The Road to Saturn(Excerpts from an Autobiographical Essay)

Dwardu Cardona

I have read less than a handful of books that can be said to haveinfluenced my way of thinking. Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds inCollision has not only been one of them, in the end it totallychanged my life.

In this work Velikovsky proposed that, in the distant past, but stillwithin man's memory, the planet Jupiter ejected from itself a smallerbut sizeable body that careened across the solar system in the formof a giant comet. Coming into close contact with Earth, but avoidingan actual collision, this cometary body caused a series ofcatastrophic events which mankind remembered and passed on tohis descendants in an oral and written tradition that eventuallyevolved into the well-known mythologies of the various nations.Thus the gods and goddesses of antiquity seem to have really beenthe deified planets of the solar system. Their divine actions weremerely reflections of errant orbits in a cosmic drama which manwitnessed and immortalized in his religious rites, his liturgies and,finally, his sacred texts.

Worlds in Collision was first published in 1950. At that time, havingbeen raised in one of Roman Catholicism's most impregnablestrongholds, I was still being taught that the world had been created

in six consecutive days. During our science courses at Stella MarisCollege, Gzira, on the island of Malta, we were informed that theEarth came into existence long after the Sun. But in the course ofour religious upbringing during the same semester at the samecollege, we were also expected to believe that the Earth was createdshortly before the Sun. Upon questioning this inconsistency, wewere told that in matters of science we were to follow the teachingof the scientists, but that in religion, honoring the words of Genesis,we were to accept the precepts of God.

II

It was on an evening in 1955, while I was browsing through a storein Valletta, that a book title caught my eye. It was Velikovsky's Agesin Chaos. I picked it up, leafed through it, and read a few pages. Idid not buy the book. I merely placed it back on the shelf. I nevereven noticed the author's name.

Here, I thought to myself, was another foolish attempt by somepseudo-scholar who was out to prove, in some pseudo-scientificway, that the miracles of the Old Testament, especially those ofExodus, were really misunderstood natural phenomena.

By this time the radio noises from Jupiter, as predicted byVelikovsky, had already been detected. Textbooks on astronomy,however, were still preaching a universe void of any forces otherthan gravitation. Entire galaxies, it had already been discovered,were even then colliding with one another. But mere planets, it wasstill being argued, could not so collide.

I was at that time working on high tension voltage during my stint atthe Mains Section while in training at her Majesty's Dockyard. Myinstructor was George Wickman. He was partly deaf but his wit andwisdom had turned him into something of a legend throughout theentire section of the E.E.M. His appetite for knowledge wasvoracious; his reading voluminous. He not only possessed a uniquephilosophical mind, he had an encyclopedic memory to boot. I tookso much to him that, more than being his apprentice, I consideredmyself his protege. I told him about Ages in Chaos -- or what I hadthought Ages in Chaos was all about. As best I can remember, thisis what he said to me:

"No amount of human reasoning can ever hope to make sense ofGod's madness. Murder in God's name, as described in the Bible, isa contradiction in moral precepts; hail stones that burst into flames,as described in Exodus, is a contradiction in scientific terms. The

man who will make logical sense of God's miracles will never beborn."

III

My next meeting with Velikovsky occurred in 1960 in another bookstore, this time in Montreal, Canada. The title of another book hadattracted my attention. It was Worlds in Collision. I leafed through itand the passages I read instantly made me connect it with what Iremembered of Ages in Chaos. I did not yet know that both bookswere written by the same man. I did not remember having heard ofImmanuel Velikovsky. But I did remember George Wickman'swords and, maybe because it was a second-hand copy, I purchasedthe book. I still have that same worn-out edition on one of myshelves. I devoured it in one sitting -- although heaven only knowshow often I have had occasion to return to it. There are times when Iactually curse the day I came across that work. Like many otherswhom I was to come in contact with later, I was utterly enchantedby Velikovsky's seductive reasoning. The next day I was out huntingfor Ages in Chaos.

The man George Wickman had said will never be born had alreadylived half his life. True -- Velikovsky might not have been entirelycorrect about the specific set of "miracles" he sought to explain; but,in a more general way, he had shed a bright and scholarly light onthe meaning behind religious beliefs to say nothing of many of theworld's ancient marvels.

In the meantime, scientific discoveries had already vindicatedseveral of the crucial points he had raised. More than that, as in thecase of the radio dispatches from Jupiter, some of them had actuallybeen predicted by him. Evidence was discovered pointing to pastshifts in the direction of the Earth's astronomical axis and theposition of its geographical poles. The Earth's magnetosphere hadbeen discovered. Spectral analysis had revealed the presence ofhydrocarbons in cometary tails. The net negative charge of the Sunhad been detected. Electro-magnetic interactions had been found tobe sufficiently strong to affect the Earth's rotation, even if onlyminutely. Yet, despite these correct prognoses, the world of sciencecontinued to ignore him. Today's belief is that his advance claims, ashe preferred to call them, were mostly derived through erroneousdeductions and that, in any case, they are inadequate in proving histheory of nearly-colliding worlds. To this day, in the halls ofscience, Velikovsky's name remains strictly anathema.

My studies of Velikovskian catastrophism can be said to have

commenced as soon as I turned the last page of Worlds in Collision.Burying myself in Montreal's libraries, scrounging around second-hand book stores, I brought myself up to date on the sordidcontroversy that has become known as the Velikovsky Affair. I setout on an extensive inquiry which has led me through the librariesof three Canadian universities and those of their cities. Nor has thisresearch yet come to an end. What commenced as mild curiositymetamorphosed into an ogreish obsession. I examined every facet ofWorlds in Collision, checked its every detail, and weighed all itspossibilities, plausibilities and probabilities. I investigated everyalternative to Velikovsky's contentions.

My initial reaction, of course, was to disbelieve the whole thing.After all, Worlds in Collision is not a faultless work. Far from it.Even as I read it that first time, I could already detect certainweaknesses in Velikovsky's knowledge of mythology on which themajor portion of the book is based. One did not have to be an experton the subject to spot these flaws. In fact, right from the start I havebeen utterly amazed at Velikovsky's detractors, none of whom, untilrecently, seem to have been intelligent enough to finger the sorespots contained in his work. As I have twice stated before elsewherein my accumulating works, the battle against Velikovsky might havebeen over in a year had the assault come form knowledgeablemythologists rather than the pompous astronomers who took part inthe debate during the 1950s. Had I not had an open mind, I wouldhave laughed Worlds in Collision right out of my life. In some ways,I might have been better for it. But because there were aspects of thework with which I was not overly familiar, I decided to giveVelikovsky the benefit of the doubt. To that end, my researchcontinued and flourished.

IV

One of the first things I unearthed was that the idea of cosmiccatastrophism did not originate with Velikovsky. Granted that hemight not have been aware of his precursors when he first embarkedon his work, Velikovsky himself soon realized it and, despite theaccusations of his detractors, did not hide the fact. Without takinginto account what the ancients and present primitive peoples havehad to say about the subject, free thinkers have been writing oncosmic catastrophism since the 17th century. Among the best knownhave been William Whiston, theologian, mathematician, and deputyat Cambridge to Sir Isaac Newton; Ignatius Donnelly, member ofcongress, reformer, and politician extaordinaire: Hans Hoerbigerand Philipp Fauth, the one a self-styled cosmologist, the other a

renowned selenologist, who collaborated amid an "ill-temperedbattle of books" during the rise of the Nazi regime; and HansSchindler Bellamy, a British student of mythology who becameHoerbiger's disciple in the English-speaking world. There were afew others and while their hypotheses, long since relegated to thedust bins of history, varied from one another, they had one thing incommon: They all emphasized a dissatisfaction with the then-prevailing views concerning the nature of the solar system and itsformation, to say nothing about its later history.

