Prophecy for Dummies

In my quest to popularize the advancing science of comparative mythology and plasma physics as they relate to the Restored Gospel, it occurred to me that the popular “… for Dummies” series, relating to everything from auto repair to brain surgery, might be helpful. A nuts-and-bolts approach to prophetic interpretation that employed an analogy about learning to read might help others better understand my approach. The following is the result. – A.E.L.

While we’re definitely not dummies, we all previously thought that one needed a prophetic calling or a PhD in order to interpret prophecy.

But I have found that not to be the case. Anyone who has learned to read—dummies like me and you—can also learn to understand prophecy.

This is done by simply following the clues throughout history, like Hansel and Gretel followed the breadcrumb trail through the forest, tracing the images or metaphors of prophecy to their source in Earth’s ancient heavens. Then, moving forward in time from antiquity to the present, one can map out their use as the prophets consistently employed them in various epochs and in a variety of cultures.

So, reading prophecy is not all that difficult. It’s learning how to understand it that’s a bit hard. That’s because we’ve never been properly schooled in prophetic imagery, a skill once known to all the prophets that has been lost to us over the eons.

And even though Joseph Smith clearly learned that skill, properly employed it and sought to reinstate its imagery in the minds of Latter-day Saints as part of the Restoration, the membership failed to grasp his meaning. (See “The Keys To Prophecy, #1-#12" and “What Joseph Knew.”)

Yes, reading the imagery of prophecy is an acquired skill, just like riding a bike or reading. In fact, the best analogy for learning to read prophecy comes from your own experience as you first began to read.

Think back to when you couldn’t read, before you learned your ABCs. Do you recall what the printed letters on a page looked like? I can. It looked like so much meaningless gobbledygook. There was no way you or I could make sense of it no matter how long we stared at it. Flipping the pages was futile. Trying to find meaning in it was pointless.

Well, that pretty much describes the situation where prophecy is concerned. You can understand the words, but the message is strange gibberish. Try as you might to find meaning in it or make sense of it, you cannot. Instead, your head begins to hurt. Reading various prophecies only further complicates the matter. It all seems to deal in that same bizarre imagery. Even reading books on the subject by supposed ‘authorities’ on prophecy leaves you no closer to understanding the stuff. And there are whole chunks of prophecy that the 'experts' all seem to avoid. Soon you despair, thinking that making sense of prophecy is going to be nearly impossible.

To teach you how to read, the teacher first started with the alphabet and letter recognition. Each letter had a name—A was “aee,” B was “bee,” and so on. And you learned to recognize them and identify them by name. Once you mastered the alphabet, you took your first step toward reading. But you still could not read.

The same is true of prophecy. To understand it, your teacher must take you back to the basics—stars, planets and plasmas. Why stars, planets and plasmas? Well, that’s where the language of prophecy came from. Earth’s ancient heavens were once alive with planets (the ancients called them stars, not planets) and electrified, glowing, lifelike plasma phenomenon. These impressive elements riveted the attention of ancient peoples the world over and sparked an explosion of imagination and imagery in all cultures.

Just like the letters of the alphabet, what the ancients saw in those long ago skies became the building blocks of all religious tradition and culture.

As analyzed elsewhere (See "A New Heaven and a New Earth," “The Saturn Myths and the Restored Gospel,” “The Saturn Epic: In The Beginning,” “The Saturn Epic: Mythmaking,” "The Polar Configuration and Joseph Smith," “Prophets and Plasmas” and “The Electric Universe”), with a little effort you’ll discover the reasons for believing that Earth’s ancient skies were vastly different than our own today. You’ll learn of the objects and images our ancestors saw in the astronomical theater, and we’ll give names to those planets and plasmas. This will be the prophetic equivalent of learning your ABCs.

The next thing our reading teacher did was to show us that each letter had one or more sounds. That further complicated things, but we were told that it would all become clear if we just persevered. So, we went down the now familiar alphabet assigning sounds to each of them. We learned, for example, that the letter C could have an “sss” sound as in “see,” or a “kay” sound as in “cat.” This was further complication and confusion for our struggling young minds.

Unlike today, where planets are little more than bright, distant stars in the sky, these planets and plasmas were very close.They were overwhelming and imposing because they were close to the Earth. They actually appeared larger than the moon does today. Brilliantly lit, dynamic and magnificent in ancient skies, these planets and plasmas were reverenced as gods or primeval powers.

And ancient onlookers assigned distinctive characteristics or personalities to these nearby planets and plasmas, based on their appearance, movements and changes. They were considered gods, supernatural powers that ruled the heavens, their sole habitat. The “theater of the gods,” then, was the ancient firmament overhead. In the cultures of antiquity, these planets and plasmas became human-like or animal-like gods who acted out their epoch stories on that grandiose stage.

Their identities included names, though those names varied from culture to culture. Even within a single culture, the same astral object acquired numerous names as it moved and changed over time. To modern eyes, this riotous nomenclature of ancient gods offers only confusion. To the ancients it made perfect sense since each name identified a unique aspect of their planet or plasma gods.

But the identities and attributes of those gods were strikingly similar in every cultural tradition because the look and behavior of those planets and plasmas was consistently interpreted the same way from culture to culture. This was due to the fact that the appearance and actions of these gods or powers suggested the same characteristics, natures or personalities in the minds of the ancients the world over.

For this reason, the ancients wrote and spoke of them as if they were living beings or creatures, and they so illustrated them in their sacred art. For example, Saturn (the largest of the planets seen in earthly skies) was the “father god” or “creator,” Venus came to be seen as the original “queen of heaven” or “mother goddess” and Mars became her “son,” the “hero” and the “warrior,” among many other designations. And the plasmas that were seen stretching between the planets took on a large number of identities: a connecting sky pillar, celestial tree, world mountain, astral river and ladder, stairway or path to heaven. Such commonalities allow us to identify each of the primary actors by their role in Earth’s ancient heavens and the traditions of mankind, no matter what name they went by in the various ancient cultures.

Returning once again to our reading analogy, we recall that our teacher introduced the notion that stringing several letters together produced a readable word. To read it, we used the sounds we had learned for each letter, and we were encouraged to “sound out” the more difficult words phonetically. And so we began to haltingly read our first words. “Look, Jane. See Dick run. Run, Dick, run.”

This was a bit of a tricky process. Sounding out each letter and then stringing those sounds together didn’t always produce a recognizable word. We soon learned that there were more complex rules that governed the way some groups of letters sounded. The u-g-h in “laugh” or “tough” made an “fff” sound, even though when those three stood alone they said “Ugh!” Still more complexity to master.

The corollary in learning to read prophecy is the realization that prophetic interpretation assigned a number of roles or characteristics to each of the congregate powers in the sky. For example, Venus was not only the mother goddess, she later became Mars’ crown of light, the “hand” of god, the wife of Saturn and ultimately a raging, angry goddess. One plasma conduit, stretching between Mars and Venus, was described as a dragon, beast or monster because it writhed, undulated and twisted like a snake.

And the complexity of these cosmic forms only grows and multiplies as we survey the literature and traditions of ancient cultures. These original forms, prototypes or archetypes became the basis for nearly innumerable traditional and religious narratives, and their perceived behaviors became the stuff of sacred rituals in all ancient cultures.

