http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thotiv14.txt
SATURN'S REVOLVING CRESCENT by Dave Talbott [ed. note: this is an experiment, hoping to find a way to add illustrations to THOTH. The attached photo belongs with this article. Please let me know if you are able to receive it.] The attached illustration depicts four distinctive phases in the daily cycle of the polar configuration: UPPER LEFT. Here the Sun has set and the crescent is descending to the left. The sky is darkening and the configuration is growing bright. This is the beginning of the archaic "day," which continued to be celebrated at sunset for many centuries after the disappearance of the planetary configuration. Of course echoes of the original timekeeping language occur even into modern times. Archaic words for the brightening of Saturn will usually be translated as the "rising" of the sun, though the literal meanings will be "to grow bright," to "come to life," "to grow strong," etc.
UPPER RIGHT. Now the crescent is directly below, in its midnight position. In the archaic language of the daily cycle, this is the supreme moment of the "day," the moment of greatest brilliance.
LOWER LEFT. The crescent rises to the right as the sky lightens and the splendor of the configuration begins to diminish. Archaic words for this phase in the daily cycle will usually be translated as "evening," which can only foster more confusion.
LOWER RIGHT. At noon, the crescent is directly above, in its weakest phase. Archaic words which are typically translated as "night" refer to this phase in the daily cycle, representing the waning of the sun god's "life," "strength," or "brightness."
To make sense of the comments I intend to submit over the next several days, it will be imperative that readers understand this aspect of the model. If Saturn was at the pole, as required by the global traditions, and the Sun cast a bright crescent on Saturn, no other motion of the crescent is possible. Therefore, the tests of the model can only emphasize the profound contrast between the predictions of the model and the language of the daily cycle expected under the common solar interpretations.
Michel Tavir wants to know: Excuse if I ask, ... how can the Sun cast a light on Saturn and still be invisible for Earthlings? And: can this be made to match Wal's idea of the whole series of planet being _inside_ the Sun star's sheath?
Dave responds: The brief answer: The arrival of the crescent on Saturn is a distinct mythical event. It is the beginning of a well-defined daily cycle, following the earlier, "timeless" epoch. That requires half of a rotating Earth to be illuminated by light of the Sun. I always assumed, though tentatively, that this event related to a diffuse gas-cloud of some sort, from which the planets gradually emerged. Even after the appearance of the crescent and a more sharply defined daily cycle, my general sense is that the Sun was not seen as a distinct form in the sky. There was a direction from which illumination arrived at the Earth, but not a clearly visible source.
Wal's concept of a Saturnian glow-discharge "womb" came as an interesting variant, and quite promising, I believe. But, no matter how one chooses to explain what was going on physically, the Sun is not a named player in the original myths, though its effects are definite with the arrival of the crescent. This event finds its way into the myths as "the separation of heaven and earth," though that translation of the ancient words can only mislead.
Walter Radtke reported: In Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) in Syria, an ancient tablet was discovered in the 1950s dating back to 1400 BC. The oldest known musical score, it takes the form of interval names and number signs, and even has lyrics. The text is identified as a hymn to the moon goddess Nikkal.
Walter asked Dave: I was wondering what your take on Nikkal was. I don't recall mention of this deity in your work. Is this another case of erroneous reference to the crescent as being lunar?
Dave replied: Walter, Nikkal is the Ugaritic form of the Sumerian goddess Ningal, clearly a Venus figure. Ningal in the WIFE of Nanna, the so-called Sumerian moon god (Saturn in his crescent-form). Similarly, the Ugaritic Nikkal is married to the "moon" god Yarih. Therefore, the idea that either the Ugaritic or the earlier Sumerian goddess is herself the moon will not stand up. In both she is the SPOUSE of the "moon."
Of course people will not accept that the so-called "moon" god is Saturn without a lot of evidence. But in fact, more than one scholar has already noticed that, in the Babylonian astronomical traditions, the crescent god Sin (Sumerian Nanna) WAS identified with the planet Saturn. One of the great pioneers in the study of Babylonian astronomy, Alfred Jeremias, stated the equation of Sin and Saturn unequivocally. Earlier, Rawlinson had already observed that the crescent of Sin was an aspect of Saturn. Peter Jensen similarly confirmed the identity of Sin and Anu, which leads to the same conclusion. The spouse of the crescent god is the far-famed queen of heaven, the planet Venus, depicted both as a radiant star in the center of Saturn and as a radiant star inside the horns of a crescent. Since the crescent was on Saturn, these two most common representations stand in perfect accord with each other.
Most popular treatments of the crescent-gods in Mesopotamia show no awareness of this enigmatic relationship to Saturn.
Nowhere in the world is the crescent more prominent pictographically than ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of astronomy. Moreover, the two most frequent contexts of the crescent defy any identification with the moon in our sky. The crescent is most commonly wrapped around the wheel of the "sun" god Shamash, whom the texts identify as Saturn. We thus recall Rawlinson's original observation that the crescent was an aspect of Saturn. The same crescent, enigmatically, appears atop a cosmic pillar ... (T)hese two attributes are core principles of the Saturn model and lead to some of the most persuasive tests of our reconstruction.
Dave Talbott *********************************************************
LOCALIZATION OF THE WARRIOR-HERO by Dave Talbott
By way of background, the following are notes on the evolution of the warrior-hero myth. They are based on a section of my article, "Mother Goddess and Warrior Hero," in AEON I:5. ~Dave
In the natural evolution of myth, no tendency was more common than that by which originally cosmic figures were brought down to earth and their attributes, habitations, and life events affixed to a local landscape. Every temple, sacred city, and kingdom, built as a representation of a cosmic dwelling, soon came to be remembered as the place where creation began. In the same way, every local prominence became a figure of the cosmic mountain, every river, fount or spring a symbol of the ethereal stream. It was through this universal process that the crucial distinction between symbol and thing symbolized eventually broke down. For it was in the nature of ancient representations that the symbol bore the name and shared in the numen of the archetype.
The myths take us back to the age of "beginnings," and the symbol eventually becomes a vital part of the collective memory: soon it is as if the localized emblem had itself emerged in the creation. In Egypt, every city preserved a myth identifying itself with the place where the primeval sun stood in the beginning, when the god produced his own "resting place" or luminous habitation in the sky, "giving birth to himself" through the first activity of the goddess and hero.
By the progressive merging of emblem and archetype, the god's worshipers, in effect, altered the location of the primeval events, and once-cosmic powers devolved into the "ancestors" of the local tribe or city. (Clearly, the gods became "ancestors" because, with the blending of archetype and symbol, their home could no longer be distinguished from the terrestrial habitation; once such a process had begun, it was inevitable that the primeval companions or children of the sun would become "ancestors" of the nations telling the stories.
Assimilation can only lead to pervasive confusion. While the hand-formed symbol, the city built by men, comes to enjoy an elevated stature and cosmic significance in the eyes of its inhabitants, the gods themselves are profoundly diminished as later chroniclers, seeking to preserve the local traditions, are compelled to adapt them to a familiar landscape. This ambiguity will be found, in varying degrees, in all religious and mythological systems. At one turn the gods rule the heavens, and at the next they live as men, occupying identifiable places and leaving identifiable "monuments" to their lives and activities. And the singular principle that can be counted on in all cases is this: the processes of localization and assimilation continue to advance with time so that the confusion grows increasingly severe.
Wherever these processes have operated freely, given sufficient time, the warrior hero and mother goddess will have lost their cosmic character altogether. The vast majority of the heroic figures to which the modern researcher has access (such as the Greek Heracles, Odysseus, Perseus, Theseus and Oedipus), though still bigger than life, appear as extraordinary "humans" accomplishing their marvelous feats on earth, usually in identifiable locations, with an abundance of local "testaments" to their activity. The symbols have, in effect, redefined the archetype, creating massive contradictions between the different accounts.
What does a Heracles, or a Helen of Troy, have in common with the archetypal male and female powers identified in the Egyptian creation legend? The answer is, in the most radical sense, everything. While local geography, culture and history have profoundly altered the portrait, there would simply be no subject without the prototype. The best efforts of modern scholars have failed to explain such figures because these miracle-working "humans" are the folk-tale and literary echoes of a wholly alien celestial order.
Taking the most obvious distinction between earlier and later versions, there is the matter of scale. While the archetypal warrior-hero bears aloft the central sun and the all-encompassing land of the gods, it is obviously not possible for such an idea to be retained in the localized traditions, where the central sun has become an ancestral king, and the cosmic dwelling a terrestrial temple, palace or city. Yet the theme is not obliterated in the later chronicles, but re-focused. For the warrior-hero will still be found "supporting" the king, often as a slave, servant or priest (a theme endlessly repeated in the tales of Heracles, for example). What is not generally recognized, however, is the generic link to the older tradition of the heaven-sustaining hero as the servant or priest of the sun god Saturn, the celestial prototype of kings. In the archaic tradition the three meanings--upholder, servant and priest--are synonymous.
Similarly, one notes the repeated associations of the folk-tale warrior-hero with channels or flows of water, either irrigating or flooding an ancestral land or dwelling, or draining off enclosed floodwaters or swamps. In virtually all later instances, the chroniclers will point to a particular place in which the feat of the hero was accomplished. Due to the re-focusing involved in such localization, few modern commentators will recognize that the prototype was the heaven-supporting giant--in Egypt, the god Shu--who personifies the ethereal fount and celestial waterway. Yet the proof of the connection is readily at hand. For in the instance of the Egyptian Shu we possess at once the vivid cosmic portrait set forth in the world's oldest ritual texts, and later localized portraits of Greek, Roman and Christian times. Here we can observe in the clearest of terms the transition from the original cosmic power Shu to the Heracles-like hero of later times.
At the Qes sanctuary of the XXth nome of Lower Egypt a black granite shrine from the Ptolemaic period (later transported to Al-'Arish) recorded the story of "Shu and Geb when they reigned as kings upon earth." In this late tale, it is the god Shu who, in the style of Heracles, "excavated" the lake of the sanctuary and in the time of Ra (often recalled as a terrestrial ruler in later accounts) constructed the king's palace that it might endure "like the Mountain of Fire-Light." It is said that Shu, as a great warrior, rose to the throne of Atum or Ra and (apparently single-handedly, in Heracles fashion) slaughtered "all the enemies of his father" and destroyed "the sons of rebellion." He then became a builder in the service of his father, for there were "hundreds of thousands of sanctuaries which the Majesty of Ra had called into being in all the names, and which the majesty of Shu had built." Thus, it was Shu who, according to this late chronicle, "irrigated the towns, and the settlements and the names, and he erected the walls of Egypt and built temples in the Land of the South and the Land of the North."
Could anyone familiar with the myth of Heracles deny the similarity? Localization and assimilation have led to rampant duplications of the story of creation, so that a later chronicler, traveling from city to city in Egypt, might indeed have pieced together a story of countless "labors" of Shu, creating a fabulous pastiche of local myth. It is not surprising, therefore, that Greek "histories" declare that Heracles himself sojourned in Egypt, serving as "general" under Osiris and achieving feats virtually identical to those of Shu.
Though Shu and Heracles are in fact the same figure, we have the advantage in Shu's case of very ancient testimony illuminating the original cosmic personality (to which the later echoes can be systematically traced). And of course Shu is not the only instance of the warrior-hero in Egypt, so additional ground will have to be covered if we are to establish the clearest possible profile of the prehistoric god.
Similarly, the mother goddess must be followed from a set of originally unified concepts to the fragmented expressions of later times, in which the goddess appears alternately as mother, daughter or spouse of a great god or king, an enchanting maiden or fairy goddess, a harlot, hag or witch.
In all of this we will find that what have long been viewed as separate and irreconcilable threads of ancient lore acquire entirely new meanings when viewed under the illumination of the polar configuration.
FROM THE FOOTNOTES:
Through assimilation, as noted above, every local symbolic sanctuary shared in the history of the celestial prototype, which was shouted into existence by the sun god and given form by Shu.
Of course the connection of Shu and Heracles has already been noted by others. See K. H. Brugsch, Dictionnaire Geographique de l 'ancienne Egypte (Leipzig, 1880), p. 851.
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http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thotiv15.txt
ONE STORY TOLD ROUND THE WORLD By Dave Talbott
Ancient peoples narrated and re-enacted the story in a thousand ways, but when the core is exposed, it comes down to this--
"Once the world was quite a different place. In the beginning, we were ruled by the central luminary of the sky--creator, primeval sun-god, and father of kings--presiding over an age of natural abundance and cosmic harmony. This was the exemplary epoch, the Golden Age, a standard of justice and prosperity invoked by all later generations.
"But the ancient order fell into confusion when the king of the world tumbled from his celebrated station. Then the hordes of chaos were set loose and all creation slipped into a cosmic night, the gods themselves battling furiously in the heavens.
"And yet, from this descent into chaos a new and reconfigured world emerged, and the universal sovereign, rejuvenated and transformed, assumed his rightful place in heaven.
A few notes:
This is the most elementary statement I can construct with respect to the totality of world mythology. Obviously, it can not stand on its own, however.
The reference to the sovereign power as creator, for example, introduces a vast field of myth and symbol.
The first "snapshot" of the polar configuration and the related "sun" pictographs depict the condition of the unified power, the subject of the One Story, just prior to displacement of Mars and Venus. Differentiation has already begun. Mars and Venus have emerged visually from the embryonic cloud--the "golden seed" in which they were jointly enshrouded in the visual center of Saturn. Venus is discharging violently, putting Mars in shadow. Thus, in this phase, Mars appears as a darker innermost sphere, what the Egyptian language calls the "heart of the heart."
What follows this phase is the displacement, departure, or "spitting out" of Mars and Venus as the first forms of the hero and goddess, who now become quasi-independent, highly active figures in the creation events. Though this activity grows complex, I have two animations in preparation which will illustrate the definitive motions: 1) the visual descent of Mars and (in vital connection to this descent) the appearance of a stream of luminous material stretching along the polar axis, 2) the displacement of Venus from its axial position in the center of Saturn, leading (via a more complex path) to the spiraling cometary form of Venus.
