Introduction
In the previous article, we could show that the state of the planetary system can be explained as a consequence of a gravitational perturbation caused by a passing dwarf star. We consider this event as the trigger of havoc in the planetary system and as the cause of global catastrophes. As this happened during the prehistory of man all this is reflected in myths and preserved religions. To find additional evidence and to elaborate on the features of the alien star, we are taking our cue from deciphering cryptic images and messages of myths.
Associating myths with zodiac signs and astronomy is a tradition already cited by Aristotle. In various myths, a constant element of horror is a cosmic fire – larger than the Sun. The simplest explanation for this is that irregular sky phenomena such as comets or meteorites could have triggered such imagery. On closer inspection, however, even spectacular events such as really large comets remain inadequate explanations.
Some protagonists of abstruse ideas attracted astounding attention, such as Immanuel Velikovsky with his book “Worlds in Collision”. His work might serve as a perfect example of good questions but wrong answers. David N. Talbott follows the footsteps of Immanuel Velikovsky.1 In his quirky Saturn cosmology this planet wanders between the planets. Although physically this is nonsense we have to admit that Talbott’s speculations are not without reason. We are going to unravel the dark news about a sky cataclysm and put together the fragments of individual reports into a consistent picture.
When Marduk kills the sky dragon, or Zeus castrates his father Kronos, terrible upheavals took place in heaven. Although it is masked and well repressed, this understanding lives on in Christian eschatology. The appearance of the Savior is preceded by cataclysmic celestial events. John’s Book of Revelation portrays this transformation by employing terrifying allegories. Reading the text, one feels tempted to renounce Christ’s coming. Note that the Revelation repeats scenes and characters from the mysteries of the Egyptian god Taht-Aan (= Thot), who was literally Aan (= John), the divine penman. The fundamentals of Revelation dates back thousands of years earlier.
Accretion disc
To elucidate the message contained in myths we need to decode the largely visual language of millennia-old myths. We pick up the thread by turning to a widespread motif: How did the image of a snake used to describe the cosmic object in question develop? To keep a long story short, a coiled snake is a position well-suited to reproduce the visual impression of an accretion disk, as shown in Figure A.
To capture its features and to distinguish it from our home sun, we call the object ‘Red Sun’.
The accretion disk marks the Red Sun as a young star. When it approached our Sun, the formation of planets from the gas and dust of the accretion disk was in full swing. The gravitational force of nascent planets already had ripped gaps in the homogeneous disk giving it the optical appearance of a whirlwind when viewed from a distance.
Approaching the Sun, gravitational perturbations make the Red Sun, which is to be classified rather as a giant planet than a star, light up. A dimly glowing brown dwarf turns into the hot Red Sun of the myths. The alien star gave birth to the god Ra. This development in radiation explains the report of the sudden emergence of the Red Sun out of the dark sky. The cosmic wheel appeared in the sky at a position which the Egyptians preserved in memory as the Duat.3 This reasoning fits the determinative which the Egyptians used to express the word and position of Duat in their writing: a star within a circle. A sign which to our understanding correctly captures the picture of a sun in the center of an accretion disk. Unsurprisingly, the signs for Duat and for the god Atum-Ra (two concentric circles ⊚).4 (The ancients perceived the planets and stars as their gods.)
The snake as a symbol fits well with the image of an accretion disk and further details of related prehistoric messages. The myths tell of lightning bolts ejected off the sun, of emanating flares and about changes in shape during its passage. The assumption of an accretion disk casually clarifies the origin of such seemingly enigmatic effects and avoids speculations based on non-physical ideas.
How big the terrible serpent stood in the sky can be deduced from the name it bore in Egypt:5
….. it is noticeable that the name of the Apap in Egyptian signifies to mount on high, become tall, vast, gigantic, like the swirling dust and darkness of the sand-storm.
In the Book of the Dead, it is said that the terrible serpent Apep threatens to swallow the Sun. Our thesis solves this mystery. When Earth stood in the conjunction position to the Red Sun (behind the Sun) the comparatively small solar disk got engulfed by the giant accretion disk. Figuratively correctly captured, in that case, the huge accretion disk ate the Sun which remained against this glowing background, only visible because of its brighter yellow color.
In the pyramid texts of Pharaoh Unas, we find the saying (No. 138): 6
O King Unas, beware of the lake of fire
The pictorial description as a pool of fire is consistent with our interpretation.
.. the stays of thy sails and of thy rudder are taut in the wind as thou sailest up the Pool of Fire in the underworld.
and
I have come from the Pool of Flame.
fire and stirring up storms of reddish dust which darkened the Sun, Moon and stars.
As a description of an accretion disk we regard the wording:
Golden of limbs, blue of head, emerald upon both of his sides ….
Fitting to the thesis of an accretion disk as a template it is said in the ‘Negative Confessions’ (No. 14) that two flares eject from its center:7
Hail, thou whose legs are of fire, who comest forth out of the darkness …
The Red Sun can take this shape and these colors if we consider color variations of the plasma flares emanating from the disk, see Figure A.
Michael Rappenglück refers to the worldwide common motif of the one-legged god often supplemented by the reference to something turning and assigns it to the world tree and the spinning canopy.8 We see here rather the rotating accretion disk with its plasma jet whirling out of its center into space as the underlying template.
