Once the symbolic nature of the scriptures is understood, as well as its origins and its implementation, an entirely new perspective of the gospel emerges. Knowledge of the events and conditions that lead to the religious symbolism of all ancient cultures allows us to see that gospel symbolism and the symbolism of idolatry both have their roots in the same ancient history. That is, the symbolism found in all ancient religions — false and true — shares the same origins.
It also allows us to make a clear distinction between the symbolism of the gospel and the truths of the gospel — hence the title of this article. One gospel is symbolic; the other is literal. The trick is recognizing which is which.
The gospel of symbolism
The symbolism of the gospel is typified by the New Testament book, Revelation. Nearly everything John wrote of was described in traditional, symbolic terms. In fact, it becomes clear that little about future events is ever revealed literally. With only a few notable exceptions, revelation given to prophets seldom explains the future in literal terms. Symbolism is the device used almost exclusively to depict future events. (It is not within the scope of this article to attempt an explanation as to why this is so. Whether symbolism is injected into the message by the prophet, who then transmits it to the people, or whether it comes from a divine source, the reader may judge for himself. Still, the question is worth asking, rhetorically. Why would revelation from an eternal source contain symbolism born in this creation only?)
This symbolic gospel can be an invaluable vehicle for communicating, but both the giver and the receiver must have a clear understanding of its use. Otherwise, the receiver is left with a multitude of confusing images and metaphors that seem meaningless and muddled — the fevered inventions of manic minds. The Savior’s use of parables is a mild form of this symbolic or metaphorical method. Those who were “enlightened” got the full meaning of his story, while the remainder simply heard a prosaic homily.
Clearly, the symbolic gospel is a kind of Gnosticism — a system of metaphors and symbols that both the giver and the receiver must know (hence the Greek term for knowing, gnosis) to properly interpret the story or lesson. Gnostic writings are cluttered with symbolism that is still largely incomprehensible to modern scholars and religionists.
Latter-day Saints fail to recognize that even modern revelation has this element of Gnosticism. Yet, they seem perfectly willing to embrace the gnostic elements of temple worship. This may be a reflection of the intellectual dichotomy the Saints exhibit, or it may be due to simple ignorance and indifference.
This universal use of symbolism is the reason the traditions of other religions — indeed, all the myths and legends of antiquity — seem so extravagant to the modern mind. We have not been schooled in their symbolic traditions. The modern, rationalist philosophy has no place for ancient symbolism. The rationalist — whether an agnostic or a believer — sees ancient symbolism as so much nonsense. Thus, any religion based in ancient symbolism holds no meaning for him or her.
Common traditions, common symbols
The common origin of ancient symbolic religious systems may explain many strange similarities between religions that are usually explained away by the process of diffusion (the migration of ideas, beliefs and practices from one culture to another). The fundamental ideas behind common beliefs and traditions originated in the same ancient heavenly events. It also explains why all ancient religions possess a cosmology in one form or another.
All ancient religious traditions, no matter the religion or culture, share a common origin in ancient heavenly events. Yet, each culture created unique stories, gods, and rituals based on those events. At first glance, the symbolic traditions of one culture appear to have nothing to do with those of another. Yet, upon closer inspection and considering those ancient celestial events, we find that they all share a remarkable degree of coincidence. Those ancient traditions all tell of gods and demons: super-human beings who ruled the heavens, whose actions determined the fate of mankind; they describe a cataclysmic creation and the near destruction of the world. Their traditions are intricately interwoven with astronomical interests: stars, suns, and planets. These religions are filled with concerns for the movement and order of the heavens: the solstice, the equinox, precession, the rising of certain constellations and planets, etc. Seen from this perspective, the disciplines of Comparative Mythology and Comparative Religion are very nearly the same discipline.
This pervasive use of symbolism also explains a small curiosity. When Joseph Smith inquired of the Lord about the meanings of certain passages in Revelation, he was given a more extensive explanation of the symbols themselves — more symbolism, in other words — not their origin or their meaning. Most Saints have the impression that the revelation gave literal explanations for the symbols, but a careful reading will demonstrate that this is not the case. Rather, he was given all the shades of meaning that have been attributed to the symbols from hoary antiquity, attributions typical of the elaboration and exposition of all such symbols that have been going on since the beginning of time. (See Doctrine and Covenants, 77, “. . . explanation of the Revelation of St. John.”)
The gospel of literalism
The truths of the literal gospel are typified by latter-day revelation. (For example, see Doctrine and Covenants 138, “. . . a vision of the redemption of the dead.”) This literal gospel invariably transmits information about the nature of our relationship with God, the pre-existence, the afterlife, the eternities and the purpose of mortality. There is nothing symbolic about it, except perhaps for the language used in a vain attempt to explain the ineffable.
Thus, what we call the gospel is really a combination of two primary elements: symbolism from ancient tradition and literalism from eternal truths. If we can discriminate between the two, there is little concern about misinterpretation. However, if we perceive the two as one, then misunderstanding is inevitable. It is this kind of confusion — mistaking imagery for reality — that has caused some of the most heated debate among Latter-day Saints in this dispensation. More apostasy and more bitter acrimony can be traced to this cause than almost any other.
Take the second coming, for example. The literal gospel teaches us that the Savior will come again to the Earth to usher in an age of peace and prosperity called the Millennium. It gives no details about the actual event, except to suggest that he will simply descend from heaven as he ascended. (See Acts 1:11.) The symbolic gospel describes his coming as if it were to be a staged media event, as the return of a conquering hero: Christ comes with fire in his eyes, wearing many crowns, riding a white horse, with a sword in his mouth, his clothing dipped in blood, and accompanied by concourses of angels. (See Revelation 19:11-15.)
The literal gospel teaches truths; the symbolic gospel employs elaborate imagery to make an entirely different point. In this case, as with so very many other doctrinal issues, this view of the scriptures helps avoid misinterpretations.
© Anthony E. Larson, 2003
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
"The World That Then Was ..."
Other than the actual creation itself, the most notable catastrophe in Earth’s early history that also brought the Patriarchal Age to an end, was Noah’s Flood. This was the benchmark, the dividing line between two great epochs in Earth’s history. Before the Flood, the world was an astonishingly different place; after the Flood, it became the “lone and dreary” world we know today.
We learn this from the scriptures. Peter’s understanding of the change that brought an end to the most remarkable epoch in Earth’s history — the age of the Patriarchs or the Golden Age — coincides with a radical change in the Earth and its heavens. He wrote that the “old world” disappeared, saying that God
Thus, in the Apostle Peter’s view, the change in the Earth, wrought by the Deluge, was so dramatic that he deemed it proper to say that “the old world” had “perished,” implying that “the heavens and the earth which are now” are entirely different from those that existed prior to the Flood.
This event, this remarkably dramatic and profound change, is central to an understanding of Earth’s early history. Thus, knowing how it came about and what happened to create it are vital to our understanding of the scriptures, history and the gospel.
The division
Also critical to our view of this epoch is the enigmatic secondary change that took place soon after the Deluge: the division of the Earth in the days of Noah’s grandson. “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided.” (Genesis 10:25.)
But to fully understand those changes, one must see them in the proper context. Only with the understanding that the Saturn myths and the Polar Configuration give us can we begin to grasp the true impact of the Old Testament narrative.
As catastrophists and mythologists labor to understand the true history of our planet, a startling and amazing view of Earth’s early history begins to emerge — one that explains the most enigmatic and baffling parts of scripture. While there are still many gaps in the narrative, leaving considerable room for further revision and adjustment, an overall picture begins to emerge that supports scriptural history and helps Latter-day Saints better understand the gospel.
In the very beginning
As elucidated elsewhere, it is most likely that Jupiter and Saturn were part of a binary sun system. Binaries are the most common arrangement known to astronomers, far more common than the single star system we inhabit today.
That parental binary also had several smaller bodies in tow, Earth being one of them. Indeed, most of the planets we know today as part of our present solar system were probably part of that original binary system. It also would have appeared as what astronomers today call a “brown dwarf” star with a relatively dim corona or photosphere. Earth and its companion planets would have orbited beneath that corona, creating a truly unique set of conditions unlike anything we see or can even properly imagine.
It was in this state that most of Earth’s pre-history took place, before Adam came to inhabit the planet. It is likely that the record in stones and bones, buried in the Earth, represent this earliest epoch. The flora and fauna of Earth’s prehistoric period are truly bizarre and foreign to our world and, likely, could not have survived the world as we know it today. It seems reasonable to assume that conditions on our planet were vastly different than those we know today, given the forms of plant and animal life that proliferated in those prehistoric days. What is likely is that the flora and fauna we see around us today represent radical adaptations of those early forms.
Celestial car crash
The real story of our world begins when our present sun, Sol, and our parent, Jupiter/Saturn binary had a close encounter with another star. It was most certainly not a head-on collision, since if the angle of incidence were that radical, none of the orbs involved would have survived intact. Rather, one sun overtook the other, much as the space shuttle docks with other satellites or the space station today. Hence, the capture of the Jupiter/Saturn binary by Sol was a rather lengthy process rather than a sudden event, thus lacking any of the catastrophic manifestations associated with later events.
But the contact was not without profound consequences. The interaction between the two primaries may have created an exchange of charge or electrical potential that gradually snuffed out the brown dwarf binary while it boosted the output of Sol. Such an exchange would explain why early traditions make no mention of the sun that is so prominent in our heavens, while they recall, at the same time, the dominant first god/planet, Saturn, emerging from the “waters” of “creation” as the photosphere fog of the binary faded, allowing earthlings to actually see Saturn for the first time. Indeed, this take on the events of the creation found in Genesis fully and understandingly explains those circumstances as no other theory can.
The original binary system remained largely intact while it began to orbit Sol. Somewhere in this period of relative calm, shortly before or after the capture began, Adam was placed on the Earth. This is so because the earliest recollections of mankind, recorded in cultural traditions the world over, including the Old Testament, remember an emerging heaven and earth that correspond to the Polar Configuration, as proposed by Talbott. It is that same configuration illustrated by Joseph Smith for Philo Dibble.
At this point in the process, Saturn and/or Jupiter became a dying star. The fire went out and the star’s photosphere or corona slowly dissipated, allowing Earth’s newest inhabitants to gradually see Earth’s companion planets, the orbs that seemed to hover above their world, in the heavens. What early mankind then saw was the nested group of planets (Saturn, Venus and Mars) slowly appearing or emerging from what seemed to be a heavenly haze or fog, sometimes referred to as “waters.”
The real creation
It is worthy of note that what is recorded in Genesis as the creation may not have been the real creation at all, but the recollection of an event that all mankind witnessed and remembered as the “creation.” This may be so because virtually all ancient cultures remembered and recorded this creation, indicating that there were many eyewitnesses to this event — an impossibility if man were placed on the Earth only after this supposed creation. The Genesis account is, likely, only one of many such recollections.
As explained elsewhere, the most meaningful explanation yet offered of the creation events, as described in the Bible, is provided by the emergence of the Earth/Mars/Venus/Saturn/Jupiter system from its original status as an independent brown dwarf, binary star system to a satellite system of Sol in a linear, polar configuration. Ancient cultures the world over, which had already descended several generations from Adam, watched and recorded those unfolding heavenly events and then recorded them as the creation.
The late emergence of the biblical creation account is even more likely when we consider that Moses is traditionally regarded as the author of Genesis. While he certainly could have received the story via revelation, what is more likely is that his account was derived from even earlier accounts (much as Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon) that reported the same things all other ancient accounts reported about this creation event.
The original heavenly order of things
Saturn occluded Jupiter from the earthlings’ point of view, so Jupiter did not yet step onto the celestial stage or into their iconographic belief system. But, Venus and Mars were clearly visible, appearing in a nested arrangement within Saturn’s limb. Much less imposing, but certainly visible, were seven small satellites or moons that orbited Saturn. These seven appeared much smaller than Venus or Mars. All these planets and moons were the original Titans, as remembered by the Greeks, planetary powers that stood imposingly above the Earth.
At this juncture, it is worthy of note that from these seven small satellites come all the traditions, practices and icons that employ the sacred number seven — seven days of the week, seven gates, seven cities, etc. Perhaps more importantly for scriptorians, these are the archetypes for the seven angels of John’s Revelation.
A solar system within the solar system
Assuming a new orbit about Sol, its new primary, the Jupiter/Saturn mini-solar system with its unusual configuration of satellites became increasingly unstable. It was just a matter of time before the same forces that caused its capture also dismantled it. That dismantling, like its original capture, was a process rather than an event. And because it was a process, mankind watched it unfold over many generations, from Adam to Noah.
The gradual dismemberment of the old binary covered a rather lengthy period of time. The same forces that brought Sol and the old binary system together now began to dismantle the Polar Configuration. The motions of Earth, Mars and Venus became more and more erratic. As they did so, a multitude of celestial phantasmagorias played out in Earth’s heavens, giving rise to the elements described above, and many more.
Myth making in the heavens
It is in the elucidation of this part of the planetary saga that Talbott has made the greatest strides. His work has shown how very many images from antiquity — iconographic and metaphoric — have their origins in the heavenly epic seen by ancient peoples the world over as the planets began their sky dance and metamorphoses. This has been the area where this author has concentrated his explanatory efforts concerning the connection between those ancient planetary powers and the gospel and the scriptures are concerned. Nearly everything his author has written has dealt with the archetypes that originated in this period of the Polar Configuration. Each of the planets became an actor in this, as yet, poorly understood drama that played itself out across earthly heavens — poorly understood because of the distortion and elaboration of traditions (myths and legends) over the millennia, because modern science can accept only what it can see and test (empiricism) and because recent generations have no familiar point of reference since nothing even remotely like those events has transpired in our time.
The roles they played
Each of the planets, which stood majestically above the Earth in that epoch, looked and behaved differently due to their position in that configuration. As a result, each was assigned a different role, attributes and character by ancient observers.
Saturn was not as active, so he remained in the background — ever present, ruling the skies, the king of heaven, the architect of all creation, the great center. He was Cronus (Kronos), the timekeeper because all else turned around him while he remained motionless in the heavens.
Venus became the archetype for female goddesses in all cultures. She was the prototypical star from which all modern star symbols are derived, a thing of beauty and wonder in the heavens. She was god’s (Saturn’s) daughter and/or wife, his invigorating power and his glory. If the goddess is female — whatever the culture — she was probably invented to depict some aspect or act of Venus. And because Venus was the most active element in the planetary saga, she has the most incarnations in myth and legend. At some point in the celestial drama, she moved away from her previous location, centered on Saturn. Hence, she (Athena) was said to have been born from the head of Zeus.
Mars had his own career. He became the archetype for all ancient hero gods. He was a warrior, a villain, a fool, a giant, a dwarf, etc. He was also the son of Saturn, because he was seen to leave or be born from within Venus, god’s wife/sister/daughter. Being the most proximate of the planets to Earth, Mars soon became the most terrifying when periodic instabilities in the Polar Configuration brought Earth and Mars close together. Mars was seen to descend toward the Earth, along the common planetary axis. As he did so, he grew from a child to a youth and then to an adult. He then receded, moving away from the Earth. This, in effect, reversed the previous process in that he once again became a child and returned to his former place in the center of Venus, the "womb" of heaven.
Elements other than planets
During these events, a flux tube of electrified plasma and elements from the atmospheres of both planets erupted into an apparent connection between the two, Earth and Mars, that changed its appearance from time to time. On one occasion, it was an awe-inspiring pillar of light, standing majestically between heaven and earth with Mars sitting atop its pyramidal shape. At other times, it became an interplanetary vortex, the mother of all twisters that oscillated in Earth’s heavens, churning up Earth’s polar landscape and all beneath it, leaving behind it the polar ice cap and the permafrost layer known today as tundra. It was the archetype of all sacred mountains (Olympus) atop which sat the temple of heaven (Saturn), god’s habitation. It was a pillar, a mountain, a ladder, a stream of water or wind, and the great celestial tree after which our Christmas trees are modeled.
Of course, there is much, much more to the story. Whole books could and will be written as ongoing research reveals more and more about each of the gods, goddesses, icons, appearances and elements that went to make up the history of the Polar Configuration.
The great change
What happened next in the history of this configuration of planets is presently the least understood part of the entire epic. For that reason, any analysis will necessarily be flawed and therefore subject to revision. Nevertheless, it is worth risking a few missteps to connect the entire story to ancient traditions — especially scriptural accounts — and the modern epic so that we may better understand our catastrophic, planetary heritage. Moreover, this segment of the planetary history supplied its own share of unique images, still more grist for the myth mill.
