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. 8 May 15, 1998 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS QUOTE OF THE DAY APPLIED CATASTROPHICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . .Amy Acheson A BRIEF ORIENTATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dave Talbott COMMENTARY ON THE ELECTRIC SUN . . . . . . . .Wal Thornhill ELECTRICAL EFFECTS OF PASSING BODIES . . . . .Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- QUOTE OF THE DAY: Planetary catastrophes have had a far greater impact on the evolution of the solar system, the history of our earth, and the evolution of human consciousness than science has acknowledged. Dave Talbott (THOTH II-4, February 28) ---------------------------------------------- APPLIED CATASTROPHICS By Amy Acheson (thoth at whidbey.com) I want to turn Dave's statement (above) around and examine it from the other direction. How does awareness of recent catastrophe affect our everyday behavior? Without that awareness, would Dave laugh so much? Would Wal have taken anthropology as seriously as astrophysics? Would Ev drive 33 hours straight to attend a workshop? Would Mel and I let our children eat, sleep, potty train, wean and study on their own schedule? [Not an easy decision to keep when our teenage daughter finally decided to learn Spanish on her way to the airport for a two-week excursion in the Yucatan.] And there's the big questions of cultural prejudices, as expressed in a post from D E Davis: "There will be an agenda behind any set of ideas you will come across. "Deconstructing through such author power games as Zionism or homophobia is of paramount importance. When approaching the mythologies of ancient cultures, which provide invaluable information about physical events of the past, the need to understand the cultural context of their production is heightened even more." Once we become aware of the catastrophic etiology of cultural compulsions we are free to walk away from them. It's never easy. There are survival traits woven into the fabric of the compulsions. Simply dropping them could prove suicidal. But even if we meticulously separate the compulsions from the rational parts of culture, we still have to deal daily with people who aren't even aware that the compulsions exist. I personally see this dichotomy in action on every scale from the bristling energy surrounding e-mail haggling to student riots to war. And, while I don't enjoy having my ideas trampled in the mud by debunkers on the InterNet, that, too, is part of the process. After I've struggled so hard to avoid the compulsions, I need to respect the fact that others haven't yet experienced that insight (and stay aware of the fact that I may be uncovering more insights with tomorrow's dawn.) The historical record documents the terror of the past. We of the present have a choice: to pass on our guilt-ridden, fear-driven heritage or get on with the healing. Amy Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- A BRIEF ORIENTATION David Talbott (dtalbott at teleport.com) With the next issue of THOTH, I shall begin a series of articles focused on a single "snapshot" of the planetary configuration which we have claimed dominated human imagination in ancient times. As a prelude to that series, I am submitting the following introductory questions and answers for the benefit of the many new subscribers to this newsletter. WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT MYTH? I think there's a very good reason to care about myth, even though myth as a whole may seem to speak a language too obscure for rational, feet-on-the-ground folk. Myth is, I believe, a window to early human history, a more intense period of history than we've realized. The myths have their roots in a time of celestial catastrophe, and more often than not the appearance of confusion results from viewing myth as something other than what it is. In the course of cultural evolution and scientific advance, we left behind the fabled "long ago," whose images seemed wholly out of touch with our own world. Yet my personal conviction is that ancient myth, when seen as a symbolic record of earth-shaking events in the sky, will permanently change man's view of his celestial environment. BUT YOUR CONCLUSIONS ARE NOT THOSE OF OTHERS WHO DEVOTED LIFETIMES TO THE STUDY OF MYTH. HOW DOES YOUR APPROACH TO MYTH PRODUCE SUCH SURPRISING CONCLUSIONS? For more than 25 years I've been working to solve a puzzle. Why do ancient chronicles of celestial gods and heroes tell such similar stories? Though the names differ, the various biographies of the gods reveal more parallels than I had ever believed possible. And the deeper I looked the more clear it became that ancient races around the world recorded many identical experiences, even when they used different symbols to tell their stories. Many common themes run through the folklore of diverse cultures. From ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to the Americas, from India to China, Scandinavia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, one finds surprisingly similar accounts: celestial temples and cities, a lost paradise or "Garden of Eden," a cosmic mountain, a flaming serpent or dragon in the sky--and surprisingly similar stories of global calamity ranging from wars of the gods, to a great flood or a devastating rain of fire and gravel. If we'll look at these collective memories carefully, it will change our understanding of the past. Many of the myths concern planets, but the accounts make no sense to us in terms of the movement of these remote bodies today. Why did the planets, these little pinpricks of light, play such a powerful role in the mythical "age of the gods"? Along with others working in this field, I've come to interpret the myths and drawings and ritual practices from a new vantage point. Here is the conclusion in a nutshell: A few thousand years ago, the sky did not look anything like it appears