Within the framework of our model of a traversing accretion disk, also chapter CXXXVI of the Egyptian Book of the Dead with its heading ‘The Chapter of the Sailing of the Great Boat over the Ring of Bright Flames’ becomes understandable. According to the description and appropriately, the boat circles around a central sun, which itself remains (relatively?) stationary.
A description fitting to our thesis of the circling object can be found in the book of the Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge:9
… thou makest thy creations as Governer of thy Circle
In the belief of the Egyptians, the sun god Ra sails across the sky with his barque while at the same time his ship is entangled by a snake. The image of a serpent entwined around the ship is a well-chosen allegory to describe an accretion disc. Figure B shows a graphic representation of Ra, who to our understanding embodies originally the Red Sun and not the Sun. In any case, the symbols that characterize it fit our thesis.
Furthermore, and attributable to the confused and over time changeful religion of the Egyptians, we find other inscriptions in praise of Ra that perfectly fit our thesis of a glowing accretion disk.
O Ra in thine egg, radiant in thy disk, shining forth from the horizon, swimming over the steel (?) firmament.10
The terror spread by the Red Sun is reflected in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. As a comment to the ‘Book of the Death’ Wallis Budge states:
A long section of the text in the pyramid of Unas contains nothing but formulæ, the recital of which was intended to protect the deceased from various kinds of snakes and worms. These are exceedingly ancient, indeed, they may safely besaid to form one of the oldest parts of the funeral literature of the Egyptians, …..
He concludes, and as we expected, the Red Sun belongs to the oldest stratum of the Book of the Dead.
Not only do myths tell of a winding structure characterizing the god Ra, but also drawings on papyri and reliefs. During its flight through the solar system, the initially flat accretion disk becomes unstable, since it squirms and undulates undergoing severe distortions in the superposing gravity of two suns. A corresponding change in the shape of the ‘snake sun’ is described in the Papyrus of Ani:12
….. when it sprang from the watery abyss even as it was in the days of old. I am Fate (?) and Osiris, and I have changed my form into the likeness of divers serpents …… Horus is seated upon the throne of the dweller in the double Lake of Fire …..
In accordance with the Egyptian description of their god Ra, the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish13 describes the god Marduk as a winding and circling celestial phenomenon. An enlightening correspondence of the myths about the Babylonian god Marduk and the Egyptian god Ra. This fact either links the two cultures or indicates a common experience.
This illustrative metaphor and description of Ra aligns with what we read in the Mexican Chilam Balam. This book contains a puzzling message about the god Bolon-ti-ku: 14
Red was the mat on which Bolon-ti-ku sat. His buttock is sharply rounded, as he sits on his mat. Then descended greed from the heart of the sky, greed for power, greed for rule.
The classical interpretation assumes Bolon-ti-ku to represent the planet Jupiter. An otherwise by the Mayan almost never mentioned planet. We take it for a far more impressive phenomenon, especially since the author laments about the situation following the appearance of that god:
Compulsion and force were the tidings, when he was seated <in authority>; compulsion was the tidings, compulsion by misery; it came during his reign, when he arrived to sit upon the mat …
Suddenly on high fire flamed up. The face of the sun was snatched away, taken from earth. This was his garment in his reign. This was the reason for mourning his power, at that time there was too much vigor.
To describe the accretion disc as a mat on which a round butt – the sun ball – squats, means on the one hand a funny metaphor, on the other, it is a remarkably fitting one. It is then said that the whole world turned red in color under the rule of Bolon-ti-ku. True! Trivially, the Red Sun bathed the Earth in its red light. The size of its accretion disk made the Sun fade and its vigor highlights the climate catastrophe.
A very vivid description of an accretion disc comes from an Australian Aboriginal myth. Here is a brief summary:15
As for appearance, there is basic agreement that a great snake is involved, but other features vary. In western Arnhem Land, for instance, reference is often made to ‘horns’, one at each side of the snake’s head, to ‘whiskers’ (when it is male), and to the dazzling light from the snake’s eyes.
An apt description, in which we find all the characteristics of an accretion disk. It remains unexplainable how this description can be mistaken for that of a comet or meteor, as W. Bruce Masse does.16
The report of the Phoenician historian Sanchoniatho 17 about an ancient snake cult coincides perfectly with our understanding:18
The nature then of the dragon and of serpents Tauthus himself (Phoenician Taataus = Egyptian Thot)19 regarded as divine, and so again after him did the Phoenicians and Egyptians: for this animal was declared by him to be of all reptiles most full of breath, and fiery. In consequence of which it also exerts an unsurpassable swiftness by means of its breath, without feet and hands or any other of the external members by which the other animals make their movements. It also exhibits forms of various shapes, and in its progress makes spiral leaps as swift as it chooses.
Not only in cultures distant in time and region but also in the native Edda, we encounter a mythical echo of the appearance of the Red Sun. If you take the appropriate view, verses so far considered merely as dramatic poetry transform into substantial messages:20
Surt fares from the south
with the scourge of branches,
The sun of the battle-gods
shone from his sword;
….
Analogous to earlier quoted sources, the accretion disk turns into a fire vortex, and in the blade, we recognize the plasma jets of the Red Sun. In the following verse of the Edda, the accretion disk is described as a shield and the raging cyclone again transforms into a snake. Again, we come across the motifs of serpent and ship, both symbols of the accretion disk:
From the east comes Hrym | with shield held high;
In giant-wrath | does the serpent writhe;
O’er the waves he twists, | and the tawny eagle
Gnaws corpses screaming; | Naglfar is loose.
