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THE MYTHICALLY BASED PLANETARY MODEL

Dave Talbott

The first civilizations arose from attempts to celebrate or recapture the
age of the gods.

The degree of early manUs orientation backwards, to the age of the god's, is
extraordinary.  The definitive features distinguishing early civilizations
from the more pastoral age that preceded them seem to have arisen as ritual
expressions, honoring, re-enacting and extending celestial forms and celestial
episodes in the age of the gods.  The first writing, vital technologies,
monumental architecture, the rise of kings and larger-scale political
organization, rites of sacrifice and wars of conquestQall of these distinctive
attributes and tendencies of the first civilizationsQcan be traced to
religious or ritual practices in which men sought to re-live and to extend the
Prime Example provided in the mythical age.  It is not an exaggeration to say
that the makers of civilization never built anything considered sacred or
undertook any religious act without first finding inspiration and guidance in
a celestial prototype.  And all traditions agree that prototype arose in the
age of the gods.

....
All that separates the Great Pyramids of early Egyptian from the small mounds
spread across that ancient land is scale.  The motivation is provided by one
and the same prototype.  It is the compulsive extension of the prototype that
brings forth technology.  Until this stirring of religious fervor there is no
collective impulse to fuel technology.  And always the reference of this
nearly obsessive activity is to the age of the gods and to things celestial.

First there is a wheel in the sky.  Then come the ritual wheels fashioned as
duplicates of the cosmic wheel.  Then come the elaborations from which the
useful wheel emerges.

First there are the forms in the sky.  Then come the abstract and natural
hieroglyphs representing and interpreting these forms.  Then comes the further
abstraction into systems of writing.  Writing emerges as a tool of ritual,
enabling worshippers to extend their celebration of the gods.

How are we to explain this obsessive orientation to the age of the gods? Where
did the incredible power of the prototype come from if there was no prototype?
If you think the myth of the celestial prototype was an invention, you are
required to conjure an undocumented period of rampant fabrication followed by
a documented period in which fabricationQmaking things up out of nothingQwould
have been unthinkable.

...
.....
I am going to assume that readers are generally familiar with the suggested
planetary assembly I have called the Rpolar configuration,S but I will add a
few thoughts concerning the logical context of the thesis.  Because the theory
has evolved in certain unexpected directions in recent years, I will also note
a couple of critical revisions to the mythically-based model.

Saturn was not alone in the sky, but part of a gathering of planets moving in
unison to constitute a nearly overwhelming celestial presence.  The
participating planets in the proposed configuration are: Jupiter, Saturn,
Venus, Mars and Earth.  Each planet receives its assigned place in the
assembly for very specific reasons, and all of the threads of evidence
supporting this lineup are interconnected: change the sequence of planets and
the argument as a whole unravels.  But allow the planets to fulfill their
mythical roles, and neither the planets nor the myths will disappoint us.

The above illustration represents certain tenets of planetary mythology,
without any attempt to reflect distance or relative motions of the bodies in
relation to each other or to the Sun.  It is a just a starting point.  The
thesis holds that in the earliest-remembered phase of the configuration, the
participants were held in alignment, so that from a terrestrial vantage point,
Saturn occluded the view of Jupiter, Venus appeared in the center of Saturn,
and Mars appeared inside the orb of Venus.

Additionally, the Earth itself was aligned axially to the other planets, so
that the giant configuration appeared fixed in the polar sky.

Scale and perspective are not only vital, but establish a set of principles
and requirements that must coincide with the mythical material, without
contradiction.  These principles and requirements are specific enough to
provide an easy means of disproving the model if it is fundamentally invalid

- the participants are held in a Rconjunction,S but for the observer on Earth
the planet Mars must move up and down the axis visually;

- light arrives from the Sun at a particular angle, producing specific
effects;

- the rotating Earth has a direct effect on the movement of the resulting
celestial forms;

- the participating planets are of dramatically different sizes, and these
differences must cooperate with distance to produce identifiable images (as
well as specific changes with the evolution of the configuration);

- the viewer on Earth is not precisely on the axis, but slightly removed,
affecting the appearance of Mars in its Rdescent.S (In treating issues of
perspective it is not unreasonable to place the terrestrial observer on the
45th parallel.)
.........
The majority of myths say that only water stretched across RheavenS or the
unformed world in the beginning.  Imagine the gas-giant Saturn (with no
visible rings) hovering above ancient man and brought to a golden glow in the
night sky.  Mythically the heaven-god was Rthe golden waters,S the sea.  The
gaseous, turbulent envelope of Saturn, for the observer on earth, had all of
features of a wind-driven RoceanS aboveQthe boundless, formless sea, the misty
place or backdrop of certain, more focused events.  Cosmic sea and heaven-god
are originally synonymous.  In more than one astronomical tradition, of
course, Saturn is not only the sphere of Rheaven,S but the water planet.

Planetary MotifsQEarliest Phase

With respect to the original condition, when Mars and Venus stood in
conjunction inside the orb of Saturn, a series of symbols and mythical
equations can be identified.  In this brief review I will place the accent on
Venus, noting the repeated association with both the creator-king and the
warrior-hero.  All of the attributes outlined here relate to the earliest
phase of the configuration, in which the crucial ideas are sphericity,(both
the spherical and ovoid forms of Venus illustrated above) centrality (Venus
was seen squarely in the middle of Saturn or RheavenS), and the planetUs role
as an enclosure housing a smaller orb.
......
But once I had settled on the juxtaposed images of Venus and Mars in the
center of Saturn, I could no longer ignore the possibility that the crescent
was on Saturn and that the central orb, star or cross inside the crescent
related to Venus or Venus-Mars in conjunction! That Venus is, in a global
tradition, the RStarS par excellence, the mother and prototype of stars, only
accentuates the issue.
........

One of the distinguishing features of the Jovian image pictographically is a
series of bands placed on a circle or sphere.  Additionally, there is the
prominence of wavy, meandering or swirling lines suggestive of well-defined
atmospheric currents such as are characteristic of JupiterUs appearance today,
accentuated and stylized in artistic representations.  A third component, less
common but not infrequent, is spots or small circles or dabs of gold or other
color spread along the bands, suggestive of atmospheric vortices (both the
famous Red Spot and lesser examples of atmospheric vortices are noteworthy in
photographs of Jupiter today.

..........
The name of the god means RSmoking Mirror,S and Aztec art provides not a few
instances of both the god and the symbol.  Two distinctive traits of the
smoking mirror, in addition to the circumscribing curl of Rsmoke,S are:
colored bands and spots.  Two examples are given below.  In one instance it is
the bands that characterize the smoking mirror, in the other the spots.

...............
Sometime in this general period I also received a Macintosh diskette from an
R. M. Smith of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was a subscriber to AEON. 
He had been following the discussion of the polar configuration with interest,
he said, and offered on the diskette two different models accommodating the
idea of a polar Saturn.  I found the submission encouraging and intended to
talk with Smith directly, but as it happened other events were pulling me in
quite a different direction at the time, leading to the above-noted year and a
half sabbatical.

It was close to the end of that self-imposed retreat that I received a call
from an engineer named Robert Grubaugh, whose name I had never heard before.
He told me he was a structural dynamicist by training but also quite familiar
with orbital calculations.  He had worked for a number of years for TRW, a
high-tech contributor to the US space program, and putting bodies into the
right orbit was just part of a good dayUs work.  He told me that people were
troubling themselves too much over the physics of the polar configuration,
that he had worked regularly with synchronous orbits, and that Rthe basic
planetary lineup you're looking for is simply a set of synchronous orbits.S
Developing a model, starting with Rgood old Newtonian physics,S was really not
that difficult, he told me.  But hereUs what caught my attention: He said that
the model he had worked out required Jupiter to be behind Saturn (providing
the magnetic strength for the required torque on the EarthUs pole to cause it
to precess, keeping it aligned to Saturn) and that it put a continuous quarter
crescent on the orb of Saturn..  Now that got my interest!

It was only a short time later that we personally met in Portland.  When he
left I had little doubt that his contribution would be vital.  Bob is 70 years
old with the energy and spirit of someone half that age.  And there is no
question as to his hands-on experience and competence when it comes to
calculating orbits.

Synchronous orbits require an unusual equilibrium position for each of the
participating planets.  Particularly interesting to Bob Grubaugh, however, was
this significant fact emerging from his calculations of equilibrium positions:
the calculations showed that if planets move in close proximity, as required
by the mythically-based model, they tend to move into their respective
equilibrium positions; even if disturbed somewhat by secondary forces, they
will recover and continue toward the equilibrium necessary to sustain
synchronous orbits.

Because no one had previously raised the mechanical issue concerning multiple
synchronous planetary orbits of the type needed for the polar configuration
(nothing in the solar system today would prompt the question), it seems that
no one had performed the elementary calculations to show that orbits of the
very sort required to make the model RworkS can in fact be a natural outcome
of planets close enough to interact dynamically.

GrubaughUs calculations provided a surprising answer to the physical question
many thought might never be answered.

................
But the most dramatic point in the video comes from the earthbound view, at
the 45th parallel.  As the planets in the animated model follow their
mathematically defined orbits, they present to the viewer on earth the precise
sequence of images we have substantiated on the basis of universal mythQ

Saturn stationary in the sky, hiding Jupiter behind it.

Venus in the center of Saturn.

Mars in the center of Venus, descending to become immense over the northern
horizon, then ascending back to its position inside Venus.

In this computer-generated model, all references were provided by GrubaughUs
orbital dynamics, and none by the oft-repeated mythically-suggested movement
of Mars up and down the polar axis.

It is important to emphasize as well that orbital mechanics will not allow
arbitrary motions or arbitrary placement of planets in the positions necessary
to fit the visual requirements of the model.  Once the distance of the
planetary congregation from the Sun is defined, there is only one equilibrium
position for each of the planets in the sequence.  The reason Mars moves so
dramatically in GrubaughUs calculations is due to the much smaller mass of
that planet.  As it orbits between two larger bodies (Venus and Earth) a
resonance is induced that gives increasing eccentricity to MarsU orbit.  The
accord of the resulting motions with the fundamental Martian mythical
motifQthe hero descending and ascending the world axisQis stunning.

