April 5, 1997 EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke CONTENTS: THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (2)................David Talbott RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (Part 2)............................Ralph Juergens ----------------------------------------------- Quote of the day: It seems astonishing that in the course of half a century of studies of the sun in context with the thermonuclear theory, very few professional astrophysicists have ever expressed the slightest discomfort over discrepancies between observation and theory, or even over the fact that an ad hoc extra theory has had to be devised to explain practically every individual feature of the solar atmosphere. Ralph Juergens ----------------------------------------------- THE MYTH OLF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (2) By David Talbott (dtalbott at teleport.com) The ancient Sumerians repeatedly proclaimed that kingship had descended directly from the creator-king An, the most ancient and highest god of the pantheon, and the revered founder of the Golden Age. Consider the myths and images of the Hindu Brahma, Manu or Yama, the Iranian Yima, Danish Frodhi, or Chinese Huang-Ti--all models of the good king, ruling over a primitive paradise. The respective cultures esteemed these mythical figures as *prototypes*. In later ages the chroniclers have such figures ruling on earth. But in the earliest traditions the kingdom is in the sky, and this ancient kingdom of the Universal Monarch is one of the most pervasive archetypes of world mythology. Natives of Mexico insisted that the great god Quetzalcoatl, a sun god who ruled before the present sun, was their first king and founder of the kingship rites. He not only introduced all of the arts of civilization, but presided over the Golden Age. The ancient Maya proclaimed that their once-spectacular civilization had its origins in the rule of the creator-king and god of the Golden Age, Itzam Na. At the center of Mayan culture, stood the sovereign chief, announcing himself as something like "the King of Kings and ruler of the world, regent on earth of the great Itzam Na." The leading Mayan expert, J. Eric Thompson, saw this an "inflated notion of grandeur," "a sort of divine right of kings which would have turned James I green with envy." And yet throughout the ancient world, one encounters this divine "grandeur" of kings at every turn. The original concept may appear as self flattery, but it actually has more to do with a *burden* of kings: the requirement that the king live up to the mythical aura of kings. Never was there a king in early times that did not wear the dress of a mythical god--the model of the good ruler. Whatever the celestial, founding king had achieved, it was the duty of the present king, pharaoh, or emperor to duplicate, at least through symbolic repetition. For such was the first test of a *good* king. This historical burden of kings will explain why every king was expected to renew the primeval era of peace and plenty. Why, for example, was the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III so eager to announce that he had restored conditions "as they were in the beginning", in the Tep Zepi or Golden Age of Ra? Or why did the Pharaoh Amenhotep III congratulate himself so for having made the country "flourish as in primeval times..."? The Pharaoh was expected to repeat the achievements of the celestial prototype! In the same way, when the Sumerian king Dungi ascended the throne, it was declared that a champion had arisen to restore the original Paradise.. Indeed, every Sumerian king was expected to reproduce the wonders of "That Day," or the "Year of Abundance"--the Golden Age of An. When the famous Assyrian king Assurbanipal took the throne, the chroniclers proclaimed that "the harvest was plentiful, the corn was abundant. . .the cattle multiplied exceedingly." For such was the accreditation of a good king. Among the Hebrews, the expectation was continually expressed that the king would introduce a new Golden Age. The Irish King, according to the respected expert J. A. MacCulloch, ruled under the same expectation: "Prosperity was supposed to characterize every good king's reign in Ireland," MacCulloch writes, and "the result is precisely that which everywhere marked the golden age." This is, of course, a very familiar idea. The ancient king was, in the words of the eminent psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, "the magical source of welfare and prosperity." It's interesting how often scholars have noticed the theme, without explaining it. How did this universal idea arise--that the earth is *fruitful* under the good king? The ideals of kingship, according to the myths themselves, were a mirror of the life and personality of the great celestial king whose rule brought abundance and cosmic harmony. Hence, the same state of things should accompany that king's successors who share in the blood-line and charisma of the great predecessor, whether that predecessor is called Ra or An, Quetzalcoatl or Itzam Na. Perhaps it will seem a bit strange that an ancient god identified as the creator would be so intimately associated with the idea of kingship, or remembered as having ruled on earth during the Golden Age. There is a fascinating paradox here: In the earliest traditions, as we've already noted, the Universal Monarch