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THE MYTHICALLY BASED PLANETARY MODEL

Dave Talbott


Introduction

In this article, the first of three parts, I take up these issues:

1) General issues for catastrophists working in the Velikovskian tradition.
What is the basis of our confidence in myth? Can it ever be proven that myth
is a reflection of unusual celestial events?

2) Evolution of a mythically-based model.  A summary of recent changes in the
model of the polar configuration, and a look at other aspects of the
configuration on which little or no detail has been previously published.

3) Introduction of Robert Grubaugh and a physical model of the polar
configuration.  Grubaugh has considerable professional experience with orbital
dynamics through his work with the U.S. Space Program.  His recently-submitted
model (presented in this issue of AEON) is both simple in concept and
remarkably congruent with the myths on which the thesis rests.

Mythically-Based Model

For over twenty years now, I have argued that a planetary assembly I called
the "polar configuration" once moved close to the Earth, dominating the sky of
ancient star worshippers.

The evolution of the theory has advanced significantly in recent years, with
certain details throwing new light on the celestial images involved.  Given
the scale of the subject matter and the recent amendments to the mythically-
based model, the only efficient way to proceed is by synopsis first, then by
elaboration of discrete story elements, so that there is a "whole story" to
which one can relate the discrete parts.  In keeping with this approach, I
offer this three-part series as an outline of more fully developed material to
follow in future issues of AEON.

A Need for Clarity

Every catastrophist following a Velikovskian approach to myth must continually
ask himself: how seriously do I believe that myth can illuminate an unknown
past?

The question will pursue the catastrophist relentlessly because his
theoretical approach is challenged every time he wonders if an extraordinary
celestial phenomenon--some possibility yet to be admitted by mainstream
science--might explain a particular form or episode of myth.  And the path he
has chosen leaves little room for compromise.  Logic does not permit one to
pick and choose which unusual mythical themes one will take seriously.  If
myth has a reference in spectacular natural events, then no well-established
mythical theme can be ignored.  Sidestepping various themes in order to
bolster a more easily defended interpretation becomes an invitation to a
misunderstanding of the past.

I emphasize this point because one of the biggest potential distractions to
catastrophists is the discussion of elaborate physical models based on a few
mythical fragments.  This kind of discussion is not only generally useless but
easily leads to self-deception: it implies that complex historical questions
can be answered by abstract logic, or by mathematical or physical
demonstration.  But there are a thousand abstract possibilities, and that
doesn't make any of them true.  Moreover, the first effect of arm-chair
theorizing on fragmentary evidence is to discredit the idea that myth is
useful.

The goal is not to expound upon purely theoretical models, but to reconstruct
an unknown past on the basis of pervasive images and pictures--historical
evidence that finds no reference in the natural order today.  The logical
focus is the human experience as recorded on papyrus, on clay, and on stone. 
Through comparative analysis and cross-referencing, one must seek out the
observed patterns, for it is these patterns that provide the foundation of a
systematic inquiry.

Confronting Our Belief Systems

If the well-documented, recurring mythical themes actually originated in a
different celestial order, then a revolution in science and in our
understanding of the past is inevitable.  For catastrophists in the
Velikovskian tradition, it is receptivity to the veiled messages of myth that
provides a common ground for discussion.  Without that receptivity to myth,
what do we talk about?

If you are considering venturing into myth in these terms, however, there is a
certain risk.  The risk is that, guided by the desire to know what happened,
and finding yourself at the intellectual crossroads, you really do let the
myths speak for themselves, irrespective of conventional teaching or prior
theory.  You simply can't take this step without opening the door to
previously unimagined possibilities.  When examined comprehensively from a
Velikovskian orientation, with full cross-referencing of recurring themes,
myth will inevitably bring you to a point of no return.

Now one of the reasons to ask whether myth might refer to an alien sky is very
simple: All attempts to explain myth--even the most explicitly astral myths--by
present behavior of presently-observed celestial bodies have failed.  Is there
any global mythical theme that can be explained by reference to the present
celestial order? Not one--among hundreds of well-developed motifs.  Once you
realize that the myths speak for unfamiliar experiences--that they reflect
celestial forms no longer present, or events no longer occurring in nature--you
are entering uncharted territory.  And if the excursion has any sane and
rational justification, then the ground-rules for study of the past are
radically changed.

The key is to follow the anomaly.  For example: perhaps you begin to notice
that a variety of mythical themes all point to an anomalous conclusion about
the past--say, the planet Venus' former cometary identity (first discerned by
Velikovsky).  You begin to wonder if Venus' recurring identity as soul-star,
hair star, bearded star, serpent-dragon, torch of heaven, feathered serpent,
bearded serpent, hairy serpent, fiery serpent, etc.--all acknowledged pre-
astronomical glyphs of the comet--might actually be explained by the most
straightforward interpretation possible, even though that interpretation
obviously conflicts with modern theory.

Are these mythical images themselves worth pursuing to a higher level of
detail, to see how well the suggested pattern holds up under closer scrutiny
and to see what complementary patterns might emerge? If you choose to
disregard the cometary interpretation because it isn't scientifically
supported, then you are closing the door.  If, on the other hand, you simply
suspend judgment and explore the imagery to test its underlying coherence, you
are already approaching the point of no return.  You can't justify this kind
of exercise on the basis of one anomaly and then resist the exercise as you
begin to encounter other equally compelling patterns, all suggesting something
entirely different from what we see in the sky today.

The Surprising Coherence of Myth

I can remember, as a first impression of myth, little more than a jumble of
meaningless, disconnected ideas.  Nothing seemed more futile than seeking out
an intelligent account.  In these early encounters, the mass of random details
didn't even look interesting! And this is why, today, I can't imagine anyone
just casually glancing at the myths and finding something compelling.

Each time I returned, however, the sense of coherence or underlying unity was
heightened.  And gradually I could see distinctive patterns that simply
couldn't be explained away.  The more you become aware of these patterns, the
more confident you become that something incredible happened, and it is simply
not useful to interpret the patterns through conventional references.  Let's
not forget that every previous attempt to interpret and explain myth by
reference to the Sun, Moon, stars or planets today has lasted only as long as
it took the critics to set pen to paper.

I offer here some general observations on the character of world mythology,
noting a few of the "anomalous" facts one must confront in seeking an
explanation of myth as a whole.

1.  No recurring mythical theme is explained by the present celestial order.

This is an amazing fact, in view of many hundreds of identifiable themes.  The
inescapable conclusion: it is self-defeating to ignore the possibility of a
changing sky.

2.  There is no evidence that early man was a fabricator in the sense commonly
assumed.

It's impossible to immerse oneself in the mythical world without realizing
that the storyteller himself is bound to the integrity of the original
experience, though the first storytellers could not help but interpret, or to
project meanings onto experienced phenomena.  The highest obligation of
ancient storytelling was to be true to the remembered event, to get the story
right. Conversely, there is no documented instance of "primitives" inventing
a central episode of myth.  The duty of the storyteller is to repeat the story
as it was told by his predecessors.

In myth, the event itself is filtered through the subjective interpretation or
projection of those experiencing it.  Event and interpretation are the story.
No living dragon ever flew about in the sky.  But it is preposterous to assume
that the global myth of the dragon was unrelated to anything actually
experienced by man.  Early man did not--could not--fabricate the events
inspiring the interpretation.

Honoring the story by repeating it in words reflected the same fundamental
impulse as all other forms of imitation and alignment in ancient ritual, art,
and architecture.  Recitation of the story momentarily transported both the
storyteller and the listener backwards to the mythical epoch, which was
experienced as more compelling, more "true" than the later age.  That's why,
among all early civilizations, as noted by Mircea Eliade and others, the age
of myth provided the models for all sacred activity.

3 Recurring mythical themes are almost certainly prehistoric.

The basis of this generalization is a simple provable fact.  All fundamental
mythical themes will be found in very early historical sources, and the
related signs and symbols will be found in prehistoric settings.  This rarely
acknowledged fact, which could be easily disproved if incorrect, is of
incredible significance.  If early man was habituated to making up experience,
one would expect an endless stream of new mythical themes--new forms and
personalities arising as if from nowhere.  This absence of invention forces us
to ask: what unknown ancient experience could have produced the massive story
content of myth, including hundreds of underlying patterns that have lasted
for thousands of years?

4.  All myths are associated with "the age of the gods."

Now what do you think that people meant by that expression? The Egyptians
called the lost epoch "the age of the primeval gods--which began with the Tep
Zepi, the First Time or Golden Age of Ra.  The age of the gods was not only
dramatically different from the present age, it represented for all ancient
nations a preferred order, a standard and reference for all later activity.

Mythically speaking, as the phrase "age of the gods" suggests, man lived close
to the gods, or in communion with the gods, or the gods lived on earth in some
sense, on the world's highest mountain, occupied the central province,
kingdom, or island.  But again, none of this means anything, in a casual
observation of myth.  No theory of myth that is unable to account for the age
of the gods can explain its subject.

5.  The gods are no longer present.

The age of gods, in all variations on the theme, passes into a more mundane,
more confused age, a less interesting, less real, less dramatic, less heroic
time, which can only take sustenance from reference backwards.  The gods and
heroes departed, and in numerous accounts the departure of a god or hero is
accompanied by great upheaval.

If we can oversimplify the many forms in which the departure of one or another
god occurs, the most common idea is transfiguration into a distant star--in the
more meticulously elaborated astronomies, a specific planet.  Countless other
forms of transfiguration, as a "soul-bird" a "feathered serpent," a comet, a
stone, a column of smoke, when examined in detail, consistently support the
planetary transfiguration.

6.  Through storytelling over time, the gods are brought down to earth.

In the course of re-enactment and storytelling over the centuries, the
celestial gods become the aged kings and warring heroes, the great queens and
long-haired princesses of epic literature.

That this process occurred is easily verifiable because there are countries in
which the process can be observed over many centuries, perhaps a couple of
millennia.  In the case of the Egyptian Ra, the prototype of the good king, or
Shu or Horus, prototypes of the hero Hercules, you can see this transformation
clearly in the classical histories of Egypt.  Similarly, all of the
personalities and motifs associated with the great queens and princesses of
folk tale will be found in the images of the Egyptian Nut, Isis, Hathor and
other unequivocally celestial goddess figures.  But in the later accounts, all
of the events occur on earth and the players, though charismatic and
possessing great magical powers, become increasingly human.

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

The degree of early man's 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 conquest--all of these distinctive
attributes and tendencies of the first civilizations--can 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.

Elaboration of the Prototype

To expand on this last tenet briefly--

In the upward movement of early civilizations, one does not discover the
introduction of new prototypes or a new vision, only more ambitious, larger-
scale, and more fully elaborated expressions of the original prototype.  The
emergence of early technology was what made this increase in scale and in
progressive elaboration possible.  And the varied technologies themselves
were, to an astonishing degree, the outflow of ritual celebrating 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 fabrication--making things up out of nothing--woul
d
have been unthinkable.

