mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== THOTH -A Catastrophics Newsletter- VOL II, No. 7 April 15, 1998 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS QUOTE OF THE DAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clark Whelton LUNATIC FRINGE OR CUTTING EDGE? . . . . . . . . . . Amy Acheson THE LOGIC OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE . . . . . . . . . David Talbott MORE THAN ONE TYPHON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dwardu Cardona THE GREAT RED SPOT: COMMENTARY . . . . . . . . . . Wal Thornhill CYDONIA COMMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . .various email listers ---------------------------------------------- QUOTE OF THE DAY If Columbus had succumbed in mid-voyage, it's unlikely his crew -- a mutinous bunch -- would have carried on without him. Velikovsky's crew -- to whom the word "mutiny" is not unknown -- has done pretty well in his absence, all things considered. We take turns clapping each other in irons, and we're all sailing in different directions, but perhaps it's just as well. There are new worlds and new collisions ahead, enough for all of us before the voyage ends. --from a review of VELIKOVSKY'S "THE DARK AGE OF GREECE" by Clark Whelton ---------------------------------------------- LUNATIC FRINGE OR CUTTING EDGE? By Amy Acheson How do you know if a new idea is from the lunatic fringe or the cutting edge of science? First of all, those terms are only defined in relation to an orthodox paradigm. And the final judgement can only be made after the fact: "the fact" being a paradigm shift. The fringe, the cutting edge, and orthodoxy are part of a process, and we need them all. The advantage of orthodoxy, defined as an accepted paradigm, is that it allows people to assume a "big-picture" framework, so they can focus on developing details rather than arguing over fundamentals. The development of details is an efficient way to discover anomalies. Eventually, anomalies build up to a crisis, defined as the need to find a more explanatory paradigm. As the anomalies build, there are theorists who engage in fringe activities. They question assumptions, speculate, and resort to "anything goes" theorizing in the effort to make sense of the anomalies. At times of crisis, these fringe activities become the cutting edge: the resource base from which the new paradigm arises. After a new paradigm is accepted, the competing paradigms and the old orthodoxy become the new "fringe." If you leave out any step - orthodoxy, resistance, or fringes -- you lose the process. Over the centuries, people have become more comfortable with this learning process. Innovators are no longer heretics to be burned, but crackpots to be laughed at (and to be denied grants and publication.) Is it possible to make the process painless? Probably not. Struggle and competition are the essence of it. But we can make it more like sports than war. We can value our "enemies" and appreciate their part in the process. We can see paradigms, not as RIGHT or WRONG, but as intellectual tools in the search for understanding. Amy Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- THE LOGIC OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE David Talbott (dtalbott at teleport.com) In my previous article I noted that "in certain situations a simple comparison of human testimony can achieve exceptional reliability, even though the witnesses are not inherently trustworthy." Though the principle is not generally acknowledged, it can easily be verified through an example such as that of "The Unfortunate Peter Smith," presented in that article. With respect to the use of evidence based on human testimony, I recently received the following comment from Maurice Gilroy: > I believe that if you want to claim that you are going to > provide a scientific explanation of past events, your > explanation must be a "bottom up" one, not "top down." Your > explanation must be evolutionary in the sense that it must start > with sound physics, and proceed up through whatever chemistry, > biology, psychology, and sociology is necessary to explain the > mythic description. To make Greek rationalist judgments about > Oriental myths, and then try to figure out some plausible > chemistry and physics, is working "top down," (and backwards). > This may be necessary in the very early "searching for some > logical explanation" phase. However, if sound physics will not > support some appealing vision of the past, then that vision is > in some way flawed. This appears to be the status of > Velikovsky's and Dave's visions of biblical and mythic events. > This judgment may seem arrogant to someone with a humanistic > background, but the foundation of science is the physics and > planetary geology that make the carbon chemistry of biology > possible. I am convinced that there is no sound physics that > will support the Velikovskian of Saturnist vision of ancient > catastrophes. To Mr. Gilroy's credit, his posture has been one of complete fairness and open-mindedness. So I am happy to include