mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================
CHAPTER FIVE

LEGENDS AND MIRACLES

Settled temporarily by the Holy Mountain, Israel awaits miracles. Moses
and no one else must provide them. The Mountain is very active - smoke and
fire abound. The scene is obscured by the continued high dusty and
turbulent sky. Moses ascends the Mountain and gets initial instructions
regarding preparation of a covenant. Moses returns and receives the
assurances of the people: "All that Yahweh has spoken we will do."[1]
Yahweh, hearing this, commands Israel to be present at the foot of the
mountain on the third day of their consecration.

The third day broke with horrendous thunder, lightning, clouds, and
trumpet blasts upon the mountain. The people assembled as instructed.
Yahweh called up Moses and Aaron and delivered the Ten Commandments to the
multitude. Apparently the people could not make out his words with all the
thunderings, lightnings, the sound of the trumpets and the mountain
smoking, so they said to Moses: "You speak to us and we will hear; but let
not God speak to us, lest we die."[2] So Moses drew near again to the
"thick darkness" where Yahweh was and he received many ordinances.

Moses is told to invite the leaders of the people up to see Yahweh; do not
let the people come up. Before doing so, Moses sacrificed oxen and
sprinkled their blood over the people as they gave their pledge to the
Covenant.

He brings the seventy elders and three priests - Aaron and his sons (later
to be accidentally electrocuted) - up to a marvelous plateau, a table or
pavement of sapphire stone, evidencing prolonged electrical discharging,
raising a heat that glazed the rock, perhaps metamorphosing it [3]. There
"they saw the God of Israel;" it is repeated: "They beheld God."[4] Not
so, the exegetes say, Yahweh is invisible; ergo they could not have seen
him; never mind the explicit language.

Nonetheless Moses is inspired and hears Yahweh calling to him. He tells
the elders to await him and, during his absence, to refer any problems to
his adjutants, Aaron and Hur. Joshua, who is called his servant, goes part
of the way up, and halts. Moses waits because of a dangerous cloud that
hovers over the summit. On the seventh day, Yahweh calls, and Moses enters
the cloud. All Israel, meanwhile, can see from below "the glory of
Yahweh... like a devouring fire on top of the mountain."[5]

After forty days and nights, Moses descends from the mountain with the
laws, written by Yahweh on two stone tablets. Awaiting Moses is a full
scale revolution - the Golden Calf. He destroys the tablets in shame and
anger. He suppresses the revolt ruthlessly. He begs Yahweh for another
chance. Again he goes up the Holy Mountain. This time, Yahweh admonishes
him to hide himself from His person, so Moses enters a crevasse, a cleft,
a kind of cave, and there crouches as far in as possible ("bows low") when
Yahweh's brilliance passes by him. Not even a pinprick of light penetrated
his cave, says a legend, or else he would have been consumed when Yahweh
and his retinue passed by; still the intensity of illumination was such
that "he caught the reflection of it so that from its radiance his face
began to shine."[6]

When he descends, the people recoil from him in fright and awe. His
countenance is radiant. He has a halo - the first halo, and the only one
on earth - Neher states enthusiastically. Others give Moses horns on this
occasion. Michelangelo's great conception of Moses depicts him with horns.
Why didn't the Jews and Catholics complain of this?

Daiches presents an unconvincing etymological argument [7]. All the
medieval and Renaissance scholars and churchmen, led astray by St. Jerome,
read a word wrong: Karen (H) is a verb meaning "shone" or "gave forth rays
of light"; the noun keren means "horn" or ray of light" (Ex. 34:35). He
objects to deriving the latter from the former word. But the words are
obviously related; Hebrew vowels are notably unreliable in sounding words
(as when a preference is sought between "Jehovah" and "Yahweh"); the
earliest etymologies are often indefinite and partial. Perhaps something
with connotations of both "horn" and "ray of light" may be intended,
inasmuch as the phenomenon was capable of giving both impressions, and
people were quite sensitive to "horns" in this aftermath of the revolt of
the Golden Calf.

Ruth Mellinkoffs enchanting study of The Horned Moses concludes that St.
Jerome's translation of Exodus 34:29 as `horned' appears "in keeping with
the context and meaning of `horned' in the ancient world as well as the
metaphorical meaning of `horn' and `horned' in the Bible. It meant
strength, honor, victory, power, divinity, kingship, and salvation..." The
scholar-theologians of the Church saw them as "horns of light, or light
emanating in the manner of a horn" - an interpretation first suggested by
Rashi, the famous eleventh-century Jewish commentator.[8]

Moses has unusual ways of conducting, storing, and discharging
electricity. Or was there so much of a voltage gradient as he descended
that he discharged static electricity in coming down? As mountaineers have
testified, St. Elmo's fire under certain propitious conditions, even now,
will stream like horns from the ears of a subject and from any tool he is
carrying. The horns of animals stream fire, too, in such circumstances.
And always in mind is the comet with its horns reaching far out from its
head. Close the horns and there arises a halo, given to Moses and to
saints. The later saints got their radiant `halos' by traditional
inference; for them it is a medal, like millions of Christians wear the
crucifix without experiencing crucifixion. Earth and heaven are united in
a single symbol once more.

Moses "did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been
talking to Yahweh." He ordered all to draw close so that he could give
them the laws. The people's faces shone, too, briefly [9]. Perhaps they
felt a sympathetic contagion. Afterwards Moses put a veil over his face
whenever he was in public. He removed it when he spoke to Yahweh in the
tent and then replaced it when he came out. St. Paul spoke of "Moses, who
put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of
his fading splendor." His skin was probably desquamating. When it was
cured, an explanation for removing the veil would not be difficult: to
avoid claiming a permanent gift, or as punishment by Yahweh for some
peccadillo. One rare picture of ca. 1000 A.D. gives Moses all three:
horns, veil, and mask [10]. (See Figure 15.)