In the Indian Vedas, many cryptic messages can be identified as descriptions of a celestial wheel of fire Its appearance and related occurrences assigned to various gods, such as Indra, Agni and Rudra, likely report about the same event.21
For further evidence of the large number of ancient traditions, which tell of or are based on the occurrence of cosmic phenomena, we refer to Pliny the Elder 22 who wrote about an event that triggered natural catastrophes:23
A terrible sign observed the Ethiopians and Egyptians, when Typhon was there – in the age named after him – king. It had a fiery appearance and was twisted like a spiral and of a sinister appearance; it was not a real star, but more like a fiery knot.
To classify this celestial object described by Pliny as a normal and recurring phenomenon is untenable. The description is inappropriate for known objects, especially since in the following paragraph Pliny explicitly delimits the devastating, fiery appearance of comets by assigning “hair” to them, for example, a tail as a characteristic.
The most stylized representation exists perhaps in the swastika as a more stylized display of the Red Sun.24 Our conjecture agrees with the conclusion of Amanda Laoupi. She deduces that the swastika symbol from the Bronze Age represents a celestial fire:25
Archaeologically speaking there is a profound relationship between the swastika and fire (sun, wheel of creation, architecture of cosmos) creation and evolution.
… it is a weapon of the snake king (dragon). …..
The association of the Sanskrit term svastika with this symbol may be traced in the Astika Parva (Mahabharata), which relates the birth of a cosmic bird par excellence — Garuda. This fabulous winged deity had a radiance like the Sun, could change shapes at will, and destroyed other gods and kings by casting down
Moreover, Polynesian cosmology also supports our model by describing an accretion disk. Here, a quotation from the lecture of Hertha von Dechend, which does not obviously refer to the Red Sun, but in the context very well does:26
In Tahiti, for example, fetiaave = a ‘star with a tail’, a comet and fetiaura the ‘red star’ is Mars. Hawaiian hokuaea generally means planet, ‘wandering star’. And as verb we have in Tahiti fetua, ‘to roll in succession’ as do the waves of the sea. And hetuhetu, to roll, as the ‘waves on the shore’. In Hawaii, hoku also means, ‘a word, a thought, something risking in the mind’. You realize that ‘ascending’ and ‘descending’ are astronomical words which describe circular orbits. It is just a whetu / hoku, to which such verbs as whiti and heke refer – hiti means ‘the revolution of time’, fetua ‘to roll in succession’.
She provides this quotation to give an example of how myths can be misunderstood but strangely enough, she herself does not explain it either.
Celestial events
The initial steady and quite calm motion of the accretion disk as well as the slow increase in the mass of the planetesimals in the accretion disk was disrupted when the gravity of the multiple higher-mass Sun perturbated the orbits. The planarity of the disc got lost when the self-reinforcing chaos generated by the obliquely acting gravity of the Sun pulled transversely to the disk plane at the objects and the steady rotation of the accretion disk got shredded. Where hitherto objects circled on adjoining paths and gradually grew into planets, now ricochets and cross-cruisers generated chaos. Important to note, that in a dense disk consisting of separate particles the viscosity is not zero. Thus, counteracting the obliquely interfering gravity of the Sun the internal viscosity of the accretion disk resisted the twisting. The gravitational perturbation of the Sun wrecked the accretion disk and caused it to shrink continuously in size. Finally, large parts of the flat accretion disk became knotted into a fireball, just as described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
The collision of massive lumps, internal friction of dust and swirling gas heated the cool disk to red hot. Hot spots arose at the locations of planetesimals whose gravity acted as a forge for the incoming material. Near the center, wherein the vortex of the accretion disk the material achieved the highest speeds and where the highest densities prevailed, solidified granules decomposed due to heat and collision of particles and atoms. As a result, a plasma rotated around the near-surface of the Red Sun, generating a strong magnetic field. Ions that were pushed into this magnetic field were bundled along the axis of the magnetic field and ejected into space in the form of a cone. The solar wind of the Sun bent the plasma cones – just as it acts on the tail of a comet. The naive observer on Earth recognized a crescent-shaped sun chariot and regarded the way-bent jets to be the horns of a ram or the lightning bolt of a god. The myths report this state exactly and supplement the appearance of the celestial phenomenon with a detail that only an accretion disk can display.
Ancient gods from Zeus to the Japanese deities Shukongō-jin own a terrible thunderbolt-like weapon. Sometimes it varies as in the case of Indra’s vajra and Thor’s short-handled hammer. If the weapon appears on pictures in a symmetrical form as a double trident, we recognize in it the plasma jets of the accretion disk.
Herodotus claims to have heard from Egyptian priests that the sun once rose twice a day.27 With a second sun in the solar system, this report becomes an explainable phenomenon. Even the continuation of his report that this second sun had changed its direction twice finds trivial clarification in the model of the passage of the foreign stars.
According to Herodotus, this sun passes through all celestial regions: north, south, east, and west. If the Red Sun intruded obliquely to the ecliptic, it swung extremely closely around the Sun. Seen from the perspective of Earth, see Diagram 1, this impression takes place and Herodotus’ message about its visibility in all directions of the sky become easily explicable.
a) Left: Paths of Earth and Red Sun in the top view of the ecliptic. The differently colored path segments represent the monthly motion.
b) Right: Trajectories of Earth and Red Sun in a view almost parallel to the ecliptic. The red ellipses illustrate (qualitatively) the change of shape of the Red Sun as seen by an observer on Earth.
