Thunderbolts Forum v3.0

[quote=ForumModerator post_id=8730 time=1674238140 user_id=29156]
Ev Cochrane has his own website:
https://www.maverickscience.com/

He has written several books which are avaiable for purchase on the website.
There are also a large number of pdf's available for immediate reading on that site.
[/quote]

Thank you for that. I've looked at Ev's site. His work and Talbots are fascinating, and the associations are very compelling. But the full picture requires a union between growing agreement about these associations, And, science making forward motion in backing up these associations with at least the beginnings of described mechanisms. What I read in this thread is a stumbling block in regards to those scientific discussions about actual potential mechanisms that can back up the associations, (polar configuration).

So I guess while I'm fascinated by the associations of ancient creation stories and a possible real cosmological event, or events, as well as Peratts plasma formations being linked to the confounding symbology of petraglyphs, I'm more interested in the discussions about the real mechanisms and their success in influencing and sparking curiosity with science. I'd love to hear more about any developement in that area, because I feel convinced of the other half of the story already.

Ev Cochrane has his own website:
https://www.maverickscience.com/

He has written several books which are avaiable for purchase on the website.
There are also a large number of pdf's available for immediate reading on that site.

wow. I'm out of my depth here but really hoping this discussion continues. I feel like the fate of the Polar configuration hangs in the balance. Its been over a year from these exchanges.

Have we lost Jp Michael and van der Sluijs to team uniformitarian forever?

Have Ev and Ren found new Saturnian references to reopen discussion?

Has that guy with the dremel tool and magnets made more papers?

Hoping to hear some updates on this subject. Is Tony Peratt still a fan at least?

Thanks much for your interest and question Earl. The answer is yes, wheel-like petroglyphs are found all across America in indigenous cultures that never knew the wheel. So, too, such images predate the actual invention of the wheel in Old Europe.

I'm new here, so be kind....I've been making my way through the "Discourses on an Alien Sky" series in YouTube, and in general following the discussions here. One question I have regarding the recurring pictographs / cave drawings of "cosmic wheels" that do look very similar. The question is - do we see any depictions of this in societies that did not have the wheel?
I know that North American Indians [sic] did not have the wheel - but are there Anastazi or Hopi, or whatever cave drawings that include that wheel?

Thanks,

Earl

A correction to my previous post: I stated that Inanna's comet-like pictograph disappeared "from the script" after the early period when I should have said that it disappeared from religious cult after about 3000 BCE. The sign continued to denote Inanna/Venus in the cuneiform script for several millennia. Please excuse the brain cramp.

Naturally, it would be impossible in a forum such as this to reproduce the voluminous evidence presented by Talbott and myself in favor of recent incidents of planetary catastrophism. The fact that much of the evidentiary basis for the theory remains unpublished is also an unfortunate hindrance to successful communication, needless to say. That said, I'd like to offer a few remarks that might clarify a few of the issues raised by JP and Rens. Consider the earliest pictograph denoting Inanna as the planet Venus (no idea how to include an image here, so imagine the so-called Gatepost with streamer, a spiraling comet-like form). This particular image occurs in the earliest strata of Uruk with pictographic writing (Uruk IV), circa 3300 BCE and, in fact, is among the most popular pictographs from this period. All scholars accept that it describes the planet Venus, in large part because Mesopotamia, unlike virtually every other ancient culture, maintained a consistent and scientific approach to astronomy throughout the millennia. Remarkably, however, this incredibly popular pictograph depicting Sumer's greatest astral divinity, disappears from the script shortly thereafter. How is this fact to be explained? The most logical explanation is that this particular pictograph encodes Venus's comet-like history wherein it was orbiting around the polar column while presenting a comet-like tail. As Talbott and I have documented, once Venus became stabilized in the polar column (this in conjunction with the planet Mars, which appeared in "front" of it), the heaven-spanning tail disappeared (or better, took on a different appearance altogether, long story). As Dave and I have documented in various works, images identical to Inanna's pictograph (the so-called Mush sign) will be found around the globe, not only in Minoan Greece but along the Northwest Coast of the New World. What are we to make of this evidence? I'd like to think it should be obvious that we should hardly expect the indigenous natives of British Columbia to preserve the connection to Venus inasmuch as they did not have a scientific astronomy and never developed writing. Minoan Greece had writing but it remains undecipherable so it is quite impossible to determine if they preserved the connection between the pictograph and Venus. Certainly it is telling that Egypt did not preserve the connection to Venus even though their texts are virtually the same age as those of Uruk/Sumer. Following Rens's methodology, then, one might be inclined to dismiss the evidence linking this pictograph to Venus because it is "geographically limited to the ancient Near East." Yet who among us would consider this a wise choice?