Mastering the use of these archetypes by understanding their astral origins allows any reader to interpret them wherever they are found: in religious ritual, in narratives such as scripture, in hieroglyphics, monumental architecture, petroglyphs or sacred symbols.

In our reading analogy, we eventually discovered that words could be grouped into sentences to complete a thought. And several sentences comprised a paragraph, a tidy group of thoughts that, when grouped together, made a summary or conveyed a concept.

In prophecy, we learn that a few simple symbols can convey whole narratives. In some cases, only one ideogram or hieroglyph invokes whole paragraphs of text.

Conversely, we learn that scriptural or religious metaphors have symbolic equivalents. This was a two-headed coin. On one side we have the symbol, and on the other we have its metaphoric equivalent. This allowed the ancients, most of whom could neither read nor write, to depict, read or relate a whole story with just a few symbols or a single ritual.

In reading, with practice came proficiency. After years of work, we mastered reading sufficient to extract meaning from any text. We were finally readers.

So, too, with deciphering prophecy. With some dedicated time and effort, we can train ourselves to read prophecy as easily as we read the morning paper.

But that was not all there was to reading. We soon learned that there were other languages. Some even used ideograms instead of an alphabet. That is, just when we think we’ve mastered it all, we discover that there are new horizons to explore.

So it is with prophetic language. Once we master the basics—the archetypes—once we learn the imagery those basics gave rise to, we can “read” any prophetic metaphor or arcane symbol as easily as we read the letters on a written page.

Of course when we reach that level, we discover to our amazement that what we have learned is only the tip of the iceberg. We quickly find that the imagery or language of prophecy is also the key to the vision of all the prophets, not just prophecy per se. And that includes the teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith. We realize, too, that it is the key to temple symbolism and ritual, both in ancient cultures and in the modern church.

We should have guessed that learning to interpret prophecy, like learning to read, would ultimately reveal sweeping vistas of knowledge and understanding beyond anything we could have imagined at the outset of our quest.

I guess we’re not dummies after all.

©Anthony E. Larson, 2009

More on the Electric Universe

Einstein got it wrong … and so did Newton, for that matter.

Electricity was an unknown item, except as a novelty, in Newton’s day. Hence, his speculations on gravity did not take electricity and it’s considerable power into account. Einstein knew of electricity and charge, but as a mathematician, he discounted them in his calculations.

Even today, given the practical application of electricity’s power in our everyday lives, we are largely ignorant of its nature, its properties and its role in the universe. We know that it can generate light and heat. We know that electricity creates magnetic fields, and those can be harnessed to turn motors. It is the backbone of our modern age, bringing us all the comforts, benefits and wonders of our computer-driven, technological world. Yet, we still don’t really know how it works.

While scientists and engineers have harnessed electricity’s awesome power to our benefit, they do not understand it. That is, the fundamental nature and properties of electricity are still matters of conjecture — as are its cousins: light, magnetism and gravity. Though we know that they are interrelated, we do not understand how. Like light, electricity is still pretty much a mystery to us.

But we stand on the threshold of a quantum leap forward in our understanding of the very nature of our universe and its primary mover and shaker: electricity. If a few, maverick scientists and scholars are correct, electricity not only lights the universe, as it does our streets and homes, it creates and organizes them. It powers the sun, giving light and heat to our world and all the planets. It determines the orbits and the rotation of the various planets. It sculpts the face every planet, moon, comet and asteroid. It powers the weather systems of the planets, including our own. And, it even gives us life — an unacknowledged fact that will revolutionize the field of medicine when it becomes accepted.

Thanks to the emerging field of plasma physics, we are beginning to see how electricity works in the universe. We now know that electricity is a million, billion, billion, billion times more powerful than gravity. It is a force to be reckoned with.

For Latter-day Saints, all this, of course, becomes vital to our study of the gospel, rooted as it is in the symbolism of the past. That is, in order to fully understand past, cosmological events, we simply must have a clear understanding of the role electrically energetic plasmas played. Only then can we fully grasp the enormity of ancient events, as recorded in scripture and all ancient texts.

Comparative mythology gave us the key to open the door. From it we learned that in the distant past, Saturn visually dominated a unique, polar configuration of planets, of which our world was a part. But it could not explain the science behind that concept. The laws of gravity simply would not allow such a situation or condition. Plasma physics and recognition of the dynamic roles of electricity and charge in that ancient configuration provide the missing pieces to our puzzle.

We may now have at hand the means to explain Newton’s law of gravity. We may also be able to see the flaws in Einstein's theories.

Equally valuable, we now have not only the eyewitness accounts of the ancients, but we have empirical evidence, based on an entirely new paradigm, to tell us what happened in Earth’s ancient heavens that gave rise to all the imagery of the ancients — the same imagery that we see on the walls of temples, tombs, monuments and in ancient texts, like the scriptures.

The pioneers in plasma physics tell us that what they see in electrified plasmas in their laboratories they also see in intergalactic space. What they see in microscopic experiments is virtually identical to pictures given us by the Hubble telescope. The term for that similarity between the tiny plasma configurations seen in the lab and the gigantic ones seen in space is “scalability.” That is, large, small or in between, these plasmas behave in identical and predictable ways.

This is a vital concept. If these energetic, electrified plasmas, similar to those seen in the laboratory and through the Hubble telescope, were once proximate to the Earth in solar system-sized scale, if they dominated our ancient skies with the same plasma figures, then it should be no surprise to learn they are identical to ancient symbols. Rock art, called petroglyphs, reflect these similarities, as do all the icons of the past and the language they inspired.

This is a fruitful field of inquiry for any Mormon who wishes to understand the language of his or her scriptures. Only through recognizing the true, electrical nature of God’s universe can we properly understand him and his creations. Only by seeing the past, present and the future through these “electric” lenses can we fully grasp what our Father has done and how he has done it. Furthermore, we must wear these lenses to see and appreciate what he and his prophets have given us in the scriptures and the restored gospel.

© Anthony E. Larson, 2009

The "One Story"

The mythology, traditions and religions of ancient cultures the world over and across all time are based in singular astral objects and events observed by the earliest inhabitants of this planet. That’s the basis of what one comparative mythologist called “the One Story told around the world.”

This is a novel concept, but one that is central to deciphering almost all the mysteries from the past. It declares that the seemingly bizarre beliefs and traditions of widely divergent and isolated cultures in hoary antiquity all derived from a single source: our ancient heavens.

This notion stands in diametric opposition to the traditional, scientific view that the heavens have appeared constant for as long as Man trod this planet. Yet, when we turn to the records bequeathed us by our ancestors, we find they tell us a very different story—one that makes no sense in light of our present concepts.

What those primeval people saw defies all description. We see nothing remotely like it in our present skies. It was so overwhelming, so dramatic that its elements indelibly impressed themselves upon the human psyche. The mythologies, legends, traditions and religions it spawned still retain a vivid memory of things seen in ancient skies, though we fail to perceive them as such.

These myths, legends, traditions and religions are the repositories for the memories of cosmological pageants that played out over Earth’s skies for an extended period of time in the very earliest epoch of Mankind. They are an invaluable record, bequeathed us by our ancestors, each containing some elements of the One Story.

