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THE BEDROCK OF MYTH

_by Roger Ashton_
1. [1]Tracing the Origin of Myth
2. [2]The Nonexistent Sunlike Saturn
3. [3]Perceived Form and the Passage of Time
4. [4]An Alternative Conjecture
5. [5]The Sequence of Manifestations
6. [6]The Forms of the Polar Apparition
7. [7]Sungir and the Nasatyas
8. [8]The Triple Crescent and the Neanderthals
9. [9]Three Tests_
_
_1. Tracing the Origin of Myth_

If the metaphors of myth and the symbols and emblems derived therefrom can
be traced retrospectively to the elements of a primeval visual design from
which all of them could evidently and separately evolve, then that
primeval visual design is the bedrock of myth. It is not necessary to
presume that this origin has a unity in time. The design need consist only
of the very simplest set of parts from which the metaphors may readily be
obtained.

Identification of gods with planets plants obstructively false clues along
the trail of retrospective tracing. One of the absurdities to which these
false clues can lead is the north celestial polar Saturn. The latter is
thoroughly weighed and found thoroughly wanting in the essay "The
Unworkable Polar Saturn" [published with revised title in _Aeon_ 1:3,
CLE], in terms of celestial mechanics, geophysics, palaeoclimatology, and
palaozoogeography. Those who have been regarding the polar Saturn as if it
had been a reality have not paid proper heed to the significance of the
fact that connections of gods with planets are found in the later and not
in the earliest sources of myth.

To abandon the planetary and retain the north celestial polar aspect of
the primeval gods allows for an open and unbiased approach to the question
of whether there was ever any original physical basis for mythical
conceptions. Until the thesis set forth in the course of this essay
receives some measure of physical verification, it is still easily
conceivable that the material of myth is due to subjective, visionary,
psychic, mystic, metaphysical, cryptic, subliminal, or, if one can stomach
the idea, occult factors. This may be true no matter how neatly mythical
motifs coalesce into one composite image retrospectively, and no matter
how well the archaeological finds discussed herein may seem to attest that
coalescence.

_2. The Nonexistent Sunlike Saturn_

In "The Sun of Night," published in _Kronos_ in 1977, Dwardu Cardona
proudly flourished what seems to be an exception to the late dates of
links of planets with gods. It is from a Sumerian source. Therein, Shamash
the god, usually identified with the Sun, is identified with Saturn the
planet. Cardona confidently asserted that the only possible interpretation
was that Saturn was once a Sun of the night.

Taking this source material at that sort of face value, however, is
peculiarly naive. It is thoughtlessly inconsistent with an evidently
warranted procedure of tracing all of the items of myth backwards in time
to what is clearly a unifying origin. When the items mentioned by Cardona
are thus traced, Cardona's sunlike Saturn proves not even to be a single
swallow, let alone that which fails to make the proverbial summer.

Shamash the god was originally no more the Sun than Saturn the planet.
Both the Sun and Saturn are displacement metaphors. During the process of
corruption of the earliest content of myth, interchangeable metaphors for
godly attributes led in time to spurious narratives and misleading
divergences of idiom, whi[ch] I shall in due course illustrate.

Hindu sources are exceptionally rich in celestial materials that
Velikovskians would be strongly inclined to use to identify gods with
planets. With slipshod and circular reasoning and tendentious use of these
sources, the sunlike Saturn could be obtained in numerous parallel
versions. Every one of these would be spurious. In chronological order,
the sources are the _Rgveda_, _Yajurveda_, _Atharvaveda_, the various
Brahmanas among which the _Shatapatha Brahmana_ is of prime importance,
the _Upanishads_ in which the myth of the preceding forms the basis of an
increasingly abstracted and artificial philosophy, and the major epics and
_puranas_, at the end, in which the content of myth is the most corrupted,
elaborated, encrusted, concocted, and diversified. In addition, there are
numerous philological, astronomical, and astrological works, belonging to
the later period, and a series of glossaries of varyingly encyclopedic
nature, compiled at various dates. The latter supply much if not most of
the numerous mythical connections of planets, as for example in the case
of what seems to be an implicit connection in probably lost segments of
myth between Mercury the planet, the Celestial Pillar, and the highly
poisonous and hallucinogenic _Dhattura_ or jimson weed plant, _Datura
stramonium_ (or _Datura metel_) I shall use some of what emerges from this
extraordinarily rich store of sources in my ensuing discussion.

From these sources, I have unearthed an immense amount of corroborative
material which fully supports the basic visual forms of the primeval
mythical god as set forth in David N. Talbott's _The Saturn Myth_. I shall
illustrate this discourse with these forms and their many derivatives.

Figure 1 below shows Prajapati, the Primordial Cosmic Man. The immobile
orb, the head, is attached to the immobile Support or Cosmic Pillar, the
body. The protruding arms are formed by the protruding ends of the moving
crescent that circles the orb, at the North Celestial Pole, in one day.
The Polar Assemblage or image is seen as the Cosmic Man only very shortly
before, during, and after midnight, when the crescent is appropriately and
symmetrically placed.

Figure 1 0000 hrs. Figure 2 0000 hrs.Figure 3 0000 hrs.

Etymologically, _Prajapati_ means Lord of Procreation, or the actual
Phallus. The Cosmic Phallus is shown in figure 2 above.

In _Bhagavata Purana_ V.23.7, Saturn the planet is situated on the
generature organ of a Cosmic Porpoise, shown in figure 3 above. Of vital
importance is the fact that in myth and ancient hymns, various metaphors
are used as if the orb, crescent, and pillar were interchangeable parts.
From the cited passage one may place Saturn either in the orb or in the
Support to which the orb is attached. Elsewhere, as we shall see, it could
be in the crescent.

Of equally vital importance is the fact that in order to perceive the 3
figures in their specific and varied guises, the lines of division and
spatial relationship of the parts must in each case be different. Only
with a protean apparition would this have been possible. Doubt is cast
upon the planetary interpretation.

The most commonly known word for planet, _graha_, also specifically means
ladle. Figure 4 below shows the ladle, _graha_, whose bowl is the
crescent. Evidently the crescent, an element of the bedrock of mythical
metaphor, became corrupted in the course of time to planet.

