Chapter Three

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“...And the heat and blaze from both of them were on the dark-faced sea, from the thunder and lightning of Zeus and from the flame of the monster, from his blazing bolts and from the scorch and breath of his stormwinds.“

Hesiod, Theogony, describing the dragon Typhoeus’ assault on the world.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

 

ELECTRICAL ENCOUNTERS IN SPACE

 

 

 

Velikovsky’s Challenge: An Unstable Solar System

No one investigating the themes of myth and catastrophe can afford to overlook the pioneering work of Immanuel Velikovsky, author of the 1950 best-seller Worlds in Collision. Though the book sparked an international scientific controversy, continuing well into the 1970’s, few scientists today are familiar with the independent investigations inspired by Velikovsky’s insights. As a result, the occasional comment on Velikovsky rarely touches the issues as they now stand, more than 40 years into the space age.

Velikovsky saw in ancient literature a story of planetary distur- bance, rich with images of cosmic upheaval and improbable mon- sters in the sky. A centerpiece of his reconstruction was the planet Venus, the subject of catastrophic images the world over. Veli- kovsky claimed that about 3500 years ago, Venus appeared in the sky as a spectacular comet, nearly colliding with the earth and bringing wholesale disaster. He also argued that several centuries after this disaster, a series of close encounters of Earth and Mars produced upheavals on a global scale. Less well known is his claim that ancient planetary catastrophes involved bolts of "lightning" or electrical arcing between planets in close approach.

To most scientists the idea of a planet as a comet, or planets jos- tling with each other like "billiard balls," or lightning on an inter- planetary scale, was simply preposterous. Velikovsky’s work deserved only ridicule.

It is not our purpose here to analyze the details of Velikovsky’s work. Our interest is in fundamental concepts that distinguish his insights from the sweep of modern theory. In Worlds in Collision Velikovsky claimed—

1. The present order of the planets is In geologically recent times the planetary system was unstable, and at least some plan- ets moved on much different courses than they do today.
2. Erratic movements of the planets led to global catastrophe on the Earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Immanuel Velikovsky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Immanuel Velikovsky, 1972

3. Through rigorous cross-cultural comparison of the ancient tradi- tions, an investigator can reconstruct the celestial

Velikovsky brought impressive scholarly credentials to his inquiry, and his approach was interdisciplinary. He used the insights of a psychoanalyst and the methods of a historian to investigate the traditions of diverse cultures. He discerned deeply rooted themes that others had failed to see—descriptions of traumatic events occurring on a global scale.

In support of his reconstruction Velikovsky found physical evi- dence from geology, paleontology, and archeology. He also formu- lated a series of predictions consistent with his hypothesis, but unexpected by previous theories. He predicted that the planet Jupi- ter would emit radio signals; that the planet Venus would be much hotter than astronomers expected; and that craters on the moon would reveal remanent magnetism and radioactive hot spots. Veli- kovsky’s ability to anticipate scientific discovery produced a sur- prising statement from the renowned geologist Harry Hess (in an open letter to Velikovsky in 1963):

Some of these predictionµs were said to be impossible when you made them. All of them were predicted long before proof that they were correct came to hand. Conversely, I do not know of any specific prediction you made that has since been proven to be false. I suspect the merit lies in that you have a good basic background in the natural sciences and you are quite uninhibited by the prejudices and probabil- ity taboos which confine the thinking of most of us.1

The authors of this book believe that Velikovsky was incorrect on many particulars, some of them crucial to a proper understand- ing of ancient events. But his place among the great pioneers of sci- ence will be secure if he was correct on the underlying tenets noted above. For this challenge to customary beliefs Velikovsky was ridi- culed and reviled. The most profound implication of that challenge is an insight that is crucial to understanding space age discoveries. He said that the only way the evidence that he presented could be reconciled with current scientific knowledge would be through con- sideration of electromagnetism. In Worlds in Collision he wrote:

I became skeptical of the great theories concerning the celestial motions that were formulated when the historical facts described here were not known to science.... The accepted celestial mechanics, not- withstanding the many calculations that have been carried out to many decimal places, or verified by celestial motions, stands only if the sun ... is as a whole an electrically neutral body, and also if the planets, in their usual orbits, are neutral bodies. Fundamental princi- ples in celestial mechanics, including the law of gravitation, must come into question if the sun possesses a charge sufficient to influ-

 

 

 

 

ence the planets in their orbits or the comets in theirs. In the Newto- nian celestial mechanics, based on the theory of gravitation, electricity and magnetism play no role.2

This was written several years before the space age began. But now, as we argue in this and later mono- graphs, the vital role of electricity and magnetism can no longer be denied. We have, however, gone beyond Velikovsky's observations to identify numerous aspects of the ancient expe- rience never envisioned by Velik- ovsky. The authors desire to honor Velikovsky here because, while we pursued our work independently of each other for more than two decades—one following historical evidence, the other exploring scien- tific evidence—we both received the original spark of inspiration from the same pioneering theorist.

To question modern notions of solar system stability is to raise possibilities that presently have no place in space exploration, geo- logical investigation, or accepted studies of ancient history. Com- munication in such a case can easily break down, due to the incompatibility of theoretical assumptions. Yet one advantage offered by the interdisciplinary hypothesis we offer in these mono- graphs is its testability. The breadth of our subject permits the investigator to cross-reference wide-ranging fields of data, giving primary attention to undisputed patterns of evidence. In numerous instances, the patterns present acid tests

• Do the patterns present a unified picture of the ancient world?
• Do the patterns challenge modern assumptions about solar sys- tem history?
• Are the patterns predictable under a different view?

When the Planets were Gods

Certain beliefs that can only appear outrageous today pervaded the ancient cultures. One of these beliefs is that, at the beginning of time, heaven and earth were united. Prior to the collapse of this pri- meval order, towering gods moved about in a theater described as either close to the earth or on earth. What the ancient Sumerians called the “bond of heaven and earth” linked the gods above and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An orrery, or mechanical model of the planetary system, now in the British Natural History Museum. The model symbolizes the stable and predictable movements of the planets—a sharp contrast to the insistence of ancient cultures that the heavens were altered cata- strophically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The story of Adam and Eve in para- dise, as depicted in a painting by the 16th century German artist Cranach.

humankind below, when the supreme god Anu ruled with terrifying splendor.

The Egyptians celebrated the “First Time,” or “the age of the primeval gods,” marked by the universal kingship of Atum Ra. For Greek poets and philosophers it was the Golden Age of Kronos who, with his fellow Titans, dominated the heavens. Other cultures called it an age of “giants,” or of “archangels,” or of divine “ances- tors” in the sky. Though we have much crucial ground to cover before taking up these traditions, certain facts must be acknowl- edged at the outset:

 

• Recollections of a prior “age of gods and wonders” occur the world Always this lost epoch begins with paradise, or a Golden Age, a stark contrast to “the present time.”
• Archaic mythical and astronomical traditions proclaimed that this former world disappeared in an onslaught of fire or
• Commonly accepted approaches to human history are unable to illuminate either collective

For anyone investigating the roots of ancient themes, these con- siderations can hardly be a small matter! Nor can they be separated from Velikovsky’s original challenge to science.

Vital clues appear in the early astronomical traditions. Ancient tribes and nations had reason to fear many natural phenomena, from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to storms and floods. Most had good reason to fear their own neighbors as well, since “barbarians at the gate” periodically overwhelmed one culture after another. But what did the first astronomers fear the most? More than anything else on earth or in the sky, they feared the planets.

Significantly, the fear of planets is most emphatic in the   birth-

place of astronomy, in Mesopotamia. The historian Diodorus Sicu-

 

 

 

 

lus states the matter explicitly in his report of Chaldaean beliefs: “But above all in importance, they say, is the study of the influence of the five stars known as planets.”3 If the fathers of the science be heard, planets determined the fate of kings and kingdoms, brought devastating upheaval, and reconfigured the sky. One would think that many other forces in nature would have commanded far greater attention than remote planets. But the message of the first stargazers is clear. They venerated and feared the planets as the gods, goddesses, heroes, and chaos monsters of the mythical epoch.

Sumerian astronomer priests invoked the goddess Inanna, the planet Venus, as the radiance or glory of the heavens, but also as a great dragon depositing fiery venom on the “rebel land.”—

Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the foreign lands. When like Ishkur you roar at the earth, no vegetation can stand up to you. As a flood descending upon (?) those foreign lands, powerful one of heaven and earth, you are their Inanna. Raining blazing fire down upon the Land, endowed with divine powers by An, lady who rides upon a beast, whose words are spoken at the holy command of An! 4

For the Sumerians and Babylonians no celestial power was more consistently linked to earthquake, pestilence, and death than the planet Mars, whom the star-worshippers honored as Nergal “raging flame-god... whose storming is a storm flood.”6

Archaic astronomical and magical texts of Mesopotamia are filled with such images. (Other examples are given in sidebars to this chapter.) Sumerian and Babylonian astronomy, with its memo- ries of warring planets, conditioned the fears and expectations of every culture influenced by it. And outside the influence of Meso- potamian astronomy we find remarkably similar ideas, from Aus- tralia and the South Pacific to the Americas.8 The images boldly defy what is self-evident in our own time and would have been equally self-evident to the mythmakers had they observed the sky that we do today. Without the aid of telescopes we see five planets moving on regular paths around our Sun, and it does not appear that anything has changed. But is it possible that the uneventful solar system to which we are so accustomed is deceiving us?

It is known that early Greek philosophers such as Heraclitus,9 Democritus, and Anaxagoras preserved archaic traditions of former worlds that fell into chaos. Two of the most common expressions of the notion were ekpyrosis the combustion of the world, and kataklysmos, the destruction of the world by flood. Such concepts of universal destruction dominated the thought of Zeno, the founder of Stoic cosmology, and later gnostic systems carried forward simi-

Sumerian vessel shows the god- dess Inanna, in the form of a pan- ther, battling a serpent. The goddess herself, however, is known to have taken both feline and serpentine forms.

