THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL III, No. 12 Aug 31, 1999 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS PARADIGMS AND IDEOLOGIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Mel Acheson BY JOVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Dave Talbott ASTROBIOLOGY . . . . . Ev Cochrane, Dwardu Cardona, Dave Talbott CHLORINE DISCOVERY NEAR IO . . . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- PARADIGMS AND IDEOLOGIES By Mel Acheson I get newsletters from several think tanks. A recent one contained an article analyzing the effects of "ignorant masses" and "expert elites" on public policy. One paragraph described a political dynamic which, with the substitution of only two words, also occurs in science. In the following quote, I've substituted the appropriate sense of [science] for the author's use of "politics" and [paradigm] for "ideology'. [A paradigm] "constrains" [scientific] attitudes-imposing conceptual consistency on them, but at the cost of screening out information that would undermine doctrinaire conclusions. This is unavoidable if [paradigms] are to accomplish their cognitive purpose: making sense of the otherwise incomprehensible world of [science]. The [believer in a paradigm] is able to absorb more [scientific] information because his preset convictions allow him to better organize data-convenient data, at least-than can members of the [scientifically] innocent mass public. But part and parcel of the [paradigm believer's] ability to assimilate self-confirming data is the ability, and the need, to dismiss conflicting data-and to condemn their purveyors as stupid or evil. If one's [paradigmatic] opponents were merely mistaken, one would be obliged to study and rebut their erroneous ideas, and that would undermine the time-saving convenience of one's own [paradigm]. Opponents must be written off entirely if their ideas are to be safely ignored. Thus, animating the most sophisticated of [paradigm believers] is usually the unquestioned assumption that no decent, caring person would oppose [statements derived from the paradigm]…. ("Public Ignorance and Democracy" by Jeffrey Friedman. CATO Policy Report, July/August 1999, V. XXI, No. 4, p. 11.) But this need to write off opponents is not a necessity inherent in the nature of paradigms. It's an invasive need, carried unconsciously into the competition of paradigms under the character armor (chronic personality rigidities) of the participants. Tolerating other paradigms carries just as much (or as little) logical necessity. But the frequent choice of intolerant attitudes reveals something about the nature of scientists. Paradigms in science and ideologies in politics are expressions of the underlying nature of human cognition: the ability to recognize patterns of intelligibility. In a complex world about which we have limited experience, there can be more than one way to make sense of it. The history of ideas provides a long list of paradigms and ideologies proposed and imposed, adopted and abandoned, revived, revised, and ignored. Some ways of making sense work better than others for accomplishing the goals we want. But that is an evaluation from utility. The political dynamic described above is an evaluation from righteousness. The switch from "does it work?" to "are you right?" is also the expression of an underlying nature, but one not of cognition but of anxiety. The (cognitive) values of "right" or "correct" are largely defined by and limited to the paradigms themselves, but they are applied to other paradigms with the non-rational necessity of a primal fear and guilt. What began as a purely intellectual activity is transformed under the heat and pressure of a deep-seated terror into a moralistic and religiose caricature of religious activity. "[M]aking sense of the otherwise incomprehensible world" is an activity quite different from being right. There are more paradigms than a person has time to study, and there's no inherent necessity to write them off or even to rebut them in order to pursue a chosen one. Writing them off is surrendering to the invasion of fear and abandoning your responsibility, freedom, and power to make what you can of your own paradigm. Mel Acheson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------- BY JOVE By Dave Talbott [The following comments are excerpted from the Kronia electronic discussion group and should be read in conjunction with other published articles.] "Saturn" (the Universal Monarch) has both elder and younger aspects. I think it may have been Macrobius who said that the younger Saturn is Jupiter and the elder Jupiter is Saturn. (Be that as it may, I didn't invent the idea!) :>). The principle is inherent in Greek approaches to the two gods. Though Kronos and Zeus were clearly two different planets in Greek times, their biographies nevertheless overlap. Zeus is acknowledged to be the younger form of Kronos, of course. However, the two aspects are impossible to miss: Kronos is never portrayed as a victor over world-threatening dragons of darkness. You see the same thing in the relationship of Osiris to Ra. Osiris is inseparably connected to Ra as the son of Ra, and the "second Ra", but he is certainly not IDENTICAL to Ra. The Egyptians remembered Atum-Ra as the central sun presiding over the creation and the First Time; and they gave detailed accounts of the god's first appearance. No such story is told of Osiris. Conversely, Ra has virtually disappeared in connection with the Osiris story, as recounted in the Sed Festival ritual and numerous other accounts. This is a story of cosmic transition - death, dismemberment, resurrection, and transfiguration. For all intents and purposes Atum-Ra is not