On the mythological front, it was not long before I had to acceptthat the deities of the ancient nations originated as personificationsof cosmic bodies, prime among which were the very planets of thesolar system. It did not take Velikovsky, or any of his precursors, toconvince me of this. The ancients, who were in the best position toknow what they themselves believed in, so stated in many of theirtexts. It therefore struck me as strange that most modernmythologists would go to such great pains in attempting to explainmythological characters and themes in anything but cosmic terms.In this respect, whatever else may be said of him, Velikovskyproved superior. Not that he was always correct when identifyingspecific deities with specific planets but, had he dug deeper in a fieldwhich I now know to have been novel to him, he would havediscovered that, in many instances, the ancients themselves hadalready supplied the identities of their gods. Where they did not, therules of comparative mythology unerringly lead the way. But that issomething that only crept slowly on me as my research continued tounfold.

After reading Velikovsky I should not have been surprised at thesheer amount of mythological tales which hinted at, referred to, andsometimes explicitly described catastrophic events. These appearedof such magnitude that, were they to be believed, they could only beexplained by the shaking of the Earth's framework. Predominantamong these disasters was the universal deluge, which the Biblicalaccount associates with Noah. Moreover, the cosmic thread that ranthrough the ages was intertwined with these disasters so that it didnot take long to realize that Velikovsky had been right when heinsisted that catastrophism was literally heaven-caused.

What became more and more obvious was that the celestial orderwith which ancient man was so obsessed was entirely different fromthe one we are presently acquainted with. Ancient man describedthe Sun as rising in the west, setting in the east, stopping in mid-course, and turning right around. According to ancient texts, the

planets seem to have occupied different positions in the sky; theymoved in different orbits and, in all cases, looked entirely differentfrom the way they do now. Prime among these examples was theplanet Venus which, very much as Velikovsky had claimed, wasdescribed as having had the form of a comet which followed achanging orbit entirely different from the one it follows at present.

As everyone knows, the planets, like the stars, appear to the nakedeye as nothing more than pin-points of light in the night sky. Yetancient traditions seem to leave no doubt that these same planets,often described and even depicted as spheres and/or discs, wereviewed at close quarters and often in terrifying circumstances. Thusmost of mythology turns out to be a reflection of cosmic disorderswhich ancient man seems to have witnessed and survived. In thisgenerality, if in nothing else, Velikovsky was entirely correct.

V

Between 1961 and '62, while still in Montreal, I embarked upon anepic work of fiction, my second to date, the first having been pennedat the age of fifteen. When I moved to Toronto it was partly in thehope of getting it published there. Titled Once the Favorite of theGods, this work was woven around the impending disaster of theuniversal deluge and its final culmination. At that time I erroneouslybelieved I knew enough about this catastrophe even though I hadnot yet ascertained which of the planets had been responsible for it.The deluge is there ascribed to the Earth's passage through thewatery tail of an errant cometary body. While the human drama Iportrayed was derived entirely from imagination, the cosmicscenario followed an adapted version of the one proposed in 1696by William Whiston in his New Theory of the Earth.

Once the Favorite of the Gods had its ups and downs at the hands ofvarious agents and prospective publishers and, although it wasfinally accepted by Concept Productions under an option, in the endit was never published.

At the risk of being labelled a reaper of sour grapes, I waseventually glad the book never saw the light of day. While I am stillmore than happy with its human drama, I had committed two majorblunders: I presented Noah as a human protagonist, albeit as ashadowy background figure and quite differently from the manner inwhich Biblical proponents are wont to present him; and I describedthe cosmic events in terms which, I was soon to learn, did not reflectthe traditional sources correctly. Even though it was only a work offiction, I would have been thoroughly embarrassed by these errors.

It was while waiting for the outcome of my book that I decided tocollate my research on catastrophism and the Velikovskyphenomenon into a coherent set of loose-leaf volumes with a cross-indexed file to accommodate the referential notes I had beengathering. Many times abandoned and re-commenced, this workcontinues to this day.

And so back to the libraries I went in order to ascertain what elseour forebears could divulge about the deluge and, if possible, aboutearlier times. What I continued to discover amazed me, for, evenbefore the deluge, it seems that cosmic catastrophism had beenrampant, and today it is my belief that mankind owes its emergenceas the unique race it has become to such disasters in the celestialsphere.

VI

Catastrophism betokens destruction, but our ancient forebears seemto have been just as obsessed with creation. Tales of creation areamong the most abundant in the world's repository of mythology.Our ancestors not only described the creation of the world, they didso as if they had actually witnessed the occurence. There is no pointin countering that such cosmogonical tales are the result ofphilosophical reasoning. It does not seem possible that primitivepeoples, with whom it all started, and who were separated by vastmountain, desert and ocean stretches, would arrive at similar, andsometimes identical ideas in their philosophical quest for primalbeginnings.

Predominant among such identical ideas, the recognition of whichwas to carry me far, was the shedding of a bright light, exactly asdescribed in Genesis, at the very commencement of creation.Proponents of the diffusion theory might accuse me of gullibility,but my contention is that such ideas would be too unnatural tosurvive diffusion and the test of time had there not been someuniversal cause in the real world upon which they might have beenbased.

Had primitive reason required the abolishing of an imagined primaldarkness by the shedding of light, logic would have chosen the Sunas the source of that sudden illumination. What would have beenmore logical than to have the creation of the Sun dissolve thisfictional gloom? And yet in all cases where the light of creation isspoken of, the Sun was said to have been created later. This posedan enigma that took me long to resolve. When I finally did, it wasagain through Velikovsky.

VII

It was during my investigation of the myths of creation that I finallycame face to face with Saturn. Actually I had been bumping intohim from the beginning, but it was not until now that I saw thisplanetary deity as something more than a murky figure lurkingbehind some of the most engaging mythological motifs I had yetencountered. From then on every avenue that I followed brought meback into his shadow. As intrigued as I had been with the idea ofcosmic catastrophism, this new turn of events piqued my interesteven more and, in the end, there was no escaping the clutches of thismost ancient mythological character. I trapped myself in theSaturnian maze and to this day I find myself still meandering withinit, hoping to come to its end before my life does.

In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky had offered next to nothingabout Saturn. He only hinted, somewhat teasingly, that, prior to thecatastrophe of the Exodus, the Earth had suffered a more severeseries of disasters, one of them being the deluge, at the hands of thegiant gas planets. What I was not yet aware of was that, originally,Worlds in Collision had contained a long section on the tribulationscaused by the planets Jupiter and Saturn. Prior to its publication,Velikovsky had been advised to drop this section of his work whichhe then shelved with the intention of expanding it into a futureprequel. In a moment of desperation at the manner in which thescientific establishment had castigated him, Velikovsky oncethreatened to take this opus with him to the grave. But the momentpassed and the work was preserved. Completed posthumously withthe help of Jan Sammer, it now rests in the archives of unpublishedmanuscripts held in custody by the Velikovsky estate.

What I, on the other hand, was uncovering about Saturn wasbeginning to puzzle me to no end. Peeping from behind this and thatdatum, I kept coming across these strange allusions to Saturn ashaving once been an immobile planet. How could a planet, at closequarters or otherwise, have not appeared to move across the sky?

Other textual bits and pieces kept hinting at Saturn having onceoccupied a position in Earth's north celestial pole. As a pole star,Saturn's apparent immobility would be explained but there wasnothing in celestial mechanics that would accommodate any planetin that role. To be quite frank, I had no idea what to do with thisinformation other than to disbelieve it. I therefore decided to ignoreall such allusions and put them down to misinterpretation by thoseearly writers who had striven to record the beliefs of their more

ancient forebears. I should have asked myself: Would all thesemisinterpreters have misinterpreted in the same way?