This preliminary video does not reproduce the light from the Sun, though that
is easily defined from the 45 degree angle of the planets synchronous movement
around the Sun.

The video was shown at Scranton following a brief presentation by Grubaugh.
Though the response was highly encouraging, one issue raised at the event
continued to crop up afterwards as others heard about GrubaughUs orbits.  The
issue relates to KeplerUs Third Law.  Ignoring the equation itself, the
relevant principle is: the farther a planet is from the Sun, the lower will be
its orbital velocity; hence, the farther a planet is from the Sun, the longer
will be its period (the time it takes to revolve around the Sun once).  The
same principle would, of course, apply to the satellites moving around a
planet.

And yet, when one considers the Grubaugh synchronous orbits, it is as if the
principle is being reversed.  Moving outward either from Jupiter or from the
Sun, each of the participating bodies is moving faster than its inner
partners. How can this be?

The answer is that all of the participants are interacting.  Each of the outer
bodies is literally revolving around all of the inner bodies, in addition to
revolving around the Sun.  And all of the revolutions are equal to one Earth-
-year.

The seeming RviolationS of KeplerUs Third Law is only illusory.  The Law canUt
apply to bodies that are interacting significantly with each other as well as
the Sun.

Yet several critics continued to appeal to Kepler.  One of theseQwhose name
would be recognized by AEON subscribers and whose contribution has in recent
years degenerated to flurries of mean-spirited postcardsQwas driven to new
heights by GrubaughUs calculations.  Having staked everything on the absolute
and unequivocal impossibility of the polar configuration, he began flailing
away day and night, the postcards stacking up to a half an inch or so before
he realized that Grubaugh was correct: Kepler doesnUt apply.

Even persons familiar with orbital dynamics seem to have stumbled, at least
briefly, on the Kepler issue.

Samuel Windsor, who has contributed orbital data to Don Patten, asserted the
impossibility of GrubaughUs synchronous orbits, saying that in order for the
math to work, the mass of one body would have to be inside the other.

Actually, a demonstration of both the concept and the workability of
synchronous orbits is not difficult.  The principle at stake can be shown with
a simple three-body illustration.  Assume that Saturn is orbiting the Sun and
that the Earth is orbiting SaturnQ

In this simple illustration, the Earth is farther from the Sun than is Saturn.
Does this mean that the Earth must be moving slower in relation to the Sun
than the inner planet Saturn (as RrequiredS by KeplerUs Third Law)? Not at
all, because the Earth is not orbiting the Sun independently of Saturn.  As a
satellite of Saturn its movements are related dynamically to both the Sun and
Saturn.

In the familiar relations of moons to planets in the solar system today, as
the moons swing around the far side of the planets (the side away from the
Sun) their movement in relation to the Sun is faster than the primaryUs
orbital velocities.  And nothing more than this is happening in the stipulated
synchronous orbit except that the satelliteQEarth in the above illustrationQis
placed at a distance whereby (following accepted Newtonian dynamics) it
revolves in one year.  Now no one could deny that such a placement is easily
calculated.  Place Saturn at any location in the vicinity of EarthUs or VenusU
orbit today, and there will be one easily defined distance from Saturn at
which the Earth would revolve once around Saturn with each circuit of Earth-
Saturn around the Sun.

For example, if you place Saturn at VenusU present orbit, and none of the
other polar configuration participants are included in the calculations, an
Earth orbit with a radius of about 7 million kilometers would have a period of
one solar year.

In the illustrated planetary relationships, given a one-year period, what
happens to the relative position of the Earth in relation to Saturn and the
Sun? The angle of the Earth-Saturn lineupQhere, 45 degrees removed from the
tangential orientation I had originally proposedQplaces a permanent one-
-quarter crescent on Saturn.

If you add Jupiter to the equation so that Saturn is revolving around Jupiter
and the Earth is revolving around Saturn and Jupiter, the math becomes more
complex while the primary forces remain the same.  Nor do the additions of
Mars and Venus change the primary dynamics.  With the additional planets what
you do get, according to Grubaugh, are certain secondary forces that could,
over time, cause a gradual migration away from the 45 degree angle, perhaps
also introduce other instabilities.  Because the more subtle interactions can
be quite complex, he has emphasized that further, more precise calculations
will have to be undertaken in order to project the potential consequences.

As for the primary forces active in the model, GrubaughUs calculations seem to
imply that, under the stipulated conditions (gas giants in the general
vicinity of VenusUand EarthUs orbits today), synchronous orbits could be as
natural as the common orbits of planetary moons today.  In fact, if Grubaugh
is correct, when the required conditions are present, there is a natural
tendency of dynamically interacting bodies to move into the very synchronous
relationships illustrated by the three-body model..  That, too, suggests a
possibility of stunning impact.