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. 2 January 31 , 1998 EDITOR: Michael Armstrong PUBLISHER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS: VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (13)...................David Talbott HUBBLE CAPTURES A ONE-HIT WONDER...............Robert S. Boyd Knight-Ridder News Service Comments....................................Wal Thornhill "THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED" Comments......................Mel Acheson & Wal Thornhill "THE GREAT COMET CRASH".....................Amy & Mel Acheson URL's of Interest ----------------------------------------------- Quote of the day: If the cultivation of understanding consists in one thing more than another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one's own opinions. John Stuart Mill ----------------------------------------------- VELIKOVSKY'S COMET VENUS (13) By David Talbott (dtalbott at teleport.com) [EDITOR'S NOTE: This continues Talbott's series of articles on the myth of the comet Venus.] SWEEPING AWAY THE NIGHT Discerning the relationship of archetype and symbol is particularly crucial when the symbol, in its familiar associations in daily life, cannot convey the extraordinary power of the archetype. By "archetype" we mean the original experience or idea giving meaning to a symbol. Without that relationship in view, the symbol can only appear random and absurd, because there is nothing standing behind it. A recurring symbol among the Aztecs is that of the broom. In this case the symbol may seem so far removed from our subject as to have no place in this analysis. Yet since this very symbol does recur in ritual contexts of darkness and upheaval, it is only appropriate that we seek out the underlying idea. The broom plays a part, for example, in the myth of Cihuacoatl, or "Woman Snake," the chief advisor to the Aztec ruler. Cihuacoatl stands in close but enigmatic association with both the horrifying serpentine goddess Coatlicue and the revered mother goddess Toci. But strangely, Cihuacoatl's relationships and symbols suggest two extremes, with no apparent bridge between them. In her most familiar role, she speaks for "domestic" responsibilities (she holds a broom and was remembered in the daily sweeping of the household shrine); but she was equally "at home" in her Terrible Aspect, the man-eating mistress of chaos. We must remember what Mircea Eliade and other perceptive students of comparative religion have taught us about the motives of myth and ritual. Inherent in the idea of correspondence with the gods was the idea of sacred moments, sacred domains, and sacred gestures, distinguished from the insignificant and "profane" by their connection with the great events and deeds of the gods. The principle applied at all levels of activity, not just the publicly visible centers of collective ritual. Every household had its sacred aspect, as did the kingdom. "Women had care of the household shrines, and the presentation of the little broom at birth signaled their sacred responsibility to keep the home zone well swept, and so free from potentially dangerous contamination," writes Inga Clendinnen, in her book AZTECS. In this single statement lies the key--the relationship of macrocosm and microcosm. "Dangerous contamination" operates at all levels and the words take their meaning from the myths of gods and heroes. The sacred domestic role of the broom is defined by a "broom's" role in an earlier cosmic drama the modern world has failed to understand. It may be hard for many of us today to fully appreciate that the morning sweeping of the household shrine was a commemorative occasion, symbolically tied to the sweeping away of DARKNESS. Symbolically, the localized "disorder," the gathered dust and debris, referred back to the vastly greater disorder of the COSMIC night. And this elementary symbolic relationship is the bridge between microcosm and macrocosm--the "domestic" goddess, and the all-devouring, raging hag with disheveled hair, rushing across the sky when the world had fallen into chaos. With "broom" in hand, the raging goddess pursued the chaos hordes, "sweeping" away the celestial debris of the world-ending cataclysm. Every household was an extension of the sacred order defined in ancestral times. In each household was thus kept the sacred fire, symbol of the animating light of heaven, ritually extinguished at the end of every 52-year world cycle, then re-ignited with the dawn of the new cycle. Every 52 years, the household re-lived a cosmic disaster. Then, on the following morning, as a symbol of the same events, the ritually-ordained sweeping occurred, to the sounds of a beating drum. This reverberating drumbeat meant nothing other than the voice of Ehecatl, the Dawn Bringer, avatar of Quetzalcoatl. In the words, of Jacques Soustelle, "The morning star shines with the brilliance of a gem and to greet it the wooden gongs beat on the temple-tops and the conchs wail." The dawn was thus an echo of the COSMIC morning when the world was "set in order" after the great cataclysm. Ritual sweeping repeated the ancient event of cosmic renewal, the defeat of the fiends of darkness. For these "fiends" WERE the celestial debris or cometary cloud descending upon the