CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When Thor, the Scandinavian Jupiter, went into battle, and
would grasp the handle of his terrible weapon, the thunderbolt or electric hammer, he was obliged to put on his iron gauntlets. He also wears a magical belt known as the "girdle of strength", which, whenever girded about his person, greatly augments his celestial power. He rides upon a car drawn by two rams with silver bridles, and a wreath of stars encircles his awful brow. His chariot has a pointed iron pole, and the spark-scattering wheels continually roll over rumbling thunderclouds. He hurls his hammer with resistless force against the frost giants, whom he dissolves and annihilates. When he repairs to the Urdhar-fountain, where the gods meet in conclave to decide the destinies of humanity, he alone goes on foot, the rest of the deities being mounted. He walks, for fear that in crossing Bifröst [the rainbow], the many-hued Aesir-bridge, he might set it on fire with his thundercar, at the same time causing the Urdhar water to boil (Blavatsky).
The numerous electrical aspects of the god are here apparent; "the euhemerization of electricity", Blavatsky calls him. Lightning is handled by a number of gods in the history of religion, but all together these are insignificant compared with the references accorded Homer's "Jupiter the Thunderbolter" alone. It is natural to see in this literature an exaggeration of ordinary lightning strokes, but we have already stressed in earlier chapters the cosmic role of lightning-like discharges. We see in the Universe countless instances of stellar and interstellar binary currents produced by the discharge of accumulated electrical charges. Also, at any given time there are several million electrical discharges in the photospheric region of the Sun, each about one or two thousand kilometers long and lasting ten minutes (Crew), "Mega-lightning" of hitherto unappreciated voltage has been observed by satellites in the Earth's upper atmosphere, but has not been detected yet by ground observation (Turman).
When legend reports the electrical activity of Jupiter the god, it tells of the electronics of the planet Jupiter. Mountains are leveled or melted, sky monsters felled, citadels destroyed, the Earth scorched, and armies sent fleeing; all the work of the king of gods. Every lightning stroke to Earth becomes a theophany, as in lightning-obsessed Etruria, which gave the name Jupiter (Jove-pater) to the Romans. The sacred manifestations consecrate the cosmic bolts that were memorialized and discussed for thousands of years.
The planets, following the interruption of the magnetic tube, were freed. Instead of wheeling with Jupiter, now the binary component, they orbited the Sun independently, their motion close to the plane of the old binary - now the plane of the reconstituted Solar System. In their free orbits the planets avoided one another and Jupiter because of their electric charges, which produced repulsive forces when they came into proximity. Regularly they passed through, or close to, the axis between Jupiter and the Sun. Then Jovian thunderbolts were experienced. These could be the now occasional visible discharges of the dying binary, catalyzed by the presence of a charged planet in the path of the discharge; more likely they were locally generated discharges between the planet and its electrosphere, induced by the planet's voyage through the electrified region within the invisible arc-discharge between Jupiter and the Sun [99] . Either way the planet was zapped by Jupiter as it came into opposition with the Sun. From the Earth, for the first time humans might see the other planets swinging on their journeys around the Sun.
Planet Jupiter, now viewed as Ruler of the Heavens, struggled to restore and maintain the arc -- connection to the Sun -- for a time the arc flared with occasional visible spurts, but mostly the electric connection was dark. It is in this era, possibly, that the existence of a Counter-Earth was proposed, a dark body which obscured the celestial fire (see behind to Chapter Six).
Jupiter is the most phallic of the great gods. The association of electrical stimulation, phallicism, and thunderbolting is strongly linked to the religious rites in vogue at the time of Jove (Ziegler, pp65-72). Phallic worship is common among Jupiter-type deities (Tresman and O'Gheoghan). The Amun temples in Egypt are liberally decorated with images of the ithyphallic god Min. Shiva (the Hindu equivalent of Jupiter) emasculated himself when the realized that his creative ability had left him. The analogy of this legend with the end of the visible electric arc is plain.
The golden Age of Saturn contrasts both culturally and physically with the bright harsh Age of Jupiter. We must explain brighter skies, a worsened climate, a larger role for sporadic electrical phenomena, and certain striking astronomical movements of Jupiter's "Olympian family",
The Earth emerged from the magnetic tube following the Saturnian Deluge (about 5,700 BP) with its rotational axis forcibly relocated.