Each culture remembered the story of those events from a unique, proprietary perspective. Yet they all retain a remarkable coherence when seen as memories stemming from a common, astral origin. Moreover, they were modified and elaborated down through time in very different ways by widely divergent cultures, such that today, they are nearly unrecognizable as the same story. But they are.

For Latter-day Saints who wish to fully benefit from their scripture study, their temple experience and the teachings of Joseph Smith, this knowledge is vital. Because the Prophet sought to restore “all things as at first,” he included the data about Earth’s ancient cosmology in his teachings. If we lack this perspective, his teachings in this regard are meaningless to us. Without this knowledge, our efforts to grasp the teachings of Christ and the Prophets are greatly hampered.

In order to provide the interested reader with an overview of the events once seen to evolve in ancient skies, the following narrative and commentary have been created in an easy to understand, side-by-side format. The italicized text is a narrative describing the beliefs and traditions in the One Story. The normal text is an analytical commentary describing the events and conditions that obtained in order to create those beliefs and traditions.

Once upon a time in a Golden Age, this world was an idyllic place, very different than it is now. People hardly aged at all. They lived much longer than today. There was little or no disease.

Comparative mythology tells us that all ancient cultures have traditions of an idyllic era, a halcyon epoch at the beginning of human memory when life was tranquil and without hardship, pain or illness.

There were no temperature extremes, no rain, no snow, no wind and no weather, as we know it.

Earth’s meteorological environment was drastically different than now due to tremendous electromagnetic forces in play.

Food grew in abundance year round, with no need of cultivation or irrigation. The whole world was a garden.

This electromagnetically enhanced environment dramatically affected its flora and fauna. All life prospered, whether animal or vegetable.

There were no nations, governments or even tribes. Therefore, there were no wars, no battles, no contention and no strife.

The abundance humans enjoyed led to an absence of need and hardship. Competition for vital resources was unknown. It was a completely egalitarian society.

Not only was this Earth vastly different, so were the heavens. A motionless, golden sun that never set warmed the world. Thus, there was no darkness, no day-night cycle. Its light was softer and more diffuse than the brilliant sunlight we see today.

Cultures the world over worshipped this god/sun. Anthropologists consistently refer to early cultures as “sun worshippers,” which is true. But it was not the sun we see in our sky today. Surprisingly, the ancients report the “first, best sun” was the planet we know today as Saturn.

Though it produced a subdued light equivalent to our twilight, Saturn generated sufficient electromagnetic energy to illuminate and warm our world.

It appeared to hover, motionless, because Earth was positioned directly beneath Saturn’s southern pole. At the same time, Earth’s North Pole was oriented toward Saturn. Put simply, they shared a common axis of rotation. Thus, Saturn stood where Polaris, the North Star, stands today.

A Supreme or Universal Monarch, the same sun that lighted the world, ruled from the high heavens. He was the Creator King, the first light of creation, who created himself as well as all the cosmos.

This was the archetype for all earthly kings. Coronation rites reflected Saturn’s station and actions in the heavens. This is also the source of royal imagery in our scriptures.

This creator brought himself into being as he emerged from a pool or sea of churning water, foam or mud, seen hovering like a layer of clouds in the heavens. From that chaotic void, he emerged to begin his reign over this world and its heavens.

This was the event that all cultures, including the Hebrew, recalled as the creation. The cyclonic pool, called the “firmament” in the Old Testament, was the core vortex of a plasma column or “pinch” that enclosed several planets, positioned along the common axis of rotation between them.

This Great King, seated on his throne, was also the City, Temple or Kingdom of God. He presided over an age of natural abundance, longevity and cosmic harmony.

A variety of symbols were ascribed to Saturn, due to its position and size. It was not only anthropomorphosized as a king, it was also considered a city, a temple and a kingdom. Thus, it was so described in a multitude of variations on one archetype, a dominant orb in Earth’s ancient skies.

Also born in this fixed spot in the northern heavens were the Monarch’s first creations and companions. They appeared as the Warrior or Hero of Heaven and the Son of the King and as the Queen of Heaven. Together, they joined the Sovereign to form a Holy Trinity of ruling, celestial deity.

The first act of this creator god/planet was to bring two others into existence to accompany him. Both were planets that shared the same axis of rotation with Earth and Saturn. They were Mars and Venus, Mars standing closest to Earth.

Like Saturn, anthropomorphic characteristics were attributed to them because of their appearance and behavior. One was the female planet, and the other was the male planet—the yin and the yang. Together, they spawned a multitude of sacred images: the celestial city with a temple in the middle, a heavenly eye, a wheel, etc.

These two active, companion planets appeared to stand before Saturn as it emerged from what was characterized as the heavenly “waters” of creation.

All four planets shared a common axis of rotation and were “stacked” in the following order, from the “bottom” upward: Earth, Mars, Venus and Saturn. From a visual perspective on Earth, Mars appeared centered on Venus, and Venus appeared centered on Saturn. Thus, earthbound observers saw three nested planets in Earth’s northern skies.Earth’s inhabitants honored, worshipped and revered these celestial powers in all their phases and manifestations, and there were many.

The abode of the Three was fixed in the heavens, suspended on a marvelous column or pillar of light, the Cosmic Mountain or Celestial Tree of Life. This was also the Heavenly Street and Great River of Light. It was The Way to heaven. It was this Pillar of Light or Celestial Mountain that supported and sustained the Celestial City wherein dwelt the gods. Only the worthy could mount its heights to access high heaven.

But there was more … much more. There was also a polar, plasma column that appeared to connect heaven to Earth, resembling a great pillar of light, that embraced those three planets overhead and our planet beneath, illuminating our world day and night. From its magnificent crest, the planetary triumvirate dominated the earth and the heavens. To the Hebrews, it was Zion or Sinai; to the Greeks, it was Olympus, the abode of Zeus, Hera and all the Olympians.

The polar column was also visualized as the Celestial Tree, with roots in the earth and branches among the planets/stars/gods. It was also seen as the Great River of Light, Life or Abundance connecting heaven and earth and as a ladder/stairway/path to heaven, the only avenue to the gods’ abode, the Heavenly City.

The Queen of Heaven was the wife/daughter/consort of the Creator King. She was the Celestial Egg or the Womb or Heaven, who held within her the Holy Seed, the Son of God, to whom she would later give birth in a monumental event that stirred the imagination of ancient peoples everywhere. She was the Iris of God’s Eye; her unborn child was the Pupil of God’s Eye. She was the Mouth; he was the Opener of the mouth. Together, they were the dual Heart of Heaven, the Creator’s Heart.

Venus was the archetype of all female goddesses in antiquity, the prototype of every female character in religion and mythology.Because Mars was centered on Venus, various aspects were attributed to that planet. It was an iris to Mars’ pupil, forming an eye with Saturn. It was part of Saturn’s heart. It was an egg, with the unborn child within it. Mars completed the mouth formed by Venus on Saturn’s face.

Soon, she became the Star of Heaven, the dazzling Radiant Goddess. She burst into glory that eclipsed the Creator King. She was the light and power of the Heaven King, the animating force that illuminated and protected heaven or the Kingdom of God.