The values in the bottom left of each box indicate the Eulerian angles of the rotation of the coordinate system.
This north/south change of the position in the sky is complemented by another myth, which says that the Ra-sun stood upside down while moving away. A statement that leaves us perplexed if it is supposed to describe our Sun since an isotropic sphere looks the same at any orientation. But, the message becomes highly revealing if we relate it to the Red Sun.
An alien sun with a surrounding accretion disk also solves this riddle, since in the accretion disk we detect the anisotropic structure which changes its appearance according to the direction of view and the position of the disk. Furthermore, an alien sun surrounded by an accretion disk explains also the message of a changing shape during the course of the passage. As graphically illustrated in the plot of Diagram 1, the change in the viewing angle results in an alteration of shape simply induced by perspective. Depending on its inclination and its position relative to the Earth the disk appeared most time hardly in a round shape, but usually as an ellipse of varying slenderness.
For summary we list the peculiarities which the Egyptian myths reports:
• during a short period two suns stood in the sky
• a huge accretion disk temporarily outshone the Sun
• from the accretion disk bright flares shot into space
• the second sun emerged from the darkness of the sky
• the second sun changed its position during its trajectory from south to north
• it wandered through all four celestial districts
• moving away (viewed in the north) the second sun stood upside down
If the flight route of the Red Sun was as shown on Diagram 1, the angle of view became steeper as it sank towards the south so that the initially narrow ellipse of the accretion disk broadened in perspective, and simultaneously with regard to the Earth, its radiant power – caused purely geometrically – increased.
Regarding the timing of the passage, a quantitative indication is found in Massey’s book where he quotes:28
When Herodotus was in Egypt, the “mystery teachers of the heavens” told him that during a certain length of time which had been reckoned by the Egyptian astronomers, “the sun had four times risen out of his usual quarter; that he had twice risen where he now sets, and twice set where he now rises.
If we take this quote in earnest and we refer it to the precession of Earth’s axis, the passage of the Red Sun took place at about 55,000 BC. This timing also leads to the back-calculation from the orbital inclinations, as we have derived them from the passage of the Red Sun (see my previous article), to a reasonably suitable agreement with the present orbital inclination values. Taking that time for earnest, the present inclinations of Mercury and Venus slightly deviate from the calculated result. Advantageously for Mars one receives an even better agreement than assuming for optimal agreement a passage time 414 thousand years ago.
The battling gods
An extremely indicative reference to the passage of the Red Sun follows from widespread myths about the battle of a newly emerging Great God in the sky. To explain these ancient messages we assume the extension of our model that a planetesimal of the accretion disk collided with the fifth planet that primordially orbited the Sun at the distance of today’s Asteroid Belt. (We will deal with this event in detail in a follow-up article.) As a result of this collision the fifth planet, we call it Tiamat, was destroyed. The passage of the planet through the accretion disk of the Red Sun and its destruction fanned ultimately the hellfire in the, until then, weakly luminous Red Sun. In this flare-up, we find the explanation where in space and by what event the new great god, in the myths called Marduk, Ra, Kaulu or Bolon-ti-ku, emerged. It was the N of Tiamat framed by the glaring light-bursts and the strikings of bolides into the planet and its fragments that caused lightning bolts to shoot out of the disk. This light storm has led earlier researchers to make twisted assumptions about electrical processes in space. The destruction of a large planet transformed the dark star finally into the Red Sun and generated the myths about the battling gods – Marduk, Bolon-ti–ki, and others destroying Tiamat.
Note the tridents in Marduk’s hands, which we classify as plasma jets ejecting from the center of the accretion disc. In the myths, the strongest indication for the destruction of Tiamat is found in the Enuma Elish. This epic describes how the god Marduk kills the dragon Tiamat by his whirlwind, i.e. to our understanding by his accretion disc. The relief shown in Figure C visualized this battle. The winged Marduk and the wings of Tiamat symbolize that the battle took place in heaven. A Polynesian myth describes how the Hawaiian goddess Haumea (= Tiamat) gets caught in the net of Kaul (= Red Sun = Marduk = Ra = Bolon-ti-ku) and dies in the mesh. Conforming to our thesis, also in this Polynesian myth the fifth planet disappears. The Polynesian net represents a similar allegory as Marduk’s whirlwind does.
When intruding the solar system, the radiant power of the calm Red Sun was far below that of the Sun. This situation changed dramatically in the course of the destruction of Tiamat. In its stoked-up state, the radiant power of the Red Sun exceeded that of the Sun by far. The giant heater meant a catastrophe for life on Earth. The heat of this infrared screen turned Earth into a sauna although in our scenario depicted (Diagram 1) the Earth maintains an almost maximally possible distance when the Red Sun is closing up. Earth orbits for a period of almost four months in conjunction with the Red Sun. (Note: This scenario developed only with the intention to explain Earth’s present orbit.)
In light of this explanation we understand the meaning of the following sentence in the Chilam Balam:
Suddenly a big fire flared up. The face of the sun was torn away, taken away from the earth.
Looking at Diagram 1, we fully recognize what myths mean if they are saying that the face of the sun was taken away. As shown in the plot of the paths at this event the Red Sun happened by chance to stand behind the Sun outshining it all of a sudden.
