THOTH
A Catastrophics Newsletter
VOL I, No. 8
April 5, 1997
EDITOR: Michael Armstrong
PUBLISHER: Walter Radtke
CONTENTS:
THE MYTH OF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (2)................David Talbott
RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND
VELIKOVSKIANISM (Part 2)............................Ralph Juergens
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Quote of the day:
It seems astonishing that in the course of half a century of studies of the
sun in context with the thermonuclear theory, very few professional
astrophysicists have ever expressed the slightest discomfort over
discrepancies between observation and theory, or even over the fact that an
ad hoc extra theory has had to be devised to explain practically every
individual feature of the solar atmosphere.
Ralph Juergens
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THE MYTH OLF THE UNIVERSAL MONARCH (2)
By David Talbott (dtalbott@teleport.com)
The ancient Sumerians repeatedly proclaimed that kingship had descended
directly from the creator-king An, the most ancient and highest god of
the pantheon, and the revered founder of the Golden Age.
Consider the myths and images of the Hindu Brahma, Manu or Yama, the
Iranian Yima, Danish Frodhi, or Chinese Huang-Ti--all models of the good
king, ruling over a primitive paradise. The respective cultures
esteemed these mythical figures as *prototypes*. In later ages the
chroniclers have such figures ruling on earth. But in the earliest
traditions the kingdom is in the sky, and this ancient kingdom of the
Universal Monarch is one of the most pervasive archetypes of world
mythology.
Natives of Mexico insisted that the great god Quetzalcoatl, a sun god
who ruled before the present sun, was their first king and founder of
the kingship rites. He not only introduced all of the arts of
civilization, but presided over the Golden Age.
The ancient Maya proclaimed that their once-spectacular civilization had
its origins in the rule of the creator-king and god of the Golden Age,
Itzam Na. At the center of Mayan culture, stood the sovereign chief,
announcing himself as something like "the King of Kings and ruler of the
world, regent on earth of the great Itzam Na."
The leading Mayan expert, J. Eric Thompson, saw this an "inflated notion
of grandeur," "a sort of divine right of kings which would have turned
James I green with envy." And yet throughout the ancient world, one
encounters this divine "grandeur" of kings at every turn.
The original concept may appear as self flattery, but it actually has
more to do with a *burden* of kings: the requirement that the king live
up to the mythical aura of kings. Never was there a king in early times
that did not wear the dress of a mythical god--the model of the good
ruler. Whatever the celestial, founding king had achieved, it was the
duty of the present king, pharaoh, or emperor to duplicate, at least
through symbolic repetition. For such was the first test of a *good*
king.
This historical burden of kings will explain why every king was expected
to renew the primeval era of peace and plenty.
Why, for example, was the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III so eager to
announce that he had restored conditions "as they were in the
beginning", in the Tep Zepi or Golden Age of Ra? Or why did the Pharaoh
Amenhotep III congratulate himself so for having made the country
"flourish as in primeval times..."? The Pharaoh was expected to repeat
the achievements of the celestial prototype!
In the same way, when the Sumerian king Dungi ascended the throne, it
was declared that a champion had arisen to restore the original
Paradise.. Indeed, every Sumerian king was expected to reproduce the
wonders of "That Day," or the "Year of Abundance"--the Golden Age of An.
When the famous Assyrian king Assurbanipal took the throne, the
chroniclers proclaimed that "the harvest was plentiful, the corn was
abundant. . .the cattle multiplied exceedingly." For such was the
accreditation of a good king.
Among the Hebrews, the expectation was continually expressed that the
king would introduce a new Golden Age. The Irish King, according to the
respected expert J. A. MacCulloch, ruled under the same expectation:
"Prosperity was supposed to characterize every good king's reign in
Ireland," MacCulloch writes, and "the result is precisely that which
everywhere marked the golden age."
This is, of course, a very familiar idea. The ancient king was, in the
words of the eminent psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, "the magical source of
welfare and prosperity." It's interesting how often scholars have
noticed the theme, without explaining it. How did this universal idea
arise--that the earth is *fruitful* under the good king?
The ideals of kingship, according to the myths themselves, were a mirror
of the life and personality of the great celestial king whose rule
brought abundance and cosmic harmony. Hence, the same state of things
should accompany that king's successors who share in the blood-line and
charisma of the great predecessor, whether that predecessor is called Ra
or An, Quetzalcoatl or Itzam Na.