It is from the spiraling form of Venus that the enclosure of the gods--the primeval "earth" of the creation legend--is constituted. The axial column arising with the descent of Mars is, of course, the world mountain on which the celestial land comes to rest. (According to the global tradition, the land of the gods takes form on the summit of the world mountain: the Egyptian Mount of Glory, Greek Olympos, Hebrew Zion, Hindu Meru, Chinese Kwenlun, and innumerable variants.)
Hence, the components depicted in the "sun" pictographs have very direct roles to play in more specific chapters of the One Story.
A sidebar: the One Story, as I've stated it, does not really conclude the age of the gods, since (obviously!) the rejuvenated sovereign is no longer present in our sky today. This is, however, the common framework commemorated in the creation stories and in ritual commemorations of creation and renewal associated with the New Year celebrations. The farther back you go to examine variations of the story, the closer you will get to the root idea.
The final events in the age of the gods tend not to focus on the fading of the rejuvenated sovereign but rather on the departure of the hero and/or the goddess, these two figures having become the prime characters in the stories. The ascension of the hero or goddess by way of a terraced mountain or tower, a whirling cloud, ladder, or steps to the sky, their sailing off, and/or their translation into distant stars (planets) is the final chapter in the age of the gods. Also, of course, the collapse of great palaces (Samson removes the pillar, etc.), or the sinking of lost kingdoms into the abyss, or the disbursement of ancestral "tribes" are common ways in which the final dismemberment of the planetary configuration found expression in the myths.
Dave Talbott ****************************************************************
HUMAN NATURE AND SATURNIAN RITUAL by Dave Talbott
These thoughts might be subtitled, "On Avoiding Reductionist Approaches to the Saturn Model."
Reductionism is the practice of assimilating more to a single theoretical principle than that principle can accommodate or explain. Two classic examples of reductionist approaches are the hypotheses of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Each of these theorists is identified with a particular principle taken to the extreme and offered as a unified explanation of human motivation and behavior.
It's difficult for me to imagine any critically-minded person not saying much the same thing about the Saturn model.
Is the Saturn model reductionist? Actually, it's not, though most of the suspicions expressed are perfectly understandable in the early stages of communication. The model simply claims that there was an extraordinary myth-making epoch: the patterns of myth, symbol, and ritual originated in a unique phase of human history, one dominated by awe-inspiring planetary forms in the sky. I do not believe that critically minded folks, after assimilating the full range of evidence, would still suggest that the theory is reductionist. I base this observation on actual experience. Again and again, I've watched the suspicion disappear as people realized that the global patterns, the only field of evidence we are concerned with in the historical argument, REQUIRE the celestial forms.
As a rule, it will be the new enthusiasts who run the risk of falling into the reductionist trap. I've often noticed, for example, a tendency for enthusiasts to suggest psychological interpretations which do appear to exceed the explanatory power of the model.
I would make a critical distinction between "living in Saturn's shadow" and "being human." When individuals get in a fight, or nations drop bombs on each other, are they being Saturnian, or just being human? Generally, I would say that they're just being human, though one can often find echoes of Saturnian images, particularly where fierce religious concepts dominate. In more ancient times, however, warring nations were consistently Saturnian: through warfare, they sought to replicate on the battlefield the devastation formerly wrought by the gods themselves. And in no sense is it reductionist to observe this pervasive influence on human memory.
Consider, for example, the words of Assurbanipal describing his military campaigns against neighboring Arabians: "Ishtar, who dwells in Arabia, who is clothed with fire and bears aloft a crown of awful splendour, rained fire over Arabia. The warrior Irra, engaging them in battle struck down my foes. Urta, the lance, the great warrior, son of Enlil, pierced my enemies to the life with his sharp arrow. Nusku, the exalted messenger of the gods, who makes my rule glorious, and who, at the command of Assur and Ninlil, the valorous lady, goes at my side, guarding my kingship, took his place before my armies and brought low my foes." Clearly, this is not just being human, but also living in Saturn's shadow.
In essentially the same terms, the Egyptian king Seti described his devastation of neighboring tribes as the activity of the warring "majesty" of Amon (in the Saturn model the royal "majesty" means the discharge streamers of Venus--the effusive, terrifying "radiance" or "splendor" of the Great Star/Great Comet)--"I have caused them to see thy majesty as lord of radiance... I have caused them to see thy majesty like a circling star, which scatters its flame in fire... I have caused them to see thy majesty like a flame of fire, like the very being of Sekhmet, in her tempest." Etc. etc.
In the most explicit terms, the king sought to repeat the tempest of the Venus goddess Sekhmet, the majesty, the eye of Re, which had vanquished the rebelling enemies of Re, the chaos fiends, when celestial confusion and darkness had overtaken the world.
It seems quite clear to me that, while countless echoes of the Saturn myth surround us still, one can be human without necessarily being Saturnian. Often, when an individual is going through a transforming experience, he will experience a sense of imminent disaster. Generally, I don't see that experience today as a symbol of Saturn, though various Saturnian influences might be considered. If one looks for signs in the sky, or trembles at the approach of a planetary conjunction, THAT is Saturnian. The Saturn experience is not the cause of human anxiety, though it can still affect the forms of anxiety (and presumably the scale of anxiety under certain circumstances, such as the end of a millennium.)
Belief in God is not Saturnian. But viewing God as a merciless, bearded man on a mountain top, periodically destroying the world IS Saturnian. And of course any tendency to cling to ancient myth as the word of God is by definition Saturnian, though people often cling to non-Saturnian ideas as the word of God as well.
To feel guilty is not Saturnian per se. To want to blame others is not Saturnian either. That's just being human. To clutch at a crucifix, an Ankh, or praying wheel in response is being human AND Saturnian.
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http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thotiv16.txt
WHITE CROWN by Dave Talbott
In addition to the twin imagery of the rotating crescent, it is necessary to deal with certain additional mirror images due to the polar placement of celestial bodies as seen by an observer on a rotating earth. This can involve either mirror aspects of illumination from the Sun, or mirror sunset and sunrise aspects of the configuration due to displacement of bodies from the axis. An instance of the latter will be the mirror images associated with the Inanna sign in ancient Sumerian symbolism of the "gate post with streamers." An instance of the former will be the illumination of the conical "White Crown" such that the lightened portions presented mirror images at sunrise and sunset.
I've attached as a single JPEG pic a few slides from my seminar overview of the evolving configuration. The images relate to the Egyptian White Crown and its intimate connection to an enigmatic feather symbol, called _Mayet_. In the Saturn model this feather could ONLY mean the illuminated portion of the White Crown. Hence, the language and symbolism of the feather and White Crown provide important tests.
[ed note: See attachment for pictures.] FIRST SLIDE. This is the opening frame of an animation segment, showing a view of the configuration from space, as material streamed up the axis from Mars toward Venus. The bodies are slightly displaced from the axis, and this displacement will force some additional, highly unique tests. (I'll get to these in a day or two.) A closer view of the Earth and Mars shows that the material leaves Mars at its equator, to stream upward toward Venus.
SECOND SLIDE. This shows the view of the depicted stream from the Earth (22nd parallel), along with the Egyptian White Crown, which the Saturn model interprets as a ritual image inspired by the celestial prototype shown here.
THIRD SLIDE. Here we see the two phases of sunset and sunrise, presented along side the ostrich feather. For the obvious reasons, the model considers this feather to be symbol of the illuminated portion of the celestial White Crown.
FOURTH SLIDE. The goddess Mayet IS the ostrich feather. She was also the Eye of Re. Numerous texts confirm that the Eye, the goddess and the White Crown are synonymous. Though the equation appears ludicrous to specialists, the Saturn model will not only explain, but predict the equation.
FIFTH SLIDE. In Egytpian ritual and symbol, the two feathers of Mayet represent two halves of the daily cycle. That is exactly what we should expect, though nothing in nature today would suggest the idea.
SIXTH SLIDE. Repeatedly, Egyptian artists placed the two feather to the right and left of the White Crown, though the origin of the symbolism remains inexplicable to Egyptologists.
SEVENTH SLIDE. Together, the feathers of the right and left CONSTITUTE the White Crown, exactly as the Saturn model claims. The feathers reach upward from a red disk. In the ritual of kings, the pharaoh honors and imitates this relationship of the warrior-hero to the goddess by donning the crown and feathers.
EIGHTH SLIDE. Mars descends visually from the sphere of Venus, appearing to wear a conical crown. Thus, in the myths the god Shu, originally resting inside the central Eye of Re, is "spit out" to become the first form of the warrior hero. Remarkably, the feather is an acknowledged Egyptian symbol of Shu's birth, exactly as we should expect.
NINTH SLIDE. The Saturnian crescent stands in a definitive relationship to the crown. The horns of the crescent signify the horns of the Bull of Heaven. Thus, the Egyptian Bull is depicted with a red disk resting between its horns, from which rise two feathers, in precise accord with the model.
Dave Talbott ****************************************************************
RENS' OUTLINE Rens van der Sluijs, Ev Cochrane, Dave Talbott
To all,
Yesterday I put an article on the Web containing a brief outline of the methods and principles to be followed in comparative mythology. A large number of previous theories claiming to explain the origin of myth and religion are discarded and it is shown that planetary catastrophism is the only possible theory to account for all the data available. Comments are welcome. Address: http://home-2.worldonline.nl/~mdvds/doctrine.htm.
Rens van der Sluijs, Holland
EV COCHRANE WRITES: If this is a brief outline, Rens, I wonder what the completed work would look like! Very impressive indeed. In the first paragraph, I noted a sentence that read like pure Dave Talbott: "[The Saturn theory accounts] for the entire range of concepts appearing in every single aspect of human civilization." Who said that unified theories were a thing of the past?
DAVE TALBOTT ADDS: Yes, it was very gratifying to see Rens' insightful summary. I would only qualify the sentence in question slightly. Certain ancient concepts belong to a deeper stratum of experience and perception than any natural event can adequately explain. While the ritual and symbolic FORMS are Saturnian, the taproot in human motivation has to run deeper. "WE are guilty!" "HE is guilty!" The planetary dramas certainly did invite deep human tendencies to the surface. But the collective response (scapegoat principle, sacrifice, war, etc.), though highly Saturnian in form, reveals levels of human perception and motivation outside the reach of the Saturn model. I would say that the Saturn model is a unified explanation of the ritual and symbolic forms, but it cannot ultimately account for the roles of fear, guilt, separation, competition, or rage in human relationships. Intensely experienced events did, however, catalyze such harsh or starkly-expressed responses that it becomes impossible to deny the presence of motivations which are, in our own time, often expressed much more subtly. In that sense, the Saturn research can be very revealing, throwing light on an internal shadow-world which still cries out for an explanation.
RENS REPLIED: I would never claim that purely psychological mechanisms would stem from an exterior cycle of events such as the establishment and disintegration of the polar configuration would have been. Qualities like anger, envy and longing are inherent to human neurology and behaviour and also shared with the higher mammals. That is never the point. What I would claim, based on judgment of the evidence available, is that every aspect of human civilisation - beyond the strict biological! - that is, every innovation that mankind made in his social framework, was triggered by these celestial happenings. His normal mental patterns were the tools by which this happened and the mechanisms which gave shape to the process of coping with the experiences. In short: with 'aspects of civilisation' I restricted myself to tools and artifacts and social structures. A very limited number of basic structures, which Homo sapiens shared with mammals, would have predated the adaptation from celestial originals, such as the relationship between child and parents.
EV SAYS: When reading Rens and Dave talk about the ability of the Saturn theory to explain everything there is to know about ancient civilization, I am often reminded of Ed McMahon's recurring quip on the old Johnny Carson show: "That is everything one could possibly know about this particular subject." At which point Johnny would respond: "Wrong Rhino breath." Personally I would much prefer to downplay such claims and simply proceed to carefully document the many aspects of ancient civilization that the Saturn theory can help to explain. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if certain important aspects of man's civilization did not originate in celestial fireworks. Consider the invention of fire, for example, certainly one of the most important tools/findings of prehistoric man. I would suspect that the ability to artificially generate fire far predates the polar configuration. That said, it would be easy to show that ancient man, upon witnessing the whirling motions of Mars' "fire-drill" in the sky, ascribed the invention of fire or the fire-drill to the warrior hero thereby confusing the true historical order of the invention.
DAVE ADDS: I think we've got a misunderstanding here. The question isn't whether all ancient technology derived from the Saturnian experience, but whether the specific forms of collective RITUAL activity, from which a vast wealth of technology emerged, were inspired by the ancient planetary experience. That an explosion of technical capabilities can be traced to ritual motives is an eminently defensible hypothesis. All you have to do is chronicle the examples to see that this eruption of collective activity defines early civilization in distinction from the earlier pastoral condition. To make this point does not require us to claim that pre-civilized races were without technical knowledge or skill.
What distinguishes the emerging civilizations is not only profoundly Saturnian, but apparently exclusively so. The ritual "sun"-wheel preceded the useful wheel. Astronomy grew out of intense concern with planetary motions, for the obvious reason. Kingship ritual re-enacted the ascension of Mars as regent of the universal sovereign. Every queen that can be identified in the ancient world was a living symbol of the Queen of Heaven. Temples and cities mirrored the remembered celestial prototypes. Mathematical and architectural skills arose in the service of monument building and celestial observation. Writing systems emerged from pictographs of the gods and their attributes. All of the great magical and symbolic traditions can be traced to attributes and incidents in the lives of the gods. Sacrificial practices re-enacted critical junctures in the biographies of gods. Wars of nationalistic expansion commemorated the vanquishing of chaos and the progressive expansion outward of the land of the gods in the creation. All of the great calendrical festivals were rooted in memories of the age of the gods. Collective agricultural rites and practices explicitly recalled the myth of the dying god. I don't see any reason to equivocate with respect to planetary drama catalyzing the ritual underpinnings of emerging civilization.
With respect to the origins of myth, we need to continually remind ourselves that the claimed "unified theory" relates to verifiable, indisputable archetypes--patterns that are either fully acknowledged by independent comparative studies, or that we are prepared to document beyond any reasonable doubt. The groundrules are designed to explicitly eliminate selective perception. A unified explanation of myth does not mean that we have to explain any particular myth in any particular land. There is far, far too much random evolution, fragmentation, and cross-cultural assimilation of myth over SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS to justify any insistence of that sort. The value of the comparative approach is that while random evolution introduces contradictions, the points of agreement between the cultures expose the substratum of human memory.
