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. 13 Aug 31, 1998 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS IT'S STILL THE SAME ELEPHANT . . . . . Mel and Amy Acheson RESPONSE TO A CRITIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dave Talbott VENUS AND VELIKOVSKY . . . . . . . . . . . . kronia listers THE WORD ACCORDING TO PAM . . . . . . . . . . . Pam Hannah THE HISTORIC ELEPHANT . . . . . . . . . . . .kronia listers THE ELECTRIC ELEPHANT: SHOCKING VIEWS FROM THE JOVIAN SYSTEM . . Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- IT'S STILL THE SAME ELEPHANT One of the fundamental fables about human nature is the story of the 7 blind men and the elephant. Each blind man touched a different part of the elephant and came up with a different conception of the nature of the beast. Even more elementary than the different concepts--and something not directly addressed by the fable--is the matter of the blind men's different perceptions. The man rubbing the leg thought the elephant was like a tree because his rubbing gave him a sensation similar to the sensation he got from rubbing a tree. But it works the other way around, too: He perceived a tree-like sensation because he already had a concept of a tree. Centuries of philosophers have worried over the nature of perception. Thomas Kuhn, for example, noted the inextricable connection--one could almost say "con-fusion"--between perception and conception: "No current attempt...has yet come close to a generally applicable language of pure percepts.... From the start they presuppose a paradigm...." [1] Two popular aphorisms together provide a more intuitive depiction: "You'll believe it when you see it" and "You'll see it when you believe it." Prior knowledge, assumptions, attitudes, expectations, habits have their (generally unconscious) influences. Every individual has slightly (or more!) different perceptions and conceptions. If we call each perception/conception con- fusion a viewpoint, we can say everybody has a different viewpoint. A little introspection should reveal that viewpoints are constantly changing, usually a little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes we can understand each other's viewpoints. Sometimes we can combine or be inspired by several viewpoints to create a more-inclusive one: We can view more of the elephant; we can conceive of a bigger (or different) critter. For Thoth's purpose, the "elephant" is the recent history of the solar system and its people. Modern science has done an excellent job of perceiving and conceptualizing the "leg" of modern times (the past 300 years or so). But when it extrapolates these concepts into the far past--or into the far distance of space--it makes the elephant all leg. The Saturn Thesis, using a comparative method to extract common patterns from ancient myths and symbols, adds perceptions from a different--historically removed--viewpoint. The combination is a greatly-enlarged viewpoint and a radically-changed concept of the elephant. Kuhn again: "[T]he scientist after a revolution is still looking at the same world.... [M]uch of his language and most of his laboratory instruments are still the same.... [T]he change must lie either in their relation to the paradigm or in their concrete results. I now suggest...both...." [2] It's still the same elephant. Mel and Amy Acheson thoth at whidbey.com [1] Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1996. P. 127. [2] Ibid., p. 129-30. ---------------------------------------------- RESPONDING TO A CRITIC By David Talbott (dtalbott at teleport.com) Almost 25 years ago an article by James Pitton appeared in the first and only issue of a journal called CHIRON. In that article, Pitton critiqued Immanuel Velikovsky's use of sources in WORLD'S IN COLLISION. Much more recently, a well-known critic resurrected the article, wondering why catastrophists had "ignored" Pitton's criticism of Velikovsky. Since we are discussing memory as evidence, perhaps this is an appropriate place to insert a review of Pitton's comments. [ALL INDENTED QUOTES ARE FROM PITTON]: > "It is surprising that, although Dr. Velikovsky's use > of myths is one of the most important foundations of > his work, it has received almost no attention from > the experts. By contrast, the hostility of many > members of the scientific community seems almost a > healthy reaction. The purpose of this paper, then, is > to make some preliminary criticisms of Velikovsky's > methodology, and to indicate some approaches to > specific issues, particularly in regards to _Worlds > in Collision_ (1950).... Ancient myth is, indeed, "one of the most important foundations" of Velikovsky's work. In truth, it is the global memories embedded in myth that made possible a coherent new way of seeing human history and planetary history. Of course, Velikovsky and all who have mined this field of evidence have faced a huge obstacle in the modern idea of myth as sheer fiction. How could anything as elusive or "untrustworthy" as