mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== _The Saturn Thesis: Questions and Answers_ David Talbott, author of _The Saturn Myth __________________________________________________________________ _INTRODUCTION_ _Why should we care about myth? _ I think there is a very good reason to care about myth, even thoughmyth as a whole may seem to speak a language too obscure for rational,feet-on-the-ground folk. Myth is, I believe, a window to earlyhuman history, a more intensely dramatic period than we have realized.The myths have their roots in a time of _celestial catastrophe_,and more often than not the appearance of confusion results fromviewing myth as something other than what it is. In the course of cultural evolution and scientific advance, weleft behind the fabled long ago, whose images seemed wholly outof touch with our own world. Yet my personal conviction is thatancient myth, when seen as a symbolic record of _earth-shakingevents in the sky_, will permanently change man's view of hiscelestial environment. _But your conclusions are not those of otherswho devoted lifetimes to the study of myth. How does your approachto myth produce such surprising conclusions? _ For many years now, 22 to be exact, I've been working to solvea puzzle. Why do ancient chronicles of celestial gods and heroestell such similar stories? Though the names differ, the variousbiographies of the gods reveal more parallels than I had everbelieved possible. And the deeper I looked the more clear it becamethat ancient races around the world recorded many _identicalexperiences_, even when they used _different symbols _totell their stories. Many common themes run through the folklore of diverse cultures.From ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to the Americas, from Indiato China, Scandinavia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, one findssurprisingly similar accounts: celestial temples and cities, alost paradise or, Garden of Eden, a cosmic mountain, a flamingserpent or dragon in the sky, and surprisingly similar storiesof global calamity ranging from wars of the gods, to a great floodor a devastating rain of fire and gravel. If we'll look at these collective memories carefully, it willchange our understanding of the past. Many of the myths concern _planets_, but the accounts make no sense to us in termsof the movement of these remote bodies today. Why did the planets,these little pinpricks of light, play such a powerful role inthe mythical age of the gods? Along with others working in this field, I've come to interpretthe myths and drawings and ritual practices from a new vantagepoint. Here is the conclusion in a nutshell: A few thousand yearsago, the sky did not look anything like it looks today! _Planets_appeared as gigantic, sometimes terrifying bodies above the ancientstargazers. In periods of stability this involved incredible beauty,but there were also periods of mind-altering catastrophe, themost traumatic experiences in the history of man. _What is your evidence for this? _ The primary evidence comes from ancient chronicles, submittedto extensive cross-referencing. By comparing accounts from aroundthe world, one can begin to reconstruct the way the sky lookedin ancient times. Is it possible that the myths and pictographsrecorded, in a language unique to the starworshippers, large-scaleevents we've forgotten? By keeping that possibility firmly inmind, the researcher will begin to identify crucial themes ofmyth, themes found on every continent, but pointing to an aliensky. As one begins to see the past differently, recent space age discoverieswill take on a new significance. Our probes of other planets,such as the Mariner explorations of Mars, the Voyager missionsto Jupiter and Saturn, and more recently the Magellan mappingof Venus, have produced many stunning images of the planets andtheir moons, together with undeniable evidence of sweeping catastrophewithin the planetary system. Taken as a whole, these stark profilesof our neighbors challenge traditional theories claiming slowand uneventful planetary evolution. Moreover, a new possibilityarises from a reconsideration of the historical material: thepossibility that the horrendous scars on our planetary neighborsresulted from events _witnessed _by man not all that longago. _What do you mean by the statement that theplanets appeared as gigantic bodies in the sky?; _ At the core of the argument is the idea that several planets wereonce joined in a spectacular gathering of planets, together withgases and dust, smaller moons and cosmic debris. For prehistoricman, who witnessed all of this, the effect was a massive celestialdisplay in the northern sky. I've called this celestial assembly,the polar configuration, because in its stable phases it was centeredon the north celestial pole. In the beginning, the primary formwas the planet Saturn, stationary but immense in the sky. Numerouslines of evidence suggest that Saturn once towered over man andinspired the most dramatic leaps in human imagination the worldhas ever known. Our work puts a new emphasis on the unusual celestial events reflected __in the myths. When you first dive into world mythology, allof your prior training will tell you to dismiss the myth-makersas fabricators or victims of hallucination. But there's anotherway to see the myths. Ancient man experienced extraordinary events,then strove to _remember_ and to _reenact_ them throughevery means available. The result was not only a global mythology,but entirely new forms of human expression. And the whole rangeof expressions, sacrifices to the gods, wars of conquest, monumentalconstruction, pictographic representations, and endless celebrationsof the lost age of the gods, left us a massive reservoir of evidence.These highly novel expressions are, in fact, the _distinguishingcharacteristics_ of the first civilizations. _But why should we believe that the sky haschanged so drastically? _ The best I can ask for is a willingness to consider an argument.I could show you, for example, that certain celestial images preoccupiedancient man to the point of an obsession. A great cosmic wheelin the sky. The pyramid of the sun. The eye of heaven. Also theship of heaven, a spiraling serpent, the raging goddess, and fourwinds of the sky. The problem for conventional perspectives isthat these images are far, far removed from anything we see inthe heavens today. But that is only the