The Saturn Myth & Polar Configuration Analysis & Critique

[JP Michael]

Although Mars came close to Earth at some stage or stages, the visuals of all planets would have been dominated by their magnetospheres being lit up in glow mode. Especially during conjunctions. Along with this is the strong likelihood of much dust being produced and causing a gradient of this dust across the edges of the magnetospheres. Then clearly this dust at the edge would reflect light (from the Sun) and thus produce the crescent shape.

This is a simpler explanation than a Saturn System polar configuration. I have considered and developed this theory over my 15 or so years on this forum mostly in "The History Of The Earth" topic.

Mo

I like the dust option. Rens has a high place for the role of Zodiacal Light in myth. If earlier ages of the solar system were filled with far more dusty plasma than now (especially if Mars and Venus were having regular trysts), the Zodiacal Light would have been far more obvious than it is now. You have to get out of modern cities even to see Zodiacal Light because of the light pollution blocking its visibility.

[moses]

Gary Gilligan has an enhanced Zodiacal Light in his theories and explanations of Egyptian figures. His theories are well worth a read and really make one think.
Mo

[evcochrane]

Gary Gilligan has an enhanced Zodiacal Light in his theories and explanations of Egyptian figures. His theories are well worth a read and really make one think.
Mo

I'm sorry but looking to Gary Gilligan for a serious scholarly discussion of Egyptian religion is a bit like looking to Gilligan's Island for Oscar-worthy scriptwriting. The man is completely clueless.

[moses]

"I'm sorry but looking to Gary Gilligan for a serious scholarly discussion of Egyptian religion is a bit like looking to Gilligan's Island for Oscar-worthy scriptwriting. The man is completely clueless." Ev

Mainstream is completely clueless. Anyone that finds that Mars and Venus interacted is not clueless. There is just not enough tolerance to other theories in EU. Everyone that studies this stuff comes out with a different theory, and pretty wild theories at that. The difference in mindset between someone who thinks that Mars and Venus interacted and someone who does not, is enormous. Surely that is enough.
Mo

[JHL]

Everyone that studies this stuff comes out with a different theory, and pretty wild theories at that. The difference in mindset between someone who thinks that Mars and Venus interacted and someone who does not, is enormous.

Given the ubiquity across all ancient lore, and assuming there is great meaning there, what's needed is a Rosetta stone. Or a revelation.

[evcochrane]

"I'm sorry but looking to Gary Gilligan for a serious scholarly discussion of Egyptian religion is a bit like looking to Gilligan's Island for Oscar-worthy scriptwriting. The man is completely clueless." Ev

Mainstream is completely clueless. Anyone that finds that Mars and Venus interacted is not clueless. There is just not enough tolerance to other theories in EU. Everyone that studies this stuff comes out with a different theory, and pretty wild theories at that. The difference in mindset between someone who thinks that Mars and Venus interacted and someone who does not, is enormous. Surely that is enough.
Mo

The statement that mainstream is completely clueless is both factually wrong and misleading. In any scientific investigation one must learn to carefully distinguish between credible sources of information and pseudoscientific sources. In the field of comparative myth, for example, such figures as Georges Dumezil, Martin West, and Roger Woodard are credible sources. Of course I don't always agree with these fellows--none of them would accept that Mars formerly moved on a different orbit, needless to say--but one can count on the fact that they are not inventing evidence, misrepresenting sources, or butchering etymologies. Such scholars stand in dramatic contrast to hacks like Gary Gilligan, Erich von Daniken, Zacharia Sitchin, and Graham Hancock who are rank amateurs and frequently invent their etymologies wholesale. It's a bit like relying on the National Inquirer to learn about Elvis's current whereabouts rather than the New York Times obituary page.

[Lloyd]

Ev considers writers, Gary Gilligan, Erich von Daniken, Zacharia Sitchin, and Graham Hancock, to be hacks.
This Urban Dictionary definition of hack seems to be intended: A cheap, mediocre, or second-rate practitioner, especially in the fields of journalism and literature: a charlatan or incompetent.

