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. 10 June 15, 1998 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS PUZZLES AND PARADIGMS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Mel Acheson THE MEANING OF MYTH................................. .Ev Cochrane THE GOLDEN AGE. . . . . . . . . . Dave Talbott and Dwardu Cardona IMAGES OF THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE . . . . . . . . . . Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- PUZZLES AND PARADIGMS By Mel Acheson No one buys a jigsaw puzzle that's pre-assembled. The point of interest is the process of assembly more than the finally-assembled picture. And the motivation for buying is the promise of a challenging process. So it is with science: You buy a box of facts. The picture on the box is the paradigm. The challenge is to assemble the facts in such a way that the paradigm makes sense of them. It's a process of creating meaning. Once the puzzle's put together, once the questions are answered, it's no longer interesting (as science: it becomes a matter of engineering, of application). Thus paradigms are self-limiting and science is self-renewing. As a paradigm approaches the limits of its explanatory domain, as it begins to "know everything", it grows less interesting. Stephen Hawking may have discovered the mind of God, but only to find no one cares. Interest shifts to the unexplained and to the unknown. The demand grows for a new paradigm to show the way to new things in new places. It's time for science to shop for a new puzzle. So here's another pitch for my pet paradigm: The Electric Saturn Super Model promises a lot of fun. It can explain not only a shopping-cart-full of anomalies, but it can re-organize the clutter of ad-hoc explanations in the Establishment Store onto shelves of predictable phenomena. It replaces an empty, lifeless universe with a historical, lightning-filled one. There are things to do: The physics and astronomy of isolated, static particles need to be exchanged for a science of interconnected bodies adapting to a changing, energy-driven environment. (Gravity needs to be replaced.) A new mathematics will be needed to describe the new phenomena. The facts of geology need to be reassembled as ruins instead of as a record. New procedures, equipment, and experiments need to be invented. New applications-new toys-need to be engineered. The story of the past-not only mythology, but history, archeology, anthropology, psychology-needs to be reconstructed and retold. The Electric Saturn Super Model provides the big picture in which all these details can be put together. It promises to replace the determinism, fragmentation, alienation, and stasis of the traditional worldview with a connected, grounded, innovative, and dynamic worldview. Plug yourself in! --Mel Acheson ---------------------------------------------- THE MEANING OF MYTH Ev Cochrane (ev.cochrane at ames.net) Why should anyone care about the message of ancient myth? The most obvious reason, perhaps, is that myth served the role of history, science, literature, and entertainment for many centuries prior to the appearance of advanced civilizations and the development of writing. A study of ancient myth, consequently, will tell us a great deal about the intellectual life of early man. If for no other reason, this should ensure that modern scholars pay careful attention to the favorite myths of our forbears. There are many different approaches to the study of ancient myth-naturist, Freudian, Jungian, structuralist, etc. No doubt each of the various schools of thought has valid points to make. My own approach to myth attempts to make sense of the ancient traditions surrounding the various celestial bodies. It is well-known, in fact, that the earliest religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica were characterized by a preoccupation with celestial phenomena. Of the latter culture, David Kelley has observed: "It has been clear to all serious students of Mesoamerican culture that there was an intimate relationship between astronomical knowledge, the calendar, and religious beliefs and rituals." Much the same point could be made with respect to all ancient cultures. Wherever one looks, one finds the same fascination with the heavenly bodies. Throughout the ancient world, for example, comets were looked upon as objects of terror and ominous portent, their appearance said to herald the downfall of kingdoms and the death of kings. The opinion of Synesius, an author of the fourth century A. D., may be taken as typical: "And whenever these comets appear, they are an evil portent, which the diviners and soothsayers appease. They assuredly foretell public disasters, enslavements of nations, desolations of cities, deaths of kings." Eclipses, similarly, were thought to signal the imminent end of the world, anxious skywatchers performing all sorts of bizarre rituals to appease and banish the evil spirits responsible for the all-encompassing darkness. How is it possible to understand such widespread beliefs? Modern astronomers, accustomed to seeing comets and eclipses come and go without catastrophic consequences-much less the end of the world!