Thank you very much evcochrane for the response here and private correspondence. :)

I would thus like to issue a needed correction:

[quote="JP Michael"]it is time to put [i][color=#FF0000]the Saturnian aspect of[/color][/i] the Polar Configuration theory to bed.[/quote]
I think van der Sluijs may have been a little too hasty in his dismissal of mytheme 'constellations' regarding the past activities of Venus and Mars, and the utter impossibility that they describe the present conditions and activities of those planets. I will add as a caveat, however, van der Sluijs' observation that some mythemes are applicable to multiple celestial bodies. I have not yet made my way through Starf*cker and Fossil Gods, but I suspect what might significantly boost the scholarship in this area is careful attention and reporting of confusion of planetary depictions, even if it threatens one's own theory. Now more than ever, there is a need to be detailed and avoid any possible pretense of "cherry-picking" data which only suits the theory.

Thus, there still remains a place in Polar Configuration theory for [i]these[/i] planets, Mars and Venus, and their potential past epochs of eyewitnessed catastrophic interaction with our blue orb. But Rens is also right, in that we do not need another straight-jacket for interpretation, that it's planets or bust. We must keep all options on the table, both planetary and non-planetary.

What is far less certain, and I am sure Ev will agree with both Rens and myself at this point, is the role of Saturn as the 'primordial Sun'. Saturn's attestation as sun-god is mostly late and geographically limited to the ancient Near East. There is simply no [i]currently known[/i] attestation of Saturn as sun anywhere else in other traditional cosmologies. Talbott's treatment of Saturnian themes is questionable on methodological grounds, especially when he deploys various "Saturnian" mythemes to search amongst the gods for their appearance without acknowledging that other planetary actors could also have those characteristics applied to them. Ra, Horus, Adam: everything with one of the Saturnian mythemes can be Saturn with this method, even if the source material expressly denies the association (and as Ev points out elsewhere, Horus is more likely to have been Mars, not Saturn).

I look forward to delving into this matter at more length later.

PS: Rens introduced himself in our private correspondence as "Tony". I do not yet feel privy to call him by the latter, but to avoid confusion with Tony Peratt I will use that or van der Sluijs from now on.

In pondering such questions I think it is important to emphasize that the catastrophist approach is an entirely new way of viewing natural history. By way of illustration: Earlier today Public Radio's On Point program carried an hour long interview with Ken Farley, the lead scientist on the Mars Perseverance mission (see the first link below). It is a fascinating discussion and should be of interest to all members of this forum. There you will learn that "there is textbook evidence of running water on Mars," especially in the crater in which the rotor craft landed, and thus the team is optimistic about possibly finding primitive forms of microbial life. As Farley emphasizes again and again, liquid water hasn't flowed on Mars for over 3 billion years and thus any life forms found must date to that period. This consensus view stands in marked contrast to what the catastrophists would predict. Indeed, in anticipation of the Perseverance landing, I offered the following You Tube video detailing what Talbott, Thornhill, and I think about Mars:

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2021/04/28/exploring-mars-to-better-understand-earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRvyAncwEAc

Inasmuch as the vast majority of my published works have focused on the role of Mars and Venus in the recent catastrophic events celebrated by our ancestors I will confine my remarks to those two planets and leave the Saturn material to Dave Talbott and others familiar with his writings. As an introduction to the debate between Rens and the planetary catastrophists, perhaps a good starting point is his claim that the myths surrounding Mars/Venus "are satisfactorily reducible to these bodies' familiar appearance and behaviour" and thus warrant a uniformitarian explanation. This claim is demonstrably false and logically fallacious from start to finish. Consider Venus's intimate connection with gardens, attested around the globe, first in the earliest Sumerian texts describing the sacred marriage involving Inanna/Venus and then in the sacred traditions of the Skidi Pawnee of the North American Plains (for details readers can consult On Fossil Gods and/or Starf*cker where the respective myths are discussed at great length). In both cultures Venus is conceptualized as a beautiful woman who had sex with another star, thereby producing all living things. I submit that it is quite impossible to explain this manifold constellation of mythemes attached to Venus by reference to the present behavior and/or appearance of that planet. Now consider the furious, raging character universally ascribed to the planet Mars: As I have documented in Martian Metamorphoses and numerous other writings, this motif is attached to Nergal in ancient Mesopotamia (c. 2000 BCE), Ares and Heracles in ancient Greece, and the Skidi Mars in North America. Skidi rituals celebrating Mars's conquest of Venus actually make the male actor personifying Mars claim that he is becoming angry just like his celestial avatar. Does Mars currently present the appearance of a raging, furious berserker? Equally problematic for uniformitarian theorists is the incontestable fact that the "raging" of Mars typically occurs in an apocalyptic, cataclysmic context. According to various ancient accounts, the raging of the Martian warrior scattered the gods (=stars) and or threatened the world with destruction. To be continued.

