded innumerable holy sites in the shadow of sacred hills, or above sacred springs, or in proximity to sacred rivers--all made "holy" through symbolic projection, all pointing back to the world mountain, or fountain of the sun, or nether river which had distinguished the age of the gods from all subsequent epochs of human history. So yes, Pitton is correct that there are "endless variations" to every theme. That's what localization does, and it is why it would be futile to try to reconcile isolated "pieces that don't fit". At the level of localized myth, NOTHING WILL FIT. Reconciliation occurs at the level of the substratum, defined by the shared patterns of human memory, not by localized variations and contradictions. You find the substratum by seeing past the effects of localization to the underlying, shared motifs, then tracing these defined motifs to their earliest expressions. All of the major cultures, for example, preserved a memory of the "navel of the world." And in virtually every case this mythical "place", originally fixed in the sky, was represented locally, so that natives could point to a particular stone, or a particular shrine, temple, city, or kingdom, or a particular island, or a particular mound of earth deemed "the navel", recounting stories as to how, in primeval times, a great god or hero had founded this very place. When treated superficially, such themes will easily be passed off as mere egocentricity of the people telling the stories. And this dismissal will, in turn, deflect attention from the deeper questions raised by a comparative approach. The deeper questions arise from unexplained patterns. Why was the "navel of the world" commonly associated not just with the center, but with the "SUMMIT" as well? Why was it identified with a GODDESS? Why was it represented by the so-called "sun" pictograph (a small circle or sphere inside a much larger circle or sphere, as in the hieroglyphic sign for Ra)? What was the relationship of the navel to the NAVE of the "sun" wheel? And why, around the world, did races remember an ancestral hero born from, or departing from, or leaping from the "navel" before undertaking his adventures? In truth, each of these patterns is connected to pervasive larger patterns, presenting a structure far too coherent to be explained by any prior approach to myth.
_ These two stories [about the Spartan defense of Thermopylae and the capture and torture of the Roman general Regulus by the Carthaginians], taken from genuine historical events, not mythology, show the influence of ancient rhetoric. Rhetoric was taught at school; it was a part of every educated man's training. The ancient professors had the art of embellishment and elaboration mastered in a way that has no modern parallel. Of this school, which was at its peak during the Roman empire, a typical product was Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the tutor of the Emperor Nero. Seneca's plays abound in every mannerism and conceit imaginable. His version of the legend of Medea concludes with the heroine, having murdered her little children before he husband's eyes, escaping in a chariot drawn by dragons. Should we expect Seneca to preserve an accurate memory of early history? Apparently, for Velikovsky tells us that Seneca had a 'profound knowledge of natural phenomena.'...
_Since this statement about Seneca is the weakest point in Pitton's presentation, I will not labor through an extended response. The truth is that Seneca is the most respected naturalist of his day. But he was also a chronicler of myths, and I can assure the reader that Seneca did not invent the idea of a chariot drawn by dragons! The real question is: what was signified by that ancient idea, occurring from Europe to China? (If someone is truly curious, I'll offer the explanation provided by the Saturnian reconstruction.)
_ "Myths are obviously a very tricky source of historical information. But with proper care and judgment, much of value can be extracted from them. Does Velikovsky show such care and judgment? Unfortunately he often does not. In at least three important ways Velikovsky's use of mythology is unsound. The first of these is his proclivity to treat all myths as having independent value; the second is the tendency to treat only such material as is consistent with his thesis; and the third is his very unsystematic method....
