The Crowns of Sages and Warrior-Kings (Part 3)

[David Talbott]

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To avoid redundancy, I'll assume here that readers have seen the previous two Installments preceding this thread.

In this reconstruction, the movement of Mars along the shared axis produced dramatic changes in the visual appearance of the planet. Mars is the small red body in these images, and the discharging "star" in the center of Saturn is Venus. Due to perspective, when Mars moved close to Earth, it dropped visually from the center of the configuration. This is the effect of "parallax": since Mars is about half the diameter of the Earth, the viewer at the 30th (or even the 45th parallel or somewhat higher), would see over Mars. But for each degree of visual descent, it would grow much larger due to the viewers line of sight close to the axis. This appearance of dropping below Venus would occur even if the planet remained squarely on the shared axis (which it did not).

Here are three snapshots illustrating the changes in the appearance of the configuration as Mars descended and a stream of luminous material (dusty plasma) stretched between Mars and Venus. In other words, the center of attention in this phase was not a discharge between Venus and Saturn, but electrical activity between Venus and Mars:

Various conical crowns worn by the great warrior-kings of antiquity pose a persistent unsolved mystery. What I intend to demonstrate is that a simple reconstruction will explain the entire spectrum of symbols, down to innumerable finite details. As a teaser, I'll leave with you the illustration below, developed from the logic and perspective of the model. This is just a first illustration of the way in which small changes in planetary position and in the shape of the discharge streamer between Mars and Venus produced variations directly reflected in the ancient forms of caps and conical crowns. (These relationships should be viewed at a higher resolution by clicking on the image).

The first image is from ancient Mesopotamia, while the second two are the Red Crown and White Crown from Egypt, and the fourth shows the cap of the Persian warrior Mithra. But will the details provided by the ancient cultures support the proposition at stake here--that these and numerous other crowns simply captured the nuances of a celestial formation evolving through subtle changes? Generally, when a flawed or blatantly incorrect hypotheses is subjected to critical analysis, it is at the level of undeniable detail that it unravels. But If we're on the right track, then as the tests become more specific, the results should become all the more compelling.

David Talbott

[David Talbott]

The White Crown of Egypt

As noted above, the planetary configuration was dynamic. Every relative movement of the participating planets produced significant shifts in its appearance from Earth.

In the movements of the bodies, the most active form was the planet Mars, both because of its motion along the axis, and its displacement from the axis (initially a modest displacement, but much more extreme as the general instability of the configuration grew). Additionally, a discharge between Mars and Venus and between Mars and the Earth must be tracked and tested against the global field of evidence.

To avoid misunderstanding, it’s essential that you know how the image of the conical formation between Mars and Venus (shown above) was constructed. It was based explicitly on the “White Crown” of Egypt, as a test to determine whether the interpretation given by our reconstruction would hold up under the closest scrutiny, in which both the larger contexts (the universal themes) and all available information from Egypt could be applied to the analysis. The results are, in fact, stunning. Everything that the Egyptians themselves said about the White Crown, though pointing to nothing in natural experience today, is precisely what we should expect under the concrete model proposed.

Below is a 3-dimensional rendering done for me by Rick Smith in 2000, with arrow pointing to Earth. (click on image for higher res):


In this case, I asked Rick to include the crescent on Saturn, which arrived in close connection with the events we shall discuss here. If you grant that the shared rotational axis placed the aligned planets in the north polar sky, then north would be almost directly to the right of Earth, and the Sun, illuminating a hemisphere of Saturn, would be in its “noon” position:

Evaluating this reconstruction requires one to compare every attribute and implication of the model to the specific data given by the Egyptian symbolists themselves. Within the context of the model, what would we look for as acid tests? A red sphere at the base of the crown? Identity of the crown itself with the mother goddess? Original identity of the wearer as the “pupil” of the Eye? Appearance of the crown at the moment of the warrior’s descent, or “birth”? By answering the obvious questions, other, even more stringent tests, will arise.

Consider, for example: For an observer on Earth you cannot create the image of the White Crown above by placing Mars squarely on the axis. It can only be produced by moving Mars off axis slightly. And that movement carries with it inescapable implications. Does the Egyptian evidence explicitly support the precise movement required by this off-axis position? It’s one thing to construct a three-dimensional model based on a single Egyptian symbol. But it’s a quite different matter to confirm every implication that follows.

