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. 17 Oct 31, 1998 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS PEPPERONI AND THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE . . . . by Amy Acheson ON STABLE AND UNSTABLE WORLDS. . . . . . . . Dave Talbott HALLOWEEN WITCHES AND GIANTS . . . . . . .kronia questions comments by Dwardu Cardona and Ev Cochrane JUPITER'S RINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . NASA Press Release comments by Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- PEPPERONI AND THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE by Amy Acheson I've run into an analogy at work which shows why math can't always be "counted on" to explain the full picture. Our pizza franchise convinced our marketing manager to run a special sale this week. They cranked out the numbers, and decided that "the reduced gross will be more than made up for by the increased sales." But this is the fourth time they've used this particular sale, and I'm getting more cantankerous with my objections every time. The sale is this: $1 off any large pizza. What their numbers don't see is this: customer walks into store, planning to buy two medium pizzas of different varieties ... say, pepperoni/sausage and Canadian bacon/pineapple: $6.49 each, or $12.98 in all. He sees the sign, "$1 off on any large pizza". Now, a large two-topping pizza sells for $8.99, $7.99 at the "$1 off" price. And right away the customer sees how he can save $4.99 on supper. Instead of taking the two medium pizzas from the refrigerated display case, he asks me to make him a special order ... one large pizza; half pepperoni/sausage; half Canadian bacon/pineapple. After a dozen customers like this, we are so busy making "special orders" that the supply of regular pizzas in the display case dwindles and even customers who are too mathematically impaired to figure out what's cheaper have to ask for "special orders", too. Bottom line: Friday we made enough pizzas to bring in $850 on a non-sale week. What we actually grossed was $625. (minus 2 to 3 hours labor; another $100 lost). And what has this to do with the Saturn thesis? Just this: as long as astrophysicists ignore the electrical interactions taking place in the solar system, they're looking at the line-up of SL9, comet tails, Io's volcanoes and Europa's cracked surface as "$1 off." When the Saturnians add electrical interpretations to the equation, the historical orbital possibilities go up to "$4.99 off", and the math crunchers are going to have to work overtime inventing ad-hoc hypotheses to figure out where they lost that extra $3.99! ~Amy Acheson thoth at Whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- ON STABLE AND UNSTABLE WORLDS Dave Talbott (dtalbott at teleport.com) We return now to the thread on physical issues facing the Saturn theory. The challenge under discussion is that of reconciliation - a rapprochement between the historical argument on the one hand and physical theory on the other. As we have seen, the unusual nature of the hypothesized events offers us a certain advantage. These events are so specifically defined that the tests are both clear and unequivocal. This principle, essential to the historical argument, also applies to all domains of physical evidence. Grant the extraordinary hypothesis, and you WILL NOT DOUBT that the events left a trail of distinct physical markers - evidence which the specialists have simply failed to recognize. We have described a congregation of planets close to the earth and dominating the ancient sky. If this extraordinary claim is true, then there is a vital line of discovery available to us. It is available to us whether or not we see this path for what it is On this path lies all of the critical evidence left by the events, all of the dynamical principles either known or yet to be discovered - everything that is needed to reconcile the historical argument and physical theory. The path is there because truth is unified. But will we see the evidence for what it is? In launching this review, we discussed the issue of Kepler's Third Law, which seems to exclude the very planetary alignment so fundamental to the theory. But then, as we saw, there is a unique principle of collinear equilibrium that radically alters the dynamic challenge. Put planets in line, and in sufficiently close proximity to each other, and there will be for each planet a mathematical equilibrium position along that line, at which each will have the same period as all the others. The planets stay in line until perturbed. But mathematical equilibrium does not mean that a collinear configuration would endure for more than a briefest moment, since equilibrium can be either stable or unstable. Once the collinear principle was acknowledged, it did not take 48 hours for the critics to retort that elimination of the Kepler objection doesn't make any difference. "The