_These lines by Pitton are actually a lead-in to some interesting comments on the Iliad and on Velikovsky's identification of the goddess Athena with Venus. But discussion of the Iliad will require more background on the evolution of the warrior-hero myth, which I will reserve for follow-up next issue. For now I will simply register my own opinion with respect to the "three important ways Velikovsky's use of mythology is unsound". There are instances in which Velikovsky does, indeed, build too much on particular myths--such as the presumed explosion of Venus from Jupiter, based substantially on the myth of Athena's birth from the head of Zeus. If theorists are permitted to build entire theses on such selective use of material, then every interpretation imaginable will be possible. Moreover, there is a much larger field of evidence one can draw from, since stories of this sort are actually subheadings to the widespread myth of Venus as the departing eye-heart-soul of the sovereign god. The second objection, though containing much truth, can also be misleading. The fact is that Velikovsky detected certain patterns that cannot be denied and which, taken as a whole, speak emphatically for unusual phenomena--most notably the spectacular cometary history of Venus. There is nothing unreasonable in gathering from around the world the many instances reflecting this highly unusual idea, no matter how many other interesting ideas might be overlooked in the process. The fact is that Velikovsky did not address more than two to five percent of the recurring mythical themes. But by identifying certain themes and offering explanations, he opened the door to a new approach which DOES address the full range of themes in a unified way. And lastly, I would certainly not call Velikovsky's method "unsystematic". It is the systematic nature of his inquiry which establishes one of the key principles: when DIFFERENT words and symbols refer to the SAME celestial phenomena and imply the SAME sequence of events, they constitute legitimate evidence. ---
_VENUS AND VELIKOVSKY - Grinspoon's Venus _by Ev Cochrane _This week, while doing research for my forthcoming book on the planet Venus, I was reading David Grinspoon's fascinating account of Venus discovery: Venus Revealed (New York, 1997). If there is one thing that stands out about modern scientific deduction with regards to Venus it is that astronomers somehow managed to get most everything wrong. Well into the 1950's, it was still commonly held that Venus was a relatively warm place distinguished by rich vegetation, swamps, and oceans teeming with various forms of life. The clouds, it was thought, were composed mostly of water. WRONG! The rotation rate of Venus was supposedly some 24 hours, just like Earth's. WRONG! Name a feature about which scientists speculated and you find one wrong answer after another. Most remarkable, perhaps, is the long history of bogus "observations" and scientific "findings", including supposed Venusian moons, canals on Venus, a 24-hour rotation rate (others reported they had "measured" a 225 day rotation rate), and so on. Mind you, these bogus claims weren't offered by writers of science fiction; they were offered by the leading astronomers of the day! Given this pathetic historical track record, one can't help but question whether we should give the current received opinion of Venus' recent history and geological nature any more credence. After all, the currently prevailing view of Venus' origins still relies upon the theory that that planet has orbited peacefully on its current orbit for billions of years. I, for one, predict that modern-day astronomers are destined to remain like the prisoners of Plato's cave as long as they refuse to consider the abundant testimony of our ancestors to the effect that Venus only recently experienced a series of spectacular catastrophes and changes in orbit. ---
_Velikovsky's Originality _by Dave Talbott _Velikovsky's originality involves numerous components brought together in a seminal and unified approach: ancient testimony as evidence for unusual natural events, cross- cultural comparison to extract underlying ideas, planets as the great gods of the sky- worshippers, Venus as former "comet", Mars as celestial warrior and disturber of the Earth, Saturn as former dominant body in the sky, Jupiter as visible "successor" to Saturn, active role of electromagnetism in an unstable solar system, thunderbolts flying between planets, gravity as an aspect of electricity, catastrophic history of the earth, catastrophe as catalyst in evolution, the psychology of collective amnesia, fundamental challenges to the underpinnings of conventional historical chronologies. People will express opinions on all sides of the different questions raised, but the extremes to which various folks will go to deny "originality" to Velikovsky are a wonder to behold. Of course, it would be absurd to think that, when you break Velikovsky's original perspective into discrete pieces, you would not find precedents for many of the separate components. Taking his work as a whole, Velikovsky is doubtless one of the most original thinkers of this century. ---
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_Heroes of the Iliad _By David Talbott. _In the previous issue of this newsletter, we began a review of a 1974 article by James Fitton (I erroneously entered the name as "Pitton") occurring in the first and only issue of the journal CHIRON. We shall now continue that discourse, with a twofold purpose: first, to examine the logic of the comparative method; and second, to illustrate the ACID TESTS for verifying even the most extraordinary conclusions. Following this path will require us to go far beyond a mere "answer" to Fitton's contentions and to consider the groundrules of a more promising perspective on the entire field of study.
_Pitton wrote - "One of Velikovsky's most brilliant passages is that in which he cites the famous scene in the "Iliad" where Ares and Athene fight on the battleground before Troy. Athene, says Velikovsky, is the planet Venus, and Ares the planet Mars. Here is an allegory of a great cosmological drama of the eighth century B.C., when, as Velikovsky believes, these two planets nearly collided in space. The myth seems decisive evidence for his beliefs. But, on looking more closely at Homer, we see that this incident is one of several that occurred in a scene where various gods and goddesses were depicted as lining up against each other. In another part of this sequence Athene trounces Artemis, a goddess of the earth; in yet another Apollo, the sun god, contemplates a trial of strength with Poseidon, god of the sea. What great cosmological events are referred to in these lines of Homer? Velikovsky does not say; he does not refer to them....