What, for example, would the "crown" look like as the view from earth moved toward an on-axis position? The movement is represented in the computer graphic below. The precise on-axis position is given on the far right:

Click on the image to get a higher-resolution look. (I've tinted the images turquoise a bit because of a general association with turquoise or green, along with the "white" or gold [hieroglyphically, meaning "brilliance"] of the White Crown.)

As the observer moves to the on-axis position, the conical form has completely disappeared and all that is seen of the “crown” is a bright band around the red planet. So put yourself in the position of one determined to discover where the Egyptian evidence leads. In particular, what would you want to know when considering the three Egyptian symbols below? Would you not ask whether, against all apparent reason, the Egyptian symbolists recognized a hidden identity of these symbols with the White Crown?--

David Talbott

[David Talbott]

Returning to the Egyptian symbols noted at the conclusion of the previous post. Is it possible to test the proposed identity of the Aten, Uraeus Serpent, and Shen Bond? And more specifically, can it be demonstrated that these involve nothing more than an on-axis view of the White Crown that appears from an on-axis view.

As for the form on the left, the Aten, Egyptologists uniformly claim it means the Sun, giving no thought to explicit texts that make clear this was not the original meaning, only a later meaning when, in the absence of the original reference, the Sun progressively displaced or distorted various archetypal symbols. As a rule, Egyptologists will treat each of the three symbols above independently, as if no underlying identities are involved to give deeper meaning and context. The problem of identification is pervasive because, once the specialists identify the red sphere as the Sun, none of the distinctions inherent in the literal language makes any sense. The literal language is shouting at us about things never seen in our sky.

In the Egyptian illustration below, symbols of the Aten are repeated dozens of times. 

My contention is that the early Egyptian priests and artists knew very well that the three symbols I noted above meant the same thing. But Egyptologists will not even distinguish between the tight band and the red disk it encloses, though the texts themselves make crystal clear that the two are separate “personalities” in dynamic relationship. The band is the goddess, and the red disk is the warrior king, an identity that holds up through all of the variations in the symbolism. Of course, the fact that the goddess and the warrior-king came to be conceived in human form could only add distortions to the original ideas rooted in observed formations; but it did not destroy them.

By following the implications of the model, we are drawn back to the original relationship of these forms to the primeval Sun. In common treatments of Egyptian religion, this theme is as confused as any subject could get. So how do we determine the predictive ability of our reconstruction? This is where the tests become increasingly demanding, making certain that the model will be refuted if we’ve gotten seriously off track. According to the model, the three forms above must refer to the central eye, heart and soul of the primeval Sun. Seen inside, or in front of that central star was a small red sphere, the innermost, masculine heart of the radiant feminine heart. If for any reason you do not see that this is a testable and inescapable prediction of the model, then you need to speak up, and I’ll see if I can clarify the point.

Four immediate tests:

Was the Aten the mother goddess? The Aten was, in fact, synonymous with the womb of the mother goddess. Hieroglyphically, it was a band, whose meanings include “consort,” “mistress.” “My Aten has given me birth,” states the warrior-king.

Was the Aten an enclosing band around the “head” of the warrior king? Yes, the king’s head is enclosed by and protected by the Aten. A title of the warrior-king Horus, prototype of the warrior-king on earth, is thus, “the dweller in his Aten.”

Was the Uraeus serpent (second image of the three shown above) the mother goddess? Yes, the Uraeus was the most common symbol for “goddess” throughout all of Egypt. As we should expect, this serpent was regularly presented as a tight band around the head of the warrior-king. And need I repeat that nothing in the character of the Sun would give any meaning to this relationship?

Was the Shen-bond a symbol of the goddess? Yes, Egyptologists themselves acknowledge that it is synonymous with the womb of the mother goddess, beginning with the primeval form of Nut, “mother of the gods.” Nut was the “womb of the sky, with the power of the seed of the god which is in it.” Thus, the Shen-bond appears as a cord tied around the forehead of the warrior-king, in exactly the fashion of the Uraeus serpent, and in many instances the two are juxtaposed so completely as to remove any possibility of separating the two. See the image of Amenhotep III below, in which the Uraeus entwines about the Shen-cord:

(Here I must caution the reader from drawing too many conclusion from the limited narrative so far. Why was the band of the Aten also conceived as a fiery serpent and an encircling cord? The answer to that question comes from what happens to the Aten-Uraeus-Shen, which involves a much larger story. Getting to that phase of discussion will require us to take up the subsequent spiraling of the material stretching between Mars and Venus, the very stream that, in the phase under consideration, took the form of the conical crown. It is the later spiraling form that will fully explain why the Crown came to be celebrated as a spiraling serpent and a coil of rope.)