We may go farther into the mysteries of Moses' halo, Hugo Gressmann [11],
one of the greatest of Old Testament authorities, asserts that Moses
always wore a mask, that Moses wanted to play god and, after he had come
down radiant from the Holy Mountain, he assumed a sacred mask. Gressmann
had no idea of the atmospheric turbulence nor of its affecting Moses'
skin; he claimed that priestly masks were to be found elsewhere, whether
among the Egyptians or Semitic tribes. By intensive lin- guistic analysis,
Gressmann demonstrates elisions in the Bible where the word "mask" would
occur, and says that the word "veil" is a weak and vague substitution of a
thousand years later [12].

On the contrary, I find a powerful connection between Moses' perilous
sojourn on the mountain, the radiation disease symptoms, his donning the
veil or mask, and his incorporating the mask into the required equipment
of the priests when working amidst the divine smoke and fire of the Inner
Sanctum. Gressmann lets us believe that Moses' mask was his permanent
public face; if so, it can only mean that Moses was disfigured for life
and therefore wore a mask, naturally proclaimed sacred; or more likely
that Moses' facial disfiguration was itself considered a permanent mask of
Yahweh, and that Aaron's and other masks were artificial, in imitation of
Yahweh's mask and for protection against dangerous radiation and shocks
around the Holy of Holies.

I find additional support for this view in the advice of Hyam Maccoby, who
asserts that the word in dispute is in fact Karan, the only occurrence in
all of the Bible in this form. The phrase would then read that Moses' skin
became of horn-like texture

RADIATION DISEASES

The cause of Moses' halo may have been phosphorous burns, compounded by a
dose of radiation. Both elements would be present in abundance in the
clouds of the mountain and the artificial clouds of the Tent of the
Tabernacle. Whoever entered the Tabernacle unless under order was to be
stricken with leprosy [13]. Many sins are punishable by leprosy [14]. And
there are various types of leprosy; despite all the detail on the
diagnosis and treatment of leprosy in the Book of Leviticus (13:1-59; 14),
no clear single disease emerges.

	Figure 15: Moses with Horns, Veil and Mask. (Click on the picture
to get an enlarged view. Caution: Image files are large.) (Source: Bible
of Lubeck, 1494)

A "leprosy" that is not excluded is radiation sickness, which of course
during all the centuries when the Bible was seriously studied by scholars
was an unknown disease. Skin lesions, blisters, and ultimately death among
experimenters with radium and X-ray are a twentieth century phenomena.
When the first atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima, and features of
radiation disease began to emerge, it was thought at first that an
infectious plague had followed in the wake of the disaster.

In the Revolt of the Golden Calf, Aaron, whom Moses had appointed high
priest, lost hope for Moses and deserted briefly to the opposition. Later
Aaron and their "sister," Miriam, who had become a kind of priestess for
women and children, entered the Lord's tent and accused Moses of such
irrelevances as taking for his wife a non-Jew. The woman in question may
have been the daughter of Hobab, the Kenite, although referred to only as
the Cushite (Ethiopian?) in the Bible. Thus suggests Winnett, who adds
that this bigamous liaison was probably contracted for political reasons
inasmuch as the Jews were now leaving Midianite territory and moving
northwards into Kadesh, land of the related Kenites [15].

Moses promptly squelched his relatives. He said, in effect, that if it was
Yahweh they would complain to, all three of them should have a talk with
Himself. They did, and Miriam, I think, emerged from the tent with a mild
case of radiation sickness and phosphorous poisoning that blanched her
skin, and greatly frightened her and Aaron. She was to be permanently
expelled from the camp for leprosy; but Moses put in a good word for her
with Yahweh who limited the expulsion to seven days, after which she
returned, healthy, perhaps having fed meanwhile upon the honey-like manna
which, like honey, would have been an antidote for radiation sickness and
blood-poisoning [16].

According to legend, when Moses wanted to cure Miriam, he drew a circle
around himself and, in praying to God, concluded with: "If Thou do not
heal her, I myself shall do so, for Thou has already revealed to me, how
leprosy arises and how it disappears." Perhaps he was referring to his own
"halo" case.

Miriam may have lost a lot of blood cells but she did not become bald.
Many in those days were not so lucky. Isaiah probably had their history in
mind when later he prophesies: "The Lord will give the women of Zion bald
heads, the Lord will strip the hair from their foreheads."[17] Since he
raises the same point twice elsewhere, Isaiah must have had an experience
in mind in which he firmly believed. But then, far back, in the time of
Exodus, the Egyptian Ipuwer had been lamenting: "Indeed, hair (has fallen
out) for everybody, and the man of rank can no longer be distinguished
from him who is nobody." The upper classes had worn their hair long.

A Swedish commentator, Ragnar Forshufvud, writes that "a dose of 300-400
rem will give temporary epilation while 700 rem will give permanent
epilation." (1 rem = the radiation dose of 1 Roentgen of X or Y
radiation.) If the whole body is subject to a single dosage of 450 rem,
there is only a 50% chance of survival, which may be another reason why
Ipuwer had written of Exodus in Egypt, "Indeed men are few, and he who
places his brother in the ground is everywhere."[18]

Thomas Foster, "a physician of some note in the scientific world and
member of several learned societies in England and the Continent, in a
work published in 1829, devotes forty-one pages to a catalogue of plagues
and epidemics, in nearly every instance accompanied by a comet."[19]
Sometimes beasts (the "murrain") are afflicted as well as or instead of
humans.