Figure 4 0600 hrs. Figure 5 0600 hrs.Figure 6 0000 hrs.

Figure 5 above illustrates _graha_ as meaning a grip, grasp, hold. That
which grasps is the hand, seen in a partly threefold crescent. This
illustrates the notion of God holding in his hand the 'world'. It is a
celestial orb, and not the terrestrial world.

In the myth of the _Shatapatha Brahmana_, Prajapati divided himself
threefold, as in figure 6 above, becoming Agni, fire, Vaya, 'wind', and
Surya, Sun. Agni is the Primordial Priest. What belongs to a priest,
_Brahmanya_, is an epithet of Saturn the planet. Clearly, Saturn is a
corruption from the outermost crescent, 'wind' a corruption of the middle
crescent, and the Sun a corruption of the innermost.

At some stage, confusion between the first two displacements of metaphor
has occurred. One of the many names for Saturn is _Anilaprakrti_, of the
nature of the wind. Crescent to wind and crescent to Saturn makes Saturn
the wind in the mind of some inept interpreter, just as in the minds of
inept Sumerian interpreters of myth, crescent to Saturn and crescent to
Sun meant a sunlike Saturn illuminating the night.

Three parallel myths of the _Shatapatha Prahmana_ unite into the narrative
that Prajapati uttered three words, Earth, Air, and Sky, which were
lights, which were Agni, Vayu, and Surya. In the interchangeable metaphors
of myth, 'words' are a perception of light.

Numerous Sanskrit words mean both to speak and to shine. Th[e]
interchangeability and ambivalence of mythical metaphors contributes to
the corruption and misleading scattering of motifs. Agni, the outermost
crescent, is the Celestial Earth, later corrupted to terrestrial. Vayu,
the middle crescent, corrupted to 'air' as well as 'wind'. Surya, the
innermost crescent, corrupted to 'sky' as well as to the Sun. There is no
reason why the Sun or Saturn should be clues to any greater weight than
Earth, Air, Sky, and Wind in retrospective reconstruction of primeval
myth. They should be recognized as corruptions, one and all.

Herein has been seen the Celestial Earth as both orb and crescent. Thus
are the parts exchanged in the metaphors. Myths of floods over the 'earth'
were originally myths of floods of light over the orb or the crescent. The
story of the Earth covered everywhere by the Great Flood was originally
never told. Velikovskians have been naive enough to suppose that it
happened because they have come nowhere near to examining their evidence,
myth, with proper care.

It is noteworthy also that from the preceding, Earth could just as readily
be identified with Saturn as Wind and the Sun. This would be a companion
for the spurious Great Flood. This betrays the nonsensical nature of
taking planetary identifications at face value, for Velikovskians must
invent _a priori_ rules at every step to justify conflicting standards of
interpretation of myth.

In conclusion, it is clear that in Sumer as in India, corruption of myth
led to the Sun and Saturn arising from items of a formerly identical
nature, the original north celestial polar crescents. Incompetent Sumerian
priests identified Sun-Shamash with Shamash-Saturn instead of leaving the
incomprehensible traditions as they were. Thus it was, doubtless, that the
later Greeks came to call Saturn Heelion Asteer, and the Romans came to
call it Stella Solis.

A presumed sunlike Saturn is not even arguable from myth, let alone the
basis of objective material for a purported lost celestial history. In or
at least seemingly in the North Celestial polar sky, the crescentoid
formation is another matter. That is part of the original inspiration of
the metaphors, the bedrock of myth.

_3. Perceived Form and the Passage of Time_

It may well after all be that the visual designs of the Polar Assemblage
which have been unearthed primarily by David N. Talbott and used and
extended herein do in fact form the documents, as it were, of a lost
celestial history. It is a history in which the planets play no part
essentially different from what we now observe, if, in fact, the human
observers of the Polar Apparition deigned even to notice the planets at
that time.

Apparently, the Polar Apparition became triple from single, and then
sevenfold from triple. In the hymns of the _Rgveda_, Sarasvati the goddess
is usually one of a trio, but in _Rgveda_ VI.61.12 she is sevenfold,
having arisen from a threefold state. There seems to be no serious warrant
for finding indications of any other number of crescentoid elements in the
basic design of the image.

An identical formation is found from the parallel tradition of the Maruts.
Careful sifting through and comparison of the epithets of these gods as
set forth in a scattered fashion through the hymns of the reveals that
there were originally seven of them. Their midnight aspect was _Rgveda_of
seven concentric cows or men as in figure 7 below.

The Maruts were sons of Rudra. Figure 8 is a diagram of the essentials of
a composite illustration on a Harappan seal of about 4000 years ago. Rudra
and the seven Maruts are obviously depicted. The crucial clue is that in
the myth of the _Shatapatha Brahmana_, the Maruts lived in an Ashvattha
tree, _Ficus religiosa_, the leaves of which are shown in the design.
Another Sanskrit name for the tree is _pippala_.

The leaves resemble most extraordinarily closely those of Black Poplar,
_Populus nigra_, a northern tree. The equivalence both of the form of the
leaves and of Sanskrit _Pippala_ with Latin _Populus_ indicates that the
Pippala, Hindi Peepul, is a ritual substitute for the northern Black
Poplar, which was adopted by the migrating Aryans coming into India.

Against most academic opinion, the latter implies that the Harappan or
Indus Valley civilization was Vedic in nature, in spite of horses being
extremely rare in the area at the time. It must have been Vedic, for
otherwise, there would not have been enough time for the earlier migration
from the northwest to be totally forgotten by the Indian branch of the
Aryans.

The story of the Maruts living in an Ashvattha tree, the substitute for
Black Poplar, derives from a prehistoric Aryan or 'Proto-Indo-European'
original. A Greek derivative is the story of the Daughters of the Sun,
Heliades, who were changed into Black Poplars and wept tears of amber.
Here, by 'Sun', the original crescent may be inferred.

