Recovering the Lost World,
A Saturnian Cosmology -- Jno Cook
Chapter 17: The Gods Leave.

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$Revision: 42.27 $ (leave.php)
Contents of this chapter: [The Gods Leave] [Return of the Axis Mundi] [A New Era] [Endnotes]

The Gods Leave

The battling Gods in the sky started an immediate retreat after 3147 BC, and Saturn and Jupiter eventually moved to their current orbits, although it would take 860 years for Jupiter and may have taken over a thousand years for Saturn and the Titans. As the Gods retreated into the far sky, Jupiter at first continued to bolt objects in the asteroid belt, through which it was moving, as it was receding from the Sun. The displays enter the mythology of the Gods as the magical weapons of the chief God -- the bolt of Zeus that never misses, the hammer of Thor.

On reaching the asteroid belt Jupiter (in circa 2860 BC) would not likely have retained its extensive lower tail and would have reduced even its coma. Entry into the asteroid belt caused a religious crisis in Egypt. The first dynasty was replaced by the second. A large coma would only develop again as Jupiter exited the asteroid belt and was no longer in proximity to the conductive material of asteroids and dust. After about 300 years, Jupiter exited the asteroid belt in about 2550 BC at a distance from the Sun of 3.1 AU.

While Jupiter was in the asteroid belt, its massive mountain-shaped coma was replaced by horizontal streams of plasma from its south pole (as visually seen from Earth), directed left and right into the dust and objects of the asteroid belt. In Egypt Jupiter assumes the image of a God with ram's horns. After clearing the asteroid belt, Jupiter would again develop a mountainous lower plasma outpouring in an attempt to reach equilibrium with the electric field of the Sun in far outer space (between 3.5 and 5.2 AU from the Sun).

I will get back to this later period in a following chapter, but it might be of interest to quote Plutarch's brief description, from Zoroastrian sources, of the God Ahura-mazda (who is Jupiter). In Isis and Osiris, (AD 200) he writes:

"Then Oromazes [Ahura-mazda, Jupiter] enlarged himself to thrice his former size, and removed himself as far distant from the Sun as the Sun is distant from the Earth, and adorned the heavens with stars."

"One star he set there before all others as a guardian and watchman, the Dog-star [Venus]."

The comment about "distance" suggests that eventually Jupiter's coma was the visual size of the Sun or Moon, subtending 1/2 degree in diameter. From this the coma can be estimated at 3.5 million miles (5,600,000 km) in diameter at the distance of 5.2 AU, which is only slightly larger than Jupiter's current dark mode plasmasphere. [note 1]

The "Dog-star" mentioned in the quoted text above is translated from Greek use of the Egyptian word "Sothis," which was used both for the star Sirius (the Dog Star) and the planet Venus, and meant something like "bright" or "shining." In Egyptian it takes the masculine form for Sirius and feminine for Venus, the difference being an ending "d" or "t" sound in our phonetic translation. The Greeks didn't differentiate, or didn't care. There is the additional confusion in the practice in antiquity of appointing stars as the "spirits" of the planets, as every person (in Egypt) would be stellated after death. Sirius was the brightest star and Venus was the brightest planet. Sirius was "the star of Venus."

The word "Dog-star" is used in the English translation of Plutarch, who used "Sothis" as a translation of "Tishtrya" from his source, the Zoroastrian Zend-Avesta scriptures. "Tishtrya" could also be translated as "shining." But from other evidence "Tishtrya" clearly is Venus.

As noted above by Plutarch, the planet Venus remained after the battle to course across the sky. In antiquity Venus is variously called Isis, Hathor, Athena, Inanna, and other names, and is often identified as a warrior Goddess. [note 2]

After 3147 BC, Venus circled the Sun as a planet, and for the next 2500 years displayed a gigantic plasma tail, stretching some 30 million miles (48 million km) away from the Sun. Because Venus is an inner planet, the full extent of its plasma tail would be seen from the vantage point of Earth most of the time. Today the tail has dropped to dark mode, but is still 30 million miles long. Today Venus also still shows its youth by its excessive heat radiating away, continuous lightning strikes, and curious sparsity of craters. [note 3]

Mythologically, Venus was presented alternately as a charmer and a terror. That she remained venerated, despite occasional destructive electric contacts with Earth, is probably due to the fact that Venus was the most spectacular object in the sky between 3100 BC and 685 BC, an image intermittently reinforced by being seen at various distances and various parts of the sky and drawing closer every two years or so. She must have been seen as everyone's friend and companion throughout life. Like the Moon today, wherever one walked, Venus would follow. In Babylonian (Chaldean) records Venus is not recognized as a "planet" until after 600 BC, as also in Hindu records. She simply did not behave as a planet.

And a minor planet, Mercury, with wings and a tail (or a beak, in some Egyptian iconography) continues to scurry back and forth as a messenger of the removed Gods. The orbit of Mercury is the most displaced in angle from the ecliptic, and would have been understood as flying off the ecliptic (the path of the Gods) at times, often disappearing in the portion of the sky where the Sun rose. Mercury became the God of the air in Mesopotamia.

Mercury started to appear with Mars close to Earth about 80 years after 3147 BC. Mars will become the most important God, Horus of the Egyptians, over the next 300 years, a position already held since 4077 BC, but under a different form. More on that in the next chapter.

The Titans (the two giant planets Uranus and Neptune) were banished to the Underworld -- the far reaches of the Solar System -- to be rediscovered by telescope nearly 5000 years later, and named in accord with Greek mythology. Saturn takes up his station as Lord of the Underworld. He eventually becomes just a faint speck among the stars of the sky. However, he will be recognized and kept track of worldwide.

If, as a reader, you wonder at the movement of these planets seemingly out of concert with the celestial harmony of today, I should first remind you that after this period any of the suggested orbits are (with some exceptions) only slightly different from today. I can, in fact, trace almost all of the changes. Most of this will become clear in later chapters and in the appendixes.