today! Planets hung as gigantic, sometimes terrifying bodies above the ancient stargazers. In periods of stability this involved incredible beauty, but there were also periods of mind-altering catastrophe--the most traumatic experiences in human history. WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS? The primary evidence comes from ancient pictures and chronicles, submitted to extensive cross-referencing. By comparing accounts from around the world, one can begin to reconstruct the way the sky looked in ancient times. Is it possible that the myths and pictographs recorded, in a language unique to the starworshippers, large-scale events we've forgotten? By keeping that possibility firmly in mind, the researcher will begin to identify crucial themes of myth--themes found on every continent, but pointing to an alien sky. As one begins to see the past differently, recent space age discoveries will take on a new significance. Our probes of other planets, such as the Mariner explorations of Mars, the Voyager missions to Jupiter and Saturn, and more recently the Magellan mapping of Venus, the Galileo probe of Jupiter, and the Mars Surveyor have produced many stunning images of the planets and their moons, together with undeniable evidence of large-scale catastrophe within the planetary system. Taken as a whole, these stark profiles of our neighbors challenge traditional theories claiming slow and uneventful planetary evolution. Moreover, a new possibility arises from a reconsideration of the historical material: the possibility that at least some of the horrendous scars on our planetary neighbors resulted from events witnessed by man not all that long ago. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THE STATEMENT THAT THE PLANETS APPEARED AS "GIGANTIC BODIES IN THE SKY"? At the core of the argument is the idea that several planets were once joined in a spectacular gathering of planets, together with gases and dust, smaller moons and cosmic debris. For prehistoric man--who witnessed all of this--the effect was a massive celestial display in the northern sky. I've called this celestial assembly "the polar configuration" because in its stable phases it was centered on the north celestial pole. In the beginning, the primary form was the planet Saturn, stationary but immense in the sky. Numerous lines of evidence suggest that Saturn once towered over man and inspired the most dramatic leaps in human imagination the world has ever known. Our work puts a new emphasis on the unusual celestial events reflected in the myths. When you first dive into world mythology, all of your prior training will tell you to dismiss the myth-makers as fabricators or victims of hallucination. But there's another way to see the myths. Ancient man experienced extraordinary events, then strove to remember and to reenact them in every way possible. The result was not only a global mythology, but entirely new forms of human expression. And the whole range of expressions--sacrifices to the gods, wars of conquest, monumental construction, pictographic representations, and endless celebrations of the lost age of the gods--left us a massive reservoir of evidence. These highly novel expressions are, in fact, the distinguishing characteristics of the first civilizations. BUT WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE THE SKY HAS CHANGED SO DRASTICALLY? The best I can ask for is a willingness to consider an argument. I could show you, for example, that certain celestial images preoccupied ancient man to the point of an obsession. A great cosmic wheel in the sky. The pyramid of the sun. The eye of heaven. Also the ship of heaven, a spiraling serpent, the raging goddess, and four luminous "winds" of the sky. The problem for conventional perspectives is that these images are far, far removed from anything we see in the heavens today. But that is only the beginning of the theoretical challenge. As soon as you realize that far-flung cultures, though employing different symbols, tell a unified story, all of the previous "explanations" of myth collapse. Of course the point will not be proven in a few sentences, and not in a few pages. But the more you learn on this subject, the more compelling the collective memory becomes. SO YOU ARE CHALLENGING THE IDEA THAT THINGS HAVE NOT REALLY CHANGED THAT MUCH WITHIN THE SOLAR SYSTEM. Yes, we are challenging an intellectual system as a whole. What is at stake here are the pillars of the modern world view. How could it be that the sky has completely changed in a few thousand years? Our textbooks do not talk about such a thing. When instructing us on the history of the solar system, the evolution of our planet, the birth of man, the origins of civilization, no one speaks of an unstable solar system, of interplanetary upheaval, or of wholesale changes in the celestial order. When the popular astronomer Carl Sagan presented his impressive exposition on the nature of things, called Cosmos, he didn't ask if we may have misunderstood our past. Rather, Sagan's expressed view--the official view of science for many years--fits comfortably within the textbooks on astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, and ancient history. When we launched the U.S. Space program in the late 50s, then devoted billions of dollars to exploring neighboring planets, no one thought to ask if the planets might have followed different courses in earlier times, whether recent disturbances of the planetary system might have left their tell-tale marks on these remote bodies. So when our cameras and measuring devices reached the planets Mars and Venus, and the Voyager probes provided spectacular glimpses of Jupiter and Saturn--well, we were left with a hundred enigmas and unanswered questions. And yes, there's a certain irony to this. The prevailing view of myth proclaims that, through science, man escaped the bonds of superstition and make believe. But now, in the twentieth century--the