beginning of the theoreticalchallenge. As soon as you realize that far-flung cultures, thoughemploying _different _symbols, tell a _unified_ story,all of the previous explanations of myth collapse. Of course the point will not be proven in a few sentences, andnot in a few pages. But the more you learn on this subject, themore compelling the collective memory becomes. _So you're challenging the idea that thingshave not really changed that much within the solar system. _ Yes, we are challenging an intellectual system as a whole. Whatis at stake here are the pillars of the modern world view. Howcould it be that the sky has completely changed in a few thousandyears? Our textbooks do not talk about such a thing. When instructingus on the history of the solar system, the evolution of our planet,the birth of man, the origins of civilization, no one speaks ofan unstable solar system, of interplanetary upheaval, or of wholesalechanges in the celestial order. When the popular astronomer Carl Sagan presented his impressiveexposition on the nature of things, called _Cosmos_, he didn'task if we may have misunderstood our past. Rather, Sagan's expressedview, the official view of science for many years, fits comfortablywithin the textbooks on astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology,and ancient history. When we launched the U.S. Space program in the late 50's, thendevoted billions of dollars to exploring neighboring planets,no one thought to ask if the planets might have followed differentcourses in earlier times, whether disturbances of the planetarysystem might have left their tell-tale marks on these remote bodies.So when our cameras and measuring devices reached the planetsMars and Venus, and the Voyager probes provided spectacular glimpsesof Jupiter and Saturn, well, we were left with a hundred enigmasand unanswered questions. And yes, there's a certain irony to this. The prevailing viewof myth proclaims that, through science, man escaped the bondsof superstition and make believe. But now, in the twentieth century,the age of science and reason, it seems that _myth and symbol_will provide the lost key to the past, the key to a new understandingof the solar system, of planet Earth, and of man himself. _How do you distinguish these ideas about planetarymyth from the ideas of other researchers such as Joseph Campbell,Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade? _ Each of these impressive scholars came to discern certain unifiedlayers of myth, layers our traditional cynicism about myth neveranticipated. Perhaps the greatest contribution of these pioneersis their acknowledgment that the common view, seeing myth as randomabsurdity, will not suffice to explain the subject. I think the late Joseph Campbell has done the most to awaken popularinterest in myth, and he is one of my own favorites too. Followinga comparative approach, Campbell brought to light quite a numberof global themes. He noted, for example, the myths of the centralsun, the world mountain, the flowering of creation through sacrifice,the birth of the hero, the terrible goddess, and so on. Any one of these themes, when explored in its full context, couldopen the door to incredible discovery. But Campbell, like so manyothers, stopped short of asking the most important question ofall: if the celestial references of the myths are absent today,is it possible that they _were _present in a former time? _What is the real message of myth, in yourview? _ The mythmakers are telling us we've forgotten the very thing theyregarded as most vital, in fact, the source of all meaning tothe first star-worshippers. We've forgotten the age of the gods.We've assumed that as long as man has journeyed on our planetthe world looked and behaved almost exactly as it does today.And that is the fundamental error of modern perception. The answer to that error is to _re-envision_ the past. Withthe help of the ancient chroniclers, it's time to bring the forgottendramas, both the beauty, and the nightmare scenarios, into thelight of day. _You're suggesting that early man witnessedspectacular events in the sky. But many scholars would claim thatmyth is a hopelessly elusive source of evidence for proving aclaim of this sort. _ Of course they would, and the response should not surprise us.The most common objection to the Saturn thesis, is that it restson the words of story tellers who understood nothing about theworld in which they lived. But we need to think through these automatic responses. One reasonthe myths seem so absurd is that they speak for things that clearlydo not exist today. Our thinking is governed by an incredibleamount of inertia, and only the rarest of investigators has everasked, "Do we really know what ancient star-worshippers sawin the sky? Can we really be certain that our world today is amirror of the natural world our ancestors experienced severalthousand years ago?" The possibility that myth might reflectevents no longer occurring simply does not enter the minds ofmodern scholars. Now to say that we do not ask these questions is to say we aregoverned by inertia. And inertia is a very bad guide to discovery. Nothing is more crucial here than clarifying our thinking aboutmyth. We need to stop assuming in advance things _that can'tbe known in advance. _On this particular subject, until oneasks the unasked questions and looks at the evidence from a newvantage point, one is guided by _little else_ than inertia. _Skeptics might say that you can prove anythingby resort to myth. _ Well, you certainly do hear that statement a lot, and obviouslyit's not intended to mean what it literally says. The skepticis saying that all sorts of strange and exotic ideas have beenproposed on the basis of myth, and not one of them is any morereasonable that any of the others. He is saying you could arguefor anything under the sun if all you have to do is select a fewmyths for support. And he is saying there is no reason at allto _believe_ such an argument, no matter what its conclusions. For myself, I would restate the entire issue. Because the modernage has not discerned the _underlying_ message of myth, attemptsto unravel _particular _myths consistently fail. The answerto this failure is to stop the selective use of myth altogether,to adopt investigative groundrules that exclude _all _selectiveuse of myth. In the new approach to myth I've proposed, the inquiry rests fromstart to finish on