While in the tube, it was constrained to maintain a magnetic axis along the tube's perimeter. Freed from the tube, the magnetic axis found a new alignment in the magnetic field induced by the apparent motion of the charged Sun about the Earth. This magnetism, albeit weak, established a new rotational pole on the Earth close to, if not coincident with the Earth's magnetic pole (see Lapointe et al.)
A small tilt and a relatively diffuse plenum made the variations in such sunlight as was released very noticeable on the Earth in the altered system. Seasonal differences in the earlier era were minimal compared to variations in climate now existent on the Earth and during the year. We have already suggested that the first lines of Genesis move quickly, and possibly in a confused way, from a Uranian beginning into the Age of Saturn. Similarly, the second and different creation, which follows a few verses later without evident attempts to reconcile the two theories, begins in a Uranian setting, of mist without rain, and before agriculture. Man is made out of earth and placed in the luxuriant Garden of Eden, in an innocent, proto-human state of unabashed nudity and unselfconsciousness. Man gave names to every creature, and was given woman out of himself. The tree of life and knowledge, planted in the middle of the garden, and the four divided rivers of Eden, are firm symbols of Saturn, corresponding to the electrical axis and the cross-sections of the Saturn disc. (Talbott, D. N., pp120ff).
Figure 35. Apparent Motion of the Charged Sun about the Earth
Freed from the magnetic tube at the time of the Deluge, the rotation of the magnetized Earth was brought into alignment with the weak magnetic field generated by the relative motion of the electrically charged Earth-Sun pair. From the Earth the charged Sun is seen to flow in a loop around the Earth in one year, representing an electron current flowing counter-clockwise along the ecliptic (as seen looking down on the North pole). Such an electron current creates a magnetic field, which enters the Earth at its North magnetic pole. This field parallels the Earth's magnetic field. The situation described here initially brought the Earth's magnetic and rotational poles together. The later quantavolutions separated them again and tilted the Earth's rotational axis to the ecliptic.
The wily serpent that tempts Eve and Adam is the alter ego of the tree. The couple, eating the fruit of the tree upon the serpent's persuasion, become fully human, that is, possessed of self-awareness: "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons" (Genesis 3: 7). Thus they also work; they feel conscience already, and the wrath of the deity for what they had already become, conscientious workers. He evicts them into a world of shame and toil, far from the sacred tree (axis), the winged, lion-bodied gods (of the Saturnian symbolism) and the twisting, flaming sword (the axis again in its more visible sputtering phase). The Earth is now a drier, harsher habitat, where they had to wear skins rather than fig leaves. It is the age of Jupiter, and of Yahweh to come. The cosmic thunderbolts of Jupiter function in clear skies. There is a Jupiter Pluvius (" of the rains") but this is either one of his many powers (for he is overlord of all) or it is a reminiscence of his having played a role in provoking the Saturnian Deluge (Mason, pp76ff). The skies are clear because the plenum has greatly diminished in density; the heavens are transparent and the stars are seen.
A new ice age may now have begun, centered at the rotational poles. Fossil settlements of the extreme north have been uncovered that enjoyed a tropical flora (see Velikovsky, 1955, pp44ff). They probably date from the Saturnian age. The new ice will remain, advancing and withdrawing on occasions between and during encounters with celestial bodies, up to the present time. Today we cannot yet deduce whether the ice caps are increasing or decreasing (compare Kukla and Matthews with Gribbin, 1976; A. Brown).
The solar year under Jupiter may have had a succession of different lengths. First occurred the Saturnian year, to which we have assigned a 64-day duration [100] . Then it increased to 156 days when Jupiter receded. The Mayans possessed a 260-day sacred calendar that was central to their religious and cultural life, even while using a more modern and exact calendar (Coe, p9). We attribute this sacred calendar to the Jupiter-Earth synods of this era, to the time before 4 400 years ago [101] .
At the Saturnian Deluge we suspect the Earth was around 96 gigameters from the Sun. It moved outwards constantly after that to 107 Gm before the Mercury / Apollo episode of 4 400 BP, then to 127 Gm as a result of that encounter. In the course of these changes, Earth's axial tilt was altered again and again [102] (see Dachille, 1963; Warlow), causing glacial retreats and advances in the extreme latitudes at each period.
The Apollo episode is most speculative. Considering the traits of Apollo, de Grazia (1984a) associated him with the asteroid belt. We see no reason to alter that finding now. After 4 400 BP Jupiter orbited within the space of the "asteroid belt" we know today.