And let us not forget one of the most demanding requirements at this juncture. If our reconstruction is correct, the Egyptians must have known something utterly preposterous (when seen through the lens of modern perception). They must have known that all three symbols were nothing else than an appearance of the White Crown. On this point, our model is uncompromising. The radiant band is what observers on earth saw when looking straight up the axis of the White Crown, as demonstrated in our 3-dimensional rendering of the Crown viewed on axis:

(See the stills from the animated sequence, posted above, 4-23-08)

In the Theban ritual, the gods Horus and Set say to the newly crowned king, “I will stablish the crown upon thy head, even like the Aten on the head of Amen-Ra.” The White Crown and the Aten-band are the same thing. And in no uncertain terms the texts identify the crown as the goddess, precisely as predicted by our reconstruction. Thus, the Pyramid Texts say, “I know my mother, I have not forgotten my mother, the White Crown.”

Seeing this in terms of our model, it can only mean that the “birth” of the warrior-king (the visual descent of the red sphere, bringing the full crown into view) is nothing else than the “crowning” of the newborn king--i.e,, the king is “born” fully crowned, which is exactly the language used by R.T. Rundle Clark in discussing the symbolism of the White Crown and the rites of kingship. Osiris “emerged fully crowned from his mother’s womb.” Again, it could not have been otherwise according to our reconstruction. And until seen in these concrete terms, the language will appear entirely nonsensical.

But if the Aten is simply the White Crown seen from the on-axis vantage point, and the Uraeus serpent, wrapped around the “forehead” of the warrior king is precisely the same thing, then another “absurd” identity is forced upon us. The priests, knowing the story, must have known that the conical White Crown was a form taken by the very goddess who became the fire-spitting Uraeus. The Pyramid Texts say: “Oh King [in the king’s role as the warrior Horus], the dread of you is in the intact Eye of Horus, the White Crown, the serpent-goddess who is in Nekheb.” So what can only appear as gibberish in standard interpretations actually harbors a unified story. The very relationships and identities required by the reconstruction are in fact confirmed in explicit terms. And that’s a good reason to wonder just how far this predictive power of the reconstruction might take us.

David Talbott

[David Talbott]

White Crown and Ostrich Feather

Let’s start with the mystery of the Egyptian god Shu and his relationship to the White Crown. I want to demonstrate why the testing of predictive power must follow specific tenets of the reconstruction into the finest details available.

Our reconstruction identifies Shu as the fist form of the warrior-hero Mars, originally seen as a small reddish sphere inside the “Great Star,” which is Venus. The Great Star is globally depicted in the center of a larger circle or sphere (whom we identify as Saturn), in what I’ve called the “Great Conjunction of the Golden Age.”

To focus on the god's relationship to the White Crown, we must temporarily set aside the most familiar role of the god. Following the first episodes of creation, the god becomes the pillar of the sky--a role repeatedly assigned to warrior figures worldwide (a subject we’ll take up when we get to the world mountain). But right now we want to look closely at the relationship of the god to the “creator” Atum or Atum- Ra and to the goddess, whose first form (Tefnut) plays an essential role in the first phases of creation as well.

Curiously, the name for Shu was commonly written with a hieroglyph of an ostrich feather, and the ancient contexts suggest that this feather signified much more than the sound of the gods name:

Here is part of the enigma: Though Shu himself wears the ostrich feather, as seen above, and the complex of meanings clearly connect to the mythic “birth” of the god, the ostrich feather was, above all else, the hieroglyph of a goddess called Ma'at (Mayet). No one can tell us what a feather has to do either with the birth of Shu or the character of the goddess, but the vast symbolic role of the ostrich feather in Egyptian symbolism is undeniable. And since our reconstruction offers a concrete and testable interpretation of the White Crown worn by Shu, the closely-related "feather" could well be a window to even deeper layers of detail.