But on the other hand, the Solar System is hardly as stable as is generally accepted. The orbits of some of the outer planets are today observed to be changing inclination to the ecliptic, although minutely, caused by gravitational interactions with each other, but as likely to be the result of electric interactions with the Sun. All the repeating comets have likewise been observed to change orbits for reasons which cannot be attributed to gravitational forces alone. [note 4]

The Return of the Axis Mundi

As the Earth assumed a new orbit around the Sun after 3147 BC, it would have had to equalize its charge to match its location within the electric field of the Sun. This was a change from the electric field experienced when Earth was yet within the plasmasphere of Saturn. The equalization of charge would have been accomplished through an influx of electrons, concentrated at the magnetic poles.

[Image: Plasma plumes at the poles extending into the magnetosphere in the direction away from the Sun. Illustration by J. Cook.]

Plumes of plasma in glow mode would have extended soon after 3147 BC from both poles, rising straight up from the north and the south, and then bending toward the tail end of the magnetosphere, away from the Sun, looking like bent trees at the top. These would be seen at night throughout the world. Most likely the stems of the plumes looked to be the same size or only diminished slightly in diameter with distance from Earth. At the upper end the plume would be terminated in a single plasmoid sphere (similar to the Peratt Column seen in the south after 10,900 BC), with the typical tentacle-like structure extending away from the plasmoid. We know this from Mesoamerican descriptions (as the birds on top of each "directional tree") and later Akkadian and Egyptian illustrations. It is also likely that the axis mundi widened at the base to a bulbous form from the formation of a dome of water vapor where the plasma column contacted the ocean and where the plasma plumes turned to arc mode.

To be seen to a latitude of 20 degrees, as in Mesoamerica, the plumes would have had to extend 4 or 5 Earth diameters up (30,000 to 40,000 miles; 48,000 to 64,000 km) along the magnetic field lines, and another 4 or 5 diameters into the tail of the Earth's plasmasphere where they terminated in a ball-shaped or flower-shaped plasmoid. If understood as trees, the plumes would seem to wave in the wind, although in actuality this is the nightly change in perspective resulting from the rotation of the Earth, for the tops would continue to follow the direction of the magnetic field lines of the plasmasphere extending away from the direction of the Sun. The north and south trees would bend toward the east at the start of the night, and rotate to end up bending toward the west by dawn. [note 5]

It might be suggested that after the passage of time the ball plasmoid at the end of the tree would no longer show. It could also be suggested that the plasma plume showed only periodically, perhaps annually as the Earth, still on an elliptical orbit, moved alternately into a region of higher or lower value of the Sun's electric field. That would mean, since we are dealing with plasma, that the plume would show suddenly and would disappear again as suddenly at the end of some months as the Earth returned on its orbit to a lower value of the electric field and the plasma might switch to dark mode.

The repeated appearance of the plasma plume might suggest that it is represented by the repeating "shepherd's crooks" carved on megalithic surfaces by the people at Carnac in France (and other locations). A count of the crooks could furnish some estimates of how many years the axis mundi kept returning, although a baseline measure is missing if we assume that the region was completely depopulated after 3147 BC.

It could also be suggested that the "year glyph" used in the oldest records of Egypt, the Palermo Stone, represents the annual appearance of the plasma plume. The Palermo Stone is a carved basalt block from the Fifth Dynasty (circa 2550 BC) of the Old Kingdom, of which only seven fragments exist. The Palermo Stone records pharaohs of the first five dynasties. For each of the pharaohs there is a catalog of years, with each year named after an important event. Each year is distinguished from the next with a "year glyph," which arches over the space used to record events. The glyph is thought to be based on a bent leafless palm frond, as if one portion of the leaf was removed every day from the frond. [note 6]

Mesoamerica recognized a total of four trees which held up the sky, perhaps also the daytime sky, but certainly the nighttime sky. Mesoamerica places a bird on top of each of the trees. This is obviously an understanding of the terminating plasmoid of each plume, with the tentacles constituting the tail of a bird. The four trees or pillars also occur in the mythology of the Egyptians and the Chinese. From Egypt we have the following:

"This heaven was situated in the sky, which the Egyptians believed to be like an iron ceiling, either flat or vaulted, and to correspond in extent and shape with the earth beneath it. This ceiling was rectangular, and was supported at each corner by a pillar.... At a very early date the four pillars were identified with 'the four ancient khu's who dwell in the hair of Horus,' who are also said to be 'the four gods who stand by the pillar-sceptres of heaven.' These four gods are 'children of Horus,' and their names are Amset, Hapi, Tuamautef, and Qebhsennuf. They were supposed to preside over the four quarters of the world, and subsequently were acknowledged to be the gods of the cardinal points."

-- E. A. Budge in The Book of the Dead (1895)

Budge further explicates that the four pillars holding up the sky, are also called the "four blazing flames made for the Khu."

Book 13 of the Chilam Balam, titled "The Creation of the Uinal" by the translator Roys, reports on how the Uinal, the 20-day month, "came to be created before the creation of the world." The remainder of Book 13 is composed as a song, attributing some quality to each of the 20 day names of the 13 numbered days of the month. At one point we have, "Then the following were set up in the middle of the land: the Burners, four of them." The "Burners" are named after the 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th day of the month, then noted that "these are the four rulers."

There is little question that these four Burners are the four Bacabs, the Maya gods of the cardinal points, here represented, like in Egypt, as braziers. It is certainly a strange coincidence which cannot be neglected. We have to conclude that the two plasma plumes at the magnetic poles turned to arc mode near the Earth's surface or well above it. Something similar must hold for the east and west plumes, although it is difficult to make physical sense of this.

Four trees of the cardinal directions appear throughout Book 10 of the Chilam Balam. Two of the trees of Mesoamerica are associated with the east and the west, which I cannot place with certainty, as I noted above. At first I thought they might be the leading edges of the Absu, lit by the Sun, and seen rising up and widening directly from the east cardinal point and from the west. But after the Absu had disappeared, the four trees are sighted again two additional times, according to the Chilam Balam.