 

 

 

 

 

The Greek philosopher Plato.

lar notions.10 But most of the early philosophers’ works were lost, and the few extant fragments rarely provide a sufficiently complete picture of the claimed events. What, for example, was the role of planets in the remembered cataclysms?

Plato, in his Timaeus, speaks of world-altering catastrophe caused by the celestial bodies departing from their courses—

For in truth the story that is told in your country as well as ours, how once upon a time Phaethon, son of Helios, yoked his father's chariot, and, because he was unable to drive it along the course taken by his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth and himself perished by a thunderbolt – that story, as it is told, has the fashion of a legend, but the truth of it lies in the occurrence of a shifting of the bodies in the heavens which move round the earth, and a destruction of the things on the earth by fierce fire, which recurs at long intervals.… And when, on the other hand, the Gods purge the earth with a flood of waters, all the herdsmen and shepherds that are in the mountains are saved.11

Such traditions can illuminate the ancient notion, tracing to the birthplace of astronomy, that the paths of the planets have changed. The Greek historian Diodorus, reporting on the longstanding claims of Chaldean astronomy, stated that the motions of planets “are sub- ject to change and variation.”12 The Roman poet Lucan attributes virtually identical ideas to Nigidius.13 More specific is the assertion by the third century Babylonian astronomer-priest Berossus, as reported by Seneca, directly linking the movements of planets to the prior destruction of the world by fire and flood. “Berosos, who translated Belus, says that these catastrophes occur with the move- ments of the planets… which now maintain different orbits…”.14

As summarized by Franz Boll, Carl Bezold and Wilhelm Gun- del, the archaic tradition reflected in the words of Plato and Seneca held that “The flood, the conflagration of the world, and other minor catastrophes were related to planetary motions and are to be interpreted as the result of disturbances in the movements of the planets.”15

The Greek term for this planetary disturbance is synodeuein or synodos. “This requires an actual meeting and even a collision on the same plane, hence the planets bump into each other both according to width and height and so bring about the end of the world.”

There is, however, an ambiguity in most of the classical refer- ences to world conflagration. The great philosophers had begun to reinterpret the more ancient traditions, seeking to reconcile them with things observed in their sky—this despite the fact that nothing

 

 

 

in the regular movements of the celestial bodies could actually account for the earlier themes. Greek philosophy offers a telling example of the dilemma still facing investigators today. How can the consistent memories of universal destruction be reconciled with the stable solar system of modern observation? The answer is that the two cannot be reconciled. Attempts to interpret earlier cata- strophic testimony through the lens of present observation lead only to a distortion of evidence and a denial of fact.

In truth, the archaic notion of planetary catastrophe belongs to the global substructure of astral mythology. According to Taoist teachings  the  world  falls  into  chaos  when  planets  change their

courses.16 The Iranian Bundahish, in its description of cosmic dis- order, reports that the “planets ran against the sky and created con- fusion.” In the Iranian accounts, it was only after the fravashi’s apocalyptic battle with the daivas that the celestial order stabilized so that “the celestial bodies now move on their regular courses.”17 Echoes of the idea appear also in the Chinese Bamboo Books and the Soochow Astronomical Chart, both of which associate catastro- phe with planets going “out of their courses.”18 In Hindu texts, the movements of planets, in a prior age of the gods, led to the “uni- verse” dissolving in flame.19

To establish our case, therefore, we must reach beyond the mythic archetypes of attacking dragons, cosmic thunderbolts, and Doomsday upheaval to probe the substratum of cultural recollec- tions about planets. As we intend to show, certain associations of the planets, though highly unusual, are remarkably consistent from one culture to another. In particular, the global image of planets as agents of catastrophe must have an intelligible cause or explanation in human experience.

Thunderbolts Launched by Planets

With the birth of ancient astronomy, the stargazers named the owners of the divine thunderbolt. They identified them as planets, when planets were claimed to have ruled the world. The archaic astronomical tradition is stated in no uncertain terms by classical writers, reporting ideas that predated them by many centuries. “Most men,” wrote the Roman historian Pliny, “are not acquainted with a truth known to the founders of the science from their arduous study of the heavens… Thunderbolts are the fires of the three upper planets, particularly those of Jupiter.” This mysterious truth, Pliny said—

is the origin of the myth that thunderbolts are the javelins hurled by Jupiter. Consequently heavenly fire is spit forth by the planet as crack- ling charcoal flies from a burning log, bringing prophecies with it.

 

Was the Warrior-Hero a Planet?

 

 

In his groundbreak-

ing work, Worlds in Collision, Immanuel Velikovsky identi- fied the planet Mars as the source of a pervasive ancient image—that of the great warrior bearing a radiant sword in battle. Two of the most vivid examples are the Greek Ares and the Assyro-Babylonian Nergal, both identified as Mars in the astro- nomical traditions.

Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, invoked the planet- god as “Nergal, the perfect

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Babylonian Nergal, the planet Mars

self, plumed lord of battle,” the bronze of his spear gleaming “like flash- ing fire” (lightning). The link with the planet Mars is, in fact, explicit in the instance of the most famous of all warriors, the Greek Heracles (Latin Hercules). Greek poets remembered the fiery

translation of Heracles to heaven, where astrono- mers identified him as the planet Mars.

The warrior iden-

 

warrior, the most powerful one among the gods, the pre-eminent hero, the mighty lord, king of battle.” Called the “firebrand” and “fire-star,” the “most violent among the gods,” Nergal was “the unpredictable planet,” according to Babylonian sources, the bringer of disaster, the star of evil and of rebellion. (We have already noted that the masculine chaos monster of world mythology is really the rebellious or terrible aspect of the war- rior. See sidebar, page 50.)

Nergal’s Greek counterpart Ares, the Latin Mars, reveals the same image. He was venerated

as the model warrior but hated for his fury and vio- lence, and for the pesti- lence that followed him. In Homer, the words of Zeus define the warrior’s dark aspect. “Most hate- ful to me art thou of all the gods that hold Olympus, for ever is strife dear to thee and wars and fight- ings.”

Ares was both foolish and lawless. In his ram-

tity of Mars is, in fact, a global theme, combined with images of fiery arrows, swords or spears, the most common mythic forms of the cosmic thunderbolt. For the Persians, Mars was god of fire and the “'warrior of the sky.” Hindu astron- omy knew Mars as Skanda, the “attacker.” And Chinese stargazers claimed that Mars exempli- fied the spirit of the warrior.

The Aborigines of Victo- ria, Australia, insist that the hero Quarnamero, the “eagle,” who brought fire to the peo- ple, is now the planet Mars.

He was “warlike, and much given to fighting.” The Bunu- rong of Victoria remember the cultural hero as Toordt. Upon his fiery death, he became the planet Mars. Another aborigi- nal tradition remembered the mythic warrior as Waijungari who, amidst a fiery conflagra- tion, climbed his own spear to the sky, becoming the planet Mars.

The North American

 

page, he was “dread as a dark whirlwind” in the

Pawnee identified Mars as a legendary “great warrior.” The

Roman Mars

 

 

Greek warrior-god Ares

heavens. His body was stained with blood, and his bellows were “as loud

Toba Indians of Argentina said that it was Mars who assisted warriors in battle, imbuing them with the fighting spirit. So too, the Inca of Peru

 

as nine thousand warriors.”

That the great hero of epic literature echoes the myth of the warrior-god can be seen in the description of Achilles—“as it were Ares him-

claimed that Mars, as the god Aucayoc, took care of all matters relating to war.

This warrior identity of Mars remains one of the great anomalies of ancient astronomy.

 

 

 

 

And this is accompanied by a very great disturbance of the air … because it is disturbed by the birth-pangs so to speak of the planet in travail.20

Pliny also reports the claim by Etruscan wise men that there are nine gods who send thunderbolts, one of these being Jupiter, who “hurls three varieties.”

Only two of these deities have been retained by the Romans, who attribute thunderbolts in the daytime to Jupiter and those in the night to Summanus… Those who pursue these enquiries with more subtlety think that these bolts come from the planet Saturn, just as the inflam- matory ones come from Mars, as, for instance, when Bolsena, the richest town in Tuscany, was entirely burnt up by a thunderbolt.21

Similarly, Pliny's contemporary, the naturalist Seneca, distin- guishes the “lesser bolts” of the local storm from the vastly more powerful bolts of the planet Jupiter. And he reports the general tra- dition linking the planets Saturn and Mars to the occurrence of lightning. If Saturn, “has Mars in conjunction,” he writes, “there are lightning bolts.”22

Elsewhere, however, Seneca expresses his own cynicism when claims about planets and “conjunctions” of planets contradicted the observed behavior of the planets in his time. He cites the assertions of earlier philosophers that, when planets come into conjunction, or simply approach each other, “the space between the two planets lights up and is set aflame by both planets and produces a train of fire.”23 A stream of fire erupting between two planets is indeed an extraordinary idea, but as Seneca noted, none of his contemporaries observed such a phenomenon. And thus, through an understandable skepticism based on direct observation of stable planetary motions in Greek and Roman times, Seneca has earned a degree of respect from orthodox science today.

Nevertheless, this prejudice in favor of later observation cannot be reconciled with the earlier human memory. The first astronomi- cal records of five stable planets do not appear until the second half of the first millennium B.C. Prior to that time, the dominant powers of the sky are not “planets;” they are simply “gods.” So the question cannot be avoided: when the first “planet” lists appeared, were the associations with the earlier gods arbitrary, or were they based on an authentic linkage between god and planet that the modern age has failed to recognize?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roman god Jupiter

 

Lightning-Sword of the Planet Mars

 

 

 

In his investigation of the planet Mars, Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that the planet’s irregular movement and close approach to other planets caused its atmosphere to be distended “so that it appeared like a sword” in the heavens. “A planet that collided with other planets in the sky and rushed against the earth as if with a fire-sword became the god of battle,” he wrote.