The entire world remembered the planet Venus as the “star” goddess. It was Astarte, Ishtar, Ashteroth, Aphrodite, Hathor and the Greek Venus. It was not only stunningly brilliant, the planet’s plasma discharge assumed a variety of shapes that came to dominate the iconography of all ancient cultures. These star icons still dominate the imagination of humankind today. The flags of nearly every nation carry Venus’ star image in one form or another.

The Warrior Hero was a powerful god, the son of the King and Queen of Heaven. Born of his mother, he left his exalted station to descend to the Earth. As he descended, he grew from a dwarf to a giant, and heaven erupted into chaos. He had become the Destroyer of Worlds. The earth and the heavens shook. The closer he approached, the worse things became and the more terrible he looked. In so descending, he became old, sickly and decrepit, becoming human-like and taking upon himself the evils of the world, thus redeeming mankind.

Mars was the archetype for most male gods of antiquity. That planet’s story is the stuff of a multitude of legends. Mars became the model for every legendary, cultural hero. It was powerful, yet strangely impotent at times. It could topple the heavens, but it could not control itself. It was the dwarf who became a giant, the prototypical shape shifter. It was the quixotic Hero that very nearly destroyed creation, yet it was also the god who restored the heavens to their former peace and glory. It was the youth that aged and then became a youth again.

Yet, this is only one take on a variety of misadventures of Mars in ancient skies.

After his descent to the Earth, the Warrior Hero returned to his home in heaven by climbing the Cosmic Mountain or Celestial Stairway to Heaven. As he ascended, the commotion and tumult diminished. He became the Prince of Peace as the heavens ceased their tumultuous roar and the incessant shaking of the earth died away.

As Mars receded from its close encounter with Earth, it appeared to grow smaller as it also appeared to ascend along the polar column toward Venus. As the distance between Earth and Mars increased, its harmful effect on our planet diminished.

He ascended once again to return to the Mother Goddess’ womb. As he did so, he became youthful once again or reborn. He had completed his given task and overcome many vicissitudes. The Hero entered Heaven only after great Gates of Light parted to admit him, whereupon he took his mother as his wife by coupling with her in the celestial city or garden.

This is the story of the polar column as told in conjunction with Mars’ odyssey. As such, its story became the genesis of heroic adventure tales in all ancient cultures.This version of the Mars saga is the core of the Oedipus legend. As risqué as it sounds to our Victorian ears, this was at the center of many cultural traditions, including illicit temple rites the world over.

In returning to the Center Place, the Warrior/Hero reinstated the Eye or Mouth of God, thus restoring Heaven to its former appearance, glory and splendor.

During Mars’ absence, the eye or mouth was no longer complete. With its return to the center place, the eye or mouth archetypes were reinstated. This is the source of Egyptian resurrection rituals called “The Opening of the Mouth or Eye,” and similar rites in other cultures.

All was well for a time. But one day, a fierce Chaos Monster arose from the Cosmic Mountain. Breathing fire and roaring across heaven, it menaced the Celestial City and the Gods as it writhed and struck out at heaven and earth. The Queen of Heaven became the disheveled Hag of Heaven, the Witch. All creation seemed doomed to destruction by the dragon who had grown many heads until the Warrior/Hero stepped forward to subdue the monster or beast. When he did, all things became tranquil again. Life was beautiful and all heaven was at peace.

On occasion, the denizens of this kingdom moved from their appointed places, changing their appearance and their behavior, menacing our Earth, unleashing chaos and catastrophe. At such times for example, the Cosmic Mountain transformed into a serpent/snake/beast called the Chaos Monster, writhing and fierce beyond comprehension in disordered heavens, striking fear and awe into Earth’s inhabitants.

During these periods of disorder, the formerly brilliant and spectacular Venus did a role reversal, taking on the appearance of a disheveled monster that raged across the skies.

At these times of chaos, Mars became a warrior, appearing to do battle with a monster, using great bolts of lightning to subdue the threatening beast, as in the Babylonian tradition of Marduk and Tiamat.

Then, things would settle down again for a time.

In the end, this Golden Age perished in the greatest upheaval the world had ever known. The monarch was thrown down, fled and vanished, along with his castle, city or kingdom. The mountain that sustained him vanished as well, along with the queen and the son—all went into the dark abyss. The remnants of their dismembered bodies were scattered across the sky to become the glittering star field we know today. But in the process, our world was nearly destroyed, and mankind with it, by a vast flood of epic proportions. Yet, some few survived to inherit a new world and a new sky—not as pleasant as the first, but survivable.

All the movement, appearance changes disruptions and dislocations of orbs in the ancient polar configuration of planets were the result of forces dismantling that grouping. When the final dissolution came, earthlings saw the gods and the mountain they lived on recede into distant space.

Once those brilliant planets and glowing plasma disappeared, the starry heavens could be seen for the first time.

The polar oceans, held in place as permanent tides, were released, flooding the Earth. Centrifugal force drove those waters to the equator, dividing continents and creating islands for the first time. This was the origin of flood traditions in all ancient cultures.

So, everyone lived happily ever after. The end. (Until it all starts over again.)

Humans adapted and thus survived, but at a terrible cost. Constant fear of destruction from the skies haunted all mankind. We adopted survival strategies that evolved into beliefs, institutions and practices taken for granted today.But the fear of astral destruction remains, buried deep in our subconscious. The fear of doomsday remains vivid in the human psyche, though unrecognized and largely unacknowledged. We struggle to suppress those fears, denying them by replacing them with ‘scientific’ theories that put us on a peaceful and largely uneventful planet for “billions and billions of years.”

Sounds a bit like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? That’s because all myths and legends began life as cultural traditions, reenacted in sacred rites, rituals, pageants and holidays designed to preserve those memories. This One Story is also the basis for all religious tradition. Parts of it were incorporated into our temples, telling us that Joseph Smith knew the One Story ... all of it ... by heart.

This overview may be a bit hard to accept for those new to these ideas. Yet, if given enough time to fully consider them and study them in relation to the restored gospel, anyone can see the simplicity and power of such concepts. They not only explain the system of traditions, myths and legends of all nations and cultures, they explain the iconic elements of our restored religion, instituted by a prophet who knew and understood all these things, judging by his many corroborating statements.

Restoring the true religion meant reinstating all the elements of the One Story. The evidence for this can be found in our temples and scriptures, where symbols, rituals and metaphors true to the many actors and elements of the One Story abound. They are the iconic and metaphorical trappings of our religion, restored in their fullness for our edification and enlightenment. This connects us to antiquity and our ancestors. It offers a basis for understanding the ineffable and the inexplicable. But most of all, it promises to expand our wisdom and our testimonies far beyond their present, narrow boundaries.

© Anthony E. Larson, 2009

Documenting a Paradigm Shift

This past summer saw the release of two dramatic motion pictures — “Deep Impact” and “Armageddon” — both dealing with fictional events surrounding the impact of an asteroid or comet here on our home planet, Earth. Additionally, the Learning and Discovery channels have recently presented numerous documentaries touching upon the same subject.