VIII

I do not remember who it was that first brought Hamlet's Mill to myattention or exactly when. In this work, published in 1969, Giorgiode Santillana and Hertha von Dechend analyzed some of the mostobscure motifs in all of mythology and came up with a cosmicinterpretation. This was refreshing, to say the least. Even so, theyhamstrung themselves by disallowing any conclusions thatthreatened to trespass uniformitarian precepts.

What these authors proposed was that ancient man derived hisbeliefs concerning the end of all things from the slow displacementof the pole star through the precession of the equinoxes over themillennia. Cosmic catastrophism was explained as the dissolution ofan order brought about by this slow change in the celestial sphere.Creation consisted in the establishment of a new celestial order. Inother words, an era ended every time the reigning pole star wasdisplaced; the "selection" of a new pole star through precession wasthe beginning of a new world age. The universal deluge wasperceived by these writers as having been a purely celestialoccurrence which early man transcribed in earthly terms. So alsowith other deluges, with fire from heaven, world-encompassinghurricanes, and days of darkness. These early disasters, theyclaimed, were merely analogies of what actually transpired in thenight sky with each passing pole star.

The documentation of this thesis was presented in a heavy tome of505 pages, including 39 lengthy appendices, and generouslyannotated with rare-source material. The book is a heady excursioninto the intricate labyrinth of mythology and, if nothing else, servesas a veritable mine of mythic information.

It has, however, long been understood that most of mythologyderives from primitive times, from those eras preceding the birth ofwriting. While major mythological themes have changed their dressmore than once, the messages contained within their core haveremained unchanged. It is therefore difficult to accept that theprimitive mind of ages past had already noted the extremely slowchange of the pole, let alone that the change was understood. DeSantillana and von Dechend were, of course, quite aware of thisobjection, so it is not surprising that they attempted to overrule it.

The discovery of the precession of the equinoxes has long been

attributed to Hipparchus, one of the greatest astronomers andmathematicians of antiquity, who flourished sometime between 146and 127 B.C. Yet, as the authors of Hamlet's Mill argued, this doesnot prove that the phenomenon had not been observed prior to histime. But, even given that it was, it remains difficult to accept thatthis extremely slow change, the perception of which requiresthousands of years, could have given rise to a world-wide belief inthe cataclysmic end of all things -- with flood and fire and theshaking of the terrestrial globe itself. After all, when one pole star isdisplaced by another, no disaster ensues, either on Earth or inheaven.

More important is the fact -- and the authors in question were wellaware of this -- that certain items of myth and ancient astronomicallore not only refuse to fit the precessional scheme of the equinoxesbut are notorious in not fitting anything else that is presently knownabout our universe. Prime among such misfits is the ancient notionthat Saturn had once played the role of pole star which they couldnot help but run into. Like myself, de Santillana and von Dechenddid not know what to do with this odd piece of information; and,like myself, they relegated it to the limbo of unacceptable data.Their verdict on this particular oddity was that it arose through"figures of speech" that "were an essential part of the technicalidiom of archaic astrology" -- which, let's face it, does nothing toexplain the oddity itself.

This non-acceptance made me view mine in a different light. Tobegin with, if others had detected this northernism with whichSaturn is associated, the knowledge could not be as obscure as I hadfirst imagined it to be. Also, it was easier to imagine Saturn as polestar than it was to accept that primitive man would have noticed theslow precession of the equinoxes. It was then that I realized that ifwe were to reconstruct a cosmic history based on ancient records,we would have no option but to accept what the ancients recorded. Ialso decided that, for the time being, it did not much matter whetherwhat the ancients recorded was deemed possible or not. The testingof such possibilities could come later. Temporarily it was enough toattempt a reconstruction as dictated by the message of myth. Moreover, in those cases where the message was unambiguous, itwould have to be accepted at face value. And such was the messagewhich stated that Saturn had once played the part of pole star. Muchas I wanted to disbelieve it, I had to accept it. It was either that ordisbelieve everything else I had thus far uncovered.

IX

In February of 1970 I heard Velikovsky lecture at the University ofBritish Columbia, in which city I had finally dug my roots. Untilthen Velikovsky had been very reticent about the part Saturn hadplayed in the early catastrophes. Even so, that same year, an articlewritten by Joseph Goodavage, appearing in the September issue ofSAGA, contained a new clue which, so to say, made me prick upmy ears. Goodavage, who had interviewed Velikovsky, stated thatthe good doctor was somewhat guarded when it came to novae or"exploding" stars. "I prefer not to discuss [the subject]," Velikovskyis there reported as saying. "It would disclose too much about myfuture plans and work."

Could Velikovsky have been hinting that the light of creation, withwhich I was still grappling, had been shed by a nova? - I foundmyself wondering. This could only have been so if the "exploding"star happened to be one of those relatively close to Earth. Even so,its blinding radiation would have been drastically diminished at thatdistance. The flare, even if prominent, would have been a far cryfrom what the later Hindus were to describe as a light that shone asbright as a "thousand suns."

X

In June of 1971 I wrote to Velikovsky concerning some points ofdisagreement I had with him. My critique actually related to one ofthe episodes contained in his Ages in Chaos, but I also queried himabout a number of issues re Worlds in Collision. I was not yet privyto Velikovsky's home address in Princeton so I mailed my lengthyletter in care of his publisher, Doubleday & Company. L. P.Ashmead, who was then Velikovsky's editor, was kind enough toforward my missive to Valais, Switzerland, where Velikovsky waslecturing at the University of the New World. It was there thatVelikovsky finally divulged to the world, if not in detail at least inoutline, what the excised portion of Worlds in Collision hadcontained. Eight years later that lecture was transcribed by JanSammer and published in the fall issue of KRONOS.

Velikovsky did not get around to answering me until January of '72.I cannot claim that this was the start of a lengthy correspondencewith him for, in truth, we corresponded but little and onlysporadically. But he did take well to my criticism and his attitude tomy work was encouraging.

On February 22 of that same year, the CBC aired an hour-longdocumentary by Henry ZEmel that was devoted to Velikovsky andhis work. In it, Velikovsky touched upon some of the basic ideas he

had aired at Valais, and his views on Saturn became then a matter ofpublic knowledge.

Although I did not see it until later, it was through this documentarythat I first learned about Velikovsky's ideas concerning the universaldeluge. In a way I was gratified because the cause of the deluge, inVelikovsky's view, was not entirely dissimilar to what I haddescribed in my earlier work of fiction, long since permanentlyshelved. Thus Velikovsky spoke of two filaments of water --"because I cannot [rightly] call them comets," he said -- throughwhich the Earth had passed. But there, I must confess, the similarityended. It was the manner in which these watery filaments were bornthat I, like others, found most illuminating. Velikovsky's scenario ofthe flood was this:

Saturn and Jupiter had once been much closer to Earth. Saturn was awater planet. More than that, like Jupiter, it had once been a "dark"star. Through a near collision of the two, which took placesomewhere between five and ten thousand years ago, Saturn eruptedin nova-like brilliance. The water it ejected from its body took theform of two watery filaments which, seven days after the flare-up,hit the Earth and caused the deluge. The water, which fell on Earthin torrential rains, was warm and salty and resulted in more thandoubling the Earth's hydrosphere. Jupiter reacted differently. Itfissioned and expelled from itself the comet that was later to causethe catastrophe of the Exodus before turning into the planet we nowcall Venus.