_This paragraph reveals a deep misunderstanding of the Comparative method. The presence of isolated and unexplained images does not invalidate any conclusions with respect to images that ARE explicable through comparative analysis. Repeated similarities in the accounts of diverse cultures - similarities at the level of concrete detail, similarities that cannot be explained by coincidence - MUST refer to a common origin or common experience. And the more unusual or "out of the ordinary" the shared details, the more powerful the evidential value, as we have already noted. Moreover, as we will also see, a model based on recurring, global motifs will often throw surprising new light on more fragmentary images, even in cases where the fragments originally appeared to have no explanation whatsoever. When it comes to ancient memories of Mars and Venus (as we Previously observed), one faces a staggering volume of material. These are, in fact, the two most active figures in archetypal myth, while the Universal Monarch is a far more passive figure, often fading into the background in later transmissions. But the issues here are complicated by Velikovsky's own assumptions in his treatment of the Iliad. Velikovsky argued that Homer's narrative describes tribal conflicts on Earth at a time when the planets Venus and Mars moved on catastrophic courses, appearing to battle in the sky. At the outset of my own research, I was eager to consider this possibility. But soon a quite different possibility emerged. Here was my conclusion: there is no local history whatsoever in the poet's narrative! The entire story of the "Trojan War" is a localization of a much more ancient memory - the earthshaking celestial conflagration called the "wars of the gods". How can I assert this sweeping conclusion with such confidence? The confidence comes from the comparative study itself, which exposes the taproot of worldwide cultural traditions. It is this deeply-rooted cultural memory that fed all of the later accounts of heroes and warriors, as the chroniclers brought formerly celestial gods down to earth and presented them in mortal dress. First there was the story of a heaven- shattering conflagration, in which celestial powers battled in the sky. Then, centuries later, there were the chronicles of "tribal" wars, of "nations" battling "nations", all highlighting the exploits of a great warrior, and all sounding as if the events occurred on a terrestrial landscape. But who were these heroes, whose feats and ordeals fill the pages of Homer's Iliad, or the Aeneid of Virgil, or the Mahabharata and Ramayana of the Hindus, or the Celtic Mabinogion (not to mention countless other native chronicles)? It is simply impossible to undertake a comparative study of such figures without confronting the ARCHETYPAL warrior-hero presented under a vast range of symbols - what Joseph Campbell called "The Hero with a Thousand Faces". In tracing various hero-motifs to the earliest strata of civilization, it became crystal clear to me that the later figures are nothing more than echoes of the great celestial warrior celebrated in the oldest written records of humankind.- Nergal, Ninurta, and Irra of the Akkadians; Shu, Horus, and Sept of the Egyptians, to mention the barest few examples. The archetypal warrior-hero moves in the sky. And yet centuries later this same personality is seen on a local landscape, and the entire texture has changed. (For example, he no longer stands in relationship to a central sun or Universal Monarch, but instead serves a TERRESTRIAL "great king", a literary echo of the central sun.) The principle of localization is almost certainly the most misunderstood tendency in the evolution of myth. And the Iliad would make an excellent case study. Homer's story is presented as an account of the tenth year of the "Trojan War", as a confederation of Greek tribes under the rule of Agamemnon and led by the hero Achilles, sought to avenge the abduction of Helen, wife of King Menelaus, by the warrior-hero Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam. On the face of it, the conflict is something like a feudalistic war, in which far- flung communities are mobilized against a common enemy. In concept it is certainly believable, though the respective warriors appear (suspiciously) as mirrors of each other, and the abduction of a famous princess by an equally famous warrior-prince does have an eerily familiar ring to it. By comparing attributes and key episodes in the lives of the great heroes, one sees that the "best" or most illustrious tribal "ancestor" expresses archetypal images and storylines (flight of his mother, miraculous birth, abandonment at birth, exposure on a mountaintop, or fall into a river, ignorance of his father, spectacular growth and amazing feats as a child, possession of an astonishing weapon with which he is inseparably identified, servitude to a great king, murder of a great king, abduction of the daughter of a great king, torrid love affair with the daughter of a great king, confrontation with chaos powers (dragons and other monsters), defeat of chaos powers, and a good deal more, down to numerous remarkable or bizarre details ranging from intimate associations with a cosmic pillar to such potentially comic episodes as being dressed, or disguised as a woman. These unexplained but recurring motifs are, in fact, far too numerous to be detailed here, but