While all this is very entertaining and informative, the question arises: Why are we seeing this now? Such scenarios were unthinkable just a few short years ago. Reputable scientists of good standing in the scholarly community once ridiculed such ideas as fanciful and impossible — the wildest type of unsubstantiated speculation.

You may recall that the debate surrounding Dr. Velikovsky’s publication of Worlds in Collision was acrimonious. The mere suggestion that the Earth might be menaced by bodies from space caused a firestorm of derision and such antagonism that almost a half-century later the name Velikovsky is still a hiss and a byword in scholarly circles. Interestingly, various individuals who have published and promoted ideas that were first offered by the good doctor have built a number of academic and scientific careers in recent years. Yet, credit is never given to Velikovsky for his preeminence in this area. Instead, his name is judiciously avoided — seemingly at all odds — except to cast further aspersions on his name and his work.

Today we see well-respected scientists and scholars talking and writing about the reality of past and future impacts; Hollywood producers have certainly found valid story line material in the premise; even NASA has sought funding to track killer asteroids and comets, potential Earth impactors. What could have happened to instigate all this recent discussion of past and future impacts when only a few short years ago the mere mention of impacts in these circles would have brought forth defamation, ridicule and derision? Why is this suddenly being taken seriously? Something must have occurred to radically alter their point of view.

A celestial visual aid

The reason for this change of heart in the academic and scientific communities, as well as the newfound media interest in astronomical collisions, can be found in recent history. In July 1994, fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy, as predicted, repeatedly slammed into the planet Jupiter. At least one of those impact sites left a pockmark on Jupiter’s face that was larger than the Earth. Estimates were that the first fragment alone struck with the force of 200,000 megatons! Nineteen more followed, leaving visible impact scars around Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. This was an unprecedented, historic, celestial event. Nothing like it has occurred in our solar system since Galileo Galilei invented the telescope.

What crucial lesson did that impact teach scientists? Cosmic collisions do occur, and in the time frame of a human life. Moreover, if it can happen to Jupiter, it can happen to the Earth. Still more to the point, it most certainly will have happened in the past.

A major shift

Almost overnight the scientific community did a conceptual about-face that was as dramatic as it was sweeping. They had been treated to a celestial visual aid of cosmic proportions; the “impossible” had occurred before their very eyes. There was no denying the possibility of catastrophic impacts any longer.

Seemingly overnight, scientific sleuths discovered impact craters everywhere—not just on other planets and moons, but right here on Earth. Astronomers suddenly noticed that the space around Earth, indeed in the entire solar system, was littered with asteroids and comets — potentially devastating impacts in the making. Space scientists began talking about ways to use existing technology and space hardware to locate and divert any object on a collision course with Earth, thus avoiding the worldwide devastation of an impact. So it is that the Shoemaker/Levi event marked the beginning of a revolution in scientific thinking.

The gush of recent movies and documentaries is simply the media’s response to this dynamic new trend in scientific and academic circles. While all this media attention has the effect of raising the general public’s awareness, the realization is coming very slowly. Even with all this new evidence and conjecture, most people seem nearly oblivious to this conceptual revolution. The man on the street continues to generally disregard any possibility that space debris might bombard the Earth. For most people it is still little more than the premise for an entertaining “action flick.”

The fallout from a cosmic collision

Before the impact of Shoemaker/Levi on Jupiter, the only physical evidence of ancient impacts had been offered by geologist Walter Alvarez and his father, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, as well as a team of distinguished scientists. They were the first to cite geologic evidence of an impact that probably destroyed the dinosaurs. (See The Prophecy Trilogy, Vol. II, pp. 70, 71, for a discussion of the Alvarez’ discovery.) This was the beginning of a revolution in Geology and Paleontology. Almost overnight, long-held scientific views began to change. The process eventually accelerated to the point that science textbooks were obsolete before they came off the presses.

But, it took the impact of comet fragments with Jupiter to really blow the lid off the sciences. The very foundation of scientific thought — the concept of slow, gradual change — began to crumble. Where for almost two centuries scientists and scholars had seen only slow, uniform processes of change, now they saw catastrophe — sudden, tumultuous events — as the primary mechanism for change.

Oddly, these scholars and scientists try hard to leave the impression with the public that these revolutionary ideas are nothing new for them. They present their new arguments for catastrophic change with as much of a straight face and calm demeanor as they can muster, even though the subject matter is truly revolutionary and sensational compared to the orthodoxy of yesteryear. They seek to make it appear that this novel thinking represents no real shift of opinion at all, that they have always believed and taught catastrophism. Even though they are still loath to use the word “catastrophe,” this is at the heart of the revolution.

Rewriting history

Paleontologists have long recognized that there are clear divisions in the geologic record. Like pages in a book, the deposits of each age lay one atop another, the present epoch at the surface. Even to an untrained eye, when exposed to view they look like the layers of a cake. Each layer contains the fossils of the plants and animals that lived then — a record of stones and bones, if you will. The lines between those ages, between the pages of Earth’s book, are also clearly visible. Those divisions or boundaries, mapped out long ago, are clear lines of demarcation between distinct ages.

The layers were all given names now familiar to all first-year Geology students (Jurassic, Triassic, Permian, Devonian, etc.). The primary layers immediately above and below them define the boundaries. The well-known K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary, made famous by the Alvarez team and which divides the age of dinosaurs from the age of mammals, is only one such boundary.

Until the revolution began, the transition from one age to another — represented by these boundary layers — was thought to have been a slow, gradual process with one form of life gradually replacing another as global conditions slowly changed to favor certain forms of life over other, less adaptive species. Then the Alvarez team proposed that the iridium in the K-T boundary was persuasive evidence of a cataclysmic impact. They maintained that the dinosaurs did not slowly die out, as was previously thought; they were destroyed in a sudden, lethal event and its devastating aftermath.

While the Alvarez’ theory sparked heated debate and captured the public fancy (as with all things having to do with dinosaurs), most paleontologists were still unconvinced. Then the Shoemaker/Levi comet hit Jupiter, presenting for all to see exactly how an impact occurs and what are its effects. There was no mistaking its catastrophic signature. Almost immediately, most opposition was swept away. This event forced scholars to re-examine the Alvarez’ impact theory. Could this be the mechanism that changed the face of the Earth so many times in the past?

It was not long before paleontologists recognized that each of the boundaries in the geologic record represented a mass extinction caused by a cataclysmic event. They now recognize 24 noteworthy extinction events, 5 major and 19 minor. That represents one of the quickest opinion reversals in the history of science — even faster than those wrought by the work of Copernicus, Kepler or Newton!

Craters, schmaters!

Another rapid shift of opinion involves the craters left by impacts. Until the comet fragments hammered Jupiter, astronomers insisted that nearly all the cratering seen on other planets and moons in our solar system (they had spectacular photos of those planets and moons sent back to them by various space probes) were the result of volcanic activity or volcanism. They insisted that all the cratering from impacts was done early on, during the formation of the solar system and that very little had occurred since. After Shoemaker/Levi, they were no longer so cock sure! Once they looked with new eyes, they began seeing impact craters everywhere (as if they had suddenly appeared out of nowhere!). Volcanism, as the mechanism for cratering, died a quick death now that the idea of impacts carried the day. They even went so far as to point out that the Earth would look just like the pockmarked moon if it were not for erosion, which tended to erase the evidence of earthly impacts. It was not long before the impact site for the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs was found on the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. They gave the buried crater the exotic-sounding Mayan name for that region: Chicxulub (pronounced chic-shoe-lube).