Over time, the same forces that brought Jupiter/Saturn into an orbit around Sol and that held Earth, Mars and Venus in the relatively short-lived, linear configuration, eventually dismembered the old binary system, allowing all the bodies in that defunct group to assume their own, individual orbits around Sol. This process is recorded in Genesis as the Great Flood and the dividing of the earth in the days of Peleg.
The end and the beginning
That final process of dismemberment began, likely, with the event known to students of the Bible as Noah’s Flood or the Great Deluge. It began with a nova-like explosion of the old binary, Jupiter/Saturn. Perhaps it was the final stage of the old stars’ death throws. In any case, the flare-up first threw out light, then copious amounts of water in the form of ice. According to Hebrew tradition, Noah and his contemporaries saw seven days of light followed by copious amounts of rain that rapidly inundated the world.
The Genesis account of Noah’s miraculous escape from the Deluge is not the only such story. Accounts from ancient cultures the world over tell of the Great Flood. Each account also tells of survivors. Thus, it may be that the Old Testament perspective that Noah and his family were the exclusive survivors may be misleading. From the Hebrew perspective, they were the sole survivors. However, from a worldwide perspective, they were only some of many. This view is supported by evidence that people from many cultures the world over saw the subsequent celestial events.
A new heaven and a new earth
In any case, when the heavens cleared, the survivors and their descendents saw a changed sky. Saturn, they thought, was dying because, rather than the featureless, shining white orb that once dominated the heavens, it had become a dark body with clearly delineated features. It now had clearly visible variegated stripes girding it, much as it does today, giving religious significance to the funerary practice of wrapping the corpse in the mummification process and a wide variety of other mythic themes.
What is more, the dying god (Osiris) now appeared to wander away from his exalted station at the center of heaven — something he had never done before, from the ancients’ perspective. This was not the simple meandering about the center axis as Mars and Venus had done previously. At this juncture, the highest god, the center, god’s house, the celestial city itself began to move — almost imperceptibly at first, then in ever increasing circles. This new movement in the sky was actually mostly due to Earth’s own erratic motions as it left its location at the common axis of planets to eventually assume a new orbit around Jupiter. This movement now revealed Jupiter (Zeus), which up to this point had been occluded by Saturn (Cronus) — hence the traditions that Zeus was Cronus’ offspring.
The seven small satellites that played a very minor role in the early part of the epoch now played a pivotal role that gave rise to numerous sacrificial traditions and rituals as they appeared to fall into Saturn (Cronus/Kronos), who was seen by the ancients to consume his “children” in flames. For example, from this event comes the pagan tradition, recorded in the Old Testament, practiced by those who worshipped Moloch (Cronus/Saturn), of burning children as sacrifices to the planetary gods, a particularly repugnant practice denounced by Israelite prophets.
Celestial battles
As Jupiter emerged from behind Saturn, a battle appeared to commence between them, with Jupiter (Zeus) throwing interplanetary lightning bolts. Thus, Jupiter seemed to come out of nowhere to evict Saturn from his throne, the center place of heaven.
Saturn, Venus and Mars left their former positions along the central axis of the polar configuration — as did the Earth as well. That arrangement ended as Saturn left the congregation of planets to assume its own orbit around Sol. Judging by ancient religious traditions, it vanished into the starry heavens (for today’s familiar stars were now visible to mankind for the first time) in the vicinity of the constellation of Orion to become the dead god, Osiris, of the Egyptians.
Instead of peace, beauty and an inspiring display in the heavens as before, there was now chaos and mayhem as the gods began to do battle with one another. Lightning bolts leaping across millions of miles of space became the weapons the gods launched at one another. The most menacing, evil icons from ancient lore emerge in Earth’s skies in this brief period of chaos. Swarms of debris became demons of destruction and darkness. Images of many-headed serpents and menacing goddesses, witches, wolves, incredible dragons and fantastic beasts, found in all the ancient religions of mankind, have there origins in greatly distorted plasma streams, debris, gases and electromagnetic phenomena that now stretched between planets as they moved in highly erratic ways.
A new god replaces the old
Jupiter now dominated Earth’s skies, appearing to stand where vanished Saturn once stood. For a time, it ruled over a chaotic heaven where Mars and Venus appeared to metamorphose wildly as these orbs did battle with one another. This period gave rise to the universal story told about the struggle between a god of light and the demons of darkness or hell led by a dragon or monster. These were the chaos hoards, evil fiends that threatened to destroy all creation as the earth trembled, heaven thundered and the skies repeatedly darkened. Jupiter was not the benign monarch, as Saturn had been. He is darker, more ruthless and war-like. Yet he battles to keep at bay the powers of darkness that seemingly threaten all creation. Indeed, he is the archetype for the angry, vengeful god of the Old Testament.
The fall
Earth, too, succumbed to the forces that wrenched the polar configuration apart. It fell into an orbit around Sol similar to that which it follows today. This dramatic change, from the perspective of earth-bound observers, sent Earth’s former neighboring planets and the seat of god or heaven itself off into the “wilderness” of distant space to become mere pinpoints of light — planeta, or “wanderers” in the heavens. Earth was then said to have “fallen” from its formerly exalted status and position near heaven or the throne of god. Indeed, the “division” of the Earth that is said in the scriptures (Genesis 10:25, D&C 133:24.) to have occurred in the days of Peleg, one of Noah’s grandsons, was this very event, thereby establishing a sequence of events: the Flood first, followed by the “division” two generations later.
The Earth was divided
There are two elements to the “division” of the Earth, providing two equally credible explanations for that scriptural statement: one is the separation of the Earth from its “celestial” counterparts, the other is the dividing of Earth’s continents by the oceans.
The ancients considered the ground they stood upon to be an intimately connected part of the collection of orbs they saw in the sky above them. Hence, in their view, when those orbs departed the sky it made good sense to say that the Earth had been divided — another way of saying it had fallen. Additionally, with the demise of the Polar Configuration, which held Earth’s oceans in tremendous tides at the poles, water rushed to the equator due to centrifugal force, raising the water levels around the globe’s girth to unprecedented levels. Include in that the tremendous volume of additional water the Flood event added to Earth’s store. Thus oceanic water levels rose dramatically worldwide in the wake of the Flood, inundating many land bridges that once connected continents, effectively changing the topography of the entire earth and creating another, new “division” of the landmasses.
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end
The above events are remembered in the Old Testament as Noah’s Flood and the division of the Earth in the days of Peleg, while other ancient cultures characterized it as the end of one world and the beginning of another.
The profound effects of the Earth’s “fall” cannot be overemphasized. Ancient prophets sought to impress this fact upon future generations, making this motif a part of the description of Adam’s transgression, as we read in the scriptures.
The appearance of the firmament above the Earth had changed radically, as had the environment on the Earth. As if to inform us as well as Noah, the Lord swears to maintain the new order as long as the Earth exists by listing the burdensome new conditions that had not existed before, “seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night …” (Genesis 8:22.) All these new conditions were imposed on mankind due to the Earth’s “fall” to its new position in the solar system.
Abbreviated life spans
Nowhere is this altered environment that came with Earth’s fall more evident than in the life span or longevity of human beings. We learn from the genealogy of Adam (Genesis, chapter 5) that the normal life span before the Flood reached many hundreds of years — almost a thousand in Methuselah’s case. But compare that to the normal life span immediately after the Flood and in the following generations as recorded in the genealogy of Abraham (Genesis, chapter 11). The life span of those born after the Flood was dramatically foreshortened to almost half of pre-Flood lengths. Furthermore, within eight generations it was down to a little over a hundred in Abraham’s case, a fraction of pre-Flood life expectancy.
No wonder the human race associated the "fall" with death. Lifespans had been drastically truncated.
Scholars and scriptorians have always been puzzled by the seemingly inordinate life expectancy of the Patriarchs and its sudden foreshortening after the Flood. Some dismissed it as a distortion of the truth. Some accepted it on faith, but still could not explain it. Only the catastrophist view of Earth history gives any meaning to the longevity rates recorded in Genesis and the records and traditions of other ancient cultures. Even accepting the likely fact that “years” before the flood were not the same time length as those we know today (since planetary close encounters have clearly altered the length of the solar year since those ancient times), the dramatic decrease of longevity immediately after the Flood and the declining life expectancy rates thereafter serve as indicators that some dramatic change was afoot in Earth’s environment to cause those declines.
Radical environmental change
What changed to bring about foreshortened life spans? There can be little doubt, from a catastrophist point of view, that the electromagnetic environment in the Jupiter/Saturn binary system was far more hospitable to life than the sterile, hostile, one-sun system we inherited. It is like comparing life in an incubator, where everything necessary to promote life is present in abundance, to survival in an inhospitable world that oscillated between cold and heat, dark and light, where life became a struggle for survival. When the salubrious electromagnetic environment of early Earth collapsed, life expectancy naturally dropped dramatically.
A more stable, but still destructive epoch
What is more, Earth’s new orbit opened the door to a new, prolonged epoch of instability. Earth and its inhabitants were not yet out of the woods — not by a long shot. While the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn apparently settled quickly into somewhat stable orbits very nearly like their present paths around the Sun, Venus and Mars entered into elongated, elliptical orbits much different from those they follow today. Those eccentric orbits, which crossed Earth’s orbit, determined that Venus and Mars would periodically pass in close proximity to one another and the Earth, generating new catastrophes in the process. This was the historical epoch with which Velikovsky concerned himself.
Beginning after the flood with the Tower of Babel incident and continuing on down to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, this new period of instability and danger also included later biblical events such as the Exodus, Joshua’s Long Day, Jonah’s ministry to Nineveh and the day fire from heaven consumed Elijah’s sacrifice on Mt. Carmel. In the biblical narrative, the last catastrophic episode that saw Earth menaced by another planet was in approximately 701 B.C. when the Assyrian army of Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem. “And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they (the Jews in Jerusalem) arose early in the morning, behold, they (the Assyrians soldiers) were all dead corpses.” (2 Kings 19:35.)
Beyond the Bible
Every emerging culture from that prolonged epoch, whether Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Chinese or Inca, left records of those events from their own perspective. Each culture — even city-states within cultures — gave different names to the same planets/gods. Thus, the same story or a similar story is told in separate cultures, using different names, deeds and settings; yet modern scholars fail to see the commonalities. For example, there can be little doubt that Homer’s epic story of the battle of Troy recorded a catastrophic event that was also reported by Old Testament prophets; or that the Exodus even was chronicled by those outside Egypt who experienced those phenomena. The trick, as Velikovsky discovered, is to correlate the two because each saw those events from vastly different perspectives.
So, it may not be prudent to assume that since Venus was said to be Aphrodite, she was not Athena as well. She was both. She was also Hera, Medussa, Pandora, Isis, Hathor, Astarte and a multitude of other goddesses — all in different guises and settings to tell some aspect of the ancient planet’s story anthropomorphically.
What historians see as transmissions or “borrowings” of knowledge and cultural traditions — one culture to another — are largely parallel accounts from different cultures of the same events, gods and conditions in antiquity. In addition, each story or cultural tradition may or may not indicate a new event or a new god or goddess. It may simply be a re-telling of the same story from a new perspective. To further complicate things, characters, events and conditions are swapped around to create even more elaborate story lines, as in modern works of fiction or modern holidays. It is a time-tested tradition, even in temple or festival rituals where dramatic rehearsals of the acts of the gods were rehearsed.
Like witnesses to an auto accident, each one tells the story differently. The task is to recreate the actual event from the various perspectives. In this case, we are trying to sort out the accounts of a multitude of planetary encounters, told by a variety of cultures, where the actors and the settings change more frequently than ever imagined. So, each mythical account has elements of truth, but none is a fully accurate retelling of what happened or who participated. Each myth, each legend, each tradition must be carefully blended with its counterparts to create a whole that tells the real story. This is a work in progress that has only just begun.
Symbolic masking and overlays
In addition to that, these periodic, catastrophic encounters between Earth and its formerly two closest neighbors in the polar configuration, Venus and Mars, generated a new symbolism and iconography, which was superimposed on the old symbolism of the Polar Configuration. This “masking” of earlier catastrophic events by later ones makes it doubly difficult to discern the symbolism of the older events and the original configuration because of similarities — all catastrophes are natural events, born of similar physical phenomena. Thus, the mythical and ritual symbolism of later events copies or mimics that of earlier catastrophes.
Cultures not destroyed in any given catastrophe tended to focus their traditions on those most recent events. Hence, various cultures reverenced gods and icons that emerged in that catastrophe, yet they also drew on older, traditional imagery with which to adorn their new gods.
Thus, the masking of older events and symbols by more recent ones and the dramatically different perspective of events recorded by divergent cultures all has a multiplying effect on early traditions, icons and motifs, causing even more variations on ancient mythic themes. Hence, any attempt to unravel the interwoven threads of cultural and religious traditions creates bewilderment and perplexity. There is such a multitude of symbolic stories and traditions — myths, in other words — that it frustrates any systematic study of these remnants of history. Anyone who attempts to sort out the cacophony and confusion of ancient mythology can be easily overwhelmed.
Skepticism buries history
As if that were not enough, add the confusion of myth, legend and religion to the disbelief and skepticism of later generations who saw nothing but peace and stability in the solar system, and you have a formula for complete dismissal of the message our ancient forebears struggled to preserve and communicate in stone, story and ritual.
These close passes ended in the 6th century B.C., leaving a tradition of planetary catastrophe that upcoming generations had difficulty understanding or even accepting. Millennia later, mankind is almost totally ignorant of Earth’s catastrophic past. Most records of those events have long since vanished. Those few records that survived, like the scriptures, have been savaged by translators who knew nothing of ancient planetary catastrophes and subsequently mistranslated references to catastrophes. Moreover, a spirit of skepticism and unbelief has taken hold of mankind that tends to dismiss anything the least bit fantastic as invention rather than fact. Hence, those few records that have survived, sacred and profane, have been almost completely stripped of their real meaning, whitewashed by ignorance and bias. Oral traditions, myths and legends have been relegated to obscurity by generations of scientists and scholars that obstinately deny that anything extraordinary has happened in our solar system — certainly nothing like the account given above.
While much information regarding the true nature of Earth’s catastrophic past still remains in the religious traditions, customs, records, architecture, rites and rituals of all cultures — carefully preserved due to its “sacred” nature — such data carries no real credibility today, even in the minds of religious believers who completely fail to examine the evidence with anything but “spiritual” eyes.
Where the Saints stand
Mormons are no exception to this rule. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, spent copious amounts of his precious time trying to restore and revive information about and belief in those ancient events and conditions. His notes on Egyptian texts and his use of universal, symbolically correct archetypical symbols in modern temples as well as rites and rituals true to ancient forms are moot evidence of this. Why did he spend his invaluable time doing that rather than some other, more overtly good works? Because this knowledge is vital to one’s understanding of the gospel, the scriptures, the temple and one’s religion.
Latter-day Saints who ignore that information — the vast majority of the church membership, as it turns out — do so at their own peril.
© Anthony E. Larson, 2003
We learn this from the scriptures. Peter’s understanding of the change that brought an end to the most remarkable epoch in Earth’s history — the age of the Patriarchs or the Golden Age — coincides with a radical change in the Earth and its heavens. He wrote that the “old world” disappeared, saying that God
… spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; … Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store. (2 Peter 2:5, 3:6, 7.)
Thus, in the Apostle Peter’s view, the change in the Earth, wrought by the Deluge, was so dramatic that he deemed it proper to say that “the old world” had “perished,” implying that “the heavens and the earth which are now” are entirely different from those that existed prior to the Flood.
This event, this remarkably dramatic and profound change, is central to an understanding of Earth’s early history. Thus, knowing how it came about and what happened to create it are vital to our understanding of the scriptures, history and the gospel.
The division
Also critical to our view of this epoch is the enigmatic secondary change that took place soon after the Deluge: the division of the Earth in the days of Noah’s grandson. “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided.” (Genesis 10:25.)
But to fully understand those changes, one must see them in the proper context. Only with the understanding that the Saturn myths and the Polar Configuration give us can we begin to grasp the true impact of the Old Testament narrative.