-quite naturally approach these ancient beliefs with a measure of incredulity, much as adults view a child's belief in the bogeyman or Santa Claus. Scholars of ancient myth, likewise, have typically understood such beliefs as the expression of ancient man's primitive mentality and prescientific understanding of the cosmos. Yet such a view overlooks the fact that similar beliefs were common well into the modern period-in this century, in fact-and were shared by the scientific elite of most ancient civilizations. Thus the possibility must be considered that the problem in understanding is not with the ancients, rather with the preconceptions of modern astronomers. There have been scant few scholars who took seriously the ancient reports of death-bringing comets and apocalyptic eclipses. Among the few who did-Whiston, Vico, Radlof, Donnelly, Beaumont, and Kugler-it was Immanuel Velikovsky who did the most to popularize (some would say discredit forever) the notion that the ancient reports are worthy of careful attention. In WORLDS IN COLLISION, Velikovsky set the stage for a revolution in comparative mythology by suggesting that universally recurring mythical images-such as the war-god, fire-breathing dragon, and witch-reflect ancient man's attempt to commemorate terrifying cataclysms associated with planetary agents. Nearly twenty years of research has convinced me that Velikovsky was on the right track and that the modern astronomer's refusal to acquaint himself with the message of ancient myth will prove to be a most glaring omission. Velikovsky posed the following question: Why would ancient peoples on both sides of the Atlantic describe the planet Venus in terms otherwise appropriate for a comet-hair-star, serpent-star, bearded star, smoking star, etc.-if its appearance had always remained the same? And why would ancient peoples around the globe associate this planet with destruction and ill omen if it had always behaved in its present peaceful fashion? This anomaly is made all the more difficult to understand given the fact that several of the cultures who preserved such traditions-the Babylonians and the Maya, for example-were justly renowned as careful observers of the celestial bodies in general and obsessed with the movements of Venus in particular. Despite the fact that nearly 50 years have elapsed since the publication of Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky's question has yet to receive a satisfactory answer. A key to the proper understanding of ancient archaeoastronomical traditions is the comparative method. As long as one's focus is confined to this or that culture, it is always tempting to dismiss the bizarre reports surrounding the respective celestial bodies as the product of primitive understanding, creative imagination, projection of religious practices, displacement, etc. Yet should the same bizarre conceptions be discovered in a distant culture-much less in cultures around the world-it stands to reason that the ancient reports begin to take on a certain credibility and bear further investigation. An analogous situation, perhaps, surrounded the raging controversy in the nineteenth century over whether meteorites could fall to the earth from the sky. Ancient reports from around the world told of such meteoritic falls, yet astronomers of the past century dismissed them together with eyewitness reports of contemporary scientists because their worldview did not allow for the possibility that rocks might fall to the earth from heaven. As modern astronomy was eventually forced to accept the reality that meteorites did fall from heaven, so too, in our opinion, will it be forced to come to grips with Venus' cometary recent history. For in the final analysis it will be found that the mythology which came to surround comets had its origin in historical events associated with the planet Venus. Venus and comets share the same terminology and mythology for the simple reason that that planet once presented a comet-like appearance while participating in spectacular cataclysms witnessed around the world. A survey of Venus' role in ancient myth and archaeoastronomy reveals one anomaly after another. Why was Venus described as the "Great Star"? Why was the star of Venus superimposed upon the disc of the ancient sun-god in ancient iconography? Why was the star of Venus placed within the upturned cusps of a crescent? Why was Venus described as the "Great Eye"? Why was Venus described as shining from the "midst" or "heart" of heaven, a position it could never reach in today's skies? Why was Venus regarded as the "witch-star"? Why was Venus regarded as the lover of Mars? Why was Venus regarded as the mother of Mars? Equally baffling questions surround the planet Mars' role in ancient myth and archaeoastronomy. Throughout the ancient world, the appearance of Mars was said to portend war, destruction, and pestilence. Why this would be the case if Mars had always moved as it does now, in a perfectly regular, distant orbit, is not easy to understand. Babylonian astronomical texts report that the red planet was regarded as the "eclipse-agent" par excellence. Other cultures likewise associate Mars with eclipses. Yet Mars' current orbit never brings it into a position whereby it could be viewed as eclipsing the sun. The ancient reports surrounding Mars, like those surrounding Venus, can be shown to have historical precedents. Once grasp the truth of this statement, and the ancient reports suddenly take on an entirely new perspective and significance. The dignity of our forebears is restored in the process, as Hertha von Dechend was led to remark after a lifelong investigation of myth as astronomical allegory. As ancient myth informed the earliest efforts at understanding the movements of the respective heavenly bodies, so too will it inform the astronomy of the 21st century which will doubtless be firmly grounded in the reality of recent planetary catastrophism. ---------------------------------------------- THE GOLDEN AGE: VARIATIONS ON A THEME By Dwardu Cardona and Dave Talbott [EDITOR'S NOTE: In response to questions from Mel and Amy about whether myth is exclusively celestial or both celestial and terrestrial, Dwardu Cardona and Dave Talbott posted these simultaneous and similar answers. They provide an insightful glimpse into the methodology of comparative