I tend to regard Sitchin as a charlatan. Von Daniken may be one, or may just be naive. The other two seem to me to be naive etc, but probably not charlatans, as far as I can tell now. But then mainstream scientists are naive too. I don't know if naive is necessarily incompetent. (I also don't know why the program for this text box underlines naive. I checked and it's the right spelling. The program is incompetent.)

[JHL]

(I also don't know why the program for this text box underlines naive. I checked and it's the right spelling. The program is incompetent.)

Handy rule: Naive is Evian spelled backwards.

[moses]

"The statement that mainstream is completely clueless is both factually wrong and misleading...." Ev

Clueless with regard to EU in that the ancient past was dominated by electrical effects. It does not matter if they got the history right if they have not tied it to electrical effects. Tying it to electrical effects is the clue.
Mo

[Lloyd]

A GARY GILLIGAN SOURCE

I think Gary Gilligan got some of his ideas from John Ackerman, a scientist who was involved in early studies of Venus' atmosphere etc. He's been a guest on late night talk radio, such as this: https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2005-03-14-show/
which also links to his website: https://www.firmament-chaos.com/

I contacted him ten or more years ago. As I recall he said Venus' lower atmosphere is mostly sulfur. He said the instruments on the satellite that sampled the atmosphere on the way to Venus' surface were damaged or misread and so failed to detect the sulfur. He said the CO2 is above the sulfur, 50 km or miles up.

When he learned about Velikovsky's ideas, he accepted some of them, such as the dating of Mars' encounters with Earth and Venus' birth from Jupiter etc. He says the Great Red Spot is where Venus came from. He decided that Mercury was the core of Mars and it melted and was pulled out of Mars through the Mars canyon. He seems to think the Egyptian decorated eye motif with the curl at lower right was based on the Mars canyon appearance. He has some ideas similar to those of Don Patten, such as numerous Mars encounters with Earth every 15 years, which also came from Velikovsky.

I think his idea about the lower atmosphere of Venus being sulfur is plausible, unless better observations have been made since the early ones. Other than that, his ideas may be a blind alley, like Don Patten's was. They have interesting ideas that seem plausible at first, but then they usually come to nothing. I might skim his website again one of these days to see if I missed anything more promising. Looks like he has a new book about the cosmic origins of the Rig Veda.

[Lloyd]

683

QUESTIONS FOR EV

I. TIME OF SATURN SYSTEM BREAKUP?

_Ev said [at https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum3/ph ... =525#p5102 ]: "the Saturn configuration was likely long gone by the time the Pyramid Texts were carved in 2350 BCE. For example, there are numerous statements to the effect that this or that catastrophic event happened a long time ago (the disaster associated with the Eye of Horus=Venus, for example)."
_[Ev provided this PT quote.]
“"Hearts were pervaded with fear, hearts were pervaded with terror when I was born in the Abyss before the sky existed, before the earth existed, before that which was to be made firm existed, before turmoil existed, before that fear which arose on account of the Eye of Horus existed." (PT 1039-1040)."
_[Ev commented on the PT quote.]
"As is evident from the context here, the Eye of Horus disaster is placed well before the present time and is explicitly linked to the Time of Beginning -- i.e., the extraordinary cataclysmic events remembered as Creation -- when heaven was separated from earth and the primordial ordering of the cosmos occurred. The ancient Egyptians themselves were crystal clear that such events were formative for their entire civilization and religion and that they occurred well before the period associated with the inscribing of the Pyramid Texts (c. 2350 [BC]). It will be noted here that the inscribing of the Texts presumably occurred long after the "composing" or "writing" of the traditions themselves."

I-a. Was the Eye of Horus when Venus and Mars moved out of alignment with the face of Saturn?
I-b. Did the Eye of Horus event occur shortly before the breakup of the Saturn configuration?
I-c. Why do you presume that the Pyramid Texts were written long after the Eye of Horus event?