must all be confronted under the rules of the comparative approach. On the cosmic origins of these motifs I no longer have any doubt. The hero was originally a god seen in the sky. Indeed, in the Iliad, the demarcation between "mortals" and celestial "gods" is incessantly blurred Throughout the story, gods and goddesses intervene in critical events, and historians would have us believe NONE of this. Nevertheless, many of the same historians DO ask us to believe that within Homer's narrative are embedded the accounts of actual historical personages, despite the fact that all efforts to find evidence for their historicity have failed. In the intricate web of genealogies, divine intrigue, and heroic combat we meet numerous great warriors on both sides of the confrontation. On the Trojan side, Paris, Hector, Troilus (all "sons" of Priam) and the hero Aeneas. On the Achaean side, Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax, Patroclus, Diomedes. (Numerous others flit in an out of the story, of course.) But these figures are virtually indistinguishable in underlying concepts from the heroes Heracles, Perseus, and Theseus, whom Greek literature treats as "mortals", but who are beyond question the echoes of older warrior-gods helping to organize kingdoms, not on earth, but in the sky. Heracles was a Greek name of the planet Mars. And it is of no small significance that Theseus, a virtual carbon copy of Heracles, was himself said to have abducted Helen - before the events recounted in the Iliad, of course. The birth of Paris and his feats as a child replicate the universal "birth of the hero" theme: abandonment at birth, exposure at birth on a mountaintop, super-human strength , defeat of "bandits", and rescuing of stolen "cattle" as a child (c.f., "cattle of the sun" rescued by the Hindu warrior-god Indra). Like so many heroes, he begins his life as a slave (servant motif), though he is actually a prince, wins contests of strength, speed and skill, is loved by goddesses, carries off and marries the daughter of a famous king, murders another famous king while on adventures in foreign lands, and so on. So too, his alter ego Achilles entered the world by a miraculous birth. The event was followed by the flight of his mother. He was dropped into a river, raised on a sacred mountaintop, performed extraordinary feats as a child; was disguised a girl, placed in the service of a great king, and consorted with the daughter of the king. (I might also mention that the armor of Achilles was fashioned by the god Hephaestus, the same god who fashioned the shield of Hercules, around which OCEANUS flowed.) As celestial gods and goddesses are localized, they shed their cosmic dimensions, becoming the far-famed "ancestors" of the tribes telling the stories - the great kings, queens, heroes, and princesses of a lost epoch. In the same way, the spectacular dwelling of the gods - the "wheel of the sun" (habitation of the Universal Monarch) - becomes a legendary town, or city, or kingdom which fell in the distant past, when vast armies were mobilized and the world shook from great battles. Of course, in epic literature, the memories of numerous tribes are woven into linear narratives, depicting one warrior after another fighting beside or against his own alter egos. That is, in fact, the primary artifice by which poets succeeded in honoring and integrating diverse tribal traditions. These heroes are not just "descendants" of the gods. They WERE the gods - once! Actually, even in Greek literature it is virtually impossible to separate the epic heroes from the domain of the gods. In the Iliad, the gods Zeus, Apollo, Ares, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, and Poseidon are very much a part of the key episodes, conversing with heroes, standing beside them, falling in love with them, consorting with them. More than once, the gods themselves take part in the fighting, as when Apollo delivers the first blow to Patroclus, before the hero is struck by Euphorbus and then Hector. It was Apollo who guided the arrow that struck the "heel" of Achilles. Agamemnon is likened to Zeus in his upper part and Ares in his lower limbs. (Those familiar with the Saturn model will have no difficulty discerning the concrete origins of the idea.) Numerous ancestors or relatives -Tantalus, Niobe, Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes, among others - were closer in character to gods than to men. Helen was the daughter of Zeus. Her mother Leda was also the mother of the "heavenly twins", Castor and Pollux. (Indeed, more than one scholar has recognized Helen as a local transcript of Aphrodite, astronomically identified with Venus). It was said that the walls of Troy were built by Apollo and Poseidon. Cassandra, foretelling the destruction of Troy, is strangely reminiscent of the ancient lamenting goddess, roaming about with wildly disheveled hair and disturbing the land. In truth, there is not a shred of historical evidence that such personalities originated as flesh and blood figures. It is not my purpose here to merely suggest that there are archetypal themes and connections yet to be discerned by historians. Our claim must be much more explicit. There is an archetypal Universal Monarch or king of the world, an archetypal mother goddess, and an archetypal warrior hero. ALL OF THE RECURRING THEMES AROUND THESE ARCHETYPES AROSE IN RESPONSE TO SPECTACULAR FORMS IN THE SKY. THESE FORMS ARE NO LONGER PRESENT. But such a claim is surely preposterous! Well, the very outlandishness of this claim will provide a unique value under the comparative approach. It will make the acid tests both obvious and decisive. And it is these tests to which I will refer the reader in our next installment. ---
