Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Part 1: Where these ideas came from.
[Table of Contents]
$Revision: 19.1 $
Contents of this chapter:
[Introduction]
[The Osiris Mystery]
[David Talbott's Saturn]
[Adding a Plasma Connection]
[The Talbott/Thornhill model]
[Saturn in the Solar System]
[Endnotes]
"The most 'ancient treasure' -- in Aristotle's words -- that was left to us by our predecessors was the idea that the gods are really stars, and that there are no others."-- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, "Hamlet's Mill" (1969)
Earth, Mars, Neptune and Saturn all have their axes of rotation at 24 to 25 degrees to their orbit. This should not be. We would expect all the planets in the Solar System to have their spin axes pointing in the same up and down direction as the Sun. The spin axes of all of the 134 satellites of the planets point in the same direction as their parent planet, with only a few rare exceptions. [note 1]
The divergent and nearly identical inclination of the spin axes of these four planets is one of the first clues that our Solar System is a composite of two systems. The other hint was that our ancestors had called Saturn "the Sun," "the best Sun," "the first Sun." Perhaps Earth had at one time been a satellite of Saturn, or a planet orbiting Saturn? Saturn has all the look of a burned-out brown dwarf star and could have supported life on closely orbiting planets. At some time in the past, Saturn with its planets must have entered the Solar System and the two systems merged. But when and how did this merger take place? [note 2]
![[Image: the Eye of Ra]](bin/ra.jpg)
Image: The Egyptian "Eye of Ra" representing the unity at the beginning of time. It first appears early in the Old Kingdom. In the Middle Kingdom the parts of the sign become symbols for fractions of the number one.
Introduction
In 1960 David Talbott started investigating the ancient literature of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and soon came to the conclusion that, in fact, Saturn had stood in the sky, ablaze like a sun, during an earlier period recalled by people of the second and third millennium BC.
Talbott concluded that, before about 3000 BC, Saturn had stood over the north pole of Earth as an immense globe, connected to Earth with a stream of dust or water, with Mars in an intermediate position. The era of this polar apparition was universally remembered throughout the world as the "Age of the Gods." During this era, Saturn ruled and man lived in paradise with the Gods. The closing of that time was mourned throughout the world and has shaped us ever since. [note 2a]
The ending of the "Age of the Gods" (ca 3100 BC) brought on an explosive rise in civilization: intensive agricultural practice (simultaneously in five or more unrelated regions), monumental constructions, cities, writing, kingships, and wars of conquest. The "Age of the Gods" permanently set our concepts of Gods, heaven, and rebirth, and became the basis of all religions. It shaped our languages, architecture, and political systems, and even our ferocious antipathy for our own species. Most importantly, humans developed a subjective consciousness some time after the close of the "Age of the Gods." The acquisition of subjective consciousness was neither a certain process nor a rapid one. I'll detail this along the way with the narrative.
In the present Chapter I'll describe how an explanation of the mechanics of a Polar Sun developed over the last 20 years. In subsequent Chapters I'll detail the significant events leading up to the historical age -- the seventh century BC. This Chapter will touch on all these events to some extent, but mainly on the first few.
Brief Chronology
-- 5800 BC: Saturn above Earth --
Saturn shows up above Earth and starts a plasma discharge to Earth. Earth is in a close orbit around the Sun, as are all the other planets. The stars are not seen for the next 1700 years. Saturn is mostly obscured, and only near the end of this period starts to show as a giant egg in the sky. This is the era before creation.-- 4186 BC: Saturn lights up --
Saturn goes through a nova event -- a mass discharge which creates its rings and Venus -- and Saturn lights up. This is the moment of 'Creation.' The arc at the point of contact with Earth creates massive cloudbanks and glaciation. Venus is in orbit around Saturn and Mars hangs below. The "Age of the Gods" begins. Mars makes eight 'descents' to Earth.-- 3114 BC: The Gods leave --
Saturn is in a near collision with Jupiter. The "Age of the Gods" ends with the "Flood of Gilgamesh." Plasma discharges between Jupiter and Saturn are seen as the "battle of the Gods." Earth, Mars, and Venus escape to eccentric orbits. Mars, on a slightly larger orbit, partly coincides with Earth's orbit and is seen visiting Earth as Horus ten times for 300 years after 3000 BC. The Gods leave as both Saturn and Jupiter move to orbits farther removed from the Sun. Jupiter stays active and develops a coma. He becomes the chief God in almost all societies.-- 2300, 2200 BC: Noah's Flood --
- 2349 BC: Venus passes above Earth at a close distance causing "Noah's Flood" and changing Earth's orbit; the fall of the Absu. The Moon appears in orbit around Earth soon after.
- 2247 BC: A sudden extinction of Jupiter's coma. The death of Yâo. The Burning Tower, an event told worldwide in legends recalling how people lost language or memory.
- 2193 BC: (156 years after 2349 BC) Venus again passes close to Earth (the fourth time in this period). The Old Kingdom of Egypt ends and the Akkadian empire falls. The Earth changes orbits again.-- 1500 BC: Exodus --
- 1492 BC: Venus passes close to Earth during the Exodus of Moses. An arc is struck which circles Earth at about 30 degrees latitude. The Earth's orbit changes. Skies are obscured by heavy clouds for 40 years.