even around at the more critical junctures, any more than Anu or Shamash are involved in the cosmic ordeal confronting Marduk (Jupiter) in the Babylonian Akitu festival. (Anu has already fled the scene when Marduk confronts the dragon Tiamat.) Nor do any of the great "sun" gods - with whom the planet Saturn was identified - figure directly in this "second half of the story". It is always the younger form of the Universal Monarch that we see emerging victorious from the period of cosmic darkness. At some point you have to reckon with the underlying pattern here, for which there MUST be an explanation. It is interesting to note that the Babylonian priests of Marduk/Jupiter, in listing various tribal names of the god, include the name Asar, which happens to be the name of the Egyptian Osiris. Taken alone, I would not make a point of this, nor of the fact that various Egyptologists (among them, E.A.W. Budge) HAVE linked Osiris to Jupiter. The line of reasoning is really much more fundamental and based on world patterns which do not seem to allow for any other identification. Who could deny that the best-known Jupiter figures are "born" from Saturn- figures, and are seen as the younger and triumphant forms of the father. Possible physical explanations for the sequence may vary, but I do not see how the fundamental paternal relationship could be denied. And in ancient myth, the idea "to be born from" is a very literal idea, one certainly not suggestive of a personality arriving from elsewhere in the sky. The seeming paradox is actually the key. Are we dealing with one sovereign power, or two? The fact that both answers are correct is a direct pointer to the solution. One mythical figure progressively separates into two aspects precisely because these two aspects became two separate planets. It was no doubt easy for the Greeks to see Kronos and Jupiter as separate, even warring powers, despite their paternity. It was easy to identify Kronos, the displaced form, with the powers of cosmic rebellion, because the very existence of two different planets worked against the idea of one underlying personality. But the Egyptian material, of course, preceded all observational astronomy and all ideas of separate "planets". So the emphasis is naturally on the manifestation of the elder in the new form of the younger. Nevertheless, you will still find in Greek sources many indications of the original idea - one sovereign power manifesting himself in a succession of "forms". In Orphic cosmology Dionysos will be seen as the supreme power finding form in successive personalities or "bodies" of the primary gods. Before the dismemberment of Dionysos at the hands of the Titans, "he became a youthful Zeus, an aged Kronos, a babe, a youth". In the pairing of Kronos and Zeus you will never find the "elder" and "youthful" roles reversed, despite the fact that Zeus was often presented as a sovereign power encompassing all of the creative roles elsewhere reserved for Kronos (including even the "castration" of his own father, a story element in the bios of BOTH gods). An interesting comparison would be the Hindu Brahma, though the Hindus achieved a far more elevated philosophical concept. In the course of creation, Brahma manifest himself in a succession of forms, DISCARDING PREVIOUS BODIES in the juncture between world ages. That is one very natural interpretation in the sequence we are dealing with. Because the story clearly arose before astronomy and was told without reference to remote planets on predictable orbits, it can help to illuminate those traditions which WERE influenced by later planetary identities. The new form of the god displaced in the world-changing crisis is always Jupiter. And that is the fundamental character of the Egyptian god Osiris, I believe. DWARDU CARDONA ASKS: If Cochrane is correct in that Indra was Mars (with which you agree), then so must have been the Greek Zeus. Their mythological profile is identical. Who, then, in your scenario, would stand for the planet Jupiter in Greek mythology? TALBOTT RESPONDS: There is no question in my mind about the equation of Indra and Mars. In the case of Indra, there are so many documented Martian attributes and episodes as to make the case airtight. Indra is a more authentic, more obviously cosmic version of Heracles, the latter's cosmic stature being progressively diminished over time (as was Indra's in many later traditions). For several years I tentatively accepted the conventional scholarly identification of Indra with Zeus. It was in the early eighties that Ev suggested an identity with Mars, and that made me curious enough to investigate. The result was a hands-down victory for the Martian identity. Moreover, the entire basis for any equation with Zeus collapsed. Oversimplifying, it is the difference between a sovereign god (Jupiter) who HURLS lightning as a weapon against chaos, and a god (Mars) who IS or PERSONIFIES the lightning-weapon itself- this "lightning" being represented in the form of an arrow, dart, sword, spear, trident, phallus, etc. Mars is the vertical, electrically active, piercing weapon in service of the sovereign power. Such a statement cannot be made about Zeus, who IS the sovereign power, allowing for not even a hint of another master. Zeus, of course, was the Greek name of the planet Jupiter. While numerous warrior-hero figures were progressively brought down to earth, or humanized and diminished over time, there was also a tendency for the sovereign power to fall into the background, due to his more passive role. (Contrast the incredibly active role of the warrior-hero, which provided endless story content for the myth-makers.) This growing vacuum was often filled by the most revered