You've just entered the theater of an alien sky.
If the words and images seem strange to you there's a reason for this.
Our world was once a vastly different place.
To experience this won't hurt you and there's nothing to fear.
What was the mythic ship of heaven? Ancient records the world over speak of
a great ship or canoe moving in the sky.
But how strange that the sky above us today offers not a clue as to the original meaning.
In the reconstruction presented here, the ship of heaven was the celestial
vehicle of the primeval Sun, a god celebrated globally
and identified by early astronomers as the planet Saturn.
Why were so many figures of the primeval Sun given the form of a cosmic wheel,
yet said to have sailed in a visible ship? The ship of the sun god Helios, a god
identified archaically as the planet Saturn,
was described as a "golden goblet" sailing on the sea of Oceanus.
Both the Egyptian sun god Ra and the Babylonian sun god Shamash
sailed in cosmic ships. Over time, all of the ancient gods transmuted into legendary
ancestors. Numerous Native American creator gods and ancestral heroes
navigated a canoe across primeval waters.
The Maya preserved the tradition well and even the legendary Hiawatha
sailed "in a white canoe which moved without human aid".
The Japanese creator god Sukuna Biho Na rode "on the crest of the waves in a heavenly Kagami boat".
The mythic ship was a common theme amongst the Greeks who consistently recalled
former gods as legendary heroes.
The Asmat of New Guinea told of the creator-hero in his canoe, just as the
natives of the Marquesas say that in the beginning there was only the sea on which the creator Tiki
floated in a canoe. The Polynesian god Tangaroa sailed above in a "flying
canoe", just as the great shaman of the Yenisei Ostiaks, rowed his boat in heaven.
The greatest misunderstanding on this subject comes from a well known fact.
The ancient cultures gave the legendary ship a crescent-like
form. With this recurrent association, it's just too easy to assume that the
boat of the gods must have meant our crescent moon.
But the historical contexts themselves say something much different.
In fact, every concrete feature we can identify
points directly to something else, and there is no escaping the contribution of
a crescent form as described in our prior discourses.
In fact, all of the Crescent images we've discussed must be included in an
analysis of the cosmic ship -
the horns of the Bull of Heaven, the upraised arms of the pillar god,
and the twin peaks of the cosmic mountain.
All connect symbolically to the revolving ship of heaven,
with many mysteries to be addressed. The ancient Sumerians describe the god
Nanna, the Babylonian Sin, as the "bull with glistening horns".
But Nanna was more than that. In texts and in art, we see the god as the boat
of heaven with an urgent function of celestial transport.
Transport is one of the keys we'll have to follow to see that our Moon has absolutely nothing to do
with the ancient theme. In Egypt, the Pyramid Texts proclaim of the deceased
king: "May you ferry over by means of the Great Bull ... The Bull of the Sky has bent down his horn
so that you may pass over thereby". So too, the Coffin Texts plead with the great "Horn"
to transport the deceased across the celestial waters.
"O Horn, ferry across Him who is in his shrine".
Clearly, an understanding of the Bull of Heaven could only facilitate our understanding
of the cosmic ship. The imagery is explicit and incredibly concrete,
as when the Egyptian Coffin Texts celebrate the "long-horn which supports the bark of Anubis".
In both texts and art, the ship of heaven resolves itself into a pair
of horns. It's this identification that makes fully predictable the
Egyptian assertion that the two arms of the pillar god Shu
held aloft the ship of heaven. The two interpretations are inseparably connected.
That fact alone is quite sufficient to explain why we see the god Shu, with
outstretched arms, standing upright in the revolving ship of Ra,
the ship that revolved like the arms themselves in the archaic cycle
of day and night. And what of the third crescent form we've discussed,
the twin peaks? In this most extraordinary test, it's the
utter absurdity of the idea that drives our point home.
Twin peaks rotating in the sky, in a preposterous identification with a cosmic ship.
The Egyptian sources do not equivocate.
They either place the twin peaks on the ship, or the ship upon the twin peaks.
Either juxtaposition is fully reasonable, since the symbols meant
precisely the same thing.
But the specialists, seeing only the contradictions of nature as we know it,
can only marvel at the apparent incongruity.
A single form expressing itself in the explicitly connected
symbolism of a revolving crescent with opposite phases in a daily cycle.
Seen in fragments the underlying symmetry can only confirm the absurdity of ancient imagination.
Or, is it simply an affirmation of what has too long been beyond the reach of modern thought?
As we continue this series, it will become increasingly clear that all of
the symbolic archetypes are intimately and inseparably connected to each other.
All consistently point back to an alien sky, with no counterpart in
things experienced today. This is why the first and only reliable guide for us will
be the words, and pictures and symbols of those who experienced the transformative ancient events.