The relation between chemical and radiation plagues and "real plagues" of
viruses and germs is close in the history of Exodus and its aftermath.
Realization that their sources may be cosmic disturbances will no doubt
help in their investigation. In a recent BBC interview (1977) regarding
his research on "Diseases from Outer Space," Professor Chandra
Wickramasinghe maintained that "invasions of this type could be
responsible for all the major plagues and epidemics which have punctuated
our history from antiquity to modem times." He was seconded by his
colleague, Fred Hoyle [20].

THE ELECTRO-CHEMICAL FACTORY

Of clouds in Exodus, there are the high clouds of obscuring the sky and
causing the long-enduring darkness; next the cloud or pillar of smoke that
leads the Jews out of Egypt; the cloud and pillar upon the mountain; the
cloud arising from the Tabernacle sanctuary; the cloud that moves with the
ark; the cloud above Moses' tent outside the camp; and occasional clouds
that are dangerous to the camp. Yahweh's fire, which we find synonymous
with electrostatic fire, is present in all the clouds. The fire can come
before, with, and after the cloud's appearance.

The experience of clouds is frequent. These clouds do not carry rain. They
carry vapors which have serious consequences for evil and good. The clouds
in all cases are associated with Yahweh; they are dangerous; Moses is
uniquely competent to deal with them, and even he is overexposed on the
mountain and perhaps on other occasions.

The great pillar of cloud and the high obscuring blanket of cloud are
probably connected, the first being an earlier state of vision and contact
with the comet's tail and the second being a later state of the elements
of the tail that diffused throughout the earth's atmosphere. Comet tails
can be millions of miles long and thousands of miles in diameter. Since we
have had no late experience with large comets, their components are
subject to debate. It has lately become permissible in scientific circles
to attribute many kinds of materials to them - elemental and molecular
gases, particles, ice and rocks. Should a large comet-tail pass through
the atmosphere, it would deposit its own materials, and combine its
materials with those of the earth, not only with normal atmospheric
components but also with the discharges peculiar to volcanoes and typhoons
or tornadoes.

In the major catastrophic columns or typhoons of a comet-earth encounter,
therefore, would be discovered a variety of chemicals under turbulent
conditions of pressure, heat, and electricity. Picture a vast gaseous and
heavy meteoritic fall-out mingling with the eruptions of volcanoes and
electrical discharges by the many thousands, and one has the beginnings of
a conception of the event. In such a maelstrom, miracles would be
multitudinous. We are dealing with a vast electro-chemical factory. The
first response of a catastrophized human group is to relate itself to the
turbulent skies. Moses was exceedingly busy - up and down the mountain -
trying to reproduce on earth what he saw in heaven. Hence what we expect
is that certain "miracles" happen naturally and others, much simpler and
crude, but nevertheless amazing, happen as the artifices of man. Reciting
the Biblical references, we can derive radiation and radiance of various
types: a complex chemically-loaded dew; red phosphorus; hydrocarbons;
unidentified poisons; sulfur; mercury; ammonia; cinnabar (cinnamon);
formaldehyde; manna; and perfumes. The sky and earth are producing enough
heat and electricity to manufacture many products.

The element phosphorus might have been prominent in the Exodus chemical
environment. It may have had poisonous effects, especially if accompanied
by radioactive materials, in the Nile and the wells of Egypt. It was
probably present in the clouds of the mountain. It was a major ingredient
in Moses' arsenal, possibly for helping to send up smoke when smoke did
not originate in satisfactory abundance from the ark, possibly for
communicating with Yahweh in his tent, possibly as smoke bombs. When Moses
set up his tent far outside the camp for liv- ing and counseling, Yahweh
would visit him there: witness the cloud or pillar of smoke that descended
whenever Moses entered the tent door [21].

Phosphorus is "not found free in nature except in a few meteorites..."
because "it takes fire spontaneously upon exposure to air and forms dense
white fumes of the oxide."[22] It is a colorless, transparent, soft wax
that glows in the dark. It converts to red phosphorus with sunlight or
heat, after which it neither glows nor spontaneously combusts in air.
White phosphorus is used to make smoke shells for military use.)

White phosphorus is easily made. Calcium phosphate, a stone, is ground
into powder and combined with silversand (silicon dioxide) and charcoal.
Carbon monoxide is a by-product. When exposed to air, the phosphorus burns
with a bright hot flame, a voluminous dense white smoke, and gives off a
poisonous gas. Moses would have known from Egypt the properties of these
common materials, what they smelled like when burned, what the clouds on
the mountain appeared to be. His main problem would have been to
encapsulate the white phosphorus in order to deprive it of air until the
moment of use. Small gourds, ceramic jars, or bladders would contain the
material under seal. A poisonous grenade would be available to toss into
the tents of opponents of Yahweh, such as Dathan and Abiram. They had
refused Moses' summons and denied his authority. Moses supervised their
execution by Yahweh. The ground was said to split open and swallow their
households. The crowd fled the scene, which might have resembled the
hell-fires bursting out and enveloping them. Small amounts of phosphorus
would suffice to emit a smoke cloud about the Tabernacle and tent of
Moses, Phosphorescence, which may characterize many objects, is "the
emission of light from a substance exposed to radiation and persisting as
an afterglow after the radiation has been removed."[23] A phosphorescence
may last for an instant, days, or years and will react whenever agitated
by heat or optical waves. This refers to the cases of Moses and Miriam and
a kind of leprosy, but also to the "footstool of Yahweh" that the elders
witnessed; various apatite phosphate minerals are of a green glassy
appearance and "are often fluorescent in ultra-violet light...;
phosphorescent; sometimes strongly thermo- luminescent."[24] Although we
cannot be sure of the processes of the clouds of Exodus, the existence of
a special electro-chemical environment and an applied science thereof are
fairly demonstrable.