How alike the descriptions of the two gods Ra and Marduk are, becomes obvious when the English translation of the Akkadian original text characterizes the appearance of Marduk in terms of a whirlwind or cyclone. The Ra disk and Marduk’s whirlwind both symbolize the same;30
And the evil wind that was behind him he let loose in her face.
As Tiamat opened her mouth to its full extent,
He drove in the evil wind, while as yet she had not shut her lips.
The terrible winds filled her belly,
And her courage was taken from her, and her mouth she opened wide.
He seized the spear and burst her belly,
He severed her inward parts, he pierced her heart.
In spite of variation, the messages are identical. The myths from Egypt, Sumer, and Mexico describe the same event.
Prehistoric monuments
Concentric stone circles dating from prehistoric times can be found all over the world. Nobody knows who built them and what they stand for. Whether in Africa31 or Europe 32 they are ancient witnesses of lost knowledge. It is not necessarily true when historians call them graves or observatories. Doubts arise when sickles and ship-shaped figures are combined with these circular structures. With this variation of the simple circle, however, we obtain geometric structures that fit perfectly into the model of an accretion disk. Depending on the perspective and the deformation caused by gravitational perturbation, an accretion disk appears as a circle solely when viewed from above. When the disk is tilted or is viewed at an oblique angle, the shape of a sickle becomes the better description. In the circles and sickle shapes, perished cultures probably reflected a reality.
Likewise, spirals engraved in stone could be an echo of the appearance of the Red Sun.33 Whether on the stones of Newgrange 34 or on the temples of Malta35 they are ancient engravings of a forgotten cosmic event.
Conclusion
Celestial monsters were born in a sparking disk, whose fire-breathing embers burned the world. For all these cryptic reports our thesis of the Red Sun encircled by an accretion disk provides the fitting model. The ship of Ra, the net of Kaul, the whirlwind of Marduk, the mat of Bolon-ti-ku and the gruesome approach of the death ship Naglfar symbolize the Red Sun and memorize of its devastating passage.
The consequences of the destruction of the fifth planet are well preserved in the state of the solar system. In the following article, we will extend our alternative prehistory and deepen the understanding of why the planetary system looks as it does.
References
1 https://saturniancosmology.org/intro.php
2 Edited image using the template: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Explosion_de_colores.jpg
3 http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/bookgates5.html
4 https://grahamhancock.com/fordr4/
5 Gerald Massey, ‚Ancient Egypt: The Light Of The World‘ https://www.theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/AncientEgyptTheLightOfTheWorld_GMassey.pdf
6 http://maat.sofiatopia.org/wenis_text.htm
7 E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead – The Papyrus of Ani; page 275 public domain: https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/book-of-the-dead-
Note: The ten Commandments of the Bible are a shortened copy of the ‘Negative Confessions’ in the form of orders.
8 M. Rappenglück in: Gazing at the horizon: heavenly phenomena and cultural preferences within northwest Scotland, page 169 ff
9 E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians or Studies in Egyptian Mythology, Methuen & Co. London (1904); http://www.etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/20625.pdf
10 J. N. Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy, Chap. III, page 27, CASSELL AND COMPANY, London (1894); https://archive.org/details/dawnofastronomys00lockuoft?ref=ol&_autoReadAloud=show&view=theater
11 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flickr_-_archer10_(Dennis)_-_Egypt-9B-033_-_Amun-Ra.jpg
12 E. A. Wallis Budge, ‘The Book of the Dead, the Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum’ (1895), new edition by GlobalGrey 2018, page 269
13 https://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm
14 https://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/maya/cbc/cbc15.htm
15 R. M. Berndt und, C. H. Berndt, The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia, Inner Traditions International, Rochester VT, (1994)
17 https://archive.org/details/sanchoniathosph00eratgoog/page/n165/mode/2up
18 https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb10239301_00077.html; page16
19 http://www.vollmer-mythologie.de/taautus/
20 https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe03.htm
21 A. Laoupi, GODS IN HEAVEN, HAVOC ON EARTH. ANCIENT GREEK AND SANSKRIT PARALLELS OF COMET/METEOR GODS
22 Pliny the Elder * 23 or 24 A.D. † 79
23 Liber II:
24 https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Black_Sun_(symbol)
25 A. Laoupi, The Pelasgian Spiritual Substratum of Bronze Age Mediterranean and Circum-Pontic World; https://issuu.com/alaoupi/docs/-the_spiritual_substratum_of_bronze/35
26 Lecture given by H. v. Dechend: Polynesian Cosmology I WS 1977-78 (original in German)
https://www.per-aspera-ad-astra.net/Dateien/Polynesische%20Kosmologie%20I%20T1.html
27 https://files.romanroadsstatic.com/materials/herodotus.pdf (Book 2)
28 Gerald Massey; ‚Ancient Egypt: The Light Of The World‘, https://www.theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/AncientEgyptTheLightOfTheWorld_GMassey.pdf
29 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bildhuggarkonst,_Marduks_strid_med_draken,_Nordisk_familjebok.png
30 https://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm
31 https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/south-africa-fast-facts/news-facts/five-globally-important-archaeological-sites-in-africa
32 https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryMagazine/DestinationsUK/Stone-Circles-in-Cumbria/
33 https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/ancient_symbols_in_rock_art/ancient_symbols_in_rock_art.php
34 http://www.carrowkeel.com/sites/boyne/newgrange4a.html
35 https://web.infinito.it/utenti/m/malta_mega_temples/stattuet/spiral/spiralls.html
“The myths report this state exactly and supplement the appearance of the celestial phenomenon with a detail that
“only an accretion disk can display.”