collinear positions are unstable", they said. Indeed, one critic even asserted that the equilibrium positions made the problems "worse". Confusion was aggravated by Robert Grubaugh's use of the word "stable" for collinear equilibrium, and it was his position that this stability could be demonstrated mathematically. What he actually demonstrated, I now believe, is that the mass ratios involved in the configuration work to the advantage of endurance, but not stability. His own computer simulation shows instability under the accepted definition. ANY perturbation begins an unraveling of the in-line condition, which is the definition of instability. Working with an archaic computer, he had simply not run the simulation long enough to watch unraveling happen under the influence of disturbance For those who have not followed these discussions, let me give my present understanding of the terminology (with the caveat that this is not my field of expertise!). Stability and instability can be visualized by simple analogies. If the object in question is a sphere, then instability is a round hill. There is a mathematical equilibrium point on the top of the hill, but in the real world the sphere will always roll off. The steeper the hill, the more explosive the instability. The "flatter" the top of the hill, the longer it will take for the ball to roll off. If I am understanding Grubaugh's position correctly, with two gas giants acting on much smaller planets in the collinear system, the mass ratios reduce the disruptive influence of a perturbation. But mass ratios cannot eliminate instability, only slow its effects. The collinear position is still a hill In contrast, stability is a valley or well. The deeper the well, the greater the force directing the sphere to the low point of the well, and the more energy it will take to remove the sphere from the well. Though mathematicians have debated the stability of collinear equilibrium positions into this century, I am satisfied that such positions are unstable under the accepted definition of the term. To the majority of critics there was nothing more one needed to know. "Collinear equilibrium is unstable, and the Saturnian configuration is impossible," they announced with one voice. "It's over!" shouted Professor Paul Gans, one of the best known debunkers on the Internet discussion group, talk.origins. During the several-week span of the discussion on talk.origins, I do not recall any skeptic allowing for a qualification of that pronouncement. It happened, however, that a fellow named Robert Bass had wandered by the talk group and he saw my name. I had known him from some 20 years earlier, when he wrote a couple of articles on solar system stability for the journal Pensee, which I was had published from 1972 to 1974. He wrote me a friendly note and that re-kindled an old relationship. Dr. Bass is a Rhodes Scholar, a highly accomplished mathematician, and former chairman of the departments of mathematics and astronomy at Brigham Young University. I had the opportunity to discuss the stability question with Dr. Bass at length. Numerous critics had insisted that the way to determine stability of the claimed Saturnian system was to run a computer simulation. But there is a more appropriate test, Bass told me. He proposed to approach collinear equilibrium analytically, noting that the critics were making a mistake in simply writing off the equilibrium as unstable, since there can always be secondary forces coming into the equation in a critical way, and that requires one to understand the "configuration" of instability. So Bass developed what those in higher mathematics call a 20- dimensional matrix (something I'd prefer NOT to understand), and through a rigorous analysis determined what he called "the directions of stability and instability" in collinear equilibrium positions. The results were potentially far- reaching. What follows is my own best effort at describing the dynamic considerations by analogy. The collinear equilibrium position is not a hill, and it is not a valley or well. It is a "saddlepoint", a configuration which simultaneously acts like a well AND a hill, though the hill will win out and the sphere will, under even the most minute disturbance, roll off the saddle point. I came to see the saddle point in terms of intersecting stable and unstable configurations, a hill and valley. On one axis of the "saddle", you have the valley, and on the other you have the hill. Look at the shape of a saddle lengthwise and in profile, and you see a valley. But a cross-section at any point will reveal a hill. The low point of the valley is the high point of a hill. That is the "saddlepoint". So it can only be unstable, though the sphere placed at that point will only role off in one of two directions. That's a lot different dynamically than a round hill, as we'll see in a moment. But first it is crucial that