Bizarre as this scenario appeared at the time -- and how tame it nowlooks when compared to what else was yet to come -- it answeredone major riddle which had been plaguing me ever since I hadentered the Saturnian maze. Although Velikovsky himself does notseem to have been much concerned with the myths of primalbeginnings, I finally had the answer to the blinding light of creation.I realized then what Saturn had to do with this most mystifying ofevents and why it had been misunderstood down through the ages.With the disclosure of Saturn's flare-up, which Velikovsky himself,while proposing it, had badly misapprehended, the myths connectedwith the creation of the cosmos began to fit neatly into a largerpicture. It was at this point that I decided to give up fiction andpublicly enter the Velikovsky debate.

XI

I met Velikovsky in person at the three-day symposium held atLewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon, in August of 1972.

Although I had more than one opportunity to talk with him duringthose three memorable days, it was always in the company ofothers, most of whom seem to have known him quite well and who,therefore, were more privy to his ever attentive ear. Even so, he wasmore than cordial when he spoke to me and showed nothing of thehaughtiness one might have expected from such a man.

I had actually given up my job to attend that symposium. Thepresident of the company I worked for had warned me not to showup at the place again were I to go. On the other hand, while I do notwish to name the company concerned, I must also clarify that mydismissal was not occasioned because of Velikovsky. The outcomewould have been the same had I asked for leave of absence to attenda seminar in honor of Albert Einstein. I cannot therefore considermyself a Velikovskian martyr.

One impression I received at that symposium was that, amongVelikovsky's various supporters, no one seemed to have been payingSaturn much heed. Nothing was said about Saturn's northernplacement. This lack had however been more than compensated forduring some of the private sessions that took place on campus in theevenings. Knowing nothing about this, I returned home in themistaken belief that I knew something the others didn't. Withoutfurther ado, I immediately embarked on a three-front attack.

The first of these was the commencement of a lengthy work titled InPraise of Velikovsky, but with a subtitle that read "An ObjectiveCriticism of Worlds in Collision." In it I had intended to analyzeWorlds in Collision chapter by chapter, section by section, whileincluding selected materials from previous works that were germaneto Velikovsky's scheme as also, quite naturally, from newlydiscovered knowledge. This particular work never progressedbeyond a few introductory chapters.

My second attack consisted of a lengthier work devoted entirely tothe part Saturn had played in cosmic catastrophism. This one heldthe promise of evolving into a series of books for, already, mymaterial on Saturn was reaching "mountainous" proportions. Thetitle of this work was many times changed but, eventually, I settledon The God Star. Fifteen years later it is still in progress and, muchas I hate to admit it, might never quite be finished.

My third front was the most successful. I began a series of articleswhich I hoped would slowly ease me into the Velikovsky debatewhile laying the ground for my Saturnian disclosures. The first ofthese went to Pense, the only Velikovskian periodical going at the

time. Two of them were published as "Letters to the Editor." A fewothers were rejected.

One of these latter was a lengthy piece titled "Cows, Caste, andChaos." Dealing primarily with Hindu myths, it attempted to expandon certain topics which Velikovsky had only mentioned briefly enpassant. Stephen Talbott, the editor of Pense, sent me an eleven-point critique of it . I responded with an even longer article titled"Cows, Caste, and Chaos - Defended." He replied with morecriticisms, and I with further defenses.

Throughout this lengthy, but short-lived debate, I received theimpression that Talbott had Velikovsky's unpublished manuscript onthe Deluge open before him as he penned his various criticisms tomy work. I also realized that, little by little, he was slowly drawingme into a discussion of Saturnian matters. He himself fed me tid-bits of information on the subject and, in return, I offered teasingglimpses of the same. An impasse was finally reached and thematter ended there.

XII

I should confess at this point that while I was jealously guardingwhat I had uncovered about Saturn, I had not yet relinquished myfaith in Velikovsky's original thesis. I was still attempting to force-fit certain mythological motifs into the scheme of Worlds inCollision. In fact, I committed so many blunders in my debate withTalbott that, years later, as in the case with my old work of fiction, Iwas extremely thankful he never published these articles. As I havealready stated elsewhere, I have been extremely lucky in thisrespect. To date, my most defective works have, for one reason oranother, been kept from publication.

What was disconcerting about all this was that, obviously, I was notthe only Velikovskian scholar working on the Saturn problem.Worse than that, one reference Talbott had made concerning thepole as the abode of the mother goddess made me suspect that he,also, had come across the ancient belief in Saturn's formerplacement in the north. Seeing that he was on Saturn's track, howcould he not have?

All of this transpired in 1973. With renewed vigor I spent most ofthe next two years honing my work on Saturn, trying to fit thescattered references in my collection of notes into a possiblechronology of events. This was easier said than done since nowherein ancient texts is the story of Saturn brought together in one place.

A tale, however, did emerge, even though it was to go throughvarious transformations as I constantly revised and updated it.Unfortunately, the more it progressed, the more it inspired disbeliefso that, more than ever, I decided to keep it under wraps until Icould formulate a working hypothesis to account for the celestialmechanics involved.

One lesson I learned in the interim was that mythic subjectsrelinquish their message best when tracked down in the original.Again, this was not always easy because hieroglyphs and cuneiformstood in my way. While I had to rely on the authoritativeinterpretations available, I was soon to learn that not all authoritiesagreed on any given translation. The need to return to the basicoriginals necessitated the utilization of Egyptian, Hebrew and otherdictionaries. It was in painstaking slowness that I was able torecapture some of the original meaning behind the mythic themesthat were germane to the Saturnian phenomenon. It was thus that Icame to realize that the choice of certain words in these translationsoften contradicted their literal meanings . In other words, manyancient tracts had been mistranslated simply because themetaphrastic meaning of certain passages made absolutely no sensewhen compared to what was known about the present cosmos.Moreover, the confusion that ensued from this was not always dueto word-juggling by modern mythologists. As Wallis Budge stressedin more than one of his voluminous works, the ancients themselveswere often guilty of not having understood what their ancestors hadbeen alluding to.

The reversion of ancient scripture to its original meaning issomething I can never bring to fulfillment. Up until now I have onlybeen able to scratch the surface by way of some illustrativeexamples. It however remains my hope that someone with greaterlingual ability will someday embrace this colossal task. In themeantime I had enough pointers to show me the way and my workon Saturn progressed beyond expectation.

XIII

On March 6, 1975, Professor Lewis Greenberg, whom I had met atLewis and Clark, phoned me from Pennsylvania and asked me tojoin the editorial staff of KRONOS. During our conversation heasked me what I was working on. I told him about In Praise ofVelikovsky, which title pleased him; but when he heard it was reallymeant to be an objective criticism of Worlds in Collision, he said:"Oh boy!"

I then mentioned my progressing work on Saturn and it was my turnto be surprised. He informed me that Talbott was also preparing abook on the subject. "Yes," I said. "I did suspect that Steve mightbe." It was his reply to this that stunned me. "Oh, not Steve," hesaid. "It's David, his brother, who's writing the book."

By then`Pense had come out, or was about to come out, with itsfinal issue. David Talbott, Stephen's brother, had been its publisherbut I had never corresponded with him. When I told Greenbergabout my extended debate with Stephen, he assured me that Davidmust have been behind it. Years later, David Talbott himselfconfirmed the fact that he had been standing right behind Stephenwhen the latter was composing his replies to me. Why David hadnot come out into the open is something I have never fathomed.

XIV

On April 24 of that year, Professor Robert Hewsen invited me tosubmit an article for an anthology that was to be presented toVelikovsky at a dinner held in his honor. This supplied me with anopportunity to document my correspondence with Talbott in alengthy monograph. Titled "Cows, Caste and Comets," todifferentiate it form the original "Cows, Caste and Chaos," itincluded all of Talbott's objections, as also all my former rebuttals. Iindicated some areas in which I had erred and I gave Talbott a fewmore points. Although the anthology was never published, my paperwas clandestinely photocopied and privately circulated without mypermission. Since then I have had to admonish those who mighthave read it not to cite it since it contains many statements I wouldno longer care to defend.