It happens that, way back in the early 70s, I formulated a “first guess” as to the meaning of the ostrich feather. The guess had to do with light falling onto a "White Crown" formation in the sky. I was a bit off the mark in envisioning the planetary arrangement giving rise to the formation, but the underlying concept seems to have been on target.

Early in the year 2000 I asked Rick Smith to provide me with a 3-D model to test out an interpretation of the White Crown that had crystalized over the previous decade or so. The casting of a crescent on Saturn would be very important to the exercise. Here is the view from space (arrow pointing to the Earth):

A closer look:

At noon the configuration would look like this:

But the punchline for discerning the root connection of the Ma’at-feather to the White Crown is the dual appearance of the configuration at sunset and sunrise:

Is it possible that the hieroglyphic ostrich feather signified the illuminated portion of the “White Crown” at opposite points in the daily cycle? This would, of course, make the ostrich feather inseparable from the White Crown, in diverse ways that would be certain to show up in wide-ranging symbolic associations. So the apparently absurd placement of the ostrich feather on two sides of the White Crown becomes more interesting--

At the very least one would have to say that this placement is “consistent with” our reconstruction. But to see that the imagery is more than just "consistent" with a model, the logic needs to be pursued to its conclusion. In ancient Egypt, one of the most oft-celebrated themes is that of a daily cycle, though virtually every symbol is filled with apparent contradictions and unanswered questions. If the Ma’at feather was in fact seen in the sky in the manner proposed, we would certainly expect to find the unique and symmetrical appearance at sunset and sunrise to be of particular interest. And in fact we do see, in innumerable celebrations of the daily cycle, that the Ma’at feather is duplicated and placed in opposition exactly as we would expect.

But that should not be the end of it either. In the model, the two illuminated portions of the crown (a full daily cycle) add up to the full crown. Strictly speaking, the two ostrich feathers must constitute the Crown. It’s a pretty hilarious concept: that a conical crown--authenticating the king’s role as avatar of the former warrior-king in the sky--would be equated with two ostrich feathers. But the question is forced by the line of reasoning. And it is readily answered by the Egyptian artists--


Exactly as the model would predict, the twin feathers form the White Crown, rising from the red disk of the Aten. (Yes, I do need to grab a color illustration for proper emphasis here.)

But remember that we set on this path by creating the White Crown in a 3-D model that cast light on a polar Saturn, producing a revolving crescent. At the midnight position of the crescent, the point at which the configuration was its brightest (clearly the most revered moment in the daily cycle), the configuration looks like this:

So here is another prediction that must be investigated. The model implies that the Egyptians should have remembered a concrete association of the White Crown and its red disk below, with a crescent-horn, the crown and disk resting between the two horns:

Whatever one may think of the image, it does make clear that artists conceived the red disk of the White Crown as resting on, and centered upon an upright pair of horns.

Note also how the mythical interpretation of the crescent as the horns of a bull encouraged the artists to fill in the natural detail:

Indeed, every unique and fully documented feature of the White Crown presents a striking accord with our model. And to register this point more completely I'll next go back to the beginning, to take up the concrete relationship of the Ma'at feather to the eye, heart, and soul of Atum. It's a baffling complex of make-believe, all completely disconnected from natural observation- -until it is seen in its relationship to dynamic formations in the heavens.

David Talbott

[David Talbott]

The "Weighing of the Heart"

Continuing the discussion of the White Crown and its special relationship to the “ostrich feather” that the Egyptians identified as a goddess--Ma’at.

The most reliable rule is to look first for the archaic and literal meanings, and to see whether, in their literal contexts, they confirm the predictive ability of the reconstruction. The subsequent evolution of human thought beyond these root meanings can then be traced to show the power of the archetype across the millennia, as human beings struggled to find meanings in words and symbols no longer connected to anything actually observed.

In the context of our reconstruction, the feather is inseparable from the White Crown. It is the illuminated portion of the White Crown at two critical junctures in the cycle of day and night: the sunset and sunrise appearances. From this tenet, numerous deductions follow that are every bit as testable as the features of the Crown noted in the posts above. These deductions would include:

Appearance of the feather with the appearance of the Crown.

Appearance of the feather with the first activity (birth) of the warrior hero. (In the Egyptian system, this first activity is personified by the god Shu.)

Inseparable identity of the feather with the central eye, heart, and soul of the Universal Sovereign.