…
The initial steady and quite calm motion of the accretion disk as well as the slow increase in the mass of the planetesimals in the accretion disk was disrupted when the gravity of the
“multiple higher-mass” [[second]] Sun perturbated the orbits. ” ”
>>>
Hello Aloys,
The blinding complexity of the models put forth above again ignore the most plausible root cause, the cyclic approximately 12-24 thousand year Solar Novas.
One changing Sun, ours, undergoing recurrent Novas or “mini-Novas.
The effects described above: both visual and orbital can much more simply be attributed to a ‘super-flaring’ sun.
The article’s purported “Accretion Disc” then becomes an expansion event and, you don’t have to worry about the planets being ‘accreted’ on to the hypothetical “second sun” and maybe disappearing.
Planetary orbits and spin are affected, as you imply, by the drastically disrupted EM and gravitational heliosphere.
Lightning/plasma events abound in helio-space along with the massive solar energy blasted out in to space (just as happens on a smaller scale here on Earth presently, with upticks in solar activity).
Double daily sunrises and sunsets are easily explained by the temporary induced ‘wobbles’ in Earth’s spin, much like a nudged spinning toy top.
Most importantly, these Novas and mini-Novas are now observed everywhere we look in space.
Even more so now, as our telescopes and satellite detection systems have got better in recent years !!
The myths referenced are good, but the root cause is probably missed due to an over-dependence on the old
gravity-accretion model.
As an old Greek parabled, an elephant can be described in several different ways,
by blind-folded observants.
All the best,
seasmith
Hi Seasmith,
the parable of the blind men describing an elephant only by palpation is apt. It remains to be clarified who of us is the blind man. For my part, I am a trained physicist (PhD) and have also studied astronomy. So I do not consider myself totally blind.
However, I guarantee that your explanation that the Sun has gone Nova interim does not fit the problem in many ways. If the Sun really would go Nova, it would lead to a total catastrophe as the planets would be stripped of all atmosphere. Fortunately, Earth has been spared this event in the past. At best, the Sun emits flares and changes its brightness to some extent beyond the normal solar cycle of almost 11 years. E.g., although not relevant for our disucssion during the billions of years of its existence the Sun increased brightness by 30% compared to its initial luminocity.
Morever, I guarantee you that by lightning/plasma and any conceivable process in the heliosphere cannot affect the planets orbit. I suggest you take off your plasma blindfold and take a second look at the gravity elefant.
Best regards,
Aloys
Hi Aloys,
You give me too much credit.
It was your article that introduced-
“We see here rather the rotating accretion disk with its plasma jet whirling out of its center into space as the underlying template.”, rotating plasmas and writhing serpents.
I think you will probably agree that lightning is an electric current plasma phenomenon, and if one looks at the more recent astrophysics journal articles, dusty accretion disk terminology is being replaced by “dusty plasma” accretions, because we now have the bandwidth detection ability to see the gas/plasma signatures.
Nova detections have also gotten much better than when you were in school, and we now recognize that the eruptions come in many sizes and frequency, from mini to major to colossal. From Carrington-size events to the incredible displays we see in deep space.
For here on Earth, web searching magnetic excursions/mini-extinction events ( Gothenburg, Lake Mungo, Laschamp, Mono Lake etc.) will provide a degree of scale possible. Solar luminosity does not.
All the Best,
seasmith
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL096376
Seasmith, I agree with your assessment. Except to add that myths are not generated by events. Myths are archetypal structures, using archetypal clusters of features. Myths attach to events (that also tend to express archetypal events). Thus myths become legends, not the other way around. You seem to allow that myths, or rather legends, could survive about 12000 years, presumably by oral tradition. But this is impossible. All the ‘ancient’ myths are actually eternal, or at least as long as the present repertoire of atmosphere, ecology and biology. Thus new versions are not variants (which would soon diverge randomly), but perpetual ‘originals’, with the main function of rectifying divergent versions back to archetype.
It is worth recalling that Jung had repeatedly found it necessary to write ‘again and again I come across the mistaken notion that archetype is shaped by experience.’ Archetype enables nature and culture, or reality in the broad sense.
Mixing geology and mythology by way of correspondence ‘theory’ has very limited value. It could at best confirm some of the the rationalisations that we resort to, such as the Flood and the Fire. And at worst obscure the real sustainer of myth, and the real sustainers of geological formations. The main culprit in these errors of science and popular science, is common or garden correspondence ‘theory’. Which is no theory at all.
Hello Edmund,
I want to make it clear that I am not a zealot. I propose an explanation that reconciles myths, natural science and present day status. Whether someone believes in it or not, everyone must decide for himself. If you don’t do that ok with me. However, it would be good if critics could present good arguments besides their non-belief. Myths passed on during the course of multi millenia cannot be ruled out upfront, in particular after they became cult or religion. To give an example: In the Edda you can easily identify words which show a perfect relation to ancient Greek. This finding proves the myth of Ragnarok dates from a time when Nordic people and Greek were one people and thus dates back at last 5000 years.
Best regards,
Aloys
Alois, religions also express archetypal structure, by ritualising myth. Correspondences between religions, and between myths (ATU catalogue etc), indicate that neither arise from random events. Correspondences across time indicate archetype at work in cult and culture, not the other way around. Belief is irrelevant.
Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and British myth are indeed closely related by some exchange, enforcement, and aspiration, in addition to the subconscious compulsion of archetypal structure. But your dating of that cultural commonality is too deep. The Greek ‘Dark Age’ did not exist. The Low Chronology based on Greek sources (David Rohl) probably applies, and will soon overturn the errors of Manetho and Western canonical dating based on an Egyptian history that strung out dynasties that actually ran contemporary to one another. The Eddas are probably not BC 3000. Myths of divine battles are universal, eg India. Which incidentally had a common culture with Dilmun, Sumeria, and Egypt.
Your theory is a valid hypothesis based on astrophysics and geology. Best leave myths out of it, for there is no adequate theory of cultural diffusion. I have criticised Witzel’s lack of theoretical framework, and his ridiculous conclusions, elsewhere.
Hello Edmond,
I fully agree with your assessment regarding religions and myths. Also your statement about the Greek and Egyptians is ok with me. Never said different. (I think you should read my book, it covers a lot of your critism.) Having said this, I yet believe that the global “compulsion of archetypal structure” has not been ingrained without cause into the historical heritage of mankind. Cataclysms of cosmic origin shaped religion and culture of the survivors. Not without cause all ancient religions take celetial objects for their gods. To point to a possible quantitaive connection between astronomy and just to this heritage of consciousness does not seem to me a priori nonsensical. Maybe, I go too far with some conclusions and connections. But please keep in mind, the aim of my considerations, is not a final proof to be correct. I strive to make attentive to such connections and to explain a possible origin of cult, instead of classifying it as an originless phenomenon of simpletons. In any case, I reject the approach to propagate a pseudo explanation by classifying the misunderstood to be a cult. In spite of wordy texts, this is often idle chatter. Therefore, my considerations are the attempt to oppose the fact- and wild speculation by a fact-based analysis which. agreed, might be wrong but maintains logic and scientific background.
Thank your for your valuable contributions and discussion,
Aloys
Aloys, I query your last point. Which ‘scientific background’ or theoretical framework do you have for seeking ‘memories’ or details or dates of cataclysmic events in myth?
The only credible example I could think of is Paul Dunbaven’s spiralling polar era due to earth mantle or core nunation. He also claims that many myths hold history, but he also has not theorised that assumption.
If by ‘ingrained’ you mean that archetype becomes heritage, then we agree. But events and experience do not ingrain into archetype.
Cataclisms do not ‘shape’ religion and culture. The obvioius examples would be floods and meteorite impacts, but then why did the Tunguska event not become at least a cult? And why are meteorite craters not sacred?
I wonder what you mean by ‘heritage of consciousness’.
Myths need no ‘origins’. They become attached to archetypal events. Tower of Babel and 9/11; speculated, legendised, conspired, rhymed, and sung about, before and after the event, for example in an alchemical emblem and verse by Basil Valentine, in Tarot trump 16, in Yellow Brick Road by Tauplin /John, etc.
‘Connections’ are ten a penny. Science requires theory to explain why and how correspondences are connected.
Hello Edmond, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia represent the archetypes for myth. After the buildings fell ruins, a myth about their former existence remained. The Tower of Babel is a myth which dates back to the times of the ziggurats. The Tunguska impact could not become a myth because it is an event of yesterday. Moreover, it was of minor importance as nobody was harmed, and it happened at a time when such an event could be explained scientifically. Sacred craters are a difficult subject, because no one in the immediate vicinity survived the impact. However, it lived on in the memory of those who lived further away. In a known case, the neighbors feared that the sky might fall on their heads as well. Just to quote a historically testified and assignable myth of the Celts (to be read of at Arrian and Plutarch) after they experienced the Chiemgau impact. Other myths about huge impacts are easily traceable. It includes the Phaeton legend (Ovid), or the Dryas impact (Ojibwe indians). To assert, a myth without assignable event has originated without cause, because one does not know the event represents at best a circular argument.
Honestly, I don’t know what your demand for theory means. A theory explains a phenomenon in its cause. I think that I follow this claim to a higher degree than many others do. For every myth explanation I have done extensive calculations and/or referred to natural sciences. What do you expect in addition? I agree, as there are no surviving eye witness to call up, uncertainty remains. I don’t argue and cannot guarantee that my explanation is correct, but it is in its logic sound. If you put forward a more compelling explanation, no problem. In my approach I am not without predecessors. For scientific depth and scientific work in myth explanation I would like to refer to Hertha von Dechend or Franz Xaver Kugler. Both strive to connect myths with celestial events.
Keep on arguing I like it,
Aloys
Aloys, you could not rely on De Santillana and Von Deschend’s essay, Hamlet’s Mill, as a theory of diffusion, or tradition, or myth. They were professors of History, with a vested interest in the untheorised view of events sustained in collective memory. That book was popular, but made no impact on any human science.
I have noted in other strings before:
“If you see abstracts as degraded symbols, far from a ‘head office’, you fall into the same trap as De Santillana and Von Deschend, who read Icelandic myth as degraded astronomy, instead of the standard set of inspired, universal cosmology elements in myth.”