is a celestial power through and through. He is, in fact, the central light of heaven. But as we've also noted, in the course of time the creator-king's domain is progressively localized and the god takes on an increasingly human countenance as the "first king" of the particular nation telling the story. In certain lands such as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, we are able to observe the process over many centuries. In the earliest memories, Ra and An rule the sky, but later chroniclers in both lands depict them as *terrestrial* rulers. This localization of the creator-king is simply one part of a larger evolutionary process. As the myths evolve over time, the gods and heroes are brought down to earth, one nation after another claiming these divine powers as *ancestors*. And how could it be otherwise? Remember that all sacred activity within the respective cultures arose from the same collective links to the past, to the beauty and terror of the primeval age. "The further we go back in history," observed Carl Jung, "the more evident does the king's divinity become..." And when you trace the royal lineage backwards, you eventually confront the radiant figure at the head of the line. Since the story of this creator-king is as old as the myth of the Golden Age--it is older than the institution of kingship! Historians have always claimed that the myths of celestial kings were nothing more than images of local kings and kingship rites projected onto the sky. But comparative analysis will demonstrate that the reverse is true. The memory of the creator-king came first, and it was this remarkable memory which provided the mythical aura supporting and legitimizing kings the world over. Who, then--or what--was the source of this worldwide theme, this universally-remembered and profoundly charismatic power behind the rule of kings? THE ELECTRICAL SUN By Ralph Juergens --------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDITOR'S NOTE; The article below continues our republication of ground- breaking work by the late Ralph Juergens, in which he introduces the concept of an electrically powered Sun. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABSTRACT: The interplanetary medium is capable of confining the electric fields of charged celestial bodies within space-charge sheaths of limited dimensions. This phenomenon explains the success of gravitational theory in describing and predicting orbital motions in the present, relatively stable Solar System. Disruption of space-charge sheaths during close encounters between electrified planetary bodies may account for the catastrophic electromagnetic effects observed and reported by the survivors of near-collisions in ancient times. The known characteristics of the interplanetary medium suggest not only that the sun and the planets are electrically charged, but that the sun itself is the focus of a cosmic electric discharge--the probable source of all its radiant energy. RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (2) Let us now consider the problem posed by the seeming fact that the sun and the planets, all immersed in the interplanetary plasma, ought to acquire the electric potential--zero, one would guess --of that plasma. Some might claim that the problem itself is spurious, and that dispensing with it is as simple as chucking Worlds in Collision into the trash heap I contend, nevertheless, that the problem is real, and that observational evidence from many parts of the solar system can be marshaled to resolve it. This problem is real because we have ample evidence that the sun, the earth, and the moon are electrically charged bodies. Only one of the three--the moon--seems to have an electric potential equal to that of its environment, but from this we can only conclude that the environment itself has a potential as high as that of the moon. A quick review of just a few points of evidence will serve here to establish the reality of our problem. The sun is known to have a magnetic field of great complexity. Observations of coronal streamers at the poles of the sun during total eclipse suggest that at least a portion of this field has a dipole configuration, similar to that of the earth's field. Other observations suggest that in the sun's lower atmosphere the field is in a state of continual torment. The existence of the field, however, and even the existence of the complexities of that field in the lower atmosphere, can only be laid to electric currents. No matter how much theorists might like to minimize or even deny it, the fact remains that only electric currents give rise to magnetic fields. It is misleading to state simply that "moving charges" generate magnetic fields. Any body of ionized gas, for example, might be described as a collection of moving charges, since its charged particles are indeed in motion. For that matter, each charged particle moving about in such a gas can be said to constitute an elementary electric current. But so long as there is no net differential motion between positive and negative charges, the net electric current will be zero, and the body of gas will generate no magnetic field regardless of how violently it may be agitated. (However, if charges of one sign predominate over charges of the opposite sign, so that the body of gas indeed has a net electric charge, the effect of bulk gas motion will be quite different.) The fact