Recurring Mythical Images

The difficulty of explaining myth through familiar references grows
exponentially as you begin to chronicle the well-established images.  With
each new theme uncovered, you are multiplying the unlikely by the nearly
impossible. The improbability of the standard interpretations quickly reaches
astronomical proportions, for the fact is that the global images present a
degree of coherence and internal consistency that could never be explained by
sheer make believe--and that's the problem for any approach to myth that must
ultimately resort to make believe in order to account for the universal forms
and event sequences.

I shall enumerate here a few examples, in terms of clearly universal mythical
themes.  It is remarkable how consistently the same underpinnings express
themselves, not only suggesting a singular experience, but vouching for the
durability of myth: the preservation of the underpinnings even in the face of
continuing fragmentation and degradation.

The listed themes are, of course, only a few of hundreds--

Age of the gods

Prior to the present age, an age of decline, an age of iron, an age of
separation, there was an age of the gods.  At that time the gods dwelled with
man or close to man.

Golden Age

The age of the gods began with the Golden Age.  There were no seasons, no
sickness, no war.  Cosmic harmony and natural abundance prevailed the world
over.

Creator-King

In the beginning the creator himself ruled the world.  He was the model of the
good king, and therefore the "founding" king, the "first" in the line of
kings.

Heaven

In the beginning heaven was close to the earth.

One-eyed God

The creator-king possessed a single, central, luminous eye.

Cosmic Temple, Cosmic City

There was once a great temple or city in the center of heaven and this
celestial dwelling served as the model for sacred cities and kingdoms on
earth.

World Mountain

Once a great mountain or pillar rose from the earth to heaven and provided a
support to the dwelling of the gods.

Superior sun, central sun

In an earlier age, the great luminary of the sky was a superior sun, the true
sun, or best sun.  This central sun neither rose nor set but remained fixed
and ever turning in the sky.

Goddess

The creator king had a mother, daughter or consort, who was the universal
goddess, the mother of all creation.

Warrior Hero

In earliest times a great hero arose, who helped to rid the world of chaos-
monsters and to give creation its special form.

Consort of Queens and Princesses

Long ago a famous hero won through hard labor or a contest of strength or wit
the daughter of a great king or chief, or took as consort the king's own
spouse.

Sword-God

A magical sword, arising from the waters, or hewn from an immense tree or
pillar, or forged by a great smith, provided a famous young prince with
victory against evil powers.

Four rivers

The original land of the gods was divided by four rivers, four streams of
light, or four winds, signifying the four directions of space.

Four pillars

Originally four shining pillars supported the dwelling of the gods; or heaven
itself rested on four pillars.

Dying or Displaced God

Whether slain by a competitor, losing control due to his own failure or old
age, or growing tired of the world and sailing away, the creator king did not
stay.

World Catastrophe

A long time ago the entire world was destroyed by the descent of fire or
water, and only one person or a select few survived.

Ill-Omened Comet

When a great comet appeared, it signified the death of a renowned leader, or
the coming of a great war or disaster.

Raging or Lamenting Goddess

The world was once thrown into confusion by the rampage of a great goddess,
lamenting the death of a son or lover.

Serpent-Dragon

In ancient times a celestial serpent or dragon attacked the world, bringing
overwhelming chaos, and threatening both gods and man.

Star of the Heart-Soul

There is a star in the sky that is the ascended heart or soul of a former
great king or chief.

To list these most obvious themes is barely to scratch the surface of a
universal tradition.  Yet consider the nature of the challenge posed by just
these few motifs alone--not one of which explains itself or answers to any
known or observable experience, though each theme seems to have established
itself on every continent, as if deliberately to contradict natural experience
today. How has it happened that, at the level of universal myth, all
references point to unrecognized experiences?

Holographic Paradigm

To recount such universal themes is only to raise a deeper issue--the
phenomenon of linkage.  Each part or theme, when fully examined through a
comparative approach, contains all of the other themes.  Keep in mind that you
will never verify this point through specialized study, since the issue is the
relationship between recurring themes.  Just as the themes occur from one
civilization to another, so do the same connections.

We are confronted with what might be called the "holographic paradigm" of
myth. There is no Golden Age without the creator-king--anywhere.  The province
of the creator king is the cosmic temple, city, or kingdom--always.  And the
creator-king is the primeval sun god, the superior sun that lights the world
from one spot.  That spot is the summit of the world mountain--in every well-
developed mythical system.

The land ruled by the creator-king is the land of the four rivers, also
depicted as a celestial domain supported by the four pillars, which turn out
to be four extensions of the central mount or column.

None of the recurring mythical themes can be separated from any of the others.
The eye of the one-eyed god turns out to be his own spouse, daughter or
consort--who is called, appropriately, the "eye-goddess." But the same goddes
-figure is the heart-soul that ascends as a star upon the death of the
creator-king.  When the king dies, the heart-soul is also claimed to depart
as a great comet, which happens to be the form taken by the lamenting goddess,
who is the same figure as the eye- and heart-soul goddess.  But this raging
goddess is also depicted as a great serpent or dragon attacking the world.

Nor can the legendary warrior-hero be treated as an isolated figure.  He
appears universally as the servant of the creator-king.  But this turns out to
be the very same figure who wins the daughter or spouse of a famous king or
chief in a great contest, while the most popular form of the contest is the
hero's battle against the serpent or dragon that attacked the world.  The
birth of the hero is from the womb of the eye- or soul-goddess, and the event
itself is inseparably connected to the formation of the world mountain or
world pillar, a column with which the hero is, in fact, identified--though
prior to this identification the hero exists as the pupil in the eye of the
one-eyed creator king, which is provably the same thing mythically as the
hero's pre-existence in the womb of the great goddess.  The pillar or
mountain, on the other hand, turns out to be the famous weapon--the sword, mace
or club--used by the hero in his battle against the chaos monster.

The implications, yet to be acknowledged by mythologists, are stunning.  All
recurring themes are vitally connected.  Pealing away the superficial layers
of localized myth is a laborious, but necessary exercise if one is to discover
the connecting rivers of the substratum.  Beneath the layers of superficial
confusion, local coloring and fragmentation, there is a layer of coherence and
symmetry that no prior theory of myth has even begun to address in its full
integrity, much less explain.

It is the discovery of this connectedness that will ultimately redeem the
catastrophist's interest in myth and provide the confidence that, with
sufficient analysis, the roots of myth can be exposed, supplying the crucial
details necessary for a physical model.

From Unity to Differentiation

In view of the incredible confusion and self-contradiction of myth at the
level of surface detail, a few additional comments are appropriate concerning
the evolution of myth over time and the historical fragmentation of once-
unified images.

The substratum of myth demonstrates, in the most dramatic way, that originally
the central mythical images possessed multiple meanings that were subsequently
lost to differentiation.  Originally a singular form expresses itself in a
variety of mythical guises.  Originally there is a warrior god who is his
weapon--a sword, club, mace, or spear.  That weapon is also a pillar or cosmic
mountain supporting heaven, but (if we can add two more fundamental themes to
the list) the same column appears as a stream of luminous "wind" stretching
between heaven and earth, but also the underworld fount or river.  In archaic
terms, one interpretation sits comfortably alongside the others, because a
singular form in the sky produced a series of equally compelling
interpretations.  But how long could the unified image of the celestial
"sword-pillar-mountain-wind-river" survive, once the external reference--the
actual celestial form--had been removed?

Eventually the sword of the warrior hero is only a sword carried by a god that
has come to look like a man.  The pillar too is differentiated and perhaps now
stands beside the human form of the god as a semi-independent symbol.  The god
may continue to be represented hieroglyphically by the sword or by the pillar,
but he is no longer identified conceptually as the sword or as the pillar.
Over time the separation of god, sword, pillar, mountain, wind and river will
leave only the anomaly of archaic language and images: a single hieroglyph or
pictograph with a dual meaning of sword and pillar; a mythical fragment
recalling a sword embedded in, or functioning as the central pillar of a
palatial dwelling; a sword-god bearing the epithet "north wind" or "south
wind" (always meaning the wind below the land of the gods, identical to the
fountain welling up from the deep); a mountain that bears the name of the
celestial wind or river, but is launched as a sword or weapon.  At every turn
we

confront "anomalies" that point not to confusion or irrationality (the common
assumption), but to the original integrity of myth.  For example: all of these
echoes of that underlying unity literally surround the fully developed warrior
hero figures--Assyrian Nergal, Hindu Indra, Rudra and Shiva, Greek Ares,
Hercules, Apollo, and of course the Egyptian Shu, Horus, Set, Sept, Anup and
others.

It is the earliest instances that illuminate the later, for the obvious reason
that the farther back you reach, the closer you are to the original, unified
experience.  So it is not surprising to find that the Egyptian Shu, or Shu-
Anhur, a sword-god par excellence, reveals the full range of anticipated
motifs.  In addition to worshipping the god as heaven-reaching sword or
scepter, the Egyptians invoked the celestial "waterway" of Shu, celebrated the
god as the North Wind (literally, the "wind of the below," rising to vivify
the stationary sun god Ra), and depicted the god as the great pillar of the
sky, even as they declared the very same god to be the Primeval Hill, the
resplendent mountain of beginnings.  As to this unified portrait, not one
Egyptologist in a hundred and fifty years has even attempted an explanation.
For what explanation is possible? The images, in their own terms and deprived
of a celestial reference, are as contradictory as night and day.

Prototype and Symbol

It is ironic that the universal compulsion to celebrate and to extend the age
of the gods actually contributed profoundly to the dismemberment of myth.
Localized expressions, or symbols of the cosmic "prototype," progressively
distorted and confused the underlying memory.

A simple example: In the myths, an enclosure was formed in the middle of
heaven, as the navel of the world, or the center of the cosmic sea. 
Originally that form in the sky was the hallowed place or province, from which
creation began.  It was not unequivocally a crown until someone on earth
fashioned a band of cloth or gold or laurel and placed it on a terrestrial
representative of the creator king or the warrior-hero.  It was not separately
conceived as a throne until someone fashioned a throne on earth.  It was only
when someone on earth built a temple or a city honoring the enclosure of the
gods that the enclosure became the cosmic city or cosmic temple.  In each of
these instances the prototype is the same, but the scale and practical
function of the local symbol differ dramatically.  And the natural progression
of the imitative rites, adding great varieties of scale, interpretation and
local function, could not fail to complicate or add diversity to the
symbolism, while re-co

loring or re-orienting the myth itself through the lens of its local
expressions.