him in our "Critic's Corner", in the hope of stimulating constructive discussion. Also, in fairness to Mr. Gilroy, I must mention that he proceeds to outline several objections to the Saturnian model based on physical considerations. These objections are, in fact, those we most frequently encounter, and there is no likelihood of our gaining broad support from the scientific community unless the challenges are fully addressed. Though various parties working on physical models HAVE addressed Mr. Gilroy's objections at one time or another, a unified model has yet to be proposed. Certain vital principles, however, have been illuminated, including that of collinear equilibrium and tidal friction, balanced by the more far-reaching electrical considerations overlooked in conventional models of planetary history. It should go without saying that an immense amount of work on models is needed. And the compelling reason for proceeding is a vast field of evidence which science has ignored. Neither the recent history of our Earth, nor the geological history of our planetary neighbors, nor the cultural history of humankind will be comprehended until we confront the great celestial spectacles witnessed by our ancestors. And that investigation will require much more than the usual scant attention to methodology. Because these spectacles involved well-defined forms in the sky, it is essential that critical principles of reasoning be appreciated. Nothing is more fundamental to the reconsideration of planetary history than a rigorously-developed comparative approach to human testimony. For many years I have continually looked for the clearest ways to convey the reasoning process without which the extraordinary value of ancient testimony will not be recognized. But always I have found myself returning to a bedrock principle. In any theoretical exploration involving a new hypothesis, one question must be asked relentlessly. IF THE HYPOTHESIS IS CORRECT, WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND? That question is at the heart of the scientific method, whatever the field of inquiry. And the investigation must address the entire range of data bearing on the answer. When it comes to our own subject - ancient planetary catastrophe - excluding the value of human testimony would be a potentially fatal mistake, since, in advance of an investigation, it is impossible to know which sources of data will provide the most telling insights. To see why this is the case, just imagine how researchers might reconstruct ancient events if huge planetary forms DID once hang above the world, fueling veneration, terror, and an explosion of human imagination. If such planetary drama did occur, and included catastrophic interactions of the planets, how much do you think that the planets today could tell us about what the ancient SAW, or about the specific sequence of events? Whatever the nature of the catastrophes, we would certainly expect to find scars and telltale indicators of past upheaval on the planets. But it would be absurd to deny in advance the potential for vastly more specific details from those who witnessed the events. And we would quickly see the absolute necessity of honing our investigative skills and critical judgment in order to gain the full value of that testimony. It is not a matter of taking myths or symbols or ritual practices LITERALLY, of course. It is a matter of analyzing worldwide patterns, to see if they point to a coherent experience, one that could only be explained by the presence of certain external forms or globally-experienced events. For example, the flaming, long-haired or feathered celestial serpent is a global mythical image. Its power over human imagination was immense, but it was clearly a PRODUCT of human imagination as well. So the investigation must rely on principles of logic and probability. On every habitable continent stargazers celebrated a remarkably similar, biologically absurd monster. Is it reasonable to assume that imagination, even though working in a vacuum, continually hit upon the same highly specific idea, in flagrant contradiction of all natural experience? Or were the stargazers responding imaginatively to something APPEARING IN THE SKY and inspiring the great terror consistently evident in the ancient accounts? The key will be found in the symbolic language, the natural hieroglyphs (serpent, flowing hair, feathers, streams of fire). Once it is realized that, among all of the great cultures, the most common glyphs attached to the cosmic serpent - not to mention the serpent itself - were hieroglyphs for the COMET, the door is opened to stunning discovery. Suddenly one sees a vital principle almost uniformly ignored in comparative cultural studies. When an entire complex of symbols points to a singular celestial form, it is only reasonable to presume the presence of that form, and to look for corroborating references. If a unique form or celestial object WAS present, we should expect all manner of corroborating evidence; and if it was NOT present, it is inconceivable that one