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_THE TWO FACES OF "PLAUSABILITY" _by Dave Talbott _On several occasions recently, in reference to the Saturn theory, David Davis raised the vexing question of physical plausibility. This is a first shot at putting the question into perspective, particularly for those such as David D who were not present as such questions were discussed over the years. The problem involves two radically different fields of evidence - human memories on the one hand, and physical observation on the other. But truth itself is unified, and one can be certain that when conflicts occur something is wrong on at least one side of the ledger. A false assumption, a false reading of evidence, a false analysis of probability, or an invalid deduction. So how do we deal with the situation when human memories speak convincingly for something which orthodox science, with equal persuasion, denies? The Saturn theory suggests events and natural forces contrary to almost everything believed by the scientific mainstream. Does this mean that science gets to tell us whether the theory is "valid", without showing that we have misstated or misused evidence, or applied reasoning to the evidence improperly? Mainstream theorists can certainly point out the disparity between the claims of the Saturn theory and the textbook history of the solar system. And we can, in turn, point out that things which science considers out of the question were consistently remembered around the world and with a degree of detail and coherence that is inconceivable under usual explanations. But the situation is a stalemate until a ground of reconciliation is reached. What is impossible could not have happened. What happened cannot be impossible. And this fact is, singularly, our basis for confidence that answers CAN be found. We have either misapplied principles of reasoning to the historical evidence, or science is misreading evidence to a profound degree. A quick background statement for more recent subscribers to this list. The Saturn theory involves a congregation of planets including at least two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and the planets Venus, Mars and Earth, all moving around the Sun, with the Earth close enough to these bodies that they present a spectacular and at times frightful presence in the sky. Four key contrasts with conventional theory are inherent in the construction: 1) dramatic changes in the planetary order in geologically recent times; 2) a period of collinear alignment within the hypothesized configuration (during this period, of indeterminate length, the planets stayed in line and were thus seen from the Earth as juxtaposed spheres); 3) a period of axial alignment between the Earth and the collinear configuration, so that Saturn and the other bodies appeared fixed at the pole; and 4) an indeterminate period in which a bright crescent on Saturn visually turned in the sky (due to light from the Sun and the effect of Earth's rotation), the positions of this revolving crescent around the pole reflecting the terrestrial cycle of day and night. Now perhaps you have wondered how I could have ever proposed such a thing, knowing full well that PLANETS DO NOT BEHAVE THIS WAY under the fundamental "rules" of celestial dynamics. Actually, it was easy. I was convinced that the weight of historical evidence is, when evaluated logically and dispassionately, more persuasive than present scientific beliefs about planetary behavior. And this conviction has only grown over the years. The scientific consensus is not a finished encyclopedia with an exclusive on truth, and in fact that consensus is proven wrong every day. Critics have often assumed that when I first proposed the idea of a "Polar Configuration", I simply didn't know that everyday science virtually FORBIDS the underlying concepts. But in fact I knew this very well, and from the beginning I had people repeating the obvious to me. So I said (in print, more than once) that the configuration is, in terms of present scientific understanding, "impossible", or (when I was feeling more charitable to the concept) "highly implausible". To which I would add (in so many words) that the "truth must be out there", even if we have missed it. Now step into this perspective for a moment. I am as certain that huge planetary forms were seen in the sky as I am of any rule of logic, or any natural experience known to man. This is because the universal memory is too explicit, too concrete and too unusual to be explained in any other way. This is now an unshakable conviction with me. Apart from the implied celestial references, the accord of human memories is simply not possible. And I do mean NOT POSSIBLE. I am not asking you to believe this, just to understand that this is the position I hold, which may also help you understand why I believe so strongly that our task is, above all else, to develop a clear and effective presentation of the historical argument. What must be developed is a presentation SO clear that those rare but uniquely capable and