In this way, the original integrity of myth was gradually undermined by the
compulsion to remember and to celebrate the gods.  It was devotion to the
gods-- the yearning for paradise, the reverence for the symmetry, the beauty,
the drama, even the awe and terror--of the past that first led nations to
project images of the lost epoch onto their surroundings.  Seeking to sanctify
their own habitation and their own surroundings with the glow of the great
prototype or Prime Example, they projected images of the gods onto every
natural phenomenon.  Mountains, rivers, lakes, rainbows, lightning and
thunder, constellations, meteors, comets, even our Sun and Moon--all received
their names and assigned mythical attributes from the more unified forms
arising in the age of the gods.

Confusion through Localization

Now how long do you think this process could go on before the symbol began to
get confused with the thing symbolized? How long before the local mount Zion
or Mount Olympos was confused with the cosmic original--the world mountain and
residence of the gods? The very fact that the symbol took its name from the "
archetype" made this eventual confusion virtually certain.  What is Zion? It
is the mountain on which Yahweh shone in the beginning.  Since only the modest
local hill, the local Zion, actually stood before the worshippers, how could
the confusion be avoided?

That a confusion is involved, however, is clear from the universal tradition.
The same mount occurs around the world.  And not only that, the cosmic
mountain appears under the same name in different locations.  It's not general
knowledge, but there were several mount Olymposes in Greece.  Obviously, the
tradition of the mount preceded the localization!

What happened to the so-called sun god is a good example of this process--

The creator-king is the supreme luminary.  On this there is no discrepancy
between the different traditions.  But not all figures of the creator king are
sun gods.  So what determines whether a figure of the creator king is
remembered as the primeval sun?

The answer couldn't be more clear: if the name of the creator-king, in a later
age, was projected onto the body we call Sun, then that figure of the creator
-king became, by definition, "the primeval sun." Remember that sunrise--the
instant when the Sun first appeared over an eastern mountain--was in many lands
a symbolic occasion, representing, if only for a frozen moment, the epoch of
the gods, when the creator-king shone above the mountain of the world.  In the
later festive moment of sunrise, the symbolic Sun wore the mythical dress of
the original supreme luminary.  And it could not do so without carrying the
name of the creator-king.  Extension of the language and symbolism of the gods
was inevitable.  It is only because this happened in more than one land that
the planet Saturn could be called the primeval, archetypal sun god, the true
sun, the best sun, etc.  Had the Sun rising over the eastern mountain not
become a symbol of the original supreme luminary, there would be no con

fusion of "sun" and Saturn in the ancient languages.  But there is such a
confusion, it is rampant, and the confusion itself is the proof that an
extension of symbolism did occur.  Ask yourself, for example: would the
confusion have occurred in an uneventful solar system? Unless there has been a
fundamental shift of orientation, why would the remote and inconspicuous
Saturn carry the same ancient name as the Sun? The principle involved in this
particular issue must be confronted again and again. The key to resolving a
thousand "anomalies" of myth is the realization that they all evaporate the
moment one permits the archetypal references of myth to have existed as
literal forms in the sky.

Primeval Sun God

Now the flowering of commemorative Sun-symbolism does not make the mythical "
sun god" different from those figures of the creator-king whose names were
never shifted to our Sun.  Given the extensive tribal unification achieved by
the great civilizations, it is not even possible that the respective names of
the creator-king could all be acquired by the Sun.  That the Egyptian Atum Ra
corresponds in countless ways to the Akkadian Anu is easily demonstrated.  But
the name Anu was never attached to our Sun.  Rather, a counterpart of Anu or
an aspect of Anu, named Shamash, gave his name to the Sun in Mesopotamia, and
that name was carried into modern times as a name of the Sun by the Mandaeans
of Iraq.  Anu was therefore not the "sun god" in Mesopotamia.  But both Anu
and Shamash were identified with Saturn, according to the most perceptive
experts. And both were associated with Saturn, archetypical "best sun."

Similarly, Kronos, the common Greek name of Saturn in classical times, was
never shifted to the Sun.  That's because a counterpart of the god Kronos,
named Helios, gave his name to the Sun.  But both names once belonged to the
now-distant Saturn.  So you can understand the confusion caused for later
copyists, when they encountered in archaic manuscripts the word Helios as the
name of the planet Saturn! They eliminated the confusion by literally changing
the words, replacing the name Helios with the name of the god that had not
been transferred to the Sun--Kronos.  That, then, left the great mystery for
the more insightful modern scholars, when they discovered that the planet
Saturn was, before the copyists began changing words, called Helios.

Gods Brought Down to Earth

By this fundamental and universal process of transference, the symbol came to
be confused with the thing symbolized.  The celebrants began to confuse the
symbolic Sun rising over the eastern mountain with the primeval god himself.
In precisely the same way, men came to believe that the symbolic local
mountain, mythical image of the world mountain, was actually the place where
creation began.  They began to think that the local city, named after the
navel or central enclosure of heaven, was itself the original habitation of
the gods.

This extension of symbolism could continue only so long before the gods had
been brought down to earth, the various terrestrial symbols and functions
progressively fragmenting the once-unified core of myth.

One of the best examples of this is provided by the warrior hero, who is
without question the most pervasive mythical figure (due to the dramatic
activity of the god, in contrast to the more passive role of the stationary
sun or creator-king).

It is incredible how many different religious, political and cultural
functions emerged from this singular mythical personality.  Warrior, priest,
servant, builder, messenger, administrator, judge, musician, poet, bard,
artist, smith, healer, magician, shaman, medicine man, trickster, harlequin,
fool.  In various cultures, such specialized roles had a prototype in the
local myths.  But what scholars as a whole have overlooked is that the
original prototype for each of these evolved functions is the same mythical
personality: the warrior hero. The original warrior-hero contained within
himself (in a less specialized sense, one might say) all of these functions. 
In the underlying mythical scheme, there is one figure only--the demiurge, the
servant of the creator king, providing the creator with his external "voice,"
producing the form of creation, defeating the powers of chaos, laboring on
behalf of the god to build his dwelling, excavating sacred space, holding the
god aloft, and, f

rom the vantage point of the terrestrial observer, roving up and down the
world axis, and at certain critical junctures causing trouble or wholesale
disaster, then at other junctures appearing as the agent of restoration or
renewal.

You will notice for example, that each of the culturally-defined or narrowed
functions--warrior, priest, magician, etc.--involved a kind of initiation
ceremony.  But the different ceremonies for initiating the priest, the poet,
magician or smith followed the same formulae--as has already been noticed by
such insightful mythologists as Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade.  The reason
for the similarity is that the ritual prototype was provided by the biography
of a single archetypal figure.

In later epochs, the localized smith no longer functioned as a shaman,
musician, warrior, or fool, because the more specialized function gradually
led to the shedding of aspects no longer fitting the function.  What is
extraneous to an increasingly specialized function eventually drops away.  If
the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it.  So we forget that the poet was
originally a warrior.  His "words" were things, more specifically, weapons. 
They were magical, and could kill.  We forget that the fool, harlequin, or
court jester in the service of the king had his prototype in the trickster-
hero, whose original form was the warrior-hero, the servant of the creator-
king.  His jokes or tricks were deadly.

The warriors Hercules and Apollo were musicians--and renowned tricksters.
Merlin the magician was originally a warrior.  The wand of the magician
functions as a sword.  It is pointed at someone and he dies.  Or it's thrown
at someone and he dies.  Well the same thing was said of the unerring sword of
the warrior hero.  The Smith Ilmarinen, one of the central figures of the
Finnish Kalevala, was a famous warrior.  It was said that the trickster
Coyote, like the trickster Maui, was originally a great warrior.  Study the
global trickster and fool myths around the world, pull together the many
diverse threads, and in every instance you will come face to face with the
myth of the warrior hero.

Good and Evil God

It needs to be pointed out as well that, in the earlier strata of the mythical
record, this very same hero-god is also the archetypal fiend, the rebel-
barbarian.  Horus and Set are two aspects of the same figure, presented as a
light and dark head on one body.  Though both the Babylonian Nergal and Greek
Ares are called "the Hero," they are also murderers.  The poets could not
conceal the murderous side of the greatest of Greek heroes, Heracles.

Earlier myths, incidentally, do not follow familiar literary conventions with
easily defined boundaries between good and evil.  It is significant, however,
that later poets, historians and philosophers, in seeking to define these
boundaries or reflecting on human existence or questions of man's place in the
universe, continually looked back to the age of the gods for an analogy or
example, just as their predecessors looked back to the age of the gods for
every guiding principle.  Even in the later age, the creator king remained the
prototype of the philosopher's unmoved mover; the "divine race" presiding over
the Golden Age continued to serve as a mythical reference for "civilized"
conduct; the spindle of the world axis or world mountain continued to provide
the analogy for a world order behind the random appearance of nature; the
cosmic wheel still turned above the world as the poet's wheel of fate; and
even as philosophers, poets and naturalists ceased to believe in the gods,
count

less symbols of the mythical age still supplied the great examples for science
in its infancy.  That is how powerfully the mythical age influenced several
millennia of human thought.

From the first glimmerings of civilization onward man lived in the shadow of
Saturn and the planetary gods.  That the memory grew confused over the
centuries should not surprise us, for once the compelling forms in the sky had
vanished, man had only his subjective memories and interpretive concepts to
guide him.  Over time the universal tendency to localize, elaborate, or
rationally "explain" the memories, or to retain particular aspects of a story
while shedding aspects that no longer made any sense, would progressively
fragment the originally experience.  Of course memory alone can never
perfectly represent an experience, and archaic memories gradually lost their
integrity in the course of cultural evolution.  Yet the resulting jumble of
contradictions need not frustrate or mislead the investigator.  By his
recourse to the recurring themes of myth, the investigator can move through
the superficial layers without distraction, permitting only the core of myth
to speak with authority.

For here, one is dealing with memories that have not given way to random
distortion but rather have endured for thousands of years, still speaking
eloquently for a forgotten sky.

Surely the origins of these thought-structures deserve to be analyzed and
brought to light. For there is every reason to believe that the great
awakening of modern science will begin the moment that mainstream scholars
confront the underlying message of myth, and wonder if a different vantage
point may be necessary.

Evolution of a Physical Model

Ancient mythology is a window to an alien sky and to events modern man has
forgotten--events whose effects still confront us as scars on distant planets
and as exotic signs and symbols of unrecognized origin.

But how are we to reconstruct events occurring thousands of years ago? One
must re-experience them through the eyes of ancient witnesses.  Our confidence
in myth and symbol arises from the recognition that the substratum is an
accurate mirror of origins.  Having survived for several millennia, the
fundamental themes take us back in time, permitting early man, whose
recollections had not yet dimmed, to relate his experiences with clarity. 
That is why we can speak of the integrity, the lack of contradiction, the
interconnectedness of the themes.