Velikovsky compiled his work prior to major discoveries of plasma behavior in space, and before systematic laboratory investi- gation of plasma discharge phenomena. He did not call the “dis- tended atmosphere” of Mars a plasma discharge, and he did not realize that the sword of the far-famed warrior was, in fact, the cos- mic thunderbolt of the mythic traditions. But his identification of the warrior’s “sword” with the appearance of the planet Mars was

a breakthrough of extraordinary insight, one that has now been tested and confirmed through decades of independent research.

Velikovsky also noticed the relationship of the sword of Mars to a comet-like apparition, which we now recognize to be the same thing as the cosmic thunderbolt. He wrote: “In old astrological texts, as in the book of Prophecies of Daniel, comets that took the shape of a sword were originally related to the planet Mars.”

Often before and later, too, celestial prodigies assumed the shape of swords. Thus, in the days of David a comet appeared in the form of a human being ‘between the earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.’ (I Chronicles 21:16).

Through cross-cultural comparison, we discover that the sword of the mythic warrior cannot be separated from other versions of his weapon: spear, arrow, club, mace, hammer, spade, harpoon. All such weapons reveal similar qualities as the essence of the god, and all fulfill identical roles in the myths.

The mythical images imply that the planet Mars, in its plasma discharge, was virtually indistinguishable from the fiery “weapon” of the warrior. (As we noted in our summary of thunderbolt motifs, the warrior often appears as a personification of the lightning weapon.) Therefore it is not surprising that the sword, spear, arrow, mace, or other weapon of the great Mars figures in antiquity were seen as the identity of the god. The cuneiform ideogram for the god Nergal (Mars) means “sword.” Both the Greek Ares and the Latin Mars were not only symbolized by swords, but also venerated as swords. The Scythian cult of Ares, according to Herodotus venerated an iron scimitar as the image of the god himself. It is also known that the oldest Latin image of Mars was a spear, kept in the Regia and addressed as Mars himself, for it was claimed that the shaking of the spear—a great prodigy—was due to the entry of the god into the weapon. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, the Alani fixed a naked sword in the ground and “worshipped it as Mars.”

As observed by the comparative mythologist Georges Dumezil, “it is generally assumed that in more ancient times Mars did not have a statue, and the lance stood alone as the representative of Mars.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Greeks celebrated the war- rior Apollo as the active will or voice of the universal sovereign Zeus. Apollo was both the ser- vant and the celestial weapon of Zeus, employed against the chaos powers in periods of cri- sis. He was chrysáor—meaning “of the Golden Sword’ (áor),” an acknowledged hieroglyph for the cosmic thunderbolt. (See page 45.)

Though we find no consistent identity for Apollo amongst the “planets” of later astronomy, abundant clues are available. According to W. H. Roscher, whose authority on classical myth has never been surpassed, the Greek cult of Apollo was identical to that of the Roman cult of Mars. (See Roscher, Apollo und Mars)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOVE: the astrological sign for Mars retained the connection to the warrior’s famous weapon.

 

 

 

 

The Thunderbolt and the Comet

The evolution and transforma- tion of mythic symbolism over time provides a host of clues about the original patterns of human memory. We have already noted that the “thunderbolts” of the gods were cos- mic in nature, taking forms never presented by regional lightning. The regional phenomena can only hint at the qualities of the archetype (elec- tricity, light, fire, violence, noise). Lightning familiar to us today is but a reminder, a symbol of the divine thunderbolt that altered the history of the world.

One of the most common errors in historical investigation is the tendency to confuse the symbol with the archetype, and the result is invariably a fruitless inquiry. Symbols alone do not explain them- selves. Taken  in isolation, only their absurdity will    be

evident, quenching the fire of discovery. Symbols were not things in themselves; they were signposts pointing backward to something else. All sacred symbols shared a common function, speaking for the forms and events that distinguished the age of gods and wonders from all of subsequent history. When the distinction between archetype and symbol is honored, the results are both clear and stunning. In each case we find that not one symbol alone but a wide range of symbols point back to the same celestial form. Of this principle, dozens of examples will be given in these monographs.

The cosmic “thunderbolt” is not a momentary  flash

of lightning followed by a burst of thunder. Every recurring feature of the mythic tradition is an enigma. Each requires the researcher to see beyond familiar explanations. Each stands in defined relation- ship to complementary symbols that reflect the same improbable events.

Consider, for example, the “absurd” fact that, mythically and symbolically the divine thunderbolt cannot be separated from the doomsday  comet.  The  fire  anciently  claimed  to  erupt  from   or

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aztec painting of a comet, seen as a celestial announcement of devas- tating catastrophe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nineteenth century vision of a world-destroying comet.

 

THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS

 

 

between planets in close approach was not just a cosmic “thunder- bolt.” It was also called a comet.

In nature as we experience it today, a thunderbolt and a comet have virtually nothing in common. And yet the archaic tradition does not allow us to distinguish the one from the other. In fact, when Seneca referred to the “train of fire” erupting between planets in conjunction (citation above), he was speaking of archaic astro- nomical traditions about the comet. The traditions coincide pre- cisely with those of the thunderbolt. The fact that both the thunderbolt and the comet appear as the sword of a great warrior is an additional pointer to the original unity of the traditions.

The archaic traditions say that a stream of fire was seen to erupt between planets in close approach. In terms of the evolution of mythic ideas, the “fire” erupting between planets in conjunction could be called “the mother of all thunderbolts,” but also the “mother of all comets”: that is, it inspired the entire mythic content of two distinct natural symbols. Hence, there is only one reason, not two reasons, why ancient ideas about lightning and about comets defy observation in our time. The ideas arose from extraordinary natural events that are not occurring now. Many indications of this unity are given by the Pre-Socratic theories of the Greek philoso- phers.

The more general notion is encapsulated in the statement of Dem- ocritus that comets are a coalescence of two or more stars so that their “rays” unite.24 Authorities agree that the term “stars” in the pre-Socratic discussion of comets means planets, since proper stars were not believed to be moving with respect to each other. Aristotle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comet Cheseaux of 1744, with beautifully displayed, collimated jets. Drawing published by Amédée Guillemin, The Heavens, in 1868. The head of the comet, of course, in beneath the horizon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

74

 

 

 

and Diogenes Laertius recorded the theories of Democritus and Anaxagoras in these terms:

Democritus, however, has defended his view vigorously, maintaining that stars have been seen to appear at the dissolution of some com- ets.25

Anaxagoras and Democritus say that comets are a conjunction of planets, when they appear to touch each other because of their near- ness.26

Anaxagoras is said to have held “comets to be a conjunction of planets which emit flames.”27 Diogenes of Apollonia, too, believed that comets are “chains of stars.”28

A similar report is given by Leucippus: comets are due to the near approach to each other of two planets.29

There is, in fact, a remarkable consistency to the archaic con- cept, which appears to trace to the foundations of ancient astron- omy.

Seneca, in his review of archaic ideas about comets, reports that “Apollonius says that the Chaldaeans place comets in the category of planets and have determined their orbits.”30 Seneca summarizes the planetary tradition with these words (which include the brief citation above):

Some of the ancient scholars favour this explanation: when one of the planets has come into conjunction with another the light of both blends into one and presents the appearance of an elongated star. This happens not only when planet touches planet, but even when they only come close. For the space between the two planets lights up and is set aflame by both planets and produces a train of fire.31

Could such traditions withstand the progressive movement of Greek philosophy toward skepticism? The earlier assertions of Chaldean and Babylonian astronomy directly contradicted plane- tary observation in Greek and Roman times. The classical natural- ists’ reliance on contemporary observation is well illustrated by Seneca’s treatment of comets, when he notes the assertion of Epho- rus (400-330 B.C.) “Ephorus said that a comet once observed by all mankind split up into two planets, a fact which no one except him reports.”32 That a “comet” became two planets is indeed an absurd claim by all modern standards. But once we have reconstructed the tradition, it will be clear that this was far from an isolated claim. It belongs, in fact, to the bedrock of cross-cultural memory.

Despite the “refutations” by the respected naturalists of classi- cal times, the planetary nature of comets was continually asserted throughout the Middle Ages, in the works of such figures as Alber- tus Magnus, Gerard de Silteo, Roger Bacon, and Aegidius of Less-

 

The Myth of the “Great Comet” Venus

 

 

 

 

Today the planet Venus moves on a highly circular orbit around the Sun. Nothing in naked eye observations of the planet would seem to support its ancient identity as an unpredictable power, at once beautiful and terrifying.

Ancient accounts depict Venus’ long-flowing “hair” as the glory of the gods. But in the planet’s frightful cometary aspect, it became a symbol of heaven-altering catastro- phe.

 

 

 

 

 

In recent years, a number of scientists and sci- ence writers have examined the ancient fears of comets, concluding that these fears originated in a cometary catastrophe early in human history.

Among the most persuasive sources are two books by astronomers Victor Clube and William Napier, The Cosmic Winter and The Cosmic Ser- pent. Though the theories are of great interest, they miss a point of profound significance for comparative study of the comet theme. In a global tradition, now fully and convincingly docu- mented, the “Great Comet” of ancient fears was a planet. That planet, as Immanuel Velikovsky observed more than 50 years ago, was Venus.

In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky noted many tales of disaster in which the agent of destruction possessed comet-like attributes. Native cultures, however, identified this agent as the planet Venus. Velikovsky observed, for example, that in Mexi- can records, Venus was the “smoking star,” the very phrase employed for a “comet.” (Velikovsky did not know that the same equation occurs in Maya texts.) In both the Americas and the Near East, he found a recurring association of Venus with long flowing “hair” or a “beard,” two of the most common hieroglyphs for the comet in the ancient world. The same planet, among the Baby- lonians and other cultures, was called the great “flame,” or “torch of heaven,” a widespread hiero- glyph for a comet among ancient peoples.