Thanks much to JP for posting this lengthy quote from Rens (not Tony), with which I am perfectly familiar. Suffice it to say that I do not share Rens' agnosticism in this regard. As fate would have it, I prepared a long response to Rens many years ago when he first raised some of these objections. Perhaps I can locate that original response--I have changed computers numerous times since then--and have JP repost it here until I can learn how to properly format material for this Forum. In the meantime I will offer a number of points in rebuttal to foster further dialogue.

[quote=evcochrane post_id=4989 time=1619553066 user_id=7711]
Earlier in this thread JP claimed that Rens van der Sluijs has "repeatedly" shown that EU scholarship is "very poor" when it comes to working with mythic source materials. This is a gross misstatement of the facts as well as of Rens's own position.[/quote]
Allow me to quote at length, therefore, Tony's most recent foray into the topic (besides our private correspondence the last 2 months, which I shall not post here), as a demontration that this seems to be Tony's own position. This is from pages 74-75 of [i]On the Origin of Myths in Catastrophic Experience[/i], Vol 1 (Vancouver: All-Round, 2019):

[quote="Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs"]Luniplanetary catastrophism as defined above will not be pursued here except in historical discussions, both because the requisite science seems extremely shaky and because the various suggested scenarios in this genre mostly found their original motivation in a questionable, Hellenocentric reading of world mythology. The emphasis in the writings of Radlof and the Velikovskians on myths and other beliefs concerning multiple planetary deities sits uncomfortably with the comparative method because the prominence of such deities is really confined to the classical world and the Near East; on a global scale, the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury are unknown or play a marginal part - typically without any connection to the mythology of creation - in the overwhelming majority of traditional belief systems. [Footnote (n.)152 - Full arrays of planetary gods are most prominent in Babylonian, Graeco-Roman and Hindu mythology. However, except in the cases of the Babylonian Venus and possibly Mars, these deities and their associated myths appear to have existed long before they were linked to their planets, a process initiated in Babylonia.]

Some might argue that characters not explicitly identified as planets in the cultures themselves had originally related to planets but that this identity slipped out of awareness. This is a fair hypothesis, but pure conjecture nonetheless. And to build a case on shared traits of planet lore which actually are widely attested in disparate cultures and are not easily explicable by reference to the planets' ordinary features may make for a superficially compelling argument, but runs the risk of cherry-picking, turning a blind eye to the association of the same traits with other celestial bodies or mythical agents. For example, one might juxtapose selected traditions from around the world linking the planet Mars with warfare or pimples and deduce that something in the past or present appearance of Mars inspired these traditions [b][n.153 - citing Cochrane 1997, 2006, 2017][/b], while downplaying or ignoring other traditions which relate these same attributes to the planet Venus, the planet Saturn, the sun, the moon or a mythical character not associated with any astronomical object. In such cases, the gathered sets of planetary traditions are immensely valuable for comparative mythologists, but the conclusions drawn from them may not logically follow.

Other cross-cultural traits assigned to planets - such as Mars' redness or the morning star's function as light-bringer to 'day star' - may be legitimate identifiers, but are satisfactorily reducible to these bodies' familiar appearance and behaviour; a uniformitarian explanation then has the edge over a catastrophist on [n.154 - citing Aveni 1992; James 2000]. And some cases, such as reports of a tailed morning star [n.155 - van der Sluijs 2018: 52-55, 58-59], do call for a catastrophist cause, but, as the present study shall show, far simpler mechanisms will suffice than wholesale displacement of planets, which - to borrow a colleague's words - "may seem like an oversized astronomical hammer built to crack a relatively small mythological nut." [n.156 - citing James 2000:99]

Going by the traditions in their own words, the celestial bodies which could most reasonably be claimed to have been of universal importance are the sun, the moon and the morning star, whichever planet may be in the latter role. To seek the principal actors of the myths in a select class of astronomical bodies and, in doing so, to focus on the planets while overlooking the significance of the sun and moon is perhaps the most fundamental problem in the catastrophist theories of Velikovsky and his followers. A more open-ended starting position, adopted here, but not necessarily linked to any particular type of celestial body discerned today. Much depends on the extent to which identifications provided in the myths can be taken literally, a question taken up below.[/quote]
I, like Tony, really want the Saturn shish-kabob theory to be true. But at the moment it has some significant methodological flaws which allow questioning of its conclusions. I have posted those criticisms above and would appreciate answers thereto, if any.