The plumes show up repeatedly in diverse cultures. I will suggest that the east and west plumes might be an image of the denser portion of a toroid of plasma encircling the Earth (the nearer Van Allen belt). It would thus appear at the location of the equatorial, overlapping it and rising at an angle. The edges of this tube would stand out, for the plasma would be denser along the left and right edge. In some Mesopotamian illustrations a circular form is shown above the stalk. This might be a portion of the circular toroid which composes the Van Allen belts. In this case there would not be the triple leaves (the birds) associated with the ball plasmoids of the north and south polar plumes. This might be a graphical shorthand, however, for in some Mesopotamian seals the tops of the plumes are shown as small lions.

Both China and Mesoamerica assign colors to the four trees, and as a result to the four cardinal points. The colors assigned in Mesoamerica (Maya) can be traced to the looks of the sky in these four directions. The tree at the north is white, as would be appropriate to a northern glow mode plasma plume seen from the northern hemisphere. The tree of the south is yellow, which is likely the coloration due to looking south through the color of the Absu, before it disappeared. Initially after 3147 BC, the east tree is listed as being yellow, although the translator of the Chilam Balam thinks this is an error. But the Absu most likely was colored yellow, buff, or amber. But in 2349 BC and 1492 BC the tree in the east is listed as being red. This is the time when only a single red ring of the Absu still remained. The tree in the west was always black. So reads the Maya Book of the Chilam Balam.

The colors of the east and west trees were most likely determined as the night passed and dawn came (Mesoamerica defined events at their completion). At dawn the east tree would reflect the light of the rising Sun. The west tree was in the shadow of the Earth at dawn, so it was always black.

The north tree would be the largest since the north magnetic pole is the most effective in gathering electrons. The first formation of this tree, soon after 3147 BC, was a monumental event, recorded in specifics not only in the Chilam Balam but also in casual reference in the Popol Vuh narrative. Additionally, the establishment of the tree in the north was monumentalized in AD 700 in the sculptured texts of the Temple Inscriptions at Palenque. The central temple relates in part:

[with text added by archaeologists] or {me:}
"[On August 13, 3114 BC,]
13 Baktuns were completed.
1 year, 9 months, and 2 days after the new epoch began,
G1-prime {Saturn} entered the sky.
On February 5, 3112 BC, G1-prime dedicated it.
Wacan chan xaman waxac na G1 {Venus}
{raised-up-sky north-eight-house G1}
was its name.
It was his house of the north."

The use of "G1," Venus, rather than "G1-prime," Saturn, may be an error in Schele and Freidel's book A Forest of Kings, from which I quote this inscription. However, this matches the tale from Egypt about the travel of Isis to the tree of the north, at Biblos, which included the coffin of Osiris (under which there was a fire, as would be appropriate for a plasma plume).

For the present purpose it should be noted that the raised-up-sky north-eight-house (or "edifice") was dedicated a year and a half after the start of the current era, as retrocalculated by the Maya. It is within expectations that it would take perhaps a year to develop a plasma stream in glow mode in response to a change in the electric field surrounding the Earth's plasmasphere, although it seems late. (The plasma starts in dark mode and then suddenly switches to glow mode.)

The plume is noted here (and in other records) because the raised-up-sky north-eight-house was without a doubt larger than anything else ever seen in the skies up to this point in time. It rose far above the previous polar location of Saturn. Seen from Mesoamerica, the Saturnian planets had hovered only some 20 degrees above the north horizon. "Saturn entered the sky," is noted because the planet had now moved (within a year and 9 months) across the sky and to the south. This had to be established first (in this text) because otherwise Saturn (G1-prime) would perhaps not have been able to construct his edifice. Mesoamerican languages are action based.

I think, from the constant use of names-with-numbers in the Chilam Balam, that north-eight-house signifies an eventual total of eight appearances of the plasma plume. There is one Maya record (a ballcourt marker at Copan) which claims nine appearances in the north. The axis mundi would certainly be well remembered if, as I would suggest, it was last seen again in 686 or 685 BC. [note 7]

If, as I have claimed, the plasma plume would impinge on the Earth at the magnetic poles, then certainly there should be some record of this for the north magnetic pole -- if the magnetic pole were located in the North Atlantic. As a matter of fact, there are historical assertions as late as AD 800, although somewhat fanciful, claiming a descent into the whirlpool created by the concentrated plasma stream. There are stories also told as late as the 19th century (Edgar Allen Poe, "A Descent into the Maelstrom" 1841).

There are additional Celtic, Icelandic, and Norse "myths" which claim the whirlpool emitted a thunderous noise and flames. Some of the recollections might incorporate details from much longer ago than the 7th century BC. As with plasma streams today impinging on the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, the incoming plasma bored a hole into the ocean. The rotational magnetic field surrounding the incoming electric current would set the water and steam into a spin. The concentration of plasma at the point of contact would change the plasma stream to arc mode. The boiling of the ocean water would produce the grinding noise. Among Northwestern European nations (Friesland, Denmark, England, and Norway) the whirlpool is known as the Maelstrom (or Maal Stroom), which translates as "grinding stream." Maps of the North Atlantic place the Maelstrom off the coast of Norway. [note 8]

The trees would fade with time, then suddenly disappear. As a result the trees will reappear again, as the Chilam Balam makes clear, with each major change in the Earth's orbit -- as, for example, in 2349 BC and 1492 BC. I will address these changes in following chapters.

... the celestial cow

I should also note that if the left and right extremes of the surrounding Van Allen belt toroid could be seen as trees, or some such structure standing at the east and west cardinal point, then the remainder of the Van Allen belt -- the portion overhead and bridging the equatorial -- would also have been seen when it achieved glow mode.

[Image: Inner and outer Van Allen belts located within the magnetosphere of Earth.]