One person who read "Cows, Caste and Comets," and whom Iwould rather leave unnamed, contacted me with the information thatTalbott had privately circulated a paper which, my informantassured me, reflected some of my own ideas. As it happened,Greenberg, who had now become my Editor-in-Chief, had alsomentioned this privately circulated paper, so I asked him for a copy.He promised to send me one and I waited for it not without someapprehension.

XV

Offers came fast that year. Having also read my contribution to theVelikovsky anthology, Professor Warner Sizemore, who had justtaken on the post of Executive Editor for KRONOS, sent me amanuscript he had been working on with Professors Greenberg and

John Myers, the latter of whom had only recently passed away.Tentatively titled Jesus Christ: Morning Star, it consisted of a seriesof loose essays dealing with the religious implications ofVelikovsky's work. Initially, Sizemore merely sought my opinion ofthe work but, ere long, he tempted me with the offer of making me afourth author. Though already laden with my own various works, tosay nothing of my new duties with KRONOS, I jumped at the offerand "put my hand to it."

While attempting to coordinate the loose sections of thiscollaboration, connecting them together with the addition of newmaterial, it dawned upon me that the entire effort could, with somedrastic changes, be altered into a history delineating the origin ofreligion. I realized of course that this could not be accomplishedwithout reverting to primal beginnings and I wondered whether theother two living authors would be happy with this. As it turned out,they gave me a free hand and I started borrowing wholesale frommy own work on Saturn. No sooner had I commenced on this than Irealized that what I had in mind could only be accommodated in aseries of books. I next changed the title to reflect the scope of thework. I called it From Genesis to Hiroshima, and that alone told theother authors how far I intended to take the tale.

Sizemore flooded me with bibliographic material, Greenberg witheditorial advice; but, being now too busy with the production ofKRONOS, they could not offer me much additional help. Even sothe work progressed at a fast rate but 300 pages, 16 appendices, andhundreds of referential notes later, I was still dealing with the mythsof creation. How long was it going to take me to get from there tothe dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima? Despairing of being able tofinish what I had started, I eventually realized I had sent myself on afool's errand. In the end, From Genesis to Hiroshima joined my evergrowing list of uncompleted works. The only saving grace was thatthese unfinished manuscripts served as a repository of material fromwhich I lifted a series of independent articles. To this day, I am stillmining them.

XVI

In the fall 1975 issue of KRONOS, Greenberg and Sizemorepublished a half-page article titled "Saturn and Genesis." In it theybriefly analyzed Maurice Jastrow's 1910 paper, "Sun and Saturn," inwhich the Assyro-Babylonian belief in Saturn as a sun that shone atnight is discussed at some length. This was an idea I had alreadyencountered but, because of Velikovsky's belief that Saturn had been

a "dark" star, I had been assuming that the luminary had shone,much as it does now, through the Sun's reflected light. When Iunearthed and read Jastrow's original paper, I became convincedthat Saturn, despite the author's expected disclaimer, must have beena true sun of night, radiating its own light. With this new datum, myreconstruction of Saturnian events took on a more coherentchronological sequence. The scenario, bizarre in many ways, andfaulty in others, evolved into the following:

In prehistoric times, Saturn was the most conspicuous object in thesky. This body was observed by ancient man as a rotating sphere,which means that markings of some sort were clearly visible on itssurface. Since tradition insists there was no way of telling time inthose "days," these markings must have been of a fluctuating naturewith no specific form retaining a recognizable shape that could havebeen timed with each rotation. Fluctuating surface markingsbespeak an active atmosphere, perhaps in turmoil, and theimpression one receives, especially in view of what transpired later,is that Saturn was an unstable gaseous body.

Unlike the Sun, the luminary did not rise or set. It simply hungsuspended in the north celestial pole, which could only mean that itshared the same axis of rotation with Earth. More than that -- andthis was a puzzle I had not yet solved -- the texts speak of thisplanetary deity as having ruled alone and in darkness. The Sun, it isstated, was completely absent from the sky.

Man remembers this age as a time of perpetual night. But for Saturnto have been visible, it must have shed some light. Since the lightdid not dissolve the gloom, the illumination must have been feeble.For fauna and flora to have thrived, Saturn must also have shedwarmth. Man himself went completely naked. He knew nothing ofchilling winds, cold rain, of snow, or ice.

During this period, the Saturnian orb does not seem to have beenpaid much heed. It was simply there, invoking neither fear norreverence. But then an event transpired of such stupendousness thatit went down in the annals of mankind as Day One. Saturn suddenlyflared up in nova-like brilliance, flooding the Earth and itsinhabitants with a blinding light. The act of creation hadcommenced.

When the light of the flare-up finally ebbed, man was presented witha ghastly sight. Spewing out from the central orb was a multi-spiralled black mass that revolved and wound itself around itsparent. Viewed as a monster which the transformed god had to

subdue, this was also the chaos out of which creation progressed.

It seems to have been precisely at this point that the Sun made itsappearance. Day now succeeded night. Time had come into theworld.

Saturn itself continued to shine as a sun in its own right. It wasbright enough to keep the stars, except those of first magnitude,from being seen. It was not however as bright as the Sun and, duringthe day, it paled into a cloud-like ghost.

Two filaments detached themselves from Saturn's spiralling matterand were temporarily "lost" in the reaches of space. The rest of thiswatery debris congealed into a ring around the orb. The god hadorganized his cosmos. It was this "world" that man had witnessedthe god create, for in truth the creation did not originally refer to aterrestrial realm. In time this ring resolved itself into a series ofconcentric bands -- first into three and later, for the longest time,into seven. These were the original seven "heavens" or seven"earths." They were also the seven stages of creation, long aftermisunderstood as seven "days."

The light from the unveiled Sun illuminated Saturn's encircling ringas a gigantic crescent, and later as seven nested ones. The other halfof the band was only dimly lit, forming a crescent in shadow thatwas nonetheless visible. Both crescents revolved in unison,perpetually chasing each other, around the stationary orb. This,together with the now rising and setting Sun, enabled man tocalculate the passage of time. The visual revolution of thesecrescents was naturally due to the rotation of the Earth. This meansthat the Saturn-Earth System must have been at right angles to theSun-Earth vector (although, as Chris Sherrerd was to point out tome years later, not necessarily perpendicular to the plane of theecliptic).

Nine smaller satellites, which were not formerly apparent, nowappeared to revolve around Saturn. In mythology they became thenine followers, or company, of the god. A cruciform star-shape alsoappeared as four bright rays radiating from the central orb. Rightlyor wrongly, I initially interpreted these as an atmospheric illusion.

A singular beam of light also appeared to taper upward from Earth'snorthern horizon, connecting our humble abode to Saturn's gloriousrealm in the sky. All mythologies speak of this singular beam, thispolar column or cosmic tree, this bond which tied heaven to Earth.Despite the apparent impossibility of the system I had managed to

reconstruct, nothing perplexed me more at the time than thiseffulgent axis mundi. Together with the puzzle of the primevaldarkness, this so-called world-axis stymied me. What could it reallyhave been? It is obvious now in retrospect that I still retained amental block. Had I taken the ancients at their word, as I hadresolved I would, this problem would have been solved with therest. When the answer was finally in my hands, as in the case ofSaturn's flare-up, it was only because it was given to me by another.