hero-figure. You will see these tendencies clearly in the case of Indra. While his worshippers sought to elevate his stature above all other gods, the less devout chroniclers progressively reduced his stature to a more human, or even demonic form. But from start to finish the STORY is the story of Mars. Dave Talbott ---------------------------------------------- ASTROBIOLOGY by Ev Cochrane, Dwardu Cardona, and Dave Talbott EV COCHRANE WROTE: I have long argued for the possibility that microorganisms migrated between Mars and Earth. Such a cross-seeding is much easier to imagine, needless to say, if the two planets were close neighbors only a few thousand years ago, as per the Saturn theory. DWARDU CARDONA OBJECTS: What I would like to know is how such cross-seeding between Earth and Mars could have taken place during Saturnian configuration times when, according to Talbott, Mars was raining red-hot debris on Earth in that continuous stream that was the polar column. DAVE TALBOTT REPLIES: Dwardu, I think I may have misled you with something I said about the "redness" of Mars. I believe that removal of Martian atmosphere and oceans preceded its acquisition of the reddish hue with which so many Martian figures are associated. The very first forms of the warrior-hero do not seem to suggest this redness, but in the case of the more active phases of the figure, including his terrible aspect (Set, Typhon), redness is a dominant feature. Rather than speak of "red-hot" material streaming toward the Earth, I've expressed the suspicion that lower levels of Arctic or Antarctic ice include water and dust pulled from Mars. More than one rock identified as Martian has been removed form Antarctic ice, but that does not take into account any of the much larger volume of Martian rock that would have been removed from deeper levels by an electrical discharge capable of creating the stupendous Valles Marineris (the deeper material would lack the chemical signature of surface material identified by the Viking probes of the soil). >From what Wal has described dynamically in electrical interactions, I can imagine active transport of atmosphere and dust without necessarily killing off all microorganisms. Dave Talbott ---------------------------------------------- CHLORINE DISCOVERY NEAR IO by Wal Thornhill I am forwarding the appended important report from the Galileo team, along with my comments. But first, here is a copy of an answer I sent to Dave Davis and Dwardu on the 5th of April this year: To Dave and Dwardu, . . . you will no doubt be interested to know that, according to Louis Kervran's nuclear cookery book, salt (sodium chloride) has as its main ingredient - nitrogen! Both sodium and chlorine are formed in the correct one to one ratio by a series of low energy nuclear transformations, beginning with N2. So, the ingredients for sulfur and salt deposits are present in our own atmosphere! Velikovsky believed that Saturn was a source of chlorine, presumably because there is not enough chlorine in terrestrial rocks to account for the enormous quantity present as sodium chloride in our oceans. Also, he mentioned that there are legends concerning precipitation of salty water. That would be direct confirmation of the extraterrestrial or atmospheric source of sodium chloride since it is impossible to evaporate NaCl along with water in the usual weather cycle. With Kervran's new insight, Saturn need not be the direct origin of chlorine. The fact that Saturn's large moon, Titan, has a nitrogen atmosphere may indicate that Saturn is a source of nitrogen instead. In fact, Saturn is known to have an atmosphere of hydrogen, ammonia and methane which provides all of the raw materials necessary, along with oxygen and nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere, to produce the salty water, hydrocarbons and sulphur mentioned in association with the activities of the Saturnian Configuration. That is, if we accept Prof. Kervran's nuclear cook book. And, as I've said before, his work fits quite well with Sansbury's new physics. Wal Thornhill >From the NASA article: CHLORINE DISCOVERY NEAR JUPITER MOON HINTS AT SALT PRESENCE ON SURFACE The recent discovery of chlorine above Io, a moon of Jupiter, indicates the odd object may hold common table salt, according to two University of Colorado at Boulder scientists. THORNHILL COMMENTS: This discovery is important because of the unsolved mystery of how our seas became salty. Velikovsky noted that there is not enough chlorine in terrestrial rocks to account for its abundance in sea salt. NASA: Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Nick Schneider and former post- doctoral researcher Michael Kueppers of CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. They believe the presence of chlorine -- an ingredient of sodium chloride, or common table salt -- is related to the violent volcanic activity. THORNHILL: Now, as I have argued in an earlier post we may safely discard NASA's description of the jets on Io as "volcanoes". They are plasma jets caused by powerful electrical discharges between Jupiter and Io, impinging on Io's surface. The material being electrically "machined" from Io's surface will also undergo nuclear transformations since the plasma jets are like scaled up particle accelerators. As I have said before, the Gallilean satellites of Jupiter seem to be characterised by an abundance of water ice in their makeup, so we may safely assume that Io is no exception. The nuclear reaction that converts 2 atoms of oxygen into one atom of sulphur is a trick that the lowly thiobacillus can perform on Earth. So that simple nuclear fusion is sure to be the source of the red and yellow global sulphur deposits that surface Io. (Notice