The Saturn model offers a unified explanation of archetypal mythology, and it's imperative that this claim be clear. That way, there can be no question as to the appropriate tests. Anyone documenting an archetype that does not find clear and convincing explanation in the Saturn model should have the right to say that the Saturn model fails as a unified theory, putting the burden on us to prove him wrong.
Dave Talbott
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http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thothv04.txt
THE THUNDERBOLT IN MYTH AND SYMBOL By Dave Talbott
A thunderstorm is a remarkable, often terrifying event. So it's not surprising that few scholars have paused to wonder about the prominent role of lightning in ancient mythology. Archaic images of huge lightning gods roaring in the heavens, or of celestial armies hurling lightning across the sky will appear perfectly "understandable." Thus, students of folklore assure us that, through the primitive logic of the lightning myths, our early ancestors sought to describe one of the more frightening aspects of everyday life.
This common supposition is unfortunate, however, because it has prevented even the most discerning comparative mythologists from seeing the underlying patterns, none of which describes the phenomenon familiar to us. As strange as it may seem, all of the most common lightning motifs speak of things never observed in our time.
Our comparative investigation has identified hundreds of recurring themes of myth, including numerous global images of lightning. The disconnection of these images from the observed behavior of lightning is an impressive anomaly. The usual tendency will be to look for what is intelligible under the tests of common experience. If, however, "UNCOMMON experience" is the basis of the global imagery, then this very habit must be confronted as a prime obstruction to discovery.
The lightning gods of old have a story to tell, and that story, when traced to its substructure, points to extraordinary natural events. The prime requirement for investigators in this field is an independent attitude, free from theoretical prejudice and eager to consider all patterns of ancient memory, even when the mythic themes make no sense under prevailing assumptions.
SEEKING A UNIFIED THEORY
The interpretation offered here will add new opportunities for interdisciplinary exploration. Stunning revelations of plasma physics must be studied alongside ancient memories of the divine thunderbolt. Laboratory demonstrations will find a place next to prehistoric rock art. Ancient tales of prodigious gods battling in the sky must be compared with the massive scars on planets and moons, now revealed by space age probes. And recent telescopic images, revealing new worlds in space, must be considered on the same page with ancient astronomical traditions describing the thunderbolt as a weapon launched by PLANETARY gods.
Our ancestors lived beneath an alien sky, a world so different from what we experience today that historical descriptions required a vast complex of analogies to make sense of it. That is precisely what the lightning symbols give us. Great spectacles in the sky produced an explosion of human imagination--a myth-making epoch that had no counterpart in later times.
Let us begin, therefore, with the most common ancient symbols of the divine thunderbolt. All of the unusual motifs listed below find wide distribution in the ancient world--
Motif #1: Lightning takes the form of a frightful weapon--a sword, arrow, mace, club, spear, axe, or hammer.
Motif #2: Lightning is an ancestral warrior, the hero god who defeated chaos monsters in primeval times. Lightning-hero and lightning-weapon are frequently synonymous.
Motif #3: Lightning appears as a great bird or "thunderbird" with heaven-spanning wings.
Motif #4: Lightning is the flash of an "eye" in heaven. It is the destructive power of the "evil eye," destroying opposition.
Motif #5: Lightning is launched from a great wheel turning in the sky, the "chariot" of the gods.
Motif #6: Lightning is accompanied by falling stones or "thunderstones."
Motif #7: Lightning is the messenger of a central sun that ruled the sky before the present sun.
Motif #8: Lighting streaks along the world axis, acquiring the form of a towering column, the axis mundi. It is the pillar of the sky which, at the beginning of time, "separated heaven and earth."
Motif #9: Lightning is a generative, masculine pillar. It impregnates goddesses.
Motif #10: Lighting is a "chain of arrows" launched skyward by a great warrior or hero.
Motif #11: Lighting appears as a ladder or backbone of the sky, whose steps were ascended by an ancestral hero.
Motif #12: Lightning spirals, twists, or whirls across the heavens. It is a whorl, swastika, or triskeleon.
Motif #13: Lighting appears as an undulating, fiery serpent.
Motif #14: Lightning takes the form of twins, two brothers, or two companions, each viewed as the alter ego of the other.
Motif #15: Lightning is two serpentine or rope-like filaments wound around a central axis (caduceus motif)
Motif #16: Lightning appears as an equal-limbed cross; it explodes as luminous streamers, dividing the home of the gods into equal quarters.
Motif #17: Lighting "blossoms" as a flower, the celebrated plant of life.
Motif #18: Lightning is fire and brimstone (sulfur). The lightning of the gods gives rise to a sulfurous stench.
Motif #19: In their violent wars, the gods blast each other with lightning. Chaos monsters are destroyed by lightning.
Motif #20: Lightning leaves its mark on celestial heroes and chaos monsters, who are "lightning scarred," or "thunderstruck."
Motif #21: The lightning-scar or wound of the warrior-hero is the mark by which he is identified or recognized.
WEAPON OF PLANETARY GODS
There is one more lightning motif that must be mentioned. This theme is perhaps the most enigmatic of all, and it traces to the earliest astronomical traditions. It seems that, amongst many ancient peoples, the owners of the lightning bolt were PLANETS, when the planets were claimed to have ruled the world. All of us are familiar with the ancient Greek images of Zeus, the bearer of the thunderbolt, wielding his weapon against the powers of darkness. Zeus is, of course, the Latin Jupiter, and classical images were strongly influenced by the Akkadian images of Marduk, the king of gods, the planet Jupiter, famous for the thunderbolt by which he assumed celestial sovereignty.
It was Immanuel Velikovsky who, in _Worlds in Collision_, drew our attention to the ancient memory of lightning passing between planets. The historian Pliny, for example, wrote: "Most men are not acquainted with a truth known to the founders of the science from their arduous study of the heavens." Thunderbolts, Pliny wrote, "are the fires of the three upper planets."
A vivid description of an interplanetary discharge was also given by Pliny: "Heavenly fire is spit forth by the planet as crackling charcoal flies from a burning log." When such a discharge falls on the earth, he reported, "it is accompanied by a very great disturbance of the air," produced "by the birth-pangs, so to speak, of the planet in travail." Pliny also referred to an ancient Etruscan tradition describing a bolt from the planet Mars that fell on Bolsena--"the city was entirely burned up by this bolt."
Similarly, Pliny's contemporary, the naturalist Seneca, distinguished the "lesser bolts" of the local storm from the vastly more powerful bolts of the planet Jupiter, "by which the threefold mass of mountains fell."
THUNDERBOLT AS ARCHETYPE
I've said it before, but the surface of world mythology is a madhouse, and on the matter of the thunderbolt we have a particularly telling example. It is as if the mythmakers took special pleasure in defying all experience, including direct and unassailable observation. The myths have no integrity. They insult our intelligence. How could a rational, feet-on-the-ground investigator see more than random fiction in these tales?
It is the recurring themes, the ARCHETYPES, that rescue us from such skepticism, enabling us to distinguish the substratum of human memory from the carnival of fragmentation and elaboration over time. An archetype is an irreducible first form--it cannot be reduced to a more elementary statement. And as far as can be determined from historical investigation, it has no precedent.
Archetypes as a whole are the keys to our understanding of ancient mythmaking imagination. In the remembered age of the gods, our sky presented to terrestrial witnesses a stupendous display of light, form, color, and sound, associated with concrete bodies in the heavens, evolving through well-defined stages. Sometimes exquisite, sometimes terrifying, these forms were, in the imagination of the sky gazers, divine and awe-inspiring gods. Thus the myths themselves insist that nothing comparable ever occurred over subsequent millennia.
RULES OF INVESTIGATION
A productive investigation of the archetypes will require three overriding principles:
1) The investigation must focus exclusively on common mythical, symbolic, or ritual themes: including all points of agreement between far-flung cultures.
2) Each verifiable theme must be traced to its earliest instances.
3) All common cultural expressions of the themes must be considered as evidence. Pictures illuminate ancient storytelling. Ritual celebrations give context to the pictures. Myths add crucial background to the rites.
Certain extraordinary facts can now be stated concerning the archetypes, and these facts challenge all prior explanations or theories of myth.
Fact #1: No archetype finds its natural reference in our familiar sky. All common themes of myth point to events that do not occur in our time.
Fact #2: All archetypes are inseparably connected to each other. No isolated archetype can be found. It is this stunning fact that encourages the investigator to seek out a unified explanation of the archetypes.
Fact #3: All archetypes trace to the beginnings of recorded human history. Following the flowering of ancient civilizations, it does not appear that any new archetypes arose.
We further claim that no comprehension of world mythology is possible apart from the memory of PLANETS extremely close to the earth, accompanied by earth-shaking electrical activity. It was not that long ago that heaven was alive with electricity as planets moved through a rich plasma environment. Ambient electrical activity gave rise to unearthly sights and sounds for which natural experience today can only provide the faintest reminder. In the wake of these events, cultures around the world strove to reckon with the forces unleashed, to interpret the meaning of cosmic catastrophe, and to REMEMBER.
>From this new vantage point, it is now possible for the serious student to follow the progression of the symbolic language from first form, or archetype, through later elaboration. The "Saturn model," about which we have spoken so frequently in this newsletter, is based on rigorous cross-cultural comparison. Hundreds of archetypes, traced to their prehistoric roots, provide the concrete basis for a series of "snapshots" showing an evolving planetary configuration as seen from the earth. Many of these first glimpses have been presented at seminars and conferences, and more will be presented at the upcoming conference, July 6-9. An introduction will be offered in the forthcoming book, _Thunderbolts of the Gods_ (co-author is Wal Thornhill.)
ACID TESTS OF A HYPOTHESIS
As for the implications of the Saturn model, there can be little ambiguity. The model is both unique and highly specific. Moreover, our rules of investigation preclude selective perception, focusing entirely on an undisputed field of evidence: the verifiable themes, the archetypes. When measured against the known patterns of human memory, does the model meet the test of a good theory?
The role of electricity is crucial, and I must confess that I did not realize the full import of electricity until the meeting with Wal Thornhill late in 1996. For thirty days, Wal camped out in my office helping us prepare for the January' 1997 world conference. During that time he convinced me that the celestial images I had reconstructed were plasma discharge phenomena. This revelation proved to be a critical turn in the historical investigation.
For many years I had insisted that electromagnetism would have to be considered if we were to account for the remembered dynamics of the ancient Saturnian system. From the beginning I was convinced (following Velikovsky's lead) that lightning bolts had passed between planets. And I had identified the Valles Marineris on Mars as the lightning scar, wound, or disfiguring mark on the celestial warriors of mythology (the "Scarface" motif about which I've spoken elsewhere).
But prior to Wal Thornhill's arrival in Portland, I didn't even know what a Birkeland Current is, and I knew nothing about the unique configurations taken by plasma discharges.
CONVERGENCE OF MYTH AND SCIENCE
While I've experienced many breakthroughs over more than a quarter century, this one exceeded all others. It was the first indication that, at a level of explicit detail, a convergence of myth and science may be possible. This, then, inspired me to reconsider the mythic thunderbolt in terms far more concrete than I had previously envisioned. Until then, I had treated the thunderbolt as a secondary symbol, a meteorological signpost only generally directing our attention to the sights and sounds of primordial times. I had not zeroed in on lightning as a core mythical motif, one inspired by the ELECTRICAL attributes of the planetary configuration itself. What you do not recognize you do not see.
Wal's revelations encouraged me to reconsider the thunderbolt from the ground up. Applying the principles of the historical reconstruction, I abstracted from my files a summary of the archaic forms taken by "lightning" in ancient texts and art. The conclusion was startling. The recurring patterns of lightning symbolism turn out to be nothing else than the extraordinary forms taken by the planetary configuration. When considered in their ancient contexts, not one of these archetypal forms is either logical or expected under our familiar sky. Hence, an entirely new level of evidence came into the picture.
LABORATORY CONFIRMATION
There is more. Those who have seen some of the "snapshots" of the Polar Configuration will recall that the reconstructed images involve certain filamentary streamers radiating from planets or stretching between planets. In human imagination these were seen most commonly as braided hair, entwining ropes, streaming feathers, or undulating, twisting serpentine forms. Here the interactions of Venus and Mars within the configuration are most prominent, illuminating the global myths of the goddess and warrior-hero. (Several examples will be given in future installments in this series.)
One of the forms I will present at the upcoming conference is that of the far-famed caduceus. Another is the so-called "winged disk" and its many variants in the ancient world. Since these highly unusual forms answer to nothing in nature as we know it today, they must be included among the acid tests of the model.
But for now I must simply state the punchline--THE VIOLENT EVOLUTION OF THE PLANETARY CONFIGURATION, RECORDED ON PAPYRUS, CLAY, AND STONE, FINDS DIRECT VERIFICATION IN THE EVOLUTION OF PLASMA DISCHARGE CONFIGURATIONS IN THE LABORATORY.
THE MYTHICAL "CHAIN OF ARROWS"
This surprising picture emerged only in the past year. In my earlier reconstruction, I had followed the connections between an undulating, upward-spiraling, serpentine form and two powerful mythical motifs--the "chain of arrows" and the "ladder of heaven." Gathered around these motifs in texts and art are numerous other themes, including: backbone of the sky, tower of heaven, flared skirt of the mother goddess, pyramid or steps of ascent, bound serpent or dragon, severed limbs of the serpent or dragon, and more. In the course of assimilating this material, it became clear to me that a simple evolutionary sequence explained the full range of symbolic connections, if one allows for the three-dimensional perspective of an observer on earth.
At the heart of this evolutionary sequence is the "chain of arrows" event, a global theme so preposterous as to mock every attempt of comparative mythologists to understand it. In this theme an ancestral warrior or hero launches arrows toward the sky, and each arrowhead embeds itself in the one above it. The chain of arrows then becomes a ladder by which the hero ascends to heaven. Numerous examples of the theme will be found in the Americas alone, but other examples occur from Africa and India to the South Pacific. In the Kathlamet legend of a hero named "Many Swans," this great ancestor launches a stream of arrows heavenward, these forming a ladder of ascent to the sky. In the Hindu _Ramayana_ the arrows of Arjuna form a bridge capable of carrying the mighty Hanuman, the traveler between worlds.