that magnetic fields and effects attend motions in the sun's ionized gases--prime examples being the strong fields evident in connection with rotary motions in sunspots--is explainable most simply and satisfactorily by the conclusion that the solar gases are electrically charged--they contain an excess of particles of one kind--either positive or negative, but almost surely negative. The dipole component of the solar magnetic field can only be attributed to the rotation of the charged sun as a whole, as Dr. Velikovsky pointed out more than two decades ago (3). The earth's magnetic field was tentatively ascribed to electric charge on the earth nearly 100 years ago. In 1878, H. A. Rowland attempted to calculate the electric potential the earth would have to sustain to produce its observed magnetic field. His result--more than 4 x 1016 volts, negative-- seemed to him so ridiculous that he rejected it immediately. An electric charge of the necessary magnitude to give the earth such a potential, wrote Rowland, "would undoubtedly tear the earth to pieces and distribute its fragments to the uttermost parts of the universe (4)." Such arguments have convinced geophysicists ever since Rowland's time that an electric charge on the earth cannot be held responsible for terrestrial magnetism. Most recently, it has been fashionable to rest content with the so-called dynamo theory as an explanation for the earth's magnetic field. It is supposed that the field is generated by motions in the molten core of the earth. No one, however, has yet been able to show how electric currents might be produced by such motions. Professor James Warwick, of the University of Colorado, recently pointed out that the "dynamo theory has not yet successfully predicted any cosmical [magnetic] fields. Its use today rests on the assumption that no alternative theory corresponds more closely to observations (5)." [Warwick's italics] Even stronger objection to the dynamo theory is implied in this remark by Palmer Dyal and Curtis W. Parkin of NASA's Ames Research Center: "No rigorous theory has evolved that satisfactorily explains the earth's permanent magnetic field (6)." "Satisfactorily," of course, means without acknowledging the electric charge of the earth. Before proceeding, let us consider Rowland's notion that an enormous electric charge must blow the earth to smithereens. This is the same idea advanced by Donald Menzel in 1952 to add zest to his "quantitative refutation of Velikovsky's wild hypothesis" that the sun is electrically charged (7). In the first place, as Professor Fernando Sanford pointed out 40 years ago, "[Such] conclusions are all based upon the assumption that electric charges are held to conductors by [gravity] ... If this assumption were correct, it would be impossible to give a negative charge to any small conductor while in the gravitation field of the earth (8)." Sanford also pointed out that "a soap bubble and a platinum sphere of the same diameter, if joined by a connecting wire and charged from the same source, will take equal charges. This shows conclusively that whatever the force may be which holds electrons to a charged conductor it is not a force which acts between the electrons and the atoms of the conductor. This being the case, the outward pressure of the charge upon a conductor will have no tendency to pull the conductor apart." The earth's atmospheric electric field has been the subject of controversy ever since it was discovered, about 200 years ago. At issue is the question of where resides the electric charge responsible for it--negative charge on the earth itself, or positive charge high in the atmosphere? In 1803 Professor Erman, of Berlin, demonstrated the negative charge of the earth by a simple experiment. He found that a gold-leaf electroscope fitted with a short, pointed collecting rod showed positive electrification when he first grounded it and then raised it a few feet in the air. When he discharged it to the ground while holding it in the upper position and then lowered it, it showed negative electrification. After he placed a ball over the collecting rod--even after he placed the entire apparatus inside a sealed glass tube--and found the same results, he concluded, correctly, that the effects observed were due to electrical induction from a negatively charged earth (9). Erman's findings were derided, then promptly forgotten, even though only one year later two balloonists were mystified, when their collector and electroscope gathered only negative charge from high-level air, instead of the positive charge they expected (10). In 1836 Peltier, on the basis of experiments similar to but rather more elegant than Erman's, came to the same conclusion: the earth is negatively charged, and this charge gives rise to the atmospheric electric field (11). Through all the years since, no one has come up with a more plausible theory of atmospheric electricity than that of Erman and Peltier. Time after time, scientists have tried by one means or another to detect an excess of positive charge high in the atmosphere, but always in vain. (In Scientific American for March 1972, Professor A. D. Moore, writing on the subject of "Electro-statics," states: "The atmosphere of the earth is somehow supplied with a positive charge that sets up a downward electric field amounting to between 100 and 500 volts per meter on a clear day." One might question