The inner Van Allen toroidal belt, located above the Earth's equator, varies in size, extending from as little as 0.1 Earth radius (400 miles; 650 km) to 3 Earth radiuses (12,000 miles; 19,000 km). The larger outer Van Allen belt reaches from 3 to 10 Earth radiuses. My estimate is that the Absu reached somewhat more than two Earth radiuses (8500 miles) above the equator.

The glowing inner Van Allen belt likely constitutes the "body" for the cow of Hathor, with the east and west plumes adding the legs. The view of the Van Allen toroid would have been smaller (further away) in the east and west, and obscured by the atmosphere, so that only the dense edges showed -- two in the east and two in the west.

The shadow of the Earth would have cut a dark oval into the bottom of the body, the underbelly of the cow, although the Van Allen belts are not, like the Absu, a narrow phenomenon which appears only in the plane of the equatorial. The Van Allen belts are much wider, and would have been seen thousands of miles away from (north and south of) the location of the equatorial. But if the inner belt lowered to 400 miles (650 km) (as it apparently does under conditions of high solar wind activity), a portion would certainly have been removed by the Earth's shadow.

What is missing from this image are the head and udders of the cow. The cow was a familiar farm animal to the Egyptians, and clearly distinct from a bull. It was the "bull of heaven" which had, only months earlier in 3147 BC, come through and destroyed the home of the Gods. There were no celestial cows among the Maya or Olmecs. There are no cattle in Mesoamerica. There is mention of cows in the Icelandic Younger Edda of AD 1200, but it is conflated with events of a much earlier era.

The cow would have been a form seen more or less in the center of the sky, on both sides (north and south) of the equatorial, and stretching from the east horizon to the west. The cow might have been a calf, as the Israelis under Moses claim as a sacred image. The cow or calf returned as an apparition a number of times throughout history (in fact, apparently seven times).

The Van Allen belts increase in size (mostly their thickness) with increased activity by the Sun. Today, after becoming very active, the Van Allen belts discharge to the space away from the Sun in a matter of days. This would suggest that the "cow" of antiquity also did not last all that long after appearing.

For the Van Allen Belts to show in glow mode there would have to be an influx of electrons and protons from an exterior source (electrons collect in the outer belt, mostly protons in the inner belt). Thus I would expect the "cow" to only show up (for example) at those times when Venus aligned between the Sun and Earth, and the electric condition of the Earth and its surroundings changed. The cow would show directly after the cataclysm had passed.

I'm suggesting Venus as a cause here because in Egyptian sources the cow shows up seven times. In Egypt it is the cow-eared Goddess Hathor who is identified with Venus at the times of an electric contact with Earth. She is frequently depicted as a cow and is also known as one of the "Seven Hathors" (see, for example, sculptures of the Seven Hathors at the Temple of Hathor at Denderah). In the Maya Chilam Balam Venus is called "Ah Uuc Cheknal," which translates "who fertilizes the maize seven times." The seven dates would have included the four times between (and including) 2349 BC (the "flood of Noah") and 2193 BC (the fall of Akkad), plus two dates associated with the Exodus, 1492 BC and 1442 BC.

The seventh might be the 776 BC Venus contact with Mars, or following the 685 BC nova event of the Sun. The date of 3147 BC is not associated with an electric contact by Venus. I'll detail all of these in later chapters. [note 9]

... the green tree

There was also a "green tree of the center" defined in the Chilam Balam directly after 3147 BC but not at other times. The location is apparently the whole range of the southern sky, from the east to the west. This is Jupiter on his green mountain receding into the distance of the southern sky. Jupiter would appear first in the east or southeast and look small. The green shape would increase in size as the Earth overtook Jupiter, and diminish again in size as Earth passed Jupiter. The green mountain would thus seem to move across the whole of the sky in a period of months (and also on a daily basis with the rotation of the Earth). This movement through the south skies would allow the judgment that the green tree was located somewhere in front of the trees of the east, the west, and in front of the yellow tree of the south, and could be called the "green tree of the center."

In about 2900 BC Jupiter entered the asteroid belt, and the green mountain disappeared as the plasma outpouring changed shape. The green tree is not heard of again. In the Guatemalan Popol Vuh this apparition is a traveling mountain, named Zipacna, which (since we are dealing with a tropical environment) can be assumed to be green. The mummified Osiris of the Egyptians is always shown in Green. [note 10]

A New Era

Humans who had observed the celestial drama narratized the events with some difficulty and with considerable confusion, which shows in the later accounts which have come down to us. Both in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the stories of the first period after the breakup of the Saturnian system involved repeated councils by the Gods where agreements were reached and then broken and tradeoffs were made. It seems to have taken many years before matters in the sky were settled.

As mentioned earlier, late Egyptian legends speak of battles and periods of negotiations (lasting over 80 years) among the Gods as they determine who, between Seth and Osiris, is to rule which territory -- Upper Earth (Heaven) or Lower Earth (the Underworld of the south skies). But the story is eventually cast in terms of a division between Upper and Lower Egypt, rather than Upper and Lower Earth. As the planets Jupiter (Seth, Osiris, and later Re) and Saturn move further away from Earth, and as Horus (Mars) starts to show up near Earth, the claims on territories change. Horus ends up as ruler over all of Egypt, both Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, Osiris receives the Underworld of the dead in deep space, and Seth gets nothing. It is also not clear who Seth is.

The actual power of various cult centers over national politics varied over time. The worship of Horus is from Heirakonpolis (Nekhen), 400 miles (650 km) up the Nile river. Heirakonpolis probably initially gained control over all of Egypt with the establishment of the city of Memphis at the apex of the delta, thereby controlling trade up river, but did not retain power, which later passed to cult centers in the delta. Horus was also worshiped in the delta. Seth was worshiped in the region just south of the delta. In the delta Ra or Re was also worshiped, but his worship did not take hold with the pharaohs until the 4th dynasty. Ra, at that point in time, was Jupiter.