>From a systematic examination of ancient pictographs, I had concluded that the chain of arrows involved a series of toroids stacked along a central spine and that these toroidal forms had evolved violently from a luminous filament spiraling up the polar axis. Additionally, since Wal Thornhill had persuaded me that the unique phases of the polar configuration involved plasma discharging, I became increasingly aware of the vital links between the arrow-chain and the mythical "lightning" of the gods. In 1997 I had sketched out the unique form of the arrow-chain for Wal. He replied that this configuration must indeed have its explanation in plasma behavior. He agreed to look into it.
PERATT INSTABILITY
Then came one of the great surprises in the history of the research. It occurred only last September, when Tony Peratt, one of the world's most accomplished plasma theorists, described the violent evolution of a plasma discharge form that he had documented over more than two decades. In plasma science this configuration is named after Tony--it is called the "Peratt Instability." From the moment of this revelation, nothing has been the same. The correspondence between the global pictographic record, our reconstruction based on historical testimony, and the extraordinary forms of the evolving discharge in the laboratory is simply "too specific and too precise to be due to accident" (not my words, but the words of plasma experts).
The result of this new information is that the "chain of arrows," one of the most perplexing archetypes, is no longer seeking an explanation. Moreover, these revelations will bring us into direct liaison with leading experts in plasma science, and the convergence appears to be more powerful than anything we had previously hoped for.
NEXT: "Thunder Gods and Celestial Marvels"
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Intersect 2001 conference: "Electricity, Cosmology, and Human History" will include the first public presentation of this story, with new animation and other visual support.
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http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thothv05.txt
OF THUNDERGODS AND CELESTIAL MARVELS by Dave Talbott
In ancient traditions, few images find more vivid expression than the great thunderbolts of the planetary gods. When the gods went to war, the heavens shook. Lightning sped between the planetary combatants as flaming weapons, with the fate of celestial kings and kingdoms hanging in the balance.
Again and again, we find sovereign gods relying upon a "thunder weapon" to defend cosmic order. Rulers of the sky vanquish chaos monsters with stupendous, earth-shaking bolts. We see this most dramatically in the confrontation of the Greek Zeus with Typhon. But the thunderbolt is also decisive in the Babylonian Marduk's battle against the dragon Tiamat and the Hebrew Yahweh's war against Leviathan. So too, we see the mythic thunderbolt when Indra engages Vritra, or Horus battles Set, or Apollo vanquishes the dragon Python.
It is also noteworthy that great hero-gods alternately hurl lightning against the chaos dragon, or TAKE THE FORM of the thunderbolt itself. In the global pattern the hero is often inseparable from his own arrow, sword, spear, club or axe -- even a "tusk" in his mythical form as a "boar" -- while all such symbols merge as distinct forms of the cosmic lightning. [See Lightning Motif #8 in our previous article: "Lightning takes the form of an ancestral warrior, the hero god who defeated chaos monsters in primeval times and consorted with the mother goddess."]
A systematic review of lightning themes will make clear that the regional lightning of later times was but an echo of the vastly more terrifying bolts which once held the entire world in awe. Consider the ancient images of the gas-giant Jupiter, whom the Greeks remembered as the ruler Zeus, the victor in the celestial clash of the Titans. Jupiter is just a speck of light in our sky, but ancient races recalled the GOD Jupiter as a heaven-spanning form, employing lightning as his most effective weapon.
If we've failed to recognize the celestial players, it's because the implied references are PLANETS appearing huge above the ancient skyworshipers, while our present knowledge of the planets is constrained by their remote and predictable courses today. We see no evidence of unstable planetary motions today, and most assuredly we see no interplanetary lightning arcing between them!
Yet that IS the human memory. In Hesiod's Theogony, the poet describes the god Zeus, when the dragon Typhon threatened to destroy the world: "From Heaven and from Olympus he came immediately, hurling his lightning: the bolts flew thick and fast from his strong hand together with thunder and lightning, whirling an awesome flame." In this overwhelming conflagration there was "thunder and lightning, and ... fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and blazing thunderbolt." Destroyed by a searing bolt from Zeus, the world-threatening dragon came to be known as the "thunderstricken." Similarly, Typhon's counterpart Enceladus, struck down by Zeus, was the "lightning-scarred" god.
Hebrew tradition recalled the lightning of the gods in similar terms. Thus Psalm 77 proclaims, "The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook." From India, the Mahabarata and Ramayana describe great battles in which lightning of the gods filled the heavens like a rain of fiery arrows. So too, in the texts of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Scandinavia, China, and the Americas, myths and legends describe conflagrations attributed to divine thunderbolts, appearing in the forms of flaming arrows, darts, lances, and other weapons.
For anyone seeking to comprehend ancient images of the gods, there can be no greater mistake than to rationalize away the cosmic scale of the described events. But that WILL be the tendency so long as scholars demand that present references in nature account for the ancient depictions.
EVIDENCE FROM MANY FIELDS
This is an interdisciplinary investigation. To expose the roots of the mythical and symbolic archetypes, we must range across highly diverse fields of evidence. Archaic images of the thunderbolt will provide a unifying thread, connecting planetary geology, plasma science, and astronomy to a most extraordinary epoch of human history, anciently remembered as "the age of gods and wonders."
In this investigation, the "lightning bolts" now spanning galaxies will offer crucial analogies for the remembered thunderbolts of mythical gods and heroes. Physical scars on solid bodies within the solar system will become evidence EXPECTED under a new model of planetary history. And the configurations taken by plasma discharges in the laboratory will confirm the accuracy of highly enigmatic rock art and other depictions of the divine thunderbolt. It is the correlation between the different domains of evidence that provides the acid test of a hypothesis. For if, as we claim, planets once waged battles in the sky, then all related fields of inquiry should support the same conclusion, even if the experts, expecting something else, have missed the underlying story.
Since plasma science is far from my own field of expertise, I must emphasize that, in the following discussion of planetary discharges and plasma environments, I am indebted to the contribution of Wal Thornhill, my co-author of the forthcoming book, _Thunderbolts of the Gods_. Also, I must credit Amy Acheson for numerous helpful contributions. (Of course, if I've failed to accurately paraphrase either, they are not to be held responsible.)
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POLAR CONFIGURATION AND COSMIC THUNDERBOLT By David Talbott
To see the divine thunderbolt's true role in world mythology, the sense of context provided by a physical model will prove crucial.
What we've called the "Saturn theory" or "Saturn model" provides a unified reference, enabling us to interpret and account for the extraordinary commemorative activity of ancient cultures. It offers a coherent explanation of global patterns, and does so at a level of extraordinary and highly specific detail. Moreover, we claim that a fundamentally incorrect theory could never achieve this explanatory power.
The model rests upon a verifiable substratum of human memories and traditions. Beneath the surface of world mythology and symbolism, certain points of agreement shine through. In fact, scholars as a whole have never acknowledged the great volume of broadly distributed themes. The reason for this is that the experts themselves lack the necessary references; they cannot distinguish the underpinnings of the original human experience from the flood of random and contradictory details added by the various cultures as they localized, interpreted, and elaborated aspects of the universal experience.
In fact, the most significant motifs, the ones that reflect the archetypes most directly, are often the most likely to go unnoticed or to be swiftly dismissed. That's because these motifs arose from unfamiliar phenomena, events that do not occur in our time, whereas later elaborations of the motifs sought to ADAPT them to familiar phenomena. The archetypes, the root patterns, are neither random nor contradictory. All archetypes belong to a coherent substructure, and all are inseparably connected to each other. Hence, a logical and consistent explanation must be possible, even if all prior attempts at a unified theory immediately collapse when critically investigated.
MEMORIES OF DOOMSDAY
Of course, certain official tenets of science will obstruct the historian's ability to recognize patterns. Over the past two centuries, suppositions cultivated within the sciences placed rigid boundaries on historical investigation. How many archaeologists, anthropologists, or ethnologists, for example, have paused to notice the underlying agreement of the first sky-worshipers on the Doomsday memory? Every ancient culture insisted that a "world-destroying" catastrophe occurred in former times. For the Greeks this was the KATAKLYSMOS, when the world ended in flood and a cosmic winter, or EKPYROSIS, the destruction of the world by fire. We call the Doomsday memory an archetype because no culture failed to recall such an event, marked by great prodigies in the sky and a violent shift in the celestial order. On this vital point, Immanuel Velikovsky's presentation of global evidence still stands.
But just consider how severely our scientific assumptions will limit the historian's imagination, as he confronts this recurring memory. Without a second thought, he already "knows" that the sky remained fundamentally unchanged across all of human history. So he can only appeal to unconstrained imagination for his explanations. And his "explanations" will invariably discourage attention to detail and cross-cultural patterns. In almost thirty years of investigation, for example, I never found a mainstream scholar wondering why, on every habitable continent, the Doomsday accounts recall a biologically absurd serpent or dragon thrashing about in the sky. One would think that such an obvious enigma would capture the attention of the experts! Eventually, it became clear to me that unproven scientific assumptions, stated as fact, have fostered an intellectual trance, closing off the possibility of discovery.
MEMORIES OF PLANETARY DISORDER
As we descend to specifics, the observed rigidity becomes even more severe. What about the evidence for changes in the motions of planets only a few thousand years ago? With the birth of empirical astronomy in the first millennium BC, every priest astronomer knew that the planets, then seen as distant points of light, were once towering forms in the sky. The astronomers knew that, in a remote age of gods and wonders, the planets ruled the heavens, determining the fate of kings and kingdoms, and indeed the destiny of the world. Planets brandished weapons of thunder, fire, and stone. In their earliest-remembered appearance, they inspired awe and reverence, but in the end their behavior was both capricious and violent, leading directly to the Doomsday catastrophe.
The testimony is indisputable in the case of the Babylonian astronomer priest, Berossus, as cited by Seneca, and the same memory is echoed by Lucan, citing Nigidius. Plato, in the Timaeus, noted the change in the movements of celestial bodies in connection with world-destroying disaster. And he ascribed the great conflagration of Phaeton's fall to a shift in the motions of celestial bodies. More than one source reports the transformation of Phaeton into a planet (the "Morning Star") in our now-orderly solar system. Similarly, ancient Persian, Taoist, Chinese, Mesoamerican and other sources, gathered by Velikovsky, declare PLANETARY motions to be the source of the great cataclysms that punctuated world history, causing the collapse of world ages or the displacement of former "suns" prior to the re-birth of the world.
So it's no wonder that, even with the arrival of planetary stability and predictable orbits, a deep anxiety hung over all of the early cultures. We see this anxiety most vividly in the rise of astronomy and the systematic study of planetary motions. For thousand of years after the myth-making epoch, the astronomer-priests were still oppressed by the primeval fear, incessantly scanning the heavens, meticulously recording diaries of planetary motions, seeking out the signs of the one thing they feared the most - the return of Doomsday.
But how will modern historians, under the spell of a clock-like solar system, comprehend this Doomsday anxiety? Is it possible that ancient testimony, by the power of its consistency, could actually CORRECT science at a level so fundamental as to invite an intellectual revolution? For myself, I believe that this correction is inevitable and when it occurs, it will not reduce our interest in scientific fact, but re-direct our attention, infusing scientific investigation with a profound sense of discovery and new possibilities.
THE SATURN MODEL
The strongest advantage of the Saturn model is specificity. It connects hundreds of verifiable patterns to tangible and highly unusual forms in the sky, all vitally linked to equally tangible and unusual sequences of events. It further demonstrates that the archetypal figures of myth - most fundamentally the universal sovereign, mother goddess, and warrior-hero - can be fully comprehended. It is only necessary that we see these archetypes in their root identity, as planets and aspects of planets close to the earth, in defined spatial and dynamic relationships to each other, and in a celestial environment dominated by ELECTRICITY.
In prior installments of this newsletter we've introduced several dozen themes, some of these appearing as integrated complexes, such as the following themes relating to the earliest remembered time.
ARCHETYPES CONCERNING THE GOD OF BEGINNINGS
- a universal sovereign or central luminary of the sky, the father of kings, and founder of a lost Golden Age; - displacement of that former sovereign in overwhelming, world altering catastrophe; - a primeval sun, superior sun, best sun, or motionless sun in former times, before the appearance of the present sun; - a great luminary or chief of the sky at the celestial pole; - ancient language and symbolism of the pole as the motionless spot, the place of rest; or the cosmic center; - the holiest day of the week (Sabbath) as a commemoration of the primeval epoch, the day or time of the "resting god."
Generally, these closely-related traditions occur in contexts and locations far more widespread than the limited influence of empirical astronomy. Consequently, in the majority of instances, no direct information will give us the planetary identifications of the mythical personalities. But Babylonian astronomical diaries of the first millennium BC give motions of planets extremely close to their present orbits, thus allowing us to identify the references. And this, in turn, enables us to document the extraordinary and unexplained associations of the planets as mythical gods throughout the Near East and beyond. For the planet Saturn, we find these unusual associations, as we've noted in prior THOTH articles-
- Saturn as universal sovereign and father of kings, ruling at the beginning of time; - Saturn as founder of the lost Golden Age; - Saturn as an ancient ruler displaced by overwhelming catastrophe; - Saturn as the archaic "sun god"; - Saturn as motionless or resting god; - Saturn ruling from the celestial pole; - Saturn's day of the week as the holy day, the Sabbath, or day of rest.
We find, therefore, that while the first list includes separate fragments and nuances of a general tradition preserved around the world, the second list integrates all of the components by reference to a single planet. It thus substantiates a sense of underlying integrity. But it does more. It puts an exclamation point to the huge gap separating ancient memories from observed phenomena today. All "Saturnian" attributes directly contradict the actual behavior of the planet. This extraordinary situation surely does not permit the skeptic to merely claim that myth is foolishness and make believe. The situation requires the skeptic to explain how countless cultures, dispersed around the earth, could have relentlessly denied everything actually experienced, yet produced a universal accord on such unusual details.