Perhaps it will seem a bit strange that an ancient god identified as the
creator would be so intimately associated with the idea of kingship, or
remembered as having ruled on earth during the Golden Age.
There is a fascinating paradox here: In the earliest traditions, as
we've already noted, the Universal Monarch is a celestial power through
and through. He is, in fact, the central light of heaven. But as we've
also noted, in the course of time the creator-king's domain is
progressively localized and the god takes on an increasingly human
countenance as the "first king" of the particular nation telling the
story.
In certain lands such as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, we are able to
observe the process over many centuries. In the earliest memories, Ra
and An rule the sky, but later chroniclers in both lands depict them as
*terrestrial* rulers. This localization of the creator-king is simply
one part of a larger evolutionary process. As the myths evolve over
time, the gods and heroes are brought down to earth, one nation after
another claiming these divine powers as *ancestors*. And how could it
be otherwise? Remember that all sacred activity within the respective
cultures arose from the same collective links to the past, to the beauty
and terror of the primeval age.
"The further we go back in history," observed Carl Jung, "the more
evident does the king's divinity become..." And when you trace the royal
lineage backwards, you eventually confront the radiant figure at the
head of the line. Since the story of this creator-king is as old as the
myth of the Golden Age--it is older than the institution of kingship!
Historians have always claimed that the myths of celestial kings were
nothing more than images of local kings and kingship rites projected
onto the sky. But comparative analysis will demonstrate that the
reverse is true. The memory of the creator-king came first, and it was
this remarkable memory which provided the mythical aura supporting and
legitimizing kings the world over.
Who, then--or what--was the source of this worldwide theme, this
universally-remembered and profoundly charismatic power behind the rule
of kings?
THE ELECTRICAL SUN
By Ralph Juergens
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EDITOR'S NOTE; The article below continues our republication of ground-
breaking work by the late Ralph Juergens, in which he introduces the
concept of an electrically powered Sun.
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ABSTRACT:
The interplanetary medium is capable of confining the electric fields of
charged celestial bodies within space-charge sheaths of limited dimensions.
This phenomenon explains the success of gravitational theory in describing
and predicting orbital motions in the present, relatively stable Solar
System. Disruption of space-charge sheaths during close encounters between
electrified planetary bodies may account for the catastrophic
electromagnetic effects observed and reported by the survivors of
near-collisions in ancient times. The known characteristics of the
interplanetary medium suggest not only that the sun and the planets are
electrically charged, but that the sun itself is the focus of a cosmic
electric discharge--the probable source of all its radiant energy.
RECONCILING CELESTIAL MECHANICS AND VELIKOVSKIANISM (2)
Let us now consider the problem posed by the seeming fact that the
sun and the planets, all immersed in the interplanetary plasma, ought to
acquire the electric potential--zero, one would guess --of that plasma.
Some might claim that the problem itself is spurious, and that
dispensing with it is as simple as chucking Worlds in Collision into the
trash heap I contend, nevertheless, that the problem is real, and that
observational evidence from many parts of the solar system can be
marshaled to resolve it.
This problem is real because we have ample evidence that the sun,
the earth, and the moon are electrically charged bodies. Only one of the
three--the moon--seems to have an electric potential equal to that of its
environment, but from this we can only conclude that the environment itself
has a potential as high as that of the moon.
A quick review of just a few points of evidence will serve here to
establish the reality of our problem.
The sun is known to have a magnetic field of great complexity.
Observations of coronal streamers at the poles of the sun during total
eclipse suggest that at least a portion of this field has a dipole
configuration, similar to that of the earth's field. Other observations
suggest that in the sun's lower atmosphere the field is in a state of
continual torment. The existence of the field, however, and even the
existence of the complexities of that field in the lower atmosphere, can
only be laid to electric currents. No matter how much theorists might like
to minimize or even deny it, the fact remains that only electric currents
give rise to magnetic fields.
It is misleading to state simply that "moving charges" generate
magnetic fields. Any body of ionized gas, for example, might be described
as a collection of moving charges, since its charged particles are indeed
in motion. For that matter, each charged particle moving about in such a
gas can be said to constitute an elementary electric current. But so long
as there is no net differential motion between positive and negative
charges, the net electric current will be zero, and the body of gas will
generate no magnetic field regardless of how violently it may be agitated.
(However, if charges of one sign predominate over charges of the opposite
sign, so that the body of gas indeed has a net electric charge, the effect
of bulk gas motion will be quite different.)