Peaceful planet or cosmic shooting gallery?

Almost overnight, scientists began speaking of the threat posed by Earth-crossing asteroids and comets. NASA proposed a program and sought funding to find and track any object that might collide with the Earth. Most revealing were some recently declassified, top-secret data dating back to the days of the Cold War that was made public to bolster NASA’s claim of the danger posed to the Earth by near-earth objects, or NEOs.

As it turns out, the United States maintains a number of satellites in orbit as well as super-sensitive listening devices strategically placed around the surface, designed to detect the explosion of nuclear devices. These necessary measures were employed to verify compliance with nuclear treaties. Remarkably, those sophisticated surveillance devices detected several detonations each year in Earth’s upper atmosphere — some of them as large as 1 kiloton. Reports in the media of “mysterious explosions” in remote parts of the world went unexplained because the information was classified. Intelligence concerns prevented it from reaching the scientific community and the public. However, the intelligence community readily identified the mystery detonations as asteroids that entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the military began to declassify this information. The astronomers, geologists and planetary scientists were shocked by the figures. Still more stunning was the frequency with which the Earth is bombarded by space debris and by the size of those objects. Los Alamos scientists now estimate 10 or 11 objects explode in the atmosphere each year with the force of a one-kiloton nuclear warhead. One or more explode yearly with the force of a 15-kiloton explosion — about the same size as the nuclear detonation that vaporized Hiroshima! The largest meteorite struck south of Africa on August 3, 1963, producing a blast equal to a one-megaton nuclear explosion or one million tons of high explosive! It has become apparent that the Earth is constantly bombarded by a variety of “rocks,” ranging in size from a grain of sand to boulders twenty feet wide. Some are even larger.

A mystery, a solution

One of the most mysterious explosions in history occurred in 1908 over Siberia. Called the Tunguska Event after the area primarily affected, it has been the subject of intense speculation and conjecture right down to the present. An enormous fireball rent the early morning sky, as witnessed by hundreds of Siberians, producing a column of flame and clouds of thick, black smoke. A shock wave of epic proportions was felt in England some 5 hours later as it spread out across the globe. The immediate impact of that shock wave alone flattened more than 1,000 square kilometers of Siberian forests!

The mystery intensified when no evidence of an impact could be found — no crater, no meteorite. What could have caused a nuclear-class explosion long before there were nuclear devices? Numerous theories were advanced to explain the lack of a crater: Some thought it was a small comet made of ice that vaporized before impacting; one theory, advanced with a straight face, declared that a tiny black hole had passed through the Earth at that spot; many believed that an alien spacecraft — a UFO with an unstable power source — had exploded before it could land to effect repairs. Yet, now that we better understand the nature of these cosmic intruders, the Tunguska blast can be seen for what it truly was: a stony meteor, roughly 60 meters in diameter, which entered Earth’s atmosphere at an oblique angle and disintegrated in an explosion that virtually vaporized it at about 10 kilometers altitude, instantly converting nearly its entire mass into energy — about the same amount of energy as the Mr. St. Helens eruption in 1980. Had the meteorite fallen to Earth over a populated city, the devastation would have been nearly total.

Life from space

There is still one more noteworthy discovery in all this. Biologists now speculate that life may have been transported around the galaxy by catastrophic means. It is known that certain types of anaerobic bacteria can exist in extreme conditions — buried deep within the Earth where there are almost no nutrients or air, in the sub-zero cold and ice of Arctic glaciers, in the searing heat of Yellowstone’s geysers and hot pots, in deep ocean volcanic vents where no light ever penetrates. Speculation has it that these abilities would also allow this bacterium to survive the heat and pressure of an impact in the ejecta that is thrown free of the planet. Thus, an impact upon a life-bearing planet could throw small amounts of debris containing these sturdy bacteria into space. These bacteria would also be able, they conjecture, to survive the intense cold of space for a prolonged time period as well as the tremendous reentry pressure when their host rock crashed onto a new planet, perhaps millions of miles and centuries later, where these sturdy bacteria could begin the process of life anew.

By these catastrophic means, they speculate, life spreads to every hospitable niche and corner of the universe. It is for this reason that the so-called “Mars rock,” which shows microscopic structures that resemble fossilized bacteria, made such a sensation. If the early conclusions are correct, then this bit of ejecta from the planet Mars may be the best evidence for this dispersion theory, demonstrating how life is scattered throughout the universe. Once again, catastrophism carries the day. The pattern here is unmistakable. Science is turning more and more toward ideas they once thought to be laughable.

Just the beginning

One more element of this ideological revolution should be explored. Until now, it has primarily affected the sciences of Astronomy, Geology and Paleontology. The disciplines of Archaeology, Anthropology and Archaeoastronomy — the study of mankind’s history — have yet to feel the pressure of this revolution; but it will surely come, bringing sweeping change with it. It will force scholars to reconsider everything we believe about our world and our ancestors. It will become apparent that we live on a world that is swept with cosmic disaster on a periodic basis, leaving civilizations decimated and in ruin. Modern man will discover that he has failed to recognize the primary truth that the ancients endeavored to pass along. It will be seen clearly that man has survived numerous cataclysmic events, but only barely. Perhaps then Velikovsky will be acknowledged for his seminal work. More sobering still is the thought that we may succumb to our own cosmic disaster before we realize the truth about our past. Perhaps this is one lesson we will only learn by tragic experience.

So, this is, in every sense of the word, a revolution of ideas, a paradigm shift. It is most gratifying that each new step along this path of discovery brings the world closer to the catastrophist view. It would be encouraging if all Latter-day Saints could fully appreciate what this means to their understanding of the scriptures and prophecy. Joseph Smith would certainly be pleased at this turn of events.

© Anthony E. Larson, 1999

Prophets and Plasmas

“It is the thunderbolt that steers the universe,” wrote the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Today’s scholars and scientists dismiss such statements as simpleminded nonsense, based in ignorance.

But, as we have seen, electricity probably plays a far greater role in the universe than modern science recognizes. What if Heraclitus actually knew much more than we do about the nature of the power that organizes and drives the universe?

To illustrate this notion, let’s look at a glaring example from history.

Zeus throwing a thunderbolt

Notice the object Greek sculptors put in Zeus’ hand.

No, it’s not a football or a stalk of corn. The Greek sources tell us this was the appearance of those fabled thunderbolts Zeus was said to have launched from Olympus, the sacred mountain on which he resided. Clearly, it looks nothing like anything we would call a thunderbolt. Yet the Greeks were unwavering. These, they insisted, were thunderbolts. There were many variations, but none of them look like a bolt of lightning to our eyes.

More thunderbolts

The most elementary form was that of a simple missile with a corkscrew configuration.


Numerous illustrations of the weapon show it sending forth leaf-like sepals, then “flowering” into a lotus form. The petals of the lotus/thunderbolt are also elaborated in tradition as horns or wings, a fact that appears absurd today, until we perceive the underlying structure.