Earlier in this thread JP claimed that Rens van der Sluijs has "repeatedly" shown that EU scholarship is "very poor" when it comes to working with mythic source materials. This is a gross misstatement of the facts as well as of Rens's own position. For the record, I stand behind no man in my admiration for Rens's researches. He and I have been in near daily contact for twenty years now and I have edited all of his books, as he has mine. While I would not want to speak for Rens, I believe it is fair to say that he found Velikovsky's scholarship in this area to be seriously wanting and the same is true of Cardona. Whether either of these gentlemen should be included under the banner of EU scholarship is for others to determine. I know for a fact that Rens is an admirer of Dave Talbott's intellect and mythological writings, although that does not mean he agrees with everything he has ever written by any stretch of the imagination (as JP intimated, Rens does not accept a role for the planets in the polar configuration). My own personal belief is that the researches of Dave and Rens will prove pivotal as we try to reconstruct a scientific theory of myth in the 21st century. I hope this helps clarify matters.

Please excuse my lack of Forum/computer skills. I have no idea how to respond to a particular thread, if that is indeed what you call these discussions nowadays. First I would say that this is a very interesting thread. I have especially enjoyed the posts of Paladin and JP, if I am reading/interpreting correctly. JP's point about mainstream astronomy being perfectly willing to allow giant planets to roam about the solar system so long as it occurred umpteen billions of years ago is right on the money. How I wish Tony Peratt was here to set us all straight on how plasma science might help us explain how something like the polar configuration could exist. I can tell you from personal knowledge that Tony maintained that this was not only possible, it actually happened.

So after considerable back and fro with Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs, it is time to put the Polar Configuration theory to bed.

van der Sluijs raised seven unanswered questions on p.55 of his [url=https://mythopedia.info/vanderSluijs-SISR2013.PDF]"A Response to Cardona's Objections,"[/url] [i]SIS Chronology & Catastrophism Review[/i] (2013), which was preceded or shortly followed by his article co-authored with Peter James, [url=https://mythopedia.info/vanderSluijs-James-AuO31.pdf]"Saturn as the 'Sun of Night' in Ancient Near Eastern Tradition,"[/url] [i]Aula Orientalis[/i] 31 no. 2 (2013), 279-321.

Those unanswered objections are as follows:

1. Considering that the celestial pole appears very low above the horizon at equatorial latitudes, how could peoples at these latitudes have perceived a putative polar column as a 'high' vertical object, joining Earth to the sky?

[[Note: the 'column' is a global phenomenon, and not always associated with the northern sky.]]

2. Considering that the celestial north pole is not visible from the southern hemisphere, how could traditions of a putative north-polar 'sun' and column have arisen on the southern hemisphere?

[[Southern hemisphere myth has abundant references to the polar axis, but not always associated with the northern sky.]]

3. Find an example of cognisance of the celestial north pole on the southern hemisphere at a higher latitude than 10 degrees, or vice versa, in a culture unaffected by 'western' tradition and using a primary source.

4. Find an example of the planet Saturn as a 'sun' in a tradition from Africa, East Asia, Oceania, the Americas or early non-classical Europe, using a primary source.

5. Find an example of the planet Saturn as a 'sun' in any tradition antedating the 7th century BC, using a primary source.

6. Find an example of the planet Saturn at the pole in a tradition from Africa, Oceania, the Americas or early non-classical Europe, using a primary source.

7. Find an example of the planet Saturn at the pole in any tradition antedating the 3rd century BC, using a primary source.

EU proponents are to be commended for their attempt to take a catastrophist approach to mythology seriously, as well as their attempt to challenge uniformitarian cosmology and geology. But as van der Sluijs demonstrates repeatedly, EU scholarship is very poor when it comes to working with mythic source materials. Many of their arguments, especially those concerning Saturn as primordial "sun," fall down under close scrutiny with primary source material in the original languages. EU scholars particularly ignore traditions of Jupiter as "moon of night," a curious omission that requires explanation.

Sadly, this spells the end of the road for me with respect to this specific aspect of Thunderbolts. I will continue to lurk the forums, if only for posts by Evgeny and Robertus Maximus, mostly, but I am no longer convinced of one of EU's fundamental tenents: Saturn as former sun and the former 'Polar Configuration'. The current state of mythic evidence for it is neither primary, global nor ancient.