Inseparable identity of the feather with the mother goddess.

Egyptian goddess Ma'at wearing the feather that was her essential identity

The goddess Ma'at and the feather are one and the same. But a mystery arises. Every self-respecting Egyptologist will tell you that the feather of Ma’at means “truth.” It was a symbol of “law and order,” particularly in matters of justice. Numerous references to the role of the feather in a ritual called the “weighing of the heart” underscore the sense of “final judgment.” Those who failed the test were assigned to oblivion, being devoured by the goddess Ammit or thrown into the fires of primeval chaos. Those who passed the test were allowed into the fields of the blessed.

Popular ideas about the feather underscore the importance of looking past the surface of the cultural expression to the radical core. The specialists have no idea how a feather rose to such prominence or became a hieroglyph for a goddess and for the birth of the god Shu.

But answers are available to us if we will go back to the myths and symbols of the “creation.” In the beginning the creator Atum stood alone in the celestial waters. The male and female principles that would arise had yet to be differentiated. Atum was the all-containing Unity, and what would become the first forms of the goddess and warrior-hero were nothing more than his central “heart” (undifferentiated feminine principle) and innermost ab-heart--the (masculine) heart or "heart of carnelian" enclosed within the feminine heart. Strictly synonymous with this heart-symbolism was the language of the god’s central Eye (unborn goddess) and the pupil of the Eye (unborn warrior-hero).

In the first events of creation, which I shall soon describe, instability, noise, and chaos are the prevalent condition. And yet out of these events, there arose, at least for a time, the remarkably stable condition of the White Crown, associated with the coming of a distinctive cycle of day and night, this cycle written in the heavens by the circling round of what appeared as a luminous feather upon the Crown. (See illustration in previous post.)

When Egyptian texts say that “Truth circles round,” the problem lies with the translation. It is the Ma’at feather that circles round, and the axis of its circling is the Crown itself, appearing as an emblem of order, stability, and most importantly, alignment. It’s an extraordinary thing to consider, but in the context of the remembered tumultuous events, this alignment of the Crown formation permitted the light of the Sun to divide the Crown vertically with a straight line, the demarcation of light and shadow. (Visual reference in the previous post is essential here.) It is the alignment, the “straightness” of this demarcation, that inspired the reverence for the feather, with its perfectly straight spine, set back to back as a symbol of two halves of the daily cycle. It was a mind-altering contrast to the confusion and disorder that preceded it (as I’ll explain).

Not just symbolically, but architecturally, we still say that what is aligned is “true”. And in our language of justice we say that what is “crooked” is not right. Out of the initial commotion of creation, the planetary configuration nevertheless found stability. It moved into balance, and this was the balance of visual alignment.

In the “weighing of the heart” ritual it was in fact a balance that was used, and the arms of the balance extended from a perfectly vertical pole. Often this very pole terminated in the feather-goddess Ma’at, as in the illustration below.

“Balance” was clearly a part of the symbolism that gave rise to the later language--the feather circling round, the feather of truth or cosmic alignment and balance--the unique characteristic of the configuration when it moved into a visual alignmen allowing the light of the Sun to cast a perfect “feather of Ma’at” onto the White Crown.

For this to to make sense, you must remember that to produce the image of the White Crown in our 3-D rendering, it was necessary to place Earth (or Mars, or both) slightly off axis. This would mean that the visual alignment required for the perfect “feather” to fall on the White Crown may not have been the norm. At least for a time, the norm may well have been a churning motion of the Crown suggestive of instability. In contrast, the arrival at a position of balance, which allowed the feather to turn symmetrically in a daily cycle would have been a wondrous thing to behold.

Did the Egyptian symbolists know that Ma’at originally appeared as the eye, heart and soul of Atum-Ra? Of this there can be no doubt, not only because Ma’at was called the “Eye of Ra” (as were virtually all Egyptian goddesses) but because the Eye and heart-soul were the same thing. In fact, the equation of feather and heart is the essential theme in the “weighing of the heart.” On one side of the balance the symbolists placed the “heart” of the deceased. On the other they placed a feather.