The fact that magnetic fields and effects attend motions in the
sun's ionized gases--prime examples being the strong fields evident in
connection with rotary motions in sunspots--is explainable most simply and
satisfactorily by the conclusion that the solar gases are electrically
charged--they contain an excess of particles of one kind--either positive
or negative, but almost surely negative.
The dipole component of the solar magnetic field can only be
attributed to the rotation of the charged sun as a whole, as Dr. Velikovsky
pointed out more than two decades ago (3).
The earth's magnetic field was tentatively ascribed to electric
charge on the earth nearly 100 years ago. In 1878, H. A. Rowland attempted
to calculate the electric potential the earth would have to sustain to
produce its observed magnetic field. His result--more than 4 x 1016 volts,
negative-- seemed to him so ridiculous that he rejected it immediately. An
electric charge of the necessary magnitude to give the earth such a
potential, wrote Rowland, "would undoubtedly tear the earth to pieces and
distribute its fragments to the uttermost parts of the universe (4)."
Such arguments have convinced geophysicists ever since Rowland's
time that an electric charge on the earth cannot be held responsible for
terrestrial magnetism.
Most recently, it has been fashionable to rest content with the
so-called dynamo theory as an explanation for the earth's magnetic field.
It is supposed that the field is generated by motions in the molten core of
the earth. No one, however, has yet been able to show how electric
currents might be produced by such motions.
Professor James Warwick, of the University of Colorado, recently
pointed out that the "dynamo theory has not yet successfully predicted any
cosmical [magnetic] fields. Its use today rests on the assumption that no
alternative theory corresponds more closely to observations (5)."
[Warwick's italics]
Even stronger objection to the dynamo theory is implied in this
remark by Palmer Dyal and Curtis W. Parkin of NASA's Ames Research Center:
"No rigorous theory has evolved that satisfactorily explains the earth's
permanent magnetic field (6)." "Satisfactorily," of course, means without
acknowledging the electric charge of the earth.
Before proceeding, let us consider Rowland's notion that an
enormous electric charge must blow the earth to smithereens. This is the
same idea advanced by Donald Menzel in 1952 to add zest to his
"quantitative refutation of Velikovsky's wild hypothesis" that the sun is
electrically charged (7).
In the first place, as Professor Fernando Sanford pointed out 40
years ago, "[Such] conclusions are all based upon the assumption that
electric charges are held to conductors by [gravity] ... If this assumption
were correct, it would be impossible to give a negative charge to any small
conductor while in the gravitation field of the earth (8)."
Sanford also pointed out that "a soap bubble and a platinum sphere
of the same diameter, if joined by a connecting wire and charged from the
same source, will take equal charges. This shows conclusively that
whatever the force may be which holds electrons to a charged conductor it
is not a force which acts between the electrons and the atoms of the
conductor. This being the case, the outward pressure of the charge upon a
conductor will have no tendency to pull the conductor apart."
The earth's atmospheric electric field has been the subject of
controversy ever since it was discovered, about 200 years ago. At issue is
the question of where resides the electric charge responsible for
it--negative charge on the earth itself, or positive charge high in the
atmosphere?
In 1803 Professor Erman, of Berlin, demonstrated the negative
charge of the earth by a simple experiment. He found that a gold-leaf
electroscope fitted with a short, pointed collecting rod showed positive
electrification when he first grounded it and then raised it a few feet in
the air. When he discharged it to the ground while holding it in the upper
position and then lowered it, it showed negative electrification. After he
placed a ball over the collecting rod--even after he placed the entire
apparatus inside a sealed glass tube--and found the same results, he
concluded, correctly, that the effects observed were due to electrical
induction from a negatively charged earth (9).
Erman's findings were derided, then promptly forgotten, even though
only one year later two balloonists were mystified, when their collector
and electroscope gathered only negative charge from high-level air, instead
of the positive charge they expected (10).
In 1836 Peltier, on the basis of experiments similar to but rather
more elegant than Erman's, came to the same conclusion: the earth is
negatively charged, and this charge gives rise to the atmospheric electric
field (11).
Through all the years since, no one has come up with a more
plausible theory of atmospheric electricity than that of Erman and Peltier.
Time after time, scientists have tried by one means or another to detect an
excess of positive charge high in the atmosphere, but always in vain. (In
Scientific American for March 1972, Professor A. D. Moore, writing on the
subject of "Electro-statics," states: "The atmosphere of the earth is
somehow supplied with a positive charge that sets up a downward electric
field amounting to between 100 and 500 volts per meter on a clear day." One
might question the efficacy of "somehow" as an explanation; but perhaps it
suffices for a phenomenon whose existence no one has been able to
demonstrate.)