The dew that fell in great abundance in the wilderness was no ordinary
vapor. It was often red, often poisonous, often conductive and
facilitative of electrical discharges. The wearing of Moses-designed heavy
and full priestly garments, the washing that went on before and after
rituals, the placement of veils and curtains within the Tabernacle, the
holes in the tent tops, the arrangements of vessels and paraphernalia: -
"Aaron and his sons are to do this lest they die" - these were safety
practices and procedures for handling dangerous products. Only later could
they be called psychological obsessions, when their functions had
disappeared with the fading of the electrical age and the great
electrochemical factories of nature.

One scholar, Von Fange, writes that "In the Middle East in Ancient times
there was an amazing number of literary references to a garment of flame,
the goatskin dyed red, or a ramskin dyed red, or a red-dyed goat. The
meaning is completely obscure."[25] An editor's footnote reads: "Obviously
references to ramskins dyed red as in Exodus 25:5 [describe] directions
from God for construction of the sacred Tabernacle, and would have no
connection with pagan use of goat skins dyed red." Both are connected
probably to the red dust and dew that covered everything dead and alive in
the Egyptian plagues and from time to time in the wilderness. The
startling, ominous, and effective events are typically perpetuated in
design and rites. Earlier, we had occasion to discuss the taboos of
redness.

MANNA

"When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with
it."[26]

Obviously, despite the darkness of the days, a solar heating and nocturnal
cooling were occurring in the wilderness. The manna may cure the very
radiation sickness often caused by the radiation-loaded dew. Both are part
of the Exodus experience of Egypt and Israel. Few scholars doubt that
something natural and edible was being made available to the starving
Israelites. Almost always, they have sought some desert plant that by its
excrescences or pollen fall-out would give nourishment. Buber writes as if
the matter were settled [27]:

"The tale is told of manna (a secretion of cockineal insect, tasting like
crystallized honey, which covers the tamarisk bushes at the time of the
apricot harvest, drips to earth by day and becomes hard at night)."

This is a whit short of absurdity. The large volume of manna, its long
duration, its fall from heaven, the technique of its baking, and other
details of the story are shunted aside. More persuasive incidents are
available, with lichen as the possible agent, thus: "In 1829, during the
war between Persia and Russia, there was a great famine in Orumiah,
south-west of the Caspian. One day, during a violent wind, the surface of
the country was covered with a lichen which 'fell down from heaven.' The
sheep immediately attacked and devoured it, which suggested to the
inhabitants the idea of reducing it to flour and making bread of it, which
was found to be good and nourishing."[28] Electrical winds have been
blamed for such drops, which is a step in the right direction.

Manna is described in two places, in somewhat different terms [29].
"Almost any reasonably experienced confectioner will recognize the
substance concerned as a common constituent of sugar confectionary,
usually called invert sugar."[30] It fell nightly as seeds, for a long
time then occasionally. The last fall was reported just before the Battle
of Jericho, "and the people of Israel had manna no more."[31] It could be
baked into sugar-carbohydrate loaves. Although at first delighted and
grateful, the people ultimately became heartily sick of it.

The basis for its natural production was the huge volume of formaldehyde
gas, formed by the incomplete combustion of many organic substances. "At
least one worker has actually produced sugars directly from very freshly
formed gaseous formaldehyde at a temperature of 150º-180ºC (H. Vogel at
the University of Geneva in 1928)."[32]

A British expert on the chemistry of confections, M.G. Reade, has followed
the various processes whereby, from the formaldehyde of incomplete
combustion in the atmosphere, edible manna could have been naturally
fashioned. The problem is like that of artificially accomplishing
photosynthesis. He concludes that "Synthesis in a burning fiery cloud is
feasible, even probable when other environment conditions are
favourable."[33] He thinks that Moses designed the Tabernacle to produce
manna, but only because of the tent's construction[34] and not because
there is any evidence of manna being actually produced. (Reade does
speculate ingeniously that the reason why the often grumpy people followed
the leader and Tabernacle was in order to get the manna that Moses was
producing artificially.)

His comments on the tabernacle are revealing: "Perhaps the single most
basic association is that between the `Tabernacle of the Lord' and the
physical characteristics of the cloud. In laying down guidelines for the
construction of a tabernacle, or church, it was clearly stated that the
whole was to be the same as had been seen by Moses in the cloud... A
burning fiery cloud has to have a fresh air intake... This air intake
would probably be at its base and, it would be tent-shaped." Here one can
be best protected from "poisonous or asphyxiating fumes."

One might locate such air intakes on mountain tops or man-made tents.
Observing, as a trained scientist, from the "eye of the cyclone," that is,
for many days and nights, Moses produced the design and specifications for
the ark, tent, and tabernacle. Here, as elsewhere, the imitation of nature
is used as the basis for an applied science; a priest or layman or
political boss or "Just a guy hearing voices" could not produce the works
of Moses.