one see the significance of equilibrium itself. Imagine a marble on a perfectly smooth and frictionless saddle point, and you will easily visualize why the equilibrium position is unstable. The existence of a mathematical zero point does not mean that, practically speaking, the marble will stay there.. But equally important is the energy factor - which may be a little easier to visualize if we increase the size of the sphere. Imagine a bowling ball placed on a saddle point. Ask yourself how much energy is needed to HOLD the ball at that equilibrium point. Then compare that to the amount of energy needed to STOP a bowling ball falling at hundreds of miles per hour. That is the significance of equilibrium. Of course, to appreciate the scale of forces at stake, you have to imagine, not bowling balls, but PLANETS in equilibrium versus PLANETS moving away from equilibrium at THOUSANDS of miles per hour. So long as the original objection to the in-line system (based on Kepler) dominated discussion, there was no answer to the momentum problem in terms acceptable to thoses accredited in the affected fields. But once collinear equilibrium entered the picture, the ground shifted dramatically. As Bass observed, it was no longer appropriate to ignore secondary forces. So Bass conducted a mathematical experiment analyzing the effect of "tidal friction", which arises from the tidal distortion of one body gravitationally by another body. Analytically, by determining the directions of stability and instability at the "saddle point", Dr. Bass was able to visualize the effect of tidal friction on collinear equilibrium. It was his conclusion that this secondary force operates in the direction of stability. If that is correct, then the system will only unravel when a perturbing force is greater than the effects of tidal friction. In other words, ANY force working in the direction of stability means that the system is stable, even if the valley or well of stability is exceedingly shallow. This will remain true until a greater force is introduced, acting in the direction of instability. Of course the scale of tidal friction will typically be extremely small, but in the hypothesized assembly of planets, these bodies were unusually close together. And this not only makes a large difference, it could support the idea of a collinear system going on virtually forever. (In fact, however, the Saturn model is NOT dependent on long duration of any phase in the dynamic evolution of the system.) The physicist Robert Driscoll, who has spent much of his life working with electromagnetic principles, also expressed interest in collinear equilibrium. Under Newton's laws, the force of gravity varies with the inverse square of the distance between two bodies. And interestingly, the lapse rate of magnetic force between the poles of two magnets follows the same inverse square principle. But when two objects, both possessing dipolar magnetic fields, talk to each other dynamically, there is something more.. With the interaction of two sets of DIPOLES, the resulting strength of the magnetic "push" or "pull" between the two bodies will vary at the inverse 4TH POWER of distance. This unique gradient, according to Driscoll, will operate in the direction of collinear stability. But such expert testimony does not provide us with any final solutions. Some of Driscoll's work has been published in the journal AEON, but it has only invited further exploration, and Dr. Bass' work relative to tidal friction was a preliminary study subject to review by others. These specialists have, however, given us one definitive answer on a crucial point. Those who simply asserted that the Saturnian system would be unstable - and therefore "impossible - were incorrect. That presumption ignored any and all forces which would act in the direction of stability. Of course all of this needs much more investigation, and I have little doubt that many of the most significant revelations still lie ahead of us . In this reveiw, we have not yet looked at the work of Wal Thornhill and others on the "electric universe". Tidal friction and magnetic interactions are within the parameters of conventional theory. Their effects on a LIVABLE Earth would necessarily be extremely small. But there is a common assumption - what might be called a sacred principle of science - which must ultimately be challenged. It is always assumed that "gravity" is a constant. In truth, NO ONE can claim to know this, and there is significant evidence to the contrary (and we will get to it shortly). The remembered Saturnian system was alive with electric effects, and if I am hearing Wal Thornhill correctly, these effects are a direct indication that there was no gravitational "constant" within the system. Is it possible, then, that there is a much larger theoretical arena for exploring collinear stability and collinear instability? Both stability and