would consistently find widely varying words and symbols pointing to that very celestial form. But to this general and quite obvious point, Wayne Throop responded-- > Uh... no, not at all. You are saying "if the sky were > so-and-so, then human myths would be thus-and-such; human myths > ARE thus-and-such, therefore the sky was so-and-so". > This is the same syllogism as "if a being is a human, that > being is a biped; my parrot is indeed a biped; therefore my > parrot is a human". This reasoning is not correct. The issue has nothing to do with syllogisms. We are dealing with probabilities, in this case the kind of astronomical IMPROBABILITIES which we illustrated in "The Unfortunate Peter Smith" analogy. If Peter Smith had been dressed "normally", it would be astronomically improbable that the police would have received INDEPENDENT testimony suggesting the man wore two different running shoes and a shirt inside out. Therefore the reasoning of the police was virtually ironclad, despite the fact that the witnesses were not even dependable under the standard tests. Needless to say, this issue of probability is not affected by the dating of the memories, though it is amazing how little attention scholars have given to the principles involved here. When independent testimony points to the same HIGHLY SPECIFIC, BUT HIGHLY UNUSUAL EVENTS, that testimony is of huge evidential value. ---------------------------------------------- MORE THAN ONE TYPHON By Dwardu Cardona DEDavis asks: What is the current thinking on the Exodus story, then? CARDONA REPLIES: I'll answer this one cautiously. Most historians today will tell you thatthe Exodus never happened, and this includes many an Israeli historian. For reasons which I cannot quite go into here, I tend to disagree. However, that said, I must also report that in all the years since WORLDS IN COLLISION was written, AND DESPITE WHAT WAS SAID IN IT, I have not been able to discover one single bit of evidence that would tie the planet Venus to the event. All that can be said with SOME certainty, is: (1) that a comet does seem to have made its appearance in the sky during the Exodus; (2) that this comet was NOT the comet Venus; and (3) that an earthquake also occurred just before the Israelites left Egypt. At this point, I dare not say more. Dwardu. Kevin Weinhold wrote: Velikovsky wrote that he at one time was not sure if it was Venus or Jupiter that was the cause of the catastrophe. I suspect he connected Typhon-slain-by-Zeus via the confused connection in mythology: some reported that it was Zeus that fought and killed the monster with his lightning bolts; others reported that "Zeus" sent Venus (lightning bolts or whatnot) to kill the monster...is such a connection still not acceptable, considering that the ancients described the same event in two ways? CARDONA REPLIES: Well, here, the bottom line appears to be simply this: While the comet called Typhon (that is, Comet Set) and the GREEK Typhon were NOT one and the same object, it will turn out that the GREEK Typhon was also a comet. More than that, the GREEK Typhon will turn out to have been cometary Venus in disguise. The comet called Set, on the other hand, which the Greeks also alluded to as Typhon, was NOT Venus. This is why I said the matter is a little bit complicated. The complication, however, arose simply because the Greeks, for reasons of their own, referred to the Egyptian Set as Typhon. Dwardu DEDavis wrote: If I read _Worlds in Collision_ right (and it's easy to be dazzled by Velikovsky, and thus get confused as to what is evidence and what is reconstruction...) The chain of reasoning for linking the Exodus events with Venus is: 1.Venus = Athene = Pallas Athene = Typhon 2. Rockenbach said Typhon occurred at the time of the Exodus. Yes? CARDONA AGAIN: This is PRECISELY where Velikovsky went wrong. The comet CALLED Typhon and the Typhon of Greek mythology are NOT the same. The comet Typhon of Rockenbach ultimately traces to Pliny, although Hephaestion, Junctinus, Lydus, Servius, Campester, Petosiris, and Joannes Laurentius also wrote about it. What Pliny actually wrote concerning this comet was this: "A terrible comet was seen by the people of Ethiopia and Egypt, to which Typhon, the king of that period, gave his name." As we all know (I hope) there was never a king of Egypt named Typhon, after whom this comet was named. What must be borne in mind here is that Typhon was what the Greeks called the Egyptian Set. Thus the Egyptian king called Typhon would have really been named Seti (of which Egypt knew more than one.) From this it follows that the comet called Typhon, named after King Typhon, would really have been named Set. It is therefore more accurate to refer to this comet as the Comet Set (although this, again, must not be confused with the original god Set.) Yes, I know, it's complicated. However, it should be seen from all this that the comet called Set/Typhon had nothing to do with the Greek demon called Typhon, with whom Athena was NOT at all associated. The Original Greek demon called Typhon was actually