open-minded individuals within the sciences will be inspired to ASK THE QUESTION and to help us find the ground of reconciliation. I am not foolish enough to think that I will be the one to solve the challenge scientifically! I have to speak subjectively on this, but I believe that all who have worked to solve a mystery, or to understand a new idea, or to discover a new possibility will share in the confidence I am expressing on this point. It is BECAUSE truth is unified that the sense of a new possibility will always direct you to follow the implications of the idea through a maze of tests. At every step, this was the basis of my growing confidence in the historical reconstruction. As the planetary configuration came into focus, it began to suggest many hundreds of tests, always implying that if I would look in this direction, or that direction, I would find specific data (enigmatic meanings of words, drawings of things not seen in our sky, unexplained re- enactments of cosmic events) consistently speaking for the same underlying forms. And for this very reason, I shall continually urge true explorers in the sciences to follow the tests into their own domains as well. (Still speaking for myself now.) These things happened. That means the dynamical principles must be available to us. The physical evidence must still lie in the ground. It is just that, as Kuhn himself would put it, we are not seeing the evidence properly. To illustrate the way this confidence works, I want to give a few examples relating to the greatest conundrum in the first 21 years of the research - the principle of collinear alignment (planets staying in line while moving around the Sun). Even now, on the Kronia discussion group, we periodically see posters remarking on the "impossibility" of such a configuration. Here is what they are talking about: In any Newtonian system, planets move around a center of gravity. If the hypothesized Jupiter-Saturn system revolved around its own center of gravity as it moved around the Sun, one must deal with the principle of orbital equilibrium and Kepler's Third Law. The farther a planet is from the center of gravity, the slower will be its orbital velocity and the longer will be its orbital period. But planets staying in line would have to have the SAME orbital periods. Therefore, an in-line configuration is gravitationally impossible. Given the imposing momentum of planet-sized bodies, surely no "secondary" force could even come close to resolving the problem. "The polar configuration is a blatant violation of Kepler's Third Law." Even various Velikovskians joined in that refrain. Leroy Ellenberger repeated it many times. Later, Tim Thompson, on the Internet discussion group, talk-origins, repeated it in a series of postings. So how could one claim, based entirely on human memory, that a physical principle MUST be available to support the concept? Well, here's what happened. Some 21 years after I had first proposed a collinear configuration (originally I did not even know that the name for such a thing existed), the dynamicist Robert Grubaugh contacted me with a bombshell revelation. In orbital mechanics, he said, there is something called collinear equilibrium. If you put planets in line around the Sun, close enough to each other that they are all within what is called the "sphere of influence" of the dominating planets (in this case, Jupiter and Saturn), there is for each of those planets an equilibrium position at which they will STAY IN LINE until disturbed. In the unique condition of collinear equilibrium, the usual implication of Kepler's Third Law does not apply! Suddenly, a 21-year objection based on "things KNOWN to science", collapsed. So here was a first demonstration of the maxim, "the truth is out there" - a startling convergence of the historical argument and physical principle. Not just an interesting and unique principle, but the very principle the historical argument DEMANDED. Was this the end of it? No, that began a series of revelations following the same pattern. First, there was the proclamation by critics that something was "impossible" (the favorite word in the lexicon of debunkers); then there was the subsequent revelation that a particular dynamic principle overlooked by the debunkers was the very principle the Saturnian reconstruction called for. I will enumerate a series of examples in submissions to follow, all coming under the same heading - CONVERGENCE. ---
http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thoth.1998.16.txt
_THE COMET VENUS AND THE COMPARATIVE METHOD _by Dave Talbott. _Over the next few issues of THOTH, I'll be toggling between two threads - one on the methodology of the historical investigation and the other on the physical implications of the theory. We are now back to methodology, and once again James Fitton will provide the catalyst, this time for a look at the myths and symbols of the "comet" Venus. Among the representatives of Venus, according to Immanuel Velikovsky, was the Greek goddess Athena, a power born from the head of Zeus "like a blazing star which the lord of heaven shoots forth, bright and scattering sparks." Since the star trailing flame or sparks is a universal hieroglyph for the comet, various translators have rendered the expression in this line from the "Iliad" as just that - a "comet". But is this comet-like goddess properly identified as the planet Venus?