instability MUST be included in the hypothesis if one is to account for the planetary system's origins, its spectacular disruption, it's transient re- configuration, and its ultimate demise. ---------------------------------- HALLOWEEN WITCHES AND GIANTS kronia questions comments by Dwardu Cardona and Ev Cochrane KAREN JOSEPHSON WROTE: All this talk about comets combined with thoughts of [Halloween] has reminded me of something I saw on PBS (Nova, I think) .... They showed the mummies of Caucasian people who lived in what is now western China . . . One of the best preserved was a tall Indo-european-looking woman. The items found in the grave indicated that she was some kind of religious leader in the community. The item that made her particularly memorable to me was the hat she wore on her head .... It was a very high, pointed "witches hat" -- Another "old wive's tale (or bit of mythology turns out to have basis in FACT!!!!! KAJ DWARDU CARDONA COMMENTS: The witch's pointed hat IS based on fact, but not re the mummy you mention above. The pointed hat was the conical-appearing axis mundi as it stretched above the Venerian orb in its descent from the Saturnian center. (Dave Talbott may have a slightly different take on this. Why not ask him?) Dwardu. J. CALVIN BARKLEY COMMENTS: [W]ith regard to the phrase; "There were Giants on the Earth in those days", "Were" is the past tense of "are", defined as "previously", which implies that something which is no longer present or in existence, was previously present or in existence. . . . this implies that they no longer exist, although they did exist previously. "There were Giants in those days": there are none now. Fortunately, it was not stated that "there will be Giants", because, obviously, that would have all kinds of possibilities for acceptable interpretation. JC EV COCHRONE RESPONDS: The belief that "there were giants in those days" is very widespread in nature. Consider the following tradition of the Pawnee Indians: "The first men who lived on earth were very large Indians. They were giants; very big and very strong." (George Grinnell, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales," 1961, p. 354). According to Pawnee tradition, this race of giants was killed by the Flood. How are we to understand such traditions? In my opinion, the key is provided by the equally widespread tradition that in primeval times the planets used to live on earth. Here's a representative example of this theme from South America: "In days long ago the sun and the moon and all their children lived on earth...In those days the sun and the moon and everyone were human beings and lived on this earth. Sun had a son who had sores all over his body; he was the morning star...He told his uncle to carry him on his shoulders because he could not walk; he was covered with sores and had to lie down all the time...One morning they finally arrived at his father's house...They greeted one another but then grabbed hold of one another as if to fight. Morning Star, growing larger than his father and brothers, won all the fights ... The next morning he bathed and turned into the handsomest man in the world." Those familiar with my writings on Mars will recognize here several archetypal themes: The Morning Star as Mars; the hero with sores all over his body (Batraz); the lame hero (Samson); the hero who suddenly assumes a gargantuan form (Batraz, Maui, Indra, Cuchulainn); the ugly hero who suddenly becomes transformed into a beautiful being (Batraz, Odysseus). Each of these widespread themes has clear celestial precedents, all involving the planet Mars and its escapades in relation to the other planets participating in the polar configuration. It stands to reason that the theme of the giants likewise traces to celestial events, subsequently localized and "euhemerized", so to speak. Ev Cochrane DAVE TALBOTT RESPONDS: It is my contention that the different "giant" themes can be traced backwards, and the path will always lead you to ancient images of CELESTIAL powers. The fabled age of giants will echo all of the images linked to the age of the gods. The remote land of the giants will be a faint recollection of the land of the gods. Huge edifices claimed to have been built by giants will have their earlier counterpart in the COSMIC temples, cities and kingdoms built by the gods. Wars of the giants will be seen as diluted versions of the wars of the gods, or Clash of the Titans. Internal consistency is one of the crucial tests of a theory, and any suggestion that the "age of giants" could refer to a period of unusually large human beings must be subject to the consistency test. It is certainly true that around the world, folk traditions associated various cultural remains with the activity of giants. They marveled at pyramids and towers and broken walls of former peoples. Popular Arabic tradition identifies "giants" as the builders of