Celestial forms no longer present and events no longer occurring left their
signature--not just on the landscape of affected planets, but in the collective
memory of man as he strove to align himself with the experienced powers, to be
true to the gods.  For modern science, this is an utterly unknown dimension of
history, and it is therefore necessary to temporarily hold in suspension all
prior beliefs about the past.  Not in the sense that we abandon reason or
ignore physical principles once and for all, but that we let nothing get in
the way of listening to the whole story.  Considering the very nature of the
subject matter and the incredible chasm between myth and modern theory, a
reconstruction simply could not be achieved without a period of suspended
judgment.  The required methodology does not seek, or require, principles of
certainty.  It calls for provisional allowances, the granting of suggested
possibilities that can then be cross-referenced with all available historical
information.

This means, of course, that questions of celestial mechanics--including many
issues that must eventually be addressed--should not intrude on the first
phases of reconstruction.  Nor should the investigator allow himself to be
distracted by the interesting questions that mythically-based models might
pose for geology or climatology.  We are counting on the integrity of the
underlying memory: there is no reason to fear that this collective memory will
lead us into a maze of physical absurdities.  (Presumably, the events did not
violate any laws of nature!) But one will never know the questions until one
confronts, in full, the experience that physics is asked to explain.

A Methodology for Reconstructing the Past

In seeking to comprehend the external events reflected in the myths, one must
build a model from the ground up.  The "ground" is the historical experience,
and the investigator coming to the subject from the perspective of planetary
catastrophism has these primary objectives

1) to identify the dominant images (recurring themes deduced from ancient
myth, ritual and art).

2) to identify historically-based planetary associations that might account
for the images.

3) to determine where the implicated planets had to be in relation to the
Earth and to each other in order to produce such images.

As a simple exercise under the proposed methodology, one might start with
these fundamental motifs: age of the gods, central sun, axial or polar sun,
ancient "day" reckoned from sunset to sunset, Saturn's Golden Age, Saturn as
Universal Monarch, Saturn as sun god, Saturn as polar power, Saturn as Heaven
or primeval Unity.

The methodology suggests that the investigator tentatively grant whatever
natural condition is necessary to account for the listed motifs, but no more
than is necessary.  Hence, to take up the challenge without immediately
compromising the approach, there is no logical option to placing Saturn at the
celestial pole, close enough to the Earth to have inspired the listed themes.
In our imagination, as we proceed under this re-envisioning of the past,
Saturn towers over ancient man.  It does not move, but as the earth rotates on
its axis the heavens visually revolve around the immense planet.  During the
day, the appearance of the giant sphere is subdued, but at sunset (beginning
of the archaic "day") Saturn grows brilliant, precisely as the ancient hymns
and rites proclaim of the ancient sun.

It should go without saying that to produce a "model" accounting for these few
themes, while interesting, would be far from conclusive.  If we are confident
in the final outcome of the inquiry, it is only because of the sheer volume of
interconnected and recurring themes.  On the other hand, a model that accounts
for only a handful of themes could be a significant start, since no prior
theory of myth explains any theme when that theme is examined in detail.

The Polar Configuration

I do not propose here to lead the reader through all of the threads of an
inquiry now more than 20 years old.  In this and the two remaining articles in
the series we will simply sketch an outline of the celestial forms which our
investigation suggests once held sway above the ancient world.  This outline
can then serve as the backdrop for a detailed look at some of the most
interesting and significant themes.

I am going to assume that readers are generally familiar with the suggested
planetary assembly I have called the "polar configuration," 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 "conjunction," 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 "descent." (In treating issues of
perspective it is not unreasonable to place the terrestrial observer on the
45th parallel.)

It is not merely a matter of asking whether the mythical evidence supports a
particular placement of the planets.  The equally telling question is: when
you grant the planetary placement, will scale and perspective yield the visual
images necessary to make the mythically-based model as a whole "work"? I trust
the reader will see that, given the many variables contributing to the visual
effects, the possibility of an "accident" producing an accord with universal
myth and symbol is either extraordinarily remote or nonexistent.

The colors associated with the participating planets in this early stage are--
Saturn: yellow, gold, i.e., as god of the Golden Age; Venus: white, silver,
gray, later turning to bright turquoise; Mars: rusty red and dark.

The two images presented below represent the view of the celestial
configuration from Earth under two closely related conditions, without any
attempt to accommodate the light from the Sun (a critical component).  In the
first, the dark orb of Mars appears in the center of a spherical Venus, which
in turn rests visually in the center of Saturn; in the other image Venus'"
atmosphere" has acquired an ovoid shape.  In the second part of this series, I
will give the reasons for believing that this evolving form of Venus was due
to Venus pulling atmosphere from Mars, this gas then spiraling around Venus.
What happens to this gas-or dust-cloud is fundamental to the mythical history
of the configuration.

The Polar Configuration--Earliest Phase

Saturn Sign

Before proceeding further, I must briefly address issues raised by an ancient
image that, for many years, I called the sign of the enclosed sun.

This elementary image, presented in countless variations around the world, has
figured prominently in earlier discussions of the polar configuration.  But I
wish to credit Ev Cochrane and Lynn Rose for having helped me to confront a
particularly important issue.

In 1982, two years after Ev had read The Saturn Myth, he asked me what I
thought about Velikovsky's comet Venus.  I gave him a quick summary of my
opinion that, mythically, Venus was the exhaled heart-soul of the sun god
Saturn, becoming the god's curled, braided, beard or sidelock and eventually
emerging as the cosmic serpent or dragon wrapping itself around the god.  I
told him that I thought Venus' original position was on the shared planetary
axis, but between Saturn and Jupiter, originally hidden behind Saturn, then
(when it was displaced from the axis) becoming visible as an emission or
exhaled "soul-essence" of Saturn.

It was not long before Ev challenged me, saying it would seem to make more
sense to put Venus in front of Saturn to give more concrete meaning to the
role as eye-heart-soul of the sun god.

I told Ev this would open a real can of worms, and though I wanted to explore
the issue, I simply hadn't had the time.

There was some history to this issue.  In 1974 I had submitted an article to
the editors of Pensee titled "Saturn: the Polar Night Sun." It included a brief
note on the sign of the "enclosed sun." I received a letter of comment and
criticism from Lynn Rose.  In it he asked how I knew that the outer circle
wasn't Saturn and the inner circle or dot something else? That was the very
question that eventually became paramount.

What does the famous symbol represent? In The Saturn Myth, I interpreted the
sign in one way: it is a picture of the planet Saturn surrounded by a band.
But if you place Venus in front of Saturn, in answer to the image of Saturn's
central eye-heart-soul, that automatic identification of the sign is no longer
appropriate.

Now, many years later, I need to thank both Lynn and Ev for not letting me
sidestep what turned out to be one of the most fundamental questions for the
evolution of a mythically-based model.  Eventually I did have the time to
thoroughly investigate the issue.  A key was confronting the character of
Mars, the warrior hero, as the pupil of the eye, the heart of the heart and
the child carried inside the womb of the mother goddess.  When examined in
detail, the imagery didn't leave any basis for putting Venus behind Saturn!

Several other lines of investigation were, simultaneously, giving me a new
perspective on what I had termed the "Saturnian enclosure." As to the
existence of a celestial enclosure in the myths, there can be no doubt, but as
the relationship of that enclosure to Saturn took on increasing clarity, I
realized that its formation, said to have occurred "in the center of heaven,"
"in the navel of the sea," "in the middle of the world," was not visually
around Saturn but inside Saturn, at least in the beginning.  The gases of the
elliptical Venus-egg are, in consequence of certain dramatic events, resolved
into a band that expands outward.  In recent years, numerous aspects of the
cosmic scenario have crystallized, including dimensions I had never imagined
ten years ago.

What follows is a brief review of key mythical images relating to Saturn and
the planetary gods in their earliest appearance--

Saturn and "Heaven"

In the beginning the creator-king was.  That is the underlying message of
countless myths.  I think it is likely that Saturn and the planetary orbs
juxtaposed with Saturn, were the only bodies seen at the time that Saturn was
said to have dominated the sky.

The stars were probably not visible because the night sky was so brightly lit
by this primary congregation of planets.  (There is also evidence--discussed in
the second part of this series--that the participating planets moved through a
diffuse gaseous envelope, which almost certainly would have prevented a view
of the stars.) In many years of looking, I have never found any evidence that
our Sun was an object of attention, though it was clearly present.  Two
principles are evident: 1) the Sun was not directly a part of the spectacular
configuration, and 2) the Sun participated in the configuration from a
distance, in the sense that the light from the Sun produced highly visible and
definitive effects.

In the earliest remembered age the creator-king and heaven are synonymous.
Sumerian An, Babylonian Anu, Egyptian Atum-Ra, Greek Uranos-Kronos, Hindu
Varuna.

The Chinese Tien is both god and "heaven." Sanskrit dyaus (Latin deus) carries
the double meaning "god" and "heaven." Among the Zoroastrians heaven
originally took the form of the great sphere called Spihr, the body of Zurvan,
ruler of the Golden Age.  The Lapps speak of the ancient Waralden Olmay or "
World Man" identified as Saturn, while Norse legends remembered the former "
Heaven Man," called Kroder, also identified with Saturn.

Saturn is the Heaven Man, the all-containing Unity, holding within himself all
the latent powers that are subsequently activated, externalized, or set into
motion, giving form to Saturn's creation.  In the language of Egyptian myth
this means bringing forth the differentiated "limbs" of the creator king
himself.  What was originally void of form acquires a more elaborate
organization, with distinctive motions of the parts.  Primeval "void" "chaos,"
and "formlessness" signify one and same state.

The flowering form of the Heaven Man is the creation.  In several versions of
the myth, the god's own body is the "primeval matter" of creation; then in
later lore the mythical figure frequently appears as a primordial monster or
giant (Norse Ymir, Hindu Purusha, Chinese Pan Ku) sacrificed to produce the
varied forms of a new cosmic order.

Early episodes of the creation myth deserve much closer attention than can be
given here.  The events are highly concrete and involve identifiable shapes,
preceded by formlessness.  Today, when we think of a "creation myth," we
imagine a story telling how the visible world, including the terrestrial
landscape, came into being.  But the original myth told of the organization,
disruption and transformation of a visible celestial dwelling, the land of the
gods.