world, symbolized in later rites by the gathered dust in shrines and on pathways. In ritual symbolism, matters of degree and scale cannot change original meanings. Goddess, broom, sweeping, drumbeat--the clearing of the cosmic night was remembered with each dawn of day. The holder of the household broom, therefore, fills the symbolic role of the goddess. And though broom and celestial conflagration may not seem compatible, the mythical memory does place them side by side. A hymn to the "broom"-goddess celebrates Cihuacoatl-- plumed with eagle feathers, with the crest of eagles, painted with serpents blood with a broom in her hands...goddess of drum beating...She is our mother, a goddess of war, our mother a goddess of war, an example and a companion from the home of our ancestors... She comes forth, she appears when war is waged, she protects us in war that we shall not be destroyed... She comes adorned in the ancient manner with the eagle crest. The hymn makes our point for us. The goddess provides the EXEMPLARY figure to explain the later rites. The symbols of disaster, of war, and of drum beating combine with those of the broom and of protection. A goddess who "appears when war is waged" has a now-familiar sound. That is precisely the mythical role of the comet, as we have seen, and precisely the role of Venus in Mesoamerican astrology. It seems as if the commentators have failed to notice that a broom or whisk, be it constituted from straw or feathers, is a COMETARY symbol. (See our brief list supplementing the five major comet symbols noted earlier.) A bundle of straw is an old European symbol of the comet. As we will discover also in our discussion of the world-destroying hag, the famous flying broom of the European witch stands alongside the witch's disheveled, flaming hair and her serpent-dragon apotheosis as a cometary image. In China comets were remembered above all else as "brooms" sweeping away one kingdom (world age) and introducing a new order--the very function of the broom in Mesoamerican ritual. In fact, the broom plays a symbolically crucial role in more than one Aztec rite. A major celebration of the mother goddess Toci fell on the sixteenth of September, which was also a special day in the calendar of world ages. The name of the feast was Ochpaniztli, which means "Sweeping of the Roads." The chronicler Duran calls it "the Feast of Sweeping." The feast, as reported by Duran, was marked by human sacrifice, terrible commotion and feigned skirmishes in which the goddess Toci herself participated. In the ritual celebration, the goddess was personified by a warrior who, donning the skin of a sacrificed female victim and ARMED WITH A BROOM, pursued a chaotic mob of warriors. At her descent (i.e., the descent of the impersonator), and in response to the moans of Toci, "the earth moved and quaked at that moment." (The images are reminiscent of the moans in the air when Caesar died, his soul to rise as a COMET above the quaking earth.) Hearing this report Duran was highly incredulous-- I tried to investigate this and attempted to laugh off and mock this absurd belief. But I was assured that this part, this area of the temple, trembled and shook at that moment. Imagination may have served them well in this case, and the devil, always present, undoubtedly aided the imagination. Such is the power of archetypes. The integrated motifs are: commotion in the sky, moaning heavens, quaking earth, goddess with a "broom" pursuing the hordes of darkness. In these rites, the sky-darkening armies themselves were personified by warriors "armed" with brooms and appareled with colored streamers and plumed ornaments. "A bloody fray then took place among them. With sticks and stones countless men came to the combat and fight, something awesome to see..." In such manner was the havoc of the cosmic night re-enacted every year. The harsh sounds, the great din of clashing arms, the comet-like brooms and streamers of the unleashed mobs--themselves a dramatic personification of the swarming chaos powers in the sky--all accented by hurled stones and debris. Could one concoct a more vivid portrait of the cosmic upheaval terminating a former world age? A cometary disaster, involving vast "armies" or clouds and debris in the vicinity of earth, pitted against the PARENT OF COMETS, the dragon-like Venus "sweeping away" the cosmic night, provides us with a Velikovskian scenario par excellence. Clendinnen has given us an intensely dramatic account of the "sweeping" festival and its key ritual components, noting again and again the role of darkness and terror, and emphasizing the paradox of the "domestic" goddess hurled into a fray with the best warriors of the city. "These men, who scorned to turn their back in battle, fled through the dark streets...as Toci and her followers pursued them with brooms, the' domestic' female symbol par excellence, speaking of the tireless cleansing of the human zone, but now sodden with human blood." It was Toci herself, "in her paper regalia and her great bannered headdress" and her symbolic broom, who inaugurated the ritual slaying of captives. Then she confronted the warrior-mob again, "driving them ahead of her with war cries" and her broom, the hordes scattering as she chased them, until Toci was