Another popular symbol for the “comet” was the serpent or dragon, a form linked to Venus in cultural traditions around the world.

According to Velikovsky, the history of the comet Venus inspired some of the most powerful

the story, he argued, is a collective memory of global upheaval—earthshaking battles in the sky, decimation of ancient cultures, and an extended period of darkness.

Since Velikovsky’s work, independent investi- gation has confirmed his conclusion through many additional lines of evidence. In

ancient times Venus was the prototypi- cal comet, providing the original con- tent of worldwide comet fears.

The ancient idea appears to have affected all of the major cultures. Thus Robert Schilling, a leading authority on the Roman Venus (right), wondered by what “conspiracy” the image of a comet had attached itself to the planet Venus: in Latin traditions, the 8-pointed “star of Venus” also signified a comet. The Peruvian Chaska or Venus, was “the long-haired star,” the universal phrase for the comet. Similar titles of Venus occur elsewhere in both the Old World and the New. The Greek Aphrodite Comaetho, the long-haired or fiery haired Venus, preserves the same asso- ciation in the astronomer’s lexicon— “the comet Venus.” Altaic traditions declared that Venus “once had a tail.” In his famous debate with Galileo, Hor- atio Grassi recalled that the ignorant

masses had long “considered Venus as a comet.”

A seemingly preposterous claim about the most conspicuous planet, when discovered around the world, can no longer be called prepos- terous. It then becomes a key to discovery.

 

themes of ancient myth and ritual. At the heart of                                                             

 

 

 

 

ines.35 Bacon (1214-1292), a father of the scientific method, argued that conjunctions and aspects of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars were important factors in generating comets, a claim asserted also by Abu Ma‘shar.36

The reader may wonder whether this view of comets was lim- ited to Europe and the Near East. An answer comes from the Chi- nese astronomers of the T'ang dynasty, who said that comets were temporary emanations of the planets, the comet's color being indic- ative of the planet’s origin.37 The unity of thunderbolt and comet traditions can also be followed through other symbolic expressions of the archetype. Even the mythic “broom” of the gods has the two concepts standing side by side. The Chinese called the comet “the broom.” But the complementary Japanese tradition identifies the broom as the thunderbolt of the gods.38

Though Aristotle, Seneca and other naturalists contributed much to the rise of scientific methodology, we must also consider what may have been lost if the more archaic ideas about thunder- bolts, comets, and planets, so easily dismissed, actually reflected the sky of an earlier time, a time all too easily forgotten in the absence of the original celestial referents. But if the classical authors had too little information to hear the ancient witnesses cor- rectly, the independent researcher today has a great advantage. An extensive library of source material, tracing to the beginnings of civilization in Egypt and Mesopotamia, is sufficient to answer the questions posed here.

Planetary Catastrophe

More than fifty years ago, Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that the planet Venus, in the form of a comet, devastated the ancient world. Velikovsky had noticed that identical images and stories were attached to comets and to Venus—not just in one land, but in virtually all of the major cultures. The comet was a hair-star, a beard-star, a torch or flame star, and a cosmic serpent or dragon. But these very words and images were also attached to Venus from China to the Americas, from Egypt to Mesopotamia. All told, the evidence is too specific and too consistent to be ignored. (See side- bar, page 76.)

In recent years, independent researchers have carefully investi- gated Velikovsky’s work, and this new study has sparked a radical reassessment of his work by those who were most impressed with it. Though Velikovsky was certainly incorrect on many details, his insights on several foundational principles were profound. In par- ticular we stand with Velikovsky on one of his most   revolutionary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aztec illustration of a comet emerg- ing from the stars as a celestial ser- pent in 1519.

 

From Love Goddess to Chaos Monster

 

 

The comet-like attributes of Venus will bring us face to face with a mythical figure of vast influ- ence on ancient imagination—the mother god- dess. It is indeed an extraordinary fact that of the five visible planets, Venus is the only one that ancient cultures everywhere celebrated as the mother of gods and heroes. A clearly defined pat- tern of this sort cries out for an explanation, and an explanation is possible when we allow the ancient witnesses to speak for themselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What does the often-noted “Terrible Aspect” of the mother goddess signify? The goddess of love and life, when she grows angry, threatens to destroy the world. In Botticelli’s famous painting of Venus (above), we see nothing of this aspect. Ancient chroniclers, it seems, progressively sepa- rated the goddess’ life-giving and monstrous per- sonalities into different mythical figures, reducing the appearance of moral ambiguity. When we trace these figures back to their earliest proto- types, however, there can be no doubt that the two stand side by side as one goddess.

In her terrible aspect, the goddess wears the dress of the comet, including the fiery countenance of a celestial serpent or dragon. The Sumerians revered Venus as the goddess Inanna, the source of life and the glory of heaven. But in her “tempestu- ous radiance“ she provoked only fear. The hymns depict Inanna in the form of a great dragon “rain- ing the fanned fire down upon the nation.“

The Babylonians knew the same planet as Ish- tar, “who is clothed with fire and bears aloft a crown of awful splendor.” She too became a dragon, bearing the “blazing fire which rains upon the hostile land.“

Alter egos of the terrible goddess occur amongst all of the great cultures. The Canaanite Anat, the Greek Medusa

(right), the Hindu Durga and Kali, along with numer- ous other early figures of the goddess, enable the investigator to piece together a coherent story, based simply and directly on the remarkable point of agreement between the dif- ferent cultures.

The terrible goddess shrieked across the sky with flaming or wildly dishev-

eled hair (a global symbol of the comet). She took the form of a celestial torch or flame hurled against the world (another global symbol of the comet). Or she became a howling serpent or dragon (global symbol of the comet par excel- lence). In this role, the goddess emerged as the hag or witch. In both Mesopotamia and Arabia, Venus was thus “the witch star,” and even the “broom” of the witch is an

acknowledged comet symbol. The story of the terrible god-

dess finds innumerable archaic references in ancient Egypt, long before the rise of “planets” with their stable orbits. The Egyptian Uraeus-serpent (right) captures all of the nuances of the female serpent or dragon, but without the later planetary associations. In the hiero- glyphic language the Uraeus meant nothing else than the mother goddess.

A popular Egyptian figure of the Uraeus was the goddess

Sekhmet. In a catastrophe that nearly destroyed the world, Sekhmet had taken the form of the fire- spitting serpent. Her countenance was thus likened to a star “scattering its flame in fire... a flame of fire in her tempest.” “The fear of me is in their hearts, and the awe of me is in their hearts,” the goddess proclaimed. In fact, Sekhmet’s biography answers in detail to the biographies of the Near Eastern Venus goddesses, whose later planetary identity is beyond question.

 

 

 

 

claims: The planets have not always moved on the stable courses we observe today.

Fifty years ago astronomers considered it outrageous for anyone to suggest that a planet could generate a "comet" tail. Escape veloc- ity from planet-sized masses would not allow gases or other mate- rial to be released into an external tail. But space probes discovered not only that planets had magnetospheres but also that the magneto- spheres were swept back into the solar wind as magnetotails, struc- tures that resembled comets’ tails. Venus, without a magnetic field, still sported an "ion tail" reaching almost to Earth, a structure almost identical to a comet’s tail.

Proponents of the electric universe offer an entirely different explanation: a planet-sized body will sport a comet tail if it moves on an elliptical orbit through the Sun’s electric field. It will dis- charge electrically. The size of the body is not an inhibitor at all. In fact, only bodies small enough to rapidly adjust to regions of differ- ent charge will not become comets when moving on highly ellipti- cal orbits. The larger the body the more likely it is to have a "tail." We now observe "comet-tails" on a stellar scale in deep space.39 Hence the basis of the original argument against Velikovsky’s “comet Venus” are now refuted by direct observation.

Electrical models of solar system genesis suggest an evolution- ary history of the planets bearing little resemblance to textbook descriptions. If stars are formed by electrical discharge and remain the focus of discharge, we can no longer simply project current planetary motions backward into primordial times. We cannot assume a closed and isolated system. Changes in the galactic cur- rents powering the system can alter both stellar behavior and plane- tary behavior suddenly and catastrophically.

How stable was the solar system in the past? In the pioneering work of Hannes Alfvén and his successors, orbital instability is a virtual certainty in the long-term evolution of an electrical model. In the birth of stellar and planetary systems, the electric force will typically dominate. But as the system dissipates electrical energy, it will reach a transitional phase at which a shift toward gravitational supremacy will occur, with potentially violent consequences. A chaotic system will then move toward stable electrical and gravita- tional equilibrium. Once planets achieve predictable orbits, no com- puter simulation based on later motions of the planets can provide even a clue as to the earlier system or its disruption.

Many questions concerning the stability of planetary motions in the past can only be resolved through observational evidence, sup- plemented by ancient testimony wherever that testimony is globally consistent. Observationally, the first place to look will be the  solid

Hannes Alfvén, Nobel Laureate and father of plasma cosmology.

 

THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS

 

 

bodies in the solar system, many of them retaining pristine geologic records of past events. Under the conditions hypothesized by elec- trical models, planet-wide discharges would have left a multitude of electrical scars, and we must ask if planets and moons were for- merly immersed in electrical discharge, perhaps at energy levels capable of removing or depositing surface material miles deep in a short time.

To ask the question is to confront one of the great surprises of the space age—the ravaged surfaces of solid planets and moons. But from the new vantage point, the picture requires more radical explanations than anything conventionally proposed. A great abun- dance of evidence makes clear that our earth was not immune from the ravages of planetary instability and its electrical effects.

A Meeting of Planets

How might earthbound witnesses have experienced such events if they occurred in ancient times, long before the rise of science? To give perspective to the hypothesis offered here, we relate below a sequence of possible events in an electrical encounter between the Earth and another planet. In this description we envision the planet Mars as the visitor, although similar events would occur at the approach of bodies with a wide range in sizes.