The ritual “weighing” of a heart and a feather on a balance thus established the ideal equivalence of the two in the Egyptian vision of the afterlife. As above so below; as before so again. It was the archetypal event in the lives of "gods" that established the model. In a remarkable display of celestial “balance,” the feminine heart of the primeval sun acquired the form of an ostrich feather, displayed symmetrically upon the White Crown in a daily cycle. (Again, reference to illustrations in the previous post is required here.)

In a few additional notes in the next day or two, I'll see if I can clarify the concrete sense in which the symmetrical feather of Ma'at meant a victory over the chaos-powers, a theme that affected all of the Egyptian images relating to the goddess and to the "weighing" of the heart.

David Talbott

[MGmirkin]

Note also how the mythical interpretation of the crescent as the horns of a bull encouraged the artists to fill in the natural detail:

I wonder, then, with respect to Hathor: is that how Hathor came to be regarded as the cow deity...?

(Hathor)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathor

Hathor was an ancient goddess, and was worshipped as a cow-deity from at least 2700 BC, during the second dynasty.

[...]

Hathor is referred to as She with Two Faces, which is not yet understood. Speculation about its meaning ranges from it being symbolic of life and afterlife to being the mirror and the face seen in it, but no clarification of this religious euphemism for the deity has arisen.

I think a clarification has just arisen...

In the Saturn model, it seems to be essentially the literal illumination of opposite faces of the proposed Venus-Mars+ discharge pathway.



With the full "white crown" (bowling pin shape)



probably being visible between the times when the left- and right-facing "feathers" (illumination of opposite faces of the discharge pathway) were in evidence? If that makes sense.

The name Hathor refers to the encirclement by her [...] of the god of the sky, Horus who was said to be her son.

There also seems to still be a mythological link back to the "encirclement" (crown motif) mentioned elsewhere...



Interesting,
~Michael Gmirkin

[MGmirkin]

Or, I suppose that if one wanted to go through the trouble, one might toss out the full "day" / "night" cycle of the white crown... (view from right to left, for reasons that should become relatively obvious.)

"Phases" of the white crown modeled as a day / night cycle, under a Saturnian interpretation. For discussion.

Helps make the final outcome(s) a bit more straightforward (my opinion)...

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

[David Talbott]

The twin aspects of various deities constitute a major puzzle for modern scholars. In the Saturn reconstruction, the play of light off a configuration in a daily cycle is fundamental to the imagery. The symmetry of sunset and sunrise appearances--rotating luminous feather on the White Crown, revolving crescent on Saturn--offers a direct and testable answer, though there is more to cosmic twin features than these attributes alone. (e.g., twin filaments of an axial Birkeland Current, flaring out at the upper termination.)

If you think of the revolving crescent as the "horns" of a cow or bull, the first thing to look for would be artistic renderings suggesting a duality that could not have been inspired by anything observed in nature--as in these two images, the first form Egypt, the second from Mesopotamia (gotta confirm that; memory fails):

The predicted meanings would include two halves of the daily cycle; and two halves of the celestial theater. Both predictions can be readily confirmed (are confirmed in The Saturn Myth). I do intend to discuss the crescent at length in these summaries.

Back-to-back twins, such as Isis-Nephthys, are acknowledged to signify two halves of the daily cycle. I'll see if I can put up a pic later today. Considering their identification with the White Crown, your surmise was on target Michael, though the revolving crescent adds a lot more to the subject as well.

David T

[moses]

The feather was the sunlit side of Saturn ? Which makes me wonder whether
this sunlit area increased of decreased over time ( years ). For instance, was
there a time when exactly half of Saturn was sunlit ?
Mo

[David Talbott]

The feather was the sunlit side of Saturn ? Which makes me wonder whether
this sunlit area increased of decreased over time ( years ). For instance, was
there a time when exactly half of Saturn was sunlit ?
Mo

Mo, if you'll look back over the discussion above, you'll see that the "feather" was the sunlit portion of the White Crown. The crescent on Saturn is another matter. It simply means the observer on Earth was not seeing the entire sunlit hemisphere of Saturn that is evident in the external view of the configuration above. (Imagine the planets on an axis intersecting the Saturn-to-Sun radius at 135 degrees)

The polar station of Saturn was due to the axial alignment of Earth with the configuration, such that as the Earth rotated, the crescent turned visually around the polar center with the daily cycle. So there are two distinct "twin-like" features to the sunset and sunrise appearances of the configuration illustrated above. One is the feather rotating around the crown; the other is the crescent visually rotating around the polar Saturn; both are due to the rotating Earth.