alone and victorious, having swept away the warriors of darkness--"triumphant as the pitiless mistress of war, insatiable eater of men." The great sweeping festival, says Clendinnen, was "a brilliantly constructed horror event, in its abrupt changes of pace and its teasing of the imagination through the exploitation of darkness." Here we see "the image of the women's broom dipped into human blood and so become a weapon of terror, before which warriors famed for their courage were driven like leaves." A paradox indeed! The broom wielded as a "weapon of terror." But let us be clear on this: a broom on its own instills no fear. Only as a mirror of the COMETARY "broom," the terrifying "weapon" hurled against celestial armies of darkness, can the symbol make sense. And then the paradox dissolves before our eyes. Duran tells us that on the day of the feast to Toci, the people swept their houses and pathways, guided by some ancient belief he is unable to illuminate. Significantly, community roads and highways were also swept on this day, according to Duran, particularly the road passing by the shrine to the goddess Toci. The feast itself, as we have noted, was called "The Sweeping of the Roads," and this too is a key, for it enables us to complete the circle with respect to the sweeping rites. In Evon Vogt's book ZINACANTAN, the author gives a poetic tale from the Highlands of Chiapas concerning the planet Venus. It seems that the people remember Venus as a GIRL WITH A BROOM, for the folk tale "describes the Morning Star (Venus), who is believed to have been a Chamula girl transformed into a 'Sweeper of the Path' for the Sun." It is the astronomical association, then--the connection with celestial sweeping, the clearing of the way for the new "sun" or world age--that finds the planet Venus in the very guise we should expect. Even in the wake of vast cultural evolution and fragmentation, the nations of Mesoamerica kept alive the ancient link of the Great Comet to the planet Venus, in the symbolic form of the girl and her broom. -------------------------------- >HUBBELL CAPTURES A ONE-HIT WONDER > >Foreshadowing the Milky Way's fate, two nearby >galaxies are shown in a dramatic head-on collision > >By ROBERT S. BOYD >Knight-Ridder News Service > >WASHINGTON - The Hubble Space Telescope has >photographed two nearby galaxies in a rare, >spectacular collision, giving birth to millions of >hot, blue baby stars and re-enacting events that >shaped the universe when it was young. > >Astronomers say the cosmic smashup may foreshadow >what will happen to our galaxy, the Milky Way, when >it collides with our closest neighbor, the >Andromeda galaxy, some 5 billion years from now. > >Andromeda is streaking toward Earth at 300,000 mph, >but it still is more than 2 million light years >(about 12,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles) away. > >"These images show our own future," Bradley Whitmore, >an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science >Institute in Baltimore, told a media briefing >Tuesday. "But ,don't worry. You don't need to put >it on your calendar." > >The new Hubble pictures show the brilliant fireworks >ignited during a head-on wreck between the two >Antennae galaxies about 63 million light years away >in the southern constellation Corvus (the row). > >Judging by the time it took the light from the >collision to reach Earth, the crash happened rather >recently in cosmic terms--shortly after the >dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. Some >of the young stars it produced are barely 2 million >years old, a blink-of-an-eye compared with the 5 >billion years our sun has existed. > >Encounters rare today > >Such encounters between galaxies are rare nowadays, >according to Ed Weiler, the chief Hubble telescope >scientist. But they were common in the first few >billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe >was much smaller and more compact. > >"These pictures are very exciting because they show >us processes that were taking place in the early >universe," Whitmore said. > >The Antennae galaxies--so-called because they have a >pair of wispy star tails resembling an insect's >antennae--began as two roughly equal spiral galaxies, >shaped like the Milky Way. They contained few stars >and were mostly composed of huge clouds of cold >hydrogen gas. > >When they plowed into each other, the gas clouds were >squeezed and heated and eventually collapsed under >their own gravity. They formed more than 1,000 bright >blue star clusters, each containing 100,000 to a >million baby stars. > >Francois Schweizer, an astronomer at the Carnegie >Institution of Washington, likened the process to >dropping cold blobs of gas into a hot pressure >cooker. > >"Like a string of firecrackers, these reservoirs of >gas lit up in a great burst of star formation," he >said. "The collision crunched the hydrogen gas, and >new stars formed all over the place." > >As a result of the crash, the two spiral galaxies are >merging into a single, irregularly shaped elliptical >galaxy. The early universe contained mostly spirals, >but ellipticals are becoming more common as mergers >occur. About 30 percent of the galaxies in the >universe today are ellipticals, according to Anne >Kinney, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University >in Baltimore. > >Ultimately, the shift from spiral to elliptical will >happen to our own galaxy when it meets up with >Andromeda. > >"After the merger, there will be no hint of a Milky >Way," Whitmore said. "If we were alive, we'd be >living in an elliptical galaxy." * * * * * [Wal Thornhill comments]: This whole media beat-up is worthless. It is based on a string of simplistic assumptions about the internal dynamics of galaxies (which is not understood) and their mode of external interaction with other galaxies. It also mentions the ages of stars which in turn relies on an even longer list of ad-hoc assumptions, not the least of which is the notion that they are isolated thermonuclear entities. For example, based on an Electric Universe, the blueness of the stars indicates that they are under extreme electrical stress, which in turn predicts that the motion of the galactic arms containing them will be more violent than usual. It is highly likely that two close galaxies will be linked by Birkeland currents with ensuing highly complex non-gravitational interactions. Part of that may involve charge exchange which could explain the blue stars. The picture shows two helices, the signature of gigantic Birkeland currents, containing blue stars, emanating from the two galactic centres. It would be interesting to try to trace the electrical current flow between the galaxies by looking at magnetograms of the area, if they are available. Computer modeling using purely gravitational forces is totally inadequate to unravel intergalactic interactions and galactic evolution. So to attempt to predict the Milky Way's fate is complete nonsense. Wal Thornhill ----------------------------------------------- THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED-- [Mel Acheson comments]: >I have a couple of comments and questions intended primarily for Wal: >I finally got a break in my work load and read Lerner's __The Big Bang Never Happened_. (I've put it off for several years because of the impression I got that it was largely a "fundamentalist atheist" tract.) The info on plasma physics was exciting, as were his ideas on cosmology and the three modes of evolution. Now I've got to read Prigogine's work on the second law of thermodynamics. (That takes me back to the question no one would discuss with me in college: How can the second law, defined only for closed systems, be assumed to govern open ones?) >It was strange to read Lerner's off-hand dismissal of Velikovsky (and thereby V's historical method) on page 4, then later to read his (L's) extensive criticisms of modern physics for having rejected the historical. Apparently, _some_ history (that supports his thesis) is okay but _other_ history (that doesn't) is "fantasy". [Wal comments]: The obligatory back-hander to Velikovsky is a familiar ploy. Shows you're one of the good-ol-boys. Duncan Steele and Clube and Napier have all indulged in it. [Mel]: >Certainly his economic and political "histories" are more fantasy than fact: For example, the chart on p. 407 showing declining "real wages" as support for his "society in crisis" scenario is entirely misleading and his conclusions from it are false (equating "wages" with "income"--"income" increased during the period charted). Although it's a popular book, the sloppy scholarship in economics and politics makes me uneasy about his presentation of plasma physics. [Wal]: I also felt that he lost the plot half-way through the book and I said so in my workshops. However, I have read professional journals on plasma physics concerning the plasma focus device and found that Lerner reports that work quite well. I also have some of Alfven's books and don't find any discrepancies. [Mel]: >I notice he explains phenomena from the Large Scale Structure of the universe down to the structure of galaxies with principles of plasma filamentation, but he reverts to the orthodox nuclear-reaction-powered model for stellar structure and evolution. In order to produce the observed abundances of elements (primarily hydrogen, helium, carbon, and oxygen), he has to cultivate a succession of growths: plasma- induced shock waves raise an early crop of supernovae that produce the carbon and oxygen; followed by a bloom of common novae that shed helium; ending with today's climax community of dwarf stars and observed abundances. This stringing together of ad hoc possibilities imitates orthodox explanations with the resultant lowering of confidence in them. [Wal]: Once again, in my workshop notes I say that Eric Lerner's imagination seems to fail him when we come to look at our own star, the Sun. [Mel]: >Your view, from Juergens, of a "plasma transformer" theory of stellar structure would be more consistent with a plasma universe--one step instead of 3 or 4‹ but can you get it to produce the observed abundances? Have you--can you calculate the element abundances that would result from surface nucleosynthesis at a rate consistent with observed neutrinos? [Wal]: The standard theory of stellar nucleosynthesis is so complex and so full of fudge factors that the theoreticians could match any observation that came up. That theory involves only random thermal energies which is a very inefficient way to