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Author: Ted Holden
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To the best of my understanding at least, the
picture I shall try to present here is not precisely known in great
detail. Nonetheless, at this point in time, a general outline is
visible, the major elements OF the picture are clear, enough of the
picture IS visible for a viewer to grasp the basic concepts, and at
least one good book has been published (Talbott's "The Saturn Myth").
The "Saturn Myth", Doubleday 1980, although out of print at present,
will hopefully be printed again in the near future. The scientific
heresy represented by all of this is not going to fold up and die any
time soon. Too many serious people find the evidence altogether
convincing.
Possibly the best place to start is with a couple of cheap, easily
obtainable paperback copies of several ancient works; I am going to
recommend the Dover paperback copy of E.A. Wallis Budge's "The Egyptian
Book of the Dead" (yellow cover), and, as a cheap and easy way of
viewing items from both Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and Hesiod's "Theogeny"
and "Works and Days" in one place, Rhoda Hendricks' "Classical Gods and
Heroes, Myths As Told By The Ancient Authors".
Greek authors generally spoke of the antedeluvian world as a golden age,
the so-called "Age of Cronos". Hesiod says:
"First of all, the immortal gods who have their homes on Olympus
created a golden race of mortal men, who lived in the time of
Cronos when he was king in heaven."
Cronos, as we know, was the planet Saturn. Ovid describes the golden
age in part:
The earth gave forth all good things of her own accord, and
mankind, content with foods created without labor, picked the
fruit of the trees and the mountain strawberries and the cornel
cherries and the mulberries clinging to the wild thickets and
acorns that fell from the spreading oak of Jupiter.
Spring was eternal, and the gentle breezes caressed the flowers,
all springing forth without seed, with clear warm air. Soon,
also, the unplowed earth was rich with grain, and fields always
fertile, were white with the heavy beards of corn. Then rivers
of milk, then streams of nectar flowed forth...
After Saturn had fallen to the shadowy lower world [by which
Ovid intends some location no longer visible to mankind on
earth], and the earth was under the rule of Jupiter, the Silver
Age followed...
Jupiter shortened the length of springtime, and through winter
and summer and a changeable autumn and a short spring he
completed a year of four seasons.
Then for the first time the scorched air glowed with parching
heat and ice hung frozen by the winds. Then first, mankind
lived in houses...
There are several things to note here. The Greeks and Romans universally
acknowledged former golden and silver ages, during which Saturn and
Jupiter had been "kings of heaven". There is nothing exotic about the
language; in the same language, our sun is the king of heaven now.
Charles Ginenthal ("Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky", page 319) quotes
Immanuel Velikovsky in part:
"During our conversation [with Albert Einstein at Princeton], I
took this lead and remarked: 'If one evening I should stop
every passing student and professor on the campus and should ask
which of the stars is Jupiter, it is possible that not even one
of them would be able to point to the planet. How is it then
that Jupiter was the highest diety in Rome and likewise, Zeus in
Greece, Marduk in Babylon, Amon in Egypt, and Mazda in Persia --
all of them represented the planet Jupiter. Would you know why
this planet was worshipped by the people of antiquity and its
name was in the mouth of everyone? Its movement is not
spectacular; once in twelve years it circles the sky. It is a
brilliant planet, but it does not dominate the heavens. Yet
Apollo, the sun, -- the dispenser of light and warmth, was only
a secondary diety.'
The ancients universally associated some sort of a magic mountain
with either Jupiter or Saturn; some kind of a visible structural
support on which either of them, when visible, were seen to rest. The
picture of Zeus on Olympus, or Jahweh on Zion. Eventually, in every
land, some local mountain came to be associated with the original magic
mountain, but these were transpositions of a later day.
It is interesting to note that the ancients found it necessary to
explain SEASONS; they universally believed that seasons had not existed
in the antedeluvian world.
One may note also that the original great god is always seen inside of
some knd of a ring or circle or crescent of light; kings crowns and the
idea of halos are a leftover from this idea.
Let's go to the Book of the Dead for a monent. I am assuming that
anybody serious enough to have read this article this far will have
purchased (about $5) a copy by now.
I should mention the chief item of uncertainty when reading Egyptian
sources on the antedeluvian world. The various names for Jupiter and/or
Saturn (Ra, Amon, Horus, Osiris, Atum etc.) correspond to rapidly
changing celestial configurations, different time periods, different
usages in different cities, i.e. it is very easy to be off as to which
name represents which at a given time. Neo catastrophists are fairly
certain that Atum always meant Saturn, Horus always Jupiter, Hathor (the
so-called "eye of Ra") always Venus; beyond that, it's not possible to
always be sure.
Beginning on page one, it may be seen that Ra, one of the various names
for one of the major gods over certain time periods is represented by a
dot inside a circle and, occasionally, by a dot insode a hoop-snake
coiled into a circle:
x
x x x
x x
x x x
x
x x x x x
x x x
It may be seen that Budge is translating into "Eastern Horizen of
Heaven" a symbol:
x
x x
xxxxxxx xxxxxxx
x x
x x x x
x x x
x x
x x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
the lower part of which is normally associated with words meaning
"mountain", because the normal context is always something like:
"Adoration of Ra, when he ariseth in
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