It is noteworthy that on the Harappan seal, the Maruts have been separated
into mutually isolated individuals. The crescent of each stands upright on
his head instead of constituting his pair of arms. By this time, the
original form had been forgotten, although scattered metaphors in the
_Rgveda_ enable one to reconstruct it now.

Figure 9 below represents schematically the frontal aspect of the seven
pairs of cow's horns set upon an altar at Çatal Hüyük in Anatolia. Dated
at 6000 BC, this relic provides physical evidence that the concentricity
of the seven pairs of horns or crescents was still known 8000 years ago.
It justifies the retrospective reconstruction based on features of the
Maruts. It further helps in finding a tentative date for when men either
saw the Polar Apparition inreality, or in visions.

In the _Rgveda_, an attribute of the godly apparition is that of dripping
in clarified butter. The _ghrta_, ghee, as it dripped downwards, would
have appeared as in figure 10 above.

The whole of this figure may readily be seen as Zeus holding up his
tasseled aegis or shield. Both clarified butter and hassled shields are
productions of archaeologically identifiable stages of human culture. The
Polar Apparition must have been visible when the stage of using these
items was reached by that part of humanity which transmitted these
metaphors to posterity. There could hardly have been a retroactive
description of the image which used current metaphors which were unknown
when it was seen.

This is undoubtedly true of the Celestial Ship. At last visibility, ships
had been invented.

_4. An Alternative Conjecture_

In attempting to arrive at what would at the same time be the simplest and
least simplistic visual design for the irreducible origin or bedrock of
myth, it is necessary to adhere as closely as possible to the oldest forms
of mythical imagery. This is to be free from the restrictions and the
highly distorting subjectivity and selectivity of the planetary prejudice.

In other words, it is desirable to accommodate the largest possible body
of mythical metaphor while simplifying the design retrospectively in order
to reach the supposed bedrock from which divergence of virtually all of
the idiom is assumed to have developed. This guides one to the various
pictorial aspects and forms of the bedrock without the necessity for a
physical model, although I shall propose one herein.

The dripping ghee or tassels are an important clue to the nature of the
phenomenon. They are auroroid, comparable with the shifting curtains of
the aurora borealis. Just as the vertical parts of the aurora rapidly move
about, so could Zeus have shaken his tasseled aegis. [n.b.: Zeus is the
sky-god _par excellence_, as A.B. Cook makes abundantly clear in his
massive three-volume compilation _ZEUS: A Study in Ancient Religion_. CLE]

Rotational polar space is magnetically empty. In it, there is no
magnetospheric physical basis for the Celestial Pillar or Support or for
the immobile celestial polar orb atop it, because this region is far
outside the terrestrial magnetosphere. This Earth cannot have the
magnetospheric extension shown in figure 11 below, which would be required
for the polar orb to be distant enough to seem immobile.

That part of the magnetosphere which surrounds the empty rotational polar
space is distorted by the solar wind. The shape of it does not provide a
setting for the circle or crescentoid formation around the mythical orb.
Apart from that, the inferred or known altitudes of aurorae are too low
for the same aurora to be seen in the same form from points many hundreds
of kilometers apart, spread over a wide geographical area, or so it
presently appears, pending a test.

The foregoing is the forbiddingly difficult context of providing a
magnetospheric model for the Polar Apparition. It must agree with the
variety of metaphors of myth. It must be present when human technological
metaphors require it to be so. It must be visible in the same form to
people scattered over wide areas of North America and Eurasia. I therefore
propose a hologrammatic phenomenon of polarization of light of
stratospheric particles which is manifested only at certain points in a
series of intensities of solar radiation at harmonically related
electromagnetic frequencies.

At an appropriate intensity, the radiation at various frequencies is in a
proper mutual relationship, and the hologram is brilliantly lighted. It is
seen in essentially the same form from points of viewing thousands of
kilometres apart. It appears to be in the rotational polar space. It
constitutes the central feature of the sky. The complete visual assemblage
of it is that lost ancient sky which was radically different from what we
now associate with the sky. [Alternatively, this imagery also seems
compatible, in many ways, with what would be seen were Earth to acquire
temporarily, and perhaps at more than one epoch, a number of nearly
vertical, i.e., highly inclined, rings of meteoritic debris from
interaction with the then-youthful Taurid meteor stream, as Moe Mandelkehr
has modelled and proposes in his manuscript _The Answered Riddle: A Thesis
on the Meaning of Myth_, which is a major adjunct to the pioneering work
of Clube and Napier and co-workers. The Taurid stream is the presumptive
source owing to the ancient prominence of the Pleiades which is near the
radiant of the Taurid stream. CLE]

I propose further that between the activating intensities of solar
radiation, there is an interference phenomenon which blots out the Polar
Apparition. As a hypothetical instance of how this might work, if the
ratio of the intensity at 5000 [Angstroms] to that at 10000 [Angstroms]
were 3/2 or 4/3, harmonic ratios, the image might be lighted, but at
values between those fractions, harmonic or not, ratios between other
frequencies might be inexact, and the interference would blot out the
image.

If this is in fact what has been happening, then sprays of particles from
flares on the Sun serve in part to counteract the interference, but in a
weak and disjointed fashion. In present aurorae, what look like fragments
of the Polar Apparition reconstructed from myth can occasionally be seen.
If the hologram existed, it was the bedrock of myth. It was the template
for numerous mythical and still more numerous linguistic conceptions which
may now be unearthed from the ancient texts and the dictionaries.

This conjectural model overcomes at least five basic problems at once. A
truly vexing question is how mythical metaphors retain their ancient
character at all, for history is quickly forgotten. A still more vexing
question is how any elements of myth at all are transmitted when
sympathetic magic of 43,000 years ago implies a current absence and only a
former presence of the Polar Apparition. An associated question is how
recent human imagery could be applied to something which vanished long
before such imagery developed. One cannot ignore the question of how
various forms and elements of the image reappear in contemporary symbols
drawn by people who have no demonstrable acquaintance with any part of
ancient myth. A major problem arises in that certain metaphors of myth are
mutually irreconcilable unless allowance is made for frequent
manifestation by the image of varied forms, so often that recollections of
at least a few of these would reach that stage of transmission of myth
which is still accessible to our present analysis.