_Pitton wrote- "... Let me close my paper, however, by examining a cardinal point in Velikovsky's book-- his identification of the Greek goddess Pallas Athene with the planet Venus. All the substantial evidence that Velikovsky draws from the Greek myths vanishes if this identification fails. "What is Velikovsky's proof? "He begins by asserting that Pallas Athene was identified with the Babylonian Ishtar. Such a statement is hardly important. After Alexander's conquests the Greeks became aware of the religions of the ancient Near East, and frequently sought points of similarity with their own. Such similarities were often very superficial. Ishtar may have had something in common with Athene, but it would be very surprising if she resembled Athene in every respect. Velikovsky also says, 'Anaitis of the Iranians, too, is identified as Pallas Athene and as the planet Venus.' I checked Velikovsky's reference. The authority says that Anaitis was identified by the Romans with Minerva (Greek Athene) and with Venus (i.e., the goddess Venus, or Aphrodite of the Greeks)[fn. 27: F. Cumont, "Les Mysteres de Mithra", 3rd ed. (1913), p. 111]. Since Velikovsky is at great pains to point out that the goddess Venus was not the planet of the same name, his statement here is quite misleading. Velikovsky then quotes Plutarch to show that Athene was identified with Isis, and he quotes Pliny to show that Isis was the planet Venus. It all seems mathematically very correct: Athene equals Isis equals planet Venus. But identifications of this type were common in the Roman empire, a time when Europe was literally flooded with oriental cults. Isis, for example, was identified with the goddess Demeter and with Aphrodite, as well as with Athene. Since identifications varied so much Velikovsky's formula is quite misleading. Moreover, even in the passage cited by Velikovsky, Pliny contradicts him. He says that the planet Venus was identified with Juno (i.e., the Greek Hera). He says nothing about Athene.
_In one paragraph, Pitton has combined several erroneous statements with some highly dubious reasoning. There is no one who has examined the astronomical associations of Venus with a more discerning eye than Ev Cochrane, publisher of the journal AEON. Here was his observation on the above paragraph-
_ On virtually every issue raised here, Velikovsky is absolutely right and Fitton wrong. Athena *is* comparable to Ishtar in many respects [See Cochrane's article on Athena -AEON II:3- for numerous examples and further evidence that Athena is to be identified with Venus]. Athena *was* identified with Anaitis and the Iranian goddess *was* identified with the planet Venus by the ancient Iranians themselves as well as by numerous modern scholars. ... Athena *was* identified with Isis, and the latter goddess was identified with the planet Venus by the authorities cited by Velikovsky. That Isis offers an Egyptian parallel to the Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian Ishtar nearly everyone agrees. If Inanna/Ishtar are to be identified with the planet Venus, as all learned authorities agree, then it stands to reason that the same holds true of Isis.
_Moreover, the comparative approach will enable one to go far beyond explicit astronomical identifications, to confirm that ALL of the goddesses cited by Fitton - and hundreds of other goddesses as well - do fall under the Venus archetype. Planet lists and empirical astronomy came relatively late (as we should expect, since there WERE no planets moving on predictable orbits when the myths were born), and the fact is that most ancient tribes possessed no observational discipline for preserving the link of gods and planets. But are widespread cultures telling the SAME STORY in their myths and rites? If so, the Venus identifications affirmed by ancient cultures that DID develop the necessary disciplines are more than sufficient to make our case.
_But Pitton continues- There is, to my knowledge, no evidence that the Greeks ever identified Pallas Athene with the planet Venus. It is in fact interesting to note that, of all the different Greek gods and goddesses associated, at different times, with this planet, the only one missing in one standard discussion is Athene Yet if the great cosmological catastrophes that Velikovsky describes did occur, and if, moreover, they were remembered, as he says, in the world's mythologies, it could hardly be that the Greeks would have entirely forgotten this important identification, which alone provided the clue to the interpretation of those myths.
_To this, Cochrane replies- Pitton is right that the ancient Greeks apparently never identified Athena with Venus. So what? The Greeks also forgot the original celestial identification of Apollo (Mars). As I have documented in "The Birth of Athena," to be supplemented in large part by my forthcoming book "The Many Faces of Venus," there can be no doubt but that Athena is to be identified with the planet Venus. The fact that Velikovsky deduced this identification solely from a comparative analysis of the Greek myths--and with little help from the Greeks themselves-- says a great deal about his insight into the origins of ancient myth.
_Precisely so. The comparative method does not demand that every culture identify gods and goddesses with planets, since that would require astronomical knowledge that did not exist among most ancient peoples. But the comparative approach does work, and with surprising dependability. Patterns which would otherwise be missed can be tracked from one culture to another around the world, then linked to reliable planetary identifications within those cultures which developed sophisticated knowledge of the planets. These astronomers, from Babylon to China, from India to the Americas proclaimed with one voice that the mother goddess was Venus and no other planet. But the Saturn theory offers something more - a highly concrete model, drawing our attention to well- defined forms in the sky. These forms are, in fact, so tangible, so specifically drawn, that disproof of the model will be incredibly easy if we are off the mark. Unexplained superstitions and symbols of comets provide a good example, and the interconnected images can be applied to ANY well-documented goddess-figure. Name the goddess, and a Saturn theory researcher can point you to the vividly-presented cometary aspect of that goddess.