THE BURNT OFFERING

Servius, a commentator on Virgil, writes that "the first inhabitants of
the earth never carried fire to their altars, but by their prayers they
brought down the heavenly fire."[35] Even in the first century after
Christ, Josephus the Jewish historian could describe a successful
sacrifice to Yahweh: "There came a fire running out of the air, and rushed
with violence upon the altar, in the sight of all, and caught hold of and
consumed the sacrifice." But such fires of Yahweh had long been rare,
Josephus himself having testified that the Holy Spirit disappeared two
centuries before his time. I think that the great electrical flood was
mostly dammed by the time of Joshua and then was reduced incrementally
from century to century, with perhaps a century or two of revival of flow
during the time of the prophets and the end of the Late Bronze Age.

I have paid little attention to the altars of Moses and those that
followed. I do not mean the Israelite altar of unhewn, heaped-up stones
that was called for by Yahweh at first[36], or the Altar of Incense, but
the elaborate one for sacrifices designed by Moses during his mountain
retreat. The design of altars generally was fairly straightforward. It is
clear what the priests were seeking; it is evident what they found and
what failures they experienced. What is most obvious is that altars were
uniformly constructed to carry out a simple electrical function,
throughout the Near and Middle East. The Cretans, for instance, had horned
altars, as did others. Perhaps the very origin of altars goes back to the
beginning of the electrical ages, about six thousand years ago, when Zeus
in all his forms became a great god and Saturn withdrew.

The concept of archaeo-electro statics permits us to imagine that altars
were designed for burnt offerings when it was observed that the gods whom
one wished to propitiate were in the habit of dispatching sparks upon
metallized prominences such as horns, spears and elevated plates. This was
direct contact of a most exciting kind between god and humans. One could
scarcely doubt that the gods were receiving and acknowledging the
offerings. When Yahweh's fire is not called for, the worshippers use
ordinary combustion. When the oil lamps of the Tabernacle were readied
upon their seven-pronged lampstand, Moses "then fit up the lamps."[37]
Fire did not descend from the atmosphere to do the job.

The great horned altar of Israel in the wilderness was another of Yahweh's
Mount Sinai designs that Moses applied at the foot of the mountain [38].
It was a hollow, ninety-inch square cabinet of bronze-plated wood,
standing fifty-four inches high, with carrying poles. It was hollow to
permit its being filled with stones and dirt according to Yahweh's first
instructions out of Egypt. The horns of the four corners were one piece
with the rest. According to tradition, this magnificent altar did not work
at first; but finally "there came a fire out from before the Lord and
consumed upon the altar the burnt offering and fat." The fire stayed there
for 116 years without melting the brass or burning the wood, the legend
concludes, leaving us to wonder: why `116'"? [39]

A legend has Yahweh reproaching Moses, who wondered whether the divine
fire would consume the thin altar brass and wood: "Thou judgest by the
laws that apply to men, but will these also apply to Me?" Then, referring
to the fires and ice of heaven, he goes on: "Doth the water quench their
fire, or doth their fire consume the water? For, 'I am the Lord who maketh
peace between these elements in My high places.' No more shall the brass
overlay of the altar be injured by fire; even though it be no thicker than
a denarium [a coin]."[40] Obviously, he had in mind an electric fire, not
one of coals.

Cassuto [4l] insists, against exegetes and legends, that the altar had an
earthen and stone top. The legendary metal and wood top would be quickly
destroyed by a heavy wood or coal fire, as other sceptics, too, have
pointed out. I am inclined to disagree with the distinguished Cassuto;
electrical conditions were such at this time and so well controlled by
Moses that he could be confident of exciting an electrical fire whenever
it was required. The sceptics have not considered an electrical fire.

As with the Ark, once the significance of electricity is perceived in
regard to the altar, we may deduce certain behaviors and understand
others. We appreciate, once again, the immensity of electrification in
those days, the universality of electro-static applications in worship,
and the possibility of following electrical sensitivities wherever they
may lead over the lithosphere and especially up into the mountains, the
"high places" to which the Jews repaired more and more as the Earth-charge
in relation to near space diminished and the atmosphere cleared.

By "burnt offerings" the Bible means an offering destined for sacrifice on
an altar, as well as the same sacrifice after it has been burnt. On one
occasion, Moses and Aaron entered the Holy Tabernacle and came out again;
then the glory of Yahweh appeared to all the people. And fire came forth
from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering [42].

So far as one may tell, a burnt offering is successfully burnt when it is
struck by a spark discharged from above, a divine fire... It need not be
cooked; it should be marked or signed. Occasionally the enthusiasm of the
language lets one imagine that Yahweh in fact did sometimes voraciously
"consume" the burnt offering.

To get Yahweh to accept an animal sacrifice, it may have been prudent to
drain the animal of its blood, whence would perhaps come the Judaic taboo
of animal blood. Blood conveys electric current. A spark might be
dissipated if it short-circuited through a bloody offering.

On the other hand, the blood was useful in the sacrifice for inducing a
charge to collect on the metal of the altar base. Moses taught the
Israelites to pour the drained blood upon the sacrificial offering, on the
altar, and on the ground around the altar. Levites, clean-shaven all over
to minimize risks of shock, performed such tasks. Ordinary fires by
friction and combustion were also built to burn offerings and to
encourage, as with blood, the descent of divine fire.

Water, we indicated in the last chapter, will also expedite an electrical
discharge. Altars worked better if means were available to wet the same
surfaces that Moses used to pour on blood - not inside the offering but
over it, on the altar, around the altar, taking care not to move too close
or in any way short-circuit an impending spark.