An example of the fluctuation between forms which generate different
metaphors is that of the Support, the broad beam of light which extended
and narrowed upwards from the North Polar horizon to the North Celestial
Pole. Sometimes it was wide enough at the base and sufficiently pyramidoid
in outline to be seen as the Cosmic Mountain, or as the downwardly
broadening face of a single or multiple Cow whose horns were the
crescentoid formation. At other times it was narrow, a pillar, the trunk
of the Cosmic Tree, or the body or single leg of the Cosmic Man. In other
contexts, there cannot have been only that one immobile pillar, but there
must have been at least one more whose base circled the entire terrestrial
horizon every 24 hours, as a subsequent phase of this discourse will
illustrate.

The form of the crescents must necessarily have varied greatly, also, far
beyond the shape strictly belonging to crescents. They were not always
parts of a perfect circle. They sometimes took the form shown in figure 12
below, so that around midnight, people could see them as the branches of
Black Poplar, _Populus nigra_. With the optional leaves absent, it could
be seen as a spiked head of barley. In these visions, the central Support
or Pillar is very narrow. Barley was cultivated during the supposed
visibility of the Polar Apparition from about 5500 to 4500 B.C., shortly
to be discussed. The angle of the branches with the stem is completely
unavoidable, thus, for otherwise, the image cannot suggest barley. The
optional Poplar leaf extensions on the branches were inspired by figure 8.
They seem to be necessary for Black Poplar to be recognized in the image.
They should be compared with the form of figure 29, also.

Figure 13 above shows a leafless but otherwise more complete Polar
Apparition at midnight, in the _Populus nigra_ form. The conjoined mirror
branches form 3 concentric human eyes. Thus the Heliades who became Black
Poplars wept tears of amber, a metaphorical equivalent of the dripping
ghee or the tassels of the aegis earlier discussed.

_5. The Sequence of Manifestations_

Drachenloch cave, in the Swiss Alps, is at an altitude of about 2,450
meters or 8,000 feet. In the Ice Age it was accessible and inhabitable
only during interstadials of considerably warmer climate. During and
interstadial, which was apparently warmer than the present, about 43,000
years ago, Neanderthalers lived in the cave. They made a stone chest on
the floor, each side 1.05 meters, with a massive stone slab as a lid.
Inside they put seven skulls of the ferocious Cave Bear, neatly stacked so
that the muzzles faced the entrance of the cave.

One of the shifting forms of the Polar Apparition is that of Seven Bears.
In a simplified diagram, using the triple crescent phase, figure 14 below
shows how at midnight, by a blunting and splaying of the ends of the
crescents, a suppression of the orb, and by the sprouting of earlike bumps
on the support, the image could have metamorphosed into what the
Neanderthalers could easily have seen as three cave bears rearing
ferociously upwards.

The skulls under the slab are arguably powerful sympathetic magic. They
substitute for seven fierce cave bears guarding the cave for the inmates.

If the Polar Apparition had been present at the time, the magic would seem
out of joint. The Great Bears in the sky could have taken umbrage at this
impertinent imitation. If the magic recreated something powerful which had
been seen recently enough for the Neanderthalers to recall it vividly, but
which was no longer there to be seen and inspire the fear of retaliation,
it would appear more fitting.

In the scheme of appearances which I shall set forth herein, the lowering
of solar activity which created the preceding intensely cold phase would
have brought the intensities of radiation at the various relevant
frequencies down to one of the points at which the hologram was frequently
and intermittently activated. The Polar Apparition may have been virtually
a fixture of the heavens throughout the icy epoch.

During the very short warm interstadial, in which it was possible to reach
the elevated cave through the terrain which was otherwise a mass of ice
and snow, and then actually live in the cave, the next higher step in the
series of intensities of radiation would have been reached and passed.
There would have been a passing brief manifestation of the image and then,
as the climate became ever warmer for a very short interval, there would
have been no image.

The Neanderthalers who stacked the bear skulls together could have seen
the image hardly more than a decade earlier. During the maximum warmth
which permitted them to use the cave, solar radiation was too high for the
image, creating interference which blocked it out.

After that, the solar activity began a rapid decline. While it was still
warmer than at present, the average temperature had started to drop, and
the image may have flickered on again before the solar radiation fell
still further.

After that, the cold returned very rapidly due to sinking solar activity.
At the subsequent greatly lowered level, the climate was far colder than
at present, and the image again returned, perhaps to be seen on and off
for about 29,000 years, until about 13,000 years ago.

The Polar Apparition then vanished once more when solar activity again
increased, the temperature rose, and the brief period of the Allerod
Interstadial began, about 12,000 years ago. A brief period of greatly
lowered solar radiation then supervened, and the glaciers grew and spread
again in far western Europe and in the Pacific Northwest of America, and
the Polar Apparition may have reappeared for some more centuries. After
this, solar activity again increased, the climate warmed, and the
Apparition vanished yet again, about 10,000 years ago.

Some 2,000 years later, at about 6,000 B.C., the people of Çatal Hüyük
still recalled the concentricity of the 7 crescents. They had forgotten
the concentricity of the crescent in the preceding triple crescent phase.
On a wall in a shrine at the site, three pairs of cow's horns are put
separately side by side, some distance apart, instead of being on a raised
base in a row, whereby their concentricity would have been evident from a
frontal viewpoint, as with the earlier cited set of seven.

Some centuries later, possibly from about 5,500 B.C. to about 4,500 B.C.,
in the later phase of the Climatic Optimum, the solar activity, slightly
greater than at present, frequently or at least intermittently reached
that next point in the series of intensities, whereat the auroroid
hologram, the image, the Polar Apparition, was once again made visible.
This was Jupiter, the god, presiding over an age of agriculture which was
at this time already ancient and in a state of problematically increasing
development.

At about 3,500 B.C., the image had been absent for as long as 1,000 years.
Some predynastic paintings of the Gorzean period of Ancient Egypt include
an emblem consisting of a composite wheel on the outside of which are
radially mounted five animals of the sheep or goat variety. This is a
markedly corrupted depiction of the image in that windmill phase to be
discussed shortly.