II. TIME OF THE ATEN?

Charles Chandler ... said "Aten, winged sun disk, ... originated ca 2600 BC". He referenced: A STUDY OF HORUS THE BEHDETITE - FROM THE OLD KINGDOM TO THE CONQUEST OF ALEXANDER at https://oi.uchicago.edu/sites/oi.uchica ... TATION.pdf page 531, Fig. 4 (which says): The earliest winged sun disk, coffin of Hetepheres, 4th Dynasty (of Egypt), which elsewhere is said to have reigned from c. 2613 to 2494 BC.

II-a. Do you agree with that? Did the Aten first appear c. 2500-2600 BC?
II-b. Wasn't the Aten a band around Saturn that was formed by a dust trail of Venus when Venus went out of the Saturn configuration temporarily?
II-c. Did the Aten form at the same time that Ken Moss said Venus went out of the configuration in his articles on The Opening of the Mouth Ritual [See also below.]?
II-d. Why could not this PT have been written before the Saturn configuration broke up?

III. KEN MOSS' OSIRIS RITUAL CHRONOLOGY

[The following chronology is from:] The Opening of The Mouth Ritual - Part II, by Ken Moss [Aeon] Volume VI, Number 5 (2004)
https://www.catastrophism.com/intro/sea ... oom_cat=-1
... Summary
_The proposed chronological order of the real celestial events that are the probable basis for, and match, the mytho-historical record of the Osiris resurrection myth and the Opening of the Mouth Ritual is ... as follows. [222]
[1] When the Saturnian Configuration (consisting of Saturn, Venus, Mars and Earth wrapped in a plasma column with shared polar axis) commenced on its process of destabilisation, Venus went out of alignment.
[2] Saturn was occluded by cosmic material spread by the roving Venus while Mars was seen to descend towards Earth [and appeared to grow large? - LK].
[3] Due to the new electrical dynamics caused by the spreading planets, stacked plasma toroids formed within the polar column causing it to take on a backbone or ladder appearance. In Egyptian mythology, Saturn was the sun-god Osiris, Venus his wife Isis, and Mars was their son Horus.
[4] Eventually, Venus appeared to sweep away most of the material which had occluded Saturn and was seen to return to a position in front of the proto-Saturnian orb which had again become visible.
[5] Mars, as Horus, then ascended the ladder column towards his "dead" father Osiris. The two halves of the lower "jaw" of Osiris/Saturn were the bifurcated top of the plasma column. The relative nearness of Mars, Venus, and Saturn would, in all likelihood, have increased the electrical/plasma effects, illuminating the column in a much brighter light, giving the impression of stronger "jaws." This would have made it seem that Horus was using his "finger" or "spear" (the now more solid-looking portion of the column directly above Mars) to fix or set these jaws.
[6] Continuing upward and "over" the jaws, the Gates of Heaven, red Mars would eventually have reached the visual centre of the whitish ovoid that was Venus. Osiris' mouth now appeared to be opened and the god fully rejuvenated.
[7] The backbone-like toroids within the column would have dissipated, and the supreme god would have harked back to his previous appearance - a sun-like disk with a single eye or mouth atop the northerly River of Heaven. The glorious Golden Age of Saturn had returned - or so it had been hoped.

III-a. Do you agree or disagree with any of Ken's chronology and his comments above? If so, briefly, why?
III-b. Is it plausible that the use of coffins and funeral pyres originated as imitations of the death of Osiris? I figure that when Venus left behind dust that obscured Saturn, the dust may have resembled a coffin. If Venus seemed to make smoke and maybe fire in the process, some people would have been inspired to make funeral pyres, I suppose. Do you agree?
III-c. I gather that the Saturn configuration became unstable again not long after this and finally broke up. Do you agree? What range of dates do you consider likely for the time of the breakup?

[evcochrane]

Lloyd, let me say first that I admire your enthusiasm. It is obvious that you have done a great deal of reading in this arcane field of catastrophist studies. The questions you ask here are all very important but it would take several volumes to adequately answer them all, much less with proper documentation. Perhaps a sensible approach would be to deal with a couple of issues at a time. I certainly do not agree that "Aten, winged sun disk,...originated circa 2600 BCE." In the first place I'm not aware of any early evidence identifying the Aten with the winged sun disk. Secondly, I think it would be premature to conclude solely upon the basis of Hetepheres' coffin that the winged sun disk originated at this precise date (circa 2600 BCE). For all we know, it could have originated one thousand years earlier. In the absence of any extensive written texts from this early period it is very difficult to speak with certainty about prehistoric events, much less chronology. That said, I am very confident that the Eye of Horus disaster occurred well before the Pyramid Texts were inscribed circa 2350, as stated in my previous note. In the first place the scribes who inscribed these texts make repeated reference to the fact that these events occurred a long time before them and that they were not eyewitnesses, but purveyors of an old tradition. Secondly, they made a number of mistakes in transcribing the texts that would never have occurred if they were eyewitnesses to the events in question. Again, I would refer you to my essay on the Eye for details as to the history involved (it dovetails quite neatly with the Sumerian traditions associated with Venus/Inanna). To answer your specific questions: (1) Yes, the Eye of Horus event has reference to the series of events which found Venus moving out of polar alignment; (1b) No, the Eye of Horus disaster did not occur shortly before the breakup of the polar configuration but closer to the extraordinary natural events remembered as Creation--i.e., the period when the polar configuration was first formed during the ordering of the primordial cosmos (long story). More to follow.

[evcochrane]

Lloyd cited the work of Ken Moss as if it was the gold standard of ancient Egyptian chronology and planetary history. Understand, Ken Moss is a friend of mine and his two-part article appeared in Aeon, a journal I edited and published. So far as I know, this was the only article he ever published on Egyptian astral religion. Suffice it to say that, while Ken's article represents a notable achievement for a relative novice in such matters, it can hardly be used as a yardstick for reconstructing ancient Egyptian history or the astral origins of Egyptian religion.

[evcochrane]

I am still trying to make my way through Shonkwiler's Dissertation on the Egyptian god Horus. I'm about 100 pages in now (it's about 700 pages long). In my opinion, this is exactly the sort of book we should be consulting if we ever want to figure out the chronology of ancient Egypt. The latest evidence is laid out for all to see, and the translations can be trusted. It would be blasphemous to even mention the works of Gary Gilligan and/or John Ackerman alongside those of serious scholars like Shonkwiler. Yet even here it is possible to find egregious mistakes, mainly because Egyptology itself is still mired in the long-outdated solar school of myth from the 19th century. On page 78, for example, one reads: "Originally the udjat-eye was identified with the moon." The udjat-eye, as the green or healthy Eye of Horus, is to be identified with the planet Venus. It has no relationship to the moon in any way, shape or form. And herein lies the single-most important problem plaguing modern studies of myth and religion: They all want to force-fit the ancient testimony to the present skies and they all overlook the central importance of catastrophe in the Egyptian Pyramid and Coffin Texts. And as a result modern scholarship is fundamentally incapable of penetrating to the reality of the natural-historical events behind the manifold mythological traditions.

[Lloyd]

763

ATEN

Regarding the Aten as winged sun disk, I completely overlooked that association. I don't know offhand if I misquoted Charles, or if he actually said that. Don't have time to look now. But I don't see the Aten mentioned in Fig. 4 in Shonkwiler's thesis paper that Charles mentioned. It only mentions the winged sun disk. I didn't and don't equate the Aten with the winged sun disk myself, but I understand from a paper or article by Dave Talbott, I think, that it referred to a ring around the Saturn configuration, which was called the House of the gods, the ring (of dust or smoke etc) formed when Venus moved out of the configuration temporarily.

Charles has a working paper on the Aten at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=13775

He has been doing considerable research on the Exodus, the Amarna period etc at http://qdl.scs-inc.us/?top=5675 . He told me privately that he finds that Akhenaten was actually trying to destroy Atenism. He found also that Moses may have been the Egyptian, Ramose, a follower of Akhenaten who took over Atenism and made it into Judaism, I think.