This scenario is deliberately oversimplified. To avoid confu- sion, where particular tenets of our hypothesis would require advanced clarification, we have simply excluded them from this narrative. For example, our reconstruction involves an assembly of several planets moving in close congregation, but this scenario describes only two. Issues arising from the larger reconstruction will be treated in later monographs.

Based on experimental and historical evidence, we assume that Earth is the more negatively charged body in the electrical exchange. In its closest approach we envision Earth’s planetary vis- itor towering over the landscape, perhaps occupying 10-20 degrees of arc in the sky—making it 20 to 40 times the visual size of the Moon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Auroras occur when ionized parti- cles from the Sun interact with the Earth's upper atmosphere. Spec- tacular auroral displays would occur in the early phases of an exchange between charged plan- ets.

A Doomsday Scenario

Our story takes place in geologically recent times, when our ancestors lived beneath a peaceful sky in a pastoral epoch prior to the rise of the great civilizations. These ancient peoples had not yet thought of building monuments or of constructing great cities. They had not yet instituted kingships and priesthoods. They had not yet devised calendars, seasonal rites, or the first astronomies. These events occurred before humanity’s turn to ritual sacrifice and before

 

 

 

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the rise of a warrior class. There were no cosmic myths, and no for- mal writing systems were yet in use.

As our story begins Earth and Mars move toward a close encounter. The first observable interactions occur when Mars is far- ther from the Earth than the Moon today. An electrical “conversa- tion” between the two bodies produces noticeable atmospheric effects on Earth. Induced electric currents disturb the upper atmo- sphere, generating a remote hum, or a rhythmic purring or chatter of the sky, perhaps a distant, unearthly rumble or chant.

In this "dark current" phase, an invisible electric "breeze"— analogous to the solar wind—flows between the two bodies. Though we see no visible connection between the two planets, we do see growing auroral activity. The night skies are eerily lit. Brightly colored sheets and filaments dance across the heavens, extending to lower latitudes than ever observed with present-day auroras. Lightning storms grow in number and ferocity and move to higher latitudes, where lightning is normally a rarity. Across much of the Earth strange and stormy weather erupts, as clouds gather precipitously and race across the sky.

Without understanding the cause, people react to the extremes in rising and falling barometric pressures. Ionization of the air induces mental oppression, adding to a sense of foreboding. Ani- mals grow more alert and excitable.

As the electrical stresses increase, the dark current transitions to the "glow discharge" phase and becomes visible. Mars begins to eject material into its plasma sheath, generating an enveloping glow distorted in an earthward direction. Electric filaments extend from the planet’s glowing envelope toward the Earth, appearing as fine luminous hair or a beard of fire stretching down from the giant sphere in the sky. The increasing electrical stress produces dis- charge effects on Earth’s surface as well. At first, St. Elmo’s fire streams from the highest mountain peaks; but soon all mountains are ablaze with luminescence in the night sky.

 

 

 

ABOVE: Planetary nebula NGC 2392, also called the Eskimo Neb- ula, about 5000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Gemini. A planet might produce a similar ring of comet-like streamers as electrical stresses on the body rise to a proportionate level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEFT: As a more positively charged planetary intruder approaches the Earth, it responds by producing an electrical discharge “beard” stretch- ing toward our planet.

 

“Scarface” —Image of the Warrior-Hero

 

 

 

 

 

FAR LEFT: The planet Mars with its great chasm, Valles Marin- eris.

NEAR LEFT: The Aztec Xipe, the “flayed god,” displaying his deeply scarred face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most remarkable geological fea- tures in the solar system is the gigantic Valles Marineris on Mars. On Earth this chasm would run from San Francisco to New York and swallow hundreds of Grand Canyons.

In the early 1970's, engineer Ralph Juergens had proposed that electrical arcs between celes- tial bodies created many geologic features of the Moon and Mars, removing large portions of the excavated material into space. Of such hypothe- sized events, no feature on Mars provides a better example than Valles Marineris. The image above, one of the early photos returned by the first Mari- ner probe of Mars, shows the chasm dominating the visible hemisphere.

Many cultures recall a mythical warrior or giant struck down by a “lightning” weapon (sword, spear, etc.) and scarred by the deep gash or wound left on his forehead, cheek, or thigh. In view of the cross-cultural links of the warrior archetype to the planet Mars, the possible rela- tionship of the “Scarface” theme to the creation of the Valles Marineris is well worth investigat- ing. “Scarface” was the name of a legendary Blackfoot Indian warrior, also called “Star Boy.” A close counterpart was the Pawnee warrior Morning Star—who was explicitly identified as the planet Mars (not Venus as some might have supposed). On the other side of the world, Greek mythology described various heroes and rogues (one and the same archetype) struck down by the lightning-weapon. When Ares, the planet Mars,

was wounded in battle, he roared with the shout of a thousand warriors, rushing to Zeus to display the deep gash. So too, the hero Heracles, also identified with Mars, was remembered for the deep wound on his “hip-joint.” The monster Typhon, vanquished by Zeus, was the “lightning scarred” god, as was the giant Enceladus. Hindu myths speak of the deep scar on the head of the warrior Indra, god of the cosmic thunderbolt, and a thunderbolt was said to have scarred the mon- strous giant Ravena.

Did a hemispheric scar on Mars, left by an interplanetary lightning bolt, provoke the “Scarface“ theme? If so, the event occurred within human memory, and that would mean within the past several thousand years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABOVE: A Themis image of Valles Marineris shows many telltale signs of electric discharge. The removal of immense volumes of Martian sur- face remains one of the great mysteries of Mars.

 

 

 

 

The acceleration of electrons in the Earth’s atmo- sphere begins to generate catastrophic winds, and soon regional tornadoes ravage the landscape.

All these phenomena are a result of electrical charge redistribution on Earth, before any interplanetary arcs pass between the two spheres. To persons standing in the open air, from the plains of Asia to the prairies of North America, the atmosphere feels parched. Winds grow intense and hot and the land seems ready to burst into flame. Around the globe, amid the growing noise of electrical activity, lightning strikes continuously, even from cloudless skies.

Abruptly, the intense regional winds coalesce into a hemispheric  hurricane,  punctuated  by  electrical   out-

bursts. Fires erupt spontaneously, many to be quenched by sudden deluges of rain.

Electron streamers from Earth reach Mars and form an incan- descent torus or donut-like plasma band around the planet, storing electromagnetic energy. When the torus becomes unstable, power- ful arcs descend from it to the Martian surface near the equator and begin to raise the stupendous "blisters” of Olympus Mons and the other mighty "volcanoes" on the Tharsis ridge.

The arcs have bridged the vacuum gap between the two planets, and by so doing they "throw the switch" that unleashes the massive return stroke of a cosmic thunderbolt. The interplanetary arc takes the form of entwined "ropes" erupting from the Martian south pole and extending toward the Earth's north pole, the twin current fila- ments whirling about a common axis in the classic form of the caduceus. At the focal points of the electrical connection, electrons are stripped from Earth's surface. Then positively charged particles along with surface debris, explode from elevated regions of Earth, to follow the electrons away from the planet.

Soon the axes of the two planets are locked electrically into polar alignment and Earth’s North Polar region is engulfed in the flares of electrical arcing between the two bodies. Increasingly powerful electrical outbursts hurl streams of charged material from Earth’s atmosphere and surface into space.

On elevated plateaus of Earth, cosmic-scale lightning bolts race across and under the surface, excavating deep trenches up to many miles in length, then depositing the removed material over large areas to either side. Along the trenches, and at other elevated regions, rotating arcs—electrical "whirlwinds"—light the terrestrial landscape, descending from the sky to scoop out great circular pits or craters. Across the plains and forests and deserts of the Northern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A coronal mass ejection (CME) on the Sun heaves twisted filaments of atmospheric material into space. Electrical discharges of this sort would be likely if a posi- tively charged planet approached a more negatively charged body.

 

An impression of the electrical effect of planets in close approach may be gleaned from this photo- graph of the onset of a discharge between two spheres. In this anal- ogy, the lower sphere represents the Earth, the upper one the encroaching planet.

 

THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the electron flow leaves the Earth, an electrically powered “tor- nado” rises from the Earth’s polar region toward the visitor.

Hemisphere, the debris that isn’t pulled into space falls back to the surface.

These electrical vortices are the extensions of a hemispheric, electrically driven "wind," rotating around the North Polar axis of Earth. At the outskirts of this electrical hurricane, discharges ignite fields and forests beneath rotating columns of fire. An Arctic vortex engulfs the polar landscape. Water and surface material surge from Earth toward the approaching planet. Where the exchange is most intense, electrical discharge scours away layers of Arctic rock, soil, and sediment. The Arctic Ocean becomes a whirlpool beneath a rotating column of atmosphere and debris reaching into space. Land and ocean merge into a maelstrom around the polar axis, sweeping up vegetation and creatures of sea and land and dropping them in crushed and jumbled heaps in a ring around the outskirts of the rotating storm.

Tidal waves overrun the continents and sweep material south- ward. Trees, animals, rocks, and mud deluge the northern regions of Europe, Asia and North America, settling on plains and on the sides of mountain ranges.

To earthbound witnesses that survive, the sky is a sea of flame rotating about a tornado-like column, rent by continuous corkscrew discharges and reaching upward from earth toward the planetary intruder. Seen from the lower latitudes, the column is a glowing pil- lar, surrounded by serpentine rivers of fire and smoke. This is the return stroke of the cosmic thunderbolt, with spiraling, dragon-like appendages.