mythology.] DWARDU CARDONA RESPONDS: Speaking for myself, and myself only, myth refers to both celestial and terrestrial events. It's just that not much has yet been published re the terrestrial events as they pertain to the Saturn scenario - and that is at should be, because we must first delineate the celestial events before we can delve into the terrestrial ones. AMY: >And now we are hearing comments referring to the golden age as >something that happened here on earth. CARDONA: But it did. After all, one cannot believe that the Saturnian events had no effects on Earth and its inhabitants. AMY: >A rigorous consistency would require that Eden, the Golden Age, >the eternal spring, and the timeless time would refer to events >in the sky, not on earth. CARDONA: In my opinion, they refer to both. AMY: >Drawing any conclusions regarding terrestrial conditions >would be unfounded. CARDONA: Not necessarily. As but one example, think about this: The Deluge is said to have drowned Earth in its waters. "Earth," here, can be understood as the CELESTIAL earth. But what was there that was seen in the sky during this event that was interpreted as water. Why water? Fire (light mixed with darkness) would have been more appropriate had the event been strictly celestial. But if water DID descend on Earth during this particular event, then the celestial apparition could have been interpreted as a like-event. True - the Garden said to have been "east of Eden" - a mistranslation, incidentally - WAS a celestial apparition. But what was there in this celestial apparition that lent itself to the interpretation that this object was a "garden," and that this "garden" contained all the trees and fruits, etcetera, required for mankind's bliss? Was it not conditions on Earth during this period that lent the celestial apparition its imagery? The statement "as in heaven, so on Earth" has echoed down through the ages. I would like to rectify that to: "As on Earth, so in heaven." After all the celestial cow, the celestial bull, the witch's broom, etcetera, were "named" after terrestrial animals and objects and not vice versa. There would have been no celestial cow had there not been a terrestrial one. And so forth. Dwardu DAVE TALBOTT ALSO RESPONDS: Here is my position in a nutshell: all of the players in archetypal myth are celestial; the theater itself is in the sky, not on our earth. Only in later storytelling are the archetypal figures brought down to earth, to occupy local regions as imagined "ancestors" of the nations telling the stories. To this principle I am aware of no exceptions. Saturn's timeless epoch means the absence of any discernible cosmic cycles. The ancestral paradise watered by the four rivers is, in truth, the land of the gods, and this means nothing other than the WHEEL of the "sun" god Saturn, as strange as the idea may sound. But you cannot separate the world of the observers from their unique mythical interpretations of cosmic events. For example: if observers perceived in Saturn's crescent a "bull of heaven", or a "great cow of heaven" that IS evidence that the myth-makers were familiar with the species! So yes, a "rigorous consistency would require that Eden, the Golden Age, the eternal spring, and the timeless time refer to events in the sky," but I'd remove the phrase, "not on earth," since the earth is immediately implicated if there were no discernible cosmic cycles. What imagination PERCEIVED in extraordinary cosmic events was a function both of human psychology and the full range of natural experience before, during, and after the events. Hence, there are two tiers of "terrestrial" experience that must be considered in any comprehensive explanation of myth. It is one thing to say that Saturn's rule began with a "timeless epoch." But the fact that races around the world regarded this as the ideal or standard, and strove relentlessly to re-capture that condition gives us more than a reconstruction of cosmic events. It tells us something about the mythmakers themselves. Similarly, when the mythmakers say that Saturn's epoch was "neither hot nor cold," the implication is that human experience is contributing to the interpretation. In the same way, the accounts of heaven-shattering thunder, associated with the lightning of the gods, surely implies reverberating sounds on earth. And in all likelihood, the outpouring of cometary material associated with the "deluge" involved a descent of a horrendous cloud of ice on the Earth, helping to prompt the mythical interpretation. But the mythical figure who rides out the storm of the deluge is, beyond question, a celestial player in the original story. Lastly, I commend Mel for his cautionary note on the comparative method, suggesting that human psychology might tend to "extract common distortions." In fact, there would be no patterns of myths were there no 'common distortions." It is through distortion that the language of myth arises. If Saturn's crescent is just an abstract form in the sky there is no myth. It is the distorting lens of human perception that enables imagination to see the crescent as the horns of a cosmic bull. While certain pictographs may preserve literal images, myths generally do not. Hence, the methodology for reconstructing events from myth does not rely on literalism. Rather, it means finding the underlying form or event expressed by the distortion, and this process is aided by two key facts: 1) that certain abstract forms, having nothing to do with our sky today, are preserved in remarkably similar pictographs around the world, and 2) that widely divergent mythical themes, when traced to their roots, consistently converge on these underlying forms, providing the needed proof that the forms were there. The key to reconstructing events is thus provided by logic and probability, not by a "literal" interpretation of myth. And the reconstruction rests most fundamentally on recurring patterns that would not/could not have arisen under our sky but would be EXPECTED under the hypothesized conditions. Dave ---------------------------------------------- IMAGES OF THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE By Wal Thornhill Amy remarks: Check out the astronomy picture of the day for June 2: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html It shows the butterfly nebula. Looks like an electric discharge to me - something that would be at home in a fluorescent light. In fact, it's such a good example of the magnetic pinch effect that you can almost make out the words "diet Coke" crumpled down the middle. :-) (see photo in Wal Thornhill's notebook, p 22, or his CD, p 47.) An exciting view from a new paradigm. Amy WAL COMMENTS: That nebula is precisely the shape that Dr Charles Bruce, in England, said would be found to form the classic Planetary Nebula if you were looking at it along the axis. His view of planetary nebulae was that they are an electric discharge phenomena, forming two opposing cones and not a spherical shell of material around a star. He was right. But that's not all! [Here's pictures]: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/5_27_98_agu_release/index.html from Viking Orbiter 2 of a 50 km wide crater in the southern hemisphere that is the subject of an even closer look by Mars Orbiter - look at the corkscrew central mound. There is a close-up . . . which is supposed to show ponding and dunes. It looks to me more like melted rock with furrows tending to follow the corkscrew motion of the arc that created the crater. [Now]to the escaped planet. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980529.html The explanations for the luminous filament are as silly as ever. The one about a dust tube acting like a fiber-optic cable to channel the light from the stars, to explain the glow from the filament, floored me. Don't they understand that fiber-optic cables rely on total internal reflection? How does gas and dust achieve that? Anyway, the discovery, if confirmed, supports the electrical parturition model of the formation of smaller bodies from the larger. It also coincides with an earlier Hubble discovery of stars speeding out of a stellar nursery in Orion as if they had been shot out of a cosmic gun. The important thing to note about the close-ups of the Sun that are now pouring in, is the extent to which the filamentary structure of everything we see is carried on down to the limit of resolution. It occurs to me that the plasmoid that entwines the sun like a twisted rope must operate very closely to the photosphere to build those beautiful coronal loops and arches. That notion might account for the polarities of leading and trailing spots and the different polarities in opposite hemispheres if the extent of the plasmoid is such that it covers the lower latitudes of the Sun continuously. If its size changes during the solar cycle, it could account for the latitudinal drift of sunspots over the cycle. There is a very good picture in Kenneth Lang's book "Sun, Earth and Sky", p.115, of the corona in soft x-rays, snaking about the Sun. The caption reads: "This x-ray image shows bright loop-like emission, presumably from hot gas trapped by strong, dipolar magnetic fields within active regions, and fainter magnetic structures with contorted, twisted geometries that may be shaped by electric currents in the corona. Relatively faint and long magnetic loops also connect active regions to distant areas on the Sun, or emerge within quiet regions away from active ones." With regard to the "sunquake" caused by a solar flare http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9805/27/sun.quakes/ http://soi.stanford.edu/press/ssu05-98/ and the surprise at the depth to which it reaches from the corona, of course in the electric Sun model the photosphere is not the "surface" of the Sun but merely one level in the extremely complex plasma phenomena associated with an anode discharge in space. The shock is not purely mechanical and [is not] due to an "electromagnetic explosion" high in the corona. Like the newly discovered phenomena associated with Earthly lightning that extend from ground level into space, we are seeing in the Sun's corona merely the topmost level of a phenomenon which probably has its roots below the photosphere. So the fact that the waves in the photosphere were 10 times stronger than expected is not surprising if there was the equivalent of an almighty thunderclap from beneath the photosphere rather than above it. In comparison, the corona being extremely tenuous would not be expected to couple much, if any, mechanical energy from a shock wave to the photosphere. The acceleration of the shock wave may be due to continuing energy input from below from the extended duration of the discharges seen on and above the Sun. So long as scientists are hung up on shock waves, an internal "dynamo" and magnetic reconnection (a fanciful model without any experimental verification) to explain phenomena on the Sun there will be little hope of NASA's "commercial" coming true about predicting solar flares in the future. What is needed first is a better understanding of the coupling of the Earth's weather to its plasma environment. Then we may begin to understand the powerful weather and lightning storms recently discovered on the Sun. Lastly, there are some new images from Europa confirming (if that were needed) that the long lineaments are not due to cracks in ice. http://galileo.ivv.nasa.gov/ Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- 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.