Briefly, Apollo is a great god of the Greeks. His equivalent identities are obscure: he may be Horus of the Egyptians (unless Amun-Jupiter and Horus are the same). He owns no planet in late ancient times. He is a psychically remote god, and a god of plagues and remote missiles in war. He is young and a son of Jupiter. He is wise and was literally brilliant -- "Shining Apollo."
The envied reputation of Apollo as the shining, "brilliant Hellenic god of peace and civilization" (see, for example, Grant, p1064) coincides with the idea that he was destroyed. He could not become even Deus Otiosus, thereby exposing the sad human experience, howbeit unconscious, that "the only good god is a dead god".
It is conceivable that "Apollo", a planet nearest to Jupiter, in the second millennium of the Jovian Age, was perturbed and then destroyed by Jupiter's thunderbolts. Apollo has solar attributes which were in late classical times exaggerated until he was often portrayed as the Sun, a most unlikely identity. The shining of Apollo, as of his brother, Hermes - Mercury (de Grazia, 1981) was most likely occasioned by flare-ups in close conjunction with Jupiter, prior to the outburst that destroyed the planet. Apollo, the god, often clashed with his father. To some (Ovenden, 1972), the asteroids look like bits of the residue of a large planet, long ago exploded [103] . The time of the "asteroidal explosion" is recent (Van Flandern) even under long-time reckoning; it is very recent if placed in the context of Greek legend. In this context, several events coincide and relate to the larger theory of Solaria Binaria.
Apollo has a younger brother, mischievous Hermes (Mercury), who is a swift, winged messenger of Zeus (Jupiter) and the gods, who is connected with electricity (especially as Thoth, in Egypt), the creator of illusions (mental problems), and is god of thieves, travelers, and healing. He, too, becomes a great god, known to many - East Indians, Mexicans, Teutons, and others. Though Yahweh reflects Jupiter, he also has qualities of Thoth; Moses was probably a devotee of Thoth, and acts towards Yahweh as Hermes towards Zeus (de Grazia, 1983a).
Astronomically, Mercury would have been next to Apollo, would have acquired atmosphere and debris from Apollo in the latter's outburst, then lost charge and would have been displaced towards the Sun. In so doing, he would have passed by Earth and Moon, inflicting considerable damage upon both. The lobate scarps and shallowly scalloped cliffs that run for hundreds of kilometers across Mercury's face suggest shrinkage of this planet after formation (Murray, p42). In contrast, Earth, Moon and Mars seem to have expanded (ibid., p41). In electrical terms, Mercury has lost charge while the other three bodies have gained it, consistent with the orbit shifts proposed in this book.
If indeed "Apollo" was destroyed, it must have been by Jupiter, which absorbed much of Apollo's material, so that a dearth of debris orbits in the space inside Jupiter's position today. Mercury seems to have escaped the full wrath of Jupiter; it was not destroyed, But it lost instead its superior orbit, beyond the Earth, and was flung much closer to the Sun. Like the Moon and Mars, it bears the marks of its devastation. Its surface is saturated with craters, strikingly similar in density of numbers to those on the Moon and Mars (Hammond). A "discrete terminal episode of bombardment" of catastrophic proportion has been proposed in an attempt to explain the similar surface destruction on these three astronomical bodies (Murray, pp45ff). Though some of these craters were caused by impacting bodies, especially during interplanetary encounters, they were in the main the result of electrical bombardment. The thick clusters of craters found even in heavily cratered terrains (Oberbeck et al., p1697) bespeak genesis by electrical rather than heavy-body impact. The crater lumps noted at the site of the lunar rays on the face of Mare Cogitum were the earliest for which a bombardment hypothesis would no longer avail (Lear, p43, p38). Yet, besides Juergens (1974/ 75, II. 28ff), only Pickering has forwarded an electrical explanation for cratering.
During changes in orbit, electrical transactions on an enhanced level are induced. Unless a body is protected by an extensive atmosphere, and today none of these are, surface damage will result whenever electrical currents flow to or from them (Juergens, 1974, I. 21-3). Too, if the transactions are of great intensity, even the presence of an atmosphere will not guarantee immunity. When Mercury moved inward past the Earth it was severely damaged, both by its change in orbit and by its direct transaction with the bodies it passed.