 

Material removed from the surfaces of both planets produces an interplanetary field of rock, gas, dust, and ice. Seen from Earth,    a

 

 

 

 

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sky-darkening cloud of debris encircles Mars and stretches toward the Earth, illuminated by comet-like streamers and explosive bursts of lightning. Writhing, spi- raling, phantom-like formations appear in bursts of elec- trical discharge, as the debris hurtles through regions of different potential.

Dust falls, accompanied by sand, then by gravel and rock, and finally by boulders, dropping amid the clamor of electrical screeches, howls, and whistles. A continuous roll of thunder reverberates around the Earth. There is no escaping the sights and sounds of devastation—the doomsday conflagration of wind, water, and fire.

A Question of Cosmic History

The events described in the above scenario pose questions and concerns broader than any specialized inquiry. If such events occurred, where might we look for evidence? Certainly, the evi- dence would not be in short supply! But what changes in current perception would be required for us to see evidence as evidence?

Within the world’s educated populations, most beliefs about what is possible come directly from the teachings of science. But often the greatest obstacle to discovery is the inertia of prior belief. Examples abound, from centuries of denying that the Earth moves around the sun to mathematical proofs that heavier-than-air flight is impossible. Transcending this obstacle requires a wider field of view, for every age suffers from its own limited sense of possibility. Science at its best expands this sense of the possible.

Albert Einstein used the metaphor of climbing a mountain and gaining ever-wider vistas. From the higher vantage point you can see the lower, enabling you to understand how its limited view once seemed correct. From the higher viewpoint the old limitations become apparent, earlier explanations lose their validity, and the picture of the world changes.

Investigation across the disciplinary boundaries demands a con- tinual reexamination of theoretical starting points. We must be mindful of all assumptions, so that critical turns in the evolution of theoretical frameworks can be taken into account in all fields affected by them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even the violent storms of today sometimes exhibit the characteris- tics of electrical interactions. Here we see stacked toroid shapes, each embedded in the one above.

 

 

Witnesses to Catastrophe

The chroniclers of old were not physicists, but they recorded human experiences that will prove vital to scientific investigation. While we shall give little or no weight to isolated testimony, it would be unreasonable to ignore the agreement between diverse

 

The Martian Source of Meteorites

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A widely repeated ancient claim is that light- ning storms produce falling rocks or “thunder- stones.” (See theme #7 in our list of thunderbolt motifs, page 41.) “The thunderstone falls down from the sky in thunderstorms or, more accurately, whenever the lightning strikes,” states Christopher Blinkenberg, the leading authority on the supersti- tion. By what reasoning did this improbable but worldwide association of lightning and falling stone occur? Certainly nothing experienced in modern times could have provoked the theme.

Yet, within the framework of our reconstruc- tion, the idea is predictable. Both the original myths and the derivative superstitions can be traced to an epoch of planetary upheaval, when electrical arcs flew between planets in close congregation.

Electric discharge excavated great quantities of material from planetary surfaces, generating clouds of meteoric or cometary debris—the mythic armies of chaos. Some portion of the material would inevi- tably fall on earth.

Thus a shower of stones was said to have occurred in the attack of Typhon. And in the “clash of the Titans,” a popular Greek theme, the gods launched both thunderbolts and boulders, nearly destroying heaven and earth. In fact, the theme was exceedingly widespread in the ancient world. The chaos armies of the Hindu warrior Indra, called the Maruts, simultaneously flash “lightning” and hurl stone. In Tibetan traditions the thunderbolt takes the form of the dorje, called “the king of stones.”

ABOVE: A Viking lander photograph of the Martian surface shows a landscape littered with sharp- edged rocky debris. In the hypothesis offered here, the vast majority of the debris originated from Mars itself, in massive episodes of electrical discharging.

 

Considering the archetypal link of the warrior- god to the planet Mars, it is intriguing to find that meteorites from Mars are now identified on Earth. In a number of instances (more than a dozen), chemists have determined this from the signature left in the rocks by the Martian atmosphere. But if electrical discharge removed Martian surface mate- rial miles deep, then we can be certain that thou- sands of times more rocks from Mars do not possess the signature of Mars’ atmosphere. They originated well beneath the planet’s surface.

In recent decades no one has devoted more attention to tracing ancient images of the planet Mars than Ev Cochrane (author Martian Metamor- phoses.) Cochrane notes that the Babylonians, the most advanced astronomers in the ancient world, describe meteorites falling from Mars. For exam- ple, a text says “If a fireball[meteor] (coming from) Mars is seen….” Mars was given the name Nergal, of whom it was said, “Great giants, raging demons, with awesome numbers, run at his right and at his left.” “You hurl the towering stone …. You hurl the stone in fury…,” one hymn declares. Cochrane concludes that, in episodes of planetary catastro- phe, “Mars was seen to hurl great bolides towards Earth, the capture of which was presumably made easy by the near passage of the red planet.”

 

 

 

cultures, particularly when that agreement involves specific but highly unusual details that defy simple and direct observation in our own time. In fact, the accord revealed by comparative analysis is far greater than general studies of the archaic cultures have ever acknowledged.

Around the world, ancient sky watchers drew pictures of things that do not appear in our sky today. Yet the pictures reveal global similarities. Storytellers recalled events of celestial splendor and terror. In ritual reenactments from culture to culture, ancient nations re-lived the celestial dramas, telling how a prior world order fell into chaos. And beneath the pandemic surface confusion, we discover identical patterns and meanings in pictures, words, and commemorative practices.

 

 

 

In these pages we dispute the modern appraisal of world mythology. Common “explanations” of the great myths cannot account for the layer of integrity beneath the wildly contradictory surface elaborations. In fact, the consensus of the different cultures constitutes an unrecognized substructure of human memory in ancient times. Additionally, the earliest astronomical records pro- vide a library of evidence, illuminating the substructure in many surprising ways. Meticulous observers of the sky preserved vital links between their mythic gods and the planets of a recently orga- nized solar system. These links will be particularly important because the great majority of tribes and nations around the world did not preserve sufficient astronomical knowledge to identify their gods, goddesses, heroes, and chaos monsters with the celestial bod- ies that inspired the myths.

Planets brought world upheaval, a catastrophic fall of rock, fire and flood. This is the message extracted from systematic cross-cul- tural investigation. But the interpretations of scholarly  researchers

The “tree of life,” depicted on an Assyrian cylinder seal impression (ninth or eighth century B.C.), shows the tree between two mythic “griffins” and two “caprids.” The cosmic tree is among the most uni- versal and compelling mythical themes, but few modern scholars have wondered if the heaven- reaching form may have once been seen in the sky. The similarities of the ancient design elements to the unique forms of high-energy plasma discharge is now a subject of scientific scrutiny by Anthony Peratt and his colleagues.

 

THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS

 

 

 

 

The lotus and papyrus columns of the ancient Egyptian temple of Kar- nak direct our attention to countless myths of the world pillar, frequently remembered as a brightly glowing plant or tree of life whose stem or trunk was the world axis.

 

 

 

 

Among the Norse tribes, the Valkyries became a popular sym- bol of chaos overtaking the world. When catastrophe arrives, the Valkyries ride across the sky with their hair streaming in the wind.

today are conditioned by modern beliefs. Scholars assume that the ancient storytellers simply didn’t understand the forces of nature as we do today. And they are correct. But modern scholars are unaware of, or ignore, two hidden assumptions that are no longer tenable. They presume that the forces of nature were the same in ancient times as today, and they suppose that no fundamental new discoveries about the universe are likely, or even possible. So as unexpected vistas open before them, they begin to rationalize, grasping for explanatory straws. If chroniclers from every culture tell of a fiery dragon in the heavens, perhaps they were simply shar- ing with each other various exaggerations of local adventures. Or perhaps it is “only natural” that they would imagine a great moun- tain of the gods, a column of fire and light, as a metaphor for the invisible axis of the world. Or maybe there is a deeply psychologi- cal quirk involved, a common but irrational part of the species, causing people everywhere to give the same underlying structure to their fanciful tales.

Such responses cannot begin to account for the agreement within human testimony, when that testimony is examined objec- tively and comprehensively. Cultures the world over, using different words and different mythical images, invoke the same extraordinary forms in the sky and the same experiences of devastating upheaval: These universal themes will not be resolved by any fragmentary approach. What did the celestial dragon or chaos monster signify? Why was the monster so commonly linked to a celestial whirlpool, whirlwind, tornado, or “storm wind”? What did the dragon’s flam- ing countenance or fire-breathing aspect mean? Why was the female form of the monster so commonly identified as the “terrible aspect” of a mother goddess? And who was the ancestral warrior, the celestial hero who met the monster in combat?

The above sketch of a planetary encounter is the first glimpse of a hypothesis—a proposed new way of comprehending events remembered in ancient times. If the Earth was formerly joined in a devastating electrical encounter of planets, what might a pre-literate people have seen in this encounter? How might they have recorded the events?

• In the conflagration of fire, wind, and stone, would they imag- ine great wars of the gods?
• In the heaven-spanning electrical discharge formations would they see the “thunderbolts” of divine powers in the sky?
• In the filamentary outflow of discharge, would they see the wildly disheveled hair of gods or goddesses?

 

 

 

 

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• In the spiraling and undulating formations, would they see ser- pents or dragons in combat?
• In the electrified debris-clouds, would they see the celestial “armies” of chaos and darkness?

Archetype and Symbol

It is essential that we avoid a common misunderstanding about the nature of world mythology. In popular imagination “myth” sim- ply means fiction, something to be contrasted with “reality,” and that is all there is to it. Though the popular use of the term is inap- propriate, we do not desire to glorify mythology as a source of higher teachings or hidden wisdom. On the face of it, world mythology is a barbaric madhouse, riddled with contradictions and absurdities.