that the ridges on Europa are also a reddish colour which I attribute to localised sulphur production by interplanetary lightning travelling across the surface of that moon in the recent past). NASA: "In fact, Io seems to have a higher proportion of chlorine in its atmosphere than any other object in the solar system," said Schneider. THORNHILL: Chlorine is highly chemically reactive and so would not be expected in atmospheres unless it is being replenished (like the ozone layer on Earth). NASA: "The huge volcanoes on Io are similar to giant geysers, spewing material hundreds of miles into the atmosphere, said Schneider. The two researchers used a telescope at the National Science Foundation's Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to make their findings, including the discovery of chlorine emissions in the doughnut-shaped ring of charged particles surrounding Jupiter known as the Io torus. THORNHILL: The volcano story is . . . required only because electrical discharge effects are denied by astronomers. What kind of volcano has a vent that glows at the temperature of a lightning arc? It was described as the hottest spot in the solar system apart from the solar photosphere! NASA: The Io torus, which is five times larger than Jupiter, glows with a power greater than all the electricity generated on Earth, he said. THORNHILL: The problem for astronomers is to explain where the power is coming from and why it is manifest in this way. In the Electric Universe model the power comes from the galaxy and is often delivered in tori that encircle stars, planets and moons. The energy intercepted by Jupiter and its moons is a small fraction of the galactic energy on its way to light up the Sun. The same energy source creates the 1500 mph winds on Neptune and creates similar electric geysers on its frozen moon, Triton. NASA: Prior to the discovery of chlorine, the only elements observed escaping from Io's atmosphere were sulfur, oxygen, sodium and potassium. THORNHILL: Sulphur and chlorine are next door neighbours in the periodic table. Based on the pioneering work of Prof. Louis Kervran, each of the low atomic weight elements listed are strongly involved in biological nuclear transmutations so it is reasonable to assume that chlorine, like the abundant and obvious sulphur deposits on Io, will be created in the energetic environment of a plasma arc impinging on water ice. NASA: The most common inorganic compounds of chlorine are sodium chloride, which is ordinary table salt, and hydrogen chloride, a colorless gas that is emitted from the volcanoes, said Schneider. "It's not yet clear how salt would form on Io," said Schneider. "Unlike Earth, Io has no oceans that could evaporate and leave behind salt deposits. But it is possible that underground rivers or aquifers fuel Io's volcanoes and may carry dissolved salt. Salt also could be made by chemical reactions in Io's atmosphere." THORNHILL: The sodium and chlorine would be created from other lighter elements in Io's arcs and most would combine and fall back to the surface as salt. NASA: The recently discovered chlorine may be emitted by Io's volcanoes or may come from the breakup of salt on Io's surface by charged particles in the torus that constantly bombard the surface of the moon. THORNHILL: In the electrical model there is no need for a source of chlorine intrinsic to Io. The discovery is very important from Velikovsky's point of view. He said that the water of The Flood, following the breakup of the Saturnian system, was salty. The most probable origin of the bulk of the salt in our oceans is from the nuclear reactions that took place in the powerful cosmic electrical discharges involving the atmosphere of proto-Saturn. I will be interested to see the isotopic makeup of the chlorine at Io. On earth the ratio is Cl37:Cl35 = 1:3 NASA: The discovery also has implications for the chemistry of Io's atmosphere, he said. On Earth, relatively small amounts of chlorine from human-made CFC's play a major role in breaking down fragile molecules like ozone in the atmosphere. "My guess is that we won't find any ozone on Io," said Schneider, noting the proportion of chlorine in Io's atmosphere is a billion times greater than that on Earth. THORNHILL: We are not just talking lab chemistry here. Just as you get ozone from a photocopier because of the high electrostatic fields employed in the xerox process, you will get ozone on Io because of the presence of oxygen and powerful electrostatic effects in its thin atmosphere. NASA: "Chemical reactions may actually produce salt in the atmosphere," he said. "The study of chlorine on Io is sure to benefit from the extensive research on Earth's ozone hole, which in turn benefited from the study of chlorine in the atmospheres of other planets." THORNHILL: This has all of the hallmarks of a paid political announcement - an attempt to relate the faulty science NASA does in deep space to the flawed science back home on Earth. Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com 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/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovskian/ http://www.bearfabrique.org http://www.grazian-archive.com/ Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.e-z.net/~mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our focus is on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the 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. We welcome your comments and responses. [EMAIL PROTECTED] New readers are referred to earlier issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above. Go to the free newsletter page and double click on the image of Thoth, the Egyptian God of Knowledge, to access the back issues.