Moreover, to note the Saturn connection is only to place the first surface scratch on the unified substratum. Once we take up the themes of the mother goddess and warrior hero, the universal motifs grow explosively, for these are, beyond question, the most fully documented figures of myth. And in both cases a gigantic library of global themes will converge on two planets - Venus and Mars.
Since we could quickly become lost in the great volume of material relating to the goddess and hero archetypes, I'll let the following list suffice for now.
GODDESS THEMES
- goddess as central eye of the primeval sun or universal sovereign; - goddess as luminous heart of the sovereign god; - goddess as animating soul of the sovereign god; - goddess as radiant "star" depicted in the center of archaic "sun" pictographs; p goddess as inner glory, power, strength of the universal sovereign; - goddess as hub and radiating spokes of a great wheel turning in the heavens; - goddess as omphalos or navel; - goddess as departing eye, heart, or soul, raging in the sky at the time of world-threatening catastrophe; - goddess taking the form of a chaos-serpent or dragon at the time of world threatening catastrophe; - goddess as Great Comet presiding over the end of a world age.
These goddess themes, all of which we've discussed previously, are extremely widespread, and are most clearly expressed by the earliest cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. But it is the links to the planet Venus that give the definitive clues. With the birth of empirical astronomy, every listed theme was connected to the planet Venus. Indeed, Venus is the ONLY planet identified as a goddess by astronomer priests of the first millennium BC.
WARRIOR-HERO THEMES
- hero born from the womb of the mother goddess - hero appearing as pupil of the eye, or born from the eye - hero conceived in the heart or soul of the sovereign god - hero leaping from the "star" depicted in the center of archaic "sun" pictographs - hero wearing the inner glory, power, or strength of the universal sovereign as a radiate crown - hero as axle of a great wheel turning in the heavens - hero as "navel-born" god - hero pacifying the raging eye goddess - hero vanquishing the cosmic serpent or dragon - hero wielding symbols of the Great Comet to restore the world after a great catastrophe
Here, too, the respective themes are far more widely distributed than any astronomical identification, though the clear and undisputed planetary associations that ARE available will lead to one conclusion only. The warrior-hero was the planet Mars.
A SNAPSHOT OF GATHERED PLANETS
It should go without saying that none of the common mythical themes, nor any of the associations with planets noted above, will find explanation in familiar natural events. But can this disparity justify an entirely new vantage point? To answer this question, we do not propose to take the reader on all of the sinuous paths of the original investigation. Rather, we shall simply offer a model which, we claim, WILL make sense of the global traditions, integrating and accounting for the field of evidence more completely than any prior theory. The underlying principles of the model are these:
- The planetary system we observe today is new. Only a few thousand years ago planets followed vastly different courses, in an unstable solar system.
- Our Earth formerly moved with several planets in close congregation, through a rich, electrically active plasma environment. The planets included (among others) Earth, Mars, and Venus, in a close dynamic relationship to the gas giant Saturn.
- In periods of relative "stability," the dominant planets in the system moved in COLLINEAR equilibrium. That is, the primary bodies remained in line as they moved through space.
- At an early phase of the configuration, the planet Saturn - prior to acquisition of its present ring system - appeared as a stationary, towering form at the celestial pole. This means that the axis of the earth was pointed directly to the aligned planets.
- Both Mars and Venus played highly prominent roles in the configuration, these two bodies appearing one in front of the other in the center of Saturn, positions confirming the collinear equilibrium of the system.
- It is tentatively assumed that the planet Jupiter was also part of the ancient assembly, though Jupiter was apparently hidden behind Saturn until a period of profound instability.
- Evolution of the configuration was marked by continuous electrical discharging, profoundly affecting the visual appearance of the celestial forms - and presumably the dynamics of collinear equilibrium as well.
- It was the highly unusual configurations taken by the discharge phenomena that inspired the ancient symbolism of the divine thunderbolt. Hence, the entire range of thunderbolt images in antiquity will add a vital layer for testing our hypothesis as a whole.
I'm attaching to this newsletter a slide from an upcoming presentation at the INTERSECT 2001 world conference. (For most email readers, the image should appear at the end of the newsletter.) This will be my first reference slide for the articles to follow. The slide depicts an early phase in the hypothesized configuration as seen from Earth, together with a few prehistoric rock art images from Ireland and California. The pictographs, inscribed on stone, illustrate the relationship we intend to document, between planetary forms seen in the sky, the patterns of world mythology, and verifiable formations of plasma activity in the laboratory. It was the dynamic evolution of this planetary assembly, we shall contend, that inspired the mythical histories of the gods.
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THE CAPTURE QUESTION AGAIN by Dwardu Cardona
QUESTION: In your opinion, is there enough information in the mytho-historical record(or geological record) to discriminate between an interpretation of the Saturnian system coming from outside the system and the Saturnian system always being at the distance of the asteroid belt? If so, what do you accept as evidence?
REPLY:
This ties in with the manner in which the Cosmic Egg was seen to break. See here my article, "The Evolution of the Cosmogonic Egg," AEON III:5, pp. 52 ff., but especially p. 67.
[editor's note: back issues of _Aeon_ are available for $15 each at http://www.aeonjournal.com/back_issues/back_issues.html. Here's a brief summary of the reference from pg. 52: ... "one consistent motif connected with [the myths of creation] ... concerns the universal, celestial, or cosmic egg. This motif is found scattered throughout the entire world -- Mircea Eliade has noted examples from Polynesia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Greece, Phoenecia, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Africa, Central and South America." And from pg. 67: "As Talbott has already shown, the luminous gases expelled by the dislodged Venus slowly congealed into a circular band which expanded and was visually seen from Earth to surround the Saturnian orb. This band, or egg, ... was originally of a golden color ... having glowed as a complete circle for an ambiguous length of time, the band's illumination changed so that, while half of it remained a brilliant gold, the other half changed to a lesser silver light -- or half bright and half dark, as other sources inform us. What this means is that the position of the ring must have changed with respect to the present, but still somehow hidden, Sun."]
Also, had the Saturnian system always existed at the distance of the asteroid belt, the crescent would always have been there, and we have deduced from the mytho-historical record that it had not.
Also, had the crescent always been there, its circling around the Saturnian orb would have enabled man to tell the passage of time, which the ancients themselves tell us they could not. See here my paper, "The Beginning of Time," in same issue of AEON, pp. 71 ff.
Also, we need a mechanism to account for Saturn's flare-up and, as Thornhill has indicated, this is best explained by the Saturnian system's plasmasphere coming in contact with that of the Sun. Had the Saturnian system always existed at the distance of the asteroid belt, it would already have been within the heliosphere.
Also, had the Saturnian system always been at the distance of the asteroid belt, Venus, Mars, and Earth would have long been within the clutches of the Sun's attracting power, and the planets would not have been able to sustain their linear stacking.
The asteroid belt is therefore best understood as the GENERAL locality in which the system broke up, having come within that orbital distance from outside the Sun's domain of influence.
There's more, but the above should suffice for now.
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LIGHTNING DOGS: in myth and plasma labs discussion with Rens van der Sluijs
Cardona: people's beliefs about natural phenomena often don't make sense with regard to those phenomena. The lightning was on all continents regarded as a dog or wolf descending from heaven.
G. Johannesson: One of the most common themes in plasma discharges is an item called hetermomacs, that originated in the experimental laboratories of the Kurchatov Institute. The common theme is dogs and foxes all over the place.
van der Sluijs: lightning as a canine animal [Meso-America, Europe, Malaysia, Africa]
'The Chinese "celestial dog" is similarly a thunder and lightning deity, and there are many references to it in the Chinese books, including the following: "When dark clouds covered the sky everywhere at night, a noise of thunder was heard in the north -- This was what people call a descent of the celestial dog ... "It has a shape of a large moving star, and produces a noise. When it descends and reaches the earth it resembles a dog. Whatever it falls upon becomes a flaming fire; it looks like a fiery light, like flames flaming up to heaven" ... "The celestial dogs live on the top of high mountains" ... The dogs are mentioned "as a kind of badgers living in the mountains, or as birds or plants ... , or dragons."' [D. A. MacKenzie, Pre-Columbian America (New Jersey) 1923: 246]
'According to the Matacos Indians of the Gran Chaco, the jaguar was in possession of fire and guarded it before man had procured it for himself'. [Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 208]
'The Bakairi Indians of Central Brazil allege that in the early days of the world the Lord of Fire was the animal which naturalists call Canis vetulus.' [Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 208]
'However, in other parts of British New Guinea the dog is said to figure in most stories as the animal which brought the first fire to men.' [Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 209]
'The Shilluk of the White Nile relate how, ... , they swathed the tail of a dog in straw and sent him to fetch fire from the land of the Great Spirit; the dog returned with his tail ablaze, and ever since the Shilluk have had fire.' [Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 210]
'The Sia Indians of New Mexico say that they procured fire from the coyote...' [Sir J. G. Frazer, Myths of the origin of fire; an essay, London 1930: 211]
On the Maya thunder dog: "At times he is dotted with spots to represent stars... His body is often in human form, carrying a torch in each hand ... he falls from the sky... " [D. A. MacKenzie, Pre-Columbian America (New Jersey) 1923: 247]
'The dog is associated with the night and is a god of death and lightning; he fell from heaven' (Maya). [MacKenzie a]
'Keeping one's distance from the family DOG is also a good idea, as dog's tails are alleged by some to attract lightning.' [D. Pickering, "Dictionary of superstitions", 1995: 157 ad "lightning"]
'A dog coming into a house during a storm will "draw lightning" and the same applies to a horse.' [N. N. Puckett, Folk beliefs of the Southern Negro, New York, 1969: 48]
'Some people are afraid of wet dogs and horses in a thunderstorm, believing that they "draw" the lightning; ... ' (Europe). [M. Leach (ed.), Standard dictionary of folklore, mythology and legend, 1984: 621 ad "lightning"]
'Sometimes he (Kadaklan, the creator, MAS) sends his dog Kimat (the lightning) to bite a tree, a field, or a house. He amuses himself by playing his thunder drum' (Malaysia, MAS). [H. R. Hays, In the beginnings; early man and his gods, New York, 1963: 358]
'Kadaklan, the thunder-god of the Tinguian people of the Philippines, lived in a tree with his dog Kimat, lightning, and sent him to bite people he disliked'. [K. McLeish, Myth; myths & legends of the world explored, London 1996: 605 ad "Thunder"]
'In the Congo, it was believed that lightning was a magic dog that gave a sharp bark.' [T. Andrews, Legends of the earth, sea and sky; an encyclopedia of nature myths, 1998: 5 ad "Africa"]
That should be enough to give an impression. Similar connections exist between lions/cats and lightning, etc. etc. Next to nothing about mythical lightning seems to be 'ordinary'.
Rens van der Sluijs
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FROM: THE MANY FACES OF VENUS by Ev Cochrane
[editor's note: This is the introduction to Cochrane's latest book. _The Many Faces of Venus_ and Cochrane's first book in the series, _Martian Metamorphoses_ can both be purchased at the Aeon website, www.aeonjournal.com ]
"If we look at the physical universe the way astronomers do, we may never know anything about it. The recent U.S. planetary probes revealed a shocking paucity of real knowledge about the contents of the cosmos." Garrett Verschuur
The slow and steady movement of the respective planets about the sun is frequently lauded as a sign of the clock-like regularity and order which distinguishes the solar system. Yet it can be shown that this much vaunted regularity is a comparatively recent development. As we will document in the pages to follow, the ancient sky-watchers describe a radically different solar system. If we are to believe their explicit testimony, recorded in countless sacred traditions from every corner of the globe, Venus only recently moved on a much different orbit, cavorting with Mars and raining fire from heaven. Is it possible that modern astronomers, in neglecting the ancient folklore surrounding the respective planets, have overlooked a vital clue to the recent history of the solar system? I, for one, believe this to be the case.
=46rom time immemorial the planet Venus has fascinated terrestrial skywatchers, and cultures everywhere assigned it a prominent role in their mythological traditions and religious rituals. Already at the dawn of recorded history, Sumerian priests composed hymns in honor of the planet which they venerated as the goddess Inanna:
"To her who appears in the sky, to her who appears in the sky, I want to address my greeting, to the hierodule who appears in the sky, I want to address my greeting, to the great queen of heaven, Inanna, I want to address my greeting, to her who fills the sky with her pure blaze, to the luminous one, to Inanna, as bright as the sun, to the great queen of heaven." sacred marriage-hymn of Iddon-Dagan, circa 1960 BCE
As our earliest historical testimony regarding Venus, the Sumerian literature surrounding Inanna is indispensable for reconstructing the ancient conceptions surrounding our Sister planet. Especially intriguing are those hymns which describe the planet-goddess as dominating the skies and raining fire and destruction. The following passage is typical in this regard:
"You make the heavens tremble and the earth quake. Great Priestess, who can soothe your troubled heart? You flash like lightning over the highlands; you throw your firebrands across the earth. Your deafening command ... splits apart great mountains."
Such imagery is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with Venus' current appearance and behavior. Indeed, scholars investigating the literature surrounding Inanna/ Venus rarely make an attempt to interpret it by reference to celestial phenomena, preferring instead to interpret the vivid catastrophic imagery as the product of poetic metaphor and creative imagination. As we will document, however, the Sumerian testimony has striking parallels around the globe, in the New World as well as the Old, a telling clue that common experience of catastrophic events -- not poetic metaphor -- is responsible for the peculiar traditions surrounding Venus.
The planet Venus as disaster-bringer is equally apparent in Mesoamerica, where the observation and veneration of Venus amounted to a collective obsession. For the Aztecs and Maya alike, the heliacal rise of Venus was an occasion of ominous portents marked by dread and hysteria. Bernardino de Sahag=FAn, a Franciscan friar writing in the 16th century, chronicled the Aztecs' perception of Venus:
"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 the attempt to propitiate Venus, the Aztecs offered it human sacrifices, a practice associated with the planet in the Old World as well. What is there about the planet Venus that could have inspired such grim rites? Venus' present appearance would never inspire mass hysteria or vivid tales of impending doom and world destruction. How, then, are we to account for the fact that Sahag=FAn's testimony documenting the Aztec's attitude towards Venus echoes the Sumerian skywatchers' conception of Inanna/Venus: "To provoke shivers of fright, panic, trembling, and terror before the halo of your fearsome splendor, that is in your nature, oh Inanna!"