Creation involved events seen and heard by man.  That is why one must see "
heaven" as the ancients did--a luminous sphere holding within itself the latent
powers activated in the creation.  As noted by Plato and other early
philosophers, the unformed world was a sphere.  In the words of the Latin Poet
Ovid, the unformed world "was all Chaos, the rounded body of all things in
one. " Hence, when early myths speak of the "heaven" god, the subject is not
an abstract "sky," but the province of beginnings--the theater for the birth of
the secondary gods and the great dramas of "the First Time." Heaven--the
place--was once close to the earth; that's a universal tenet of myth.  When the
myths say that in the beginning Saturn ruled, they proclaim the same thing,
for Saturn and "Heaven" are one and the same god

The majority of myths say that only water stretched across "heaven" 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 "the golden waters," the sea.  The
gaseous, turbulent envelope of Saturn, for the observer on earth, had all of
features of a wind-driven "ocean" above--the 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 "heaven," but the water planet.

Planetary Motifs--Earliest 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 "heaven"), and the planet's role
as an enclosure housing a smaller orb.

As the reader will observe, the three attributes are vital to numerous links
in the argument, all connecting what are otherwise incompatible mythical
interpretations to a single underlying form..  Though an overview requires a
compression of material, asking the reader to briskly tread a lot of ground,
the discernment of repeated relationships can add immensely to one's sense of
symmetry: a singular form, interpreted in different ways, will eliminate
countless apparent contradictions in ancient symbolism of the Venus-goddess.

Venus

Womb-Goddess

Though it is only with the beginning of differentiation that Venus emerges as
an independent power, the Venusian character as celestial womb and female
principle is clearly an overarching motif.  Venus is the great goddess, born
in the center of heaven (more literally, signifying the center of heaven in
her earliest character), while carrying the warrior-hero as impregnating seed,
as unborn god, and as newborn child on the lap.

A systematic analysis of the primary Egyptian goddess figures will show that
in each and every instance--whatever the mythical guise--the root idea is that
of an enclosure.  Isis as throne and crown, Hathor as house of Horus, Nut as
sacred city or "place," Sekhemet as eye, etc., all denote in the most explicit
way the "mother-womb" from which is born the warrior hero.

The same underlying goddess image will be found in Mesopotamia.  The Sumerian
Gula is "mother-womb." The Babylonian Ishtar's name means "womb." In Hindu
myth, the goddess is the yoni or "womb," while the hero is the masculine power
"shining in the Mother's eternal womb."

In the Saturn Myth, I devoted many pages to the global idea of the mother
goddess as a band or enclosure, without discerning the original relationship
to Venus.  What does an enclosure have to do with a planetary orb? I later
realized that the answer is: Everything.  The mythical identity of Venus
starts as an enclosure and ends as one--and the intervening biographical events
are more colorful and complex than I had ever imagined in the early years of
the research.  Both an advantage and a challenge confront us.  The challenge
is to integrate the massive new material into a unified reconstruction; the
advantage is that the new details provide spectacular additional levels of
evidence.

Animating Soul: "Glory," "Splendor," "Power," "Wisdom"

Venus is the interior light, the divine "glory," "splendor," or "majesty" of
the creator king, conceived as the life source, departing to become an
independent power and achieving an intelligent design.  Hence, the earliest
sacred astronomy identified Venus as "soul-star" (Babylonian title of Venus).
All of the Egyptian counterparts of the Near Eastern Venus goddesses reveal
this identity, as I have noted more than once in earlier articles.  When the
Romans deemed Venus the "soul" of Caesar shining in the sky, they celebrated
an ancient tradition.  In the same way, natives of Mexico invoked Venus as the
" soul" of the old sun god Quetzalcoatl.

What the Hebrews remembered as the Shekinah, the indwelling "glory" of God,
the Sumerians remembered as the "terrifying splendor" in the center of heaven,
the Hindus as the shakti or animating interior "power" of the creator king,
and the Egyptians as the khemet or "resplendent power" of the sun god.

Each of the major mythologies preserved its own variation of this idea--the
visible, animating, radiant soul, or soul-star--declaring this power to be a
goddess.  The female "power" of the creator-king is seen.  It has, or
acquires, a form.  It behaves in specific ways, that is, has a history, and it
is the full history of this soul-star to which one must look in order to
understand the related goddess-types as "intelligence," "idea," "wisdom,"
"fate," "word," "charm," or binding "spell." The intimately connected terms
fill the ancient lexicons: the "Word" of the creator-king is his own life
breath, going forth as a terrifying power: it is the concrete expression of
the creator-king's " thought" (intelligence, wisdom), shaping events,
producing the form of creation, determining the fate of the gods, and binding
the enemies of cosmic order.  While the stationary creator-king is, by
definition, a largely passive figure, the goddess is highly active.

Heart

Inseparably tied to Venus' identity as soul-star is the planet-goddess' role
as the heart of the creator-king--a vital, luminous, internal organ providing "
life" to its owner.  "Heart" and "soul" are thus virtually indistinguishable
in most mythical symbolism.

The Martian hero, on the other hand, will be the enclosed sphere (stone, ball,
small orb) inside the heart--what the Egyptians called "the heart of the heart,
," the ab-en-hati, or reddish ab-heart inside the female hati-heart.

In examining the myths of other peoples, many vital clues can be derived from
analyzing the hero in his relationship, at birth, to the heart of the creato
-king or sun god.  For the ancient Sumerians, the "heart" of heaven meant the
womb of the hero's birth.  In the general tradition, the hero comes forth as
the outflow of the heart, which is what the myths mean when they identify the
hero as the externalized "will" or "desire" of the creator-king--the Demiurge
(c.f., the Greek Eros: in numerous sources one notes that the will or outflow
of the creator's heart took form as the warrior hero).  In the case of
Egyptian symbolism the relationship can be confirmed in every major variant of
the warrior hero, from Shu, to Horus, to Thoth.  The heart from which the hero
is born is the great goddess.

Venus-Eye

I believe it was O.G.S. Crawford who first drew scholars' attention to the
widespread pictographs and symbolic images of what he called "the Eye Goddess.
" But the planet Venus he never mentioned, so he missed the key.  It is
incredible how frequently one encounters the identity of the planet Venus or
Venus-goddess as eye or Great Eye.  Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, the Americas,
Polynesia.  But no one seems to have asked whether the relationship to Venus--
the planet--might tell us something about Crawford's eye-goddess pictographs,
most commonly involving simple concentric circles.

Moreover, all of the experts seem to have ignored the other half of the
equation.  The creator-king possessed a single eye.  Atum was god of the
"Sole-Eye." The eye "shineth with splendors on the forehead of Ra." And
countless ritual texts leave no room for disputing that this eye was the
mother goddess, a fact repeated by every Egyptian tribe, whatever the
particular name for the goddess.  It is simply impossible to separate the Eye
Goddess from the original personality of the creator-king.

Nor can one isolate the eye goddess from the warrior hero, for he appears
explicitly as the pupil of the Eye, or the red apple of the eye. (This too, I
have noted in earlier essays.) Shu is, in his original state, "seated in the
middle of his father's [Atum's] eye. The hero Horus proclaims: I am Horus in
his Eye." Thus does the hero appear as the dweller "in the middle of his own
eye.  My origin is from the apple of his eye, the texts say.  I am I the
Terrible One who issued from his Eye.

Today we are so used to the phrase "apple of his mother's eye" that we do not
even notice the irrationality of the image.  But trace the language to its
origins and you will see that the apple of the eye was the child of the
goddess.

Vase

As the surrounding, radiant "womb" housing the unborn warrior-hero, Venus was
the receptacle par excellence.  To the mythmaker, the illuminated gas or dust
cloud revolving around the planet was seen as the revolving mud and waters of
the cosmic sea, from which a receptacle or "vase" took form, as if on a
potters wheel.  In Egyptian symbolism the vase and the goddess are virtually
synonymous.  And of course the female or goddess form of the vase in primitive
cultures has been noted by numerous authors from Eric Neumann to Marija
Gimbutas.

But this vase-goddess is the same goddess who carries the warrior-hero in her
womb, and hundreds of examples could be given from around the world, showing
the unborn or re-born warrior hero contained within a vase or receptacle
goddess.  The Hindu Vasishtha is "born from the jar," while the Iranian
Fravashi, Khumbya, is "the son of the jar." Muslim tradition echoes this theme
in declaring that the soul of Mohammed preexisted in a vase of light in the
world of spirits.

Zelia Nuttall's study of Mexican symbolism confirmed the very same idea: the
sacred man-child of the Mayans emerges from a vase.  (Appropriately, the Mayan
vase signified the "navel or center" of heaven, according to Nuttall.) The
same symbolism of the vase has been documented in both China and the Americas
by Carl Hentze and others.

Presented below are the two most common Egyptian versions of the vase:

Egyptian Vase Hieroglyphs

The consistency of the imagery is compelling.  The Egyptians clearly knew, for
example, that the vase was the goddess.  The vase-sign was a common glyph for
the goddess Nut.  More generally, the vase meant goddess, mistress, queen, to
consort with, etc.  Normally, when we see a vase we do not think either "
goddess" or "female principle." Nor do we think of a "heart" or internal
organ, but to the Egyptians the vase-goddess and heart of the creator-king
were one and the same, and there's no possibility of this being due to later
syncretism or indiscriminate assimilation.  In the Egyptian language, the
heart is written with the vase-sign, and the sign also carried the general
meaning internal organ and "occupying the center.

Navel of the World

Saturn is Heaven, the primeval, unformed world, the cosmic sea.  Venus is the
hallowed, hollow place at the center of heaven, in the center of the world, in
the center of the cosmic sea called the navel.

Identity of goddess and navel or omphalos, of course, has been long
recognized. Omphalia was a Greek goddess.  And when Hindu or Greek poets
remembered their favorite warrior-hero as the navel-born, they honored the
archetypical link of hero and goddess.

Navel of the world, navel of the sea, navel of heaven.  How often have
mythologists, reviewing the genesis myths, noticed that the navel is the focus
of initial activity, then offered only abstractions as explanations.  In all
mythological systems (and here I mean literally all systems on which we have
significant data) creation acquires its form through the activity of the
mother goddess and warrior hero.  Originally these juxtaposed powers
constitute the navel.  Their departure from that position is the beginning of
creation..

Nave of the Sun-Wheel

Around the world the image of the orb contained within a circle, a band, or
larger orb was associated with the idea of a great turning wheel both
mythically and pictographically.  Images of Crawfords eye goddess merge with
images of the cosmic wheel carved in stone on every continent.  But why was
the mystic eye conceived as a wheel? Again, natural experience today provides
not a clue.  Yet somehow the identification established itself in more than
one land.  The famous Greek Cyclopes, literary echo of the Heaven Man, is the
wheel-eyed; the Norse great god Odin possessed a single eye, remembered as a
giant wheel.

The language of the wheel is instructive, for there is a self-evident
etymological link of the wheels navel and the mythical navel.  The nave is the
receptacle or sleeve at the center of the wheel, in which the axle turns.  If
one applies the concepts discussed here to the language of the cosmic wheel,
the implications are inescapable: the nave of the cosmic wheel must be the
goddess, and the axle of the wheel must be the warrior hero, or the integrity
we have claimed for myth breaks down.

Though the cosmic wheel will be a primary topic in the concluding article, it
is only appropriate to note, in this brief summary, that all of the key
associations are confirmed in Hindu symbolism of the sun wheel.  (The most
fully developed and preserved symbolism of the wheel will be found in India):
Yes, the ritual texts explicitly identify the mother goddess as nave of the
sun-wheel, and yes, in equally explicit terms, they declare the warrior-hero
(c.f., Indra, the most widely venerated hero god in ancient India) to have
formerly served as the wheels axle .

Cosmic Egg

One of the mythical events consistently placed in an early phase of creation
is the birth of the cosmic egg or world egg.  The Greek Chronos, or Time,
brings forth a cosmic egg, then sets the egg in motion.

The Great Chronos fashioned in the divine

Aether a silver egg.

And it moved without slackening in a vast circle"

Professor Eliade traced recollections of the cosmic egg--one of the most
universal images of the great goddess--across Indonesia, Iran, Phoenicia,
Latvia, Estonia, West Africa, Central America , and the west coast of South
America.

Numerous Egyptian sources say that the egg took form in the cosmic waters much
the same way that the vase-goddess appeared.  That the Egyptians recognized
the identity of egg and vase is clear: for they declared, without
contradiction, that the god Ptah fashioned the egg on the potter's wheel.

The island of the egg, the land of the egg, the egg of the sun, in Egyptian
symbolism, mean the middle place, the navel, the starting point of creation.
Hence, it is completely consistent with the above-noted range of symbols that
the same egg denotes the cosmic womb from which the warrior-hero sprang in the
beginning.  In the Egyptian language the egg is a common determinative for "
goddess," and the priests could thus celebrate the unborn hero as "the mighty
one in the egg."

Enigmatically, the hero proclaims, "I sit in the Eye, my egg." Need we point
out that natural experience (today!) could never inspire such a statement? Yet
the image of Mars visually centered within the ovoid Venus does indeed look
like an eye, but also a reddish sphere inside an egg.  When referred to the
unifying celestial form, the internal consistency of the mythical imagery
meets our every expectation.

The Logic of the Polar Configuration

When considered as a whole, the variety of goddess forms provides a series of
verifiable symbolic equations.  Taken alone, or deprived of their objective
reference, the identities will seem incongruous or hopelessly confused; but
see them in terms of the unifying reference--a literal source in the sky--and
the seeming irrationality instantly vanishes.

To fully appreciate the unified substratum of myth and to weigh the historical
implications one must continually engage the subject from the vantage point of
a test.

Does any experience of nature today offer a clue to the historical origins of
the cited ideas?

If the celestial form we have illustrated hung spectacularly above ancient
man, is anything more needed to explain the mythical images?

Since the model implies extremely specific relationships between symbolic
forms, one does not have to be concerned that the oft-noted "ambiguity" of
myth will allow a proponent of the polar configuration to recklessly equate
mythical ideas that were originally unrelated.  That the eye-goddess meant the
eye of the creator-king is a provable equation and is not refuted by any body
of data. That this eye meant the "soul" or "soul-star" is also provable.  That
the eye was the womb from which the hero burst forth is provable as well. 
Against such layers of mythical evidence a critic is invited to bring forward
any countervailing evidence based on recurring themes.

And if the countervailing evidence is not forthcoming, how is one to assess
the logic of the situation? Is it possible that the sky we know today could
produce no mythical themes, while a wholly unified but entirely imaginary
order could produce all mythical themes?

To summarize the foregoing: the planetary identities associated with the
earliest phase of the proposed configuration are--

Saturn: all-containing Unity, Heaven, Heaven Man, unformed world, the cosmic
sea; primeval sun, central sun, polar sun.

Venus: universal goddess, womb, heart, soul, glory of the creator king, eye
goddess, vase, navel, nave of world wheel, cosmic egg.

Mars: child carried by Venus, the heart-born god, heart of the heart, vase-
born god, navel-born god, axle of the world wheel, pupil or apple of the eye,
hero born of the cosmic egg.

Saturnian Crescent

When I was in the earliest stages of developing the thesis of the polar
configuration--before I had presented the idea to anyone--there was a point at
which the idea occurred to me of an illuminated crescent or half-circle of
light revolving around a stationary god.  It was not a single mythical theme
that produced the idea but a series of interconnected images--revolving ships,
revolving horns, horned peaks, outstretched arms and outstretched wings, all
presented in alternating positions around a central figure, with a distinctive
relationship to an apparent celestial column, and in explicit association with
a cycle of day and night.

The specific form I believed to be latent in the wide-ranging mythical images
was this.  If the crescent was produced by light from the Sun, then this form
would be the midnight position for the observer on Earth.  And if a rotating
Earth was in any relationship to the Sun that could produce such an image,
then the celestial form would go through a daily cycle.

Sunset Midnight Sunrise Noon

The thesis concerning the revolving crescent was a turning point in the
investigation, because it produced a level of specificity permitting the
entire notion to be easily disproved if the revolving crescent did not exist. 
In that sense, it met the classical test of a good theory.  It gave me a
highly specific set of questions to apply to each and every motif.  Did the
outstretched arms, or extended wings, so often depicted reaching around a
divine figure, consistently relate to a daily cycle? Were they to the left and
right in connection with the archaic "dawn" and "evening"? Were they above at
"night" and below in the "day"? (Keep in mind that the ancient "day" began at
sunset; "night" was the period from sunrise to sunset.) Did the respective
positions of the cosmic ship and horns consistently fulfill the same
requirements? And did the twin peaks of the cosmic mountain actually revolve
around the polar center, standing inverted above the god during the phase of
receding light, or night? These questions were so specific and the answers so
consistent, even while flatly contradicting all observations of nature today,
it was no longer possible to doubt the existence of an objective reference.

In 1988 and many times thereafter I invited critics to submit their
refutations under the obvious tests.  It was only necessary for the critic to
show that the highly unusual behavior of the proposed crescent-forms was
contradicted by early sources somewhere.  It is, after all, more than a little
interesting to discover that while hundreds of sources are consistent with the
behavior of the suggested crescent-forms, one finds no recurring images or
recurring traditions contradicting that behavior.  In the five years since
that invitation, no one has stepped forward to offer a challenge based on
historical evidence.

Crescent and Enclosure

As for the explanation of the revolving crescent, I had looked to Saturn
standing within an illuminated cloud-like band.  But how did the light fall on
this broad band to create a crescent? An illuminated semicircle, or half-donut
would be the image if the light arrived on a line coinciding with the plane of
the revolving dust or gas..

About four years ago, a computer specialist named Dennis Baker called me to
tell me that the crescent issue was bothering him.  We agreed that a degree of
back lighting would be necessary to create a long crescent image on a
doughnut-like torus-cloud around a polar Saturn, but he emphasized that this
would also create a counter-crescent on the inside of the doughnut.

My assumption was that a degree of back lighting occurred, at least in certain
phases, giving more of a crescent image, and that at other times the light
arrived precisely along the plane of the torus-cloud's revolution, creating a
simple half-circle--all depending on relative relationships to the light source
as the configuration revolved around the Sun.  Though I wasn't satisfied with
this ambiguity of the mythical model, and tended not to want to commit myself
on the issue, I did a revised illustration of the polar configuration showing
something of a counter-crescent, while the crescent itself was compromised a
bit at the two terminations.  The illustration took a tenuous middle ground
between crescent and half-circle.

But a far more fundamental issue was raised by myth and symbol.  I was at this
time becoming increasingly aware of the possibility that the orb of Saturn
itself was illuminated in such a way as to create a great crescent revolving
visually with the rotation of the Earth.  In all of my early formulations of
the polar configuration, I was guided by the conclusion that the pictographic
dot or orb in a circle always meant Saturn enclosed by a band; so wherever a
crescent could be seen wrapped half way around a circle, I saw it as a
crescent placed on the band by the light of the Sun.

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 "Star" par excellence, the mother and prototype of stars, only
accentuates the issue.

The star-in-crescent will be found on every continent, and its concrete
meaning will be discussed in the second installment of this series.  If the
crescent was actually displayed on the orb of Saturn itself, one would possess
a very direct answer for the sun god Ra's title as "Shining Horn" (noted in
The Saturn Myth).  And when Babylonian astronomical texts associate the great
crescent of Sin with the planet Saturn, as first noted by the pioneering
Assyriologist George Rawlinson, the connection could be taken in the most
direct sense.

About two and a half years ago, having realized that several new dimensions of
research were necessary--and apparently one highly significant amendment of the
model--I broached the subject with Ev Cochrane.  The context of that discussion
was a sharing of thoughts on the likelihood that the presentation of the polar
configuration was going to grow more complex.  I expressed the sense that, at
the present publication rate, my once-envisioned schedule for completing a
summary would apparently have to be extended to several life times.  Putting
an exclamation mark to the observation, I informed Ev that I had been musing
over a crescent on the orb of Saturn itself--an idea that would require a re-
write of much of my earlier published material, and a mass of new material. 
Instead of our making headway, perhaps the road ahead was just growing longer.

Over the following months, the idea of a Saturnian crescent solidified itself
into a powerful conviction.  At the same time, I was encountering many new
twists to the thesis, all of them exciting, all of them critical to a complete
scenario of events, and all seeming to remove the possibility of ever
finishing satisfactorily a task I had once conceived as a life's work.

It's not my purpose here to a give a personal account of the situation, so I
will only state the conclusion: I set the task aside.  For about a year and a
half, I never opened a book or once set pen to paper on the subject of ancient
myth and planetary history.

Jupiter

Back to the narrative (since the sabbatical is, as you can see, over).

The heart of the argument on behalf of the "polar configuration" is an
extraordinary planetary line up.  Though I have often mentioned the planet
Jupiter's role in the suggested configuration, prior discussion has added only
the scantiest of details.  It seems appropriate in this "synopsis, therefore,
to provide the gist of the reasoning behind my insistence, for over two
decades, on Jupiter's position behind Saturn.

What caught my attention very early in the research was the consistently
repeated relationship between Saturn and Jupiter mythically--the same Father-
Son connection recurring in the symbolism of many lands.  The essential idea
seems to be that of a retiring, aging, departing, displaced or dying creator-
king giving way to a rejuvenated version of himself--this renewed god-king
occupying precisely the same location as his predecessor and figuring as the
central subject of annual rites celebrating renewed cosmic cycles--most
significantly, the "New Year."

The relationship of the two mythical figures is extraordinarily close.  In
fact, to talk about these figures as if they are different mythical
personalities is to immediately mislead.  In countless instances the
personalities are blended as aspects of one celestial power.  There is--in many
versions of the New Year's myth--only one god-king, showing two aspects--the
aged and the rejuvenated god.  Even today, we celebrate at the New Year the
cycle of Father Time (a Saturnian image of extreme import) who grows old, his
beard long, but who is "renewed" at the conclusion of the year by a younger or
re-born version of himself.