- 1440 BC: (52 years later) Venus again comes close to Earth. The Middle Kingdom of Egypt ends. The sun stands still for Joshua. Mesoamerica is destroyed.-- 8th, 7th Century BC: The Start of History --
- 776 BC: A simultaneous visit is made by Venus and Mars (the "ball game"). There continue to be repeated close calls by Mars over a period of 60 years.
- 747 BC: Mars jars Earth. The Earth's orbit changes. Calendar reforms are made worldwide.
- 686 BC: Mercury jars Earth.
- 685 BC: Venus goes nova. Jupiter bolts the Sun (the death of Quetzalcoatl). The polar axis and the equinox shift.
- 670 BC: Earth's orbit becomes circular.
The Osiris Mystery
In the first century AD, Plutarch, in an essay "Concerning the Mysteries of Isis ans Osiris," described the strange liturgies of the Egyptians. Plutarch was at a loss to explain the story of Isis and Osiris which so pervaded all of Egyptian thinking. Plutarch's reaction was based on 400 years of Greek common sense. He thus reduced the story to a series of metaphors and similes, even equating the death and resurrection of Osiris with the rise and fall of the Nile and the growth of vegetation. But it becomes obvious from Plutarch's repeated attempts at explanation that he failed to understand the mysteries which in his time were already 3000 years old.
We will progress no further than Plutarch in our attempts to explain myths and the mythical histories of the Gods if we refuse to accept myths at face value -- that is, as long as we persist in metaphorical explanations. I do not believe that the myths of antiquity were written as metaphors for lightning, sunshine, or spring, or as guides to moral behaviour. This last is especially suspect, for if myths form the basis for religion, one would expect them to have some exemplary content. However, this is universally lacking. Myths have no point to make. They are, in fact, history. [note 3]
In the 1980's I ran into Immanuel Velikovsky's books. Velikovsky managed to bring ancient myths together into a cohesive story which retold the myths as history -- specifically a history of planetary events affecting the Earth. Velikovsky published "Worlds in Collision" in 1950 and "Earth in Upheaval" in 1955. [note 4a]
"Worlds in Collision" is actually very readable and started to answer many questions about antiquity, about Mesoamerica, and about the strange concerns and thinking of our ancestors. There are problems with some of Velikovsky's research. "Worlds in Collision" seems at times dated, for, despite the fact that nothing more relevant exists, many of the sources are from late antiquity or, just as suspect for us, from the late 19th through the middle of the 20th century. References in "Worlds in Collision" are also at times selectively quoted (although I find this less troublesome) and at times attributed to the wrong era.
Velikovsky's second book, "Earth in Upheaval," was presented as a compendium of physical data bearing on the subject, but the physical data fails to be convincing, whereas the literary sources of the first book succeed wonderfully in telling a believable story. Of course literary sources are absolutely suspect to 'scientists' and the major contemporaneous critiques of Velikovsky came from staid scientific disciplines.
Mostly the critiques represented reactions to Velikovsky's suggestions of catastrophism. But catastrophism soon entered the very disciplines which had objected to it so vehemently, although always placed safely distant in the past. The acceptance of the giant meteor (meteorite) crater depression in the Yucatan as indicative of a catastrophic event (responsible for the worldwide K-T boundary layer of Iridium dated at 65 million years ago) was an admission by the scientific community that 'such things' could happen. Academics might entertain catastrophes millions of years ago, but not within the early historic era.
Velikovsky, however, dealt specifically with historical time, not geological time. "Worlds in Collision" recounts how Venus ran on an eccentric orbit around the Sun in the second millennium BC, crossing Earth's orbit regularly. Velikovsky suggested that Venus had been recently expelled from Jupiter, that it showed with the tail of a comet, and that it approached Earth in 1492 BC, swinging around it before proceeding on its course, to return again 52 years later for another approach. [note 4]
Velikovsky held that the approaching planet was taken by the Hebrews as the savior God of the Exodus. The Hebrews left Egypt during the confusion and devastation which resulted from the close approach of a planet of equal size to the Earth. It caused the demise of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. The Earth's orbit increased, and the year lengthened. It is only becoming clear during the last decade how this could have happened and what the forces between the two bodies would have been.
"Worlds in Collision" relates another disturbance of Earth after 747 BC, this time due to a series of disruptive close approaches of Mars, at one time involving also the Moon and Venus. The details of these interactions are described vividly in the "Iliad" as the combat of the Gods paralleling the Trojan War by the mortals below. The "Odyssey" recounts the play of Mars and the Moon, as does the Mesoamerican "Popol Vu." This epoch of over a hundred years closes with Mars and Earth taking on their current positions around the Sun and another change in the Earth's orbit. In 747 BC the year lengthened to 365 and 1/4 days. Everywhere calendars were updated, most often by adding five days to the end of the old year. [note 6]
Both Venus and Mars were held in awe by many peoples, and Venus in particular was closely watched for the next 3000 years in Mesoamerica to the complete exclusion of the Sun and the Moon. This, in fact, is one of the most curious aspects of our historic past. As Velikovsky wrote,
"The Sun and the Moon are two great luminaries, and it is easily understandable that the imagination of the peoples should be preoccupied with them and should ascribe to them mythological deeds. Yet the ancient mythologies of the Chaldeans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the Maya, preoccupy themselves not with the Sun or the Moon, but prima facie with the planets."-- Immanuel Velikovsky, unpublished document at [http://www.varchive.org]
Not everything written by Velikovsky is plausible; for example, his suggestion that small flies descended from Venus on a close approach to Earth! His theories of the separation of atmospheric gases likewise do not stand up well to accepted postulates of chemistry and physics. But Velikovsky never attempted to define a physics for his described events, although he checked closely with people who would know and thus seldom misspoke his conclusions. [note 7]
Naturally, when Velikovsky missed some point, his critics would pounce on him like tigers. But the force of his argument does not derive from physics or exact dates (although he had a penchant for dates) but from an accumulation of literary sources. I struggled with the mechanics involved in the close approach of Earth and Venus, but what rang most true for me was his recitation of the ten commandments in Hebrew -- as the groans of an Earth writhing with seismic waves -- when the mountains groaned and "the hills danced like little lambs."
Velikovsky spent much of the rest of his life defending his theories, demanding tests be made by the establishment, and making predictions. He was correct all too frequently. He had an amazing ability to connect disparate information and to see connections where others could not. He wrote a number of additional books dealing with the chronology of the Middle East, filling 600 year gaps. Most of that later work either has been accepted or is still under discussion. [note 8]
Velikovsky had intended to write a history of events preceding the close approach of Venus in 1500 BC, but put it aside. It would have involved Mercury, Saturn, and Jupiter. One comment he made was that he thought the Earth had at one time been a satellite of Saturn. That suggestion started David Talbott on a search for contrary evidence.
David Talbott's Saturn
David Talbott initially sought to disprove Velikovsky's notion that Earth had at one time been a satellite of Saturn, but twenty years later he was solidly convinced otherwise, publishing "The Saturn Myth" in 1980.
The "Saturn Myth" held that, in the early history of Mesopotamia and Egypt, Saturn had loomed very large over the north pole of the Earth, with Mars and Venus (?) in between and all four connected by a stream of particles of dust or water -- the axis mundi. Absurd as this might initially seem, all the religious documents of the early Middle Eastern civilizations point to the same idea, as do the Vedas, Chinese, Celtic, Maya, and Norse recollections, and the legends of people elsewhere throughout the world.
The Sun (our current Sun) was but a minor character in all this. One role it played was to light up the edge of Saturn. This became the first index of the passage of time, the first "clock." (Saturn or Kronos translates to 'time.') From the Earth, below the south pole of Saturn, a crescent could be seen rotating on a daily basis around the edge of the immense globe, suspended above the north horizon as the Earth turned.
The configuration of Saturn, Venus, Mars, and Earth all in a line -- the "polar alignment" -- presented some very real dynamic problems, for it was initially thought that all the planets were located in the same plane, that is, the ecliptic, and rotated around the Sun in unison, with the earth's pole pointing toward Saturn. The idea that Saturn revolved around the Sun with the other three planets hidden behind it -- called the "shishkebab alignment" -- would in effect have placed Earth on its side. The crescent seen on Saturn, under this model, was thought to be the planet Jupiter, located between Saturn and the Sun, just partially visible and lit by the Sun. But it wasn't so.
The stumbling block in this four-planet shishkebab, as first proposed, was the suggestion that all the planets would, in effect, be on their sides and, if the whole arrangement orbited the Sun, the direction in which the poles pointed would constantly change. The dynamics of such an arrangement are untenable, despite the acceptance of this configuration by a number of physicists and aerospace engineers. Earth is a gyroscope, and twisting a gyroscope's spin axis makes it react violently. The Earth would have split asunder from the forced change in rotational momentum.
One of the first independent analyses of the dynamics concluded that this configuration would only work if Mars were allowed to oscillate between Saturn and Earth -- thus alternately coming closer to and receding from the Earth. Strange as the shishkebab alignment was, this was even stranger, yet this is what Talbott had surmised from his investigations but never published.
Details of the "Saturn Myth" were argued for another 20 years. During that time there were a number of competing models, all created to fit the imagery derived from before 3100 BC. Interestingly, the imagery was never in question. Some researchers disputed the assignment of planet names to the polar apparition, and some argued for completely different phenomena. But there has been little disagreement that the imagery appears universally, certainly within the region defined by cultural diffusion from Mesopotamia -- to Egypt, Greece, India, and Rome.
Concordance from further afield was spotty and often could be argued as selectively picked, but most is better established today. There is evidence of these tales from Africa, Meso-America, South America, China, Oceania, but on a lesser scale and always much later. Van der Sluijs at one time said, "None." But he also did not consider the creation 'myths' from China, or the Nordic tale of heaven atop a tree, in effect the axis mundi seen from a completely different vantage point (as is the 'bridge to the Other World' of the Celts), or the underlying strata of mythical elements which show up in Mesoamerican and South American sources.
It was initially surmised that the celestial phenomenon of a large globe suspended above the north pole had already existed since before the Old Kingdom of Egypt (before 3000 BC) and came to a final end with the dissolution of the Old Kingdom (after 2300 BC). The concluding date proved to be incorrect and there was no information about what might have come before 3000 BC.
The era before 3000 BC became a field of speculation for some authors. Many assumed that Earth had always existed below the south pole of Saturn. Dwardu Cardona could imagine life developing on an Earth enveloped within the coronal glow discharge of the sun Saturn. [note 9]
Whatever brought the polar alignment to an end also remained a mystery, but its demise was to be preserved in the religious observances of Egypt as the mysteries of Isis and Osiris. For thousands of years Egypt remained an extremely conservative society. The 1000 mile-long landscape, bordered by deserts on both sides, kept Egypt from invasion and from many outside influences and, together with its successful agricultural production, provided no reason to do anything different from what had been done in the past. If we were to seek a single reliable record of a world view from antiquity, it would be Egyptian. It was the Egyptian sources which Talbott used for his book "The Saturn Myth." [note 10]
What brought the Saturnian Configuration to an end was an interaction with the planet Jupiter, which at that time probably orbited much closer to the Sun. Jupiter is massive -- it has more mass than all the rest of the planets of the Solar System together. Jupiter is also stable. With an enormous mass and rotating at a period of 9 hours, it represents most of the rotational inertia of the Solar System. Jupiter would not budge. It tore the gas giant Saturn apart -- or so it looked from the vantage point of Earth.
This became the Egyptian tale of Osiris (Saturn) who is killed and dismembered by his evil brother Seth (Jupiter), his body parts strewn along the Nile river (more likely the zodiac, at that time cluttered with dust) and resurrected as Horus (Mars). Isis (Venus) is the sister of Osiris, who collects his body parts for burial and is instrumental in his resurrection as Horus. Other Middle Eastern sources have similar tales. St. Paul readily equated the death and resurrection of Christ with that of Osiris. Throughout all of the world (except initially in Egypt) Jupiter (the name translates as "youth" or "the younger") gains ascendancy to become the new primary god. In Egypt Jupiter is identified as Seth, the evil killer of Osiris, but among some sect he is Osiris himself. [note 11]
Adding a Plasma Connection
Wal Thornhill ran into the cosmology of Talbott by accident, and immediately understood it in completely different terms. Having studied the works of plasma theorists, which hold that the nature of the sun is not nuclear but electrical and that virtually all phenomenon in the Universe are exhibitions of plasma discharges, Thornhill was able to bring a completely different approach to the mechanics of the Saturnian Polar Configuration. He maintained that the connecting stream between the planets wasn't water or dust -- it was a plasma stream from Saturn at glow or arc level.
I'll discuss plasma here briefly. For more information see the websites of Wal Thornhill, Don Scott, and Anthony Peratt. For an independent view see the site of Laszlo Kortvelyessy. [note 11d]
A plasma stream represents a flow of electrical current through a low density gas or an easily ionized gas. The current could be composed of electrons, negatively charged ions, protons, or positively charged ions, in any mix. The number of electrons or positive ions need only represent a few percent.
The flow of positive or negative charge carriers can happen simultaneously and would flow in opposite directions. (The 'current' only flows in one direction.) The space between stars, and even between galaxies, contains enough electrons and protons to allow the flow of plasma. The 'vacuum' of intergalactic space thus supports plasma streams billions of miles wide and light years long. These can often be be seen in X-ray imaging.
A plasma flow could thus be understood as a very low level gas, however, it does not behave as a gas. It is electrical in nature, not unlike the controlled current flows we use for electricity in wires. The plasma current flow results from a difference in the electric field potential from place to place -- think of it as a 'voltage' difference.
Plasma streams take three forms. The 'dark mode' represents the least current, and is invisible. In the 'glow mode' the flow is visible because the increased energy of the electrons makes them radiate light. In the 'arc mode' the ionized media is so energized that it radiates not only visible light but also ultra violet and x-rays. Although arc mode represents the highest current flow, the discharge in arc mode still takes time because plasma streams are self-limiting even at large current levels.
Plasma streams tend to organize into strings, induced by the constriction of the surrounding (circular) magnetic fields induced by the current flow. At smaller dimensions, as in plasma streams between planets, these strings tend to pair into twisted bundles, called Birkeland currents. [note 11a]
The common "flash tube" used for cameras is a plasma discharge through an ionized gas. The flow of current (amperage) can be astoundingly high -- currents in flash tubes often exceed a thousand amps. Only the fact that the flash is of very short duration keeps the glass from melting.
Plasma streams are applied commercially, as in (for example) neon lighting, UV lamps, pulsed xenon lamps, neon lamps, carbon arc lamps, electrical arc welding, and electronic flash. Plasma streams are used in precision metal milling, and in (some) radio vacuum tubes and gas rectifiers.
Natural plasma displays include electrical arcing, lightning, ball lightning, Saint Elmo's fire, such obvious phenomena as flames, and less obvious phenomena such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and water spouts. Plasma in space is seen at galactic dimensions and between binary stars. In our Solar System the multi-million volt lightning strokes between the rings of Saturn are plasma displays, as is the generation of the light of the Sun. The tails and comas of comets are plasma discharges.
The most spectacular display of plasma in arc mode is seen at Jupiter's satellite Io, which has a 'volcano' facing Jupiter that has been belching incessantly and continuously for all of the 30 years since it was first spotted. During that time it has moved (50 miles) and never built a cone. Although it looks like a volcano, it is a strike point of a plasma stream between Jupiter and Io. The plasma stream is dispersed over a wide area at Jupiter and thus at a very diffuse density -- in dark mode -- but it is concentrated at Io in a single spot (the closest point to Jupiter), thus driving the current density up to such a high level as to be in arc mode. The current flow is estimated at 5 million amperes. [note 11c]
Venus' magnetosphere tail (which is a planetary plasma) extends some 30 million miles away from the Sun as a plasma stream in dark mode, and consists (as recently found by a space craft) of a twisted string -- a Birkeland current. [note 11b]
The Talbott / Thornhill model
Thornhill also made it obvious that planets are globes which each carry an electrical charge and it is this -- their electric field -- which keeps them apart. The planets in the Saturnian polar model would keep their distance from each other because the electrical repulsion would quickly equal gravitational attraction at close distances, that is, within the enclosing plasmasphere of Saturn. [note 12]
Thornhill's additional major change in the model was to stack Saturn and its planets one above each other so that, in rotation about the Sun, the side of Saturn would be lighted by the Sun -- a stroke of genius. He proposed that the Saturnian System, including the planets Earth and Mars (he does not believe that Venus was part of this group) first entered the Solar System in ca 3200 BC and approached from below at an angle of 24 degrees to the ecliptic.
This suggestion solved the problem posed by the continuous change in the spin axes of the planets required by the shishkebab model. The spin axes of all the planets would now remain unchanged as the Saturnian System (sort of) corkscrewed into a circular orbit on approaching the plane of the ecliptic. After a relatively quiet period, during which time man lived with the Gods, the three planets would join the other Solar planets, although not until after a number of violent interactions which displaced Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars to more distant locations. Thornhill estimated that it would have taken less than 300 years. [note 13]
By the Talbott / Thornhill model, Earth would have existed within the glow level plasma discharge (the coronal envelope) of Saturn before the intersection with the Solar System, and within the memory of mankind. This condition would have provided an amount of light which did not vary from day to night. The stars and other planets would have been invisible, and perhaps not even Saturn would have been seen -- just the "waters above."
Then, as Thornhill would suggest, on approaching the Solar System from deep space, and finding itself in a space dominated by the electric field of the Sun, Saturn would shrink its discharge envelope until both Mars and Earth were located outside the sphere of visible discharge. As we approached the Sun, Saturn would become visible in the waters above as a giant globe hovering in the sky at the north pole.
This scene is, in fact, the worldwide scenerio of creation: Chaos dissolving into an image of a large globe. The waters above dissolve to show "land" -- the original land of Paradise. Everywhere this land was called "Earth," while the place where humans lived was called "Lower Earth," and at a later date "Middle Earth."
As the radius of Saturn's coronal discharge envelope shrinks, the glow discharge changes to an arc discharge. Saturn suddenly lights up like a sun and connects to Earth, via Mars, with an electric arc. God is born, and 'creation' ensues. The waters below have separated from the 'waters' above and light is created - not the light of the Sun, but the coronal discharge of Saturn. As related in all creation mythologies, mankind was witness to the birth of God and the creation of the Universe. The Universe, however, consisted only of 'Upper Earth' in the north and (as I will detail later) rings of debris standing in the sky in the south, thought to represent an ocean. Humans thought of themselves as living in a valley between these two regions. Only in the far north of Earth was it obvious that the globe in the sky was nearly overhead. [note 14]
Saturn in the Solar System
Thornhill's plasma/electrical model solved many of the problems of Talbott's composite imagery. However, Thornhill suggested an initiation of the signs in the sky in 3200 BC, and a demise within a few hundred years. I really doubt that there was such an easy transition. The description is correct, but simplified. It must have been considerably more complex and violent. And it would have taken much longer. I think, in fact, that altogether it took over a half billion years for the intersection of Saturn with the Solar System to resolve into the quiescent conditions we experience today.
The following are my objections to some aspects of this model:
First of all, objects entering the Solar System from afar go into wildly eccentric orbits, rather than circularizing gracefully within a few hundred years, no matter from which direction they come. None of the present planets have as yet settled down to orbits flattened to the equator of the Sun and not all have circularized their orbits. [note 15]
Secondly, in the Thornhill model the Saturnian System entered the Solar System from below the ecliptic. However, this is based on the unstated assumption that the Sun and its planets (and by extension, any star) together move in the direction of the Sun's north pole -- what we would call "up". This is, in fact, the movement of the whole Solar System in its rotation about the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. But there is no particular reason why the Saturnian System would be moving in a similar manner, that is, in the "up" direction of the axis of Saturn. It might have been moving in any direction and become displaced from its course by the gravitational attraction of the Sun. Saturn (and its planets) could have arrived from any direction. Over time the path taken by Saturn around the Sun would have flattened out to the ecliptic. What is important is that the direction of the spin axes of Saturn and its satellites would not have changed. They are today still at 31 degrees to the axis of the Sun (24 to 27 degrees from perpendicular to their individual orbits). Spin (rotational momentum) is very stable, in that it represents an enormous amount of kinetic energy.
Third, Saturn would not gently corkscrew its way into the ecliptic to find a location among the other planets. If Saturn came into the Solar System from outside, it would act similar to a comet on approaching the Sun. The Sun is big -- 12 times the diameter of Saturn and more than 3,500 times the mass. Saturn would be gravitationally attracted and would speed up on approaching the Sun, whip around the Sun at close range (the perihelion of its orbit), and then disappear into space to return again after a long interval.
I am thus suggesting a far longer period of interaction between Saturn and the Solar System and a far more complex series of interactions. Some of the interactions can be traced and dated. We have the information at hand.
As Saturn repeatedly closed in on the Sun, it would retain its original planets as satellites, although some planets might be wrenched free and start orbiting the Sun independently. Any planets lost from Saturn would probably orbit the Sun in close orbits, much closer than Earth's present orbit, with differing inclination to the ecliptic and probably also with differing eccentricities. (Eccentricity is a measure of how much an orbit deviates from the circular, and thus how elliptical the orbit is.) Seldom would these orbits intersect. Saturn, because of its considerable mass, would remain on its very eccentric orbit, with the closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) near the orbits of its lost planets and an aphelion billions of miles away.
Additionally I would locate Jupiter much closer to the Sun during this period. At one time we assumed from the knowledge of our current Solar System that other star systems would exhibit similar structures -- small planets in close orbits and larger planets in far orbits. The Earth today is located at a distance of 93 million miles from the Sun, called an Astronomical Unit (AU). Jupiter is today located 5 AU from the Sun; Saturn is at 9 AU. Uranus and Neptune are far beyond that. However, we have since found over a hundred stars with detectable planets, and in all cases we have been astounded that these stars have planets the size of Jupiter at distances of only one to two AU from the star -- that is, not much further away from the star than the current distance of Earth from the Sun.
It would thus not be unreasonable to suggest that, at an earlier time, Jupiter might have orbited the Sun at only one or two AU. At this location Jupiter would have a strong influence in modulating the orbits of any of the inner planets, and eventually provide the cause for the close of the "Age of the Gods."
What I will suggest in a following Chapter is that Saturn probably first intersected the Solar System at the start of the Cambrian, 560 million years ago. At that time the Saturnian planets (satellites), including Earth, continued to travel with Saturn, protected by the coronal envelope surrounding Saturn. I will further suggest that Earth was captured by the Sun only after the Permian, 250 million years ago.
Between the Cambrian and very recent time, Saturn remained on an extremely long period, crashing through the inner portion of the Solar System only infrequently. Some time before the last three million years, that period was greatly reduced so that, by the time of the first humans, Saturn swept through the inner planets regularly.
This information would set the stage for the events of the eventual capture of Earth below the south pole of Saturn. I will address this period, starting in about 9000 BC, a few Chapters hence (Chapter 6, "Creation and the Polar Sun").
First I will establish: (1) in Chapter 2, "The Solar System and Cosmology," some matters of distance and time for the Universe and the Solar System, (2) in Chapter 3, "Saturn and Evolution," a history of Saturn and the Solar System and the evolution of life, (3) in Chapter 4, "The Ice Ages," the rise of Homo Sapiens, and (4) in Chapter 5, "Archaeology," the first signs of Saturn in the Upper Paleolithic.
You could safely skip this background information and start with the first part of the main narrative, [Chapter 6].
Endnotes
Almost every satellite of every planet revolves around the parent planet at the equator of the parent planet, even the wildly tilted planet Uranus. The Moon is not a satellite. It is a planet sharing the same orbit around the Sun as Earth. The moon does not travel on the Earth's equator, which it would if it were a satellite of Earth. It travels in the ecliptic. None of the planetary satellites do that. That is why the moon relocates higher and lower in the sky over the period of the year. It is also much too far from its primary (Earth), and way too large to be a satellite of Earth.
Two satellites of Jupiter are larger, and one of Saturn, but they
orbit planets which are 10 times larger than earth in diameter, and none
of these large satellites are as far away from their primary. Most
satellites are also very close to their primary. Only Saturn's moons
Iapetus and Phoebe are very distant (2 and 8 million miles), and the eight
outer moons of Jupiter are all beyond 8 million miles (and on very
irregular orbits).
[return to text]
Saturn is about the right size to have been a minor star and was
thought to be a a ball of gas, although today it is known to consist
mostly of liquid hydrogen -- not typical of a star by current precepts.
Yet the amount of energy put out by Saturn today (including plasma flows,
x-rays, and radio waves) exceeds the amount received from the Sun by a
factor of three. That Saturn may have been a star has been suggested by a
number of people over the years, but based on Saturn being composed almost
entirely of gases.
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See David Talbott, "The Saturn Myth" (1980).
The conclusion that Saturn, or the God associated with Saturn, had stood at the north pole was generally held by most mythologists, from worldwide sources, although it remained inexplicable how this could be.
Similarly Giorgio de Santilliana and Hertha von Dechend, in "Hamlet's Mill" (1969), came to the same conclusion although the authors then deny their findings because the conclusions were so unbelievable. Instead they attribute the primacy of Saturn in antiquity to a metaphor for the precession of the equinoxes, and posit this understanding and very early awareness to be the case for all societies in the world. Anecdotally, de Santilliana and von Dechend started their investigation in order to disprove Velikovsky's claims.
Dwardu Cardona, in "God Star" (2006), furnishes a massive update from
mythological sources.
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"Myth narrates nothing," writes Jean Markale in "The Celts, Uncovering the Mythic and Historic Origins of Western Culture" (1978), refuting Mircéa Eliade. We all too readily resort to using metaphors, since 'metaphor' is the basis of all our thinking and some people will insist that metaphor is the only interpretation of myth. Thus Leroy Ellenberger's 1994 critique of Talbott's book, "The Saturn Myth," reads, in part...
"He [Talbott] insists on literal interpretations of texts ... to the exclusion of metaphor and many other modes of expression."-- Usenet talk.origins group, 1994
However, Talbott is correct in avoiding metaphorical interpretations. He is certain that the texts deal with descriptions of actual events. Yet as a reader you will notice that the Saturnian researchers often invoke metaphors when they are uncertain of the physical events or processes which are being described by ancient texts.
I will insist later in this text that our ancestors were completely
incapable of metaphorical expressions until the first millennium BC.
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The reaction to "Worlds in Collision" was absolutely volitile, especially from the scientific community for whom the ideas expressed by Velikovsky countered all the "scientific narratives" they had grown up with and had accepted as invarient thruths. The following is a recounting of the personal reaction by John Godowski, an engineer.
"I opened the book to somewhere in the middle, read about half a paragraph, and I was stunned, astonished, and violently angered! No book had ever before or since provoked such a violent response from me - I was furious!""... Like some warped version of a Greek myth gone literally mad -- written in a scholarly tone no less! With Footnotes! That was even worse! How could anyone with even the intelligence to put a decent sentence together actually stoop so low as to write such a thing? Was he a Crackpot? Out of his mind?"
"Didn't he know about the billions and billions of years and the nebular theory of solar system formation? He couldn't have had an eighth grade education and not known! Therefore he must have known this was Totally False and Impossible before he ever put pen to paper."
".. Think of the damage to Science he is doing! By writing such horribly absurd things - in a seemingly scholarly text - as though he meant to be taken seriously - what will happen when people who are not scientists (or engineering majors like me) read works like this - the work of a silver tongued scientific sounding Charlatan! He will take us back to the Dark Ages - He's trying to undermine Science! No regard at all for Truth!"
-- John Godowski, quoted by Robert Fritzius at [http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/]
Ten years later Godowski became convinced otherwise.
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From the physical characteristics of Venus, it has obviously been created recently. There are many claims in antiquity to this -- "born of Zeus" -- that is, Jupiter. Some people point to the red spot of Jupiter in evidence of a possible mass expulsion as a reaction to the fall of an asteroid into Jupiter.
The millions of asteroids today floating between Mars and Jupiter are suggested to be the remnants of the supposed planet "Krypton" which at one time was assumed to have revolved around the Sun at that location. Krypton thus is understood to be a rocky planet which exploded in the past, and might have sent a fragment bounding towards Jupiter. But the separation dates of the asteroids (in terms of the meteorites which reach Earth) do not match the speculated date of a recent breakup of Krypton. The breakup of the asteroids happened 3.2 million years ago (with others dating back 30 million years, and for some as much as 700 million years).
Venus was, however, not an expulsion of Jupiter, but a escaped
satellite of Saturn, new in about 4200 BC. Venus was without a doubt on an
elliptical orbit, and did cross Earth's orbit in an earlier time. More on
this in following text.
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Most of the changes in planetary orbits are due to changes in the
ellipticity of these orbits, and the slow rotation of the second node of
the elliptical orbits. The changes in orbits can be readily explained by
the electrical fields experienced by two planets as their plasmaspheres
touched and merged. The seismic disturbance experienced by the Earth's
crust, due to the repulsive electrical forces, were felt at considerable
distances (often millions of miles) and were real and massive. More on
this in another chapter.
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Venus has been implicated in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1917. The
suggestion is that the Sun, Venus, and Earth would have had to have been
in line a few months earlier -- with the Moon as an intermediate
connection. This can be shown to hold for recent viral epidemics. Thus the
suggestion that the tail of Venus could affect the incubation of insects
is not altogether without precedent. For more details see the file
"Venus and Epidemics."
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Immanuel Velikovsky "Ages in Chaos" (1952), "Peoples of the Sea" (1977), "Rameses II and His Time" (1978), and, never published: "The Dark Ages of Greece" and "The Assyrian Conquest". Some of the unpublished material may be found on line at [http://www.varchive.org].
See Peter James "Centuries of Darkness" (1991) for work coming out of
the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies.
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Cardona is correct that the Earth could have existed within a plasma discharge (in this case like a rarefied 'atmosphere') of a brown dwarf star. The temperature of the plasma might be quite high, but of such low density that it would be equivalent to 'outer space.' The border conditions of the electric field surrounding the Earth would isolate and protect the Earth's atmosphere from external conditions. Today the Earth exists under exactly the same conditions within the plasma discharge ("atmosphere") of the Sun.
Titan, one of the moons of Saturn (today), and one of the largest
moons anywhere (somewhat smaller than Mars), has a nitrogen atmosphere and
a cloud cover. It was presumed to have rainfall, for, as reported by the
ESO VLT (2004), there were possible "huge surface reservoirs of liquid
hydrocarbons" under the heavy clouds. The NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft
descended to Titan's surface in early 2005, to find it dry, but with an
atmosphere of methane, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Titan exists within
the discharge of plasma and radiation of Saturn.
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There are Mesopotamian influences in Egypt (bottle seals and other signs of trade) up to about 3100 or 3000 BC, at least in the Delta region ('Lower Egypt'). But they stop suddenly, and Egypt takes a completely independent course in its subsequent history.
Talbott's sources were initially from what later would be known as "The Book of the Dead" -- a compilation of spells, many of which are descriptive of the acts of the deities involved.
Talbott had been confronted with a confusing set of data in trying to
make sense of Egyptian records, for the priesthood of Egypt kept track of
every element of all the varied images in the sky viewed over a period of
perhaps a thousand years, and all elements and symbols were superimposed
on each other. This was probably the result of a democracy of Gods and
religious practices among the many separate nomes (the 40 distinct temple
districts of Egypt). The numerous variations of spells of the Egyptian
"Book of the Dead" parallel this confusion. The welter of details that
Talbott managed to extract suggested bizarre and inexplicable physical
conditions -- it was almost unbelievable.
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See the endnote to the Preface.
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Jupiter was probably held to be Seth or, more likely, the mummified
Osiris, until the 4th Dynasty, after 2600 BC, when the religious climate
changes and Jupiter is recognized as Re, the Midnight Sun. Between 3000 BC
and 2700 BC it is Mars/Horus who looms largest in the sky and in religious
practices.
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The Birkeland bundles happen in arc mode and high level glow mode.
There are additional configurations in high level arc mode, such as the
separation into stable patterns of 28 or 56 bundles. When traveling long
distances in arc mode, the streams tend to disconnect from the source
(because of a voltage drop) and continue to travel with a twisted body,
collapsed ball-shaped ends, and what looks like fork-like tines at both
ends. These are known as 'plasmoids,' and can travel millions of miles.
Plasmoids are depicted in sculptures of the gods in antiquity in Europe,
Asia, and Mesoamerica.
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See Thomas Gold "Electrical Origin of the Outbursts on Io," Science,
206:1071, 1979
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For a discussion of interplanetary electrical fields and plasma, the exterior negative charges of planets, and the electrical characteristics of the Sun, see the 1972 article by Ralph E. Juergens, "Reconciling Celestial Mechanics and Velikovskian Catastrophism," presented in Pesee (1974) as "Of The Moon and Mars" [part 1], and [part 2].
For a more recent well written discussion, see the 2005 essay by [James Hogan] from his book "Catastrophes, Chaos
and Convolutions" (2005).
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A planet would only sense the exterior shell of surplus electrons of another planet (if close enough). Each planet is enclosed in a 'coma' of plasma, where the electrical field of the planet gradually dimishes until a double layer of particles is reached at the extreme of the enclosing coma. At the double layer the electric field inverts to match the exterior electric field of the Sun. The double layer thus isolates (shields) a planet from being sensed by any other planet. (Electric fields do not extend beyond conductive surfaces.)
Planets without a magnetic field or without an atmosphere will form a coma close to the surface. For a planet with a magnetic field, the coma will be shaped sort of like an apple, with the two dimples located above the location of the magnetic poles of the planet. This apple-shaped coma, called a magnetosphere, rotates with the rotation of the magnetic poles of a planet on a daily basis. The magnetosphere often extends ten to twenty diameters beyond a planet.
In the direction away from the Sun there will be a shadow of the Sun's electric field, and the coma (magnetosphere) will extend into the shadow -- often by millions of miles. This forms the 'tail' of the magnetosphere of a planet.
If the plasmaspheres of two planets touch, they will reform to become a single enclosing coma. The planets will then sense each other's electric field, and repulsive forces will result (since both are negative). The planets will also attempt to equalize charge with an electrical discharge.
Existing within the magnetosphere of Saturn, Earth would sense only the exterior negative charge at the surface of Saturn (or at the limit of its atmosphere), even though Saturn might have had a surplus of protons at the interior.
Both gravitational attraction and electrical repulsion are functions
of the inverse of the square of the separating distance. At close
distances neither force would overwhelm the other and a stable balance
point could be reached between the two planets. How this attraction and
repulsion would force the gradual relocation of the Earth to a location
below the pole of Saturn is discussed in a following chapter.
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Thornhill's and Talbott's ideas were expressed at the Kronia Nevada
Conference of July 2001.
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In Genesis, God separated the waters below from the waters above by
creating the dome of the sky. This is the appearance of the northern stars
in 3114 BC, as the Gods leave the vicinity of Earth. The "waters above,"
which had been the plasma outpouring from Saturn to the surrounding space,
remain "above" as the dust laden zodiac, and additionally as equatorial
rings (discussed in later Chapters). It was the plasma stream connecting
from Saturn to Earth, looking like a stream of running water, which was
cut by God, thereby separating the earthly waters from the celestial
waters.
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Only Mercury revolves at the Sun's equator, although it also has the most elliptical orbit of any of the planets, doubling its distance from the Sun during each orbit. The remaining planets today have orbits differing by a few degrees from the "ecliptic" -- defined as the plane of the Sun and Earth, and 7 degrees off the Sun's equator. Pluto is off the ecliptic by 17 degrees and on a wildly eccentric orbit. I have never consider Pluto a planet.
I should also add that the 'flattening' of orbits may not strictly be required, because gravity represents a spherical field, the flattening of orbits is not due to the gravitational influence of the Sun. It is the minor tugs that larger planets exert on others with each passage which forces a flattening of orbits over an extended period of time.
The location of all the planets to a band extending only a limited amount above and below the Sun's equator is a phenomenon not defined by gravity. It is (probably) an electrical property, but remains undefined, and without a solid supporting theory. The same inexplicable phenomenon is seen in the rotation of nearly all planetary satellites at the equators of the planets (and all in the same direction), including the satellites of Uranus, which lies on its side with respect to the ecliptic.
The circularization of orbits in relatively short spans of time, as I
will suggest later, has happened in historic time, is similary due to
electrical interactions with the Sun, but also influenced by the large
planets.
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Calculations are in Unix bc notation, where ^ denotes
exponentiation; the functions (a)rctangent, (s)ine, and (c)osine use
radians; angle conversions to radians or degrees by the divisors rad=.017+
and deg=57.2+; other functions are shown as f( );
units: million == 1,000,000; billion == 1,000,000,000;
one AU == 93,000,000 miles.
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