The tale about the negotiations, the Contending of Horus and Seth, is considered to be a 12th dynasty (circa 1500 BC) version of a much older myth. The actual descriptions of the contests and labors with which Horus and Seth are beset are ridiculous in the extreme. Isis is involved also, at times as the goddess Hathor. The following is a short narrative version adopted from [www.philae.nu/philae/Horus&Seth.html]:

"After another appearance before the court of the Gods follows a series of bizarre events. First, Horus and Seth change into hippopotami and stay under water for three months. [This was a contest of sorts.] Isis becomes concerned for her son and throws a copper harpoon, but it misses Seth and hits Horus instead. She retrieves it by magic on his complaint. On her next throw she hits Seth but he appeals to the brother-sister relationship between them, and she withdraws the weapon. Horus emerges out of the water, enraged that his mother spared the life of Seth. He cuts off her head and she turns to flint."

"Under water" is under the edge of the Duat. The ecliptic, low in the south sky in summer nights, would dip below the Duat perhaps a month after the vernal equinox and rise out again a month or so before the autumnal equinox. That accounts for three months under water.

We can also suggest that the "copper harpoons" represented plasmoids launched at Mars (Horus) and the other planet, Seth (whoever he is), in sequence. They would be copper colored, rather than the bright white of an electric arc, because they are seen through the screen of the Duat, which was most likely yellow, buff, or copper colored.

That Isis (Venus) would lose her head likely represents the sudden switch of the coma of Venus to dark mode (or a notable reduction in size) after releasing two massive lightning bolts. It might be the loss of her tail rather than her coma. The Egyptians would have seen the bolts travel along the ecliptic, like thrown harpoons, and explosively "detonate" at the two planets. We would expect plasmoids to be brilliantly white, for they are electrons in arc mode, but seen behind the Absu or Duat, which was colored buff or yellow, these would have changed to a coppery color.

If the Contending of Horus and Seth was created out of nothing as a narrative in circa 1500 BC, then we have to ask how these people knew about the change in color -- the screening of the Duat which had not been seen since 2349 BC. All but a single ring of the Duat had disappeared 850 years earlier.

That brings up the question of what planet here represents Seth. For the period directly after 3147 BC, when Jupiter is seen receding into the southern night sky after attacking Saturn, I would suggest that Jupiter is Seth and Saturn is Osiris. But somewhat later (differing by the "theology" of differing Egyptian nomes), it is Jupiter who is Osiris -- a mummified form depicted in green, and matching the description of the Quiche Popol Vuh as a traveling green mountain. At that time, or at some point in time, it is also likely that Mercury was identified as Seth, still on a very elongated orbit and always seeming to travel nearly the same orbit as Mars. If Mars and Mercury traveled together, this would allow Venus to harpoon both of them within a short interval. Mercury also sported a large coma, polar plumes, and a tail. In fact, a globe will grow out of Seth's head in a later episode of this narrative, which in effect is Mercury developing an enlarged coma.

These details place the origin of the story in the era shortly after 3147 BC, but mixed in are much later elements. For one, Seth in the end is assigned to travel in the bow of the boat of Ra (Jupiter) to watch for the celestial snake Apep (details of Apep are in a later chapter). The "boat" form of Ra is the "shen" form associated with Jupiter after about 2940 BC but the snake Apep does not show up until after 2349 BC.

A few more discordant story elements are added, like the gouged eyes of Horus, and a whole "semen" episode.

"Later Seth finds Horus asleep under a tree and gouges out his eyes which he buries in the sand where they turn into lotus flowers. Hathor finds Horus and pours gazelle milk into his eye sockets, causing them to heal."

"Seth next invites Horus to his home, and makes a homosexual attack on Horus. Horus however catches the semen of Seth in his hand which he shows his mother Isis. She in outrage cuts off his hand, throws it into the marshes. Then she makes Horus's phallus rise and catches his semen in a jar, spreading it on lettuces which Seth will eat. Before the council of the Gods Seth claims the homosexual domination of Horus, but Horus instead wants their respective semen to speak from where it is located. Thoth [who also plays Seth] calls the semen, and the semen of Seth comes out, not from Horus, but from the marshes where his hand had been thrown by Isis. Horus's semen appears as a gold disc on the head of Seth who now is humiliated."

The "eyes of Horus" will be recognized as the ball plasmoids at the end of polar plasma plumes, which must have been bright enough to light up the night. Horus was located in the ecliptic next to (sleeping under, that is, in retrograde motion) the southern plasma plume. This suggests that the initial plasma plumes after 3147 BC may have lasted for a half-century. "In the sand" is the last ring of the Duat, equated by the storytellers to the strand of the Duat ocean.

The totality of semen exchanges should be recognized as plasma in glow mode between planets and, in the case of the "swamp," with objects in the asteroid belt. The lettuce is an Egyptian variety which exudes a milky-white liquid when broken open. The court proceedings are eventually resolved as follows:

"The council now sends a letter to Osiris in the underworld, asking for advice. Osiris threatens them all if his son is not chosen. He will remove the stars in the heavens together with man and god alike and make them all descend below the Western Horizon. This causes the council to finally instate Horus on the throne of Egypt. Re states that Seth will accompany Re in the heavens and that his voice will be heard in the thunder itself."

Osiris (here possibly Jupiter) is obviously far removed, placing this ending well after 3147 BC, when Jupiter had entered the asteroid belt. The worship of Jupiter as Osiris dates from the end of the Old Kingdom, 2349 BC, when the first references to Osiris show up, and, as will be detailed in later chapters, Jupiter suddenly reappeared in his full mountain form after exiting from the asteroid belt.

In the end, in the Contending of Horus and Seth it is agreed that Osiris (now as Saturn) gets the Underworld and remains there, swaddled in strips of cloth like a mummy. He never again disturbs other planets. Jupiter remained active only a short time, then, about 200 years after Mars shows up, entered the asteroid belt, reduced the size of its coma, and started zapping asteroids which came near.