As illustrated above, the "horns" of the Bull of Heaven presented a twin-like appearance at sunset and sunrise, thus accounting for the biologically impossible image of a twin-headed bull in connection with the twin aspect of the celestial theater (revolving crescent).

And Michael G: I see your post went up as I was composing my own earlier this afternoon. I think you're right. Seeing the four phases of White Crown illumination in one pic probably makes it a bit more clear. Good job.

David Talbott

[David Talbott]

Concluding Notes

Before moving on, I’ll leave a few concluding notes on the crown motifs discussed here.

Conjunction and displacement

We start with universal mythic themes, then allow the earliest-recorded examples of the themes to lead the way in a systematic investigation. By this process, the underlying unity of myth is gradually exposed, and we discover that there are no isolated archetypes. All are connected.

I’ve emphasized that every influential symbol can be followed in any direction to see its link to every other influential symbol. In their concrete details, the “crowns of sages and warrior kings” are a window to the full story of world mythology. They are the story of the original unity of “heaven,” giving way to phases of “creation,” placing the spotlight on the active roles of the mother goddess and warrior hero in these events. The crowns worn by the warrior hero, originally a cosmic figure, are the prototypes of crowns worn by kings on earth. On examination, these crowns turn out to be the hero’s own mother or consort, the mother goddess. And though the symbolism reveals increasing levels of coherent detail, none of the crowns have a meaningful connection to things observed in nature today

My claim has been that the core details can all be rendered concretely in terms of a visual model of planets in alignment, one that can then be tested against the entire field of historical evidence.

In the images of the White Crown above, one notes an interplay of the mother goddess and the warrior-hero, always reflecting the dynamics of conjunction and displacement. The Egyptian Aten (conjunction) leads to the White Crown (displacement, but with surprising balance and symmetry). In the same way, the radial discharge of Venus in the center of Saturn, with Mars directly in front of Venus, is a story of conjunction. But the primary forms of the radial discharge are also seen from a displaced position off axis (scallop shell, 7-headed serpent, hand of God).

Fundamental to the integrity of the Egyptian images considered in this final installment is the original identity of the goddess and hero prior to their differentiation as separate personalities: they are the eye, heart, and soul of Atum-Ra, the universal sovereign. What happens to these powers in their differentiation is the archaic story of “creation,” recounting how the creator brought forth his dwelling in the sky. (I will try to summarize the underlying idea in the next few weeks. No archaic myth has been more misunderstood than the “creation.” The original subject was the bringing forth of the place par excellence, the cosmic temple, city, or kingdom, celestial prototype of sacred dwellings on earth.

Additional nuances worth noting

In the 3-D representation of the transition between the White Crown and Aten, the metamorphosis itself exposes the underlying identity. But one point in particular must be emphasized. Though observers on Earth would have almost certainly enjoyed a near-perfect on-axis view of the Crown at some point in the planetary movements, we have to distinguish between perfect planetary alignment and perfect visual alignment of the observer. As I mentioned, it is necessary to keep in mind the phenomenon of parallax. When the planets are in perfect alignment, an observer would see this form at noon:

Visually, it is a not a perfect alignment because the observer is not precisely on axis. For the observer to be perfectly on axis, he’d have to be standing at the geographic pole. Because Mars is only about half the diameter of Earth, a viewer at the 30th parallel (our reference) would see over Mars slightly, creating a hemispheric crescent-like form or “claw” wrapped around Mars from above. In the perfect planetary alignment, that is what would be seen day and night, always reaching from above. (i.e., not revolving in the fashion of the Saturnian crescent, an effect of the rotating Earth).

When I saw this 3-D rendering (done for me by Rick Smith in 2000) I asked myself where I’d “seen” this before. Then I remembered the “claw of Atum”, said to have stopped the commotion or strife in the celestial city. In the Pyramid Texts, Utterance 229, the claw is said to be set upon the neck of the serpent power Neheb Kau, called “The Provider of Attributes” (all of which will make more sense as we take up the creation). Protective amulets of a claw were worn by female royalty. And that reminded me of the “vulture” goddess Nekhbet and her relationship to the shen-bond discussed above. The artists depicted the goddess holding the shen in her extended claws, as in the full color rendering below.