As catastrophists and mythologists labor to understand the true history of our planet, a startling and amazing view of Earth’s early history begins to emerge — one that explains the most enigmatic and baffling parts of scripture. While there are still many gaps in the narrative, leaving considerable room for further revision and adjustment, an overall picture begins to emerge that supports scriptural history and helps Latter-day Saints better understand the gospel.
In the very beginning
As elucidated elsewhere, it is most likely that Jupiter and Saturn were part of a binary sun system. Binaries are the most common arrangement known to astronomers, far more common than the single star system we inhabit today.
That parental binary also had several smaller bodies in tow, Earth being one of them. Indeed, most of the planets we know today as part of our present solar system were probably part of that original binary system. It also would have appeared as what astronomers today call a “brown dwarf” star with a relatively dim corona or photosphere. Earth and its companion planets would have orbited beneath that corona, creating a truly unique set of conditions unlike anything we see or can even properly imagine.
It was in this state that most of Earth’s pre-history took place, before Adam came to inhabit the planet. It is likely that the record in stones and bones, buried in the Earth, represent this earliest epoch. The flora and fauna of Earth’s prehistoric period are truly bizarre and foreign to our world and, likely, could not have survived the world as we know it today. It seems reasonable to assume that conditions on our planet were vastly different than those we know today, given the forms of plant and animal life that proliferated in those prehistoric days. What is likely is that the flora and fauna we see around us today represent radical adaptations of those early forms.
Celestial car crash
The real story of our world begins when our present sun, Sol, and our parent, Jupiter/Saturn binary had a close encounter with another star. It was most certainly not a head-on collision, since if the angle of incidence were that radical, none of the orbs involved would have survived intact. Rather, one sun overtook the other, much as the space shuttle docks with other satellites or the space station today. Hence, the capture of the Jupiter/Saturn binary by Sol was a rather lengthy process rather than a sudden event, thus lacking any of the catastrophic manifestations associated with later events.
But the contact was not without profound consequences. The interaction between the two primaries may have created an exchange of charge or electrical potential that gradually snuffed out the brown dwarf binary while it boosted the output of Sol. Such an exchange would explain why early traditions make no mention of the sun that is so prominent in our heavens, while they recall, at the same time, the dominant first god/planet, Saturn, emerging from the “waters” of “creation” as the photosphere fog of the binary faded, allowing earthlings to actually see Saturn for the first time. Indeed, this take on the events of the creation found in Genesis fully and understandingly explains those circumstances as no other theory can.
The original binary system remained largely intact while it began to orbit Sol. Somewhere in this period of relative calm, shortly before or after the capture began, Adam was placed on the Earth. This is so because the earliest recollections of mankind, recorded in cultural traditions the world over, including the Old Testament, remember an emerging heaven and earth that correspond to the Polar Configuration, as proposed by Talbott. It is that same configuration illustrated by Joseph Smith for Philo Dibble.
At this point in the process, Saturn and/or Jupiter became a dying star. The fire went out and the star’s photosphere or corona slowly dissipated, allowing Earth’s newest inhabitants to gradually see Earth’s companion planets, the orbs that seemed to hover above their world, in the heavens. What early mankind then saw was the nested group of planets (Saturn, Venus and Mars) slowly appearing or emerging from what seemed to be a heavenly haze or fog, sometimes referred to as “waters.”
The real creation
It is worthy of note that what is recorded in Genesis as the creation may not have been the real creation at all, but the recollection of an event that all mankind witnessed and remembered as the “creation.” This may be so because virtually all ancient cultures remembered and recorded this creation, indicating that there were many eyewitnesses to this event — an impossibility if man were placed on the Earth only after this supposed creation. The Genesis account is, likely, only one of many such recollections.
As explained elsewhere, the most meaningful explanation yet offered of the creation events, as described in the Bible, is provided by the emergence of the Earth/Mars/Venus/Saturn/Jupiter system from its original status as an independent brown dwarf, binary star system to a satellite system of Sol in a linear, polar configuration. Ancient cultures the world over, which had already descended several generations from Adam, watched and recorded those unfolding heavenly events and then recorded them as the creation.
The late emergence of the biblical creation account is even more likely when we consider that Moses is traditionally regarded as the author of Genesis. While he certainly could have received the story via revelation, what is more likely is that his account was derived from even earlier accounts (much as Joseph Smith received the Book of Mormon) that reported the same things all other ancient accounts reported about this creation event.
The original heavenly order of things
Saturn occluded Jupiter from the earthlings’ point of view, so Jupiter did not yet step onto the celestial stage or into their iconographic belief system. But, Venus and Mars were clearly visible, appearing in a nested arrangement within Saturn’s limb. Much less imposing, but certainly visible, were seven small satellites or moons that orbited Saturn. These seven appeared much smaller than Venus or Mars. All these planets and moons were the original Titans, as remembered by the Greeks, planetary powers that stood imposingly above the Earth.
At this juncture, it is worthy of note that from these seven small satellites come all the traditions, practices and icons that employ the sacred number seven — seven days of the week, seven gates, seven cities, etc. Perhaps more importantly for scriptorians, these are the archetypes for the seven angels of John’s Revelation.
A solar system within the solar system
Assuming a new orbit about Sol, its new primary, the Jupiter/Saturn mini-solar system with its unusual configuration of satellites became increasingly unstable. It was just a matter of time before the same forces that caused its capture also dismantled it. That dismantling, like its original capture, was a process rather than an event. And because it was a process, mankind watched it unfold over many generations, from Adam to Noah.
The gradual dismemberment of the old binary covered a rather lengthy period of time. The same forces that brought Sol and the old binary system together now began to dismantle the Polar Configuration. The motions of Earth, Mars and Venus became more and more erratic. As they did so, a multitude of celestial phantasmagorias played out in Earth’s heavens, giving rise to the elements described above, and many more.
Myth making in the heavens
It is in the elucidation of this part of the planetary saga that Talbott has made the greatest strides. His work has shown how very many images from antiquity — iconographic and metaphoric — have their origins in the heavenly epic seen by ancient peoples the world over as the planets began their sky dance and metamorphoses. This has been the area where this author has concentrated his explanatory efforts concerning the connection between those ancient planetary powers and the gospel and the scriptures are concerned. Nearly everything his author has written has dealt with the archetypes that originated in this period of the Polar Configuration. Each of the planets became an actor in this, as yet, poorly understood drama that played itself out across earthly heavens — poorly understood because of the distortion and elaboration of traditions (myths and legends) over the millennia, because modern science can accept only what it can see and test (empiricism) and because recent generations have no familiar point of reference since nothing even remotely like those events has transpired in our time.
The roles they played
Each of the planets, which stood majestically above the Earth in that epoch, looked and behaved differently due to their position in that configuration. As a result, each was assigned a different role, attributes and character by ancient observers.
Saturn was not as active, so he remained in the background — ever present, ruling the skies, the king of heaven, the architect of all creation, the great center. He was Cronus (Kronos), the timekeeper because all else turned around him while he remained motionless in the heavens.
Venus became the archetype for female goddesses in all cultures. She was the prototypical star from which all modern star symbols are derived, a thing of beauty and wonder in the heavens. She was god’s (Saturn’s) daughter and/or wife, his invigorating power and his glory. If the goddess is female — whatever the culture — she was probably invented to depict some aspect or act of Venus. And because Venus was the most active element in the planetary saga, she has the most incarnations in myth and legend. At some point in the celestial drama, she moved away from her previous location, centered on Saturn. Hence, she (Athena) was said to have been born from the head of Zeus.
Mars had his own career. He became the archetype for all ancient hero gods. He was a warrior, a villain, a fool, a giant, a dwarf, etc. He was also the son of Saturn, because he was seen to leave or be born from within Venus, god’s wife/sister/daughter. Being the most proximate of the planets to Earth, Mars soon became the most terrifying when periodic instabilities in the Polar Configuration brought Earth and Mars close together. Mars was seen to descend toward the Earth, along the common planetary axis. As he did so, he grew from a child to a youth and then to an adult. He then receded, moving away from the Earth. This, in effect, reversed the previous process in that he once again became a child and returned to his former place in the center of Venus, the "womb" of heaven.
Elements other than planets
During these events, a flux tube of electrified plasma and elements from the atmospheres of both planets erupted into an apparent connection between the two, Earth and Mars, that changed its appearance from time to time. On one occasion, it was an awe-inspiring pillar of light, standing majestically between heaven and earth with Mars sitting atop its pyramidal shape. At other times, it became an interplanetary vortex, the mother of all twisters that oscillated in Earth’s heavens, churning up Earth’s polar landscape and all beneath it, leaving behind it the polar ice cap and the permafrost layer known today as tundra. It was the archetype of all sacred mountains (Olympus) atop which sat the temple of heaven (Saturn), god’s habitation. It was a pillar, a mountain, a ladder, a stream of water or wind, and the great celestial tree after which our Christmas trees are modeled.
Of course, there is much, much more to the story. Whole books could and will be written as ongoing research reveals more and more about each of the gods, goddesses, icons, appearances and elements that went to make up the history of the Polar Configuration.
The great change
What happened next in the history of this configuration of planets is presently the least understood part of the entire epic. For that reason, any analysis will necessarily be flawed and therefore subject to revision. Nevertheless, it is worth risking a few missteps to connect the entire story to ancient traditions — especially scriptural accounts — and the modern epic so that we may better understand our catastrophic, planetary heritage. Moreover, this segment of the planetary history supplied its own share of unique images, still more grist for the myth mill.
Over time, the same forces that brought Jupiter/Saturn into an orbit around Sol and that held Earth, Mars and Venus in the relatively short-lived, linear configuration, eventually dismembered the old binary system, allowing all the bodies in that defunct group to assume their own, individual orbits around Sol. This process is recorded in Genesis as the Great Flood and the dividing of the earth in the days of Peleg.
The end and the beginning
That final process of dismemberment began, likely, with the event known to students of the Bible as Noah’s Flood or the Great Deluge. It began with a nova-like explosion of the old binary, Jupiter/Saturn. Perhaps it was the final stage of the old stars’ death throws. In any case, the flare-up first threw out light, then copious amounts of water in the form of ice. According to Hebrew tradition, Noah and his contemporaries saw seven days of light followed by copious amounts of rain that rapidly inundated the world.
The Genesis account of Noah’s miraculous escape from the Deluge is not the only such story. Accounts from ancient cultures the world over tell of the Great Flood. Each account also tells of survivors. Thus, it may be that the Old Testament perspective that Noah and his family were the exclusive survivors may be misleading. From the Hebrew perspective, they were the sole survivors. However, from a worldwide perspective, they were only some of many. This view is supported by evidence that people from many cultures the world over saw the subsequent celestial events.
A new heaven and a new earth
In any case, when the heavens cleared, the survivors and their descendents saw a changed sky. Saturn, they thought, was dying because, rather than the featureless, shining white orb that once dominated the heavens, it had become a dark body with clearly delineated features. It now had clearly visible variegated stripes girding it, much as it does today, giving religious significance to the funerary practice of wrapping the corpse in the mummification process and a wide variety of other mythic themes.
What is more, the dying god (Osiris) now appeared to wander away from his exalted station at the center of heaven — something he had never done before, from the ancients’ perspective. This was not the simple meandering about the center axis as Mars and Venus had done previously. At this juncture, the highest god, the center, god’s house, the celestial city itself began to move — almost imperceptibly at first, then in ever increasing circles. This new movement in the sky was actually mostly due to Earth’s own erratic motions as it left its location at the common axis of planets to eventually assume a new orbit around Jupiter. This movement now revealed Jupiter (Zeus), which up to this point had been occluded by Saturn (Cronus) — hence the traditions that Zeus was Cronus’ offspring.
The seven small satellites that played a very minor role in the early part of the epoch now played a pivotal role that gave rise to numerous sacrificial traditions and rituals as they appeared to fall into Saturn (Cronus/Kronos), who was seen by the ancients to consume his “children” in flames. For example, from this event comes the pagan tradition, recorded in the Old Testament, practiced by those who worshipped Moloch (Cronus/Saturn), of burning children as sacrifices to the planetary gods, a particularly repugnant practice denounced by Israelite prophets.
Celestial battles
As Jupiter emerged from behind Saturn, a battle appeared to commence between them, with Jupiter (Zeus) throwing interplanetary lightning bolts. Thus, Jupiter seemed to come out of nowhere to evict Saturn from his throne, the center place of heaven.
Saturn, Venus and Mars left their former positions along the central axis of the polar configuration — as did the Earth as well. That arrangement ended as Saturn left the congregation of planets to assume its own orbit around Sol. Judging by ancient religious traditions, it vanished into the starry heavens (for today’s familiar stars were now visible to mankind for the first time) in the vicinity of the constellation of Orion to become the dead god, Osiris, of the Egyptians.
Instead of peace, beauty and an inspiring display in the heavens as before, there was now chaos and mayhem as the gods began to do battle with one another. Lightning bolts leaping across millions of miles of space became the weapons the gods launched at one another. The most menacing, evil icons from ancient lore emerge in Earth’s skies in this brief period of chaos. Swarms of debris became demons of destruction and darkness. Images of many-headed serpents and menacing goddesses, witches, wolves, incredible dragons and fantastic beasts, found in all the ancient religions of mankind, have there origins in greatly distorted plasma streams, debris, gases and electromagnetic phenomena that now stretched between planets as they moved in highly erratic ways.
A new god replaces the old
Jupiter now dominated Earth’s skies, appearing to stand where vanished Saturn once stood. For a time, it ruled over a chaotic heaven where Mars and Venus appeared to metamorphose wildly as these orbs did battle with one another. This period gave rise to the universal story told about the struggle between a god of light and the demons of darkness or hell led by a dragon or monster. These were the chaos hoards, evil fiends that threatened to destroy all creation as the earth trembled, heaven thundered and the skies repeatedly darkened. Jupiter was not the benign monarch, as Saturn had been. He is darker, more ruthless and war-like. Yet he battles to keep at bay the powers of darkness that seemingly threaten all creation. Indeed, he is the archetype for the angry, vengeful god of the Old Testament.
The fall
Earth, too, succumbed to the forces that wrenched the polar configuration apart. It fell into an orbit around Sol similar to that which it follows today. This dramatic change, from the perspective of earth-bound observers, sent Earth’s former neighboring planets and the seat of god or heaven itself off into the “wilderness” of distant space to become mere pinpoints of light — planeta, or “wanderers” in the heavens. Earth was then said to have “fallen” from its formerly exalted status and position near heaven or the throne of god. Indeed, the “division” of the Earth that is said in the scriptures (Genesis 10:25, D&C 133:24.) to have occurred in the days of Peleg, one of Noah’s grandsons, was this very event, thereby establishing a sequence of events: the Flood first, followed by the “division” two generations later.
The Earth was divided
There are two elements to the “division” of the Earth, providing two equally credible explanations for that scriptural statement: one is the separation of the Earth from its “celestial” counterparts, the other is the dividing of Earth’s continents by the oceans.
The ancients considered the ground they stood upon to be an intimately connected part of the collection of orbs they saw in the sky above them. Hence, in their view, when those orbs departed the sky it made good sense to say that the Earth had been divided — another way of saying it had fallen. Additionally, with the demise of the Polar Configuration, which held Earth’s oceans in tremendous tides at the poles, water rushed to the equator due to centrifugal force, raising the water levels around the globe’s girth to unprecedented levels. Include in that the tremendous volume of additional water the Flood event added to Earth’s store. Thus oceanic water levels rose dramatically worldwide in the wake of the Flood, inundating many land bridges that once connected continents, effectively changing the topography of the entire earth and creating another, new “division” of the landmasses.
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end
The above events are remembered in the Old Testament as Noah’s Flood and the division of the Earth in the days of Peleg, while other ancient cultures characterized it as the end of one world and the beginning of another.
The profound effects of the Earth’s “fall” cannot be overemphasized. Ancient prophets sought to impress this fact upon future generations, making this motif a part of the description of Adam’s transgression, as we read in the scriptures.
The appearance of the firmament above the Earth had changed radically, as had the environment on the Earth. As if to inform us as well as Noah, the Lord swears to maintain the new order as long as the Earth exists by listing the burdensome new conditions that had not existed before, “seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night …” (Genesis 8:22.) All these new conditions were imposed on mankind due to the Earth’s “fall” to its new position in the solar system.
Abbreviated life spans
Nowhere is this altered environment that came with Earth’s fall more evident than in the life span or longevity of human beings. We learn from the genealogy of Adam (Genesis, chapter 5) that the normal life span before the Flood reached many hundreds of years — almost a thousand in Methuselah’s case. But compare that to the normal life span immediately after the Flood and in the following generations as recorded in the genealogy of Abraham (Genesis, chapter 11). The life span of those born after the Flood was dramatically foreshortened to almost half of pre-Flood lengths. Furthermore, within eight generations it was down to a little over a hundred in Abraham’s case, a fraction of pre-Flood life expectancy.
No wonder the human race associated the "fall" with death. Lifespans had been drastically truncated.
Scholars and scriptorians have always been puzzled by the seemingly inordinate life expectancy of the Patriarchs and its sudden foreshortening after the Flood. Some dismissed it as a distortion of the truth. Some accepted it on faith, but still could not explain it. Only the catastrophist view of Earth history gives any meaning to the longevity rates recorded in Genesis and the records and traditions of other ancient cultures. Even accepting the likely fact that “years” before the flood were not the same time length as those we know today (since planetary close encounters have clearly altered the length of the solar year since those ancient times), the dramatic decrease of longevity immediately after the Flood and the declining life expectancy rates thereafter serve as indicators that some dramatic change was afoot in Earth’s environment to cause those declines.
Radical environmental change
What changed to bring about foreshortened life spans? There can be little doubt, from a catastrophist point of view, that the electromagnetic environment in the Jupiter/Saturn binary system was far more hospitable to life than the sterile, hostile, one-sun system we inherited. It is like comparing life in an incubator, where everything necessary to promote life is present in abundance, to survival in an inhospitable world that oscillated between cold and heat, dark and light, where life became a struggle for survival. When the salubrious electromagnetic environment of early Earth collapsed, life expectancy naturally dropped dramatically.
A more stable, but still destructive epoch
What is more, Earth’s new orbit opened the door to a new, prolonged epoch of instability. Earth and its inhabitants were not yet out of the woods — not by a long shot. While the Earth, Jupiter and Saturn apparently settled quickly into somewhat stable orbits very nearly like their present paths around the Sun, Venus and Mars entered into elongated, elliptical orbits much different from those they follow today. Those eccentric orbits, which crossed Earth’s orbit, determined that Venus and Mars would periodically pass in close proximity to one another and the Earth, generating new catastrophes in the process. This was the historical epoch with which Velikovsky concerned himself.
Beginning after the flood with the Tower of Babel incident and continuing on down to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, this new period of instability and danger also included later biblical events such as the Exodus, Joshua’s Long Day, Jonah’s ministry to Nineveh and the day fire from heaven consumed Elijah’s sacrifice on Mt. Carmel. In the biblical narrative, the last catastrophic episode that saw Earth menaced by another planet was in approximately 701 B.C. when the Assyrian army of Sennacherib besieged Jerusalem. “And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they (the Jews in Jerusalem) arose early in the morning, behold, they (the Assyrians soldiers) were all dead corpses.” (2 Kings 19:35.)
Beyond the Bible
Every emerging culture from that prolonged epoch, whether Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Chinese or Inca, left records of those events from their own perspective. Each culture — even city-states within cultures — gave different names to the same planets/gods. Thus, the same story or a similar story is told in separate cultures, using different names, deeds and settings; yet modern scholars fail to see the commonalities. For example, there can be little doubt that Homer’s epic story of the battle of Troy recorded a catastrophic event that was also reported by Old Testament prophets; or that the Exodus even was chronicled by those outside Egypt who experienced those phenomena. The trick, as Velikovsky discovered, is to correlate the two because each saw those events from vastly different perspectives.
So, it may not be prudent to assume that since Venus was said to be Aphrodite, she was not Athena as well. She was both. She was also Hera, Medussa, Pandora, Isis, Hathor, Astarte and a multitude of other goddesses — all in different guises and settings to tell some aspect of the ancient planet’s story anthropomorphically.
What historians see as transmissions or “borrowings” of knowledge and cultural traditions — one culture to another — are largely parallel accounts from different cultures of the same events, gods and conditions in antiquity. In addition, each story or cultural tradition may or may not indicate a new event or a new god or goddess. It may simply be a re-telling of the same story from a new perspective. To further complicate things, characters, events and conditions are swapped around to create even more elaborate story lines, as in modern works of fiction or modern holidays. It is a time-tested tradition, even in temple or festival rituals where dramatic rehearsals of the acts of the gods were rehearsed.
Like witnesses to an auto accident, each one tells the story differently. The task is to recreate the actual event from the various perspectives. In this case, we are trying to sort out the accounts of a multitude of planetary encounters, told by a variety of cultures, where the actors and the settings change more frequently than ever imagined. So, each mythical account has elements of truth, but none is a fully accurate retelling of what happened or who participated. Each myth, each legend, each tradition must be carefully blended with its counterparts to create a whole that tells the real story. This is a work in progress that has only just begun.
Symbolic masking and overlays
In addition to that, these periodic, catastrophic encounters between Earth and its formerly two closest neighbors in the polar configuration, Venus and Mars, generated a new symbolism and iconography, which was superimposed on the old symbolism of the Polar Configuration. This “masking” of earlier catastrophic events by later ones makes it doubly difficult to discern the symbolism of the older events and the original configuration because of similarities — all catastrophes are natural events, born of similar physical phenomena. Thus, the mythical and ritual symbolism of later events copies or mimics that of earlier catastrophes.
Cultures not destroyed in any given catastrophe tended to focus their traditions on those most recent events. Hence, various cultures reverenced gods and icons that emerged in that catastrophe, yet they also drew on older, traditional imagery with which to adorn their new gods.
Thus, the masking of older events and symbols by more recent ones and the dramatically different perspective of events recorded by divergent cultures all has a multiplying effect on early traditions, icons and motifs, causing even more variations on ancient mythic themes. Hence, any attempt to unravel the interwoven threads of cultural and religious traditions creates bewilderment and perplexity. There is such a multitude of symbolic stories and traditions — myths, in other words — that it frustrates any systematic study of these remnants of history. Anyone who attempts to sort out the cacophony and confusion of ancient mythology can be easily overwhelmed.
Skepticism buries history
As if that were not enough, add the confusion of myth, legend and religion to the disbelief and skepticism of later generations who saw nothing but peace and stability in the solar system, and you have a formula for complete dismissal of the message our ancient forebears struggled to preserve and communicate in stone, story and ritual.
These close passes ended in the 6th century B.C., leaving a tradition of planetary catastrophe that upcoming generations had difficulty understanding or even accepting. Millennia later, mankind is almost totally ignorant of Earth’s catastrophic past. Most records of those events have long since vanished. Those few records that survived, like the scriptures, have been savaged by translators who knew nothing of ancient planetary catastrophes and subsequently mistranslated references to catastrophes. Moreover, a spirit of skepticism and unbelief has taken hold of mankind that tends to dismiss anything the least bit fantastic as invention rather than fact. Hence, those few records that have survived, sacred and profane, have been almost completely stripped of their real meaning, whitewashed by ignorance and bias. Oral traditions, myths and legends have been relegated to obscurity by generations of scientists and scholars that obstinately deny that anything extraordinary has happened in our solar system — certainly nothing like the account given above.
While much information regarding the true nature of Earth’s catastrophic past still remains in the religious traditions, customs, records, architecture, rites and rituals of all cultures — carefully preserved due to its “sacred” nature — such data carries no real credibility today, even in the minds of religious believers who completely fail to examine the evidence with anything but “spiritual” eyes.
Where the Saints stand
Mormons are no exception to this rule. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, spent copious amounts of his precious time trying to restore and revive information about and belief in those ancient events and conditions. His notes on Egyptian texts and his use of universal, symbolically correct archetypical symbols in modern temples as well as rites and rituals true to ancient forms are moot evidence of this. Why did he spend his invaluable time doing that rather than some other, more overtly good works? Because this knowledge is vital to one’s understanding of the gospel, the scriptures, the temple and one’s religion.
Latter-day Saints who ignore that information — the vast majority of the church membership, as it turns out — do so at their own peril.
© Anthony E. Larson, 2003
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Prop 8: A Warning From Our Past
(Note: This article was written long before the issue of same-sex marriage and California’s Proposition 8. The animosity and rancor against the church that has emerged may be the issue that this article discusses. Every Latter-day Saint should know where this may lead and what its effects might be on them, personally.)
Latter-day Saints are justifiably pleased with the exceptional growth of the church in the last five decades. Most members see it as confirmation of the fact that this is the true church, restored in fulfillment of scriptural promises that the gospel will be taken to the four corners of the earth.
Ever since President David O. McKay instigated the “Every Member A Missionary” program in the early 1960s when there were about 2 million members, the church has experienced remarkable growth. Today, almost 50 years later, there are more than 13 million members worldwide. At its present rate of growth, the church adds about 1 million members every three years.
While the goal of carrying the message of the restoration to the world is a laudable one, it may come with a mixed blessing. Insightful students of church history know that exceptional growth comes with a caveat — one that Latter-day Saints would do well to recognize.
Consider a lesson from the past.
There was another time, in the early days of the church, when the membership rolls swelled rapidly. While the Saints rejoiced in the successful proselytism, one of the consequences was not a happy one, as history testifies. In order to see how that experience might apply to us, it may be instructive to review the events and conditions that contributed to the ultimate persecution and expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo.
From the outset, the Saints had been well received by Illinois residents. Politicians, especially, were eager to court the Mormon vote. Since they tended to vote as a block, the political party that could please the Mormon leadership believed they would have the Mormon vote.
The resulting competition among Illinois politicians resulted in some rather remarkable benefits for the Saints. For example, the Nauvoo city charter, granted by the Illinois legislature in Springfield, gave the city the power to muster a city militia — an unprecedented concession that was probably extra-constitutional, according to Elder Dallin Oakes. Nevertheless, it was granted with little political opposition since Mormons were seen as an asset to the state, one to be cultivated and developed.
So to begin with, everything was rosy for the Saints of Nauvoo. Assistance and acceptance from pleasant Illinois neighbors seemed to come from every hand, in stark contrast to the rejection they had earlier suffered at the hands of Missourians.
The new city soon experienced exceptional growth as the highly successful missionary work by the apostles in England sent converts by the boatload to the small Illinois settlement. The influx of converts overwhelmed the burgeoning frontier city. Joseph Smith and the brethren were hard put to find room for all of them.
Nauvoo eventually became more populous than Chicago. At about the same time, Mormons began to field their own candidates for office. Joseph Smith himself ran for the office of U.S. President.
The Illinois’ political establishment became alarmed at this turn of events. Neither party could any longer count on the Saints’ vote. They began to worry that the Mormons, rather than being a minority voting block, would become the new political power brokers in the state. This, they likely felt, was intolerable. Something had to be done.
As Nauvoo, the beautiful city by the Mississippi, grew, so did tensions between the Saints and their neighbors. History was repeating itself. Every time the Prophet and his people established roots — New York, Kirtland, Jackson County and now Nauvoo — they were ultimately despised, hated and ejected by their neighbors.
Of course, every Mormon knows the tragedy at the heart of this story. The friendly attitude of neighbors vanished and antagonism flourished. Governor Ford was unwilling to address the Mormons’ complaints. He was even intimately involved in the questionable arrest of the Prophet and the political and military maneuvering that ultimately resulted in his imprisonment and martyrdom.
The eventual outcome was the expulsion of the saints from Illinois. Once again, they lost their lands, their homes and most of their personal belongings. Thus dispossessed, they began the epic march west under the able and inspired direction of President Young.
Then and now
Similarities between those events and conditions and those we see today are remarkable, as evidenced by the following:
In 1992, a book entitled The American Religion by Harold Bloom, a literary and religion critic, examined Mormonism along with several other uniquely American religions. His analysis of modern Mormonism and its potential future have ominous echoes of the early Nauvoo era, forebodings of which every Latter-day Saint should take heed.
Bloom clearly admires Joseph Smith for the unique religion he founded, calling him “a religious genius.” Among many interesting observations, Bloom has some relevant things to say about the recent growth of the church.
He summarizes what the future might bring for the church.
The nation will not always be only two percent Mormon. The Saints outlive the rest of us, have more children than all but a few American groups, and convert on a grand scale, both here and abroad. I do not know what figures they project for their increase, in the next generation, but my own guess is that by the year 2020 (when I will not be here), they could well form at least ten percent of our population, and probably rather more than that. Their future is immense … Salt Lake City may yet become the religious capital of the United States. (The American Religion, p.113.)
Given its presently ever-increasing conversion rates in the Western United States, Bloom envisions a time when Mormonism will become the dominant religion of the region. “The more deeply I study the Mormons and meditate upon their peculiar appropriateness for the American spiritual climate, the more I become convinced that someday soon they will be the Established Church of the American West.”
While Mormons may not be willing to make such grandiose claims themselves, Bloom clearly feels that the church will continue to experience unprecedented growth in this new century.
Still, the news is not all good. Like our predecessors in Nauvoo, remarkable growth may cause renewed resentment toward the church and its members by our fellow Americans. Bloom presages the reaction that may emerge in America to the growing LDS population when he asks,
What would the Mormons wish to do if the United States ever has so large a Mormon population, and so wealthy a consolidation of Mormon economic power, that governing our democracy became impossible without Mormon cooperation? (Ibid., p. 90.)
This question has distinct similarities with the question Illinois politicians and power brokers of the 1840s must have asked about the mushrooming Mormon population. They most certainly felt that they were about to lose control of their own state to the Mormons. Power and wealth were at stake. Illinois’ movers and shakers were fearful of losing it to the Mormons. Surely they questioned what changes Mormons might seek to impose on the general populace if they gained political and economic control of the state. No wonder nearly all elements of frontier American society combined in an unholy conspiracy to drive Mormons from their midst. Growing Mormon political influence threatened to depose and dispossess the existing power structure.
One wonders, given the deaf ear the U.S. government turned on the Mormon issue at that time, if the concerns of Illinois were not also those of Washington as well. In all probability, Joseph Smith’s candidacy for the U.S. presidency was a wake up call to politicians and power brokers at the national level. Seeing the events in Illinois and given the grass-roots interest in the candidacy of the Mormon prophet, they could not help but fear a repeat of frontier events on a national scale. Such a blatant power grab could not be tolerated. Hence, officials at the national level turned a blind eye to events in Illinois, allowing the locals do their dirty work.
As with the Nauvoo saints, today’s church has more political influence in the nation than its membership would seem to indicate. Bloom recognizes that reality. “Mormon financial and political power is exerted in Washington to a degree far beyond what one would expect from one voter in fifty.”
While present speculation is still muted, at its present rate of growth the church will surely begin to experience increasing resistance from various quarters of American society: other denominations, political parties and candidates, and ultimately from the government itself as it is the only entity powerful enough to be used as a tool of retribution against the saints. Recall that it was the Illinois state government, using the power of law, which brought about the imprisonment and execution of Joseph Smith. Never mind that the charges, the behavior of officials and the entire process smacked of impropriety if not illegality. The Mormons and their prophet were a perceived threat that must be eliminated at all costs. Official channels were used to give the entire expulsion process the guise of legality.
There are those who might say that such a thing could not happen in a time when such obvious prejudice and bigotry are nearly nonexistent, that the law cannot be perverted as it was on the American frontier. But those who so believe ignore the lessons of history, and are thus doomed to repeat its mistakes.
Elsewhere Bloom cogently observes, “What seems like science fiction now will not seem so in 2020, if the Mormons are then one American out of eight.” It is a question that must also arise in the minds of politicians and power brokers in modern America as Mormons continue to comprise and ever increasing percentage of the U.S. population and economy. Today we are at the two to three percent level. What might happen when we reach the ten percent level — and beyond?
This is the heart of the issue at hand. When over one-tenth of the American population is LDS, the other nine-tenths will begin to regard them as a threat in any number of ways. If Bloom is right, the exceptional growth of the church could have a solemn down side. Church members could find themselves faced with a similar predicament to that of the early Saints in Nauvoo. The commonalities between the Nauvoo experience and the present are too significant to be ignored.
Speculation on Bloom’s part is evidence of a growing concern about the ‘worldly’ influence of Mormonism rather than any concern about doctrinal issues. Yet doctrinal issues certainly played a part in the Mormon’s expulsion from Nauvoo and would likely have a role in any future clash between Mormons and their neighbors. Indeed, the combination of doctrinal issues, political influence and economic power would consolidate disparate elements of American society to create an unholy alliance that would then present a united front against the Mormons.
Such a confrontation would take the shape and form it took in the Nauvoo period, pitting the church against other American institutions, the Mormons against their fellow Americans. According to the statements in his book, Bloom believes “the twenty-first century will mark a full-scale return to the wars of religion.” Of course, that is what happened in Nauvoo — a war of religion that cost the Mormons dearly.
One must ask, where is the threshold? At what percentage of the general population do Mormons become a perceived threat? At what level does the uneasy peace between Mormonism and its American neighbors reach critical mass, the flash point that ignites general antagonism against the Saints? That is hard to say, but worth keeping in mind as we face the future.
Already other, rival religious groups in America have labeled Mormonism a “cult,” thus downgrading our status in the eyes of their membership such that persecution of Mormons and their religion becomes acceptable — even a sacred duty. In their minds, Mormons are beneath contempt. So far, the contention is only verbal and intellectual, but it could easily escalate if political or economic pressures were added to the mix. This eventuality has menacing implications in view of the Nauvoo tragedy. Religious intolerance in that instance immediately preceded political and social intolerance.
So, while conversions to the church continue apace, we may wish to consider the lessons of our own recent history and prepare ourselves for what may lie ahead. After all, persecution of the Saints has been an integral feature of every dispensation of the gospel. The 100-year window of opportunity presented by our present, peaceful coexistence with the “world” may soon be closing.
© Anthony E. Larson, 2002
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Daniel and the Polar Configuration
There are a number of scriptural stories that are clearly Saturnian in nature. That is, knowing the myths and traditions spawned by the Polar Configuration of planets in antiquity allows us to recognize when the prophets used that same imagery in their accounts. Indeed, we find indications that most of the prophets, if not all, were shown the appearance of the planets in Earth’s ancient heavens. Their response to what they saw in vision was uniformly enthusiastic.
The first example is that cited in "Kolob, the God Star," analyzing the Pearl of Great Price, and more specifically the vision in Abraham. The polar configuration was the primary feature of his vision. This appears to be the case in the Old Testament book of Daniel as well.
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream
In Daniel, chapter 2, we find that King Nebuchadneaazar has a dream that leaves him “troubled.” While he cannot remember the dream, he is certain that if one of his sages can refresh his memory, that same person will certainly know the interpretation of the dream.
The wise men (Chaldeans) were at a loss. They had no idea what the king had dreamed, much less the interpretation thereof. What is more, they asserted that no one should be expected to know the dreams of another. When the king heard this, he became furious. He threatened to kill them all.
At this point in the narrative, the wise men seek out Daniel, who appeals to the king for more time to divine the dream and its meaning.
We pickup the account in verse 19.
The prophet’s common vision
Daniel’s enthusiasm comes from more than simply learning in vision of the king’s dream. His euphoria likely stems from the fact that he was shown the Polar Configuration in vision and recognized it as the source of all religious tradition. The evidence of this is in Daniel’s words to King Nebuchadnezzar, as we shall see shortly.
Note Daniel’s reference to the change of times and seasons in the above verses. One of the most profound differences between the world at Daniel’s time (our time as well, in fact) and the Patriarchal Age was the radical change in the heavens and the earth. The contrast between the two ages was so dramatic that the Apostle Peter was later to write “the old world that then was … perished.” (2 Peter 3:5.)
This radical change necessitated a whole new way of calculating the day of the year and the time of day. While in the heavens, Saturn and its appendages were the equivalent of a celestial clock and calendar. Instead of looking at one’s watch, as we do today, the ancients had only to glance at the heavens in order to determine the time of day. Many ancient monuments were constructed after the collapse of the polar column in order to record the passage of time, using the periodicity of the new heavens, yet employing the symbolism of the old Saturnian system. Stonehenge, for example was both a celestial observatory and a circular calendar. And because it preserved the time keeping elements of the ancient Saturnian system, it was also a sacred place, fit for rites and rituals — a temple, in other words — connected with both the old and the new heavens.
Hence, the ongoing debate about whether sacred compounds like Stonehenge are calendars to mark the passage of time, observatories to track the motion of the sun, moon and stars, or sacred compounds for religious rites and rituals is truly futile. Such sacred sites served as all three at once! (Notably, modern temples serve these same three functions.) Indeed, the very layout of modern timepieces reflects the circular arrangement of the ancient Saturnian system, as do monuments such as Stonehenge.
Seasons, as we know them, were nonexistent in the Saturnian Age. When seasons began, after the polar configuration seemingly exited the heavens, the calendar became a vital necessity for tracking the seasons and marking the passage of time. Thus, it was natural and proper for Daniel to attribute the change of the “time and the seasons” to God and the vision he had just seen.
Saturnian traditions revealed in a dream
Daniel ultimately reveals to the king a rather interesting narrative that bears scrutiny in light of what we know about ancient Saturn and the Polar Configuration of planets.
This description matches the appearance of the Polar Configuration during the phase that gave rise to the celestial, heaven man, angel or god standing upon the Earth and answers to the archetypal symbol of Saturn’s crescent as outstretched arms, Venus in the center of Saturn as the head, Mars at the top of the polar column as the chest or heart, and the column itself as the belly and lower limbs.
Here we see an Egyptian version of this image.
This is the Babylonian version of the same astral image.
This is an artist rendition of how it appeared above the Earth in the ancient heavens.
This is the same image that the apostle John declared to be an angel of God. It is also likely that this is the image that is referred to in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 133, verse 18 wherein the Lord is made to “stand upon the mount of Olivet and upon the mighty ocean, even the great deep, and upon the islands of the sea, and upon the land of Zion,” a remarkable feat for a man (even a resurrected god), but an accurate description of the ‘heaven man’ image. (Incidentally, this speaks volumes about events that will be seen to occur in the last days as described in this remarkable revelation to Joseph Smith.)
Note that each segment of the great image described by Daniel was said to be of certain elements: head of gold, beast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. This is clearly an indication of the appearance, brightness and color of each element of the Polar Configuration that gave rise to the ‘heaven man’ image.
The brightness of this apparition was said to be “excellent,” and its form “terrible.” All the elements of the Polar Configuration were in this specific alignment or arrangement at only one time during a 24-hour period: at the time we call midnight. At the point in the day/night cycle, the entire configuration became astonishingly bright, much like today’s moon rising in a blackened sky at midnight.
The celestial stone
But there is yet more to the king’s vision as described by Daniel.
These verses describe the metamorphosis of the heaven man image. While it is unlikely that this event saw the dissolution of the Polar Configuration, which event came much later in its career, this was a notable state in the long evolution of that peculiar arrangement of planets. Ultimately, at the end of the Saturn epoch, Saturn and its satellites did vanish into the darkness of space, “that no place was found for them.” Therefore, the statement is correct, but not chronological. In the meantime, the configuration continued to evolve into many other forms before its final dismemberment. Evidence of the continued evolution is in the narrative itself, as we shall see.
The stone that “was cut out without hands” was Mars. In the early stages of the ancient configuration of planets, Mars appeared to be in the center of Venus, which appeared to be in the center of Saturn. It had remained stationary relative to the other visible planets while Venus underwent many dramatic changes before returning to a more stable position. (See "The Saturn Epic: In the Beginning.")
Now it was Mars’ turn to become unstable. Mars exited its apparent position in the center of Venus and began to ‘wander’ or ‘descend’ without any apparent outside intervention. Thus, it was said to have been “cut out without hands.”
As Mars appeared to descend, it seemed to grow larger because it was, in fact, moving toward the Earth along the shared axis of rotation. Thus it seemed to ‘descend’ and ‘grow’ at the same time. By the time Mars reached the position shown in Figure 1, the ‘pillar’ or ‘mountain’ appeared between Earth’s northern horizon and the approaching Mars. Thus, in Daniel’s depiction, the “stone” became a “great mountain.”
The plasma stretching between Earth and Mars, Daniel’s “mountain,” now appeared to form a skirt about the legs of the heavenly apparition, while Mars was seen as the torso. The crescent on Saturn formed the outstretched arms of the figure with Venus as the head. (See the above illustrations.)
The plasma in the pillar (skirt/mountain) must have been spectacularly bright and colorful, as pictures from the Hubble telescope have shown in other such plasma structures in our galaxy. Thus, earthly spectators assigned the colors of various metals to the “image” to describe its wondrous appearance. Daniel’s account merely repeats those cultural traditions of the colorful image.
But, as Mars continued its descent and growth, the mountain appeared to collapse and the grouping seemed to come apart. Thus, in Daniel’s account the stone “smote the image upon his feet, that were of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces.”
Mars continued its apparent descent as it approached Earth along the common axis of rotation until both the polar column and Mars appeared to be a literal appendage or “mountain” on Earth’s northernmost horizon. Or, as Daniel told it, “… the stone … became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”
As Mars and the polar column approached most closely to the Earth, the ground beneath the feet of onlookers began to quake, furthering the impression that an impact of some kind had take place. Hence, they had the idea that the stone “smote” the image. Darkness shrouded the Earth and the great cities fell, lending yet more weight to the idea that the image had been destroyed as well.
When the darkness dissipated after an indeterminate length of time, Earth’s inhabitants saw the polar configuration once again. However, Mars had begun to withdraw from its former proximity to the Earth. A new phase of the Saturnian configuration had begun.
The interpretation
Of course, Daniel gave an interpretation of the dream.
In antiquity, the role of the monarch was clearly defined by Saturn traditions. He was god’s agent on earth, the successor to the original, celestial monarch, Saturn. Any interpretation of dreams that involved that heavenly prototype of all earthly kings would, by necessity, follow that concept. Daniel indulges in neither flattery, as some have suggested, nor exaggeration to ingratiate himself to the king by referring to Nebuchadnezzar as the gold head. He was merely articulating cultural tradition.
Daniel follows that pronouncement with an explanation that each of the other parts of the image represents four subsequent kingdoms, each inferior to the one that immediately precedes it. Apparently, the idea that the whole of civilization is deteriorating is not new to our time. Representing mankind in a long, downward spiral, except where God intervenes through his prophets, is the entire message of the scriptures.
“… on earth as it is in heaven.”
Note that this is an instance of how one time celestial objects were employed to give order and meaning to earthly events and conditions. It is an example of imposing the heavenly order of things on the earthly, a commonly used device in antiquity.
The analogy of earthly kings and kingdoms is made complete in Daniel’s exposition. It is the kingdom of God that, like the celestial stone, shall roll forth and consume all others.
Here we see the power of analogy at work. The evolving Polar Configuration is made to depict the world and the kingdom of God. As the prophets attempted to convert the ‘pagans,’ they were forced to use the religious traditions of those same people to teach gospel principles. What better way to change hearts and minds than to put a unique twist on that which is familiar and comfortable to your audience?
“If it works, use it,” seems to be the rule. This can be seen in the teachings of virtually every prophet, including the Savior’s use of parables. It is why most of the scriptures, the gospel, temple ritual and temple iconography has pagan roots. It was the pagans, with their obvious Saturn traditions, that the prophets were sent to convert.
Of course, there is inherent danger in this practice: Later generations might mistake the symbols and imagery used as teaching tools for the real thing. Additionally, converts may retain their beliefs in pagan traditions even after converting to the gospel. This is the drawback or downside to using symbolism at all, from whatever source.
Joseph Smith emphasized the validity of the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. He let Daniel’s interpretation stand, adding only that the church he founded was the beginning of the kingdom that would consume all others seen in Daniel’s vision. All the brethren since Joseph have taught this same thing.
More dream symbolism
In chapter 4, the king has another dream with a new set of symbols.
The heavenly tree was only another expression of the polar configuration, the pillar being the trunk of the tree and its branches being the crescent in an inverted position from that of the heaven man.
This was the appearance of the polar configuration at midday in the ancient, day/night cycle.
Though we do not readily recognize it as such, it was the principal symbol for an ancient cult that worshipped trees or worshipped in groves. The Israelite prophets called it Asherah (Ashtoreth), and they condemned its worship. (See "Temple Symbols and Christmas.")
Still more symbolism
Yet another dream in chapter 7 introduces us to yet another set of symbols. These are four beasts. Notice the remarkable similarity between these beasts and those listed in Ezekiel 1:10 and Revelation 4:6,7. It seems clear that the ancients frequently associated beasts with several aspects of the Saturn configuration.
There is a clear difference between Daniel’s beasts and those of Ezekiel and Revelation. It appears that the visions in Ezekiel and Revelation deal with the daily cycle of the Polar Configuration with each of the four beasts representing the four primary points of the compass. These originate in the four principle positions of Saturn’s rotating crescent in a 24-hour period—midnight, morning, midday, and evening. Coincidentally, Joseph Smith’s interpretation of the four beasts he found on the Egyptian papyri is the same: These four beasts represent the four cardinal points of the compass. The vision of Daniel deals with four primary stages during the evolution of the Saturnian configuration of planets. Hence, it’s use of the symbolic number four, personified in the four beasts. (See "The Eagle, the Bull, the Lion and the Man.")
A multitude of traditions
Thus we see that understanding the early history of our planet and its unique heavenly manifestations is vital to understanding the prophets because they taught the lessons of the gospel with traditions and stories — myths, if you will — that originated in the Saturnian congregation of planets as they metamorphosed over time as well as the plasma constructs that emerged between planets. These archetypes evolved into a multitude of icons and images in every ancient culture, becoming the basis for legends of epic dimensions.
The lesson to be learned here is that we should not mistake imagery for reality. We would do well to use our newfound knowledge to enhance our understanding by separating the planetary traditions from the lessons they were designed to teach.
© Anthony E. Larson, 2000
The first example is that cited in "Kolob, the God Star," analyzing the Pearl of Great Price, and more specifically the vision in Abraham. The polar configuration was the primary feature of his vision. This appears to be the case in the Old Testament book of Daniel as well.
Nebuchadnezzar’s dream
In Daniel, chapter 2, we find that King Nebuchadneaazar has a dream that leaves him “troubled.” While he cannot remember the dream, he is certain that if one of his sages can refresh his memory, that same person will certainly know the interpretation of the dream.
The wise men (Chaldeans) were at a loss. They had no idea what the king had dreamed, much less the interpretation thereof. What is more, they asserted that no one should be expected to know the dreams of another. When the king heard this, he became furious. He threatened to kill them all.
At this point in the narrative, the wise men seek out Daniel, who appeals to the king for more time to divine the dream and its meaning.
We pickup the account in verse 19.
Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.
Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his:
And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:
He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.
I think thee, and praise thee, O thou God of my fathers, who hast given me wisdom and might, and hast made known unto me now what we desired of thee: for thou hast now made known unto us the king’s matter. (Daniel 2:19-23.)
The prophet’s common vision
Daniel’s enthusiasm comes from more than simply learning in vision of the king’s dream. His euphoria likely stems from the fact that he was shown the Polar Configuration in vision and recognized it as the source of all religious tradition. The evidence of this is in Daniel’s words to King Nebuchadnezzar, as we shall see shortly.
Note Daniel’s reference to the change of times and seasons in the above verses. One of the most profound differences between the world at Daniel’s time (our time as well, in fact) and the Patriarchal Age was the radical change in the heavens and the earth. The contrast between the two ages was so dramatic that the Apostle Peter was later to write “the old world that then was … perished.” (2 Peter 3:5.)
This radical change necessitated a whole new way of calculating the day of the year and the time of day. While in the heavens, Saturn and its appendages were the equivalent of a celestial clock and calendar. Instead of looking at one’s watch, as we do today, the ancients had only to glance at the heavens in order to determine the time of day. Many ancient monuments were constructed after the collapse of the polar column in order to record the passage of time, using the periodicity of the new heavens, yet employing the symbolism of the old Saturnian system. Stonehenge, for example was both a celestial observatory and a circular calendar. And because it preserved the time keeping elements of the ancient Saturnian system, it was also a sacred place, fit for rites and rituals — a temple, in other words — connected with both the old and the new heavens.
Hence, the ongoing debate about whether sacred compounds like Stonehenge are calendars to mark the passage of time, observatories to track the motion of the sun, moon and stars, or sacred compounds for religious rites and rituals is truly futile. Such sacred sites served as all three at once! (Notably, modern temples serve these same three functions.) Indeed, the very layout of modern timepieces reflects the circular arrangement of the ancient Saturnian system, as do monuments such as Stonehenge.
Seasons, as we know them, were nonexistent in the Saturnian Age. When seasons began, after the polar configuration seemingly exited the heavens, the calendar became a vital necessity for tracking the seasons and marking the passage of time. Thus, it was natural and proper for Daniel to attribute the change of the “time and the seasons” to God and the vision he had just seen.
Saturnian traditions revealed in a dream
Daniel ultimately reveals to the king a rather interesting narrative that bears scrutiny in light of what we know about ancient Saturn and the Polar Configuration of planets.
Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee and the form thereof was terrible.
This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass,
His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. (Daniel 2:31-33.)
This description matches the appearance of the Polar Configuration during the phase that gave rise to the celestial, heaven man, angel or god standing upon the Earth and answers to the archetypal symbol of Saturn’s crescent as outstretched arms, Venus in the center of Saturn as the head, Mars at the top of the polar column as the chest or heart, and the column itself as the belly and lower limbs.
Here we see an Egyptian version of this image.
This is the Babylonian version of the same astral image.
This is an artist rendition of how it appeared above the Earth in the ancient heavens.
This is the same image that the apostle John declared to be an angel of God. It is also likely that this is the image that is referred to in Doctrine and Covenants, Section 133, verse 18 wherein the Lord is made to “stand upon the mount of Olivet and upon the mighty ocean, even the great deep, and upon the islands of the sea, and upon the land of Zion,” a remarkable feat for a man (even a resurrected god), but an accurate description of the ‘heaven man’ image. (Incidentally, this speaks volumes about events that will be seen to occur in the last days as described in this remarkable revelation to Joseph Smith.)
Note that each segment of the great image described by Daniel was said to be of certain elements: head of gold, beast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. This is clearly an indication of the appearance, brightness and color of each element of the Polar Configuration that gave rise to the ‘heaven man’ image.
The brightness of this apparition was said to be “excellent,” and its form “terrible.” All the elements of the Polar Configuration were in this specific alignment or arrangement at only one time during a 24-hour period: at the time we call midnight. At the point in the day/night cycle, the entire configuration became astonishingly bright, much like today’s moon rising in a blackened sky at midnight.
The celestial stone
But there is yet more to the king’s vision as described by Daniel.
Thou sawest til that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces.
Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth. (Daniel 2:34-35.)
These verses describe the metamorphosis of the heaven man image. While it is unlikely that this event saw the dissolution of the Polar Configuration, which event came much later in its career, this was a notable state in the long evolution of that peculiar arrangement of planets. Ultimately, at the end of the Saturn epoch, Saturn and its satellites did vanish into the darkness of space, “that no place was found for them.” Therefore, the statement is correct, but not chronological. In the meantime, the configuration continued to evolve into many other forms before its final dismemberment. Evidence of the continued evolution is in the narrative itself, as we shall see.
The stone that “was cut out without hands” was Mars. In the early stages of the ancient configuration of planets, Mars appeared to be in the center of Venus, which appeared to be in the center of Saturn. It had remained stationary relative to the other visible planets while Venus underwent many dramatic changes before returning to a more stable position. (See "The Saturn Epic: In the Beginning.")
Now it was Mars’ turn to become unstable. Mars exited its apparent position in the center of Venus and began to ‘wander’ or ‘descend’ without any apparent outside intervention. Thus, it was said to have been “cut out without hands.”
As Mars appeared to descend, it seemed to grow larger because it was, in fact, moving toward the Earth along the shared axis of rotation. Thus it seemed to ‘descend’ and ‘grow’ at the same time. By the time Mars reached the position shown in Figure 1, the ‘pillar’ or ‘mountain’ appeared between Earth’s northern horizon and the approaching Mars. Thus, in Daniel’s depiction, the “stone” became a “great mountain.”
The plasma stretching between Earth and Mars, Daniel’s “mountain,” now appeared to form a skirt about the legs of the heavenly apparition, while Mars was seen as the torso. The crescent on Saturn formed the outstretched arms of the figure with Venus as the head. (See the above illustrations.)
The plasma in the pillar (skirt/mountain) must have been spectacularly bright and colorful, as pictures from the Hubble telescope have shown in other such plasma structures in our galaxy. Thus, earthly spectators assigned the colors of various metals to the “image” to describe its wondrous appearance. Daniel’s account merely repeats those cultural traditions of the colorful image.
But, as Mars continued its descent and growth, the mountain appeared to collapse and the grouping seemed to come apart. Thus, in Daniel’s account the stone “smote the image upon his feet, that were of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces.”
Mars continued its apparent descent as it approached Earth along the common axis of rotation until both the polar column and Mars appeared to be a literal appendage or “mountain” on Earth’s northernmost horizon. Or, as Daniel told it, “… the stone … became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.”
As Mars and the polar column approached most closely to the Earth, the ground beneath the feet of onlookers began to quake, furthering the impression that an impact of some kind had take place. Hence, they had the idea that the stone “smote” the image. Darkness shrouded the Earth and the great cities fell, lending yet more weight to the idea that the image had been destroyed as well.
When the darkness dissipated after an indeterminate length of time, Earth’s inhabitants saw the polar configuration once again. However, Mars had begun to withdraw from its former proximity to the Earth. A new phase of the Saturnian configuration had begun.
The interpretation
Of course, Daniel gave an interpretation of the dream.
This is the dream, and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king.
Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory.
And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beast of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. (Daniel 2:36-38.)
In antiquity, the role of the monarch was clearly defined by Saturn traditions. He was god’s agent on earth, the successor to the original, celestial monarch, Saturn. Any interpretation of dreams that involved that heavenly prototype of all earthly kings would, by necessity, follow that concept. Daniel indulges in neither flattery, as some have suggested, nor exaggeration to ingratiate himself to the king by referring to Nebuchadnezzar as the gold head. He was merely articulating cultural tradition.
Daniel follows that pronouncement with an explanation that each of the other parts of the image represents four subsequent kingdoms, each inferior to the one that immediately precedes it. Apparently, the idea that the whole of civilization is deteriorating is not new to our time. Representing mankind in a long, downward spiral, except where God intervenes through his prophets, is the entire message of the scriptures.
“… on earth as it is in heaven.”
Note that this is an instance of how one time celestial objects were employed to give order and meaning to earthly events and conditions. It is an example of imposing the heavenly order of things on the earthly, a commonly used device in antiquity.
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. (Daniel 2:44.)
The analogy of earthly kings and kingdoms is made complete in Daniel’s exposition. It is the kingdom of God that, like the celestial stone, shall roll forth and consume all others.
Here we see the power of analogy at work. The evolving Polar Configuration is made to depict the world and the kingdom of God. As the prophets attempted to convert the ‘pagans,’ they were forced to use the religious traditions of those same people to teach gospel principles. What better way to change hearts and minds than to put a unique twist on that which is familiar and comfortable to your audience?
“If it works, use it,” seems to be the rule. This can be seen in the teachings of virtually every prophet, including the Savior’s use of parables. It is why most of the scriptures, the gospel, temple ritual and temple iconography has pagan roots. It was the pagans, with their obvious Saturn traditions, that the prophets were sent to convert.
Of course, there is inherent danger in this practice: Later generations might mistake the symbols and imagery used as teaching tools for the real thing. Additionally, converts may retain their beliefs in pagan traditions even after converting to the gospel. This is the drawback or downside to using symbolism at all, from whatever source.
Joseph Smith emphasized the validity of the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. He let Daniel’s interpretation stand, adding only that the church he founded was the beginning of the kingdom that would consume all others seen in Daniel’s vision. All the brethren since Joseph have taught this same thing.
More dream symbolism
In chapter 4, the king has another dream with a new set of symbols.
Thus were the vision of mine head in my bed; I saw, and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and the height thereof was great.
The tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth:
The leaves thereof were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all: the beasts of the field had shadow under it, and the fowls of the heaven dwelt in the boughs thereof, and all flesh was fed of it. (Daniel 4: 10-12.)
The heavenly tree was only another expression of the polar configuration, the pillar being the trunk of the tree and its branches being the crescent in an inverted position from that of the heaven man.
This was the appearance of the polar configuration at midday in the ancient, day/night cycle.
Though we do not readily recognize it as such, it was the principal symbol for an ancient cult that worshipped trees or worshipped in groves. The Israelite prophets called it Asherah (Ashtoreth), and they condemned its worship. (See "Temple Symbols and Christmas.")
Still more symbolism
Yet another dream in chapter 7 introduces us to yet another set of symbols. These are four beasts. Notice the remarkable similarity between these beasts and those listed in Ezekiel 1:10 and Revelation 4:6,7. It seems clear that the ancients frequently associated beasts with several aspects of the Saturn configuration.
There is a clear difference between Daniel’s beasts and those of Ezekiel and Revelation. It appears that the visions in Ezekiel and Revelation deal with the daily cycle of the Polar Configuration with each of the four beasts representing the four primary points of the compass. These originate in the four principle positions of Saturn’s rotating crescent in a 24-hour period—midnight, morning, midday, and evening. Coincidentally, Joseph Smith’s interpretation of the four beasts he found on the Egyptian papyri is the same: These four beasts represent the four cardinal points of the compass. The vision of Daniel deals with four primary stages during the evolution of the Saturnian configuration of planets. Hence, it’s use of the symbolic number four, personified in the four beasts. (See "The Eagle, the Bull, the Lion and the Man.")
A multitude of traditions
Thus we see that understanding the early history of our planet and its unique heavenly manifestations is vital to understanding the prophets because they taught the lessons of the gospel with traditions and stories — myths, if you will — that originated in the Saturnian congregation of planets as they metamorphosed over time as well as the plasma constructs that emerged between planets. These archetypes evolved into a multitude of icons and images in every ancient culture, becoming the basis for legends of epic dimensions.
The lesson to be learned here is that we should not mistake imagery for reality. We would do well to use our newfound knowledge to enhance our understanding by separating the planetary traditions from the lessons they were designed to teach.
© Anthony E. Larson, 2000
Another Vision of the Last Days
Since all communication — including revelation — is corrupted to one degree or another by the interpretation placed upon it by the recipient, it was assumed that the visions of early Saints would necessarily have been closer to the original concepts taught by the Prophet Joseph Smith; they would not have been adulterated by modern misconceptions of prophecy that have been introduced over time. (See “Children of the Light” for an explanation as to why the interpretation of recent revelation might be tainted by sectarian notions.)
Thus, every attempt was made in The Prophecy Trilogy to include visions of the last days given to early Saints (Charles D. Evans and President John Taylor). This was done to demonstrate the remarkable harmony and integrity between the concepts presented in The Prophecy Trilogy and the scenes presented in those early visions. Former LDS exegetes of prophecy had been unable to make any sense of these visions, so they ignored them. Yet, with the point of view presented by this author, the true value and merit of these visions can now be appreciated. Hence, they were included in the trilogy.
Like the Charles D. Evans vision, the following vision was recorded in The Contributor, the official church publication at the end of the 19th century and forerunner to the Improvement Era and today’s Ensign. As such, its credibility is greater than those dreams or visions recorded in journals and diaries of other Latter-day Saints since the general authorities themselves chose this material for The Contributor. Note that the author is not named, leading some to speculate that he may have been a general authority, if not the president of the church himself, who reported this vision. Commentary will follow.
The Dream of the Plagues
The present times seem to be more than usually prolific of prophetic dreams among the Latter-day Saints. In nearly every settlement the people have been warned of events soon to occur; and visions of the future glory of the Kingdom of God upon this earth have passed like a panorama before many of those who love God and obey His commandments.
Some two or three years ago, I had retired for the night, when suddenly a glorious messenger appeared at my bedside and awoke me from my slumber. The light of his presence filled the room, so that objects were discerned as clearly as at noonday.
He handed me a book, saying, “Look, and see what is coming to pass.” I took the book in my hands and, sitting up in bed, examined it carefully and read its contents. In size this book was about seven by ten inches, opening like a copybook and bound in beautiful cover, on the front of which was stamped in gold letters its title, which was The Book of the Plagues. The leaves were printed only on the front side of each, and were composed of the very finest quality of pure white linen, instead of paper. The typography throughout was in the finest style of the printer’s art. Each page was composed of a picture printed in colors as natural as art can copy nature, which occupied the upper half of the space, below which was the printed description of the scene represented.
On the first page was a picture of a feast in progress, with the long table set upon a beautiful lawn, over which were interspersed clumps of fine shrubs and towering trees. In the background through the foliage, could be discerned a stately suburban villa, adorned with all the ornaments of modern architecture. The landscape presented the appearance of midsummer. The sky, and indeed the whole atmosphere, appeared of a peculiar sickly brassy hue, similar to that which may be observed when the sun is wholly eclipsed, and the disc is just beginning again to give its light. Throughout the atmosphere small white specks were represented, similar to a scattering fall of minute snowflakes in winter. About the table a part of richly dressed ladies and gentlemen were seated in the act of partaking of the rich repast with which the table was laden. The minute specks falling from above were dropping into the food apparently unheeded by all, for a sudden destruction had come upon them. Many were falling backward in the agonies of a fearful death; others drooping upon the table, and others pausing with their hand still holding the untasted food, their countenances betraying a fearful astonishment at the peculiar and unlooked for condition of their companions. Death was in the atmosphere; the judgments of God had come upon them as silently and swiftly as upon the proud Sennacharib and his host of Assyrians.
In one corner of this picture was a small circular vignette, showing the front of the store of a dealer in pork. The wide sidewalk was covered by an awning supported on posts at the outer edge, and on this walk were shown barrels of pork, long strings of sausages, fresh slaughtered hogs, piles of smoked bacon and headcheese; and along the edge of the walk, next to the store, beneath the front windows, leaned a number of large hams and pieces of side meat, reaching across the whole front, except a small space at the doorway. There were twelve of these pieces, and on each piece was painted a large letter, in order to make as a whole the word ABOMINATIONS.
Below this scene was the description: A Feast among the Gentiles, commencement of the Plague. And in smaller type below [was] a note saying that the particles of poison, though represented in the picture, are so small as to be invisible to the naked eye.
On the next page was another picture. It was a street scene in a large city. In the foreground were the residences of wealthy city merchants. The character of the buildings gradually changed; along the view and in the distance were shown the great buildings of trade and commerce in the heart of a large metropolis. On the sidewalks throughout the long vista, the busy, throbbing rushing crowd had been cut down like grass before the mower.
Again it was a midsummer scene. The same atoms of poison were falling through the air, but their work was done; the same sickly brazen atmosphere that seemed thick with foul odors laid upon the earth, in which no breeze stirred a leaf of the foliage. Upon the balconies of the richly decorated residences, across the thresholds of the open doorways, along the walks and upon the crossings, lay the men, women and children, who a few days before were enjoying all the pleasures of life. Further on, the dead were everywhere. Houses of business that had been thronged with customers stood with open doorways, frowning upon streets covered with the dead. Across the thresholds of the banks lay the guardians of wealth, but no thieves were there to take the unlocked treasures within. The costly merchandise of a thousand owners laid untouched upon the counters and shelves. In the noonday glare of the sickly sun, not a soul was shown alive; not one had been left to bury the dead—all had been stricken or had fled from the death-dealing plague and the doomed city. Along midway upon the street, a hungry drove of those horrible ugly slaughterhouse dogs, (which may be seen in the pens attached to the filthy slaughtering places in the outskirts of many cities), was tearing and devouring the dead and feasting upon the bodies of rich and poor alike with none to molest them.
Below this picture was the description: Progress of the Plague among the Gentiles. A street scene in a large city. Nearly fifty of these pictures I carefully observed, wherein the fearful effects of this and other plagues were almost as vividly portrayed as if I had actually seen them.
The last scene in the book was descriptive of the same plague as the first. A beautiful park-like, grassy prairie was surrounded by elm and cottonwood trees, the area embraced being about eighty rods across. In the center of this enclosure was a large cone-shaped tent of a bright purple color, about thirty feet in height by twenty in diameter at the base. Midway in height in this tent was a floor dividing the inside into two stories. Near this tent was another, a round wall tent, about thirty feet in diameter, and nearly as high as the first. This was clean and white. Leaving a space of about a hundred yards from these central tents were hundreds of small rectangular wall tents in rows, reaching as far as the surrounding trees, each tent clean and white, and appearing to be of a size suited to the wants of an ordinary family. Not a human being, animal, bird or vehicle was in sight. Not a breath of air appeared to be stirring. The same atmosphere as in the previous pictures, with the atoms of poison, was represented, and the same time and season of the year.