In the closing years of the nineteenth century the electrical
genius Nikola Tesia built and operated an electrical observatory in the
Colorado mountains. Very early in his researches he proved that the earth
harbors enormous numbers of free electrons. One of his obsessions at the
time was to transmit electric waves through the ground. He reasoned that
if the earth were not negatively charged, it would act as a vast sink into
which enormous amounts of electricity would have to be injected to bring it
to a state where it would vibrate electrically. He discovered that the
necessary electrification was already present in great abundance (12).
Tesla's finding was recently--and quite inadvertently--repeated for
the moon. In Nature for November 12, 1971, Winfield Salisbury and Darrell
Fernald, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, reported that they
had received signals from the command module of the Apollo 15 flight at a
time when it was behind the moon. The signals had been carried around the
curvature of the supposedly radio-opaque moon by electric waves in the
moon's surface layers (13).
If then the sun, the moon, and the earth are electrified bodies,
how may we square this fact with the ubiquitous presence of plasma in the
solar system?
One is nagged by the suspicion that F. A. Lindemann was not
entirely mistaken concerning free (excess) charges on the sun when he wrote
as follows in 1919: "It is easy to show that appreciable electrostatic
forces cannot exist on the sun. The outer layers ... must certainly be
highly ionized ... so that any charges on the sun as a whole would rapidly
be neutralized by the emission of ions (14)." In other words, the mutual
electrical repulsions among excess like charges must drive them outward and
away from the sun.
Lindemann went on to assume that the electric forces must be
balanced by gravitational forces --the concept later shown to be invalid by
Sanford. But if we neglect gravity, the argument seems to lead to the
conclusion that the sun's potential can only be zero, instead of the few
thousand volts calculated by Lindemann.
Furthermore, Lindemann's case seems to gain from our present
knowledge of. the inter-planetary medium. Surely a conducting plasma
pervading space can only facilitate the dissipation of excess charge by the
sun.
But Lindemann's argument is sound only if two unstated assumptions
are valid:
1. The interplanetary medium is devoid of electrical strain the
plasma harbors no electric potential of its own - and can therefore serve
as a sink for excess solar charges; and
2. The sun's electric charge is not continually renewed via
electric currents.
I propose to challenge both these assumptions. However, as the
reader may already surmise, this can be done only at the cost of
challenging astrophysical dogmas more precious than that which denies the
sun and the planets electrostatic charge.
I offer what follows merely as a very brief summary of my own
notions as to how and why the solar system is electrified in spite of all
arguments that it can't be.
NOTES
3. Velikovsky, Cosmos Without Gravitation (Scripta Academica
Hierosolymitana, 1946), p 18.
4. H. A. Rowland, American Journal of Science, (3)15 (1878), 30-38; cited
by F. Sanford, Terrestrial Electricity (Stanford University Press, 193 1),
P. 79.
5. J. W. Warwick, Phys. Earth Planet. Interiors, 4 (North-Holland,
1911), p 229.
6. P. Dyal and C. W. Pirkin, Scientific American (August, 1971),66.
7. D. Menzel, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 96
(1952) 525.
8. F. Sanford, Terrestrial Electricity (Stanford University Press, 1931),
p. 80.
9. Gilbert's Annalen, 15 (1803), 386; cited by Sanford, ibid., p. 106.
10. F. Sanford, op. cit., p. 107.
11. Ibid., p. 107.
12. J. O'Neil, Prodigal Genius - The Life of Nikola Tesla (Ives Washburn,
1944), 178.
13. Science News (November 20, 1971).
14. F. A. Lindemann, Philosophical Magazine, Series 6, Vol. 38, No. 228
(December, 1919), 674.
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The late Ralph Juergens was a civil engineer living in Flagstaff, Arizona,
and was formerly associate editor of a McGraw-Hill technical publication.
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PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE--
http://www.kronia.com/~kronia/
Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics:
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
http://nt.e-z.net/mikamar/default.html
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The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of an intense discussion
that has been going on for several years within a community of scholars
interested in astral catastrophics. We have initially narrowed our focus
to supporting a reconstruction of recent planetary dislocations that ended
a universally remembered "Golden Age." Serious readers must allow some
time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for a
relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and
information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher,
but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation
that may be included in the articles. Again, we welcome your comments and
responses, and any supporting information or relevant submissions.
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Michael Armstrong
Mikamar Publishing
mikamar@e-z.net