Middle Eastern megaliths. The Greeks proclaimed that a generation of giants had built the great fortifications at Tiryns and Mycenae. Scattered megaliths across Europe invited the same idea. Throughout Mesoamerica and South America it was claimed that the massive remains of earlier cultures had been constructed by giants. Similar ideas will be found in the South Pacific. Well, it is certainly true that if earlier generations were big enough, then building some of the larger monuments might have been easier. But if this explanation is entertained, should we not apply it also to those remarkably similar instances in which NATURAL features - mountains, gullies, ridges, canyons, and rivers were identified with the former activity of giants? In northern Ireland there is the famous CLOCHAN AN AIFIR, the "Giant's Causeway". It is constituted by huge hexagonal, basaltic columns, formed from the cooling of lava, and reaching as high as 200 feet or so. Native tradition claimed that these were built by a race of giants as a means of crossing the Irish Sea. In fact this kind of motif is quite common and was attached to the natural formation called the "Bridge of the Gods" on the Columbia River not all that far from here. So there was not just one natural "bridge" claimed to have been built by giants or gods. A good place to start in an exploration of the "giant" theme would be Greek myth, because it stands in an ambiguous zone between the more archaic world, in which the gods are celestial powers, and a later world in which the gods have been brought down to earth and localized as "great men". The Greek Gigantes are sons of the earth goddess Gaia. When the god Ouranos is "castrated" by his son and alter ego Kronos, the planet Saturn, it is from his blood that the Gigantes arise. They are not just "large" human-like creatures. They are towering forms capable of shaking heaven and earth. This birth of the Gigantes is virtually synchronous with birth of the goddess Aphrodite from the "foam" of the severed members of Ouranos. Aphrodite is, of course, the planet Venus. In Greek literature the Gigantes are directly involved in battles with the gods. Often they were depicted with serpent-tails. Their weapons were "mountains" (in truth, the world mountain itself). And yet, though numerous gods were drawn into the fray, and the earth reeled under the crashing of weaponry, it is fascinating to note that it was a so- called "mortal" warrior-hero, Heracles, who slew the two leaders of the revolt. But Heracles is, as we have seen, the echo of an explicitly cosmic figure in the earlier traditions. Indeed, the war with the giants is essentially an extension of the Clash of the Titans. The Greeks regarded the Titans as "ancestors" of humanity. Their prevalence was synchronous with the remarkable epoch of Kronos, the planet Saturn. Kronos himself was the chief of the Titans, all of whom were sons of Ouranos, as were the Gigantes. At the close of the Golden Age of Kronos, the Titans fell into discord and fought with the gods of Olympos. "...And the infinite great sea moaned terribly and the earth crashed aloud, and the wide sky resounded as it was shaken, and tall Olympos rocked on its bases....Now Zeus no longer held in his strength, but here his heart filled deep with fury, and now he showed his violence entire and indiscriminately...Out of the sky and off Olympos he moved flashing his fires incessantly, and the thunderbolts....while the flames went up to the bright sky unquenchably, and the blaze and the glare of the thunder and lightning blinded the eyes of the Titan gods, for all they were mighty. The wonderful conflagration crushed Chaos, and to the eyes' seeing and ears' hearing the clamor of it, it absolutely would have seemed as if Earth and the wide heaven above her had collided, for such would have been the crash arising as Earth wrecked and the sky came piling down on top of her, so vast was the crash heard as the gods collided in battle." Dave Talbott ---------------------------------------------- JUPITER'S RINGS NASA new release comments by Wal Thornhill FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 15, 1998 GALILEO FINDS JUPITER'S RINGS FORMED BY DUST BLASTED OFF SMALL MOONS Jupiter's intricate, swirling ring system is formed by dust kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into the giant planet's four small inner moons, according to scientists studying data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Images sent by Galileo also reveal that the outermost ring is actually two rings, one embedded within the other. The findings were announced today by scientists from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (NOAO), Tucson, AZ, at a news briefing held at Cornell. "We now know the source of Jupiter's ring system and how it works," said Cornell astronomer Dr. Joseph Burns, who reported on the first detailed analysis of a