Though they differ somewhat, these patterns are, in fact, surprisingly consistent. And that consistency is a vital key to understanding what we see in these sculptures.

So, what are these thunderbolts of the gods?

To answer that question, we must look to a surprising source: the most recent images of similar features in distant galaxies and stars. We must also consider the nature of something called plasma and its electrical properties.

Plasma and electricity

Plasma permeates space. Our entire Milky Way galaxy consists mainly of plasma. It is the fourth state of matter. We are all familiar with the first three, most common states of matter: gas, liquid and solid. We experience them every day. Yet, we are also surrounded with plasmas, though we don’t recognize them for what they are. In fact 99% of the entire universe is plasma!

An electrical plasma is a cloud of ions (positively charged particles) and electrons (negatively charged particles) that can sometimes light up and behave in some unusual ways when ‘excited’ or activated by applying electrical and magnetic fields. The most familiar examples of electrical plasmas on Earth are the neon sign, lightning, and the electric arc welding machine. The ionosphere of Earth is an example of a plasma that does not emit visible light. Fire is a plasma. The cloud of particles that constitutes the solar “wind” is a plasma.

Birkeland

During the late 1800’s, a Norwegian physicist, Kristian Birkeland, explained that the reason we could see Earth’s polar auroras was that they were plasmas. Birkeland also discovered the twisted corkscrew-shaped paths taken by electric currents in plasmas.

Plasma behavior continues to astonish the specialists who study it, and it is radically different from the familiar behavior of solids, liquids, and gasses. It is self-organizing, paring into filaments that intertwine or ‘braid’ into pairs that attract each other at long distances and repel each other at short distances.


Sometimes those twisted shapes are visible and sometimes not — that depends on the strength and the current density being carried by the plasma. Today these braided streams of ions and electrons are called “Birkeland currents” after their discoverer. The mysterious “sprites”, “elves”, and “blue jets” associated with electrical storms on Earth are examples of Birkeland currents in the plasma of our upper atmosphere.

In a plasma, these filaments evolve into braided ropes that can act as electrical transmission lines, much as braided, twisted cable is used to carry electrical power to our homes. As a practical matter, we’ve learned that wound or braded cable carries electricity more efficiently. The apparent reason is that this is the natural configuration for electrical current, as discovered by Birkeland.

Birkland currents form braided filaments

On a cosmic scale, that means they can carry electric power across galactic and intergalactic space, while organizing and driving secondary systems, including stars and planets. Electric current in space, passing through plasma, will take on the corkscrew (spiral) shape discovered by Birkeland (see above).

There are three distinctly different steady state modes in which plasma can operate:

Dark Current Mode - The strength of the electrical current (flow of charged particles) within the plasma is very low. The plasma does not glow. It is essentially invisible. We would not know plasma was there at all unless we measured its electrical activity with sensitive instruments. The present day magnetospheres of the planets are examples of plasmas operating in the dark current mode, as are the giant, but quite indiscernible, Birkland currents that carry the prodigious power throughout the galaxy to light our sun and all the stars.

Normal Glow Mode - The strength of the electrical current (flow of charged particles) is significant. The entire plasma glows. The brightness of the glow depends on the intensity of the current in the plasma. Examples are any neon sign, emission nebulae and the Sun’s corona.

Arc Mode - The strength of the electrical current in the plasma is very high. The plasma radiates brilliantly over a wide spectrum. Current tends to form twisting filaments. Examples of this mode of operation are an electric arc welding machine, lightning or the Sun’s photosphere.

Such filaments have already been discovered in our own solar system. For example, it is known that million ampere currents flowing down the Earth’s magnetic field lines at the northern and southern poles cause the Earth’s aurora to glow. A similar glowing vortex, astronomers dubbed a “flux tube,” was found by planetary explorer spacecraft to connect the planet Jupiter with its closest satellite, Io.

Langmuir

In the early 20th century, Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir studied electric plasmas in his laboratory at General Electric. He further developed the body of knowledge Birkeland had pioneered and was the first to use the name ‘plasma’ to describe the almost lifelike, self-organizing behavior of these ionized gas clouds in the presence of electrical currents and magnetic fields.

Langmuir identified a plasma phenomenon called a “double layer,” a boundary that forms around charged objects immersed in plasma. This boundary, now called a “Langmuir sheath,” surrounds our planet. Invisible to the naked eye, it electrically isolates our world from the Sun’s plasma, called the solar wind, and interacts with it in ways we have yet to fully understand.

Laboratory experiments and simulations on supercomputers reveal that plasma discharge formations, under the influence of electric currents, are remarkably similar to formations observed in remote space. The patterns of plasma behavior are said to be scalable. That is, a high energy electric discharge in plasma will produce the same formations irrespective of the size of the event. The same basic patterns will be seen at laboratory, planetary, stellar, and galactic levels.

Duration is proportional to size as well. A spark that lasts for milliseconds in the laboratory may persist for years at planetary or stellar scales, or for thousands of years at galactic or intergalactic scales.


Because Birkeland currents most often occur in pairs, they tend to compress between them any material (ionized or not) in the plasma. This is called the “z-pinch” effect. Thus, when we look at nebulas in space such as the one pictured above, we are looking at glowing plasma — a celestial thunderbolt of prodigious size — showing the z-pinch effect on a galactic scale.

The most striking feature of the central part of this nebula is its polar symmetry, looking much like those Greek “thunderbolts” pictured on the first page. The central ‘neck’ is where the galactic electrical currents, “pinch” down to create the hourglass figure.

Once again in the photo above, we see the similarities between galactic plasma structures and the lotus-like illustrations from ancient art of the gods’ thunderbolt weapons.


These shapes are uncannily similar to those of Zeus’ thunderbolts drawn by ancient astronomers because such electric phenomena are scalable through several orders of magnitude.

That is, microcosmic or macrocosmic, they always take on the same appearance. They exhibit the same forms and characteristics whether the discharge occurs over a fraction of a millimeter in a laboratory, over thousands of kilometers in Earth’s heavens or across many light-years in the galaxy. In fact, computerized simulations of high-energy electrical discharges in the laboratory indicate that the same patterns can be scaled up yet another 100 million times to galactic size.

A revised view of the past heavens

In the electric model, the actual history of our solar system does not resemble the currently accepted theories of the sciences. Abbreviated “first glimpses” of these discoveries may provoke incredulity, shock, and irritation. Therefore, the reader must be asked to suspend all prior beliefs on the subject, including matters thought to have been settled decades, or even centuries ago in order to give this evidence a proper hearing.

The implications of these new discoveries for aiding in our understanding the scriptures are profound.

The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that the catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah was caused by a thunderbolt — the plain was “consumed by lightning.” And he added, “Personally I am quite prepared to grant that once-famous cities may have been burnt by fire from heaven.” Also Josephus asserted that the cities had been “consumed by thunderbolts.” Philo wrote that “lightnings poured out of heaven,” destroying the cities.

Such observations dovetail with the Greek traditions of thunderbolts. Accounts in scripture of what might otherwise be considered ‘miraculous’ become understandable phenomena, without detracting from the gospel message they also convey.