age of science and reason--it is myth and symbol that will provide the lost key to the past, the key to a new understanding of the solar system and of human origins. At the heart of this claim is a bedrock principle: the myth-making age arose from the human urge to REMEMBER; hence, the patterns of myth are the patterns of human memory. And if it can be rigorously demonstrated from cross cultural comparison that numerous DIFFERENT words and symbols and mythical themes actually point to the SAME HIGHLY UNUSUAL EVENTS, then the patterns of memory will carry more weight than science has ever considered. HOW DO YOU DISTINGUISH THESE IDEAS ABOUT "PLANETARY" MYTH FROM THE IDEAS OF OTHER RESEARCHERS SUCH AS JOSEPH CAMPBELL, CARL JUNG AND MIRCEA ELIADE? Each of these impressive scholars came to discern certain unified layers of myth, layers our traditional cynicism about myth never anticipated. Perhaps the greatest contribution of these pioneers is their acknowledgment that the common view--seeing myth as random absurdity--will not suffice to explain the subject. I think the late Joseph Campbell has done the most to awaken popular interest in myth, and he is one of my own favorites too. Following a comparative approach, Campbell brought to light quite a number of global themes. He noted, for example, the myths of the central sun, the world mountain, the flowering of creation through sacrifice, the birth of the hero, the terrible goddess, and so on. Any one of these themes, when explored in its full context, could open the door to incredible discovery. But Campbell, like so many others, stopped short of asking the most important question of all: if the celestial references of the myths are absent today, is it possible that they were present in a former time? WHAT IS THE REAL MESSAGE OF MYTH, IN YOUR VIEW? The mythmakers are telling us we've forgotten the very thing they regarded as most vital--in fact, the source of all meaning to the first starworshippers. We've forgotten the age of the gods. We've assumed that as long as man has journeyed on our planet the world looked and behaved almost exactly as it does today. And that is the fundamental error of modern perception. The answer to that error is to re-envision the past. With the help of the ancient chroniclers, its time to bring the forgotten dramas--both the beauty, and the nightmare scenarios--into the light of day. ---------------------------------------------- COMMENTS ON ELECTRIC STARS By Wal Thornhill The possibility is that the sun is isothermal, or even that the standard model does apply somewhere deep inside. The problem for the theorists is that, if the photosphere is an anode phenomenon, the boundary conditions defined by the photospheric temperature and apparent radius of the sun is no longer applicable as it used in the standard solar model. So, yes, I am suggesting that the sun is a different size than that suggested by the photosphere. Therefore we don't know the true volume of the sun, nor the surface temperature as required by the perfect gas theory. As for the calculations about the density of the sun - which is proportional to its mass - which in turn is determined by the measured gravitational attraction of the sun for the Earth, I believe we have a problem there too. As I mentioned in a more recent post, "our physics is lacking in some crucial areas." To put it bluntly, I do not believe that Einstein's view of gravity as curved space is correct or even helpful. There is an alternative classical model which shows great promise and relates the inertial and gravitational mass to induced electrostatic dipoles in nucleons. That means that the gravitational "constant', G, is neither constant nor universal. If that is so, we do not know the mass of the sun either! Since we don't know the mass or volume of the sun, we cannot determine its density. It is clear then that we can say little about the solar interior conditions. And since the interpretation of helioseismology data is constrained to a large extent by the standard solar model, any conclusions from that source must be viewed with caution. It also seems to me that there is a lack in the perfect gas theory used in the standard solar model which may have profound consequences if the "neo-classical" theory of gravity is correct in principle. That is, the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law does not deal with electrostatic polarization of atoms/molecules due to gravity. Such electrostatic polarization occurs in a strong gravitational field because the nucleus of each atom will be displaced within the atom, slightly toward the centre of the sun. Such radial atomic polarization would create an increasing electrostatic field as you move out from the centre of the sun. That field will be responded to by nucleons (according to the new theory of gravity) to give a much greater effective gravitational field than would be produced by the same matter if it were at the Earth's surface (for instance). As if the indeterminacy of mass and volume of the sun were not enough, such a polarization effect would render invalid calculations of density versus distance from the sun's centre, based on the perfect gas laws. It has also occurred to me that the radial electrostatic polarization of the sun may be responsible for focusing or initiating the cosmic discharge in the first place. Once begun, the energy density of incoming cosmic rays at the Earth's orbit, which equals the radiant energy output from the sun, shows that little input is required from nuclear reactions at the sun to explain the sun's radiant output. I have used the analogy of a power transformer, where the cross-country power lines carry electrical power at a lethal voltage but the transformer converts it to a lower, more useful household voltage. Likewise, stellar transformers convert the lethal power of galactic cosmic rays to a more benign level of radiation conducive to life. Naturally, at this early