Egypt is awarded to Horus, who is held to be the resurrected Osiris, but in actuality is Mars now on an orbit which periodically overrides the orbit of Earth. This condition apparently started 80 years after 3147 BC and lasted some 300 years. Mars appears as an active and impressive ruler of Earth. By comparison, Jupiter does nothing except recede further from Earth. [note 11]

Within a hundred years of the initial disturbance of 3147 BC, both Mesopotamia and Egypt rebound to achieve the most stupendous growth in civilization ever seen. (Both also initiate the first dynasties.) This rebound stands as one of the most amazing facts of prehistory, a blooming of civilization often noted as "unsurpassed" by historians and archaeologists. This is duplicated in other places, as if the world suddenly woke up. Large-scale grain cultivation starts up right after 3000 BC (but due to other considerations) in West Africa, the Indus valley (Pakistan), China, Southeast Asia, Mesoamerica, and South America. Agricultural production in Mesopotamia increases as never before, monumental stone architecture soon takes a leap forward in Egypt, trade is expanded, and writing suddenly proliferates. [note 12]

In spite of this progress, however, both Mesopotamia and Egypt remain conservative and rooted in the past. The temple religions and economies are now more tightly integrated into society than ever and become the justification for the kings and pharaohs who rise to fill the void left by the departed Gods.

The universal lack of an elite before 3100 BC is an outstanding and inexplicable difference between the culture before and after the flood of 3147 BC. Today we simply cannot imagine the existence of large egalitarian societies which somehow accomplished the extensive irrigation projects, food production, and trade which existed before 3100 BC. We are much more comfortable with conditions after 3100 BC, when kings, pharaohs, and emperors show up to lead the people.

We are a gregarious species and although we do not seek out leadership, after the removal of the powerful Gods, anyone who reached out to lead the people, would have been willingly accepted. Perhaps it was cast as a benign care-taking initially. The first kings in Sumer are known as the "shepherds of the people." The new leaders everywhere take on the role of the Gods. [note 13]

Again, I have to point to the sky for the example of the behavior of those who assume the leadership as kings and pharaohs. The new leaders all derive from the established priesthood, and are often the primary servants of the local God. The new leadership understands dynastic succession as legitimate. It had been seen among the Gods. The new leadership sees battle and the death of others as a means of achieving power. This too could be inferred from the activities depicted in the skies. In Mesopotamia the new leaders remain as the kings of distinct theocracies. In Egypt the new leadership unifies the individual districts, with their individual Gods, and assumes for itself the identity of the one ruling God, Horus.

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Special thanks to G Gilligan for pointing out the seven celestial cows of Hathor.

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Endnotes

Note 1 --

To have the same apparent diameter (a half degree) as the Moon at the eventual location of 5.2 AU from the Sun, 480 million miles (773 million km) from Earth (using the tangent of 1/2 degree, with the Earth located at this time at 0.79 AU), the coma would have been:

(sin(0.5) / cos(0.5)) * (5.2 - 0.79) * 93,000,000 = 3,500,000 (5,600,000 km) miles in diameter.

Plutarch's information can be verified, at least to within an order of magnitude. Near the closest region of the asteroid belt, 215 million miles from Earth (at 3.1 AU, with the Earth located at 0.79 AU at that time), the coma of Jupiter before entering the asteroid belt would have looked about two times as big, thus twice the size of the Moon. Plutarch had suggested "thrice." Within the asteroid belt the coma would have reduced in size because of the surplus of conducting agents.

Considering that the comas of comets a few miles wide at times exceed the diameter of the Sun, 864,000 miles (1,390,000 km), these estimates do not seem unrealistic for Jupiter, which has a diameter of 88,700 miles (143,000 km), and today has a plasmasphere (in dark mode) which is 3.2 million miles (5 million km) in diameter.
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Note 2 --

In Egypt, as Isis, she is understood to have traveled up and down the celestial Nile (the ecliptic) in search for Osiris's body parts after 3147 BC. The Egyptians initially identified Venus as Neith, another warrior Goddess, and only later applied the names Isis and Hathor. The plurality of names probably stems from the religious democracy of Egypt, and would thus be names specifically in use at the temples of differing nomes. As I pointed out earlier, Neith originally was the ball plasmoid of the south skies, last seen in about 8347 BC.

The Sumerian and Akkadian Goddess Inanna is Venus, and narratives from 2300 to 2000 BC have her on repeated adventures, including visits to Lower Earth, that is, the Underworld (as in Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld). At each of seven gates of the underworld she is stripped of some item of clothing, and eventually she is hung from a hook. The seven gates are the rings of the Absu, used narratively.

The implication is that the orbit of Venus extended beyond the orbit of Earth, and at least periodically Venus was seen as an outer planet and visually slowed to a stop, in what is known as "retrograde motion." If at that moment Venus still had a visible tail, it would stretch away from the Sun as well as Earth, and thus would not be seen. I will suggest in later chapters that the orbit of Venus did indeed overrun the orbit of Earth in antiquity, at least until 1492 BC.
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Note 3 --

Robert Fritzius points out the lack of small craters, and the relatively few large craters, in an essay, "Is Venus a New Planet?" presented at the American Astronomy Society in 2007. See [www.shadetreephysics.com/vel/NewVenus.htm].

Because craters are the anode burn marks of plasma in arc mode, small craters would not be expected on any planet with an extensive atmosphere, since the plasma strikes would be dissipated by the atmosphere. The same is true for Earth and for Saturn's satellite Titan. And yet, there are also far too few large craters.
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Note 4 --

Robert W. Bass in 1974 pointed out that the original estimates of planetary orbital stability were made by Laplace in 1773, and have been quoted without question for 200 years. Bass writes:

"Laplace's theorem allegedly proving stability of the solar system (1773) was shown to be fallacious in 1899 by Poincaré; in 1953 dynamical astronomer W. M. Smart proved that the maximum interval of reliability of the perturbation equations of Laplace and Lagrange was not 10 exp 11 years, as stated in 1895 by S. Newcomb, but actually at most a small multiple of 10 exp 2 years."