The Sun's activity had lessened, and the climate had cooled a little,
although it was still warmer than today's. Until now, apparently, solar
acctivity has neither risen nor fallen so high or so low as to activate
the hologram at all.

It is worth noting that in the sequence of successive phases of the
existence and the nonexistence of the Polar Apparition, as set forth
herein, no single manifestation is the root cause of the generation of the
content of myth. The generation has no utility in time.

In the myth of the _Shatapatha Brahmana_, the seven _Rishis_ or Primordial
Sages or crescent men became seven _rikshas_, or bears, then becoming the
constellation Ursa Major. Here, the displacement of metaphor is from
crescent ot star instead of to planet.

Apparently, the Polar Apparation was never absent for a sufficiently long
time for the Neanderthal perception of seven bears to fail to be
transmitted over 40,000 years to the human perception of 3,000 years ago.
Before the idea could die or become hopelessly distorted, the template
always reappeared and stimulated an accurate idea of it in the minds of
the viewers and their subsequently unseeing posterity, once again.

Since in the last cited myth, the men became bears, the metamorphosis of
the crescentoid formation to outstretched bears' paws, the suppression of
the orb which had formed the mens' head, and the sprouting of bumps on the
support which looked like bears' ears, was not only seen in this way, but
clearly transmitted as part of myth. This documents the protean nature of
the hologram, and shows where mythical bedrock has been undeniably
reached.

The image, the template of ideas, has now been absent, perhaps, for more
than twice as long as at any time since the last Interglacial Period, long
before the Drachenloch bears. During that Interglacial, known in Europe as
the Eemian and perhaps corresponding to the Sangamon of North America, the
image may have been absent for many millennia, because the climate was
much warner than today's, and the solar activity was doubtless higher than
that which reawakeend the image about 7,500 years ago.

Still warmer climates prevailed during earlier interglacials. A still
warmer climate preceded the intensely cold glacial periods, during what is
called the Villafranchian period in Europe, which may correspond with the
Blancan of the North American southwest. As one looks further backwards,
one sees epochs of ever warmer climates, the warmest being the Radiation
Maximum period at the end of the Cretaceous.

Several points in the level of intensity of solar radiation may have been
manifested during these changes, which actived the hologramfor more time
at each such stop, or sometimes for very long extended periods. In the
entire stream of time during which our ancestors evolved from shrewish
creatures into present humanity, the image may have often been visible.

To the primitive animals, for which only survival mattered, the image was
irrelevant. It was periodically part of the natural environment,
nonetheless. The sheer repetitiveness and naturalness of it might be why
the minds of the people gravitate to its forms. Even if they know nothing
of myth, they recreate the visual symbols thereof. This need not be
explained by the baseless and fanciful notion of racial memory, or
genetically inherited ancestors' experience. It is a bias in the framework
of visual perception in the mind, towards recognition of natural elements
in the environment. Exposure to this impression during the course of
evolutin has been sufficiently prolonged and repeated for the impression
to have become to some minute digree neurologically imbedded. It is so
slight and so subtle that those who express it use metaphors and symbols
which are not found in the ancient myth, but which have the same basic
intent. The entirety of the polar Assemblage is never questioned.

In what I have said about the interglacial and galacial periods and the
interstadials which subdivide the durations of the latter, I have assumed
ath the Milankovic cycles of Earth's orbital eccentiricty, orbital tilt,
precession, and wobble, are only incidental factors int eh Ice Age
successions, and not at all the root cause. Recent research has shown the
changes in climate to be far too abrupt for such a limited theory as that
of the Milankovic cycles, which is out of joint with and takes inadequate
account of additional factors. Stratigraphic considerations demand over
200,000 years for the Holstein or penultimate Interglacial, vastly more
than the Milankovic scheme could allow. Each Interglacial was warmer than
the succeeding, the last having been warmer than the present. Preglacial
climats were still warmer, and apparently without such frequent
oscillations as the Milankovic scheme would demand. What remains as a
cause of the entire sequence of climatic change is periodic alteration of
the level of solar activity, within limits which as yet have not been
fatal for life on Earth.

_6. The Forms of the Polar Apparition_

Before citiing additional prehistoric material, I shall summarize the
various forms which my research into mythical metaphors have necessitated
for the polar Apparition. In this I have been guided by the easily
documentable assumption that the basic set of forms unearthed by David H.
Talbott are essentially correct. To accommodate much more of the total of
surviving mythical metaphors than this basic set permits, these forms have
to be duplicated, displaced, and subject to a number of internal
alterations, some of which have already been discussed herein.

Up to a certain point, we may suppose that imaginative prehistoric
humanity could see various shapes in the image, just as the more
impressionable among us readily isolate faces in cracks and patches on
ceilings and walls, or even in the shapes of flowers. Beyond that, only
Protean changes in the image could have inspired those mythical metaphors
which we find, as with the black poplars, barley, and bears.

Many of the metaphors seem unrealted to one another at first, but their
mutual identifications in such texts as the Rig Veda make clear which
metaphors come from which part or form of the basic set of elements of the
image. The most parsimonius collection of those forms or incarnations is
what is now set forth. As far as possible, for simplicity's skae, the
single crescentoid phases of the forms are shown.

In figure 15 below, the basic elements are the support, thje central
immobile org atop it, the crescent, and the opposite continuation of the
crescent, forming the mirror crescent, or the rest of the celestial polar
circle. During and very shortly before and after midnight, the figure's
symmetry allows the two ends of the crescent to be seen as cow's horns, a
man's arms, a bird's wings, or with the crescent thicker and splayed at
the ends and with the orb suppressed and with earlike knobs on the
support, a bear's front legs.

Figures 16 and 17 above show the disposition of parts at 3 hours before
and 3 hours ager midnight. Figure 18 above shows the appearance at 9 a.m.

It is clear that the cowlike, humanoid, birdlike, or bearlike form is seen
in convincing symmetry during at themost the limited period from 11 p.m.
to 1 a.m. For the rest of the time, the image is either distorted or
wholly disrupted. This causes acute probelms in the visual interpretation
of numerous items in ancient myth, which cannot be resolved by recourse
only to those elments and ofrms of the image thus far considered.