myth count as evidence powerful enough to challenge science? At issue are two different ways of seeing myth. In one perception, myth is an outpouring of human imagination as humankind looked out at an ancient sky very much like our own. In the other perception, myth is an outpouring of imagination in response to extraordinary celestial events--earthshaking dramas unlike anything occurring in our sky today. The good news is that one can apply certain principles of reasoning to the patterns of human memory. Though these rules are employed all the time in judicial proceedings, the vast majority of scholars have ignored them, fostering a madhouse of competing interpretations and further discrediting myth as a source of evidence. > "When we come to exact historical material from the > myths we find many difficulties. The stories appear > in endless variations. Each writer has his own > version. sometimes the names are different, sometimes > the sequence of events, sometimes the actual events > themselves. We are, moreover, at the mercy of the > individual authors. One of our earliest sources for > Greek myths is Pindar, who considered himself under > no obligation to tell the story as he knew it. Like > the modern government censor, Pindar defended his > right to change any parts of the story he thought > objectionable. The earlier, of course, the purer the > tradition. Conversely, many later versions of > individual myths show considerable embellishment.... Virtually everything Pitton says here is correct except the overstatement of Pindar's assumed "right to change any part of the story". There is an observable degradation of human memories over time, through localization, fragmentation, elaboration, and embellishment, including various forms of "political correctness" within the different cultures. But Pitton does not really address the implications of these evolutionary tendencies, or say how we might deal with them in a comparative approach. For example, amending a story or adding a detail will always create a contradiction between one version of a story and another. But there is more to it than this. In addition to observing the accumulation of contradictions, one must also confront the underlying points of agreement between broadly distributed cultures. Most significant are those points of agreement on details so SPECIFIC that the agreement could not be the result of accident or any suspected general tendencies of the human mind. But this principle, absolutely crucial to the comparative approach, is not even addressed by Pitton. The critic does, however, acknowledge one key which, on it own, can resolve many contradictions. The earlier the traditions, the more pure their content. This principle is of vast import, and it can be easily verified by simply observing the evolution of mythical themes and personalities over time within particular regions. One will note, for example, that countless figures originally worshipped as dominating forms in the sky are, in later times, described as LOCAL kings, queens and warriors. The Egyptian Ra was the creator-king, the central sun. But later myths depict him as an aged and venerable ruler of Heliopolis. The Greek Kronos (Latin Saturn) was also the creator and central luminary of the sky, though later traditions recalled the god as a former king, ruling for a time on earth before being forcibly removed from his throne. The Akkadian war-god Ninurta emerges in later myths as the terrestrial warrior Nimrod, and countless other celestial warriors show the same evolution. Greek chronicles describe Heracles wandering across a vast landscape, though his exploits are clearly those of the Egyptian Shu, Anhur, Sept, and Horus, with whom Heracles was, in fact, identified. The original celestial character of these Egyptian gods is beyond question, despite the fact that in later times chroniclers could point to the very places ON EARTH where the heroes' greatest exploits occurred. I mention this particular evolutionary principle because it is the single, most common basis of misunderstanding, first by ancient storytellers, then by modern-day critics. Every localization of a god in later chronicles involves a contradiction at two levels. It is a contradiction, first, because the earlier traditions do not depict a local figure, but a cosmic figure. And it is a contradiction also because each localization stands in opposition to all other localizations of the same figure, each forcing geographically-based variations into a story that originally had no connection whatsoever to geography. The roots of this evolutionary tendency in COMMEMORATIVE practices need to be appreciated. It is a fact that numerous ritual celebrations or re-enactments had the effect, over time, of placing originally CELESTIAL gods on plots of earth. In commemoration of the gods and their attributes, ancient artists and architects fashioned thousands of terrestrial symbols-- temples, cities, and kingdoms patterned after, and NAMED after, the dwelling of