planet's ring system, along with Maureen Ockert-Bell and Dr. Joseph Veverka of Cornell, and Dr. Michael Belton of NOAO. "Rings are important dynamical laboratories to look at the processes that probably went on billions of years ago when the Solar System was forming from a flattened disk of dust and gas," Burns explained. Furthermore, similar faint rings probably are associated with many small moons of the Solar System's other giant planets. "I expect we will see similar processes at Saturn and the other giant planets," Burns said. In the late 1970s, NASA's two Voyager spacecraft first revealed the structure of Jupiter's rings: a flattened main ring and an inner, cloud-like ring, called the halo, both composed of small, dark particles. One Voyager image seemed to indicate a third, faint outer ring. New Galileo data reveal,that this third ring, known as the gossamer ring because of its transparency, consists of two rings. One is embedded within the other, and both are composed of microscopic debris from two small moons, Amalthea and Thebe. "For the first time we can see the gossamer-bound dust coming off Amalthea and Thebe, and we now believe it is likely that the main ring comes from Adrastea and Metis," Burns said. "The structure of the gossamer rings was totally unexpected," Belton added. "These images provide one of the most significant discoveries of the entire Galileo imaging experiment." Galileo took three dozen images of the rings and small moons during three orbits of Jupiter in 1996 and 1997. The four moons display "bizarre surfaces of undetermined composition that appear very dark, red and heavily cratered from meteoroid impacts," Veverka said. The rings contain very tiny particles resembling dark, reddish soot. Unlike Saturn's rings, there are no signs of ice in Jupiter's rings. Scientists believe that dust is kicked off the small moons when they are struck by interplanetary meteoroids, or fragments of comets and asteroids, at speeds greatly magnified by Jupiter's huge gravitational field, like the cloud of chalk dust that rises when two erasers are banged together. The small moons are particularly vulnerable targets because of their relative closeness to the giant planet. "In these impacts, the meteoroid is going so fast it buries itself deep in the moon, then vaporizes and explodes, causing debris to be thrown off at such high velocity that it escapes the satellite's gravitational field,"Burns said. If the moon is too big, dust particles will not have enough velocity to escape the moon's gravitational field. With a diameter of just eight kilometers (five miles) and an orbit that lies just at the periphery of the main ring, tiny Adrastea is "most perfectly suited for the job." As dust particles are blasted off the moons, they enter orbits much like those of their source satellites, both in their size and in their slight tilt relative to Jupiter's equatorial plane. A tilted orbit wobbles around a planet's equator, much like a hula hoop twirling around a person's waist. This close to Jupiter, orbits wobble back and forth in only a few months. Jupiter's diameter is approximately 143,000 kilometers (86,000 miles). The ring system begins about 92,000 kilometers (55,000 miles) from Jupiter's center and extends to about 250,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) from the planet. Galileo has been orbiting Jupiter and its moons for 2 1/2 years, and is currently in the midst of a two-year extension, known as the Galileo Europa Mission. JPL manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of Caltech, Pasadena, CA. The new images, and further information on this discovery and the Galileo mission, are available on the Internet at the following websites: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/sept98/jupiter_rings.html Wal Thornhill comments: This is an interesting news item. But it makes all the usual bland assumptions of a non-electrical universe. Last Saturday, Robert and I filmed my friend Rod Browitt (who is sadly fighting cancer at present) here in Canberra while he repeated electric cratering experiments. You won't believe how good some of them look on broadcast quality video! One of the things we observed was how an "electric wind" over a simulated planetary surface can effectively blow the surface dust off without visibly discharging and causing scarring. It can do this in defiance of gravity and does not require high velocity impacts to provide the kinetic energy. It renders unnecessary the hypothesis of high velocity impacts to remove surface material. In any case, the visible removal of surface material from Io in electric discharges may be being repeated on a small, undetectable scale on the tiny moons of Jupiter. You may also note that the craters on the small moons of Jupiter are circular! 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/ 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.