In the later years of his life, Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfven, the founder of plasma science, reached a startling conclusion about the nature of the universe. He said that today’s gravitational systems are the “ashes” of prior electrical systems. This remarkable idea and the revelations we’ve seen about plasmas in a near Earth environment requires that we read our scriptures from an entirely new perspective, however unnerving. It raises the possibility that the ancient heavens looked nothing like the skies we see now, and accounts of events from that time must be re-read with this new perspective to more fully appreciate the message they contain.

This is the new perspective Latter-day Saints should keep in mind while re-reading their scriptures — not only prophetic passages but historic accounts such as Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price. These can only be fully understood when read with the following in mind:

As recently as several thousand years ago, planets moved under the influence of electrified plasma, a medium that can easily overwhelm gravity. Orbits changed, and catastrophic electrical encounters altered the terrain, the climates, and the atmospheres of planets, including our Earth.

Though the duration of instability is unknown, the final episodes of catastrophe occurred in the time of our early ancestors, who witnessed celestial wonders beyond anything imagined today. Charged planets and moons were held in a close array by electrical forces and were seen as huge spheres in the sky. In periods of instability, plasma discharges passed between planets, capturing the obsessive attention of human witnesses. Ancient sky worshippers observed the resulting plasma configurations as these discharges mutated from one unstable phase to another, seemingly alive, intelligent and habitually combative. It was such events, often earthshaking, earsplitting and terrifying, that supplied the raw content of world mythology and inspired the great religious and symbolic traditions of antiquity.

Claims for such a scenario can be substantiated by comparing the forms taken by plasmas in the laboratory and the symbolic religious art of antiquity — etched on tomb and temple walls, carved on rock, illustrated on religious icons and even painstakingly embedded in vast landforms.

Plasma forms in sacred art worldwide

Plasma physicist Anthony Peratt, the foremost authority in the world on the forms exhibited by laboratory plasmas under the influence of electrical forces, recognized this ancient form of iconography as illustrations of plasmas in space, much as we have identified the thunderbolts of the Greek gods as plasma. That is, Peratt insists that what looks to our eyes as though they were myth-inspired icons, nonsensical doodling or just plain gibberish are actually accurate representations — facsimiles in stone, if you will — of what the ancients saw in their skies. He points out that he has seen all these same forms in plasmas generated in his lab experiments at Los Alamos National Laboratories.

What follows is only a minute sampling of Peratt’s published work, comparing ancient rock art with laboratory experiments and simulations on supercomputers of plasma discharge formations under the influence of electric currents. You will agree that the similarities are stunning.



These are graphic representations of one plasma configuration produced in Peratt’s laboratory that he affirms gave rise the examples of rock art from around the world seen below that he calls “squatter man.”


Note that the squatting position illustrated above is strongly reminiscent of the posture or stance taken by Polynesians in their sacred ritual dances and by Hindu ritual dancers, a connection not previously made by anthropologists.

These images suggest two other possibilities for interpretive use beyond the more common squatting figure. The many arms of the Hindu god, Shiva and the spider, found on the plain of Nazca in Peru
are likely derivatives of the same plasma image.

Most of the symbols and petroglyphs found the world over are probably illustrations of things seen in Earth’s heavens anciently, further demonstrating the universality of these images, as in this Chinese glyph.

This worldwide commonality argues convincingly that there is only one place all ancient cultures could have seen these images: in Earth’s ancient skies.

Another plasma arrangement discovered in the laboratory by Peratt is here illustrated below.


Called a “Peratt Instability,” this plasma configuration takes the shape of a stack of donuts. These graphic and computer generated illustrations of experimentally created plasmas look remarkably like the mythic “backbone of god.”

A multitude of petroglyphs appear to depict Peratt’s stacked toruses. These are only a few among thousands of such examples. So all those squiggly drawings on rocks were based in rock-solid reality.

The stacked toruses, seen from an oblique angle, also took on the appearance of the mythical “chain of arrows.” These can be seen in similar illustrations from sacred art of widely separated cultures.

Heretofore inexplicable rock art that was generally thought to have no basis in the physical world can now be seen as a heroic attempt by ancient cultures to record the plasma phenomenon they saw in the heavens, something they considered to be sacred imagery.

Without the insight these plasma configurations offer, anthropologists are at a loss to explain the origin or the motivation for such bizarre images. They frankly admit that the meaning of such glyphs is a mystery, such as the Egyptian illustration below.

Yet, when seen in light of cutting edge plasma science, the explanation is quite simple, though unexpected. These were things seen overhead in Earth’s ancient heavens. Those that saw them felt compelled to record what they saw in order to preserve what they considered to be sacred. These petroglyph sites were subsequently considered sacred as well, a place to recall the images of the gods and perform rituals.

A more complete and elaborate version of the Peratt Instability is seen here (left) in a computer simulation of an actual plasma experiment in the laboratory.

Compare it to a reproduction of an Arizona petroglyph (right).
The correlation is stunning, and it leaves no doubt about the original subject for this Native American petroglyph.

The computer simulation (left) shows where the increase in current strength begins to “warp at the edges.” The petroglyph (right), precisely reflects those same details. Like the “squatter man” seen above, this is clearly an illustration in stone of a plasma configuration seen in the heavens.

Peratt identifies the parts of the stone glyph that correspond to those elements of a Peratt Instability (below).


Taking a closer view at the torus seen at the base of the Peratt Instability, we see an entirely new figure.

This plasma image (left) figures prominently in the mythology of the past, where it was call the “sky mask,” giving rise to the universal practice of wearing masks in conjunction with religious ceremonies and stacked divinity icons in “totems.” The obvious relationship of these plasma images to sacred imagery leads to only one conclusion: Earth’s ancient inhabitants recorded by every means possible what they could see in the skies above them during an epoch of intense electrical plasma activity in the heavens.

Coming full circle

Having only briefly explored the nascent field of plasma science and its relationship to ancient iconography, there is only one more comparison to make in order to complete our journey.

Like the thunderbolt wielding Greek god, Zeus, the Sumerian god Ninurta is said to have thrown thunderbolts across heaven as he battled the celestial monster, Anzu. A side-by-side comparison of the Sumerians’ illustration of their god’s weapon (far left) with one of Peratt’s electrical “hourglass” formations in plasma (near left) puts a lock on the thesis of this paper.

A cross-cultural comparison of celestial thunderbolts, as in the Hindu vajra (top) and the Greek thunderbolt (bottom) reveals a whole new perspective of the religious iconography of the past and its unexpected, but exciting, connection to plasma physics.

And a comparison of a variety of Greek thunderbolt images (nine images below) to some primary plasma constructs seen in computer simulations of laboratory plasma (five images below) leaves little doubt what the ancient Greeks saw.

The astounding relevance of plasma phenomenon in space to the iconography of the ancients forces Latter-day Saints to consider the likelihood that if these manifestations were so impressive as to motivate cultures worldwide to record what they saw by any method available to them, then this same imagery must have found its way into scriptural accounts recorded by the prophets of God and into the iconography of temples, ancient and modern.

This is the test. And Joseph Smith and the gospel he restored pass it with flying colors.

© Anthony E. Larson, 2005