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