In this book we will seek to discover the historical circumstances and logical ratio-nale behind the ancient mythology attached to Venus. To anticipate our conclusion: Venus was associated with dire portents and tales of apocalyptic disaster for the simplest of reasons -- it was a primary player in spectacular cataclysms involving the Earth in relatively recent times, well within the memory of ancient man.
The implications of this theory, if true, are at once revolutionary and far-reaching. In addition to necessitating a drastic revision in our understanding of the historical determinants of ancient myth and religion, the central tenets of modern astronomy and a host of allied sciences would be called into question as well. With stakes this high, it is imperative that we endeavor to gain further insight into the origins of ancient Venus lore.
The ancients' obsession with the planet Venus stands in marked contrast to the relative indifference currently accorded our nearest planetary neighbor. Who among us could even point out the Evening Star on any given night? Would anyone in their right mind be inclined to view Venus as an agent of destruction and impending doom?
David Grinspoon, a NASA astronomer and the author of a very entertaining history of Venus observation, offered the following summary of the ancients' preoccupation with Venus:
"Venus must always have seemed a unique, animated entity. For our ancestors the details of the complex movements of Venus served as important harbingers of war and peace, feast and famine, pestilence and health. They learned to watch every nuance for the clues they could wrest of what nature had in store. They watched carefully, obsessively, through skies not yet dimmed by industrial haze and city lights, and they learned to predict accurately, for years and decades to come, the rising, setting, dimming, brightening, and looping of Venus."
Confronted with Venus' prominent role in ancient consciousness, Grinspoon, like countless others before him, seems to take it for granted that it is only natural that the ancients would look to that particular planet for omens of things to come. But why should this be, since there is neither an inherent nor logical relation between Venus and the phenomena mentioned by him -- war, pestilence, fertility, etc.? Indeed, it stands to reason that any ancient skywatcher worth his salt would soon discover that there was precious little to be learned about such terrestrial matters from the patient observation of Venus. That is, of course, if we are to believe the conventional version of Venus' history, which holds that the planet's appearance and behavior has hardly changed for millions of years.
In recent years, modern astronomy has made great strides in removing the veil which had previously obscured the physiognomy of Venus. For the first several centuries of telescope observation it was commonly believed that Earth's so-called twin was home to beings like ourselves, complete with a thriving civilization. Until the midpoint of the present century it was still thought possible that Venus might be "Earth-like" in its features, with a tropical climate, vast oceans and swamps teeming with various forms of life. Yet all such geocentric scenarios were to receive a severe jolt in 1962 when, courtesy of Mariner 2, Venus was revealed to be a most inhospitable place, with surface temperatures in excess of 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Under such conditions, oceans (of water, that is) are quite out of the question and life, as we know it, almost unthinkable.
The recent history of the scientific investigation of Venus reveals a vast theoretical graveyard of discarded hypotheses, false deductions, erroneous premises, shoddy observations, and wishful thinking. While many astronomers, Carl Sagan among them, expected the Venusian clouds to be composed of water, Mariner 9 found precious little water and plenty of concentrated sulfuric acid. Where leading astronomers "observed" luxuriant Venusian vegetation in full bloom, modern space probes discovered a barren, desiccated wasteland. Indeed, if the truth be known, the Mariner, Magellan, and Pioneer missions have forced astronomers to radically revise their previous assessments as to Venus' origin, nature, and geological history. On virtually every major feature of the Venusian landscape and atmosphere, the astronomers' theoretical expectations have been proven wrong time and again. And wildly wrong at that. Given this dismal track record, there would appear to be some justification for maintaining a healthy skepticism with respect to astronomers' current "best guesses" as to what is possible regarding Venus' recent history. Indeed, as we will document, there are good reasons for believing that other -- even more radical -- revisions in our understanding of Venus are in order. Ev Cochrane
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THE SERPENTS OF CREATION By Dave Talbott
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following text is excerpted from a chapter of the forthcoming THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS, by David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill.
ENVISIONING THE ANCIENT SKY Were it possible for you, the reader, to stand alongside our early ancestors, to witness the events that provoked the age of myth-making, you would see celestial dramas on a scale virtually inconceivable today. You would see an electric sky filled with luminous clouds, threads of light, and undulating rivers of fire. And you would see great spheres joined in a cosmic performance--events seemingly too vast, too improbable for anything but a dream. Observe this celestial theater, and your first thought will be, "This could not have happened!" Yet allow events to unfold, and that first response will give way to a contradiction--a sense of the eerily familiar: "Where have I seen this before?"
Our answer is that you HAVE seen these events before--through their universal reflection in art and storytelling. These reflections are, in fact, the core images of the ancient world, recorded on papyrus and stone, mirrored in the sacred symbols of the great religions, reenacted in mystery plays, and embodied in monumental construction on every habitable continent. Once recognized, the images leap out from every page of world mythology.
SERPENTS IN THE SKY The pervasive role of cosmic "serpents" in world mythology is a mystery often mentioned in historical and astronomical studies, but never satisfactorily explained. Frequently adorned with feathers or wings, sprouting long-flowing hair, or breathing fire, these monsters rank among the most enigmatic and outrageous cultural icons, invariably eluding the grasp of the researchers attempting to explain them. Yet around the world, these biologically absurd serpents reveal numerous features in common--the clearest indication that the monsters DO have an explanation. But when investigators, exploring every possibility they can imagine, still find no answer, it becomes increasingly likely that the truth is simply "off the map"--outside the limits of current thinking. The boundaries of perception have excluded a memory so powerful that it influenced every ancient culture. From the infancy of civilization through all prior epochs of human history, world-altering serpents were claimed to have once moved in the heavens.
In most great mysteries, recurring patterns are the key to discovery. Is it significant, for example, that wherever the theme of Doomsday or celestial chaos occurs, a great serpent or dragon (mythic alter ego of the serpent) presides over the disaster? The connection is as old as the earliest civilizations. In ancient Egypt, the serpent Apep, whom the Greeks called Apophis, was the arch-enemy of the creator and of celestial order. His plotting against the supreme god Ra produced an earthshaking tempest in the heavens, and numerous Egyptian rites commemorated the victory of Ra over Apep, whose hideous forms and terrible roar haunted the Egyptians throughout their history. At the temple of Ra in Heliopolis the priests ritually trod underfoot images of Apep to represent his defeat at the hands of Ra. At the temple of Edfu, a long series of reliefs depict the warrior Horus and his followers vanquishing Apep or his counterpart Set, cutting to pieces the monster's companions, the "fiends of darkness."
Comparative investigation confirms that every well-documented culture possessed its own names and images of the serpent or dragon of chaos--the monster whom the Babylonians called Tiamat, the Greeks knew as Typhon or Python, and the Hindus called Vritra or Ahi. In Australia it was the Bunyip-monster, sometimes identified as the "Rainbow Serpent," that once decimated the earth. And in North America remarkably similar stories were told of the "Great Horned Serpent."
Hundreds of mythic counterparts to these serpents or dragons could be named as well. But what useful information do such monsters offer the modern world? Their contribution lies in a collective memory too consistent to be denied, including agreement on numerous, highly improbable details.
These monsters also provide a bridge connecting mythology to the tangible world of plasma physics. Until very recently historical researchers have had no reason to think of PLASMA when considering the mysteries of the cosmic serpent. Yet, as we shall attempt to demonstrate, everything known about the serpent-archetype finds a corollary in the recently documented behavior of electric plasma. And from this new vantage point, ancient reverence and fear take on astonishing clarity.
THE COSMIC SERPENT IN CREATION MYTHOLOGY Though serpent images pervade world mythology, few investigators have realized that the diverse--and always preposterous--mythic claims about serpents are the echoes of a universal story. The first chapters of the story trace to the beginnings of human memory, prior to the rise of the great civilizations. Before there was an "evil" monster--a serpent or dragon of chaos--there was a serpent that called forth no moral judgment at all. The myths describe it as prodigious and awe-inspiring, even frightful in its countenance, but its appearance occurred before disaster. In fact, the serpent of chaos is but the alter ego of the serpent of LIFE, a creature well represented around the world. Chinese serpents and dragon are frequent bearers of the life elements. The Mexican "feathered serpent" was the giver of life. For the ancient Egyptians, the Uraeus serpent was the soul or "life" of the creator himself. The Chaldean word for "serpent" meant also "life." And while the Arabic word for "serpent" is el-hayyah, the word for "life" is el-hayat. Thus, El-Hay, one of the common Arabic names for the creator (betraying an archaic but unrecognized relationship to the cosmic serpent), means "the giver of life," or the "principle of life itself."
To find the original meaning of the serpent-image in world mythology we must consider a mythic theme that is profoundly misunderstood today--the story of "creation." It is in the ancient accounts of creation that we find the cosmic serpent in both its life-giving and destructive aspects. But if scholars do not recognize the "serpent of creation," the reason is that a misperception of vast historic consequence is shared today by orthodox religious teachers and secular experts alike. All have failed to see the true meaning of the creation theme, whose origins predate most modern religious traditions by thousands of years.
The first creation stories did NOT answer the question--"How did we get here?" These accounts did not speak of the origin of our earth, the appearance of the distant stars, or the birth of human beings. In fact, the creation myth was not "speculation" at all. The described events WERE NOT IMAGINED. They were WITNESSED by human beings on earth and then INTERPRETED IMAGINATIVELY. That distinction will prove to be of sweeping significance.
It is not an accident that archaic "creator" gods appear as visible powers. They are seen and they are heard, a fact still evident in the biblical narrative, with its many references to the frightful countenance of Yahweh surrounded by cosmic waters. "The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook." "The pillars of heaven shook and were astounded at his roar." Such language is, of course, quite abundant in the biblical texts, though the modern reader naturally assumes that all references to the sights and sounds of the creation are metaphorical.
We see the commotion and upheaval of creation in one religious tradition after another. The oldest and most comprehensive Greek account, Hesiod's THEOGONY ("the Origin of the Gods"), tells of earth-disturbing catastrophe, including the famous attack of the serpent Typhon, when the world teetered on the edge of complete destruction. The birth of the gods in the more archaic Babylonian creation epic, ENUMA ELISH, is accompanied by frightful noise and tumult, as the serpent Tiamat rebelled against the gods, and chaos overtook the world. The Egyptian PYRAMID TEXTS recall the terrifying occasion of the great god's birth: "Hearts were pervaded with fear, hearts were pervaded with terror when I was born in the abyss." The theme is repeated in the oldest Hindu texts, the RIG VEDA, in connection with the birth of Indra, most famous for his defeat of the world-threatening serpent Vritra: " ... When thou first wast born, o Indra, thou struckest terror into all the people." Yet in popular imagination, the birth of the gods could have nothing to do with human terror, because human beings had not been "created" yet.
What, then, was the true subject of the original creation myth? It told how gods and goddesses, monsters and heroes ruled the world for a time and then went away. The story described how these powers fashioned a prodigious dwelling in the heavens, the celebrated home of the gods. It also recounted how this dwelling was overwhelmed in a great uprising or revolt led by a monstrous serpent or chaos-power, as celestial armies fought over the fate of the world, the conflagration ending in the defeat of the monster, the vanquishing of the rebel. And finally, the story told how the gods eventually retreated from the world or were translated into distant stars or planets.
We offer a radically new perspective on the creation theme. With the rise of the first civilizations, ALL commemorative activity pointed back to the events of "creation" and to nothing else. For this striking fact, no scholarly rationalization will suffice, and the answer can only lie in intensely experienced events--events of sufficient magnitude to account for both the global pattern and the extraordinary power over human imagination. The point was duly emphasized by professor Irving Wolfe in a recently published compendium of catastrophist inquiry--
"Nature produces Culture and the natural cataclysms which our ancestors have collectively experienced have influenced and shaped the cultural artifacts created afterwards. To put it simply, cultures are what they have gone through. The past determines the present, and the cosmic past exerts the greatest influence. A culture, if properly interpreted, therefore becomes a mirror of what preceded it."
It is in the recurrent details that we find the most compelling clues. At the core of the creation story is the activity of a cosmic serpent or dragon, whose biography embraces the mythic age of the gods from start to finish. The serpent's masks are many, and often the creature will present itself in unfamiliar garb, only to reappear in its serpentine aspect. But the creature has a story to tell and it is only necessary that we trace the theme back to the beginning, when the serpent first appears as a CONSTRUCTIVE power in the events of creation.
It is a well-established fact that the great creator-gods of antiquity possessed serpentine features or serpent companions, and the two notions often merge. What we shall ask the reader to consider is a new possibility--that these serpentine associations answer to things once seen in the heavens.
In Egyptian sources the creator Atum received his visible "form" from the serpent Neheb Kau, arising from the cosmic waters. The name means "Provider of Attributes": the serpent's coils were the god's own external form or body. "I was encircled in my coils," the god declares, "one who made a place for himself in the midst of his coils." Muslim legends recall a brilliant serpent around the throne of the creator Allah: "Then Allah surrounded it by a serpent ... this serpent wound itself around the throne." Much the same image occurs in Hebrew traditions: "And a silver dragon was on the machinery of the throne." "... And a silver serpent bore the wheel of the throne." The Orphic creator Chronos held in his hands a snake which formed a ring by holding its tail in its mouth. The Hindu great god Vishnu rested upon the coils of a serpent Ananta, floating on the cosmic waters.
Australian aboriginal myths celebrate the Rainbow Serpent, Aido Hwedo, said to have "assisted" in the creation. Natives of the African Sahara say that God utilized the body of the serpent Minia in the creation. In numerous Polynesian traditions, the "creator" appears as a serpent or the "Great Serpent." The male and female aspects of the Chinese creator were depicted as two human beings--Fu Xi and NÃ* Wa--with entwining serpentine bodies. And throughout the Americas, from Alaska to Peru, native traditions portrayed various creator gods as "the Great Serpent" or insisted that the creator possessed serpentine attributes.