Figure 19 below shows a rotating independent column transfixed through
theh centre of the crescent, approaching at 9 p.m. the immobile support or
Cosmic Mountain with which it will seem to merge at midnight, and out of
the other side of which it will subsequently emerge. In some incarnations,
the support is formed of coiled twists. It is then the Cosmic Serpent in
the vertical aspected as contrasted with the curved serpent seen in the
crescent. When the rotating independent column merges with it, the
herograpples with the dragon. When the column comes out of the right side
after midnight, being worsted, the hero flees from his opponent, only to
repeat the performance on the following night. It is essential that this
moving man retains his shape in order to be recognized as such throughout
the entire episode. Only with the moving column fixed at the centre of the
jointly moving crescent is this possible.

In his circling, in a day, his arms traverse the entire periphery of the
celestial Earth, the polar circle. Ath the same time, the foot of his
column, his body, his single leg, traverses the entire horizon of the
terrestrial Earth. This correspondence and consequent ambivalence of
earthly metaphors is the source of the corruption of myth after the Polar
Apparition last vanished, whereby the celestial Earth became readily
mistranslated as the terrestrial Earth.

Figure 20 above shows a rotating independent column fixed at the juncture
of the crescent and the opposite side of the circle. Indra, sword in hand,
approaches the mountain, cleaves it, and as the arm-sword-crescent emerges
from the other side, the crescent-waters are released, flowing out and up
through the circle to the right.

This last figure is fundamentally lopsided, but mythical metaphor demands
it. Regardless of the difficulties of the physical explanation in relation
to the hologram, this form of the image serves to explain some
peculiarities of archaic elements of the Sanscrit vocabulary. Verb roots
whose meanings include to give, as if the figure with arms outstretched to
the right brings gifts, often also include the meaning of to attack, as if
the figure holds forth a sword with hostile intent.

Figure 21 below shows a mirrored rotating independent column which passes
through the middle of the crescent, retaining that alignment throughout
the rotation around the celestial pole. It is effectively a dual
independent column. In one perception thereof, the figure at the lower
left is Indra, and that to the upper right Soma, Indra consumes the sacred
drink, Soma. In another perception, at the upper right a lean cow circles
the pole in pursuit of the fact cow at the lower left, in a singlefold
version of the stroy of Joseph's dream in Genesis XLI.4.

Figure 22 above shows a dual independent rotating column wherein the
columns are fixed at the juncture of the crescent and the opposite or
mirrored crescent. Here, and at only around the midnight position, a hero
of ealirest Mesopotamia or Egypt strangles two attackers, two lions. Just
as "lines" in English could corrupt to a more understandable "lions," so
also could the "lions" of the early MiIddle East version have been a
corruption of some other similar word. The original exact alignment of the
figures was apparently forgotten by the time the sculptures were made.

Another perception of figure 22 at midnight is that the figure at left
with arms outstreched down and round to the right, and the mirror figure
at right with arms outstretched in the opposite direction to meet and
merge with those of this counterpart, jointly churn or twist the central
entity. As they rotate through 24 hours, they churn the Celestial Ocean.

Figure 23 below shows the windmill phase, a fourfold independent rotating
system of columns in the threefold crescent phase. Each column extends
down to the relevant moving point on the terrestrial horizon. Each column
can be seen as a treetrunk, and the attendant portions of crescents as the
branches. This is reflected in the illustration of the 4 Cosmic Trees in a
famous Mexican manuscript or codes, Fejervary-Mayer, in which the trees
are upside down. In the myth of the Shatapatha Brahmana, the gods split
into 4 parties, bore the 4 moving columns and the sets of arms of each. In
the case where there are 7 sets of crescents and opposite and attached at
the end to them, 7 mirro crescents, the total number of cosmic persons,
including the 7 attached to or springing from the lower central and
immobile support, is 35, and indeed it is found in Rgveda X.55.2-3. If
each column with the attached orb atop it is a phallus, there are then 4
anticlockwise rotating phalli, forming the original of the story of 4
naked men who robbed a bees' nest in the Fabulae of Hyginus. The bees will
be discussed shortly.

Figure 24 above shows six orblets in the polar enclosure. A Mesopotamian
seal suggested this phase or form. The spikes to which the orblets are
attached are suggested by the implicit connection of the orb with the
fruit of Dhattura or Jimson Weed, _Datura stramonium,_ or _D. metel_ L.,
in turn suggested by the rich store of linguistic associations in Sanskrit
of this plant. The jewelled spikes on kingly crowns or the spikes on the
crown of the American Statue of LIberty, likewise reflect this aspect of
the image.

Figure 25 above shows 9 orblets or metaphorical coriander seeds attached
to the central celestial polar orb. Hindu mythical metaphor, etymological
considerations, Mesopotamian seals, the hieroglyph for the ancient
Egyptian Ennead, and Andean iconology have provided this design. With
their coriander seed stalks, the orblets are apparently the bees that
attacked the men, their long stings attacking the head of the phallus.

Herein, in all, there are 6 arrangements of the stationary Support or
Cosmic Pillar and the addtional single, double, and quadruple mobile
column or columns. For each of these there are perhaps nine, six or no
orblets. For each of the consequent 18 arrangements, there are 1, 3, or 7
crescentoid entities, yielding 54 combinations. If there is eitehr an orb
at the centre, or no orb, in which case there is darkness or purple in the
deep, there are 108 possible arrangements.

Be this artificial, gratuitous, or fortuitous, but at least by wisdom
genuinely after the event, these totals correspond with the fact that 108,
540, and 5400 were numbers of great significance in myth and symbolism for
the early Hindus, early Mesopotamians, and northwest Europeans. It is at
least conceivable that the foregoing provides the reason.

The 4 independently rotating columsn were evidently different colors, and
not always the same set of colors. This led to a number of traditions of
colors of the cardinal directions.