Elijah, the prophet, was mostly incredible as a worker of miracles. There
was enough of the scientific in his behavior in his famous contest with
the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal to judge it correct as to
structure even if exaggerated [43]. In a time of great drought for the
Northern Kingdom of Israel, when the king and most others were whoring
after false gods, Elijah, hiding out from sure death, suddenly catches the
message that finally a great thunderstorm is coming to end the drought. He
impatiently importunes a friend to ask the king for an interview. The
friend says in effect : "Why are you in such a hurry to get killed and to
get myself killed?" Elijah insists, and the king sees him. Elijah asks for
a chance to confute all the false prophets and the king agrees. A contest
is set up on Elijah's terms - the opposition is to choose a bull,
sacrifice it, and ask for a sign of the Lord's acceptance. He, Elijah,
will do likewise. Whoever receives the sign wins.

The opposition builds its fire, places its offering, dances about, and
gets no response. Elijah builds an altar of stone, places his offering,
and then pours twelve barrels of water upon the offering. He dowses the
offering thrice. He digs a trench around the altar and fills it with
water. The time is approaching evening. The water soaks down and makes
contact with the water table. The approaching thunderstorm is preceded by
a heavy, moist, ionized, and charged lowering atmosphere. The fire of
Yahweh descends upon the offering of Elijah. His triumphant followers
escort the prophets of Baal to a nearby place and kill them.

THE BRAZEN SERPENT AND OTHER RODS

A final "miracle-product" permitted by the electrical age to the ingenious
scientist was a variety of rods. The most famous was the caduceus of the
Greek god Hermes (in Egypt, Thoth), nowadays the symbol of the medical
profession because Hermes was also the greatest healer. The next most
famous rod was the Brazen Serpent of Moses, then Aaron's Rod, and then, of
course, we hear of other wonderful staffs. Every shepherd needs a staff,
every walker a cane, every boy a stick.

So we should expect great disbelief to be visited upon rods. Yet rods have
a mysterious quality: they are "guns" in slang; they are phalluses among
many prehistoric peoples; they are water-finders in the sensitive hands of
dowsers; they are electric attractors and lightning-rods; they are Upper
Paleolithic batons; they are lances, tilting weapons, flag-poles,
may-poles, dolmens, bethels, etc.; no man is complete without one.

Yahweh, in a legend, advertises that "dead things come before Me and leave
Me imbued with life," referring to the rod of Aaron which had lain in the
inner sanctum of the Tabernacle one night and then "brought forth buds,
and bloomed blossoms, and even yielded almonds."[44] This is a flagrant
challenge to legend-analysis: what can be made of it?

The Bible tells that Moses, in need of proving why Aaron should be High
Priest of Israel, decreed that a beam of wood should be cut into twelve
staves, that the Levi's should have one marked for them, and all other
tribes one each as well, the Levi staff being that of Aaron. The rods
would be left with Yahweh overnight to see which tribe shall have its rod
singled out by him as the rod of the High Priest. Aaron's, and Aaron's
alone, was transformed in the night, and his priesthood was divinely
authorized by test once more.

If there is a kernel of truth in this sacred competition, it must rest
with the manipulation of Aaron's stick in the middle of the night. It may
be conjectured that it was subjected to severe shock on the mercy seat of
Yahweh until it evidenced changes sufficiently symbolic to suggest the
buds, blossoms, and almonds described in the Bible and legends. The ark
when operative is somewhat like a tornado: it discharges sparks that set
up a column of gases and dust and modifies whatever conductor it may
embrace.

A tremendous tornado occurred in Chatenay, France, in 1836, and an expert
report was made upon it for insurance purposes:

All those (trees) which came within the influence of the
tornado, presented the same aspect; their sap was
vaporized, and their igneous fibres had become as dry as if
kept for forty-eight hours in a furnace heated to ninety
degrees above the boiling point. Evidently there was a great
mass of vapor instantaneously formed, which could only
make its escape by bursting the tree in every direction; and
as wood has less cohesion in a longitudinal than in a
transverse direction, these trees were all, throughout one
portion of their trunk, cloven into laths. Many trees attest,
by their condition, that they served as conductors to
continual discharges of electricity, and that the high
temperature produced by this passage of the electric fluid,
instantly vaporized all the moisture which they contained,
and that this instantaneous vaporization burst all the trees
open in the direction of their length, until the wood, dried
up and split, had become unable to resist the force of the
wind which accompanied the tornado [45].

Aaron's rod, by discontinuous and repeated sparks, could achieve something
of the remarkable representations that the observers saw in it the next
day. The other rods had been laid aside, of course. Moses had had several
rods, the rod that impressed the Hebrew welcoming committee in Goshen, the
rod that he carried into his negotiations with Pharaoh Thoum, the rod that
he held high in the first battle with the Amalekites, the rod that he used
to find water, and the rod that was the Brazen Serpent. I have mentioned
some possible special quality of each in another chapter. Of these, only
the battle-staff appears to have been luminously activated; "the Midrashim
narrate that the Israelites encountered the Amalekites in a thick veil of
clouds,"[46] hence it must have sparked a light to have such effect on
friend and foe alike.

The early rods that behaved like snakes may have been metal or metalized
for high conductivity, insulated at the grasping points, and with pointed
head to encourage a discharge upwards. If they discharged they would
rustle and hiss like snakes. Possibly, too, by a certain disjointing,
sparks might be induced to leap the hinging points and cause a wriggling
effect by attraction and repulsion. (Priestley, quoted earlier, was
calling such a spark "spider.") As with other magical tricks, the
competition of professional magicians would accord to someone the fame of
being the best of magicians. If a god or demon is associated with the
basic phenomenon, that god, that magician, and that device are altogether
connected and acknowledged superior.

The Brazen Serpent (see Figure 16) was the outcome of popular grumblings
and protests which provoked Yahweh into sending fiery serpents among the
people to bite and kill many of them. Moses, begged to intercede, was told
by Yahweh: "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; everyone who is
bitten, when he sees it, shall live."[47] There was no doubt always cause
to blame the people for their disagreeable temper. The snakes that caused
anguish were probably innumerable animals driven above ground by
thermoelectrical phenomena [48] accompanied by fiery electric charges
snaking though the ground, else why so many? Why so homeopathic a solution
as another fiery snake that is under control? And why the cure from seeing
the model excepting that thus would Yahweh and Moses lend their authority
to psychosomatic therapy? But the bronze serpent, as an independent
spark-generator, might have occupied a private tent of healing. Dr.
Mesmer, famous for "mesmerizing" people, was one of "a long line of
electrotherapists, that even today practices with some success. Healing
might originate in certain cases by electroshock with the priesthood as
therapists administering sparks to patients. Other cases of healing might
occur by the bactericidal effect of ozone in the rooms where the
electro-static machines were operated" as with Mesmer [49].

	Figure 16: The Brazen Serpent is Formed (Click on the picture to
get an enlarged view. Caution: Image files are large.) (Source: Bible of
Lubeck, 1494.)

The bronze serpent, representing unconsciously the comet by its shape and
electrification, was carried with the Ark; as Ziegler has suggested
elsewhere, it might have been used as an independent capacitor with its
rod and snake separated by an insulator so as to permit the tongue to
discharge against the head of the rod. It might, too, be employed just
behind the mercy seat as the target for discharges from both of the
grounded cherubim; and it might be operated as an independent electrical
dem- onstrator affixed to the Ark. Numerous instrumental assemblies and
adjustments could be managed for different purposes, with more or less
sparking, smoking, noise-making, and explosions.

Since Pliny described the great comet of Typhon as spiral-shaped,[50]
there is some reason to connect the serpent with the celestial apparitions
of Exodus.

King Hezekiah broke into pieces the Serpent of Moses or a reproduction
thereof six centuries later on grounds that it had become the object of
idolatry. Or perhaps it could cause panic if it were electrified and, as
Ziegler guesses, there would be nowhere to go from a city undergoing
siege, or about to do so. The electrical signaling had to be astutely
controlled to prevent its causing self-demoralization.

Twenty-five hundred years later, in the first modern outburst of
enthusiasm for the rediscovery of electrical fire, there comes once again
the idea that electricity cures. The spark-spitting is not from snakes but
from jars. Some religious evangelists, admirers of the new science,
unconsciously emulate their Old Testament hero, Moses. So we find in a
bibliography the following item, which speaks for itself:[51]

A.D. 1759. - Wesley (John), the founder of Methodism (1703-1791) and the
most eminent member of a very distinguished English family, publishes "The
Desideratum; or Electricity made Plain and Useful, by a Lover of Mankind
and of Common Sense." In this he relates at great length the cures of
numerous physical and moral ailments, attributed to the employment of the
electric fluid, under such curious headings as "Electricity, the Soul of
the Universe," "Electricity, the Greatest of all Remedies," etc.

THE POUCH OF JUDGEMENT

Moses, who hates sorcery and divination, provides a special place for a
pair of objects, the Urim and Thummim [52]. He orders to be made a pouch
of cloth that is closed at top and bottom but open at its two sides, with
gold chains attached to hang it from the High Priest's shoulders and to
tie it around his waist. It is the size of a man's hand. To the front of
the pouch is attached a gold plate into which are fitted twelve different
precious stones, each containing the name of one of the Twelve Tribes.
"And into the pouch of judgement you shall put the Urim and Thummim."'

No one has found an origin for these two words. They are thought to be a
very ancient device. Their shape is "impossible to ascertain."[53] Only
top officials, perhaps only heads of state or tribes, could ask the priest
to employ them. "They served as a means of inquiring of God, that is to
say, of obtaining from the deity, with the help of the priest, an answer
concerning matters beyond human ken."[54] Since they were used to choose
which of two goats would be sent into the desert to Azazel on the Day of
Atonement, it is thought they were a kind of lot. Other incidents of their
employment are known. They gave short answers, usually "yes" or "no," to
carefully framed question about a highly uncertain decision. Only one
question could be handled at a time.

Moses never used them, probably because he could speak directly to Yahweh.
But Joshua did, and Saul, and David. After David, the two objects
disappear from the Bible. Legend does not go farther than to implicate the
Urim and Thummim in the processes of inquiry. The open-sided pouch
indicates that the pieces were not carried in it, but employed in it, for
at least a hand might enter it, Legend says that the two words mean "Light
and Truth." "Only a high priest who was permeated with the Holy Spirit,
and over whom rested the Shekinah, might obtain an answer, for in other
cases the stones withheld their answer. But if the high priest was worthy,
he received an answer to every inquiry, for on these stones were engraved
all the letters of the alphabet, so that all conceivable words could be
constructed of them."[55]

For lack of any better explanation, we are impelled to think once more of
electrical mysteries. The Holy Spirit and Shekinah, like angels, may be
metaphors for a manifestation of electricity. The "Light" does not always
appear. The priest must be worthy. King Saul could not get an answer one
time, and searched then who had done wrong, for Yahweh "did not answer him
that day."[56]

A successful attempt is described by the legend: after the King or head of
the Sanhedrin looks into the face of the priest and makes inquiry,

The high priest, looking down on his breastplate, then
looked to see which of the letters engraved on the stones
shone out most brightly, and then constructed the answer
out of these letters. Thus, for example, when David inquired
of the Urim and Thummimm if Saul would pursue him, the
high priest Abiathar beheld gleaming forth the letter Yod in
Judah's name, Resh in Reuben's name, and Dalet in Dan's
name, hence the answer read as follows: Yered , 'He will
pursue.'[57]

More electricity is revealed here: certain stones shine brighter than
others, "gleaming forth." The priest ponders the letters and composes the
reply as best he can.