stage, many of the ideas expressed are speculative. But I am convinced that the sun exhibits all of the complex phenomena associated with a plasma discharge. Based on the standard solar theory, Fred Hoyle wrote in Frontiers of Astronomy, 1955, p.106: "We should expect on the basis of a straightforward calculation that the Sun would 'end' itself in a simple and rather prosaic way; that with increasing height above the photosphere the density of the solar material would decrease quite rapidly, until it became pretty well negligible only two or three thousand kilometers up." The standard solar model has nothing but adhocery to offer by way of explanation for the complex phenomena observed on and above the photosphere. So despite the clever mathematical virtuosity displayed, I suggest the standard model simply doesn't apply to our sun or any other star. The field is wide open for new ideas! Wal Thornhill More responses to later questions on the same subject: What I tried to emphasize is that the Einstein model of gravity is wrong. In its place I favor a neo-classical physics approach which relates inertial and gravitational mass to nuclear electrostatic dipoles and the transmission of the electrostatic force at near infinite speed. In this model, the Newtonian gravitational constant, G, is neither constant nor universal. It depends to a great extent on the electric charge on the star or planet. That is the reason why G is the most ill-determined "constant" in physics. By assuming that G is the same for the Earth and the sun, conventional theory arrives at a mass of the sun which is fictional. Sure, gravity operates on and above the sun in the way we expect from present theory, so quantitatively the force works exactly according to Hoyle. But internally (below the photosphere) the gravitational field will deviate from our expectations of the standard solar model since we do not know the radial distribution of charge or the radially cumulative effects of gravitational electrostatic polarization of atoms and nuclei. Intuitively I would expect that the contribution to the gravitational field of the sun from the nuclei of atoms within the sun would rise much more rapidly in the outer layers than expected in the standard model, where all atoms of a particular element have the same mass regardless of where we find them. (Remember, the stronger the electrostatic polarization, the higher the apparent mass of an atom in the electrical model. It is precisely the same effect we see in particle accelerators). The result would be a quite different density profile from the standard model, with a much lower density at the centre of the sun. If you are curious about the electrostatic dipole model of gravity, I urge you to write to the Classical Physics Institute, 492 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, New York 10185. There is much more depth, complexity and detail in the theory than I am willing or able to repeat on this forum. For those who need quantitative arguments - it's there. Some of the ideas expressed above may not wholly conform to the ideas of others in this new and exciting field. I am happy to be corrected. Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- ELECTRICAL EFFECTS OF PASSING BODIES By Wal Thornhill >Clark Whelton asks: > >Velikovsky had to explain his claim that the Earth slowed and >stopped, or that the axis tipped, by attributing these >effects to standard gravitational interaction with passing >bodies. In an electrical universe, couldn't spin rate and >orientation of the axis be affected by electrical interaction >with passing bodies, possibly even a comet? Yes Clark, but the important thing in all of this, and something which Velikovsky in his usual intuitive way presaged, is that gravity itself is linked to electrostatics. It is not some innate quality associated with matter, unrelated to its electrical structure. With hindsight this seems so bleeding obvious you wonder at the lack of common sense of "experts" - but that is the nature of paradigm shifts. The importance of this "discovery" cannot be overstated since at one stroke it overcomes the objection that electric forces can play no part in celestial dynamics because of the shielding quality of space plasma for electrical forces. Plasma does not act as a shield for gravity, so if you can change gravity by changing the electrostatic charge on a body the effects can be felt by other bodies in the solar system. Of course, the most dramatic changes in planetary charge occur when interplanetary discharges take place. A comet could have the effects you mention if it carried sufficient charge. Of course, all of this has profound implications for the doomsayers amongst the NEO researchers. . . . It is safe to assume that asteroids carry considerable electrical charge. As evidence, the presumed magnetic field detected during the Galileo spacecraft's flyby of asteroid Gaspra. It surprised investigators, not least because it seemed to be as strong as the Earth's. That interpretation was based on calculations of the presumed effect of an inert obstacle the size of Gaspra on the solar wind. The fact that the solar wind disturbance was much larger than expected is more easily explained as the extent of a Langmuir sheath (plasmasphere) which shields a charged object from the surrounding plasma. It is unnecessary to infer a magnetosphere. As I wrote some time early last year concerning Tunguska and the great Chicago fires, if such a body approached within the Earth's plasmasphere, electrical effects would begin to be noticed up to a day before "impact". Once it got close enough it would likely be destroyed by the Earth's own defense system - a cosmic discharge. I can guarantee that the "impact" would look nothing like all of the simplistic artists' renditions which don't even show so much as a spark of lightning. ---------------------------------------------- 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.