-- Robert W. Bass "Can Worlds Collide?" Pensee (1974)

A few hundred years ("a small multiple of 10 exp 2") is vastly different from 100 billion years ("10 exp 11"). As suggested from the little data available from antiquity, it might be much less than that. The Earth / Moon system apparently became stable within a period of about 30 years.
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Note 5 --

Milton Zysman first proposed something like this, in 1994 at a Velikovsky Symposium, for the era after 1500 BC when the Israelites followed a pillar night and day after the Exodus from Egypt. Zysman assumed this would be an extensive aurora. But auroras depend on gases in the Earth's atmosphere and upper atmosphere to achieve their colorful effects. The effect comes about through high-energy electrons in cyclotron motion colliding with low-pressure Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Nitrogen atoms. The aurora only extends about 60 miles (100 km) up from the surface of the Earth. A very intense aurora will extend up to 600 miles (1000 km) in altitude in a red glow from sparse Oxygen ions above the atmosphere. But even 600 miles is not enough to be seen worldwide, although intense auroras tend to be placed at lower latitudes. Above the 600-mile altitude the effect of the incoming electrons would be invisible, unless, as a plasma, it switches to glow mode.
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Note 6 --

The year glyph occurs already in predynastic times circa 3100 BC to 3050 BC, but, as far as I know, not before 3147 BC.

In Roman Republican times, staffs (Latin Lituus) shaped like the polar plumes were carried by the Roman college of augers to "mark out a ritual space in the sky" in order to "indicate divine favor or disfavor" by the passage of birds (Wiki). This is of course the same instrument associated with the pharaohs of Egypt, where it is called a shepherd's crook by archaeologists. In actuality it represents the Pharaoh's control over time.

Today Roman Catholic bishops still carry staffs of the same shape ("crosiers") as a symbol understood to represent a shepherd's crook and thus suggesting their role as shepherds of the community. I might point out that the bishop's mitre also dates from late antiquity (although this is much disputed).
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Note 7 --

Ballcourt A-IIb at Copan in Honduras was built during the sixth or seventh century AD, and soon remodeled. The remodeling preserved three central alley markers, representing the mythological burial places of the father and uncle of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the heroes of the Popol Vuh. Similar markers are found at Yaxchilan, Cerros, and other locations. But at Copan the carvings are well preserved, and can be read. Two mythological characters are shown flanking a ball in each marker. Only the ball of the central marker is in play (between Hunahpu and One-Death); the balls of the north and south markers are suspended by a twisted cord from overhead beams.

A tree is shown on the outside area of the north and south markers. The tree of the north is labeled "Nine Successions"; the tree of the south is labeled "Seven Successions." If, as I suspect, the trees represent the polar plasma plumes of the north and south, then we have here an inventory of how many times the axis mundi reappeared. It would be appropriate to reappear more frequently in the north, since the north magnetic pole would facilitate a larger influx of electrons.

[Image: The ballcourt markers from Copan,
circa AD 700; after Freidel and Schele.]

I can only list seven events where this might have happened -- 3147 BC, 2349 BC, 2193 BC, 1492 BC, 1440 BC, 747 BC, 686 BC -- each corresponding to a known change in the Earth's plasma condition. The dates of 1440 BC and 686 BC are not certain. The date of 685 BC could be added. I also have the suspicion that there might have been two additional changes in the orbit of Earth between 2349 BC and 2193 BC, which have remained unrecorded. All of this information will be developed in following chapters.

The name "Nine Successions" is one more "succession" than noted in the records at Palenque, where the first northern plasma plume is called "north-eight-house."
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Note 8 --

With reference to the Maelstrom, Giorgio de Santillana and H. von Dechend, in Hamlet's Mill (1969), reproduce, without comment, two early maps, the 16th century Carta Marina (Olaus Magnus) and an illustration from Athanasius Kircher's Mundus Subterraneus (AD 1665). The first map places the Maelstrom off the southwest coast of Norway; the second map places it further north. Both locations are relatively close to land. In the 16th century the north magnetic pole was located south of Spitsbergen and west of Norway.

[Image: Carta Marina map. After Giorgio de Santillana and H. von Dechend, "Hamlet's Mill" (1969).]

[Image: Mundus Subterraneus map. After Giorgio de Santillana and H. von Dechend, "Hamlet's Mill" (1969).]

Santillana and von Dechend offer other worldwide mythological references, but most are descriptions seen from afar, and likely to represent events before or directly after 3147 BC. They vaguely note that the whirlpool is mostly located in a northwest direction from Greece (or north by northwest from Western Europe). In the end, with no physical model available to them, Santillana and von Dechend suggest that the whirlpool is a representation of the precession of the ecliptic, although they admit that this model "does not, of course, help to understand any single detail."
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Note 9 --

The series of 7 dates which I have suggested may need to be altered, so that 747 BC (a Mars event) is added. The strong association with Venus (Hathor) in Egypt is probably because of four repeated electric contacts with Venus starting in 2349 BC. The sequence of events for 2349 BC is detailed in the New Kingdom Tale of the Celestial Cow, (recorded in some five tombs) which recapitulates the contact of 2349 BC and was the start of three additional contacts which ended the Middle Kingdom of Egypt in 2193 BC. More on this in chapter 19 and following.
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Note 10 --

When Marinus van der Sluijs put out the book The Mythology of the World Axis (2007), I started to investigate if plasma plumes might have been sighted repeatedly in antiquity. Even Nonos in circa AD 450, in his poem Dionysiaca, recounting the events of 685 BC, makes casual reference to a world axis, the axis mundi, writing, "Even the axis, which turns in the centre, began to totter through the whirling ether."