“Most cultures believe, as you do, the common, garden, rationalised ethnography, not requiring any science. If rationalisation is adopted in anthropology, it leads only to correspondence theory (De Santillana, etc). Even common sense knows that “the sky” comes from nature (Lion etc), and myth (Hercules), and legend (Perseus etc), and society (Virgin), and calendar (Plough List). Even cosmology (direction, orientation) is independent of the sky. Orientation does not come from the sky, but equally “from” earth. Language, dress, species, cooking, healing, herbs, art (of which I have massive data), building site spacing (ditto), come from re-expression of innate perception. Cultural media rarely illustrate one another, each has its own fixed structure, and its own range of options. The sky is a myth map and a structure map. Here is a version relevant to many aspects of all cultures;
[edmondfurter.wordpress.com]
“Your outline suggests that you see culture as invented in one place and time, and passed on, or diffusion. I have lots of evidence to disagree with that paradigm. Even the diffusionist historians De Santillana and Von Deschend in Hamlet’s Mill note that motifs appear again and again in the jetstream of time, on the order of a diffusion not possible in that paradigm. Or words to that effect. On my websites including http://www.stoneprintjournal.wordpress.com and http://www.mindprintart.wordpress.com are may examples of archetypal motifs, and explanations of how they sustain culture via subconscious inspiration and recurrent behaviour, as an extention of nature.”
“Kuhn… and De Santillana and Von Deschend; and even the trance school in archaeology; and every contributor I have read on this site, assume that culture is a conscious construct; transmitted by the cultural record itself (myth, legend, ritual, art, song, music); consciously developed, ‘improving’ or ‘evolving;, sometimes ‘degrading’, depending on mental faculties; learned by new members. These assumptions are all entirely and paradigmatically wrong, as the other Kuhn explained (see my article on this site at Author of the Month, September 2015). Culture re-expresses nature, thus indirectly transforming archetypal structure; and culture directly expresses archetypal structure, from subconscious inspiration. The two kinds of expression may seem to sometimes contradict one another.”
I came across a note by Robert Bauval endorsing De Santillana on how ‘stars influence myth’. I respect Bauval’s engineering expertise, but he does not use, and did not develop, any anthropology theory.
“Jung was right, we dip into our collective subconscious (not ‘unconscious’, since symbolism, dreams, art and ritual give us some conscious access to that province). Claude Levi-Struass was right, we are creatures of structure. Alchemists are right, we could understand nature by following her signatures in icons and elements. Artists are right without knowing how or why. Archaeo-astronomy, from De Santillana and Von Deschend to Von Daniken and the correlation theories, are scratching the surface of a larger correlation. It is not just star maps that mark place and time.”
“These questions are relevant to the multi-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary ‘tacks’ and ‘cable twines’ that offer existing strands for what could become a scientific description of archetypal structure. I probe psychology, anthropology (with some initial leads from De Santillana, Robert Temple, Graham Hancock, Andrew Collins), archaeology (Lewis-Williams, Alyson Wylie, Anne Solomon, Sven Ouzman), esoterica (alchemy, Tarot emblems, Bible code), and art history (Ernst Gombrich, Marucie Cotterell), to lay a groundwork for this field. I think mindprint is what trans-disciplinary science labels ‘new knowledge’.”
“We [humans] sense that there is something eternal and un-abased in art, myth and ritual, but we did not sit down to “work it out” as a form of “instruction”, as De Santillana and Von Deschend theorised.”
“Each of these stories and artworks tell us a little more about the rope of the sky. There is no reason to compare only Icelandic myth with only Icelandic art, etc. There is no reason to seek only astronomical data in it, as De Santillana and Von Deschend have done (although they speculate on universality in between their literal, historic interpretation of Icelandic tales). Even stellar myth is not about the stars as such, as De Santillana understood. And culture does not improve or evolve, as Von Deschend understood [believed].”
I have a more contextual criticism of popular anthropology in my books Mindprint (2014) and Stoneprint (2016), in a chapter titled ‘Popular anthropology plays Broken Telephone’.
Aolys, the only theory of culture that could offer a framework to your initiative, is by Witzel (culminating in 2013: Origin of the world’s mythologies). I have added my criticisms of his lack of theoretical rigour, and his already generally criticised conclusions, in a string on Academia.
Even his title is problematic. Myths have no ‘origin’, and are perpetually originated and sustained by archetype, via structure (physis and dighe as Heidegger explained), in nature and cultural media (as I had theorised in the context of each of the relevant human sciences, starting with philosophy; and demonstrated in each of the cultural media, in editions of Stoneprint Journal).
This is the ‘origin’ and ’cause or causes’ we are debating here, one of the most basic and most ultimate questions in the human sciences: Where do things come from? Who are we? (as Schroedinger noted).
Hello Edmond,
It seems that we hold two views which are so different that no compromise is possible. I am simply too materialistically minded a person to gain anything from your point of view. In conclusion, I think all I can say is said. Would be interesting to meet you sometime for an exchange of ideas. Could become an interesting meeting.
I’ll be following your work and would be delighted if you keep on having an eye on my work – despite all dissent.
It is what it is, and that is good. For sure, it would be foolish if everyone would be of the same opinion.
Aloys
Aloys, well said. The fault of our diametrically opposite views of culture is not in us, but in science. culture, including myth, is poorly theorised. Anthropology remains more of a craft than a science. Popular culture, including religion and politics, maintains its grip on culture and on scientists in the humanities. Which are decades behind natural sciences. Popular anthropology is the coalface of the human sciences.
Really interesting post!
gbnoksnd
nutelees
Thanks for your share and for the comments