Mythology also speaks of a universal world mountain located at thenorth. This was a phenomenon I had understood as a lithic bulgethat was raised in gravitational response to Saturn's close proximity.The axis mundi would have rested on top of this bulge which wouldhave accounted for the world-wide belief in the archaic deity restingon his mountain of glory.

Various atmospheric phenomena also appeared in conjunction withthis polar sun in the form of parhelia and Parry halo arcs, althoughthese, because of their very nature, were understandablyimpermanent. The most amazing aspect of the Saturnian structure,however, was the uncanny resemblance it bore to the human form,especially around the hour of midnight, when the sunlit crescent ofits encircling ring(s) appeared as two uplifted arms. The entireapparition was like a resplendent giant towering above the world forall mankind to see.

As I have stated elsewhere, no earthly description can ever hope todo this phenomenon justice. We will never be able to fullyappreciate the impact it must have had on the primitive psyche. TheSun itself might have been brighter, but Saturn was much moreglorious. For untold generations Saturn's strange apparition becamethe very focus of man's existence. It was the fountainhead of allreligious beliefs and, more than that, the impetus behind the rise ofcivilization.

Unstable as this system might have been, it managed to sustain itselffor an unspecified but long period of time. Its formation ushered inan era that mythology remembers as the Golden Age. This was theEdenic childhood of mankind, a time of prosperity and peace,during which the earth was said to have given freely of its bounty. Itwas an age that man was forever after to recall with nostalgiclonging. But in time it, also, came to an end.

The two filaments that had detached themselves from Saturn'sformer spiral had gone into orbit around the Sun. Each successivepassage had brought them back into close proximity of the

Saturnian system. These were seen as monsters which periodicallythreatened the god. Eventually at least one of them collided with theEarth. Composed mainly of water, this filament dispersed itselfacross the Earth in a deluge that lasted for days. Thus the universalflood was a direct result of Saturn's initial flare-up.

Saturn, with its cosmos, became unhinged. It was now seen to circlearound the sky as the Earth, knocked off its balance by the impact ofthe collision, began to wobble and topple. Slowly but surely theSaturnian apparition slid down the sides of heaven and sank beyondEarth's trembling horizon. Earth had actually turned head overheels. The god of mankind, dying his death, had drowned in thedeluge.

With the overturning of the Earth, the Sun reversed its path acrossthe sky, rising where it had formerly set and setting where it hadformerly risen. The quarters of the world had been displaced.

But all was not lost. After a while the Earth righted itself and Saturnwas seen to return to his post in his former glory. The god had risenfrom the dead. To others he had been saved by building an ark.Noah was actually Saturn - and where was my work of fiction now?- while his ark was the sunlit crescent. Textual evidence of Noahhaving sailed through the sky actually exists. Moreover, the word"ark" derives from a root that, in more than one language, translatesinto an ancient name for Saturn.

The panic with which mankind had witnessed the death anddisappearance of its divinity was temporarily allayed. But, ere long,it became apparent that something was amiss with the deity. Thecentral orb lost its brightness; wrinkles and blotches began to appearover its surface. The luminary's gaseous envelope was re-assertingitself. To those who looked on in horror, the risen deity had beenstruck with leprosy; to others, he was beginning to show signs of hisadvancing age.

In the end, whatever force had held the planets rotating on the sameaxis dissipated. The polar column severed itself from the main bodywhile the ringed structure was seen to break up. Saturn's cosmos hadbecome unglued and literally fell apart. The god, to some still dead,had been dismembered.

Earth and Saturn parted company. The giant planet, growing everdimmer, was seen to move slowly away. No longer a sun, it grewsmaller as it rose above the Earth until, eventually, it became thepin-point of light we now see in the night where it was free to

reconstruct a new system of rings. In the surrounding sea of starsthat now became the order of the night, mankind saw the dissectedmembers of its god.

Thus Saturn was the only deity who was born his own son; wholived on Earth; who died and descended to the underworld; whorose again from the dead and finally ascended into heaven. If thetale sounds familiar, you now know its origin.

This, then, was the story of Saturn as I had been able to piece ittogether. It did not come easily to me. I had to struggle to accept it. Ihad made many errors and many were the times I had to retrace mysteps. Nor was the version recorded above the final one. I knew Ihad to refine it further and, to this day, I am continually revising it.But at the time I was more than convinced that, in general, itsoutline was basically sound.

The truth is that the story is more complicated than I have made itappear. For the sake of clarity I have refrained from encumberingthe scenario with its geologic implications, as I have also refrainedfrom delineating the parts that Mars, Venus, and Jupiter were forcedto play in these primeval events. In a while I shall have somethingto say about both these topics but, in the meantime, I shouldcontinue with the major events in my career that led me ever closerto the Saturnian truth.

XVIII

.In January of 1976 Velikovsky wrote to thank me for mycontribution to the anthology. In a hand-written note at the end ofhis letter, he mentioned something about a "chance for co-operation" which I took for a veiled hint aiming at collaboration. AsI was to learn years later, this was an offer he had made from time totime to various others of his supporters. I did not wish to hurt hisfeelings (although I doubt that they were hurt) but, for one thing, Iwas already overburdened with work; for another, I doubted that hewould appreciate the turn my writing was taking. I had already beenasked to temper my criticisms of his work, not to arm his detractorswith additional ammunition to fire at him. When I questioned theintegrity of this appeal, I was told that while there need be no sacredcows, not even Velikovsky, we should, on the other hand, attempt totime our gorings. To be honest, I did not quite relish the idea but,not wishing to create unnecessary waves, I held back my majorcriticisms ofWorlds in Collision until the San Jose seminar of 1980.

That thank you note was the last time Velikovsky wrote to me. He

had gotten wind of my collaboration with Greenberg et al., and hefeared that From Genesis to Hiroshima might preempt him on thesubject of collective amnesia about which he himself had beenpreparing a book. He did not take kindly to my declaration that hewould be receiving full credit on the subject and our relationshipbegan to sour. As it turned out, From Genesis to Hiroshima was topeter to a halt while Velikovsky's Mankind in amnesia did not seepublication until three years after his death.

XIX

The long-awaited copy of Talbott's paper on Saturn arrived. Titled"The Universal Monarch: An Essay on the Lost Symbolism ofSaturn," it outlined the mythological motifs associated with Saturn'snorthern cosmos.

The first thing that struck me on reading it was the close similarity --nay, near identity -- that Talbott's Saturnian configuration had to myown model. It was immediately obvious that Talbott and I had beendigging in the same well. There were differences, especially ininterpretation, but, in the totality of the scheme, these were minor.On the other hand, it did not take much to realize that in no waycould Talbott have borrowed any of his ideas from mycorrespondence with his brother. Having been as secretive about myrediscoveries as he himself had been with me, I had never saidanything to Stephen about Saturn's northern placement or thebizarre structure Saturn had organized around itself. While Talbott'spaper included many items which were not contained in my work,nothing I had divulged to Stephen was to be found in David'soutline. The paper contained nothing about the events prior toSaturn's flare-up, nor did it so much as hint at Saturn's dissolution.The method through which he proferred his revelations was entirelydifferent from mine, stressing symbol rather than myth. Achronological sequence was not even attempted.

My mind was at ease. More than that I was elated because if tworesearchers, working independently of each other, could come to thesame unconventional conclusions about a most unconventionalcelestial arrangement, the derived model could hardly have been theresult of an overworked imagination.

In what did Talbott and I differ?

Where my research had unearthed nine satellites revolving aroundthe Saturnian orb, Talbott vouched for only seven. Among thevaried symbolism associated with the revolving crescents of light

and shadow, Talbott included that of the ever battling cosmic twins,a mythological motif I had not yet accounted for. But our maindifference concerned the polar column or axis mundi. While I hadvisualized the world mountain as an actual uplift of land, Talbottsaw the mountain as an analogy of the polar column. In other words,to Talbott, mount and axis were one and the same. Actually, certaintexts do speak of mount and axis as if they were one and the sameportent; others, however, seem to intimate that the two wereseparate, even if closely connected, phenomena.