In the case where in anticlockwise order the colors were a hypthetical
yellow, white, red and black, corruption of myth would then have
associated the 4 sectors of the polar enclosure or circle with gold,
silver, copper and iron. The latter are the symbolic characters of the
mythical millennia, the progressively degenerating ages of mythical human
pseudohistory. In Maya tradition, each color-tree-pillar was associated
with a destruction of the world, and end of an age of the world.

It was earlier noted that during the Climatic Optimum the Polar Apparition
may in fact have existed as the presiding god Jupiter during an age of
accelerated development of an already ancient agriculture. This particular
millennium may thus have some basis in fact. The detailed explanation of
how the quarter circle of the image could be corrupted into a thousand
years of mythical pseudohistory must perforce be the subject of a separate
extended study.

Gold is very prominent among the godly metaphors in the _Rgveda_. This
implies that gold was being worked when some forms of the Polar
Appartition were still seen. This implies in turn not only that the
ancestors of the composers of the hymns of the _Rgveda_ were the
metallurgists of southeast Europe of 4500 B.C., but also that the image
could be seen from that region.

Only a very few of the transitions between one and another of the supposed
108 forms of the image have been preserved in myth. An incomplete number
of incarnations appear in isolation. In the designs and patterns of
sculpture and pottery, the assemblage is almost never complete, often
lacking a fundamental part.

About the latter, two reasonable suppositions may be made. First, the vast
variety of forms and the sometimes huge collection of metaphors by which
each was characterized formed a corpus beyond the transmissive capacity of
people who no longer saw it and who certainly did not understand what it
had been. Second, in the most recent spells of visibility of the image, in
the "Younger Dryas" glacial phase and in the Climatic Optimum at its
height, fluctuating intensity of solar radiation could have caused one
after another of the various forms to appear in a chaotic succession. That
htis might be the origin of the notin of primeval chaos is worth serious
attention. Two Sanscrit words for chaos, sankara and snakulam, have
together 24 etymologies which one and all derive from aspects and
incarnations of the Polar Apparition, implying that in at least one strand
of tradition, those were recalled as being in turmoil. Space herein
precludes discussion of the numerous details.

If aspects of the image are reconstructivel in one tradition from one
collection of metaphor and likewise from another with another collection,
the tradition of common origin knew all of those metaphors and was far
richer in content. Thus, the rich collections of metaphors of the _Rgveda_
and the _Pyramid Texts_ must formerly have been united in one collection,
while each is far richer than those of later traditions. Ther has been a
steady and easily documentable impoverishment, a progressive loss of a
relatively incorrupt description of aspects of and especially the cohesion
within the Polar Apparition. This forms the basis of a strong argument in
favor of the former existence of a physical basis for all of the godly
forms.

Finally, it was noted that in mythical metaphor, one part of the image is
often substituted for another. This argues that they belong to an
indivisible whole, a unified assemblage. This is why the various forms of
the image I have proposed herinabove areas close to each otehr in basic
elements as can be contrived. Another reason is that in ancient myth,
there is frequently a transposition of a god from what is one form to what
is evidently another, as with figures 19, 20 and 21 above. This requires
that in the tentative reconstructions, the original gods should look alike
in as many ways as possible.

_7. Sungir and the Nasatyas_

Figure 22 earlier discussed a form in which there were two independent
mobile columns, each opposite the other, symmetrically, fixed at the
juncture between the crescent and the opposing mirror crescent. An
interchangeable pair of gods or the _Rgveda_, Brhaspati and Indra, are
suited in their manifestation as a pair by this design. In the myth's
corruption, Brhaspati's ame was passed on to Jupiter the planet. In at
least one later Hindu source, Indra is also Jupiter. Jupiter is not a
pair, however, and they were.

Their real context is revealed when it is noted that they shared a number
of exploints and attributes with the Nasatyas, or Ashvins, the Heavenly
Twins. They are evidently an alternative version thereof, a parallel
derivative of a single earlier tradition or vision.

The most simplified visual aspect of these gods which can be extracted
from the metaphors can be illustrated as below. Figure 26 shows the 3 a.m.
position. To the lower left one Nasatya stands, reaching out to the right,
holding the rins which curve round and up through 180° to the other
Nasatya, a mirror image in attitude and gesture. One of these is otherwise
Brhaspati or Indra, and the other, Indra or Brhaspati. The crescents and
their mirror crescents or opposite circular continuations are the
frequently mentioned 3 whells of the Nasatyas' chariot. Since each column
or body goes down to the horizon, the observer would have seen each god as
standing upright.

Figure 27 above shows the position reached at 9 a.m., and figure 28,
midnight. The support or fixed vertical pillar at the base which the
Nasatya assemblage circled every 24 hours is one or another of the
mythical persons to whom the Nasatyas tended as heavenly physicians, or
rescued from the metaphorical ocean waves of the shimmering auroroid
crescents. In figure 28, the central immobile figure seems at the midnight
position to be seated upon any one or all of the three crescents, the
three seats of the Nasatyas' chariot.

Chariots with 3 wheels and with 3 seats were evidently invented by the
time at which this last form of the image was seen. It remains for
archaeology to uncover proff that such chariots already existed no later
than 4,500 B.C.

Archaeology has unearthed remains indicative of the Nasatyas themselves
from much earlier times. If the Nasatyas were not perceived as sharing one
head, they were seen to be arranged in mutual opposition, head to head. At
a site called Sungir, in a suburb of Vladimir, near Moscow, this is how
two boys were buried, one between 7 and 9 years old, and the other between
12 and 13. Their ornaments consisted of thousands of pierced mammoth ivory
beads sewn as ornaments intotheir clothing. To these beads in their
headdresses were added canine teeth of polar foxes. Artifacts included
sixteen spears, darts, and daggers. Found in 1969, this grave and the
cemetery in which it was included, were dated to 23,000 B.C.

Evidently, the boys were of rich and prominent families in a community
having a far more sophisticated material culture than anyone would have
imagined within the Ice Age. Their mutual disposition in the grave can be
understood as a physical confirmation of the reconstructed disposition of
the Nasatyas in the above figures. In spite of the difference in ages of
the boyas, their placement implies sympathetic magic which required them
to merge with or become elevated like the Nasatyas. That this cannot have
been otherwise is indicated by the fact that their clothes were covered
with thousands of ivory beads, corresponding with the thousands of sparks
or jewels upon the person or persons of the Polar Apparition.