well-established, recurring themes of myth,themes that have survived thousands of years of cultural mixingand still shine through despite the inherent tendency toward localizeddistortion over time. Additionally, this approach will place thehighest emphasis on the oldest sources, those originating closestin time to the experiences behind the myths, where there is theleast opportunity for distortion. It is in the oldest sourcesthat you find the most poignant and literal expressions of theuniversal themes, with minimal dilution of the celestial imagesinvolved. _And you believe, therefore, that you can proveyour case on the basis of mythical and historical evidence? _ The proof begins with certain well-established celestial formsrepeated in myths and pictographs and ritual reenactments aroundthe world. Not one of these primary forms, when placed under themicroscope, will reveal any relationship to things experiencedtoday. There are sun-wheels, to be sure, but on examination theyhave nothing in common with the body we call sun. We find imagesof stars in great abundance, but they do not behave like any starsin our sky. One finds as well a distinctive crescent-form, recordedby all ancient cultures, but why does it never correspond properlywith the crescent moon? The researchers first impression will be of confusion, one astronomicallyabsurd image after another. A star in the center of the sun. Acrescent holding in its hollow a central star. A crescent on thegreat sphere of the sun. A sun standing motionless at the centerof heaven. A sun occupying the summit of the world axis. A celestialcolumn rising along the polar axis to support a great crescentmoon. A star with a spiraling tail. A star carrying inside itselfan unexplained dark or reddish sphere. The theoretical problemis that, from one ancient nation to another, there is far moreconsistency to these astronomical absurdities than is rationallyconceivable within traditional theoretical frameworks. Here's the dilemma in a nutshell: random, irrational ideas couldnever produce global, coherent patterns at any level of detail;but there _are_ demonstrable global __patterns, andin greater detail than any comparative mythologist has previouslyrecognized; therefore, the images cannot be entirely random. In truth, the dilemma has no answer until one finds a new vantagepoint for interpreting the coherent substratum of myth. But findingthat vantage point will require us to stop projecting our ownsky onto that of prehistoric man. The good news is that nothingelse is necessary in order to open the door to discovery. _Perhaps the patterns you refer to simply spreadfrom one culture to another by migration. _ Yes, up to a certain point one _could_ argue that commonthemes simply migrated from a central, very ancient source. ButI doubt that anyone would be so daring as to explain myth as awhole in this way. And that is our subject, all of the well-established,repeated themes of world mythology. Also, I would have no argumenton behalf of the polar configuration were it not that all of theacknowledged themes, or archetypes, are _interconnected. _Nowthe word interconnected stands opposite the idea of random patterns.If there are no objective references to the myths, imaginationis the only explanation we have, despite the fact that, as anexplanation of the subject, _pure_ imagination fails everylogical test. _Nevertheless, your dependence on mythicalimages will surely inspire skepticism. _ Of course! On the face of it, myth is the most incoherent, confusedand least credible source of information in the world! In common perception myth has, for centuries, meant _fiction_.And myth, in one obvious sense, _is_ fiction. It is makebelieve. But here again, clarity is vital. It should be obviouswe're not suggesting that things occurred in the manner impliedby mythical language itself. We don't need to be told that fieryserpents and dragons, or heaven-sustaining giants, or ships inthe sky, or witches on brooms _do not exist in the sense understoodby the myth-makers_. The question we're asking is: What arethe celestial references, and where did the myths come from? Inwhat human experiences did the most powerful themes of myth originate? Nothing is more obvious than the myth-maker's relentless tendencyto _interpret _events: monstrous creatures in the sky, celestialcities and kingdoms, sky pillars, rivers or fountains of life,celestial kings, heroes, and shamans, mother goddesses and divineprincesses, heaven- embracing trees, crescent-horned bulls andcrescent-ships, demons of chaos, there is no limit to the roleof human imagination, whatever may have inspired these ideas.Ultimately, there is only one question here: did these imaginativeforms arise from _nothing _in nature, or did they arise froma natural environment more dramatic and terrifying than anythingknown in modern times? Since there's virtually no limit to the field of evidence, thereare logical groundrules for determining if the references arealien to our sky. Why not apply these reasonable groundrules andsee where they lead? _Okay, what do you regard as effective groundrulesfor a study such as this? _ Well, the key is to identify the underlying patterns. Once yourealize that there are unrecognized levels of integrity to myth,a fact incomprehensible within prevailing theoretical frameworks,you'll naturally want to know: just how coherent _are_ thesepatterns? Asking that question again and again is the way we willfree ourselves from the tyranny of inertia on these subjects. In truth, not just the more monstrous personalities, but all ofthe objects and events of myth present the same _apparent_confirmation of the myth-maker's irrationality. But the firststep toward understanding the myth-making epoch is to distinguishbetween the _unusual_ and the _imaginative_. The eventsare unusual, while the interpretations are imaginative. I'm notasking you to agree that a shining temple or city of living godsonce stood in the center of the sky. Or believe that a great heroof flesh and blood once arose to rid the world of the chaos-monsters.Or that this very same hero once consorted with the mother goddess.I _will_ ask you, however, to consider whether these unexplainedand _global _themes may have roots in uncommon natural events.In our skepticism about such global themes we forgot the elementarydistinction between event and interpretation, then tossed outthe entire body of evidence. A new