slain by Zeus. One other thing to keep in mind: It has never been ascertained on what evidence, if any, Rockenbach associated this comet with the Exodus. All those who also mentioned this connection, like Johann Hevel, got it from Rockenbach. Velikovsky himself was of the opinion that Rockenbach might have had access to ancient documents that might have contained quotations from the writings of Campester and Petosiris. This is doubtful in the case of Campester and purely conjectural in that of Petosiris. Lydus, who quoted Campester on Comet Typhon, would hardly have omitted this most interesting of items had the latter had anything to say about the subject. Fragments from the works of Petosiris have also been published but the information concerning the Exodus is not there contained. All we are left with, therefore, is a comet called Set which Rockenbach, for no reason we can discover, associated with the time of the Exodus. As I said before, there is absolutely no connection between this comet and the planet Venus. Dwardu Cardona ---------------------------------------------- THE GREAT RED SPOT: COMMENTARY By Wal Thornhill The Economist runs some very good science stories. Here's one for April 4th: Jupiter The Great Red Hurricane THE Great Red Spot of Jupiter has been a puzzle since 1664, when Robert Hooke first glimpsed it in his telescope. Those who have since contemplated its baleful stare have wondered, reasonably enough, why it is so great (its length is one-and-a-half times the diameter of the earth); why it is red; and why it has been there so long. Nowadays, these are questions not for astronomers but for meteorologists. Jupiter's weather is more exciting than earth's - with wind speeds up to 540kph (335mph), storms that last for decades and at least three sorts of rain - but its atmosphere is thought to work in basically the same way. Results presented this week by Fred Taylor of Oxford University, during a conference at the University of St. Andrews, support that view. The red spot is not so much a spot as a giant sprinkler, and hence not unlike an earthly hurricane. Dr Taylor and his colleagues have been analysing infra-red pictures taken by the spacecraft Galileo (owned by NASA, America's space agency), which is currently touring Jupiter and its moons. In the process they have made other intriguing discoveries. In 1995 Galileo dropped a probe into the Jovian clouds which beamed information about its environs back to the spacecraft. It found hardly any water clouds, raising the question whether Jupiter had been formed out of the same stuff as the sun and other planets. Dr Taylor's analysis lays this worry to rest. There is water on Jupiter but, as on earth, it is spread about unevenly. The probe simply hit a dry patch. The pictures also reveal that, as expected, Jupiter's main layer of cloud is composed of ammonia. But above it is a thick smog, made of organic compounds broken up by the sunlight. Below the ammonia is another devilish blanket, of ammonia combined with hydrogen sulphide, and there may be water clouds beneath that. Somehow this reeking cake of an atmosphere holds the key to Jupiter's ornate swirls, bands and spots. A planet's weather is driven by heat moving from one part of the atmosphere to another, among other things. On earth, a lot of the heat gets transported by water. In evaporating, water absorbs heat and carries it upwards; on condensing, into clouds and rain, it lets the heat out. On Jupiter, the fact that other substances can do this too leads to more layers of cloud and more complicated weather. Such as the red spot. The new infra-red images from Galileo show that it is not a deep vortex of cloud as previously thought. Instead its top is a tangle of spiral arms. The gaps in between them reveal a large, fairly clear area below. And the spot is slightly raised near the middle. Dr Taylor thinks this means that the red spot is actually a relatively narrow, spinning column of material rising from the depths and being sprayed out over the ammonia clouds. At its edges, the material falls back down. Besides that, however, the mysteries persist. More data remain to be analysed. Dr Taylor hopes they will give some clues as to what the substance is (i.e., why the spot is red) and why the column is not in the very centre of the spot. As for the spot's extraordinary lifetime, that is probably due to its size. But since Galileo cannot look into the past, the question of how a hurricane big enough to last for over three centuries got started will be harder to answer. ................................................................. Wal Thornhill comments: It is very interesting to note the structure in the Great Red Spot - "a tangle of spiral arms". A short time ago I posted the view that the GRS is the site of a continual diffuse discharge from the ionosphere into Jupiter's atmosphere. A tangle of spiral arms could have been predicted on this basis if the electric currents flowing into the vortex were made manifest by some electrical action on Jupiter's atmospheric gases. Once again, the