According to the thesis set forth herein, the Polar Apparition would have
been very often brilliantly visible during the icy era of the burial.
Either it was at that very time visible in the Nasatya form or
incarnation, in which case the magic applied dubiously to something
present, or, more credibly, it was visible in another form, the Nasatya
form at that moment being a thing of years or decades or even centuries
earlier, in which case the magic conforms to the reconstruction or
recreative variety characteristic of recent history.

The latter bias is evident in the many forms of religious ritual which
recreate mythical conditions whith symbolic acts and objects. What is most
significant is that the attributes of the gods are stated in the present
tencse, as if they had never vanished. There is no story of the final
disappearance of the Polar Apparition. It would not in the least have
suited the priests to admit that their authority was based upon something
whose former frequent or periodic manifestations had ceased altogether. We
can merely speculate upon how the very difficult decades and centuries
after the disappearance were managed by the custodians of dogma.

The latter considerations throw unresolvable contradictions in the way of
deciding of the Sungir burial was a human sacrifice designed to bring back
the absent Nasatyas into the sky. Thus far north, the Polar Apparition may
have provided on occasion some valuable light at night for hunters, and it
may have been absent when the boys were buried, the solar radiation being
at the wrong peg of intensity.

_8. The Triple Crescent and the Neanderthals_

In 1939, at Monte Circeo in italy, A. C. Blanc entered a cave which had
been sealed for more than 50,00 years. On the floor was a Neanderthal
skull surrounded by a ring of white stones. This suggets the central orb
surrounded by the orblets. Beside the skull there were the bones of pig,
deer and aurochs, or wild cow, Bos Primigenius. Asusming that the 3
animals somewho reflected the current or immediately preceding form of the
triple crescentoid formation, the form of the Polar Apparition as in
figure 29 below is suggested. The projections of the deer's antlers may be
compared with the leaves of the Black Poplar in figure 13 earlier
discussed.

Here, the crescents are deformed, consistent with the conceivable
variations of the auroroid phenomenon. That three different animals of
this sort were periodically suggested int he course of the shifting forms
of the image is reflected in the Roman sacrifice, suovetaurilia, of a pig,
a sheep, and a bull, and also a similar early Chinese sacrifice.

In 1938, in a cave at Teshik Tash, Uzbekistan, a Neanderthal child's skull
was found, surrounded by a ring of 6 pairs of ibex horns whose cores were
rammed into the soil. The circular arrangement evidently substitutes for 3
crescentoid components on one side of the celestial polar circle, faced by
the 3 perhaps slimmer and dimmer mirror crescentoid components on the
opposite side.

In the cave of L'Hortus, in southern France, a mass of debris was found
which included Neanderthal bones, fragments of 4 lynxes, and 3 ibex
skulls. The latter sugest the triple crescentoid formation on one side of
the celestial polar circle.

_9. Three Tests_

What has been proposed as the origin of myth and religion, the bedrock,
the template, is an auroroid hologram reaching from the horizon, in some
phases sweeping thorugh all points thereof, up to the celestial polar
region of the observer. The presence or absence of it, brilliantly
manifest or totally inapparent, arises from polarized light from
magnetospheric particles, in turn due to the intensities of radiation at
various frequencies, say for example in the harmonic series (here
"harmonic" applies to octaves of frequencies) 250, 500, 100, 2000, 4000,
8000, 16000, 32000 Angstroms and so on, here proceeding from abiotic
ultraviolet through visible light into the farther infrared. The present
relative intensities at the supposed set of wavelengths inhibit the
auroroid hologram with an interference phenomenon which completely
destroys all traces of it.

As proposed earlier, there must be a harmonic relationship between
intensities of radiation at the various relevant wavelengths, for the
normal interference to be nullified. This aspect of the problem could be
quite intricate.

The curves of intensities for various wavelengths of solar radiation for
a) the recent Climatic Optimum, b) the last glacial period, and c)
whichever preglacial era was as much warmer than the Climatic Optimum as
the Climatic Optimum was warmer than the glacial period, or,
alternatively, that equivalent period at which a point in the intensity of
solar radiation was reached whereby the image would have been lighted,
would doubtless differ from each other only slightly. It is, as indicated,
the fine and precise detail in the intensities at specific wavelengths
which are of prime importance.

It is conceivable that a laboratory simulation of the impact upon the
terrestrial magnetosphere of varying intensities of solar radiation, as
well as the impact of bursts of particles like those from the solar
flares, could be made. If so, information about the reality or nonreality
of the hologram could be obtaine din the process. Since such a simulation
may in any event provide information relevant to terrestrial electronic
communications, the experiment is tempting and worthwhile.

It was indicated earlier that whether present aurorae have any
hologrammatic aspect is worth testing. Interested persons stationed in the
Arctic and Antarctic regions could take simultaneous photographs from
several different distantly removed points of viewing. Something new would
in any event be learned.

Another possibility is that the Polar Apparition is not visible only in
the ultraviolet and the infrared, just beyond each edge of the narrow band
of frequencies at which light is visible to the human eye. That is to say
that the image would shine at 3750 and 7500 Angstrom, but not in between.
If there were a slight shift upwards, any light seen would be purple. It
is worth noting that the Chinese called the north celestial polar region
the Purple Forbidden Palace. Ultraviolet and infrared photography of the
north and south celestial polar skies might in general be instructive.

The latter takes no account of the fact that in the various traditions,
one may find red, yellow, green, blue, black and white as colors of the
pillars at the cardinal points. How such sets of colors, in addition to
the evidently predominant gold, could be made manifest in the Polar
Apparition, may pose a challenging theoretical question.

Another theoretical question is where the immobile orb around which the
assemblage turns is really located. In Rgveda II.6.4, Agni the god is
identified with the Pole Star, dhruvah. A bothersome question is whether
the Pole Star, as with so many other items, results from a displacement of
metaphor which occured after the image disappeared. this question cannot
be answered without recourse to reliable information.

Copyright (c) 1987, Roger Ashton