[Image: THEMIS mission tracks electric tornadoes in space; Shown on the night side of Earth; after Andreas Keiling, UC Berkeley.]

It was the information from Mesoamerica (noted in the text) which convinced me that this was so. One soon realizes that the plasma phenomena could also be described by the directional trees mentioned repeatedly in the Maya Chilam Balam. In March of 2008 I added sections titled "Return of the Axis Mundi" to various chapters. Then a year later vd Sluijs wrote a piece for the Thunderbolts.info website (March 29, 2009), presenting information from a press release from UC Berkeley, which stated that NASA had discovered the (northern) plasma plumes, on the night side of Earth, bending up into the magnetosphere, and extending 40,000 miles (65,000 km) up -- as I had predicted about a year earlier. I did not initially propose two plasma plumes. Vd Sluijs writes:

"The idea of a giant radiant pillar rising up from the earth to the sky would have sounded too fantastic to be true - until recently."

"In April of 2009, NASA's fleet of THEMIS satellites detected vast electrical tornadoes about 40,000 miles (65,000 km) above the night side of the earth, on the boundary between the solar wind and the earth's magnetosphere."

"Since the 1990s, a handful of 'plasma mythologists' had assumed the former existence of a stupendous, luminous sky column that was visible from almost every part of the earth. The evidence for this was the prominent place allotted to this axis mundi or 'world axis' in detailed cosmological traditions from hundreds of cultures dotted around the globe."

The hundreds of cosmological traditions notwithstanding, vd Sluijs is here confusing the polar plumes with the Peratt column, discussed in a previous chapter. Obviously these polar plumes are not a "stupendous luminous sky column" of Peratt.

"The column was widely portrayed as a prodigious mountain, tree, rope, bridge, ladder or pathway and was universally characterized by notions of centrality, vitality, vorticity, and luminosity: the conspicuous position it occupied in the firmament earned it an association with the 'navel', 'heart' or 'centre' of the world; its agility made it seem as if it was imbued with life, like a giant divine creature breathing life into the surrounding cosmos; its filamentary extremities were subject to warping and twisting, while the column itself was seen to be entwined by spiraling filaments frequently compared to snakes; and the splendour of the light it emitted repeatedly invited comparison to the sun and to lightning."

"The difference between the mythical column and the tornadoes observed today appears to be one of scale only: an unusually strong bombardment of charged particles onto the ionosphere could have triggered the formation of a single collimated Birkeland current, of a semi-permanent nature, that was susceptible to a type of plasma instabilities known as 'Peratt Instabilities'."

-- Rens van der Sluijs

Well, not quite. "Could have" isn't close. The Peratt column was 400,000 miles (650,000 km) long, 10 times larger than the polar plumes. Otherwise I would agree with vd Sluijs that in a higher dark mode or in the initial level of glow mode the two separate "tornado" columns would merge, and form a single twisted pillar. Only in high glow mode and low arc mode would entwined columns appear. I doubt if the polar plumes ever switched to arc mode except at its contact point with the ocean and into the Earth's upper atmosphere, for the concept of "braziers" are certainly expressed in Egypt, and "flames" or "lights" in the Chilam Balam.

I do not agree with some of the forms that the polar plume is being equated to here -- the mountain, ladder, navel, heart, and the center of the world. These forms, and others, are to be associated with the plasma connection from Saturn under conditions of plasma instability of extreme conditions (as noted in the text) -- and under parameters of a very large plasma connection extending over millions of miles, not thousands, and sustaining shockwaves which took months to form and propagate. A plume 40,000 miles long would not respond in that manner.

Van der Sluijs is confusing three distinct forms, which had only a casual visual relationship to each other: (1) the Peratt column propagated from the far south and which most often appeared near Earth as four lighted streams and bypassed earth (until 8347 BC), (2) the later singular column connecting Saturn in the north to Earth, which, because of its size, could also support extensive discontinuities for months (until 3147 BC), and (3) the polar plasma plumes, which, even at 40,000 miles, were minor apparitions and which came and went seven or eight times.

Van der Sluijs fails to mention that the plasma plumes would have been seen rotating from the east to the west every night -- "waving in the wind" like trees, or as smoke blowing down from fires, as depicted in Egypt. This sight could have been determined from the information presented by NASA. But NASA's plumes currently are in dark mode.
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Note 11 --

We may think of Mars as a small planet, but when it appeared above Earth in this era it would have been gigantic, exceeding the previous apparition of Saturn in size. This happened not just in Egypt, but throughout the world, as signified by the fact that within a hundred years after Mars was last seen "on his mountain," that is, in plasma stream contact with Earth, pyramid construction starts everywhere. That suggests (as, for example, Patten and Windsor have done) that Mars continued to be seen periodically nearing Earth, but did not get all that close, although close enough to do considerable damage.
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Note 12 --

There is a boom in population after 3000 BC in Mesopotamia, which cannot be attributed exclusively to agriculture (which had been long established there), or the fact that farmers tend to have more children. Population growth seems to have been very limited during the "Age of the Gods" and earlier -- almost a zero growth rate. One wonders if radiation from the plasma stream (which included ultra violet, radio, X-rays, high energy atomic particles, and gamma rays) did not inhibit births. In Sumer, in the second millennium BC, there are extensive laws (and records) governing adoption -- perhaps a holdover from previous times.

Exponential growth, however, often masks slow beginnings. We might at least acknowledge a new beginning for humans after 3147 BC.
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Note 13 --

It is currently presumed that there were kings in Egypt before the first dynasty, often presented as "Dynasty 0" and including kings named after a number of animals -- Scorpion, Catfish, and others. But these names are only known from label inscriptions, and although they might point to some local chiefs or chief priests of temples, it is very doubtful if these were kings of a dynasty. It is difficult to determine anything for sure since all the graves were robbed in antiquity. However, and significantly, none of these predynastic kings of Egypt were acknowledged in the official chronicles. Additional notes on the predynastic kings may be found in Appendix A, "Chronology."
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