cook up heavy elements. Electric discharges drive non-random high energy particles together in a much more efficient, but nonetheless complex, nucleo-synthetic process. The only way to begin to answer your question is in the plasma laboratory, as Alfven tried to tell us. [Mel]: >My second question is perhaps less complicated: An order-of-magnitude calculation (with the small resources I have) comes up with the Sun radiating over 30 000 times the energy it gets from cosmic rays: Radiant output of Sun= 4x10exp26 Watts= 2x10exp45 ev/sec Cosmic ray density (at earth)= 1 per sec per sq cm Cosmic ray energy= 10exp18 ev (some kind of average; max= 10exp21) Surface area of Sun (at photosphere)= 6x10exp22 sq cm Cosmic ray input= 6x10exp22 x 10exp18= 6x10exp40 ev/sec < 2x10exp45 by a factor of 3x10exp4 >Even taking the solar "surface" to be the edge of the corona (where electrons escape coronal fields in orthodox theory--at a height of 10exp6 km above the photosphere), the cosmic ray input is low by a factor of 7000. >I suppose nuclear reactions from the cosmic ray influx would add something. I don't have the numbers to calculate the energy output of reactions in the quantity that would result in the observed numbers of neutrinos. Do you? Is this enough to make up the energy deficit? Or do you have another explanation? [Wal]: I have not had time to look up references to back up the idea that cosmic ray energy input is equivalent to the radiant energy output of the Sun. I must do so soon. Ralph Juergens noted "that the calculated energy density of cosmic rays in our galaxy is comparable to the total energy density of e-m radiation, including starlight", which amounts to the same thing (Pensee II, Fall 1972, pp 11,12.). As you mention, the nuclear reactions taking place at the surfaces of ordinary stars will add to the energy. The problem in trying to work backwards from the observed number of neutrinos to arrive at the expected energy from this source is that we don't know what non-thermal nuclear reactions are occurring. ---------------------------------------------- Book Review/Recommendation We recommend you look up the book, _The Great Comet Crash_, edited by John R. Spencer and Jacqueline Mitton. The article, "The String Of Pearls" by Weaver and Jewett, describes the appearance of SL9 from discovery to impact. There is a multiple photo on page 45 showing the tail development between March 27 '93 and Jun 7 '94. "At the time of discovery, in March 1993, the component fragments were embedded in a sheet of bright material that extended beyond the ends of the train." They attribute to radiation pressure the fact that "most of the dust sheet [was] on one side of the train. That was the side in the direction away from the sun at the time of break-up." As the pieces separated, each fragment had its own tail, also pointing away from the sun. "In the final few weeks prior to impact, however, the comae became highly elongated along the comet-Jupiter line." (attributed to tidal forces) "The comae took on a tadpole-like appearance, with the tail pointing toward Jupiter. Despite the stretching of their comae, the fragments generally maintained condensed, stable cores, at least until the last views about 10 hours before impact." Amy and Mel Acheson ---------------------------------------------- News of interest to catastrophists: Two new moons of Uranus have been discovered, bringing the total up to 17. Unlike the other 15, these moons move in large, eccentric retrograde orbits, inclined at a large angle to Uranus' equator. You can see one of them at NASA's Astronomy picture of the day website. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ Look in the archive for November 3 to see one of the new moons of Uranus. Then take a look at the photo for today (November 6) It's called "The Magnetic Carpet Of The Sun." In case any of you don't have access to the website, I'll copy the text here: "The Sun has a Magnetic Carpet. Its visible surface appears to be carpeted with tens of thousands of magnetic north and south poles joined by looping field lines which extend outward into the solar corona. Recently, researchers have revealed maps of large numbers of these small magnetic concentrations produced using data and images from the space-based SOHO observatory . . . The small magnetic regions emerge, fragment, drift, and disappear over periods of only 40 hours or so. Their origin is mystifying and their dynamic behavior is difficult to reconcile with present theories of rotationally driven large-scale Solar Magnetism. Is some unknown process at work? Possibly, but the source of this mystery may well be the solution to another -- the long standing mystery of why the outer Solar Corona is over 100 times hotter than the sun's visible surface! The SOHO data reveal that energy released as these loops break apart and interact seems to be heating the coronal plasma." Maybe a big mystery for a purely mechanical solar system, but it looks to me like just what the astronomer ordered for an electrically driven one. Amy Acheson ---------------------------------------------- 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 Pensee 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 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.