But in the end, the underlying consensus—the recurring themes or archetypes—will rescue us from the contradictions of myth, enabling us to discover a substratum of astonishing integrity. The distinguished analytical psychologist Carl Jung first used the term archetype in connection with the origins of myth and symbol, sug- gesting universal patterns too often ignored in prior studies of myth. An archetype is an irreducible first form. It cannot be reduced to a more elementary statement. In connection with world mythol- ogy, it means the original idea or structure, whether it is the root idea behind the “goddess” image, the model of a “good king” or “hero,” or the ideal form of a sacred temple or city.

To recognize the archetypes in the ancient world is to open up a new and crucial field of investigation, since many hundreds of glo- bal patterns persisted for thousands of years. It is vital that the reader keep in mind, however, that by “archetype” we do not mean the unconscious structures of thought to which Jung referred, but an original pattern of conscious human experience, to which numer- ous unconscious ideas and tendencies may indeed trace.

A considerable debt is also owed to the distinguished student of comparative religion, the late Mircea Eliade of the University of Chicago, author of numerous books on the subject and editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Religion. Perhaps Eliade has done more than any other scholar to show that world mythology rests upon a coherent substructure. It is not the mere collection of dis- connected fragments traditionally assumed within the western world.

Surely the late Joseph Campbell did the most to awaken popular interest in myth. Following a comparative approach, Campbell brought to light a large number of global themes—the “hero with a thousand  faces,”   the  “angry  goddess,”  the  “world    mountain,”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carl Jung, a pioneer of depth psychology, discovered many universal patterns in ancient myths and symbols. These “archetypes,” he said, can be seen even in the earliest civiliza- tions, and they speak for mysteri- ous structures of the subcon- scious still with us today.

 

The Conjunction of Goddess and Hero

 

 

“Mars and Venus, known as Parnassus,” paint- ing by Andrea Mantegna, 1431-1507. On the summit of the mythic mountain of the gods, the archetypal warrior consorts with the mother goddess.

 

 

 

In the alchemical text, Gemma gemmarum, the goddess Venus describes herself in relation to the warrior Mars:

Transparent, green, and fair to view, I am commixt of every hue,

yet in me's a red spirit hid,

no name I know by which he's bid, and he did from my husband come, the noble Mars, full quarrelsome

In the Sumerian temple of Inanna, a great cele- bration occurred when the legendary king Dumuzi engaged in sacred congress with the god- dess. Playing the role of Inanna, a revered prin- cess consorted with the king of Sumer, the living symbol of the hero Dumuzi. In this way, the cele- brants symbolically renewed their world, just as had occurred in the age of gods and wonders.

A mirror of this marriage was that of Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylonian rites. But other Meso- potamian cities conducted their own variations on the theme. In Lagash it was the warrior Ningirsu who united with the goddess Baba, alter ego of Inanna. Other gods, including Enki, Ninurta,and Ningizzida, played similar roles in their respec- tive cities. By his symbolic reenactment of the primeval “marriage,” the king on earth certified his role as regent or successor of the ancestral warrior in heaven. In doing so, he assured the fer- tility and abundance of the land.

The “sacred marriage” was common to king- ship rites throughout the ancient Near East, with countless parallels and elaborations amongst the world’s ancient cultures. In many instances it became an integral component of New Years’ fes- tivals—collective reenactments of catastrophe and celestial chaos, followed by the restoration of order in heaven and on earth. For an understand- ing of these events it is essential that we follow the dominant planetary associations of the god- dess and the hero in astronomical traditions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

will be a primary theme in monographs to come, and the clues are well worth pursuing.

A notable Greek example is the “marriage” of Aphrodite and Ares (Venus and Mars), a subject of the 8th chapter of Homer’s Odyssey.

Due to the many tribal memories integrated into the chronicles of heroes, the “marriages” sometimes reach comic dimensions. Heracles (Latin Hercules) “marries” Megara, the daughter of Creon, king of Thebes, and Deianeira, daugh- ter of Oenus, king of Calydon,but consorts with uncountable numbers of other “princesses,” each with her own localized story. That Heracles was a Greek name for Mars is not a small clue!

But how strongly did the astronomical tradi- tion influence Greek poetry? Opinions will differ, but Lucian’s words in the second century AD res- onate well with the global theme. “It is the con- juncture of Venus and Mars that creates the poetry of Homer.”

A Basque tradition depicts the goddess Mari riding in a celestial cart or on a “broomstick“ in a ball of fire (a pointer to the medieval “witch”).

The myths says that she “was the planet Venus … Her son-lover was Sugaar, the planet Mars.”

In North America, the Pawnee knew Mars as a legendary warrior, and when Mars and Venus approached conjunction, they celebrated the war- rior’s ancient “marriage to the daughter of a great chief”—a perfect replica of the Old World mar- riage of goddess (princess) and warrior-hero.

 

Though we can only introduce the subject here, it                                                               

 

 

 

 

renewal through sacrifice, and dozens of other motifs.

It is also clear that the pioneers of comparative study could not account for the content of myth in terms of natural events. And they stopped short of asking the most important question of all: if the natural referents of the myths are now missing, is it possible that they were present in a former time? Campbell, for example, recog- nized the worldwide doomsday theme—the idea of a prior age col- lapsing violently. But he did not relate the memory to anything that may have actually occurred in our world to inspire the memory.

Event and Interpretation

The first step toward understanding the myth-making epoch is to distinguish between the unusual and the imaginative. The events that inspired the archetypes of world mythology are unusual, not part of our familiar world today at all. But the ancient interpreta- tions are imaginative: humans projected wide-ranging personalities and mythic qualities onto objects and formations in space. In its skepticism about the patterns of human memory, the modern world forgot the distinction between natural event and human interpreta- tion, then tossed out the entire body of evidence.

A systematic exploration of ancient sources will show that our ancestors lived beneath an alien sky, a world so different from all subsequent experience that the storytellers, in describing the prodi- gious events, drew upon a vast complex of analogies to make sense of them. Great spectacles in the sky produced an explosion of human imagination, a myth-making epoch that finds no counterpart in later times.

When the gods went to war, the heavens shook. Lightning sped between the celestial combatants as flaming weapons, with the fate of the gods themselves hanging in the balance. For anyone seeking to comprehend the ancient images, there can be no greater mistake than to rationalize away the cosmic scale of the described events. This was a time of human wonder and overwhelming fear, the mea- sure of which cannot be gauged by anything presently witnessed in the heavens.

But is human testimony reliable? Or did the myth-makers sim- ply defy all natural experience, including direct and unassailable observation, in order to conjure things never seen? The mythic “thunderbolt” will provide us with an exemplary test of the ancient witnesses’ power of observation. Certain extraordinary facts can now be stated concerning the archetypes, and these facts challenge all prior explanations or theories of myth—

Joseph Campbell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A scene from the film “Wickerman,” based on Celtic legends and rites, personifies the ancient idea of world devastation through the burning of a colossal “man.” In the most archaic forms of the general tradition, the figure dying, dismem- bered, or incinerated in the confla- gration represents the original unity of “heaven.”

Fact #1: No archetype finds its natural referent in the world of common experience. All widespread themes of myth point to events that do not occur in our time.

Fact #2: All archetypes are inseparably connected to each other. No isolated archetype can be found. It is this stunning fact that validates the underlying integrity of the substratum.

Fact #3: All archetypes trace to the beginnings of recorded human history. After the flowering of ancient civilizations, it does not appear that any new archetypes arose.

We further claim that heaven was once alive with electricity as planets moved through a rich plasma environment. Ambient electri- cal activity gave rise to unearthly sights and sounds and earth-dis- turbing events. In the wake of these events, cultures around the world strove to reckon with the forces unleashed, to interpret the meaning of cosmic catastrophe, and to remember.

The urge of ancient peoples to record and to repeat their stories in words reflected the same fundamental impulse we see in all other forms of reenactment and alignment in ancient ritual, art, and architecture. Recitation of the story momentarily transported both the storyteller and the listener backwards to the mythical epoch, which was experienced as more compelling, more “true” than anything that came later. And that is why, amongst all early civilizations, as noted by Mircea Eliade and others, the world-changing events to which the myths refer provided the models for all collective activity of the traditional cul- tures.40

It  needs  to  be  understood  as  well  that  the globally

recurring themes appear to be as old as human writing. All of the common signs and symbols we shall review in these monographs appear to precede the full flowering of civili- zation. This rarely acknowledged fact, which could be eas- ily disproved if incorrect, is of great significance. If our early ancestors were habituated to inventing experience, we should expect an endless stream of new mythical con- tent over the millennia.

This absence of invention throughout almost all of human his- tory forces us to ask how the original “creativity” of myth arose. If the myths are purely “imaginative fiction,” with no objective, origi- native event, why did later generations lose the ability to generate such fiction? But if, on the other hand, the myths arose as the human response to extraordinary events, then we must ask, what were the events? In answering this question, we cannot afford to exclude any domain of ancient testimony.

 

 

 

 

Ritual Celebrations

Enter the ancient world and all familiar signposts disappear. But there is a key in the relentless glance backward, occurring at every level of activity in the early civilizations, from monument building to an outpouring of hymns and prayers to the gods. We see it in ancient foundation ceremonies of temples and cities, in rites of kingship and sacrifices to the gods, and in the violent wars of con- quest, by which tribal chiefs forged new  nations,     king-

doms, and empires. A review of such activity, with particular attention to the ritual contexts, will show a dis- tinctive commemorative function. Indeed, we would not be going too far to suggest that civilization itself was a bursting forth of new and creative forms of remember- ing—all harking back to some aspect of a primeval con- flict between order and chaos.

With unprecedented effort, a sense of urgency, and often remarkable skill, ancient stargazers raised towering, heaven-oriented monuments—pyramids and obelisks, ziggurats and great stone circles, monstrous creatures guarding city gates, and everywhere a panoply of gods and goddesses and celestial heroes whose explicit forms mock every attempt of the specialists to understand them. The first mystery here is one of motivation. What drove early races to mobilize these endeavors, to drag huge stones over great distances, and to invest such col- lective energy in construction activity? Before the Egyp- tians, Sumerians, Aztecs, or Maya ever  raised a     sacred

edifice, they would look back to primordial times. The foundation ceremonies reenacted noteworthy junctures in the lives of the gods. And invariably, at critical turns in the stories, chaos monsters reared their heads, threatening to ruin all of creation.