approach will simply let the dominant patterns of myth speakfor themselves, and will then construct a model that can explainthem in a unified way. _What, then, is the heart of your argument? _ For several years now I've been asking those with an interestin the subject to find a global mythical theme explicable by referenceto known natural phenomena. It has not happened, and I do notbelieve that it will happen. Despite the appearance at the superficiallevel (where the translators of various texts _assume _a __reference to the sun or moon, or some other readily accessiblephenomenon), there is no theme of myth answering, in its earliestexpressions, to the world we know. And my plan is to continuereiterating this point until someone refutes the argument as I'vepublished it. Now if this assessment is correct, we're left with only two optionstheoretically. Either we must imagine that the ancients populatedtheir mythical world with forms and events never experienced,denying natural experience at every turn (something no theoristhas ever claimed); or we must assume that the world formerly presentedto the mythmakers a range of sights and sounds unlike anythingknown in modern times. There's a way to resolve the question, in terms that should beacceptable to reasonable investigators. What I've urged is ananalytical approach concentrating on the universal themes of myth,because these will enable the researcher to look past the countlesslocal elaborations and fragmented episodes of later eras, andto keep the focus on the substratum. Nothing will boost the researchersconfidence more than discovering that the roots of myth are notonly identifiable, but _coherent_, each springing from thesame taproot. Just consider, for example, the overarching idea repeated in mythsthe world over, the collective memory of a former age of the gods.It began with a period frequently termed the Golden Age, but waspunctuated by a collapse of the original order, sweeping catastrophe,wars of the gods and eventually a _departure_ of these visiblepowers. Yes, there are a hundred variations on the theme, andcountless contradictions in the localized versions, but at rootwe have the idea that the great gods were overwhelmed in a deadlycatastrophe, wandered off, or flew away to become distant stars. We've never really reckoned with this collective memory, thatthere was once an age of the gods, when man himself lived closeto these mysterious personalities. The general theme is both universaland remarkably persistent. From the dawn of history onward, thattheme never gave way to a contrary myth, that is, until men _stoppedbelieving in the gods_. The recurring themes of myth offer a crucial analytical tool.The methodology works to expose the underpinnings of a collectivememory by concentrating on the themes that have survived for thousandsof years, in all major cultures. In this way, the investigativeapproach itself prevents you from slipping into subjective interpretations,or dwelling on aspects of myth that are clearly evolutionary andlocalized. It also enables you to avoid becoming distracted bythe rampant later confusion of sacred _symbols_ with theoriginal powers _symbolized_, a phenomenon on which I willhave more to say later. _So how do the planets figure into this? _ In the most direct way. The great celestial powers first celebratedby man were __planets and aspects of planets, all playingconcrete roles that can be demonstrated through systematic analysis. When I started my own investigation in 1972 it was obvious thatmost mainstream scholars did not admit any meaningful relationshipof early gods and later planets. It soon became clear why thiswas so. The gods are far more dominant, more active, and moreviolent than could possibly be explained, or illuminated in anyway, by the present fireflies of light we call planets. Now weknow that the early priest astronomers developed their arts withincosmic traditions dating back to the dawn of civilization. Andwhen the first stargazers of ancient Mesopotamia, China and Mesoamericabegan recording the movements of settled (or generally settled)planets, they insisted with one voice that these distant bodiesonce dominated the world as the gods. The incredible discrepancybetween the gods biographies and the present little specks inthe sky presents a fascinating _unexplained_ but _worldwide_anomaly. I'm suggesting, in other words, that we pay serious attentionto the profound shift in ancient ideas about gods and planets,a shift occurring between the dawn of civilization and the firstmillennium BC. The earlier capriciousness of the _gods_ graduallygave way to fixed and repeated cycles of _planets_. In myopinion, this dramatic change in human perception speaks for a _change in celestial environment_, a shift from the activeand dramatic presence of the planetary gods to the remote, uniformand predictable sky we observe today. Until the establishmentof the stable cycles or patterns, of course, observational, mathematically-basedastronomy could have no foundation. Now obviously the unshakable opinion of astronomers is that thesolar system of our ancestors looked very much like it does today.Yet surprisingly, there's no evidence that, at the dawn of civilization,any starworshippers recorded planetary movements such as presentlyoccur, even though celestial ìsunî and star symbolsare everywhere. Conversely, the _shift in perception_, fromviolent gods to regulated planets, accords very well with ourclaim that the planetary system changed dramatically within humanmemory. _And this is where Immanuel Velikovsky comesinto the equation. Do you consider yourself a Velikovskian? _ I do indeed consider myself a Velikovskian, in principle perhapsmore than in detail. In fact, I would never have taken up thissubject, were it not for the inspiration of Velikovsky, who hadtriggered a major scientific controversy in 1950 with publicationof _Worlds in Collision_. In this groundbreaking work, basedon a reading of mythical and historical material from every ancientculture, Velikovsky argued that a few thousand years ago the planetVenus took the form of a terrifying comet, threatening the Earthand causing general havoc around the world. Whatever you may thinkof Velikovskyís idea, no one could dispute that it wasbased on a great deal of carefully collated research, and thethesis _deserved to be considered with the same care that Velikovskyhad devoted to the subject._ Actually, the response of the orthodox scientific community tellsus a lot about the difficulties facing intellectual outsiders,or anyone else for that matter, who challenge institutionalizedtheories. Even as sales of Velikovskyís book soared, makingit the _number one bestseller in the country_, the scientificelite launched an incredibly narrow-minded and vicious attackon Velikovsky, misrepresenting both the scholar and his thesisat every turn, all told, one of the saddest and darkest episodesin science this century. In 1972, more than twenty years after release of _Worlds inCollision, _I was publishing a little student journal called _Pensée, _and we decided to do a special feature onthe Velikovsky controversy. But as we began to talk with Velikovskyand then with other scholars who had developed an interest inhis work, we realized there was much more to be said than couldbe covered in a single feature article. So we devoted a completeissue of _Pensée _to Velikovsky and called it _ImmanuelVelikovsky Reconsidered_. That turned out to be only the beginning. The response to theissue made it impossible to go back to producing the little studentjournal. Over the following two or three years we published aten-issue series on Velikovsky, a series that left a distinctivemark on the academic world, not only bringing scholarly attentionto the controversy, but serving as the catalyst for many populartreatments on Velikovsky, ranging from a British Broadcastingspecial to a very well-received _Readers Digest_ article. _But you did not just publish on Velikovsky,you got directly involved in the research. _ Yes, something interesting happened when I received a brief two-pageoutline of Velikovsky's unpublished ideas about the planet Saturn.Velikovsky claimed that at one time Saturn had been a very largebody in the sky. He had speculated that Earth may have been asatellite of Saturn during the period remembered as Saturn's GoldenAge. But the planet was disturbed in some way, exploding violently,Velikovsky said, and this was the event in the sky that ancientman associated with the dying god, one of the universal themesof myth. Though I found all of Velikovsky's work on myth extremely fascinating,I began my own research with a specific challenge regarding themythical profile of Saturn, and at the time nothing in the worldwas more exciting to me than this intellectual issue. It's important to keep in mind, incidentally, that Velikovskypublished quite a number of important books. When the great controversyhit after _Worlds in Collision_, for example, he devotedhimself to several years of research into the geological historyof the Earth, seeking to show that our planet has experiencedglobal catastrophes in the past. The book was called _Earthin Upheaval_. But when did the Earth-disturbing catastrophes occur? What werethe mechanisms? Is there a relationship between the physical evidenceand the catastrophic events implied in the mythical-historicalmaterial? Though Velikovsky certainly did not answer all of thequestions raised, his _Earth in Upheaval_ is a very significantwork, and much of it still holds up well today. And of coursethe idea that the Earth has suffered catastrophic changes, withthe sudden extermination of whole species, is much more acceptabletoday than it was when Velikovksy wrote. Now we see scientistsopenly discussing the extinction of the dinosaurs by commentarycatastrophe; we see the British astronomers Victor Clube and BillNapier proposing catastrophes that sound very much like Velikovsky'scomet Venus disaster, except they've replaced the Venus cometwith the known comet Encke. And even more recently, with the commentaryimpacts on Jupiter, the question is being asked with a new seriousness:could it happen here? Well the answer is: the feared commentarydisaster has _already _happened here, and a great deal moreas well! _In your own work, the story centers on theplanet Saturn, Velikovsky's dying god. Can you summarize yourconclusions? _ Starting with a few clues provided by Velikovsky, I began to lookat the monumental civilizations of the past in a new way. Andwhat I found was a story of such depth and color I couldn't imaginespending my life investigating anything else. While I found many things to object to in Velikovsky's interpretation,his use of sources, and his chronology of events, I also founda nearly limitless reservoir of evidence supporting Velikovsky'smost basic claims: that the planets were the gods, that Venusentered history as a world-threatening _comet_, that Mars,moving on an erratic course, participated directly in Earth-disturbingcatastrophes, and that the planet Saturn, in the earliest rememberedage, had towered over mankind, inspiring the great cultural revolutionsassociated with the birth of the first civilizations. These civilizations,it turns out, did not arise beneath the quiet and uneventful skyto which we're accustomed; they emerged from the shadow of planetaryspectacles and upheavals. The more deeply I dug, the more clear it became that we've misunderstoodthe language of myth and symbol. When the first civilizationsappeared, all of the centers of activity were _religious_,orienting themselves to a celestial figure remembered as a former _sun_ god. Now this god, as incredible as it may seem, hadnothing to do with the body we call sun, the body we see risingin the east and setting in the west. The very names of this god,even in the cases of the familiar Helios and Sol, were the _namesof the_ _planet Saturn_, a power remembered not just asthe supreme luminary in the sky but as the _king of the world_,the prototype in the heavens for the king on earth. But the mythssay that this primeval sun's rule didn't last, and the violentconclusion of that epoch is remembered around the world as the _prototypical catastrophe_, the mother of all disasters,you might say. How, then, do we account for the discrepancy between the impliedhistorical setting and our modern notions of the past? It seemsthat in our rush to scientific sophistication, and out of thesimplest habits of perception, we came to accept theoretical suppositionsthat are not true. As the solar system passed from its capriciousstate to the settled movements we know today, our way of seeingthe heavens changed as well, with an intellectual inertia settingin, a counterpart to the inertia of the perceived, clock-likesolar system. But now a correction is needed, a bridging of thegap between the ancient and the modern worlds. And that's theunique value of myth, providing a bridge to forgotten experiences. _But how can you demonstrate, with the degreeof assurance critics will ask for, that the myths speak for analien sky? _ We start with an acid test: Do any of the elementary forms suggestedby the myths relate to present celestial phenomena? If you letthe oldest sources be your guide, the answer to that questionis consistently and emphatically, NO! The earliest expressionsof myth bear no connection to our sky today! Of course, thatís an outlandish statement to make, unlessit's true. If itís not true, it should be easy for someoneto step forward and identify a global mythical theme which, inits first expressions, answers directly to familiar bodies inthe sky and to familiar celestial motions. One of the commonly accepted tests of a good theory is its susceptibilityto _disproof_ if incorrect. And what Iím suggestingamounts to a unified theory in this sense: it claims to accountfor the myth-making epoch as a whole. To prove the theory incorrect,therefore, one need only document a mythical-symbolic theme which,at root, corresponds to the present order of things. If youíllthink about it, Iím sure youíll agree that nothingin the world should be easier. For example: we all know that myriadìsunî signs and ìsunî gods populatedthe ancient mythscape. One could thus _refute_ the Saturnthesis as a unified theory by simply showing that in the earlycultures the ìsun god moves about in the fashion of oursun, that he rises from the eastern horizon in the morning, makeshis way across the sky, then sinks below the western horizon.It is inconceivable that a god inspired by the rising and settingsolar orb would not at least show _some _behavior correspondingto the behavior of that body! Thereís only one problem. _This is not the characterof the ancient sun god. _The solar orb, in fact, has no rolein the origins of myth or in defining the character of the ancientìsun.î And that's why no one, since I first announcedthis curious fact in the early 70s, has stepped forward to challengeit. _Perhaps showing that mythical images are unrelatedto the present sky is a lot easier than proving that _yourthesis _will account for these images. _ That's where the second test comes in, because it's in the verynature of a unified theory that it claims to explain the entirefield of data. Now if the field of data means all of the recurringthemes of myth, the acid test is clear. _Will the Saturn thesisaccount for all mythical themes acknowledged by comparative mythologists_? Nothing would seem more arrogant or more foolish than such a claim.But there's a distinct advantage in stating the claim so categorically.If you think this claim is preposterous, you're saying to yourselfit couldn't possibly be true. Who could imagine that a theoryabout a _configuration of planets_ _in the sky_ couldtruly explain the origins of myth as a whole? And that's the advantage. _Because _the claim is so preposterous,it provides an ideal test. Remember that when it comes to a unifiedtheory, the exception does not prove the rule but disproves thetheory. And if an idea is preposterous, one _will_ find exceptionseverywhere. _If fundamentally incorrect, the thesis will disprovedon a hundred different grounds._ It also needs to be understood that the thesis involves a highlyconcrete reconstruction, inviting refutation at _every turn_,if erroneous. The subject is not an ambiguously defined lost continent,or a set of esoteric principles. The theory offers concrete positionsof planets, celestial bodies illuminated in a highly specificway, equally specific motions of the celestial forms produced,and clearly stated relationships between the forms. To put thepoint in the bluntest of terms: _If ancient man never experiencedthe planetary configuration I've proposed, the experts on ancientreligion and myth will have no difficulty showing us a recurringcelestial form, or a recurring sacred symbol that does not answerto the configuration in an obvious way ._ With respect to the ancient sun god, for example, I've alreadynoted here that, in the ancient astronomies, this god is identifiedwith the planet Saturn, an identity I will document at length.But that's only one level in a comprehensive and integrated thesis.I say comprehensive and integrated because the argument embracesboth the acknowledged themes of myth and numerous themes previouslyunrecognized, while demonstrating that not one of the themes standsalone. _Each theme is inseparably tied to all of the others_. I will show, for example, that every ancient culture depicts thesupreme power as a _motionless _sun, the _central luminary_in the sky. The god ruling over the golden age does not soar acrossthe sky, but _remains in one place_. Now that's a very specificidea, and if no such body as the motionless sun ever shone abovethe world, one should encounter a mountain of contrary evidence. I will demonstrate, additionally, that on every continent, thestation of this ruling power is the summit of the world axis,the north celestial pole. Visually, for an observer on earth,that means the motionless point in the sky around which the heavensappear to revolve as the Earth turns on its axis. A highly improbablelocation for a planet or a sun! Yet the tradition is as universalas it is outlandish. In a time-lapse photograph at night you wouldsee the polar sky as a series of concentric circles, representingthe circumpolar stars wheeling around a central point very closeto the star Polaris. That motionless center is where global traditionplaces the central sun. How, then, do we respond to this myth of the polar sun? Do wesimply drop the idea because of its seeming implausibility? Ordo we follow that idea through, to see where it leads? The interrelationship of the themes is a key. On the one hand,we have the identity of _Saturn_ as the sun god. On the otherhand we have the collective memory of the _central_ sun.These are two separate but intimately connected themes, belongingto an unrecognized global memory. But there is also a third threadprovided by independent astronomical traditions concerning theplanet Saturn in ancient times. From ancient Iran to China, theseastronomical traditions, as if calculated to frustrate later historians, _proclaim that Saturn originally presided over the pole! _ This is what I mean by the persistent tendency of myth and ancientastronomy to defy the world _we_ experience. If the resultsamounted to wholesale confusion, one could accept the tendencyas hopelessly irrational, and simply walk away from the wholematter. But in truth the results are astonishingly coherent, afact that will never be explained through the prior suppositionsof historians or astronomers. Now keep in mind that the earliest myths, as revealed in the sacredliterature of Egypt and Mesopotamia, are wholly preoccupied with _celestial _events. Only later, after many generations oftransmission, do the myths get localized, so that many of theepisodes seem to be occurring on a terrestrial landscape. Thisevolutionary principle will become extremely important in penetratingto the core of myth and preventing us from becoming distractedby the self-evident _contradictions _of localized accounts. I'm suggesting that an entirely different methodology is necessary,one that approaches the subject with no preconceptions, and asks:what are the underlying _forms_ inherent in the mythicalexpressions? What are the underlying _events_ or _sequences_that will account for the recurring dramas of myth? _But is it necessarily true that myths havean external reference at all, that they are a mirror of naturalevents? _ It's only to be expected that this question would arise relentlessly.Yet virtually all studies of myth, since the beginning of thediscipline, assume that there _are _objective referencesto the signs and symbols and to the central story elements ofmyth. No one has claimed that the myths evolved in complete andtotal isolation from natural experience. For example, even thosetaking a psychoanalytical approach, while emphasizing hidden thoughtstructures, would never deny that the ancient sun symbols carvedor painted on stone around the world had their external referencein an actual celestial object. Nor would they deny that the countlesscrescents drawn by primitive artists answered to a body in thesky. Despite all the competing interpretations by the different schools,they have held one thing in common: they have _assumed an unchangingsky_, and wherever possible, within the frameworks of the respectivetheories, __they have referred the celestial objects of ancientart and myth to _bodies in our sky, behaving exactly as theydo today_. The sun, the moon, comets, the pole star, the GreatBear, other constellations, lightning, wind, tornadoes, regionalfloods. Or conversely, they have referred the celestial objectsto _terrestrial_ forms such as mountains, rivers, trees,or various animals. And this is where the problem comes in. None of the _assumed_references of the myths will withstand serious investigation.Not one! _You have mentioned a crescent more than once.Are you saying that not just the sun-symbols but the crescentmoons of ancient art and ritual meant something other than themoon we see in the sky? _ I find it interesting that, since the beginning of mythical investigation,no one has questioned the reference: the abundant crescent formscould only refer to the moon, we've always assumed. In fact theassumption is automatic. Why should anyone pause long enough towonder if ancient records support the identification? But as it turns out, the crescent in the earliest representationshas nothing to do with our moon! In countless instances the crescenthas an orb or star _inside_ of it, that's the most common __context of the symbol in Mesopotamia, the birthplace of _observational_astronomy! While the Mesopotamian image is astronomically impossiblein our sky, occurrence of the image is _global_! Now simplycalling this a bizarre coincidence is not only profoundly illogical,but has the effect of cutting off the inquiry before it reachesthe most telling levels. Let me tell you what happened in my own case. Having decided toinvestigate the image, rather __than ending the inquiry becauseof the images astronomical impossibility. I began to collate boththe abstract pictographs and the _mythical_ _forms_of the crescent. By mythical forms of the crescent I mean thedifferent ways in which the mythmakers viewed or interpreted thecelestial object, as the horns of a bull, or a ship moving inthe sky, or as a number of other things as well. By doing nothing more than noting the actual contexts of the symbolism,I found myself confronting an idea so different from our moonas to eliminate even the possibility of a relationship with thatbody. To the ancient chroniclers themselves, the crescent _turnedaround a central point_ with the cycle of day and night. Theoriginal symbolic crescent does not go through phases, does notmove across the sky in the fashion of our moon at all. It simplymoves in a circle around a stationary orb or star in its hollow.Moreover, the alternating positions of that crescent in relationto the enclosed orb or star, above and below, or right and left, _signify distinct phases in the daily cycle_. In other words,the entire idea is alien to anything observed in the sky today,and yet the idea is presented with a consistency that is inconceivablewithout an actual celestial reference. Readers will find numerousexamples in _The Saturn Myth, _and I will summarize variousinstances just as soon as we've established the context. _But you also said that, at the level of thesubstructure, all of the themes are interrelated, or part of aunified whole. People may find it hard to believe that the crescentyou refer to has any direct relationship to ancient sun symbolism. _ The surprising fact is that the two are inseparable. The staror orb in a crescent is a _picture_ _of the ancient sungod_. Of course none of this will make any sense until yourealize that the sun god was a _planet_ growing brilliantwith setting of the solar orb. We're talking about a unique, anextraordinary, planetary phenomenon, and more than one planetarybody was involved. It may be extremely difficult for people toaccept this statement in advance of a satisfactory demonstration,but the reconstruction I've offered is derived from a straightforward,highly literal reading of ancient sources, with little or no interpretationadded. The methodology simply permits the texts and pictures tomean what they say. The fact of the matter is that, around the world, the ancient _sun god_ stands in an intimate association with a greatcrescent, frequently depicted as crescentine horns, or as a greatcrescent-ship revolving in the sky. This is true in both Egyptand Mesopotamia, for example. In both lands, the sun god is depictedeither _wearing a crescent or crescent-horns, or standing ina revolving crescent-ship. _And that crescent behaves in avery specific way, as I've said. _Since you have identified the sun god as Saturn,are you suggesting that the sphere of Saturn itself may have displayeda crescent_ ? Yes, I believe I can demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt thatthe crescent was part and parcel of the planet Saturn, when Saturnshone as a massive body in the northern sky, extremely close tothe Earth. In exploring the roots of the image, I came to realize that themovement of the crescent would offer a crucial test of any modelseeking to account for the symbolism as a whole. One image I lookedat very carefully was the Egyptian ship of the sun god Ra, sincethe ship is known to have originally possessed a crescent-likeform. I was particularly fascinated with the many references inthe early texts to the movement of the ship in relation to anarchaic cycle of day and night, a cycle blatantly defying anyand all celestial motions observed today. Here are the movements of the ship of Ra I found stated repeatedlyin the Egyptian _Pyramid Texts_, _Coffin Texts_ and _Book of the Dead_. The revolving ship descends to the left,or sails downstream in its daily phase of growing bright And itstands below in the phase of brilliance, or life, or shinningforth. Conversely, it ascends to the right, or sails upstreamin the phase of declining light, and it stands in an invertedposition above in the phase of inactivity or non-existence, ordiminished light. Now in order to make my point, before we've covered the groundnecessary to put all of this in context, I'm skipping over manyaspects of the cosmic ship. At this juncture I want to emphasizeone conclusion only: _I never found a reference to the movementof the ship contradicting the motions I've stated here. _Somy original challenge to Egyptologists still stands will retractmy claim of a unified theory if anyone can substantiate contrarymotions of the ship amid the numerous early Egyptian references. But what do these motions mean? Actually, there's one way, _and only one way_, you can produce this kind of a daily cycle.You will have to place a _planet-sized sphere_ _at thecelestial pole,_ illuminated by the sun (the solar orb, ofcourse) to produce a _crescent_ on the polar body. Grantthis outrageous condition, and here's what will happen: as theearth turns on its axis, the crescent on the stationary but turningsphere will revolve through phases in answer to the visual movementof the solar orb. This will mean that as the solar orb sets andthe sky darkens, the crescent, _visually descending to the left,_will begin to grow bright. It will then shine _most brightly_while it is in the recumbent position below. Then its brightnesswill begin to recede as it moves upward to the right, as the surroundingsky lightens with approaching sunrise. And finally, as the solarorb moves overhead, the now dulled or faintly shining crescentwill move above into an inverted position. In other words, placea crescent on the polar Saturn and you will get the precise motionsof the Egyptian cosmic ship, motions which have refused everyattempt at an explanation by Egyptologists. _Of course many physicists and astronomerswill find the idea of planets in polar alignment too much to swallow. _ Yes, you can count on it, and the confrontation should prove extremelyinteresting, because at some point something will have to give.Either the historical argument is going to be refuted, or theastronomers thinking on such issues will have to be expanded,and to an unprecedented degree. Is it significant that no planetary arrangement, either plausibleor implausible, could produce the clearly-stated motions of thecosmic ship, _other than a planet at the celestial pole_?And is the convergence of mythical themes here an accident? Isit an accident that the explicit movements of the cosmic shippoint to the very condition proclaimed by _independent astronomicaltexts_ ancient sources insisting that the planet Saturn onceruled from _the celestial pole_? When it comes to questions of this sort it's difficult to imagineany middle ground. Look at the myths from a conventional view,and you see only the chimeras of hallucinating minds, with nopossibility of a unified substructure. But look past the magicalinterpretations to the implied celestial references, and the resultsare at once coherent and dazzling. Central sun, polar sun, Saturnas sun, polar Saturn, revolving crescent, and revolving ship ofthe sun, all of these _recurring _themes converge on thesame unified idea. Now this is one of many, many reasons why I've argued so loudlyfor letting the mythical images speak for themselves. The momentyou achieve that detachment from prior suppositions, you openthe door to discovery, permitting the substructure to begin shiningthrough. Is there any reason _not _to take these logicalsteps, if only for the sake of intellectual curiosity? Every attemptto impose our own sky on the ancient world has led to the collapseof meaning and a heap of contradictions. Yet under the suggestedcomparative approach, each identified theme fits into a coherentpattern, each is integrally connected to all of the other themes,and each answers directly to a forgotten sky. _But you have claimed that there are hundredsof recurring themes. Do you expect people to believe that a unifiedstory is actually possible when you include the entire body ofmythical themes? _ Since our purpose here is to introduce a novel subject, not toprove a thesis, I can only state my confidence that as we setforth the details, the full integrity of the Saturn thesis willbecome clear. Yes, all of the acknowledged themes of myth, plushundreds of themes that comparative mythologists have yet to recognize,are included in the thesis, all fitting comfortably into a unifiedreconstruction. We have not, for example, addressed the issue of the central _star_universally presented in the center of the sun god, the star thatturns out to be the very orb or star in the hollow of the revolving _crescent_, as we should expect. But each question raisedleads to other questions, and now we need to go back to our startingpoint, to begin laying the groundwork for a new interpretationof myth and history, a way of re-envisioning the past that _does_work and _will _change our sense of the past in the mostfundamental way.