Even Mercury's present orbit is a mystery. According to gravitational-tidal theory the planet's axial rotation should long ago have been locked to give Mercury one hemisphere in perpetual daylight, the other in darkness [104] . The discovery that Mercury rotates three times over two orbits of the Sun has evoked remarks like "this is amazing" (Asimov) and has led theoreticians to postulate that the planet has been in orbit in its present position for less than six hundred thousand years (Gold, 1965). The state of astronomical and geological time-reckoning is such that six thousand may be read in place of the longer time (de Grazia, 1981, ch. 3).
Jupiter, like his father and grandfather, became a kind of deus otiosus, already majestic and less active in the Homeric Wars of Troy. There was no longer a close presence; philosophy and literature might usurp the regions of near space with abstract principles and metaphors. But among scientists, today, Jupiter has suddenly recovered some of his legendary features. Astronomers for some time have considered this planet to be a dark star (Newcombe). That it radiates considerably more energy than it receives as sunlight has more recently led to speculation that it is a yet-to-be-born star. Both views keep alive Jupiter's stellar nature long after it has ceased to be visibly stellar.
Today the clouds above the surface of Jupiter are very cold (150 K) yet the planet is very active electrically (Sutton, Gurnett et al.). Jupiter's "magnetosphere" is enormous: if it were optically visible, its size, viewed from the vantage-point of Earth's orbit, would be comparable to the disc of the full moon. The ion and electron currents detected within this magnetosphere represent radiation levels which would be fatal to humans (Panagakos and Waller, 1974, pp15ff). The radio noises generated within this region are received at the Earth, as are "cosmic rays" (mainly protons) of Jovian origin. Jupiter is, so far, the most demonstrably electrical of the planets. Jupiter is like a miniature Solar System, with its planet-sized Galilean satellites, its asteroid-sized satellite family and its entourage of comets. Everywhere the electrical imprint is there, and not always just by implication.
The three inner Galilean satellites, Io (resembling Earth's Moon in size), Europa (about nine-tenths of the Moon's size), and Ganymede (eight percent larger than Mercury) orbit in 1: 2: 4 resonance. When any two meet on one side of Jupiter, the third is located oppositely behind Jupiter or at quadrature to the pair (see Peale et al.). The resonance is seen less clearly in the motion of the fourth satellite, Callisto (slightly smaller than Mercury).
The surface of each of these bodies is distinctive (see Smith, B. A. et al., pp934ff). Io, seemingly, is close to being molten. It lacks craters, but shows over a dozen caldera-like scars, which were likened to active volcanoes when an eruption was observed during the fly-by of the Voyager 1 spacecraft (Morabito et al.). An electrical flux-tube through which a current of millions of amperes flows between Io and Jupiter (Stone and Lane, p947) has been linked to Io's eruptions (Gold, 1979). The Voyager 1 spacecraft was aimed at this flux-tube (Krimigis et al.) as it encountered Io. It missed the tube by seven megameters in what was labeled a navigational error; but more properly, in our opinion, the cause of the miss was an electrical perturbation (here a repulsion of the spacecraft by the tube).
The persistent connection, by the flux-tube, between Jupiter and its satellite, Io, is one of the last sites of cosmic thunderbolting between these two bodies has been known for several years since the advent of the radio telescope, when strong radio bursts which correlate with Io's position about Jupiter were detected (Dulk, p1588) [105] . That a passing spacecraft was located advantageously to photograph the flash of one of these discharges was happy happenstance. The glow was interpreted by some experts as evidence of volcanism. Apparently, to think that we have witnessed directly the fire of the gods, a cosmic discharge, would seem to be too frightening (Juergens, 1980, p74).
Jupiter discharges only to Io today, but its repertoire and gamut may have been more extensive not too many centuries ago. Photographs of Europa show it to have lobate scarps resembling those on Mercury (Smith, B. A. et al.). Perhaps Jupiter zapped it, causing it to shrink upon loss of charge. Callisto, the outermost of the four, is one of the most cratered objects in the Solar System (ibid), likely the result of thunderbolts striking it. Ganymede, the second closest of the four, shows a banded surface, pocked with ancient craters, then overlaid with younger bright-rayed craters, which stand out prominently (ibid.): distinct electrical scars resembling the rayed craters of Earth's Moon (also seen on Mercury), which Juergens (1974/ 75, II. 28ff) ascribes to cathode behavior when interplanetary discharges occur. Additional description of Jupiter's electrical nature, especially as it affects the asteroids and comets, has been afforded by Milton (1982). The present behavior of the dark remnant of Super Uranus is, in sum, fully in keeping with the pure electrical theory of the Solar System and the historical reconstruction of Solaria Binaria.
Notes on Chapter 15