red colouration could be partly due to low-energy nuclear transformations of gases in the spiral arms. Wal Thornhill (previous post): I would even hazard a guess that the Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter is, for reasons as yet unknown, the continual focus of a powerful ionospheric discharge. I deduce this from an example of the same effect on a much smaller scale on Earth in the reported glow discharge seen from space above tornadic storms on Earth. It would be of interest to know if Jupiter's ionosphere is the site of diffuse electrical discharges above the GRS. In the recent issue of Earth, Moon and Planets 73: 1996, pp. 167-179, there is a paper titled "Solar-Planetary Cycles in Jupiter's Great Red Spot Darkness". The conclusion of the paper states: "The jovian GRS darkness or visibility varies systematically in various modes. The main cycles of variation are approximately 33 years, 13-15 yr., 11 yr., 9 yr., and 3 yr. ... The obtained cycles are the result of combined effects of several agents of varying intensity - the solar activity expressed by the sunspot numbers and flares, as well as solar-planetary interactions and internal jovian phenomena. ... The effect of solar activity on darkness (of the GRS), for previous solar cycles, is also reinforced from earlier works on atmospheric activity and relative intensity of the GRS." Correlations of GRS darkness with solar activity and planetary alignments is the kind of effect I would expect if the GRS is an electrical discharge phenomenon. The work currently uses data up until 1976 and is being extended with later data which might have better resolution of short term changes in the GRS. I expect correlations with solar activity to be more striking when this is done. Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- CYDONIA COMMENTS By assorted email listers Ted Holden: They're at: http://www.mcdanielreport.com/mgsface.htm While the face itself is obviously degraded much more than might have been thought from the Viking images, the headdress or helmet that the man is wearing is obvious enough to remove any remaining doubts. Ev Cochrane: Surely you jest, Ted? I mean, are we looking at the same images? Ted Holden: Unless NASA can come up with one hell of a good ad-hoc explanation for the headdress/helmet which the man is wearing, and all of the perfectly straight and curved lines which comprise it, then the thing is obviously artificial. Shane Mage: Tom VanFlandern spoke on the Robert Knight "Earthwatch" program on WBAI radio here in New York a week ago last Wednesday night. He claimed that the photos constitute complete confirmation of the artificial nature of these Martian features. Gunnar Reis: . . . to me it is clearly a volcanic feature, especially if it is compared with the nearby volcanoes of the Tharsis region. But what do I see. It is a small mountain (compared with the other volcanoes in the same region) with a summit caldera, central to a north-south graben cutting through it. This is a situation you can find also within the earth-volcanoes. Amy Acheson: I see a fulgamite. Compare to photos of Olympus Mons for a larger example. (See Wal Thonhill's discussion: Notebook pp. 83-85; CD pp. 165-170). The helmet is "fluted, raised edges" and the nostrils are craters, typical of the high points on anodic scars. Wal Thornhill: I've just looked at the high definition picture and I think you are right [it's a fulgamite.] There is a pretty definite sinuous rille running from the top of the picture, down the right-hand side of the "face" and then broadening as it spirals up to a cratered peak. There seem to be a number of electrical erosion pits on the higher reaches, as if the arc had been travelling slightly as it created this particular fulgamite. There are many fulgamite mounds on Mars of about the same dimensions as the "face". This just seems to be a particularly odd-shaped version. Dave Talbott: Well, I don't see a face, but if you look closely down around what I think was supposed to be the "mouth" of the humanoid face, you will see that that the "mouth" actually forms the two ears and top of the head of the most incredible and perfectly formed picture of my daughter's pussycat. Duane Vorhees: In this case, I believe the proper expression is "I'll see it when I believe it." ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE-- http://www.kronia.com/~kronia/ Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, may be ordered at the I-net address below: 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 Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.e-z.net/~mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our initial focus will be on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the 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. We welcome your comments and responses. New readers are referred to earlier installments in issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above. Go to the THOTH page and click on the image titled "Thoth: the Egyptian God of Knowledge" to access the back issues.