Certain mythological themes had also made me believe that, at somepoint, the planet Mars had passed through the fabric of the polarcolumn, temporarily trapping itself there before passing on. A repeatperformance was what later severed the polar column. In Talbott'sscheme, the polar column is shown to have stretched earthwardfrom Mars, which planet would have been permanently suspendedbetween Saturn and the Earth, rotating on the same common axiswith them. Visually, Mars was thus part and parcel of the sameconfiguration. The polar column would then have been seen asbelonging to the Saturnian complexity without losing its identitywith Mars. While this was not entirely spelled out in Talbott's paper,it was clarified by him in later works.

Of the planets Jupiter and Venus nothing was mentioned. This wassomewhat strange because my earlier debate with Talbott's brotherhad eventually led to the role Venus had played in the Saturnian age,and why it was that the Venerian deities of later times were oftenimbued with Saturnian motifs. I was to live and learn.

XX

One of my most stimulating correspondents during this time, and formany years afterwards, was Frederic Jueneman. As I later foundout, he had known about Talbott's work on Saturn since 1972. Indiscussing the subject with me, Jueneman told me that anyone whowanted his ideas could have them for the asking. Emboldened bythis offer, I did not hesitate to pick his mind. Although I did notalways accept whatever he threw at me, he managed to solve manya problem for me. In March of 1976 I asked him if he had any ideason what could have constituted the fabric of the polar column, or, asI phrased it, the trunk of the cosmic tree. His reply reached me thatsame month and, when I read it, I felt like kicking my own behind.

Jueneman supplied me with more than I had asked for. To him theaxis mundi and world mountain were separate phenomena. Verymuch as I had, he interpreted the latter as a tidal uplift of land. But

the most important thing he disclosed was the mechanics he hadworked out to account for the polar column. Its major constituentshe had ascertained to have been air and water vapor. According tohim, these were "carried upward towards the nul-gravity at the apexbetween the two planets" in "a columnar Rankine vortex." To put itin a nut-shell, the axis mundi would thus have been a cosmictornado seen from a distance. The fact is that various texts whichhad already passed through my hands had actually described theaxis as a cyclone, a whirlwind, or churning hurricane. Had I listenedto the collective voice of the ancients, I would have had this solutionmuch earlier. I vowed never to make that mistake again.

The Rankine vortex, if that is what it really was, answered anothermystery. On the basis of an Assyro-Babylonian text, de Santillanaand von Dechend had inferred the occurrence of a second delugecaused by Mars. If, now, the polar column consisted of water vapor,the immense volume of moisture it would have contained wouldhave been released when Mars swooped by and severed it. As thecolumn twisted and sank in its death throes, it would have poured itswater on Earth's northern hemisphere. This would account for thosetraditions which insist on a calamitous flood that roared down fromthe north.

Going further, Jueneman also described the effect of a bolus flowcomplete with Coriolis tendency which, at times, would have splitthe central pillar into two serpentine spouts. Entwining about eachother, these were later to give rise to the god's twisted legs and themythic caduceus popularly associated with Mercury.

Throughout the years, Jueneman remained unconvinced of Saturn'sformer northern placement. As far as celestial mechanics wereunderstood, this system seemed unviable. According to Jueneman,two bodies rotating on the same axis could only have sustainedthemselves by the additional revolution around a barycenter whichwould have lent the system a slight wobble within narrow confines.In the case of a Saturn-Earth coupling, this barycentre would havepositioned the Earth within the Roche limit, with devastating results.

Thus, right from the start, Jueneman deviated from Talbott's schemeand propounded a model of his own. Basing the genesis of hissystem on a theory proposed in 1969 by R.A. Lyttleton, he opted forMars as the northern body of myth. He thus inadvertently accepted amodified version of the "bottom" half of Talbott's model whilediscarding the rest. Jueneman first presented his model in the pagesofIndustrial Research, updated it in his 1975 Limits of Uncertainty,

and continued to work sporadically on it model through the years.

Because Mars is closer in size and mass to Earth, the problem of theRoche limit is somewhat alleviated in Jueneman's scheme.Moreover, Jueneman saw the encircling rings as the outpouring ofhis Rankine vortex, with the vaporous material sucked from Earthbeing spewed into space where it formed an ever changing series ofconcentricities. In this scheme the rings would have existed inindependent suspension between Mars and the Earth, only appearingto surround Mars through earth-bound perspective. As the ringsdissipated into space, they would have been continually replenishedby the vortex. The Moon, according to Jueneman, would haveorbited as a governor around the central column.

My major objection to all this concerned the ancient insistence onthe identity of Saturn as the immobile north celestial sun. Nowherein the intricacies of myth had I discovered any direct evidence thatMars ever occupied this position.

XXI

In my endeavor to discover the possible physics behind Saturn'spolar configuration, I approached various members of the KRNOSstaff with a related set of problems. Professor Lynn Rose, amongothers, was very receptive. As I soon learned, he, also, had beenprivy to Talbott's model since 1972. In the meantime, likeJueneman, he had developed his own scheme. Unlike Jueneman, butlike Talbott and myself, Rose accepted Saturn as the primordialurbild; but, in opposition to all of us, he could not accept the northcelestial pole as the abode of this planetary deity. Rose saw Saturn'splacement above Earth's north pole as so impossible, and "sovulnerable to criticism," that he would not even consider thesuggestion.

First disclosed to me in June of 1977, Rose's model, as it developedthrough the years, was based on a system which Philolaos, theGreek philosopher, supposedly propounded in the 5th century B.C.In this system, Philolaos speaks of a central fire in the middle of theuniverse around which the heavenly bodies, including Earth,revolved. The Earth kept the same face turned toward this centralfire, which means that its rate of rotation equalled the duration of itsrevolution along its orbit. Besides Earth, there was also a counter-earth which remained hidden from Earth's inhabited hemispherethrough a similar rotational resonance.

There seems little doubt that the Philolaos system is a garbled

retention of the older Saturnian one. Rose is thus correct in hisassumption that the central fire was a dimly remembered allusion toSaturn. In Rose's model, the apparent immobility of Saturn isaccounted for through the commensurability inherent in thePhilolaos scheme. A similar situation perseveres in the presentEarth-Moon system, where the Moon's rotational period isequivalent to its revolution around the Earth. While the Moonperpetually displays the same hemisphere toward Earth, from theMoon the latter appears to be immobile in relation to the lunarhorizon. The axis mundi, which, in this case, cannot be referred toas a polar column, Rose saw as a flux tube similar to the one thatwas later discovered between Jupiter and Io. As for the counter-earth, Rose understood this as a confused memory of thathemisphere of Earth turned away from Saturn. The complete model- "Variations on a Theme of Philolaos" - was published in the fall1979 issue of KRONOS.

While this model may appear to be more mechanically viablethanJueneman's, Talbott's, and/or mine, it violates the universal messageof myth which insists in placing the Saturnian sun unequivocally inthe north celestial sphere. Rose's answer to this objection has alwaysbeen that Saturn's northern placement arose in response to thedislocated pole star of later times. But why Saturn should have beenso illogically chosen as a fictional polar replacement with suchunanimity among the ancient nations is a question that Rose hasnever satisfactorily answered.