The Shen (= Aten, = Uraeus) was the rope which, in the creation, stretched round to form the boundary of the celestial kingdom. Thus, in writing the names of kings, the Egyptians enclosed the name within a cartouche, which is itself nothing more than an extended Shen-cord, symbol of protection. Hence, both the claw and the cord within the grip of the claw can be seen in terms of the goddess’ role as great protectress. And in the symbolism of the cartouche the connection to the claw was maintained when the artist placed it in the clutches of the "vulture" goddess' claw.

[moses]

The feather - I see it ! The elongated plasma cell connecting Venus and Mars
had spiralling Birkeland currents going around it. This created darker and
lighter stripes and Venus was the bulby bit at the end of the feather. And it
was at sunrise and sunset that the straight line of the feather was produced.
This is really exciting and well worth the wait.
Mo

[MGmirkin]

I thought I'd seen this (or something like it) before...



Now that I've had a quick poke around, this seems to be very similar to several Egyptian motifs:

The Winged Disk (associated with the orb bounded by Uraeus serpents).

Which is mirrored in several images:

The Winged Isis (with flat wings and red orb; paralleling the Winged Disk).

The Winged Scarab (with flat wings and red orb; paralleling the Winged Disk).

WingedDiskScarab3.gif (4.37 KiB) Viewed 6740 times

The Winged Scarab (with curved wings and red orb [Aten]).

The Saturn hypothesis would, I assume, say that these are all pretty directly related, one motif to the other?

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

[David Talbott]

The Saturn hypothesis would, I assume, say that these are all pretty directly related, one motif to the other?

Cultural images of extended wings, in particular the "winged disk," do indeed have underlying elements in common, but a single explanation does not work for a "wings" as a whole. Due to the role of wings in protecting gods and heroes, plus many indications of a symmetrical, twin-like juxtaposition of opposing wings in relation to the daily cycle, I originally explained the mythic wings as a revolving crescent. (That ancient imagination could see a crescent as a pair of wings is clear from the phrase, "long-winged moon.") But after publication of The Saturn Myth in 1980, I began to realize that the explanation was only partially correct--well, more incorrect than correct , due to the abundance of images for which the explanation does not work.

Long story short for now. I eventually came to place the wings of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian winged disk in a phase of catastrophe and "wandering." At least two concentric bands with radiating spines, seen substantially off axis, are implied. In fact, this phase involves many episodes that are far too complex for reliable modeling in the simplified means I've used for earlier phases. Fortunately, however, this gets you into events that were recorded on stone by the millions. And this is where, IMHO, the Saturn Hypothesis meets up with the work of Tony Peratt. Before ever meeting Peratt, I had identified certain key formations relating to the "disaster and wandering" phases-- Caduceus, Eye Mask, Chain of Arrows, Backbone or Ladder of the Sky, Tower of Heaven, Goddess' Flounced Skirt, etc.

But I was never confident the forms could be satisfactorily modeled until after the Peratt meeting, which was the catalyst leading to his present life's work. He immediately recognized what I had called "upward spiraling twin-serpents" and a "stack of toruses" as a plasma discharge instability. The results of this meeting will be more significant than most folks could ever imagine. The winged disk is just one of dozens of forms that should find a full and complete explanation through computer reconstruction based entirely on rock art images, with no dependence on human interpretation.

And please, everyone, always remember that Peratt's work is entirely independent, in cooperation with a substantial team of scientists. Whenever we cite his work, we must not imply any endorsement of the Saturn hypothesis or any principle equating planets and ancient gods.

David Talbott

[MGmirkin]

The Saturn hypothesis would, I assume, say that these are all pretty directly related, one motif to the other?

Cultural images of extended wings, in particular the "winged disk," do indeed have underlying elements in common, but a single explanation does not work for a "wings" as a whole. Due to the role of wings in protecting gods and heroes, plus many indications of a symmetrical, twin-like juxtaposition of opposing wings in relation to the daily cycle, I originally explained the mythic wings as a revolving crescent. (That ancient imagination could see a crescent as a pair of wings is clear from the phrase, "long-winged moon.") But after publication of The Saturn Myth in 1980, I began to realize that the explanation was only partially correct--well, more incorrect than correct , due to the abundance of images for which the explanation does not work.

So, long story short, it's a bit more complicated than that... Gotcha'.

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin