Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechind185
“If extraterrestrial civilizations are attempting to communicate with us and are distinguishing their transmissions by doing ‘something that can’t be done in nature,’ then pulsar signals certainly are the closest thing known to fit this criterion. ”
Dr. Paul LaViolette186
“The reader now has a clear concept for the great interest in ancient archeology exhibited by modern military experts. It is highly likely that the civilizations that existed prior to the great cataclysm were far in advance of our own with respect to use of these powerful energy devices. ”187
James M. McCanney
A. Hamlet’s Mill: Another Mythological Background
1. The Galactic Context of Ancient Myths
One of the most famous and respected scholarly attempts within the mainstream of academia to construe ancient myths from a wide variety of cultures — Celtic, Scandinavian, German, Graeco-Roman, Sumerian, Egyptian, Persian, Native American, and Hindu-Vedic — in a paleophysical sense is the monumental and critically important work by philosophers Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechind, Hamlet’s Mill: A Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time. While it would be impossible to summarize their work adequately here, one salient conclusion about their study should be noted. This is that many of the images and motifs from a supposedly “primitive” time were subsequently wildly misinterpreted because the galactic astronomical context to which those motifs referred was ignored, if it was not totally unknown. While any attempt to summarize their work here would inevitably fail, some concepts should be highlighted, since they dovetail I have said elsewhere188 concerning ancient concepts of space and the harmonic interconnectedness of things in it.
Indeed, De Santillana and Von Dechind noted that one very curious feature of this “archaic cosmology” was not only its emphasis on a primeval “cosmic harmony,” but also its description of the creation of the present world as a kind of “breaking asunder” of that harmony, “a kind of cosmogonic ‘original sin’ whereby the circle of the ecliptic (with the zodiac) was tilted up at an angle with respect to the equator, and the cycles of change came into being.”189 And they hint at the tremendous anomaly at the heart of this cosmology with an astute observation, an observation many other researchers have pointed out, for such a view requires an astronomical knowledge and “prodigious feats of concentration and computing.”190 This implies that underlying the relatively “primitive” states of ancient cultures, even ancient cultures as sophisticated as Babylon or China, was something even more sophisticated. Here De Santillana and Von Dechind halt, never speculating on what that might be. They are simply concerned with a cataloguing of the cross-cultural motifs, and with an elucidation of their possible meaning in physical and astronomical terms.
One common implication of their cross-cultural comparative mythology approach is that the ancient cosmology was profoundly aware that “the fabric of the cosmos is not only determined, but overdetermined and in a may that does not permit the simple location of any of its agents, whether simple magic or astrology, forces, gods, numbers, planetary powers, Platonic Forms, Aristotelian Essences or Stoic Substances. Physical reality here cannot be analytical in the Cartesian sense; it cannot be reduced to concreteness even if misplaced. Being is change, motion and rhythm, the irresistible circle of time, the incidence of the ‘right moment,’ as determined by the skies.“191 In other words, ”there is no simple location, no analytical space.“192 While they observe that these ideas ”were incompatible with anything that our physics can think of,“193 this is not entirely true. While the “on-locality” of any of the active agents in the ancient cosmology was something of a puzzle to De Santillana and Von Dechind, in fact, with the advent of Quantum Mechanics and Bell’s Non-Locality Theorem, it is not a puzzle at all, but quite the reverse.
2. The Atsronomical-Galactic Meaning of ”Earth“, ”The Flat Earth“, and the “our Corners of the Earth”
Indeed, within ancient myths it would seem that terms such as “Earth” are operative on a number of discrete but related levels. For example, while “Earth” may indeed refer at the most prosaic level to the planet we are standing on, it also has a meaning in relation to the total system of the galaxy:
In the most general sense, the “earth” was the ideal plane laid through the ecliptic. The “dry earth,” in a more specific sense, was the ideal plane going through the celestial equator. The equator thus divided two halves of the zodiac which ran on the ecliptic, 23 ½ ° inclined to the equator, one half being “ry land” (the northern band of the zodiac, reaching from the vernal to the autumnal equinox), the other representing the “waters below” the equinoctial plane (the southern arc of the zodiac, reaching from the autumnal equinox, via the winter solstice, to the vernal equinox. The terms “ernal equinox,” “Winter solstice,” etc are used intentionally because myth deals with time, periods of time which correspond to angular measures, and not with tracts in space.194
This way of viewing the “earth” is a component in a total system is part of that “open systems paradigm” we first encountered in The Giza Death Star195 and is a very modern view, so modern, in fact, that it lies on the cusp of some of the most advanced ideas in systems theory.
Thus, the “flat earth” is not a reference to some presumed primitive view of the ancients who looked at our own planet like a dinner plate or a pancake, but to the celestial, galactic equator:
The mythical earth is, in fact, a place, but this place is not our “earth” at all, neither our globe, nor a presupposed homocentrical earth. “Earth” is the implied plane through the four points of the year, marked by the equinoxes and solstices, in other words the ecliptic. And this is why the earth is very frequently said to be quadrangular. The four “corners, ” that is, the zodiacal constellations rising helically at both the equinoxes and solstices... are the “points” which determine an “earth.” Every world-age has its own “earth.” It is for this very reason that “ends of the world” are said to take place. A new “earth” rises, when another set of zodiacal constellations brought in by the Precession determines the year points.196
There is yet another way to understand the “four corners” of the earth, and that is as the vertices of a spherically circumscribed and embedded tetrahedron. Note then that the “four corners of the earth” has essentially two simultaneously functioning meanings: (1) as a reference to the Platonic solid of an embedded tetrahedron in a sphere, the “four corners” being its four vertices, and (2) as an astrological-astronomical reference to the constellations rising at the solstices and equinoxes. It is as if the ancient myths were trying to tell us that these two meanings might be related in a fundamental physical way that we do not understand. Perhaps, however, the clue might lie in the other strange characteristic of ancient mythological cosmology that De Santillana and Von Dechind have already pointed out: the ancients’ view of the active agents of their universe — in this case, the globe of the earth, and then the wider “galactic earth” — as being non-local in nature.
Another possible clue into an underlying sophisticated — and lost — paleophysics behind this non-local view of active agents is afforded by Plato and Aristotle. For the former, in addition to the “four elements” that make up every physical object in the world, there is a “fifth” element which, aptly enough, Plato called the “aether” which “contains the four earthly elements but is wholly removed from them.”197 Similarly, Aristotle changed this to a kind of ”crystalline heavenly ‘matter.’”198 The view is not unique to the Greeks. The Egyptians certainly had their version of this strange transmutative materia prima, as did the Mesopotamians, the Hindus, the Chinese... almost every culture on earth had some version of it. For our purposes, it might provide a basis for the non-local character of the active agents of ancient cosmology. We shall eventually return to this point, but for the moment, we must note one more strange “galactic context” of an ancient motif.
; 3. The Galactic Meaning of “Tiamat”
In this case, the motif is that of “Tiamat,” the Babylonian goddess who revolted, led a cosmic war with other gods, and was eventually defeated by the god Marduk.199 As I noted in The Giza Death Star Destroyed, “Tiamat” was not only the name for a “goddess,” but the name for an exploded planet in our own solar system, a water bearing planet.200 Indeed, her name can mean “salt waters” and can imply the “primeval waters,” making her yet another symbol that can operate on a multitude of levels. As I also noted in The Giza Death Star Destroyed, her name may actually be a title conferred on specific individuals or rulers of that now missing planet. She can refer to the earth’s oceans, as well as another water bearing planet. And finally, as “primeval waters” she can also refer to the “deep” or to the transmutative aether or medium itself. In this last context De Santillana and Von Dechind observe that she can also refer obliquely to the Milky Way galaxy.201
4. The Celestial, or Galactic War and Deluge, and Mars-Nergal: The “Great Leaping One”
One of the overlooked areas of De Santillana’s and Von Dechind’s work is the galactic and astronomical-astrological context in which they understand the ancient mythological references to the Deluge, to war, and other apocalyptic imagery. An entry into their discussion is afforded by their remarks on the gigantic war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas in the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata: “The epic states unmistakably that this tremendous war was fought during the interval between the Dvapara and the Kali Yuga.”202 A significant clue is thus afforded from yet another mythological source as to when it dates its major “war of the gods in heaven.”
To see why, a brief summary of Hindu thought on its “world ages” or “yugas” is in order. In its most basic form, there are four great “yugas” or ages. They begin in a “Golden Age” and each yuga thereafter is an age that is declined from the previous one. Each age is thousands of normal years in length, though each age is of a different length. In order then, these yugas, with their lengths in years, are:
The final yuga, named after the notoriously bloodthirsty deity Kali, is an age of darkness, chaos, evil deeds, and war. Observe also that each yuga is exactly half the length of the yuga previous to it, until the cycle returns.
Note also that in Hindu teaching, the world currently is in a Kali yuga, which began — depending on the authority one consults — approximately 3000 BC. But if the Mahabharata refers to events of the previous transition from the Dvapara to the Kali yugas, running through the full cycle, then one is looking at a war that occurred between 3,898,000 and 4,320,000 years ago. While many would object to taking the epic this literally here, it is nonetheless highly intriguing that the great war recounted at such length and fought with such eerily modern-sounding and awesomely destructive weapons in the Mahabharata occurs in very roughly the same time frame as Van Flandern’s second exploded planet event, which occurred ca. 3,200,000 years ago. In other words, we are once again looking at the possibility of a real war, involving real planets blown up in a deliberate act of that conflict.
Let us now turn our attention to a seemingly unlikely source for additional perspective of this ancient war and the “cosmological original sin,” and the astronomical meaning it entails: the myths of the ancient Germanic peoples of Scandinavia. De Santillana and Von Dechind observe that, like the Hindus, and indeed, like the Babylonians and the Greeks, the ancient Teutons also had a Golden Age, who’s passing was marked by a war between the ruling “good” god and his ministers and a new race of giants who sought to overturn the old harmonious order.
Not having “multiplied” yet, this first generation of the world established the Golden Age under the rule of Him of many names — Enki,203 Yima,204 Freyr205 and many more. “But these sons whom he begot himself, great Heaven (megas Ouranos) used to call Titans (Strainers) in reproach, for he said that they strained and did presumptuously a fearful deed, and that vengeance for it would come afterwards,” as Hesiod has it (Theogony 207-10).206
But what was it that these Titans - or giants or Nephilim or Annunaki or whatever one wishes to call them - had done? De Santillana’s and Von Dechind’s understanding of the galactic context of ancient myths shows exactly what was involved:
...It was bound to happen ...when future generations would construct “forbidden ways to the sky,” or build a tower which happened to be too high. The one secure measure, the “golden rope” of the solar year, is stretched beyond repair. The equinoctial sun had been gradually pushed out of its Golden Age “sign,” it had started on the way to new conditions, new configurations. This is the frightful event, the unexpiable crime that was ascribed to the Children of Heaven. They had nudged the sun out of place, and now it was on the move, the universe was out of kilter and nothing, nothing — days, months or years, the rising or setting of stars — was going to fall into its rightful place any more... and now the time machine had been set rolling forever, bringing forth at every new age “a new heaven and a new earth,” in the words of Scripture. As Hesiod says, the world had entered now the second age, that of the giants, who were to wage a decisive battle with the restraining forces before their downfall.207
While De Santillana and Von Dechind would agree with Alford that the “war” motif is purely metaphorical, they would not have, as Alford does, reduce this imagery to a flat univocal and monotonous reference to an exploded planet and falling meteorites. In fact, to do so would miss the point entirely, for what the ancient myths are trying to say is not only that a planet exploded, but that the war was truly cosmic in nature, and affected all the celestial bodies of local space, including “earth.” In the Norse version, interestingly enough, this “end of the world” is brought about by sounding the apocalyptic trumpet, the Gjallarhorn, which has a “sound which reaches all the worlds.”208 Universal sound, capable of wreaking havoc throughout the “universe”, i.e., all the worlds in the galaxy.
Indeed, as De Santillana and Von Dechind observe, the Graeco-Roman cultural complex if full of references to a celestial catastrophe of such magnitude that even the “immoveable joints of the universe” were shaken and the “very axle” running “through the middle of the revolving heavens” was “bent.”209 At the minimum, this last reference is nothing less than a statement that the angle of the earth’s axis of rotation relative to the ecliptic was altered in some drastic fashion.
But what if the reference to a war is taken literally and not metaphorically? Only if one takes it this way do some interesting things now emerge. At this point, we shall now begin a process of periodically summarizing the emerging case, adding, as we go, new details. For now, the details we have assembled are these:
1. Van Flandern’s Revised Exploded Planet Hypothesis indicated two events, one at 65,000,000 years ago, roughly coincident with the extinction of the dinosaurs, and another “lesser” event at 3,200,000 years ago, roughly coincident with the appearance of the first humans according to the standard mainstream theory;
2. This second event roughly corresponds with the timing given for the Great War in the Mahabharata;
3. Both events must have altered the geometry of local space and the astronomical arrangement of the heavens;
4. One or both events were observed and recorded, making it likely the second event was recorded, and referred to as the result of a war,
5. A case can be made, based on the plasma cosmology of Hannes Alfven and the petroglyphs observations of Anthony Peratt, that ancient humans observed large plasma discharges in the heavens, though these petroglyphs cannot be dated to the time frame of Van Flandern’s second exploded planet event nor to the Mababbarata’s Great War;
6. Further basis for believing that such discharges were observed is afforded by the peculiar resemblance of ancient depictions of the lightning bolts of the gods, such as Ninurta (with whom we shall much to do in part two), or ancient Greek depictions of the thunderbolts of Zeus, to the models of plasma instabilities observed by Peratt in the laboratory.
210 The fact that these resemblances are so exactly described in ancient art and drawing, and, as we shall see in part two, described in texts are being weapons of war, strengthen the case that we are both looking at observed events and events of a real war. If so, the it follows that the “broken and shattered geometry” of local stellar and galactic space described in ancient myths is a result, as they themselves attest, of a war. In other words, the motif of war in the myths is not a metaphor for recurrent catastrophism, but the real cause of catastrophes, just as the myths state.
7. One or both planets may have been large water-bearing planets, and if of higher gravity than earth, and if home to intelligent humanoid life, then they may have been home to a race of “giant” like creatures;
8. Thus the explosion of such a water bearing planet would give rise not only to the asteroid belt, but, as the shock wave from that event spread through local space, would inundate first Mars, and then the Earth, with debris and water. Thus, the tremendous hemispherical “gouging” by sudden flood waters often commented upon by Martian planetary geologists is explained. One should therefore expect to be able to find references of a celestial Deluge.211 Of course, there is no lack of references from various mythological traditions referring to waters in or above the heavens. Perhaps it is time to take them less metaphorically!
9. Furthermore, if the exploded planet did have life, and if this life was of a high degree of sophistication and technological ability, its civilization might have been interplanetary in nature. The nearest planets capable of sustaining such life would naturally have been Earth, and Mars. As such, one might be expected to find mythological associations of Mars with war, which is in fact the case. In fact, it is highly significant as we shall see that the Vedic tradition refers to Mars as “the Great Leaping One.”
The Cosmic War: Interplanetary Warfare, Modern Physics and Ancient Texts Page 12