the efficacy of "somehow" as an explanation; but perhaps it suffices for a phenomenon whose existence no one has been able to demonstrate.) In the closing years of the nineteenth century the electrical genius Nikola Tesia built and operated an electrical observatory in the Colorado mountains. Very early in his researches he proved that the earth harbors enormous numbers of free electrons. One of his obsessions at the time was to transmit electric waves through the ground. He reasoned that if the earth were not negatively charged, it would act as a vast sink into which enormous amounts of electricity would have to be injected to bring it to a state where it would vibrate electrically. He discovered that the necessary electrification was already present in great abundance (12). Tesla's finding was recently--and quite inadvertently--repeated for the moon. In Nature for November 12, 1971, Winfield Salisbury and Darrell Fernald, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, reported that they had received signals from the command module of the Apollo 15 flight at a time when it was behind the moon. The signals had been carried around the curvature of the supposedly radio-opaque moon by electric waves in the moon's surface layers (13). If then the sun, the moon, and the earth are electrified bodies, how may we square this fact with the ubiquitous presence of plasma in the solar system? One is nagged by the suspicion that F. A. Lindemann was not entirely mistaken concerning free (excess) charges on the sun when he wrote as follows in 1919: "It is easy to show that appreciable electrostatic forces cannot exist on the sun. The outer layers ... must certainly be highly ionized ... so that any charges on the sun as a whole would rapidly be neutralized by the emission of ions (14)." In other words, the mutual electrical repulsions among excess like charges must drive them outward and away from the sun. Lindemann went on to assume that the electric forces must be balanced by gravitational forces --the concept later shown to be invalid by Sanford. But if we neglect gravity, the argument seems to lead to the conclusion that the sun's potential can only be zero, instead of the few thousand volts calculated by Lindemann. Furthermore, Lindemann's case seems to gain from our present knowledge of. the inter-planetary medium. Surely a conducting plasma pervading space can only facilitate the dissipation of excess charge by the sun. But Lindemann's argument is sound only if two unstated assumptions are valid: 1. The interplanetary medium is devoid of electrical strain the plasma harbors no electric potential of its own - and can therefore serve as a sink for excess solar charges; and 2. The sun's electric charge is not continually renewed via electric currents. I propose to challenge both these assumptions. However, as the reader may already surmise, this can be done only at the cost of challenging astrophysical dogmas more precious than that which denies the sun and the planets electrostatic charge. I offer what follows merely as a very brief summary of my own notions as to how and why the solar system is electrified in spite of all arguments that it can't be. NOTES 3. Velikovsky, Cosmos Without Gravitation (Scripta Academica Hierosolymitana, 1946), p 18. 4. H. A. Rowland, American Journal of Science, (3)15 (1878), 30-38; cited by F. Sanford, Terrestrial Electricity (Stanford University Press, 193 1), P. 79. 5. J. W. Warwick, Phys. Earth Planet. Interiors, 4 (North-Holland, 1911), p 229. 6. P. Dyal and C. W. Pirkin, Scientific American (August, 1971),66. 7. D. Menzel, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 96 (1952) 525. 8. F. Sanford, Terrestrial Electricity (Stanford University Press, 1931), p. 80. 9. Gilbert's Annalen, 15 (1803), 386; cited by Sanford, ibid., p. 106. 10. F. Sanford, op. cit., p. 107. 11. Ibid., p. 107. 12. J. O'Neil, Prodigal Genius - The Life of Nikola Tesla (Ives Washburn, 1944), 178. 13. Science News (November 20, 1971). 14. F. A. Lindemann, Philosophical Magazine, Series 6, Vol. 38, No. 228 (December, 1919), 674. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The late Ralph Juergens was a civil engineer living in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was formerly associate editor of a McGraw-Hill technical publication. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE-- http://www.kronia.com/~kronia/ Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: http://www.ames.net/aeon/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/velikovskian/ http://www.access.digex.net/~medved/Catastrophism.html http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.tcel.com/~mike/paper.html http://nt.e-z.net/mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of an intense discussion that has been going on for several years within a community of scholars interested in astral catastrophics. We have initially narrowed our focus to supporting a reconstruction of recent planetary dislocations that ended a universally remembered "Golden Age." Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for a relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation that may be included in the articles. Again, we welcome your comments and responses, and any supporting information or relevant submissions. ----------------------------------------------- Michael Armstrong Mikamar Publishing mikamar at e-z.net