We cannot truly solve this mystery with all of its mechanisms - or
electronics. Relevant is the fact that the famous early modern scientist,
Gilbert (1600), performed and described hundreds of small experiments to
determine the electromagnetic properties of precious and semi-precious
stones. For most of 200 years following him, scientists pursued the same
type of experimenta- tion. Efforts were made to classify all stones by
their electrical properties. Jewish legend claims to know what the twelve
stones of the Pouch of judgement were. A discussion of the truth of the
legend and of these stones and other stones also proposed is not possible
here. It suffices to speculate that the original stones fell into a
similar order of electrical behavior; particularly, each engraved tribal
gem would collect, hold, and emit the same charge under like conditions,
as would befit a confederation of equals.

The Urim might be an electrifying brush, a "rubber" the modern scientists
called it. The priest would rub the gems until they held a charge, or rub
them one by one. This he could do more easily by steadying the pouch with
one hand from inside it. The Thummin might be a stubby rod of metal. The
priest would whirl it in the air a fixed number of times and then present
it to a tribal stone. He would repeat the procedure with all other stones
in succession. If a spark gleamed forth, the letter would be used,
otherwise not. Then the full word would be combined from the letters that
lit up. The procedure was not dangerous; nevertheless it was most holy.
King Saul would have killed his son, Jonathan, that day, because, in
successive inquiries of the pouch, Jonathan was blamed for the absence of
Yahweh. But the people rebelled "and redeemed Jonathan and he did not
die."[58]

Notes (Chapter 5: Legends and Miracles)

1.  Ex. 19:8.

2.  Ex. 20:18.

3.  Cf. Ps 97:4-5: "hills melted like wax;" "the mountains melted, even
that Sinai" Jg 5:4-5.

4.  Ex. 24:9, 10.

5.  Ex. 24:15-18.

6.  G III 137.

7.  Moses, 243.

8.  Berkeley: U. of Calif. Press, 1970, p.138-139.

9.  G III 92-3.

10.  Mellinkoff, op. cit., plate II.

11.  Hugo Gressmann, Mose und Seine Zeit, Gottingen, 1913; cf. Cassuto,
448-51.

12.  Wayne A. Meeks ("Moses as God and King," 254-71 in Jacob Neusner ed.,
Religions in Antiquity. Leiden: Brill, 1970, 370-1) writes that "in very
diverse sources there persist the remnants of an elaborate cluster of
traditions in Moses' heavenly enthronement at the time of the Sinai
theophany."

13.  G III 190.

14.  G III 213.

15.  P. 198; Cf. Num. 11:35; 12:1-15.

16.  Ziegler, 45-7.

17.  Is. 3:17; cf. 7:20; 3;24.

18.  In II SISR 2(1977), letters, cf. comments on both famine and
depilation in 3 pp. 101-2, and B. O' Gheoghan in II SISR I (1977), pp.
2-3, Where radiation disease is discussed as causing abrupt stoppage of
childbirth at time of Exodus in Egypt.

19.  Francis II. Baker, "Comet Lord," 189 Living Age (June 27, 1891).
pp.818-23, repr. in W. Corliss, comp., Strange Universe, A2-ALC-001.

20.  See also their book Lifecloud, Harper's and Row, New York, 1978.

21.  Ex. 33.

22.  VII Encycl. Britannica 1964, hereafter referred to as E.B.

23.  VII EB p.962.

24.  Ibid.

25.  (1975), 136, citing George E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation,
Baltimore: John Hopkins U. Press, 1973, 43,109.

26.  Num. 11:9.

27.  p.80.

28.  M.J. Teesdale, "The Manna of the Israelites, "3 Science Gossip (1897)
229-33.

29.  Ex. 16:14-15,21,31; Num. 11:7-8.

30.  Reade, "Manna as a Confection," I SISR 2 (1977), 9.

31.  Joshua 6:12.

32.  Reade, p.10.

33.  Ibid., p.12.

34.  Reade believes that the tent was pitched high at the center to let
out fumes. Though logical, this view conflicts with the ordinary reading,
which results in a construction as depicted in figure 13.

35.  Commentary on Virgil: XII, 2OO; cf. Eclogue VI, 42, quoted by
Blavatsky, I, 526.

36.  Ex. 20:24-5.

37.  Ex. 40:24-5.

38.  Ex. 27:1-8.

39.  III G 184.

40.  III G I62.

41.  Cassuto, 362-3.

42.  Lev. 1-9; 10;23.

43.  III Kings 18.

44.  G III 162.

45.  Hare, R.; Journal of the Franklin Institute, 54 (1852) 28- 29.

46.  Velikovsky, A. in C., 60; 55-6. Ex. 17:8.

47.  Num. 21:4-9.

48.  Before the Haicheng (China) earthquake of Feb. 4, 1975, "there were a
multitude of warnings, local changes in the earth's magnetism and snakes
coming out of their lairs in the frozen ground." NY Times, Oct. 1, 1979,
60.

49.  Manoilov, 81.

50.  Natural History, II, ch. XXII, 91.

51.  Mottelay, 216.

52.  Ex. 28:15-3; see Cassuto 372-87.

53.  Cassuto, 380.

54.  Ibid.

55.  III G 172-3.

56.  I Sam. 14:37-38.

57.  III G 172.

58.  I Sam. 14:45.