XXII

My investigation of the possible mechanics responsible for theSaturnian configuration resulted in an ever increasing circle ofcorrespondents. This ongoing debate often necessitated thecirculation of letters written and received by others. Copies of earlycorrespondence between the Talbotts, Jueneman, and Roseeventually ended on my desk. These convinced me that, while myre-discoveries were arrived at independently, David Talbott hadmanaged to reconstruct the polar configuration before my ownmodel had approached completeness. This claim to priority was afact I had to acknowledge. It also taught me something aboutpresumption.

I published "The Sun of Night," my first article on Saturn, in the fall1977 issue of KRONOS. This paper merely discussed the ancientbelief in Saturn's former sun-like appearance. It contained nothingabout Saturn's boreal immobility, its encircling cosmos, or the

singular ray of its axis mundi. Having decided against Velikovsky'smethod, I did not wish to take the Kronos readership by storm and,in any case, Professor Rose had been right concerning thevulnerability of the belief in Saturn's polar abode. I thereforedecided to abide my time while introducing my readers to mattersSaturnian. I could then expound further on the theme, but slowly, ina series of future articles. Familiarity with the idea would eventuallymake for some acceptance.

As it turned out, the matter was taken out of my hands almostimmediately. In an endeavor to establish his priority, Talbottpublished his views on the polar configuration at about the sametime I published "The Sun of Night."

Following the demise of Pense, Talbott's brother, Stephen, hadorganized the Research Communications Network, a short-livedinstitution which became inactive in April of 1978. The Network'sfirst Newsletter, which had come out in September of 1976, hadalready promised the publication of "The Age of Saturn," althoughno author had been named for the coming piece. That promise waskept in Newsletter # 3, published in October of 1977, which wasentirely devoted to "Saturn's Age." Presented as an interview ofDavid Talbott by John Gibson, the article contained some newmaterial but, basically, it was a reiteration of Talbott's privatelycirculated paper.

One new revelation that Talbott touched upon lightly concerned theplanet Jupiter. Talbott would now have the Earth, Mars, and Saturn"all rotating on a single axis extending out from Jupiter." In hisopinion, Jupiter would have been invisible from Earth since it washidden directly behind Saturn. My own research, on the other hand,had disclosed what seemed to be exactly the opposite. Ancient textsfrom various quarters describe Jupiter as the god and/or star of thesouth. This led me to believe that Jupiter must have been located inEarth's south polar sky. This configuration would coincidentallyhave lessened the Roche limit problem since the Earth would havebeen gravitationally attracted to both giants without succumbing toeither.

Talbott knew as well as I that, under our present knowledge ofcelestial mechanics, the model he and I were proposing was avirtual impossibility. Nor did it matter whether Jupiter was placed inthe north behind Saturn or in the south "behind" the Earth. Whenasked whether he "should suggest some physical principle whichmight account for [his] planetary configuration," Talbott replied

with the words: "No, absolutely not."

"Does [my model] sound like something one could defend in anyterms acceptable to modern astronomy?" he asked. "I'm not aphysicist. I'm not even asking physicists to respond to my[forthcoming] book right now ..."

One gathered that Talbott's book, to be titled The Saturn Myth, wasall but ready for publication. He even discussed a second volume hewas working on, The Cataclysm, which, he said, provisionallyexisted "only as a mass of notes and a brief outline." This secondvolume would contain material on the configuration's dissolution.But whereas I had stayed my hand because of lack of physicalevidence, Talbott intended "to go ahead ... and not even worry aboutthe physics of it all."

XXIII

Hard on the heels of "Saturn's Age," Talbott released a slightlylonger paper titled "Saturn: Universal Monarch and Dying God."Offered as a special publication through the ResearchCommunications Network, it consisted of a numbered thesis thatincluded the outline of events connected with the polarconfiguration's dissolution that he had earlier mentioned.

To begin with, Talbott proposed a tentative date for the cosmiccatastrophism associated with Saturn. Whereas Velikovsky hadopted for a period between 5 and 10,000 years ago as the time slotwithin which the universal deluge had occurred, Talbott reduced thetime span to "within the past 6 - 8,000 years." To date, neither ofthem has given as much as a hint concerning the evidence behindthe selection of these dates.

Talbott described the bending of the axis mundi as the beginning ofthe Saturnian destruction. The bent pillar would have lent theconfiguration a hunch-backed appearance that was interpreted bythe onlookers as a sign of the god's decrepitude. He said nothingabout the mottled appearance of the central orb in this respect.

According to him it was at this point that the cosmic pillarcommenced on a churning motion while the ringed structure beganto move "in ever widening circles." He gave no indication, however,as to what might have caused this apparent motion.

Still according to Talbott, the deity was seen to devour the sevensatellites orbiting around it and that these actually began to

disintegrate. Saturn's disappearance was then explained as theclouding of the central orb by the ensuing debris.

The seven disintegrating satellites, in Talbott's view, continued torevolve around the clouded center while spewing their own detritusin a multi-spiralled manner. This spiral eventually segregated itselfinto the seven concentric bands of myth.

At some point during this destruction, according to Talbott'sscheme, Jupiter finally appeared from behind Saturn, "stole"Saturn's encircling band, and then wandered away from the celestialcenter. Thus Talbott made it clear that the original ringed structurehad actually surrounded the hidden Jupiter and that it was onlyEarth-bound perspective that had made it appear to encircle Saturn.This tenet was not very well explained. In more than one place,Talbott had made it appear that the enclosing band was formed frommaterial ejected by the Saturnian orb. It is hard to conceive thatmaterial ejected by one celestial body would encircle another x-miles away. Or was this, according to Talbott, but another celestialillusion in which the primeval matter had actually been ejected byJupiter? Was it Jupiter then that flared up?

In contradistinction, my scenario had Jupiter appearing from beyondEarth's horizon when the latter flipped over. Saturn and Jupiter wereseen to change places. It was said that Saturn made his acquaintancewith the southern constellations while the star of the south rose tooccupy Saturn's vacated post. In my scheme the seven bands hadactually surrounded the Saturnian orb, rather than merely appearingto do so, from long before the dissolution. These disappeared withSaturn when the luminary dropped out of sight. Jupiter wasencircled by its own ringed system, which accounts for the apparent"theft." This mythological evidence could actually have been usedto predict the later discovery of the Jovian rings. That no one didmade us all miss the chance of a lifetime.

According to Talbott, it was this partial destruction of the Saturnianconfiguration that was later remembered as the universal deluge.Thus, along with de Santillana and von Dechend, but for differentreasons, Talbott saw the deluge as a strictly, but perhaps not entirely,celestial event.

In Talbott's scheme, the resurrection of the deity is explained as theclearing of the obscuring debris which again brought the Saturnianorb into full view. Whether the Jovian planet ever returned to itsposition behind Saturn was not made clear. The second and finaldestruction, blamed on Mars, was described in terms closer to my

scenario, as was the deity's final withdrawal to the "great beyond."Of the planet Venus there was not a single mention in either ofTalbott's two papers.

The above mentioned points were not my only disagreements withTalbott's model, but they were the major ones. I mention all thishere not because I was obviously right and Talbott wrong for thatmight not be the case at all, but merely to record our differences asthey existed at the time. In the end it may turn out that he was closerto being correct than I was. But one thing was obvious: One of us,or perhaps even both, had confused some of the earlier eventsassociated with the creation of Saturn's cosmos with thoseconnected with its destruction. This brought home one particularlament of the ancients themselves who, among other things, hadoften stated that the sequence of events had long been forgotten. Inany case, I have had many an occasion to change some of my viewssince then as, naturally enough, so has Talbott. And this is as itshould be for we can best progress by constantly discarding,changing, and refining unsatisfactory portions of the theory in anendeavor to get ever closer to the historical truth.

Talbott and I did not correspond any further -- at least not for manyyears -- and we both went our separate ways.

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