Nothing was deemed more essential to life than reverential respect for the mythical models in a remote epoch. Every king received his sanction from the model of a good king, illustrated by the lives of gods. Every sacred mountain reflected the light and power of the cosmic mountain, on which the gods themselves assembled. Every temple or city was built as a replica of the temple or city of heaven.

Of this truth, Eliade wrote continuously throughout his life. All of the models for human institutions and prescribed behavior, he said, “are believed to have been ‘revealed’ at the beginning of time”—and that means in the primeval age of the gods.41

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chinese Temple of Heaven, a rep- lica of the radiant habitation origi- nally created by gods in the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

The Buddhist Naga serpent Padoha, ruler of dark realms ever since he attempted to destroy the world.

In the particulars of his conscious behavior, the “primitive,” the archaic man, acknowledges no act which has not been previously posited and lived by someone else, some other being who was not a man. What he does has been done before. His life is the ceaseless rep- etition of gestures initiated by others.42

Thus, “rituals and significant profane gestures,” according to Eli- ade, “deliberately repeat such acts posited ab origine by gods, heroes, or ancestors.”43 We can only add that, on examination, the legendary heroes or ancestors of epic literature turn out to be the mythic gods themselves, simply presented in more human form, a common pattern in the evolution of myth over time.

Though the gods were powerful, they were not invincible.  Nor

were they always kind or merciful. Even as the priest-astronomers invoked the splendor of the gods, they strove through magical and often innovative means to reckon with the gods’ caprice. The ancient sphinxes and winged bulls and gargantuan towers signify a reservoir of meaning to be preserved at all cost. Together they reflect both a celebration of the age of the gods and a collective defense against chaos—that ever-present threat to which, in the remembered “End of the World,” even the greatest gods succumbed. Competing impulses drove the birth of civilization. One impulse was nostalgia, a yearning for something remembered as the ideal—a primordial condition—subsequently lost. The second impulse was terror—the pervasive, ever-present fear that devastat- ing events in the past will happen again. It seems that at all levels of collective activity, every civilization in the ancient world expressed

the same contrasting motives.

But why do nostalgia and terror stand in such a paradoxical relationship? Clearly this is no accident. At work is the memory of an epoch without counterpart in later cultural history, an epoch of exquisite beauty, when visible “gods” ruled the world. And it was this very epoch that came crashing down in catastrophe. From one land to another the myths and ritual reenactments thus proclaim that the gods ruled for a time, then went to war, bringing universal darkness and cosmic tumult.

How was it, then, that sacred practices and ritual reenactments gave meaning, or a sense of potential defense? Clearly, the human intent was to establish a rapport with the gods, and this included a presumed ability to share magically in the observed achievements of the gods. As a rule, every symbolic object or rite possessed the ability to reproduce, on a human scale, a magical feat of divine pre- decessors. What the gods achieved on the celestial plane could be achieved on earth through imitation. As above, so below; as before, so again. Every monument and every ritual practice will thus   hold

 

The Roots of Sacrifice and “Holy” War

 

 

“As each child issued from the holy womb And lay upon its mother's knees, each one

Was seized by mighty Kronos, and gulped down.”

Hesiod, Theogony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greek Kronos or Saturn devouring his children, as depicted by Fran- cisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746- 1828). Kronos, a counterpart of the Egyptian Atum-Ra and Sumerian An (primeval Unity of heaven), ruled for a time, then fell from his dominating position in the sky. But what did the astronomers mean when they identified this power with the planet Saturn? The theme will loom as a centerpiece of our story.

In the Greek myths of Kronos and the lost Golden Age, the original ruler of the sky swallowed his own children Then, in the cosmic wars that followed, the heavens nearly collapsed under the rush of gods against gods.

It seems that in the ancient world celestial beauty and divine caprice stood side by side, feeding the great contradictions of human perception—nostalgia, reverence, anxiety, and terror.

Is it possible that the entire spectrum of ancient experience can now be brought into the light of day? On every habitable continent our early ancestors strove to imitate the gods, to repeat the events of the “First Time” or the “Great Time.” Even in the darkest and most violent aspects of the early civilizations—in the wars of con- quest and the sacrifices of human victims—the warrior-kings and priests repeated mythical episodes in the lives of divine predeces- sors.

For reasons scholars rarely comprehend, the poets say that the gods loved the smell of sacrifice and incited men to war. On earth, war became “holy” if it found sanction in the prior feats of the gods themselves. And warrior hordes learned to celebrate the cos- mic battles of the gods, imitating the frenzy of the celestial confla- gration and identifying their own neighbors with the fiends of chaos, the sky-darkening clouds that threatened the world in pri- meval times. By this identification, their flashing weapons came to represent nothing else than the cosmic thunderbolt.

 

RIGHT: At the top of an Aztec temple’s steps, a priest removes the heart of a sacrificial victim and holds it up, still beating, to be witnessed by the gods. The evidence makes clear that the sacrificial victims in these rites represented the divine heroes and demons of the mythic past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A vignette from the Egyptian Papyrus of Ani, shows the deceased, on reaching the after- world, repeating the feats of the gods by slaying the serpent- enemy of cosmic order.

evidential value in our reconstruction. Each is a symbolic imitation pointing backward to the defining events of the myth-making epoch.

Additionally, we find a remarkable consistency in the underly- ing meaning of the recurring symbols. The pyramid and sacred hill will always speak for the “world mountain” on which the gods dwelt in the beginning. The “sacred marriage” of kings will always reflect the archetypal liaison of the mother goddess and the warrior- hero. And the commotion, mock battles, and frenzied crowds of early New Year’s festivals will always reenact the celestial upheaval of the apocalypse, when gods and chaos powers battled in the heav- ens. This consistency in meaning is worldwide, and hundreds of examples will be given in these monographs.

Conclusion

In these pages, we have posed a question that can only be answered through separate but mutually interdependent levels of investigation. Can the archetypes of world mythology be under- stood with the help of new tools in the sciences? The investigation has required us to cross-reference many fields of inquiry that have no history of interdisciplinary cooperation on the scale required by the question asked.

We began with the story of the Andromeda, the dragon, and the warrior Perseus, who defeated the dragon to win the princess as bride. In the comparative approach, such stories as this come alive. The themes are meaningful and easily recognized. The princess, the dragon, and the hero belong to the core of archetypal mythology, But answers to the mysteries raised can only come through a new respect for the ancient experience, with an eagerness to follow evi- dence wherever it may lead.

The principles of our presentation to this point can be summa- rized as follows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. All documented cultural traditions assert that an original epoch of gods and wonders ended in celestial chaos. Chronicles of catastrophe within the antique cultures thus provide critical evi- dence as to the natural occurrences
2. Plasma science is re-writing the textbook on galactic, stellar, and planetary evolution. This new science, emphasizing plasma and electricity in space, also illuminates the ancient dramas in surpris- ing
3. A few thousand years ago ancient artists carved millions of enigmatic images on stone. Comparative study of these images confirms that they depict heaven-spanning electrical discharge con- figurations, a conclusion now supported by the distinguished plasma scientist Anthony
4. All ancient cultures affirm that the remembered catastrophes involved earth-threatening battles of “gods” and monsters. Most common is the story of the fiery serpent or dragon attacking the world.
5. Numerous accounts say that a great warrior vanquished the dragon. On investigation, the warrior’s invincible weapon turns out to be a cosmic thunderbolt. Though often obscured in later times, comparative analysis confirms that this original identity was univer-
6. The mythic “thunderbolts of the gods” have virtually no sim- ilarity to regional lightning. They do, however, take the very forms of plasma discharge configurations in the
7. In the early astronomies, the most revered gods appear as towering forms in the They are identified as planets, though their behavior bears no similarity to the behavior of planets today.

In addition to these building blocks of a reconstruction, we have connected certain planets to the archetypal “personalities” of myth. In particular, we have named the warrior hero in relation to the planet Mars, and the mother goddess in relation to Venus. We have also suggested that the male and female forms of the chaos mon- sters are intimately linked to the “terrible aspects” of these same planets—a subject to which we intend to devote considerable atten- tion.

Archaic memories must be approached through cross-cultural comparison and interdisciplinary analysis. The study cannot fail to raise innumerable issues for science. These issues include, among other things, the nature of plasma phenomena, the nature of the sun and stars, the nature of comets, the competing roles of electricity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stepped pyramid of Saqqara in Egypt, one of the oldest stone structures in the world. The steps of the pyramid signified the tiers of the world mountain, by which ancestral gods ascended to the sky.

 

 

 

and gravity in modern theory, and the physical scars on planets and moons.

The power of the ancient evidence lies in the unity of the sub- stratum, the archetypes. It is this underlying integrity that gives us confidence in the reconciliation of science and historical inquiry. Certain things which theoretical science today considers out of the question were consistently remembered around the world, and at a level of detail and coherence that is inconceivable under standard assumptions about the past.

But how do we deal with the situation when human memories speak convincingly for something which orthodox science, with equal confidence, denies? A meeting of the two is essential. Truth itself is unified, while mistaken perception invariably leads to con- flict and contradiction. Either we have misapplied principles of rea- soning to the historical evidence, or science is misreading evidence to a profound degree.

We believe the latter is the case, and the primary error lies in a failure to see how plasma and electricity challenge the underpin- nings of traditional theory in the sciences. This is why we have cho- sen to consider the “thunderbolts of the gods” in this first monograph. The mythic theme brings us face to face with the role of electric discharge in cosmic events.

Accordingly, we shall present our opening argument on behalf of the “Electric Universe”  in the monograph to follow.