It is not enough to simply observe that the "serpent of creation" is a primitive or irrational idea. The mystery arises from the fact that the archetype is preposterous--simply inconceivable under any assumption that the biological snake must account for the creature's prominence in world mythology. No snake on earth will inspire the notion of a primeval "creator"! Hence, the remarkable fact that EVERY culture honored the "serpent of creation" demands an explanation far more direct than any appeal to primitive "speculation" or make believe.
Moreover, both the life-supporting and destructive aspects of the serpent require investigation, for enigmatically they stand side by side as the two great polarities of creation mythology--on the one hand, the vehicle of an exemplary cosmic order; on the other hand, the agent of primeval chaos. In fact the two cannot be separated, for a vast reservoir of evidence makes clear that the chaos serpent was, in fact, nothing else than the terrible aspect of the life-giving serpent. But how did such an outrageous polarity take hold around the world? As the parent of catastrophe, the serpent became the symbol of collective fear --the Doomsday anxiety--hanging like a cloud over the ancient cultures. It was within the context of this cultural memory that priests and poets and philosopher strove for moral clarity, separating the monster into distinctive personalities, a host of alter egos appearing as the serpent's good and evil aspects.
Though the different forms of the mythic serpent can easily mask its origins, certain conclusions follow inescapably from a cross-cultural inquiry into the origins of the serpent theme. As suggested above, when human memory repeatedly converges on highly specific but "preposterous" claims, one can be certain that the convergence is not accidental: Serpent mythology arose from a common human experience. Though this conclusion is logically inescapable, it is neither recognized nor acknowledged by mainstream historians of ancient myth and religion. While specialists propose countless "explanations" for the different regional variations, we are really dealing with a single mystery here, but one having wide-ranging textures and subplots.
Moreover, to simply observe the cosmic serpent's effect on cultures the world over is to realize that the cause was far more catastrophic and fundamentally disturbing than anything surmised in traditional treatments of the theme.
THE "LIVING" POWERS OF HEAVEN The cosmic serpent was an ancient and powerful symbol of things once seen in the heavens but no longer present: that is the hypothesis we intend to support with evidence from wide ranging fields of study. The serpent was a metaphor filled with meaning, and it must be counted among the most "logical" and appropriate metaphors in the ancient world. Moreover, this metaphor points directly to electrical phenomena that can no longer be ignored. The serpent's every nuance is a feature of PLASMA DISCHARGE. Without the plasma formations, the mythic serpent is an effect without a cause. But if such structures once enchanted ancient observers the world over, the serpent metaphor is redeemed: it will explain what has been left unexplained through all of human history.
Since the forms of plasma discharge are now well documented, the question is susceptible to rigorous investigation, detail by detail. Plasma science invites us to compare the "serpent of creation" to known plasma structures, including the violently evolving Peratt Instabilities (discussed in Chapter II). In following this comparison, we must proceed from general to specific observations. We propose a vantage point outside all of modern theory. We are challenging the accepted history of the solar system and all commonly held ideas about the origins of human thought in prehistoric and early historic times
Planets and moons were once seen in the sky close to the earth. Between these bodies stretched heaven-spanning plasma formations, giving rise to distinctive, evolving structure--the exclusive subject of the worldwide creation legends. The fact that the filamentary, spiraling, twisting, undulating aspects of these plasma configurations were identified as serpentine is fundamentally reasonable under this hypothesis. And thus we shall welcome all appropriate tests, while urging scholarly and scientific review of possibilities never before considered.
Certain patterns of ancient belief are so common that scholars rarely pause to wonder about the cause. How did it happen, for example, that every ancient tribe on our planet came to see celestial bodies as living entities? Is there something inherent in the appearance of the Sun or Moon, or in the character of distant stars, to support the notion that celestial bodies are alive? Is it the daily or seasonal cycle of the Sun, perhaps, or the phases of the Moon? Is it the movement of the stars across the sky? Celestial bodies now seen from Earth offer very little to suggest animated and intelligent powers--and even less do they suggest a cosmic serpent, or help to explain the serpent's violent or raging aspect in worldwide traditions.
Perhaps it is too easy to suppose that universal beliefs need no explanation. If we encounter a primitive idea everywhere, we assume it to be a perfectly "natural" mistake of pre-rational minds. In fact, precisely such a claim was made by the student of comparative myth and religion, T. W. Doane, in the nineteenth century: "When a marvelous occurrence is said to have happened everywhere, we may feel sure that it never happened anywhere." By such reasoning, the theorist allows himself to sidestep the obvious challenge: why did every race make the same irrational mistake?
An animated, living entity possesses self-organizing, regenerative, and procreative abilities. As a rule, inert matter does not mimic living organisms. But as we earlier observed, plasma behavior is a notable exception. Irving Langmuir borrowed the name "plasma" from physiology (blood plasma) because, in the presence of electric fields, this state of matter takes on life-like attributes.
The analogy is quite fitting. The Greek _plasma_ is akin to _plassein_, "to form, to mold," a concept that is also fundamental to creation mythology. Electric plasma produces distinctive structure, and our contention will be that the plasma configurations of ancient times implied the presence of animated and intelligent powers in the heavens. To primitive observers, these powers certainly seemed alive--they acquired shape, moved with apparent intent, grew to prodigious size, changed shape, and "intelligently" organized their surroundings, even reproduced secondary versions of themselves. These life-like powers emitted unearthly sounds, "spoke" to ancient witnesses in unknown tongues, and produced celestial harmonies or "music of the spheres." In the more energetic and unstable phases, monsters in the sky shrieked and bellowed and roared. They displayed undulating tails or tentacles, their throats breathed fire, and they raged about the sky with long-flowing "manes" or flaming "hair." In their presence the earth shook, lightning blazed in the heavens, and great tempests nearly overwhelmed the world.
In remarkable agreement with the "animated" qualities of electric plasma, the mythic serpent typically reveals two complementary ideas. The monster undergoes metamorphosis--as when a "serpent" becomes a "lion"--and it incessantly appears as a hybrid form, a composite of two or more animal types, such as a lion headed serpent. That this remarkable pattern occurs universally is surely significant, and the pattern is observed among the earliest civilizations.
The "contradictory" language is telling. It implies that one-dimensional symbolism could not capture the range of the experience, the sights and sounds of the earth-disturbing occurrences. Clues are plentiful, however. Why, for example, did ancient symbolists so frequently combine serpent and leonine features in a single monster? We see this juxtaposition in the Greek Chimera, with the head of a lion and a tail in the form of a serpent. The Chinese "lion" has the countenance of a dragon, while the Chinese "dragon" possesses a distinctively leonine mane. The Egyptian goddess Tefnut appears as the Uraeus serpent, but in her terrible aspect becomes a giant lion head, with "smoking mane." The Mesopotamian dragon Labbu was a snake, but its name means "lion". The Sumerian goddess Inanna was the "lioness" of heaven, but in her rage became a fire-spitting serpent or dragon devastating the land. In Orphic theology, the god Phanes was born from an egg as a winged snake, though he grew the head of lion. "Snake of the Lion" was the name of a Mixtec creator god. The connection also shows up in the formulations of the early languages. The Hebrew _nahash_, "serpent," is cognate with Akkadian _neshu_ "lion," and Ethiopic _arwe_, "serpent," is cognate with Hebrew _aryeh, _ ari_, "lion."
Accordingly, it can be shown that the metamorphosing and hybrid forms of the cosmic serpent include all of the phases of plasma discharging listed in Chapter II (pages 27-32). Each of the cited discharging phases lends a distinguishing attribute to the cosmic serpent in the creation myth--
* Plasma FILAMENTATION gave the serpent its "hair" and "beard." * The plasma CORKSCREW produced the undulating body of the serpent. * The two filaments of the plasma ROPE produced the entwining serpent-twins. * The plasma STRING OF PEARLS was the serpent's treasure, represented by gems or beads on a string. * And the plasma SPIRAL was the winding tail of the serpent.
These structures are, of course, abundantly present in the global symbolism of the serpent, but there is a great deal more. Certain plasma forms such as the "horns" and the "wings" of the plasma column (phases of the violently evolving Peratt Instability) lack any obvious connection to "serpentine" attributes. Yet these forms repeatedly appear as features of the cosmic serpent, confirming that the inspiration did not come from any characteristic of a terrestrial snake. To reinforce this point we list below some of the more prominent features of the serpent or dragon in the universal tradition, all of them appearing to mock natural experience.
THE SERPENT-DRAGON HAS A BEARD. The Greek Typhon was bearded, and even the universal sovereign Zeus was said to have taken the form of a "bearded serpent." Numerous Egyptian serpent-powers displayed flowing beards. The Chinese dragon typically displays long whiskers and tufted beards. So also the Maya "Great Bearded dragon," the Maya serpent god Itzamna, the Aztec bearded dragon Xiuhcoatl, and the most famous Aztec serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, with his "long-flowing beard."
THE SERPENT-DRAGON HAS LONG-FLOWING HAIR. The hair of the monster, typically long and disheveled, is among its most distinctive attributes. In ceremonial reenactments, this "hair" may be represented by paper streamers or by other artificial means capturing the effusion of luminous hair-like filaments. Of the serpent Typhon, Apollodorus writes, "unkempt hair streamed on the wind from his head and cheeks." In the Egyptian language, word roots meaning "serpent" typically overlap with words meaning "hair." Set, the "Egyptian Typhon," is called also Thebeh, from _theb_, "lock of hair," and the COFFIN TEXTS celebrate the "bright hair of Set" or the "tuft of hair" on the tail of Set. The name of the serpent Nebet means 'lock of hair.' The serpent aspect of Atum, the original sovereign of the sky, is Seshem, while the root _sesh_ also means "hair" or "lock of hair." A serpent Tcha was also said to have issued from Atum's alter ego, Ra; one meaning of the word is "hair." The name of the serpent Nesh, 'terrifier', cannot be separated from _nesh_, "raised hair". Similarly the Chinese and numerous Oriental variation of the dragon are commonly presented with streaming hair. The Maya "sky serpent" displays along the length of its body the sacred lock of hair, the Caban-curl. Inca chroniclers tell of the horned rattlesnake-god that descended from the sky, its body "hairy, with a tail of gold."
THE SERPENT-DRAGON IS WINGED OR FEATHERED. The mystery was stated by Robert Briffault more than 75 years ago. "Snakes have the power to put forth wings and to become converted into flying dragons." That preposterous idea is global. Indeed, the winged or feathered serpent is so familiar that we are easily desensitized to the enigma. Apollodorus says of the serpent Typhon that "his body was all feathered." The "feathered serpent" was particularly well known in the Americas. Quetzalcoatl's name means "feathered serpent." The great serpents and dragons of Mesopotamia possess wings or wear feathers. In her terrible aspect, the Sumerian goddess Inanna became a "winged dragon": "Propelled on your own wings you peck away at the land. With a roaring storm you roar; with thunder you continually thunder." Upon their death Egyptian kings expected to meet the winged serpent of heaven, a serpent frequently depicted in Egyptian books of the afterworld. Chinese chroniclers recalled the "winged serpent" associated with immortality. Even the natives of San Cristoval, near the Solomon Islands, revered the "winged serpent" Hatuibwari.
THE SERPENT-DRAGON DISPLAYS HORNS. A few of the many examples would include the Mesopotamian horned serpent Basmu, child of Tiamat, the Greek horned serpent Ladon, killed by Heracles in his twelfth labor, the "great horned serpent," "long-horned serpent," "great water serpent," or "Horned Alligator" remembered across North America, and the Australian horned Rainbow Serpent. Like so many Native American versions of the Horned Serpent, the Chinese Dragon, with its reptilian head and serpentine, scaly neck wears the horns of a stag. Cerastes, the horned serpent of medieval European tradition, was also called "Hornworm." British folklore speaks of the "Horned Worm" (derived from the Norse word for "dragon"), which can be compared to the Kraken, a huge horned sea monster occurring in the folk tales of Norway and northern Scandinavia. Monoceros Marinus, a monstrous fish-like being with a gigantic horn, appears in German and Austrian legend. The famous cosmic dragon Mushussu of Babylonian myth, had the head and tail of a serpent, but with horns projecting from its head. Inhabitants of West Malaysia remember the reptilian dragon Tioman, formerly the daughter of a famous king, "with horns on her head and a vast swirling tail."
THE SERPENT-DRAGON IS A TWIN-FORM. Though this theme has far too many nuances to be adequately presented in a single paragraph, the twin aspect of the serpent will prove of great significance, pointing directly to celestial phenomena no longer seen in the heaven. The dragon Typhon's trunk is two entwined serpent-tails, and the same is either stated or implied in connection with other Greek monsters and giants.
DUSTY PLASMA: THE PRIMA MATERIA OF CREATION Data from plasma science suggest that the cosmic medium in which the anciently-recorded formations appeared was a "dusty plasma." In the interplanetary space through which Earth formerly moved, dissociated electrons and positively charged ions combined with neutral gases and dust particles, all subject to electrical forces. In such a plasma, the dust particles have a strong tendency to capture electrons and become negatively charged, adding features to plasma configurations that would not otherwise be present. The particles will tend to space themselves at equal distances from each other within discrete regions of a plasma configuration, and this gathered dust can produce light reflecting characteristics that would not occur in a dust-free discharge formation.
One must also keep in mind that the analogy in space for the microscopic "dust" of laboratory plasma experiments could well have included fields of sand, gravel, ice, or rock.
Additionally, it bears emphasizing that the formation of the heaven-spanning configurations requires the presence of charged bodies in the vicinity of Earth, the anodes and cathodes in discharge sequences. Based on a comprehensive survey of ancient testimony, cross-referenced with data from space, we contend that electrical discharges occurred between celestial bodies moving in close congregation. This electrical arcing cast huge volumes of material into surrounding space, ranging in size from microscopic particles to asteroid-sized rocks. It was this material within the dusty plasma that gave the celestial configurations their appearance of solidity in relatively stable phases, including light-reflecting characteristics that could only emphasize the three-dimensional look of the configurations.
When seen from this perspective, the many mysteries of the serpent become aspects of one mystery: "What was the serpent of creation"? Plasma science suggests that the creature signified both the RAW MATERIAL of celestial construction and its evolving FORM. The serpent was constituted by the medium--a dusty, electric plasma--and its metamorphosing form could only be the evolving, visible STRUCTURE resulting from the electrical interaction of charged bodies across a plasma. As to this identity, ancient sources offer a huge reservoir of support.