Below this picture was the description: “A camp of the Saints who have gathered together and are living under the daily revelations of God, and are thus preserved from the plague.” I understood from this that each family was in its tent during the hours of the day that the poison falls, and thus were preserved from breathing the deathly particles.
Handing the book to the messenger, who all this time had remained by my side, he vanished from my view as suddenly as he had appeared. I awoke my wife, who was soundly sleeping, and commenced to relate to her what I had just beheld. After telling her the description of the two pictures at the beginning of the book, and commencing on the third, this third picture and all up to the last was suddenly taken from my memory, so that I have never been able to recall them; but still I remember that they were scenes about the plagues and judgments.
In the revelation given to the Prophet Joseph, among the many plagues and judgments portrayed, that given in the Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. xxix:17-20, has always seemed to me to fully coincide with what has been related in the account of that dream. But whether that plague or another is meant, it does not matter. Plagues will come and the wicked must suffer; but the Saints will be preserved by the very principle for which the wicked persecute them, which is present revelation from the Almighty. (The Contributor, 5:411.)
Commentary
In many respects, this vision matches certain primary elements of Bro. Evans’ and John Taylor’s visions. Each wrote of a similarly poisoned atmosphere that brought certain death. The three corroborate one another and the thesis of this author regarding a future, planet-wide plague, caused by extra-terrestrial contamination of air and water, making them poisonous to living things. It is further evidence that the central thesis of And The Earth Shall Reel To And Fro regarding the Great Plague of the last days is valid. Furthermore, it is very significant that the sole source for the accounts of this future plague is the membership of the church. The scriptures make only passing reference to this plague, while latter-day revelation, given to general authorities and priesthood holders alike, exhibits a much fuller and technically accurate picture of this catastrophic plague. Once again, modern revelation, when coupled with the catastrophist view, is capable of amplifying our understanding of future events.
The first paragraph paints a very interesting picture of a church that anticipates the onset of the last days at any time. Mormonism was, in its infancy, very much a Millennialist or Adventist religion. Central to the restoration was the idea that the mission of the church was to prepare for the imminent return of the Savior. For example, the scriptural quotations of Moroni to Joseph Smith deal almost exclusively with prophecies of the last days. (See Joseph Smith—History 1:36-41.)
The author of this vision notes that there were “nearly fifty of these pictures . . . .” Yet, he only remembers the first two and the last. (One can only lament that he was not allowed to remember the rest!) The first picture is said to represent the beginning of the plague, and the second to document the progress of the plague. It is logical to surmise that the last scene in the book represents the final stage of the plague. Taken all together, the book was as close to the animator’s art as a 19th century work could be—almost a motion picture! The author notes that it was all so “vividly portrayed” that it was “as if I had actually seen them.”
Apparently, each scene was meant to depict a virtual reality. The scenes were accurate in their representation of the plague’s effects on mankind, but the settings were rather idealized and therefore somewhat symbolic. The vignette of the pork store was certainly a symbolic representation, having nothing to do with reality. It is an allusion to the Mosaic Law’s prohibition on pork, which was seen as a foul pollution. A shop trafficking exclusively in pork would certainly be seen as an abomination in a kosher neighborhood! The 12 large hams with letters that spelled out ABOMINATIONS may be a metaphor for a wicked 12 tribes. It also relates to the scriptural phrase “desolation of abominations” that is often applied to the catastrophic destructions of the last days since such destructions have historically been the means by which God swept wickedness or abominations from the planet. Obviously, the destruction of something as horrific as a pork shop could be construed as a symbolic “desolation of abominations.”
Assuming that most of the vision is self-explanatory in light of this author’s thesis, it is the last scene depicting the final stage of the plague to which we turn our attention.
The situation, as described, has many subtle implications. That they were living in tents implies two things: Their permanent dwellings were uninhabitable and they were in the process of migrating to a new location. This conforms with the traditional belief among early Mormons who had migrated to the Salt Lake Valley that the day would come when they would return to Jackson County, Missouri, the site designated by Joseph Smith for the building of the New Jerusalem. It confirms the idea of a modern exodus, seen to occur in the last days, under very similar conditions to those experienced by the Israelites under Moses’ direction. The mention of an assembly and temple-like pair of tents in the center of the encampment further reinforces this analogy.
The size of the encampment is also a notable detail. Given the size of the encampment enclosure, “about eighty rods across,” the number of tents in that defined area would be astoundingly small, given the size of the church today. It seems to indicate that although the membership of the church today numbers in the millions, only a tiny fraction of those Saints will survive to reclaim Jackson County. This, of course, is consistent with the nature and extent of the plague witnessed in this vision and also conforms to the traditional view of the original Exodus wherein it is said that 49 out of 50 Israelites perished.
Given the modest level of interest in these ideas among Latter-day Saints, it seems logical to assume that very few of us will be prepared to cope with the Great Plague and the other profoundly devastating and destructive events of the last days. Those of us who have been given a glimpse of the reality and the nature of these plagues and destructions should consider ourselves fortunate because that forewarning will allow us to better prepare ourselves for them and to better cope with them when they do happen. Such revelations as this, seen through the focused lens of catastrophism, provide us with life-saving information.
© Anthony E. Larson, 1999
Thus, every attempt was made in The Prophecy Trilogy to include visions of the last days given to early Saints (Charles D. Evans and President John Taylor). This was done to demonstrate the remarkable harmony and integrity between the concepts presented in The Prophecy Trilogy and the scenes presented in those early visions. Former LDS exegetes of prophecy had been unable to make any sense of these visions, so they ignored them. Yet, with the point of view presented by this author, the true value and merit of these visions can now be appreciated. Hence, they were included in the trilogy.
Like the Charles D. Evans vision, the following vision was recorded in The Contributor, the official church publication at the end of the 19th century and forerunner to the Improvement Era and today’s Ensign. As such, its credibility is greater than those dreams or visions recorded in journals and diaries of other Latter-day Saints since the general authorities themselves chose this material for The Contributor. Note that the author is not named, leading some to speculate that he may have been a general authority, if not the president of the church himself, who reported this vision. Commentary will follow.
The Dream of the Plagues
The present times seem to be more than usually prolific of prophetic dreams among the Latter-day Saints. In nearly every settlement the people have been warned of events soon to occur; and visions of the future glory of the Kingdom of God upon this earth have passed like a panorama before many of those who love God and obey His commandments.
Some two or three years ago, I had retired for the night, when suddenly a glorious messenger appeared at my bedside and awoke me from my slumber. The light of his presence filled the room, so that objects were discerned as clearly as at noonday.
He handed me a book, saying, “Look, and see what is coming to pass.” I took the book in my hands and, sitting up in bed, examined it carefully and read its contents. In size this book was about seven by ten inches, opening like a copybook and bound in beautiful cover, on the front of which was stamped in gold letters its title, which was The Book of the Plagues. The leaves were printed only on the front side of each, and were composed of the very finest quality of pure white linen, instead of paper. The typography throughout was in the finest style of the printer’s art. Each page was composed of a picture printed in colors as natural as art can copy nature, which occupied the upper half of the space, below which was the printed description of the scene represented.
On the first page was a picture of a feast in progress, with the long table set upon a beautiful lawn, over which were interspersed clumps of fine shrubs and towering trees. In the background through the foliage, could be discerned a stately suburban villa, adorned with all the ornaments of modern architecture. The landscape presented the appearance of midsummer. The sky, and indeed the whole atmosphere, appeared of a peculiar sickly brassy hue, similar to that which may be observed when the sun is wholly eclipsed, and the disc is just beginning again to give its light. Throughout the atmosphere small white specks were represented, similar to a scattering fall of minute snowflakes in winter. About the table a part of richly dressed ladies and gentlemen were seated in the act of partaking of the rich repast with which the table was laden. The minute specks falling from above were dropping into the food apparently unheeded by all, for a sudden destruction had come upon them. Many were falling backward in the agonies of a fearful death; others drooping upon the table, and others pausing with their hand still holding the untasted food, their countenances betraying a fearful astonishment at the peculiar and unlooked for condition of their companions. Death was in the atmosphere; the judgments of God had come upon them as silently and swiftly as upon the proud Sennacharib and his host of Assyrians.
In one corner of this picture was a small circular vignette, showing the front of the store of a dealer in pork. The wide sidewalk was covered by an awning supported on posts at the outer edge, and on this walk were shown barrels of pork, long strings of sausages, fresh slaughtered hogs, piles of smoked bacon and headcheese; and along the edge of the walk, next to the store, beneath the front windows, leaned a number of large hams and pieces of side meat, reaching across the whole front, except a small space at the doorway. There were twelve of these pieces, and on each piece was painted a large letter, in order to make as a whole the word ABOMINATIONS.
Below this scene was the description: A Feast among the Gentiles, commencement of the Plague. And in smaller type below [was] a note saying that the particles of poison, though represented in the picture, are so small as to be invisible to the naked eye.
On the next page was another picture. It was a street scene in a large city. In the foreground were the residences of wealthy city merchants. The character of the buildings gradually changed; along the view and in the distance were shown the great buildings of trade and commerce in the heart of a large metropolis. On the sidewalks throughout the long vista, the busy, throbbing rushing crowd had been cut down like grass before the mower.
Again it was a midsummer scene. The same atoms of poison were falling through the air, but their work was done; the same sickly brazen atmosphere that seemed thick with foul odors laid upon the earth, in which no breeze stirred a leaf of the foliage. Upon the balconies of the richly decorated residences, across the thresholds of the open doorways, along the walks and upon the crossings, lay the men, women and children, who a few days before were enjoying all the pleasures of life. Further on, the dead were everywhere. Houses of business that had been thronged with customers stood with open doorways, frowning upon streets covered with the dead. Across the thresholds of the banks lay the guardians of wealth, but no thieves were there to take the unlocked treasures within. The costly merchandise of a thousand owners laid untouched upon the counters and shelves. In the noonday glare of the sickly sun, not a soul was shown alive; not one had been left to bury the dead—all had been stricken or had fled from the death-dealing plague and the doomed city. Along midway upon the street, a hungry drove of those horrible ugly slaughterhouse dogs, (which may be seen in the pens attached to the filthy slaughtering places in the outskirts of many cities), was tearing and devouring the dead and feasting upon the bodies of rich and poor alike with none to molest them.
Below this picture was the description: Progress of the Plague among the Gentiles. A street scene in a large city. Nearly fifty of these pictures I carefully observed, wherein the fearful effects of this and other plagues were almost as vividly portrayed as if I had actually seen them.
The last scene in the book was descriptive of the same plague as the first. A beautiful park-like, grassy prairie was surrounded by elm and cottonwood trees, the area embraced being about eighty rods across. In the center of this enclosure was a large cone-shaped tent of a bright purple color, about thirty feet in height by twenty in diameter at the base. Midway in height in this tent was a floor dividing the inside into two stories. Near this tent was another, a round wall tent, about thirty feet in diameter, and nearly as high as the first. This was clean and white. Leaving a space of about a hundred yards from these central tents were hundreds of small rectangular wall tents in rows, reaching as far as the surrounding trees, each tent clean and white, and appearing to be of a size suited to the wants of an ordinary family. Not a human being, animal, bird or vehicle was in sight. Not a breath of air appeared to be stirring. The same atmosphere as in the previous pictures, with the atoms of poison, was represented, and the same time and season of the year.
Below this picture was the description: “A camp of the Saints who have gathered together and are living under the daily revelations of God, and are thus preserved from the plague.” I understood from this that each family was in its tent during the hours of the day that the poison falls, and thus were preserved from breathing the deathly particles.
Handing the book to the messenger, who all this time had remained by my side, he vanished from my view as suddenly as he had appeared. I awoke my wife, who was soundly sleeping, and commenced to relate to her what I had just beheld. After telling her the description of the two pictures at the beginning of the book, and commencing on the third, this third picture and all up to the last was suddenly taken from my memory, so that I have never been able to recall them; but still I remember that they were scenes about the plagues and judgments.
In the revelation given to the Prophet Joseph, among the many plagues and judgments portrayed, that given in the Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. xxix:17-20, has always seemed to me to fully coincide with what has been related in the account of that dream. But whether that plague or another is meant, it does not matter. Plagues will come and the wicked must suffer; but the Saints will be preserved by the very principle for which the wicked persecute them, which is present revelation from the Almighty. (The Contributor, 5:411.)
Commentary
In many respects, this vision matches certain primary elements of Bro. Evans’ and John Taylor’s visions. Each wrote of a similarly poisoned atmosphere that brought certain death. The three corroborate one another and the thesis of this author regarding a future, planet-wide plague, caused by extra-terrestrial contamination of air and water, making them poisonous to living things. It is further evidence that the central thesis of And The Earth Shall Reel To And Fro regarding the Great Plague of the last days is valid. Furthermore, it is very significant that the sole source for the accounts of this future plague is the membership of the church. The scriptures make only passing reference to this plague, while latter-day revelation, given to general authorities and priesthood holders alike, exhibits a much fuller and technically accurate picture of this catastrophic plague. Once again, modern revelation, when coupled with the catastrophist view, is capable of amplifying our understanding of future events.
The first paragraph paints a very interesting picture of a church that anticipates the onset of the last days at any time. Mormonism was, in its infancy, very much a Millennialist or Adventist religion. Central to the restoration was the idea that the mission of the church was to prepare for the imminent return of the Savior. For example, the scriptural quotations of Moroni to Joseph Smith deal almost exclusively with prophecies of the last days. (See Joseph Smith—History 1:36-41.)
The author of this vision notes that there were “nearly fifty of these pictures . . . .” Yet, he only remembers the first two and the last. (One can only lament that he was not allowed to remember the rest!) The first picture is said to represent the beginning of the plague, and the second to document the progress of the plague. It is logical to surmise that the last scene in the book represents the final stage of the plague. Taken all together, the book was as close to the animator’s art as a 19th century work could be—almost a motion picture! The author notes that it was all so “vividly portrayed” that it was “as if I had actually seen them.”
Apparently, each scene was meant to depict a virtual reality. The scenes were accurate in their representation of the plague’s effects on mankind, but the settings were rather idealized and therefore somewhat symbolic. The vignette of the pork store was certainly a symbolic representation, having nothing to do with reality. It is an allusion to the Mosaic Law’s prohibition on pork, which was seen as a foul pollution. A shop trafficking exclusively in pork would certainly be seen as an abomination in a kosher neighborhood! The 12 large hams with letters that spelled out ABOMINATIONS may be a metaphor for a wicked 12 tribes. It also relates to the scriptural phrase “desolation of abominations” that is often applied to the catastrophic destructions of the last days since such destructions have historically been the means by which God swept wickedness or abominations from the planet. Obviously, the destruction of something as horrific as a pork shop could be construed as a symbolic “desolation of abominations.”
Assuming that most of the vision is self-explanatory in light of this author’s thesis, it is the last scene depicting the final stage of the plague to which we turn our attention.
The situation, as described, has many subtle implications. That they were living in tents implies two things: Their permanent dwellings were uninhabitable and they were in the process of migrating to a new location. This conforms with the traditional belief among early Mormons who had migrated to the Salt Lake Valley that the day would come when they would return to Jackson County, Missouri, the site designated by Joseph Smith for the building of the New Jerusalem. It confirms the idea of a modern exodus, seen to occur in the last days, under very similar conditions to those experienced by the Israelites under Moses’ direction. The mention of an assembly and temple-like pair of tents in the center of the encampment further reinforces this analogy.
The size of the encampment is also a notable detail. Given the size of the encampment enclosure, “about eighty rods across,” the number of tents in that defined area would be astoundingly small, given the size of the church today. It seems to indicate that although the membership of the church today numbers in the millions, only a tiny fraction of those Saints will survive to reclaim Jackson County. This, of course, is consistent with the nature and extent of the plague witnessed in this vision and also conforms to the traditional view of the original Exodus wherein it is said that 49 out of 50 Israelites perished.
Given the modest level of interest in these ideas among Latter-day Saints, it seems logical to assume that very few of us will be prepared to cope with the Great Plague and the other profoundly devastating and destructive events of the last days. Those of us who have been given a glimpse of the reality and the nature of these plagues and destructions should consider ourselves fortunate because that forewarning will allow us to better prepare ourselves for them and to better cope with them when they do happen. Such revelations as this, seen through the focused lens of catastrophism, provide us with life-saving information.
© Anthony E. Larson, 1999
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Another Modern Myth
Before the advent of the nuclear age, scientists pondered the origins of the Sun’s tremendous expenditure of heat and light. Many ideas were advanced; none were universally accepted. Most shrugged their intellectual shoulders, saying that the source of the Sun’s fire was yet a mystery.