_The Saturn theory claims-- _1) that ancient fears, images, and beliefs about comets were inspired by a "Great Comet" remembered around the world; _2) that the Great Comet was the PLANET Venus, prototype of the mother goddess; _3) that the story of the Great Comet is the worldwide story of the mother goddess in her "terrible aspect". We will claim, therefore, that global myths associated with VENUS account for the worldwide images of COMETS. In fact, none of the ancient comet-ideas can be explained by the familiar behavior of comets in our sky today, any more than ancient images of Venus could be explained by the present behavior of that planet. The focus of ancient memories is on an entirely different sky. In our reconstruction, the story has a beginning and an end, with many fascinating episodes in between. And it has a reference in something SEEN, a congregation of planets that can be reconstructed down to many remarkable details. Our reference for now will be the image on the Kronia Communications website, presently under construction by Steven Parsons. Go to the page on the "Saturn theory" at- www.kronia.com There you will find a single "snapshot" of the evolving configuration, enabling us to illuminate the ancient goddess, with stunning results. Since Athena is the figure cited by Fitton, we will let this goddess serve as our first example. The story of the comet Venus begins with Venus as the great "star" depicted in the center of a vastly larger body, the gas giant Saturn. As seen from the Earth, luminous streamers of the central "star", spread across the face of the larger sphere. As we have already noted, the translators of the early religious and astronomical texts often render this larger body as "the sun". But the early astronomical identification of the "sun" with the planet Saturn is beyond dispute, even if the experts may disagree as to what to do with the anomaly. Equally enigmatic is the presence of a smaller dark or reddish sphere inside the central star. Comparative analysis will identify this sphere as the planet Mars. Ancient races called this the "Great Conjunction" of the golden age. That is not just a strange idea. Around the world, and to the point of obsession, sky- worshippers drew pictures of it. And the pictures they drew are very much like the pictures you yourself would draw if planets loomed in this fashion above YOU. Nothing in our sky is remotely similar to it. Yet the underlying form is universal and was a focal point of a vast lexicon of rites and symbols. (The fact that the known sizes of the depicted planets allow for this very image is no small matter either, considering the huge variation in actual planetary diameters! See "Symbols of an Alien Sky" pp. 71-94.) The comparative approach identifies a wide range of mythical images prompted by the appearance of Venus in this planetary configuration:
_Great Star, Great Comet _Long-haired, fiery-haired goddess _Radiant heart, soul, or "life" of the primeval sun god (Saturn) _Visible glory, radiance, majesty, splendor, power, or strength of the primeval sun _Nave (hub) and spokes of the "sun" wheel (Saturn's wheel) _Radiant eye of the "sun"; eye with streaming tears _Rayed crown worn by the warrior-hero (Mars) _Feathered headdress worn by the warrior-hero _Shield or protection of the warrior-hero _Cross-cultural investigation will show that these Venus- or goddess-images are among the dominant symbols of the ancient world. They are certainly not mere abstractions. To be sure, the mythical content involves a relentless use of metaphor, but from what human experience did the metaphors arise? The texts, pictographs, monuments, and ritual re-enactments make clear that the subject is a visual spectacle in the sky, involving prodigious forms and cosmic upheaval. The result was the most far-reaching explosion of human imagination the world has ever known. The "soul" of the ancient sun god, the god's "majesty" or "strength" was a tangible, highly visible, highly active FORM IN THE SKY, recorded in astonishingly similar terms around the world. If scholars as a whole have failed to see the coherent message it is only because, lacking a concrete reference, they did not pause to notice the distinctive patterns. The breakthrough comes from seeing, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the existence of these patterns REQUIRES an external reference. So too, once this reference is discerned, numerous additional patterns are impossible to miss. In the case of Athena, for example, I would challenge readers to put the model to a test through a little independent research. See if you can answer these questions: _1) What are the commonly-cited attributes and associations of Athena? _3) Do you find the conventional explanations of the goddess' attributes persuasive? _2) How might our model explain these diverse aspects and symbols? _4) Can you describe how ONE feature of our model - the appearance of Venus - will explain MORE THAN ONE attribute of the goddess? By working with the model you will discover an ability to explain what cannot be explained by traditional approaches. And the more you descend to specific details, the more definitive the tests will be. I would like to hear from anyone who might invest in this little experiment. Perhaps I could then reproduce the results for THOTH readers, in connection with our next submission to this thread: "The Warring Goddess Athena" ---