the gods. They constructed artificial mounds, pillars, pyramids and towers, reflecting earlier memories of the world mountain or pillar of the sky. So too, they founded innumerable holy sites in the shadow of sacred hills, or above sacred springs, or in proximity to sacred rivers--all made "holy" through symbolic projection, all pointing back to the world mountain, or fountain of the sun, or nether river which had distinguished the age of the gods from all subsequent epochs of human history. So yes, Pitton is correct that there are "endless variations" to every theme. That's what localization does, and it is why it would be futile to try to reconcile isolated "pieces that don't fit". At the level of localized myth, NOTHING WILL FIT. Reconciliation occurs at the level of the substratum, defined by the shared patterns of human memory, not by localized variations and contradictions. You find the substratum by seeing past the effects of localization to the underlying, shared motifs, then tracing these defined motifs to their earliest expressions. All of the major cultures, for example, preserved a memory of the "navel of the world." And in virtually every case this mythical "place", originally fixed in the sky, was represented locally, so that natives could point to a particular stone, or a particular shrine, temple, city, or kingdom, or a particular island, or a particular mound of earth deemed "the navel", recounting stories as to how, in primeval times, a great god or hero had founded this very place. When treated superficially, such themes will easily be passed off as mere egocentricity of the people telling the stories. And this dismissal will, in turn, deflect attention from the deeper questions raised by a comparative approach. The deeper questions arise from unexplained patterns. Why was the "navel of the world" commonly associated not just with the center, but with the "SUMMIT" as well? Why was it identified with a GODDESS? Why was it represented by the so-called "sun" pictograph (a small circle or sphere inside a much larger circle or sphere, as in the hieroglyphic sign for Ra)? What was the relationship of the navel to the NAVE of the "sun" wheel? And why, around the world, did races remember an ancestral hero born from, or departing from, or leaping from the "navel" before undertaking his adventures? In truth, each of these patterns is connected to pervasive larger patterns, presenting a structure far too coherent to be explained by any prior approach to myth. > These two stories [about the Spartan defense of > Thermopylae and the capture and torture of the Roman > general Regulus by the Carthaginians], taken from > genuine historical events, not mythology, show the > influence of ancient rhetoric. Rhetoric was taught at > school; it was a part of every educated man's > training. The ancient professors had the art of > embellishment and elaboration mastered in a way that > has no modern parallel. Of this school, which was at > its peak during the Roman empire, a typical product > was Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the tutor of the Emperor > Nero. Seneca's plays abound in every mannerism and > conceit imaginable. His version of the legend of > Medea concludes with the heroine, having murdered her > little children before he husband's eyes, escaping in > a chariot drawn by dragons. Should we expect Seneca > to preserve an accurate memory of early history? > Apparently, for Velikovsky tells us that Seneca had a > 'profound knowledge of natural phenomena.'... Since this statement about Seneca is the weakest point in Pitton's presentation, I will not labor through an extended response. The truth is that Seneca is the most respected naturalist of his day. But he was also a chronicler of myths, and I can assure the reader that Seneca did not invent the idea of a chariot drawn by dragons! The real question is: what was signified by that ancient idea, occurring from Europe to China? (If someone is truly curious, I'll offer the explanation provided by the Saturnian reconstruction.) > "Myths are obviously a very tricky source of > historical information. But with proper care and > judgment, much of value can be extracted from them. > Does Velikovsky show such care and judgment? > Unfortunately he often does not. In at least three > important ways Velikovsky's use of mythology is > unsound. The first of these is his proclivity to > treat all myths as having independent value; the > second is the tendency to treat only such material as > is consistent with his thesis; and the third is his > very unsystematic method.... These lines by Pitton are actually a lead-in to some interesting comments on the Iliad and on Velikovsky's identification of the goddess Athena with Venus. But discussion of the Iliad will require more background on the evolution of the warrior-hero myth, which I will reserve for follow-up next issue. For now I will simply register my own opinion with respect to the "three important ways Velikovsky's use of mythology