With the advent of the atomic bomb, science felt they had their answer. Physicists and astronomers advanced the idea — and the public accepted it — that the Sun was fired by the same fuel as the weapon that won the war in the Pacific, the atom. The logic was rather compelling, too, when one considered the prodigious amount of energy released in an atomic bomb. Everyone saw the awesome size and power of a nuclear detonation thanks to another, new, post-war invention — television. We were regaled with seemingly endless news reports and documentaries regarding the unthinkable devastation that awaited us if the two superpowers of the Cold War ever had the temerity and foolhardiness to employ those weapons.
Thus, the theory became fact. Nuclear fission, and later fusion, was thought to be responsible for the vast amounts of energy that the Sun radiated. Only nuclear processes, it was reasoned, could release that much energy from matter in order to power the Sun for millions of years.
Then we entered the space age. Ever more sophisticated equipment was employed to probe the workings of the Sun. Unmanned space probes were launched toward the Sun in an ongoing effort to understand it. Ironically, the more they learned, the less the data fit with their nuclear model.
The temperature problem
The first problem was discovered when they took the Sun’s temperature, so to speak.
The nuclear model of the Sun predicted that the atomic fires at its center were the hottest, that the heat and pressure at the Sun’s core were ideal for supporting nuclear fusion and fission. Moving away from the active core, they hypothesized, the temperature would gradually drop until, at the surface, it would be relatively cool, certainly cooler than the center.
What they learned surprised everyone. The sun was much cooler, relatively speaking, at the center than at the surface. Indeed, the hottest spot was above the surface, in the corona. That is, the point of greatest heat and light was not within the Sun or even on the surface. It was located high above the surface in what can be characterized as the Sun’s atmosphere.
How could that be? What could cause a nuclear-fired star like our Sun to have such anomalous heat characteristics? It was like finding that a wood stove was hottest outside rather than inside where the fire burned. The newly acquired data did not fit the model of a nuclear-powered Sun. Something was clearly wrong.
No one really seemed interested in doubting the theory, however. Rather than question the nuclear nature of the Sun, scientists sought for another explanation that might reconcile the data with the nuclear engine theory of the Sun.
Several ad hoc explanations were ginned up to explain the anomalous temperature readings within the context of the nuclear Sun theory, most of them so convoluted that the individual of average intelligence and education was unable to dispute them, much less follow the logic.
Neutrinos, neutrinos everywhere
Then there is the neutrino problem.
Neutrinos are highly energetic subatomic particles emitted by nuclear reactions. They are hard to detect because they have no electrical charge or apparent mass, and they pass easily through matter. They are ubiquitous in space. Physicists theorize that neutrinos are ejected from stars because the stars, like our Sun, are fired by nuclear reactions. We are bombarded by neutrinos from those stars every day of our lives, but they go unnoticed because they pass through us as easily as light passes through a pane of glass. Indeed, most neutrinos are so energetic that they can pass easily through anything on the Earth’s surface — walls, cars, buildings, whatever.
Scientists believed that our star, the Sun, ought to emit a huge number of neutrinos since — according to the current theory of its workings — it generates its power by a nuclear fission reaction. Scientists knew from practical experience with the atomic bomb that neutrinos are the automatic byproducts of such reactions.
An experiment was devised in order to test the theory by counting the most energetic neutrinos — those emitted by the closest star, our Sun. Of course, if you wish to sample only those neutrinos from the Sun, then you must have a way to screen out the constant rain of cosmic rays from space that would interfere with any such detection. Physicists determined that the only way they could “see” neutrinos from our sun was to go deep into an existing mine where the less energetic particles from space would have been slowed or stopped after passing a considerable distance through Earth’s crust, while more energetic neutrinos from our neighboring star would still reach their detection equipment deep within the Earth. Using sophisticated devices, they would be able to detect the most energetic neutrinos of all, those that come from our Sun.
Nuclear physicists expected to find copious numbers of neutrinos in their experiment, thus confirming their nuclear engine theory for the Sun. They were stunned to discover that the opposite was true. Instead of detecting numerous neutrinos, as should have been the case according to their theories, they “saw” almost none. How could this be?
As with the temperature problem they refused to follow the Occam’s Razor principle: The simplest explanation is probably the correct one. They could not bring themselves to question their elegant thermonuclear theories. Once again, scientists conjured up numerous ad hoc theories to explain still more data that contradicted their model of a nuclear Sun, including new categories of neutrinos that came in various “flavors.”
These and other anomalies too esoteric to discuss here point away from the theory of the Sun as a nuclear engine. Instead, they point to the Sun as an electromagnetic engine.
The light goes on
Consider this possibility: We may live in an electric universe, the only other form of energy known to have enough power to light the Sun. The galaxies may be lit, ordered and shaped by electrical energy, the stars within them powered by electricity. The Earth we live on, indeed all the planets and moons in our solar system, may be immersed in, defined and regulated by electromagnetic fields.
Many scholars and maverick scientists have speculated recently that such may be the case. They point out that the Sun may operate like a negatively charge body accumulating additional charge from the environment it moves through, then divesting itself of that energy by discharging like a great cathode in space. (The cathode in your television set does just that to light up the screen.) This accumulated charge is released in a constant discharge, creating light and heat, in a process somewhat analogous to that in a fluorescent light bulb.
It fits the observed data
This would explain the lack of neutrinos from the Sun. They would be incidental to an electric Sun, not primary as in a nuclear Sun. It would also explain the temperature anomaly. The active, energetic area, the corona or photosphere, would be the hottest, with the surface of the Sun and the interior registering progressively cooler relative temperatures. Of course, this is exactly what astrophysicists observed when they took the Sun’s temperature.
Once again, Velikovsky was the first to speculate that in past catastrophic near collisions, the complex but powerful electromagnetic forces brought to bear by planets closing on one another generated colossal interplanetary effects such as interplanetary lightning, disturbed rotation, massive inductive heating and numerous other secondary, electrical phenomena. How could a passing planet slow and stop the Earth’s rotation, then restart it again, if planets are electrically neutral? Forces other than gravity must have been at work. (Remember that Mormon wrote in Helaman that the Earth stops and even reverses rotation for a short time.) These assertions suggest that the true nature of the universe, and the Sun specifically, is electrical.
Learning from our own experience
It is ironic that a half-century of nuclear experimentation has failed to yield the abundance of power for the use of mankind that science originally promised. Except as a devastating weapon of war, the nuclear genie has little magic. Nuclear power generation is a dismal failure due to its lethality, as we learned at Chernobyl. Nuclear fission provides only a miniscule about of energy worldwide for that very reason. Nuclear fusion, the counterpart of fission, that once seemed to hold such promise as an abundant energy source, is still a costly, ephemeral, theoretical dream.
Could it be that this eventuality has a lesson for us in our view of the Sun’s fires?
On the other hand, ever since Nikola Tesla invented the polyphase, alternating current electrical system we use today, the world has been powered and lit by electricity. Together with the internal combustion engine, electricity has revolutionized our world. It has become so much a part of our existence that it is hard to imagine life without electricity to do our bidding. Yet, we still understand little of its nature or its workings. Like our ancestors who learned to use fire without understanding its nature, we have partially harnessed the energy of the cosmos with almost no understanding of it. Like light and gravity, electricity remains largely a mystery to us.
Is it merely a coincidence that we have employed electrical power so readily and effectively while nuclear power has faltered? Might it be that this is an indication of the true relative importance of the two in the universe?
The implications in such an idea are both staggering and stimulating. If true, it may explain gravity as an electromagnetic effect rather than strictly one of mass. The study of superconductors promises remarkable discoveries in the near future about the nature of electricity and the relationship between gravity, magnetism and electrical currents.
It suggests that humans, living in an extremely low frequency (ELF) electrical environment such as that on the Earth, are primarily electrical creatures rather than chemical, as modern medicine teaches. Dr. Robert Becker tried to open our eyes to this possibility years ago in his book, The Body Electric.
Perhaps most interesting of all, some form of electromagnetic levitation could explain how the ancients all around the world succeeded in moving massive stones over great distances to construct their ancient sacred temples and monuments — a technology that we will likely employ ourselves one day when we unlock the secrets to our electrical universe.
© Anthony E. Larson, 1999
With the advent of the atomic bomb, science felt they had their answer. Physicists and astronomers advanced the idea — and the public accepted it — that the Sun was fired by the same fuel as the weapon that won the war in the Pacific, the atom. The logic was rather compelling, too, when one considered the prodigious amount of energy released in an atomic bomb. Everyone saw the awesome size and power of a nuclear detonation thanks to another, new, post-war invention — television. We were regaled with seemingly endless news reports and documentaries regarding the unthinkable devastation that awaited us if the two superpowers of the Cold War ever had the temerity and foolhardiness to employ those weapons.
Thus, the theory became fact. Nuclear fission, and later fusion, was thought to be responsible for the vast amounts of energy that the Sun radiated. Only nuclear processes, it was reasoned, could release that much energy from matter in order to power the Sun for millions of years.
Then we entered the space age. Ever more sophisticated equipment was employed to probe the workings of the Sun. Unmanned space probes were launched toward the Sun in an ongoing effort to understand it. Ironically, the more they learned, the less the data fit with their nuclear model.
The temperature problem
The first problem was discovered when they took the Sun’s temperature, so to speak.
The nuclear model of the Sun predicted that the atomic fires at its center were the hottest, that the heat and pressure at the Sun’s core were ideal for supporting nuclear fusion and fission. Moving away from the active core, they hypothesized, the temperature would gradually drop until, at the surface, it would be relatively cool, certainly cooler than the center.
What they learned surprised everyone. The sun was much cooler, relatively speaking, at the center than at the surface. Indeed, the hottest spot was above the surface, in the corona. That is, the point of greatest heat and light was not within the Sun or even on the surface. It was located high above the surface in what can be characterized as the Sun’s atmosphere.
How could that be? What could cause a nuclear-fired star like our Sun to have such anomalous heat characteristics? It was like finding that a wood stove was hottest outside rather than inside where the fire burned. The newly acquired data did not fit the model of a nuclear-powered Sun. Something was clearly wrong.
No one really seemed interested in doubting the theory, however. Rather than question the nuclear nature of the Sun, scientists sought for another explanation that might reconcile the data with the nuclear engine theory of the Sun.
Several ad hoc explanations were ginned up to explain the anomalous temperature readings within the context of the nuclear Sun theory, most of them so convoluted that the individual of average intelligence and education was unable to dispute them, much less follow the logic.
Neutrinos, neutrinos everywhere
Then there is the neutrino problem.
Neutrinos are highly energetic subatomic particles emitted by nuclear reactions. They are hard to detect because they have no electrical charge or apparent mass, and they pass easily through matter. They are ubiquitous in space. Physicists theorize that neutrinos are ejected from stars because the stars, like our Sun, are fired by nuclear reactions. We are bombarded by neutrinos from those stars every day of our lives, but they go unnoticed because they pass through us as easily as light passes through a pane of glass. Indeed, most neutrinos are so energetic that they can pass easily through anything on the Earth’s surface — walls, cars, buildings, whatever.
Scientists believed that our star, the Sun, ought to emit a huge number of neutrinos since — according to the current theory of its workings — it generates its power by a nuclear fission reaction. Scientists knew from practical experience with the atomic bomb that neutrinos are the automatic byproducts of such reactions.
An experiment was devised in order to test the theory by counting the most energetic neutrinos — those emitted by the closest star, our Sun. Of course, if you wish to sample only those neutrinos from the Sun, then you must have a way to screen out the constant rain of cosmic rays from space that would interfere with any such detection. Physicists determined that the only way they could “see” neutrinos from our sun was to go deep into an existing mine where the less energetic particles from space would have been slowed or stopped after passing a considerable distance through Earth’s crust, while more energetic neutrinos from our neighboring star would still reach their detection equipment deep within the Earth. Using sophisticated devices, they would be able to detect the most energetic neutrinos of all, those that come from our Sun.
Nuclear physicists expected to find copious numbers of neutrinos in their experiment, thus confirming their nuclear engine theory for the Sun. They were stunned to discover that the opposite was true. Instead of detecting numerous neutrinos, as should have been the case according to their theories, they “saw” almost none. How could this be?
As with the temperature problem they refused to follow the Occam’s Razor principle: The simplest explanation is probably the correct one. They could not bring themselves to question their elegant thermonuclear theories. Once again, scientists conjured up numerous ad hoc theories to explain still more data that contradicted their model of a nuclear Sun, including new categories of neutrinos that came in various “flavors.”
These and other anomalies too esoteric to discuss here point away from the theory of the Sun as a nuclear engine. Instead, they point to the Sun as an electromagnetic engine.
The light goes on
Consider this possibility: We may live in an electric universe, the only other form of energy known to have enough power to light the Sun. The galaxies may be lit, ordered and shaped by electrical energy, the stars within them powered by electricity. The Earth we live on, indeed all the planets and moons in our solar system, may be immersed in, defined and regulated by electromagnetic fields.
Many scholars and maverick scientists have speculated recently that such may be the case. They point out that the Sun may operate like a negatively charge body accumulating additional charge from the environment it moves through, then divesting itself of that energy by discharging like a great cathode in space. (The cathode in your television set does just that to light up the screen.) This accumulated charge is released in a constant discharge, creating light and heat, in a process somewhat analogous to that in a fluorescent light bulb.
It fits the observed data
This would explain the lack of neutrinos from the Sun. They would be incidental to an electric Sun, not primary as in a nuclear Sun. It would also explain the temperature anomaly. The active, energetic area, the corona or photosphere, would be the hottest, with the surface of the Sun and the interior registering progressively cooler relative temperatures. Of course, this is exactly what astrophysicists observed when they took the Sun’s temperature.
Once again, Velikovsky was the first to speculate that in past catastrophic near collisions, the complex but powerful electromagnetic forces brought to bear by planets closing on one another generated colossal interplanetary effects such as interplanetary lightning, disturbed rotation, massive inductive heating and numerous other secondary, electrical phenomena. How could a passing planet slow and stop the Earth’s rotation, then restart it again, if planets are electrically neutral? Forces other than gravity must have been at work. (Remember that Mormon wrote in Helaman that the Earth stops and even reverses rotation for a short time.) These assertions suggest that the true nature of the universe, and the Sun specifically, is electrical.
Learning from our own experience
It is ironic that a half-century of nuclear experimentation has failed to yield the abundance of power for the use of mankind that science originally promised. Except as a devastating weapon of war, the nuclear genie has little magic. Nuclear power generation is a dismal failure due to its lethality, as we learned at Chernobyl. Nuclear fission provides only a miniscule about of energy worldwide for that very reason. Nuclear fusion, the counterpart of fission, that once seemed to hold such promise as an abundant energy source, is still a costly, ephemeral, theoretical dream.
Could it be that this eventuality has a lesson for us in our view of the Sun’s fires?
On the other hand, ever since Nikola Tesla invented the polyphase, alternating current electrical system we use today, the world has been powered and lit by electricity. Together with the internal combustion engine, electricity has revolutionized our world. It has become so much a part of our existence that it is hard to imagine life without electricity to do our bidding. Yet, we still understand little of its nature or its workings. Like our ancestors who learned to use fire without understanding its nature, we have partially harnessed the energy of the cosmos with almost no understanding of it. Like light and gravity, electricity remains largely a mystery to us.
Is it merely a coincidence that we have employed electrical power so readily and effectively while nuclear power has faltered? Might it be that this is an indication of the true relative importance of the two in the universe?
The implications in such an idea are both staggering and stimulating. If true, it may explain gravity as an electromagnetic effect rather than strictly one of mass. The study of superconductors promises remarkable discoveries in the near future about the nature of electricity and the relationship between gravity, magnetism and electrical currents.
It suggests that humans, living in an extremely low frequency (ELF) electrical environment such as that on the Earth, are primarily electrical creatures rather than chemical, as modern medicine teaches. Dr. Robert Becker tried to open our eyes to this possibility years ago in his book, The Body Electric.
Perhaps most interesting of all, some form of electromagnetic levitation could explain how the ancients all around the world succeeded in moving massive stones over great distances to construct their ancient sacred temples and monuments — a technology that we will likely employ ourselves one day when we unlock the secrets to our electrical universe.
© Anthony E. Larson, 1999
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
