Hello Nick and thanks for your reply.
You:
There is so much about your proposal that does not make sense. It seems that you are simply denying what the myth makers said and rewriting it to fit your preexisting idea.
As I´ve told you several times: It is not "my idea". It derives from reading existing collective myths as for instants these three sentences:
1) The Egyptian goddess Hathor (equal to the Roman goddess Venus and the Greek goddess Aphrodite) is associated with the Milky Way. Subsequently and logically goddesses Venus and Aphrodite also have to be associated with the Milky Way.-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathor
2) The Egyptian story of creation, the Ogdoad, describes the pro-creation of the Milky Way center where the first fiery light, the Atum-Ra god of light, is the first entity to be created in the Milky Way center. (Atum-Ra and goddess Hathor have a complex relationship in the creation = Milky Way matters) Link -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogdoad#In ... _mythology
3) In the Hindu Mount Meru myth of the Cosmic Mountain, "the Sun along with all the planets in the Solar System revolve around Mount Meru as one unit" = around the Milky Way center, as observed by modern telescopes. -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru#Hindu_legends
If you work with the Milky Way goddess Hathor and Atum-Ra from the Ogdoad creation story, you logically cannot come to any other conclusions that this story deals with the pre-creaton of the Milky Way where these two deities "creates everything" = in the Milky Way.
Furthermore: Just by reading the linked Mount Meru myth, the only and logical conclusion is that this myth deals with the Milky Way center and not with any "polar configuration". The entire Solar System doesn´t orbit around the Earth celestial pole, but around the Milky Way center, right?
You:
The only way you manage to assign an important role to the Milky Way is by saying that when mythmakers said "Venus" they meant Milky Way, when they said "Saturn" they meant the Milky Way, etc.
Partly correct. When I speak of Venus or Saturn, I´m not referring to the entire Milky Way, because goddess Venus represents the southern hemisphere Milky Way contours (as goddess Hathor) and the Saturnus god represent the northern hemisphere MIlky Way contours, both seemingly revolving around the celestial poles/axis.
You:
-Why would myth makers use the names for planets to refer to the Milky Way when they already possessed names for the Milky Way?
I´ve asked myself the very same question for a long time and my answer is: Because of the Roman adoption of Christianity they had to abandon their Milky Way pantheon deities but they gave some of the names to planets instead as a commemoration. This have fooled lots of scholars to state the Milky Way deities as being planetary deities.
"Mythmakers" did not use the names for planets to refer to the Milky Way, they of course really meant the Milky Way when using the superior pantheon deity names.
-Why would they have said "Venus" when they really meant "Milky Way?"
When speaking of goddess Venus they of course meant the southern hemisphere Milky Way contours which resembles the Mother Goddess as the Egyptian goddess Hathor.
-Have you considered that when the myth makers spoke of Venus, Mars, Saturn, etc., they may have been actually referring to Venus, Mars, Saturn, etc.?
Yes, and I was forced to abandon this idea because the creation myths don´t specifically speak of any other planets but the Earth. Besides this, no attributes and creative powers of creation can be asribed to planets and the Roman gendered naming of planets really reveals the truth of the planetary misinterpretation. No sound human being can imagine a planet as other that a bright dot in the Sky.
-If those deities referred to the Milky Way as you propose, then what were the names for or deities assigned to the planets?
The planets were originally just given names after their natural appearance and motion and in general just called “wandering stars”.
The naming of the planets - From -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet#Myt ... and_naming
“The names for the planets in the Western world are derived from the naming practices of the Romans, which ultimately derive from those of the Greeks and the Babylonians.
The original Greek planetary names derived from their natural appearances and motions.
1) Phainon , ”the shiner” = The later Roman Saturn
2) Phaethon, “bright” = The later roman Jupiter
3) Pyroeis “the fiery” = The later Roman Mars
4) Phosphoros, “the light bringer” = The later Roman Venus
5) Stilbon, “the gleamer” = The later Roman Mercury
In ancient Greece, the two great luminaries the Sun and the Moon were called Helios and Selene; the farthest planet (Saturn) was called Phainon, the shiner; followed by Phaethon (Jupiter), "bright"; the red planet (Mars) was known as Pyroeis, the "fiery"; the brightest (Venus) was known as Phosphoros, the light bringer; and the fleeting final planet (Mercury) was called Stilbon, the gleamer.
Today, most people in the western world know the planets by names derived from the Olympian pantheon of gods.
Maybe except from the catastrophism proponents . . . or they just don´t know what "the Olympian pantheon of gods" refers to.
You
-You speak of the importance of the group of myths which were mistakenly labeled by 19th C mythologists as "Creation Myths" and give your own bizarre interpretation of the meaning of these myths - that they reflect the story of the Sun/solar system's creation in the center of the Milky Way.
This is a logical conclusion, as the solar System is an integrated part of the galactic rotation.
You:
Furthermore, I do not think that there is any substantiation for the assertion that the ancients understood that Milky Way was a galaxy and our Sun was one of many millions of stars contained within. Astrological and mythological understanding has to be distinguished from modern astronomical knowledge. That modern understanding simply did not exist until its' beginnings in Helenistic times, when a minority of philosophers such as
Eratosthenes began to theorize and understand the Earth's astronomical position. Of course the mythological lexicon was already ancient by the time of Eratosthenes, but even him and his colleagues did not comprehend the "big picture" that is, the true nature of galaxies and the Sun's position as a component of the galaxy.
Quote from -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way ... _and_Roman
The Greek name for the Milky Way (Γαλαξίας Galaxias) is derived from the word for milk (γάλα, gala). One legend explains how the Milky Way was created by Heracles when he was a baby. His father, Zeus, was fond of his son, who was born of the mortal woman Alcmene. He decided to let the infant Heracles suckle on his divine wife Hera's milk when she was asleep, an act which would endow the baby with godlike qualities. When Hera woke up and realized that she was breastfeeding an unknown infant, she pushed him away and the spurting milk became the Milky Way.
Do you deny the Milky Way connection here too? And what about this from the same link:
A story told by the Roman Hyginus in the Poeticon astronomicon (ultimately based on Greek myth) says that the milk came from the goddess Ops (Greek Rhea), or Opis, the wife of Saturn (Greek Cronus). Saturn swallowed his children to ensure his position as head of the Pantheon and sky god, and so Ops conceived a plan to save her newborn son Jupiter (Greek Zeus): She wrapped a stone in infant's clothes and gave it to Saturn to swallow. Saturn asked her to nurse the child once more before he swallowed it, and the milk that spurted when she pressed her nipple against the rock eventually became the Milky Way.
How do you explain this? Does planet Saturn have a wife, Opis? And how can your asserted planet god Saturn have any role in the making of the Milky Way?
You see? The Milky Way references are all over the places. Exept from in the TBP.
You:
How could makers of myth know of something totally foreign to and beyond anything in their experience?
They obviously had. It´s noted in their myths for those who are open minded and have no other agenda.
-How could myth makers have known of this alleged event if it occurred millions of years before they existed?
If the Electric Universe Theory was fully elaborated, it would also deal with the electric fact of atoms and electricity in human beings and their ability to connect to the universal electric entanglement. Link -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation
If consciously and spiritually connected, anyone today and in the future can still get the information of the creation in our Milky Way and beyond and this is NOT time-depended as time is a human invention and not universal.