is unsound". There are instances in which Velikovsky does, indeed, build too much on particular myths--such as the presumed explosion of Venus from Jupiter, based substantially on the myth of Athena's birth from the head of Zeus. If theorists are permitted to build entire theses on such selective use of material, then every interpretation imaginable will be possible. Moreover, there is a much larger field of evidence one can draw from, since stories of this sort are are actually subheadings to the widespread myth of Venus as the departing eye-heart-soul of the sovereign god. The second objection, though containing much truth, can also be misleading. The fact is that Velikovsky detected certain patterns that cannot be denied and which, taken as a whole, speak emphatically for unusual phenomena--most notably the spectacular cometary history of Venus. There is nothing unreasonable in gathering from around the world the many instances reflecting this highly unusual idea, no matter how many other interesting ideas might be overlooked in the process. The fact is that Velikovsky did not address more than two to five percent of the recurring mythical themes. But by identifying certain themes and offering explanations, he opened the door to a new approach which DOES address the full range of themes in a unified way. And lastly, I would certainly not call Velikovsky's method "unsystematic". It is the systematic nature of his inquiry which establishes one of the key principles: when DIFFERENT words and symbols refer to the SAME celestial phenomena and imply the SAME sequence of events, they constitute legitimate evidence. Dave Talbott ---------------------------------------------- VENUS AND VELIKOVSKY Grinspoon's Venus by Ev Cochrane This week, while doing research for my forthcoming book on the planet Venus, I was reading David Grinspoon's fascinating account of Venus discovery: Venus Revealed (New York, 1997). If there is one thing that stands out about modern scientific deduction with regards to Venus it is that astronomers somehow managed to get most everything wrong. Well into the 1950's, it was still commonly held that Venus was a relatively warm place distinguished by rich vegetation, swamps, and oceans teeming with various forms of life. The clouds, it was thought, were composed mostly of water. WRONG! The rotation rate of Venus was supposedly some 24 hours, just like Earth's. WRONG! Name a feature about which scientists speculated and you find one wrong answer after another. Most remarkable, perhaps, is the long history of bogus "observations" and scientific "findings", including supposed Venusian moons, canals on Venus, a 24-hour rotation rate (others reported they had "measured" a 225 day rotation rate), and so on. Mind you, these bogus claims weren't offered by writers of science fiction; they were offered by the leading astronomers of the day! Given this pathetic historical track record, one can't help but question whether we should give the current received opinion of Venus' recent history and geological nature any more credence. After all, the currently prevailing view of Venus' origins still relies upon the theory that that planet has orbited peacefully on its current orbit for billions of years. I, for one, predict that modern-day astronomers are destined to remain like the prisoners of Plato's cave as long as they refuse to consider the abundant testimony of our ancestors to the effect that Venus only recently experienced a series of spectacular catastrophes and changes in orbit. Ev Cochrane Velikovsky's Originality by Dave Talbott Velikovsky's originality involves numerous components brought together in a seminal and unified approach: ancient testimony as evidence for unusual natural events, cross-cultural comparison to extract underlying ideas, planets as the great gods of the sky- worshippers, Venus as former "comet", Mars as celestial warrior and disturber of the Earth, Saturn as former dominant body in the sky, Jupiter as visible "successor" to Saturn, active role of electromagnetism in an unstable solar system, thunderbolts flying between planets, gravity as an aspect of electricity, catastrophic history of the earth, catastrophe as catalyst in evolution, the psychology of collective amnesia, fundamental challenges to the underpinnings of conventional historical chronologies. People will express opinions on all sides of the different questions raised, but the extremes to which various folks will go to deny "originality" to Velikovsky are a wonder to behold. Of course, it would be absurd to think that, when you break Velikovsky's original perspective into discrete pieces, you would not find precedents for many of the separate components. Taking his work as a whole, Velikovsky is doubtless one of the most original thinkers of this century. Dave Talbott The Youthfulness of Venus: from a paper by Wal Thornhill delivered to a conference in Cambridge, England "Another puzzle is the "domes" on Venus. They average 25 km in diameter and 750 meters in height. Their near perfect circularity argues against their formation by purely volcanic means. Compare with an example of the normal, uneven lobate structure of a lava flow from a central orifice. A better explanation is that they are the result of a diffuse electrical discharge on a very thin crust. The surface responded to the gravitational tug of the nearby planetary body and the upward electrical forces, resulting in uplift with little or no melting, and retention of electric scars. This idea is supported by the observation that the domes seem to be prevalent on lava plains and are associated with sinuous rilles. The tops of the domes have a cobweb type pattern of discharge channels and often a small central crater which argue for the surface having remained solid during the uplift of the domes. Humboldt, a 200km diameter lunar crater shows a similar pattern of roughly concentric and radial channels. The central craters on the domes are small, which indicates a "burning-spot" form of discharge which occur at higher currents than that causing the diffuse discharge. The transition from one type of discharge to the other is sudden. The fact that secondary electrical cratering occurs preferentially on the rims of earlier crater walls might also explain the overlapping domes, where the centre of one dome often coincides fairly closely with a point on the circumference of another. In other words, it seems possible that some of the many variations of electric arc behaviour at an anode seen in the laboratory may explain these enigmatic objects. Juergens points out that such raised mounds may be planetary equivalents of "fulgamites" which are mounds of metal, melted and raised above the surface of metal caps placed over the ends of lightning rods. The sides of fulgamites are usually ridged with closely spaced concentric grooves and the bases flared like a bell." Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- THE WORD ACCORDING TO PAM by Pam Hannah I've been pondering the Logos concept for some years now (in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God; the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us) and also pondering the dark necessity for the atonement (why is it never questioned that a sacrifice had to be made? What good does it do?) Working backward from the Christian Logos and Atonement, I believe the answer may be that there was a visible physical model of both in the Saturnian configuration. If there had been an ancient memory of the blood-red planet Mars driving the god-planets back to pinpoints of light in the sky during a cataclysm of cosmic proportions, the idea of the necessity of blood to restore peace and equilibrium may have been indelibly etched in human consciousness, and if the fiery ejecta of the gas giant Saturn was a detonation both seen and heard, that may have been a model for the Logos - the Word of God. Dwardu's marvelous paper "Darkness and the Deep" (which is still on Ted's website, is not that long, & has a tremendous bibliography) cites J.M. Allegro, who said, "The seed of God was the Word of God" and although Dwardu doesn't agree that this seed/word was fructifying rain, he believes that the philological connection - seed-word-logos is valid. Allegro said, "The most forceful spurting of this 'seed' is accompanied by thunder and the shrieking wind. This is the 'voice' of God. Somewhere above the sky a mighty penis reaches an orgasm that shakes the heaven. As saliva can be seen mixed with breath during forceful human speech, so the 'speaking' of the divine penis is accompanied by a powerful blast of wind, the holy, creative spirit, bearing the 'spittle' of semen." Says Dwardu, "The 'mighty penis' in the sky of which Allegro speaks....is actually mentioned in the mytho- historical record as having been as visible as the 'seed' of the creator. It was that Saturnian appendage that went down in myth, inter alia, as the Axis Mundi." Dwardu offers proofs that in many languages, the words "to speak" and "to shine" are the same, i.e. the spoken word is also equated with light and that there is a connection between Saturn, the Word, and the light. More quotes: "...Talbott informs us that this 'outflow' of light was exhaled, emitted, or spat out by the creator 'in a noisy and tumultuous event.' The implication here is that Saturn's flare-up consisted not only in the shedding of a blinding light but also in the propagation of an explosive sound in effect a colossal detonation." "The gases ejected by Saturn would have easily breached the relatively short distance and, coming in contact with the Earth's atmospheric envelope, would have been translated into an explosive reverberation." "'The unearthly sound associated with this eruption of material,' Talbott goes on, 'gave rise to a pervasive mythical idea that the fiery ejecta was itself the visible 'speech' of the creator." There's MUCH more, but enough to convince me that the Logos wasn't merely a Greek metaphorical construct. The WORD was seen, heard and experienced. Pam Hannah ---------------------------------------------- INTERLUDE: THE HISTORIC ELEPHANT JC Barkley wrote: [O]ver 90% of recorded History has been deliberately destroyed, as a result of War, Political and Religious Fanaticism. So, we are left with very small bits and pieces from which one attempts to discover a reasonable chronology, in the hope that at some point in time it will all make sense: the "Truth", at last. This formidable task may be likened to giving a blind man three hairs from the tail of an Elephant, and demanding of him that he describe accurately and in detail the Animal from which these hairs were taken and the Environment in which it lives. Dwardu Cardona comments: Not quite. It is more akin to giving a man who CAN see more pieces of an elephant than just three hairs from the tail. It is like giving such a person one complete tusk together with a fractured one; two pieces of a trunk; one complete ear; two and a half feet; one complete leg; the entire tuft of the tail; a backbone; and three quarters of a skull. Yes, we DO have that much despite all the book burning of the past. ---------------------------------------------- THE ELECTRIC ELEPHANT: SHOCKING VIEWS FROM THE JOVIAN SYSTEM by Wal Thornhill Have a look at the Galileo website and the image PIA01610 with the title shown in the subject line. The accompanying text says that the chain of 13 craters probably formed by a comet which was pulled into pieces by Jupiter's gravity as it passed too close to the planet. . . . To create a chain with anything like that alignment and with such overlaps would have required that the comet pieces all orbited each other in the same plane only a few kilometres apart. In other words, the comet was not pulled apart but may have been an assemblage of objects after the Van Flandern model. And the whole hypothetical assemblage must have hit head on as a tightly knit group, given the circularity and overlap of all of the craters in the image. But even given this most unlikely scenario, what about all of the other smaller crater chains which can be seen in abundance on Ganymede? It seems to me that Ganymede has surface electrical scarring with variations on those seen on Europa with its parallel lanes of grooved and furrowed surface, together with other scars like those seen on Mars and Venus. Image PIA01614 shows the kind of fretted terrain seen on Mars with the arcuate scarps and occasional terracing inside the walls. It is described as a volcanic feature but there are no signs of any outflow. Material seems to have been lost from the so-called calderas, and just like Mars - it is missing without trace. Image PIA01607 shows dark-floored "impact" crater with bright rims and central peaks. This fits the pattern of anode scarring where the floors of circular craters are melted. The dark floor is therefore presumably surface material modified by melting. The bright material of the rims and central peaks is likely exposed underlying strata of a different colour and composition from the surface deposits. The dark lines running around the rims are likely to be a Ganymede version of concentric rilles - like those seen on Mars, Venus and the Moon. Images PIA01615 and 1616 show the "braided" appearance of some of the swaths of grooved terrain on Ganymede. Similar effects were seen on Europa. It would indicate that Ganymede, like Europa, has taken on the role of a secondary electrode in a powerful interplanetary discharge from Jupiter. In that case, great ropes of writhing hot plasma will preferentially snake across the surface of the moon rather than through the near vacuum of space, as the current heads for its more distant target. A good idea of what it must have looked like can be had if you have seen those plasma ball novelties with the snaking discharges contained in the glass sphere. Only in the case of Ganymede and Europa the ropes would not terminate on the ball but snake around it. PIA01618 shows where two strands come together. In the lower half of the image one strand seems to touch down on the surface and where it meets another diagonal strand, it changes direction to run parallel - a characteristic of electric currents which exhibit long range attraction and short range repulsion.. PIA01619 should put to rest any notion that the grooved terrain is due to fracturing because we see one edge of a swath suddenly cutoff by an apparent transverse discharge which suddenly broadens at the point of intersection. It is evident that the motion and effects of these surface "Birkeland currents" can be incredibly complex. Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com 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://nt.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 focus is 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 issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above. Go to the "free newsletter" page and double click on the image of Thoth, the Egyptian God of Knowledge, to access the back issues.