Though ancient races and tribal traditions may have presented varying emphases
on the differentiation of the two personalities, the overarching mythical
figure is associated with two planets.  One planet signifies the original
creator-king, god of the golden age; the other the re-born or rejuvenated
creator-king whose saga was celebrated every New Year.

An and Marduk, Atum-Ra and Osiris, El and Yahweh, Zurvan and Ahura Mazda,
Kronos and Zeus, Saturn and Jupiter.  It is impossible not to notice that the
elder figure is continually associated with Saturn and the younger with
Jupiter.  A general principle might be states thus: the younger Saturn is
Jupiter, and the elder Jupiter is Saturn.  That was, in fact, the way
classical authors perceived the relationship.

Elder and Younger God

In the chronicles of the gods, the biographies of the younger and elder
personalities are continually mingled.  Kronos, the elder figure, identified
as Saturn by the Greeks, fulfills the role of the younger in the displacement
of his father Uranus (all encompassing Heaven), the latter serving
unequivocally as elder figure in Hesiod's brief account, before Kronos then
assumes the elder role in relationship to the younger creator-king, Zeus,
whose most common epithet was "Son of Kronos" and who was, in all astronomical
traditions, identified as the planet Jupiter.

Yet Zeus himself plays the elder god in relation to Dionysos, an eternally
youthful god-king, while Dionysos in his turn becomes the overarching father-
creator figure in Orphic thought and in relation to Zagreus, another eternally
youthful figure.  The mind boggles in attempting to strictly separate the
elder from the younger.  All that can be said is that, with respect to
planetary identifications, the consistency of the general principle is
remarkable: The Saturn figure is, in his primary character, the displaced
figure; the Jovian is the younger or "rejuvenated" divinity.  And the language
itself bears out the relationship.  Jove means "youth," and is of the same
root as juvenalis, from which comes our word "rejuvenation." The Babylonian
Marduk-Jupiter is Shulpae, the "youth," whose enthronement was celebrated in
the famous Babylonian New Years festival.

(It was not until the mid-eighties that I began to realized that Osiris, in
his relation to Ra, fit the general pattern; in The Saturn Myth I identified
Osiris with Saturn pure and simple).

The New Year's concept is repeated in festivals around the world.  To
oversimplify some very complex sequences, one can say that the fall or
displacement of the creator-king Saturn is synonymous with the end of the
Golden Age.  It signifies the conclusion of one cosmic cycle and triggers the
complex events leading to the beginning of another.  These events include wars
of the gods, flight, famine, attack upon the world by a great chaos monster,
winter and darkness, birth (more properly, re-birth) of the warrior-hero,
defeat of the chaos monster, enthronement of the rejuvenated creator-king, and
festivity or celebration--the joy and joviality of the celebrants also
belonging to Jovian roots linguistically.  For this reason, and in the most
fundamental terms, the two planets Saturn and Jupiter came to represent the
polar opposites of gloom and celebration astrologically.  Thus saturnine
remains in our language as "pertaining to Saturn," but more commonly
"gloominess," "taciturn" and "melancholy," while jovial possesses the sense "pe
rtaining to Jove," but also "to be filled with a joyous spirit." It may seem a 
little incongruous that the god of the Golden Age came to be seen through a dar
k and gloomy lens, but it needs to be remembered that in the celebration of the
 New Year--the most influential celebration in the ancient world--the displacem
ent of the central luminary, the darkness, the loss of cosmic order were centra
l story elements acted out in the rites.  The aged Father Time, unable to retai
n his control of the world, is a melancholy symbol, particularly when balanced 
against the figure of renewal, the young child or youthful god bringing forth a
 new cycle, as in the Latin poet Ovid's brief refrain--

After old Saturn fell to Death's dark country

Straitly Jove ruled the world with silver charm

Saturn's displacement is, in a quite straightforward way, synonymous with
Jupiter's appearance, as we should expect if Jupiter was there all the time,
hidden behind Saturn.  The Egyptian sources depict the creator-king bringing
forth "from his own body" the youthful version of himself.  He is the "second"
Ra, the creator-king himself reborn.

One of the keys to the symbolism is the role of the creator-king's heart-soul.
It departs the god upon his death and returns to him with his renewal.  Or,
stated in slightly different terms, the soul departs the elder, displaced god--
in Egypt, Ra--and enters the younger god--in Egypt, Osiris.  The dying and
resurrected Osiris carries the soul of Ra, a point that is not often noticed
by Egyptologists.  In fact, there is in this celestial sequence an apparent
prototype of the reincarnation theme--the soul of the predecessor passing on
to-- and legitimizing--the successor.

The underlying events suggest that with Saturn's removal from the polar center
and a period of general confusion, Jupiter came to occupy the visible position
previously held by Saturn.

Though we cannot here attempt a reconstruction of the spectacular events and
images involved, the reader will remember that the Egyptian "heart" has two
aspects--the female hati-heart and the reddish, male ab-heart enclosed within
the female heart, the first being identical to the mother goddess and the
second to the warrior hero, carried within the womb of the goddess.  What the
story of Osiris establishes beyond dispute is that both aspects of the "hear
-soul" participate dramatically in the cosmic drama of Osiris' ordeals,
culminating in the intensely celebrated restoration of the god to his
"rightful place."" (Aspects of this sequence are summarized in the third
installment of this series.)

It is interesting to note, incidentally, that it is not just the luminous "
heart" or heart-soul that passes to Osiris.  Egyptian sources repeat again and
again that Horus, the warrior-hero and former pupil of the Eye, delivered the
Eye to Osiris, and the texts also confirm that the Eye and heart-soul are
synonymous.  The ritual proclaims that, thanks to Horus' activity on behalf of
Osiris, the resurrected and rejuvenated god was "filled with the Eye," that he
received his "soul" thereby, that he was "made to live" thereby.



Portraits of Jupiter

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 Jupiter's 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.

Of the banded sphere I offer below a few examples from ancient art

Images of the banded sphere: 1.  North America.  2.  Mexico.  3.  Africa.  4.
Crete.  5.  Polynesia.  6.  Northern Europe.

As is well known, the Roman god Jupiter came to be represented by a sphere on
which was placed a series of bands.  One such instance of the banded sphere is
shown below.

Sphere or Jupiter

But in many of the more familiar representations of the god, his human form
dominates.  Here it is the dress of the god that gives the key symbols.  Note
in the image of Zeus (Jupiter) placed on the cover of A. B. Cook's book, Zeus,
that the bands constitute the primary design motif and are distinguished by
the very elements expected.

Zeus (Jupiter)

(I should add that in the cover illustration, which cannot be fully duplicated
in black and white, the dress of Zeus is further enhanced by spots or dabs of
gold.)

Also worth noting is the image of the Aztec Tezcatlipoca, whom more than one
specialist has identified as the "Mexican Jupiter." The experts do not mean by
this a planetary identification, of course, but have simply noted a strong
similarity (in function) to the classical Jupiter figure.  When the ancient
sun god and ruler of the Golden Age--Quetzalcoatl--is displaced, it is
Tezcatlipoca that assumes preeminence.

While Quetzalcoatl is the elder figure, the father of kings, Tezcatlipoca is
the transparently youthful successor--head of the college of princes.

The name of the god means "Smoking Mirror," 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 "smoke," 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.

Smoking Mirror of Tezcatlipoca

It occurred to me that in Egypt all of the key images of the age of the gods,
in addition to countless well-developed human and zoomorphic depictions, found
pictographic representation in simpler, more literal forms.  So I wondered if
there was an elementary hieroglyphic representation of the banded Jupiter,
perhaps in connection with the "youthful" or re-born sun god.

Among hundreds of hieroglyphs there is only one that fits the image of a
banded sphere.  In the writing system, it is the glyph for the kh-sound:

Enigmatic Egyptian Glyphy

There are, of course, many hundreds of Egyptian words that employ the glyph.
But interestingly, there are only three instance in which the glyph stands on
its own.  In the first, the glyph is employed with the determinative for
"high" or "to be high" In the second it is combined with the determinative for
"babe, " "boy," "child," "youth." These first two uses of the glyph are surely
related: the "high god" is the creator-king; and the "babe" or "youth" is the
rejuvenated or reborn creator-king.  It is not surprising, therefore, to find
that the Book of the Dead employs this very glyph to denote the "re-born" form
of the sun god.

There is a third instance deserving mention as well, though it opens up a
connection with the dying, dismembered and scattered "youth" which I have, up
to this point reserved for future discussion.  In this third instance the
glyph appears with a picture of a small twig as determinative, and means
"grain." The connection with the rejuvenated god seems clear.  Osiris himself
is called "the grain;" in symbolic representations his body is constituted of
grain; and it is as "grain" that the body of the god is scattered far and wide
prior to reconstitution and the celebrated resurrection of the god.

Once again we see the convergence of motifs on an image answering to nothing
in the sky today, yet suggesting an underlying coherence outside all present
experience.  On its own, nothing in the image would present the ideas of "
youth," "to be high," or "grain." Yet in Egypt and many other lands as well,
these are the very concepts entwined around the dying and resurrected god.  Is
it possible to believe that the widespread astronomical connection of the
rejuvenated god with the banded sphere of Jupiter is purely accidental?

(One is tempted to elaborate upon other details, but for now this all-too-
brief summary will have to suffice.)

Toward a Physical Model

The first requirement of a physical model is that it be consistent with the
data it seeks to explain.

When it comes to myth, the field of particulars is immense, and one might
easily assume that a unifying model is out of the question.  On the face of it
the claims of myth are hopelessly contradictory, removing the very possibility
of integrity.  What changes the situation is the surprising unity of the
underlying themes.  The underpinnings are far, far less complex than the
surface details of myth.  If one formulates the requirements of a model in
reference to universal motifs and permits no other details to complicate the
issue, the challenge becomes remarkably clear.  It is no longer an issue of
coherence, but one of plausibility.

Consider, for example: in the list of recurring themes presented earlier in
this article, there are no contradictions.  That fact does not involve any
manipulation of the list by the author.  It is just that, at the level of the
substratum, myth is not self-contradictory.  Moreover, as stated earlier, no
theme stands alone; each is inseparably tied to the others, each illuminating--
and illuminated by--the whole.

Is it possible that a single physical model could accommodate all of the
listed themes? Or is the apparent integrity only an illusion that bursts the
moment one invokes the physical references?

Of course the most obvious "physical requirement" immediately establishes a
horrendous gap between the mythically-based scheme and accepted theory: the
physical model must sustain an assembly of planets moving close to the Earth--
closer than conventional astronomy has ever imagined.

But the other requirements appear far more vexing.  One of the participants is
the gas giant Saturn, and the model must produce for the terrestrial observer
a stationary Saturn at the celestial pole, so that, as the earth turns on its
axis, the planet visually appears as the pivot of the cosmic revolutions.  To
the best of my knowledge, in the history of scientific speculation, no one has
never posited a planet in such an improbable position.

The difficulty multiplies with the addition of Jupiter as a hidden power
behind Saturn.  Not a fleeting conjunction of the two giants, but a quasi-
stable alignment that keeps Jupiter hidden from terrestrial view through the
indeterminate early period of Saturn's visual dominance, the Golden Age.

In answer to the planet Venus' role as the creator-king's central eye or
luminous heart-soul, the model must allow for Venus to appear plump in the
center of Saturn and to retain that position--at least for a time--as the
participating planets move through space.  By what exotic forces could such an
alignment have been maintained?

Adding to the seeming implausibility of it all is the role of the planet Mars,
now seen as a small red orb in the center of Venus, now moving down the polar
axis toward the Earth to become immense beneath the sphere of Saturn, now
moving back into conjunction with Venus, now moving down the axis again and
menacingly close to the Earth.

And finally, the planetary configuration must retain a very specific position
in relation to the Sun, so that the light from the Sun produces a permanent
crescent on Saturn, such that, as the Earth turns on its axis, the crescent
revolves around the polar center.

Quite apart from the issue of celestial dynamics, it will be obvious to the
reader that the above requirements allow for only one planetary lineup--and
this lineup forecloses the few "best efforts" at a physical model by others up
to this point.  The few previous attempts to accommodate one or another aspect
of the myths have simply not reckoned with the full range of motifs.

Synchronous Orbits

In 1974 I suggested a planetary arrangement that seemed consistent with the
myths.  The proposed arrangement included a synchronous orbit of Saturn, Mars
and Earth around Jupiter in which the three "satellites" of Jupiter revolved
around the larger body once with each revolution around the Sun, maintaining
their alignment.  (At that time I did not know where to place Venus, though I
had no doubt of its cometary character, which I related to the celestial beard
or sidelock) As the entire planetary assembly revolved around the sun--let's
say, in a counter-clockwise direction--the three satellites also revolved once
around Jupiter in a counter-clockwise direction, thus maintaining the same
angle of alignment in relation to the sun.

I had put the planets on something close to a tangential line to Saturn's
orbit around the Sun because I needed the light of the Sun to fall on the
Saturnian band in a particular way.  In other words, the orbits were
"synchronous" not because I had any idea of physical dynamics involved in such
orbits, but because maintaining the same angle of illumination during the full
orbit of the Sun required the entire line of planets to revolve around Jupiter
at the same time.



Original Tangential Model

The model presented three inherent "problems" to critics: 1) satellites at
different orbital distances have different periods (Kepler's Third Law), so
they will not stay in line; 2) the earth is a giant gyroscope: as it moves
around the Sun it would not keep its northern axis pointed toward Saturn, even
if it were aimed toward Saturn at one point in the orbit; and 3) maintaining
the same angle of solar illumination on the band would require the plane of
the band to continually shift as the aligned planets moved around the Sun.

With the placement of the crescent on Saturn itself rather than on a cloud
around Saturn, the primary physical issues were reduced to two, though
obviously the angle of the aligned planets in relation to the Sun would have
to be changed in order to produce the crescent on Saturn--and if on Saturn, why
not a crescent on the other visible participants? (I only raise the issue now,
but will offer a fascinating possibility in the second article in this series.
)

Planetary Alignment

The idea of a series of planets strung out on a line from Jupiter appeared
somewhat amusing to several commentators, one friendly critic styling the odd
planetary array the "shish-kabob model," while the accompanying illustration
of the idea became "Talbott's cartoon."

In place of this model, which was claimed to leave planets magically dangling
on a string, several interested parties conjured a different planetary lineup,
in what came to be known as the "tumbling barbell" model, this often including
Saturn and Jupiter at opposite ends of the Earth axis, with the two giants
tumbling around each other as they moved through space and the Earth caught at
an equilibrium point between the two.

For some twenty years now, the celestial barbell has been--well, tumbling about
in catastrophist circles.  And though there may be nothing inherently
objectionable to the concept theoretically, no one resorting to the idea ever
produced a version consistent with the mythical themes we have noted here.

In 1987, through a series of lively and entertaining phone calls, I got to
know the engineer Fred Hall (formerly of the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Laboratory).  Fred had read the Saturn Myth in 1980 and had, over the
following years, speculated on how orbital dynamics could sustain a polar
Saturn.  He had opted for the barbell concept and at one point nearly had me
convinced that this was the only plausible arrangement.  But the more he
worked at it, in an attempt to accommodate other details on which I was
insisting, the more incapable the model seemed of supporting the core of myth.

I think it was in 1989 that I asked him to reconsider my "1974 shish-kabob.
His good-natured response was: "you can't just have the planets hanging there.
"

A few weeks later, however, Fred called on other matters.  Unexpectedly,
toward the close of the conversation, he said he had been tinkering with the
shish-kabob, putting the planetary string on the tangent I had argued for. 
At the right distances, he said, the lesser planets trailing behind Jupiter
actually followed along rather nicely.  But I never saw a set of equations or
any drawings in defense of the idea.

Fred Hall died the following year.  Though we had never met in person, I had
come to know him well and had hoped it would be Fred who would unravel the "
celestial dynamics" puzzle.

During this period the physicist Robert Driscoll, who is well-trained in the
necessary disciplines, submitted several versions of some interesting
theoretical possibilities (one of these being published in AEON).  Driscoll's
interest has continued and he can be expected to make a valuable contribution.

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 U.S. space program, and putting bodies into the
right orbit was just part of a good day's 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 "the basic
planetary lineup you're looking for is simply a set of synchronous orbits."
Developing a model, starting with "good old Newtonian physics," was really not
that difficult, he told me.  But here's 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 Earth's 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 "work" can in fact be a natural outcome
of planets close enough to interact dynamically.

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

Grubaugh sent his orbital calculations to Ev Cochrane of Ames, Iowa, and Ev,
in turn, submitted them to one of the country's leading computer animation
firms, Engineering Animation, obtaining a commitment from the company to
produce a moving three-dimensional model based on Grubaugh's figures.

Ev and I were planning to attend a symposium of the Canadian Society for
Interdisciplinary Studies in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and we decided to drive
together from Ames.  So I flew into Ames several days early, giving us a
chance to meet with the engineer in charge of the project at Engineering
Animation and to observe the completion of the brief video production.

The four-minute video enables the viewer to watch the planetary motions from
an external view, showing the entire congregation of planets moving around the
Sun.  From the remote vantage point necessary to view the full orbits (the
orbits are substantially compressed for visual purposes), the planet Mars is
barely visible.  When the "camera" zooms in on the Earth-Venus view, however,
the small planet Mars becomes clearly visible, moving on an elliptical orbit
between the orbits of the two larger bodies, Earth and Venus.  Because the
orbits are synchronous, Mars appears to be moving first toward the Earth, then
toward Venus.

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 myth--

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 Grubaugh's
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 Grubaugh's 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 Mars' orbit.  The
accord of the resulting motions with the fundamental Martian mythical
motif--the hero descending and ascending the world axis--is 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 Grubaugh's orbits.  The
issue relates to Kepler's 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 "violation" of Kepler's Third Law is only illusory.  The Law can't
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 these--whose name
would be recognized by AEON subscribers and whose contribution has in recent
years degenerated to flurries of mean-spirited postcards--was driven to new
heights by Grubaugh's 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 doesn't 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 Grubaugh's 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 Saturn--

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 "required" by Kepler's 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 primary's
orbital velocities.  And nothing more than this is happening in the stipulated
synchronous orbit except that the satellite--Earth in the above illustration--i
s
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 Earth's or Venus'
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 Venus' 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 lineup--here, 45 degrees removed from the
tangential orientation I had originally proposed--places 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, Grubaugh's calculations seem to
imply that, under the stipulated conditions (gas giants in the general
vicinity of Venus' and Earth's 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.

The role of Mars in the computer-animated model proves interesting.  In recent
years more than one critic of the suggested Martian role in the polar
configuration has stated that Mars would not appear inside of Venus at the
general distances involved.  Another objection has been that, in moving closer
to the Earth, Mars would not appear below Venus, just bigger.  The computer
model provided impressive visual confirmation that both objections are
unfounded.

The illustration below gives a thumbnail perspective on Mars as the planet
moves toward the Earth.  As we have noted on several prior occasions, a small
descent from the polar center visually produces a much larger orb visually.
In fact, Mars becomes much larger than Venus even before it has fully emerged
from the Venus-womb (cf., the myth of the hero's birth: he bursts from the
womb, is of giant size at birth, then quickly grows immense after birth.)

If one imagines Mars continuing toward the Earth, eventually reaching the
(Earth-threatening!) position depicted below, the planet appears as a giant
mound on the northern horizon.  As will be documented in future articles, all
of the respective positions find striking support in the myth of the warrior
hero.

The Grubaugh model is, of course, highly preliminary and must be submitted to
critical analysis by others.  Whatever the outcome of this analysis, these
first steps certainly do not present a final answer to the myths, because
there is much more to mythical history than is contained in these initial
orbital calculations.

The calculations themselves are not complete, in the sense that more precise
calculations of primary forces--and the addition of secondary forces--will be
necessary to determine relative degrees of stability.

Also, everyone involved will do well to remember that stability in a lasting
sense is not the objective of the model.  Everything about the mythical
history of the polar configuration suggests evolving relationships of the
participating bodies, with chaotic forces periodically intervening. 
Additionally, certain well-established traditions imply features of the
celestial environment that may have no counterpart in the solar system today.

Descent of Mars

From the beginning, critics have frequently asserted the "impossibility" of
planetary alignment, and one can assume that removal of this objection will
only invite other equally assured objections.  Our position, on the other
hand, has been that one's sense of "the possible" is expanded by the
historically-supported sense of what happened.  And that is another reason to
keep the priority on the reconstruction of the historical experience.

I have argued for approaching the subject with these priorities: first the
mythical images, then the explanation of the images in terms of planetary
placement, then the physical model.  In my own experience, the evolution of
the mythically-based model of the polar configuration has already validated
the approach.  In more than one instance the documented images have survived
changes in both the explanation and the physical model.  Amendments to the
explanatory model were in fact required by the progressive unveiling of
additional images.  As a verifiable celestial form, the revolving crescent
remains intact after twenty-one years.  So also does orb within the circle.
But the original explanations must be modified, and consequently the
requirements on the physical model as well.  (More on these issues in Parts
Two and Three of this series.


END