Virtually all creation mythology speaks of an irreducible RAW MATERIAL used to fashion the cosmic dwelling, the habitation of the gods. Such mythic "elements" as water, wind, or fire typically provide this universal substance, though ancient sources repeatedly bring the "elements" together in ways that may seem to obscure any concrete meaning. From ancient Egypt to Mesoamerica, for example, water and fire frequently appear together as a "sea of flame" or "fire water." But if we are on the right track, the original subject of the myths DID look like water and fire. Nor should it surprise us that the sky worshipers saw in this elementary material the luminous soul-substance of the gods, their living essence. It ANIMATED the heavens. It was both the gods' own creative outflow and the medium in which they lived. And it was the raw "stuff" of creation. We see this meaning, for example, in the early Egyptian language of the _pautti_ (using Budge's transliteration), the "primeval matter" fashioned into the dwelling of the gods. It was the soul-material of the gods themselves, exploding from the creator Atum or Ra to form a fiery, watery mass. Thousands of years later, the alchemists named it the _prima materia_, the universal substance from which all else originated. Mythic images of this raw material--the wind-blown waters of heaven, the luminous breath of the gods, the flaming aether--simply drew upon the different ways of seeing the celestial medium we recognize as dusty plasma. And not surprisingly, the cosmic serpent is entirely bound up with this stuff of creation. It is at once the carrier and the form of the "soul-substance." In its root identity the serpent is elemental. It is water. It is wind. It is fire.
Surely the most common "element" in creation mythology is water, since every well-documented culture depicted its creator gods immersed within a watery abyss or floating upon a primordial sea. That electrified dusty plasma could create this appearance of cosmic "waters" is certain. And the inherent tendency of electric plasma to form spiraling and filamentary configurations cannot be ignored when considering either the serpentine aspect of the creator gods or the cosmic serpent's own embodiment of the primordial waters. Additionally, from this unique vantage point, it is easy to recognize the serpent of creation as the prototype of the mythic "sea-serpent" or dragon arising from watery depths to threaten the creation--a theme of universal distribution.
The same can be said of the serpent's identity as wind or life-breath. Serpents and dragons are the celestial soul-essence, the living "breath" of the gods, as exemplified by the serpentine pneuma of the Greeks, the World Soul or divine life-breath, organizing and animating the heavens. Egyptian texts identify the Uraeus-serpent, the out-breathing of the gods, as the soul of Ra, whose activity produced the tangible, external form of Ra in the heavens. Indeed the "souls" of numerous ancient gods appear in the form of a serpent. The heart-soul of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl rose in the sky as a fiery serpent. In the Egyptian Coffin Texts, the deceased travels the sky "by means of this soul of the horned serpent." And one culture after another declared that, in its violent aspect, the cosmic serpent was the "stormwind," appearing as a tornado or whirlwind assaulting the land of the gods.
Consider also the serpent's elemental identity as fire. Throughout the ancient world serpent and flame are inseparably linked archetypes, despite the outrageous incongruity of the idea. The cosmic serpent's venom, blood, breath, or spittle is most frequently depicted as fire. Fire flew from the monster Typhon. The Greek Chimera, Typhon's own progeny, was a composite of serpent, goat, and lion destroying the land with its fiery breath. The Egyptian Uraeus-serpent spit fire, appearing in the sky as "the Great Flame," destroying the enemies of Ra. In Chinese imagery, "a strange fire plays about the body of the dragon." The Aztec Xiuhcoatl was a dragon of fire, this "fire-serpent" being depicted in ritual re-enactments by a fire-breathing mask. The serpent or dragon form of the Sumerian Inanna spewed fire: "Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the land... Raining the fanned fire down upon the nation... " Of the biblical dragon, Job declares, "Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke... His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth."
Taken as a whole, the evidence demands a sweeping shift in perception. The dramas of the myth-making epoch were extraordinary, and they are not occurring today. Hence, they are not familiar to us. But the analogies utilized by the myth-makers ARE familiar, and these analogies constitute the primary language of world mythology. To simply recognize this fact is to see that a combination of analogies (such as the hybrid or metamorphosing leonine and serpentine monsters) will often point to the same phenomenon, each symbol adding vital nuances that would be less apparent, or not apparent at all, without the others. Together with more archaic and more literal drawings of things seen in the heavens--all pointing to an alien sky--the symbolic language of myth is a storehouse of information, encouraging rigorous cross-cultural comparison.
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http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thovi-08.txt
BIRTH OF VENUS A discussion
Ken Moss began: It is my that Tony Peratt thinks Venus was always part of the Saturnian configuration, which I tend to agree with myself. However, Wal Thornhill and Dwardu Cardona claim Venus was, or may have been, born out of Saturn within man's memory.
DWARDU CARDONA replied: Speaking for my own position on this, "may have been," rather than "was," is where I now stand. The problem here is that both hypotheses, Peratt's and mine, raise problems. See more below.
MOSS: That is, Venus was the core of Saturn that was pulled out or ejected by some means when the Saturn system came in 'contact' with the solar system. But there is an important difference between the two ejection scenarios. Wal says Venus came out equatorially and Dwardu thinks it came out Saturn's pole, the same one Mars and Earth was 'under.'
CARDONA: ... Yes, I do hold that *IF* Venus was ejected from Saturn, it would have been ejected poleward.
MOSS: Can mythology and physics combine to show what really happened?
CARDONA: Seeing as the mytho-historical record is limited to what was seen from Earth's perspective, its value in correctly surmising what really took place in space is limited in this particular instance. All that we can glean from the record is that VISUALLY Venus had not always been there. So that, if it WAS there, it was not visible to Earth-bound eyes. The record implies that Venus appeared SUDDENLY after long ages of proto-Saturnian stability.
As for physics, as Peratt has stated, the implication seems to be that all of the configuration planets were formed at the same time. Personally, I have problems with this, DESPITE LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS.
MOSS: My recent reading of Egyptian myth supports Tony in that the appearance of Venus is treated in a rather low-key way. The sun- god One is alone in the heavens then Tefnut/Venus and Shu/Mars are either quietly spit out (no sense of real force is implied) or they simply become visible at some point, one in front of the other and both in front of the disk of Saturn, from Earth's perspective.
CARDONA: But there you have it. Whether forcefully or not, Venus IS said to have been "spat out." In other words, it had not been visually apparent before that event. And as for whether the "spitting" was violent or not, we have to analyze other than just the Egyptian myth. From my own study of this subject, I can safely say (without being adamant) that the first appearance of Venus WAS a violent event.
MOSS: On the other hand, Wal's view is supported by the birth myth of Athena/Venus who suddenly burst out of the forehead of Zeus fully armed and ready for battle. This does sound like a far more dramatic appearance and fits the equator ejection model as Venus would have been seen to suddenly appear out to the side of Saturn and not between Mars and Saturn.
CARDONA: The correct translation is "skull" not "forehead." Even so, I do not see how that necessarily translates as an EQUATORIAL ejection. And, in any case, that was Hesiod's take. There are other Greek versions of the birth of Athena.
WAL THORNHILL adds: The equatorial ejection model is supported by Venus' retrograde spin. As Eric Crew made clear in his electrical core expulsion model, the ejected matter is given a retrograde spin by the very nature of its birth.
If Venus had been born from the pole of Saturn in some unspecified manner, then it would be expected to mimic Saturn's axial alignment and spin rate. It does neither.
CARDONA: You are here assuming that Venus spun retrogradely from its very inception. I can argue that it did not. And, no, I am not saying that Venus stopped spinning and then resumed in the opposite direction. It's spin did not change. But it did go through a tippe-top inversion, very much in the manner that Warlow hypothesized for Earth. As seen from Earth, the effect would have been the same as if Venus changed its direction of spin.
MOSS: The more contentious scenario, to me, is Dwardu's and the problem has more to do with the physics than any mythology. If Wal is right, that it was a combination of attraction (between the sun and the core) and sudden electric charge difference (between Saturn's outer shell and core) that drove the ejection, how could that happen in the already-aligned configuration consisting of Saturn, Mars and the Earth? For the core to come out of the pole that Mars and the Earth were 'under' it would mean that the configuration came into the solar system TAIL FIRST (Saturn being the head and Earth the tail of the string of planets).
CARDONA: The problem here, as in many other cases, is the Sun. Why are we assuming that Venus was "pulled out" of proto-Saturn by the gravitational pull of the Sun? That, surely, is NOT the manner in which planets are born. So that whether the proto-Saturnian systems entered the Sun's domain tail-first or head-first has no bearing on THIS particular issue. (To be sure, this question HAS to be answered, but in relation to an entirely different problem.)
MOSS: And if this were so, surely the Earth, being the closest body to the sun, would have been subject to tremendous forces. Surely these forces would not have left us in peace while reaching over us (and Mars), so to speak, in order to pull out Saturn's core?
CARDONA: Saturn's core, IF THAT IS WHAT VENUS WAS, was not "pulled out" by anything. Again, that is not the way in which planets are born.
THORNHILL agrees: See my article in Aeon VI:1. The gravitational attraction of the Sun had little to do with the birth of Venus. It might have contributed an offset in the expulsion from proto-Saturn's equatorial plane -- which may be reflected in the fact that Venus' spin axis does not line up with any of Earth, Mars and Saturn. But the major effects would have been felt when crossing the Sun's plasma sheath at some great distance from the Sun and well beneath the ecliptic. (That accords with the shared axial alignments of Earth, Mars and Saturn, together with the observed revolving crescent of sunlight seen from Earth on the body of Saturn).
The plasma sheath is the region of the Sun's virtual-cathode where almost the entire voltage difference between the Sun and the galactic plasma exists. The effect upon Saturn would have been, I imagine, spectacular and catastrophic, leading to the expulsion of Venus in an effort to adjust electrically. A part of the process would see Saturn accelerated from the center of its small planetary system, leaving the more distantly orbiting satellites to trail behind. That is the only way, dynamically, that I can see a close polar configuration forming.
BTW, the preferential constant acceleration of Saturn, as the most highly charged body in the assembly, toward the Sun fits perfectly with the observed constant deceleration of charged spacecraft moving away from the Sun. A dynamic polar equilibrium could only be sustained by such a constant tug on proto-Saturn.
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http://saturniancosmology.org/files/thoth/thovii07.txt
MYTH By Ev Cochrane
Why should anyone care about ancient myth? The answer, quite simply, is that for untold centuries myth served as the primary means of recording and communicating man's fundamental ideas regarding the nature of the cosmos and the sacred. In this sense, ancient myth represents an intellectual heirloom encapsulating the history of our species and is thus a ripe field of study for all students of evolutionary psychology. If, as appears to be the case, myth also preserves important clues for reconstructing the recent history of our solar system its study becomes all the more essential.
Modern scholars have defined myth as a sacred history purporting to describe the origin of the world and mankind's various cultural institutions. Mircea Eliade would emphasize myth's central function in ancient (and so-called primitive) cultures:
"One fact strikes us immediately: in such societies the myth is thought to express the absolute truth, because it narrates a sacred history; that is, a transhuman experience revelation which took place at the dawn of the Great Time, in the holy time of the beginnings (in illo tempore). Being real and sacred, the myth becomes exemplary, and consequently repeatable, for it serves as a model, and by the same token as a justification, for all human actions. In other words, a myth is a true history of what came to pass at the beginning of Time, and one which provides the pattern for human behaviours. Clearly, what we are dealing with here is a complete reversal of values; whilst current language confuses the myth with 'fables', a man of the traditional societies sees it as the only valid revelation of reality."
Countless myths, according to Eliade, commemorate the Creation, the latter regarded by ancient man as something that "really happened, as an event that took place, in the plain sense of the term." Intimately related to this widespread idea that Creation was something actually experienced and witnessed is a corollary belief -- that a great catastrophe brought down the curtain on the paradisiacal conditions which formerly prevailed during a remembered Golden Age.
Yet as insightful and compelling as Eliade's analysis of myth proves to be, there is one gaping hole in the argument: No explanation is offered for the origin of the specific mythical themes uncovered -- e.g., Creation, the Golden Age, epoch-ending catastrophe, the primeval hieros gamos, etc. This question is directly related to another major flaw plaguing most modern theories of ancient myth; namely, their general inability to explain the recurrence of mythical themes around the globe. Levi-Strauss emphasized this problem in an essay on myth many years ago: "How are we going to explain the fact that myths throughout the world are so similar?"
Particularly troubling are those bizarre details of ancient myth that don't make sense in the real world: flying, fire-breathing dragons, for example; the dwarf-like hero who suddenly assumes a gigantic form; the birth of the warrior-hero from the "heart" of the mother goddess; and countless others. One is naturally inclined to attribute such motifs to creative imagination and fictional storytelling, but this "explanation" runs up against an insuperable difficulty: These seemingly meaningless and impossible motifs are likewise to be found around the globe. As Levi-Strauss emphasized, it is very difficult to understand how creative imagination could explain such recurring motifs:
"Mythic stories are, or seem, arbitrary, meaningless, absurd, yet nevertheless they seem to reappear all over the world. A 'fanciful' creation of the mind in one place would be unique -- you would not find the same creation in a completely different place."
There would appear to be but three possible explanations for the presence of such recurring motifs:
(1)They originated in creative imagination and subsequently became diffused around the globe;
(2)They are natural products of the human mind;
(3)They have some reference to celestial phenomena, observed and commemorated in mythical language by ancient man the world over.
For reasons which will become clear, the third explanation is the only one which is compatible with the evidence and, indeed, it forms the cornerstone of the Saturn theory.
[ed note: visit Cochrane's recently up-dated website for this introduction to myth and links (at the bottom of the page) to further articles about the Saturn theory. Buttons at the top of the page connect you to sections from Cochrane's Mars and Venus books, and information for purchasing them.]
THE WEBSITE:
http://www.maverickscience.com/Myth/myth.html
ARTICLE LINKS INCLUDE:
The Stairway to Heaven Samson Revealed On Thundergods and Thunderbolts
Ev Cochrane www.maverickscience.com/
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