In our very first jointly published article some 40 years ago, Dave Talbott emphasized the theoretical
scientific importance of anomalous mythological motifs. Quote “Ancient
statements appearing to contradict elementary experience or logic are key
to discovery.” End of quote. The ancient testimony and artwork surrounding the
divine thunderbolt is anomalous from A to Z and impossible to square with
present reality. Far from being a fairy tale deriving from our ancestors
experience of a terrestrial thunderstorm, the Thunderbolt was a heaven-spanning
structure of awe-inspiring splendor and stupendous power, one which likely
endured for generations and played a pivotal role in all ancient mythologies.
Creation itself, according to numerous traditional accounts of the event, traced
to the primordial coupling of a thunderbolt and the mother goddess.
Thanks to numerous variations upon this globally attested mytheme, the
catastrophic events in question can be reconstructed in great detail shedding
much light on the historical evolution of the polar configuration and the
thunderbolt's manifold forms. Perhaps the most famous example of this
archetypal mythological theme is the lurid tale told by Euripides in the
opening lines of the Bacchae, wherein Zeus couples with Semele in the form of a fiery thunderbolt. Quote,
“Semele brought to bed by the lightning- fire.” End of quote. According to
Greek tradition, the thunderbolt not only impregnated the maiden thereby producing
Dionysus, it killed her instantly. Now here is a most peculiar idea, in
what sense is it possible to understand a thunderbolt as an impregnating or
fertilizing force? A vestigial remnant of this archaic theme is evident in the
legendary stories that grew up around Alexander the Great. In Plutarch's life
of Alexander the conniving Olympias, the Macedonian general's mother, is said to
have been visited by a thunderbolt on the eve of her wedding night. Quote, “The
night before the consummation of their marriage, she dreamed that there was a
crash of thunder, that her womb was struck by a thunderbolt, and that there
followed a blinding flash from which a great sheet of flame blazed up and
spread far and wide before it finally died away.” Strange as it must seem to modern
readers, analogous traditions will be found around the globe. The Norse thunder
god Thor, much like Zeus, was celebrated for his prodigious powers of fertility.
Thus it is that Thor's thunderbolt Mjolnir served as a fructifying talisman,
hence the famous passage in the Eddic poem, Thrym's Song, wherein it is stated,
quote, “Bring the hammer the bride to wed, place Mjolnir in the maiden's lap.”
As Hilda Davidson documented in her compendium of Norse lore, such ideas hark
back to ancient conceptions of the thunderbolt as an impregnor or
fecundator, survivors of which persist well into modern times. Thor himself was frequently invoked at
weddings, the gods thunderbolt forming a familiar accouterment of many a
bridegroom's attire. Quote, “In certain parts of Norway and Sweden, it continued
to be the custom for a bridegroom to bear an ax at the wedding long after
Thor was forgotten; the weapon was said to give him mastery, and also to ensure a fruitful union.”
It will be noted that Thor's thunderbolt was here conceptualized as an ax rather
than a hammer. Very similar ideas are attested in ancient Lithuanian where
Perkunas's thunderbolt axes were commonly regarded as agents promoting fertility.
Quote, “In Lithuania, the ax as a life-stimulating symbol, is laid under
the bed of a woman in labor; or the sill to be crossed by the newlywed couple...
During sowing, axes were thrown into the field.” End of quote. Here too, it is obvious that no farmer in
his right mind would ever view the fiery thunderbolt as a life-stimulating
talisman. Hence the profound puzzle presented by these widespread belief
systems. Analogous conceptions are found already in ancient India.
Witness the following hymn from the Rig Veda dedicated to the thunder god Parjanya.
Quote, “The winds blow forth; the lightning bolts fly. The plants shoot up; the sun
swells. Refreshment arises for all creation, when Parjanya aids the earth
with his semen... (Parjanya) come nearby with this thundering, pouring down the waters as
the lord, our father. Roar! Thunder! Set an embryo!” Here the thunder god is implored to
inseminate mother Earth and implant an embryo in her womb. Perhaps the earliest attested example of
this archetypal motif is to be found in Spell 148 from the Egyptian Coffin Texts,
circa 2000 BC. There it is reported that a thunderbolt or meteor fell from
heaven and impregnated Isis. The fall of the thunderbolt resulted in Horus being
implanted within its mother's womb. Quote, ”Isis wakes pregnant with the seed of her
brother Osiris.” End of quote. I.e., Horus himself, the soon to be king of the gods.
To return to the question posed at the outset of this inquiry, how is it
possible to understand the ancient tradition of the thunderbolt as impregnor or fertilizing agent?
One can search the world's corpus of scholarly books devoted to ancient myth,
and never find even the first glimmerings of an answer to this question. Horace's identification with
the planet Mars provides the all- important clue. As I have documented
elsewhere, Mars is everywhere identified as a meteor-like object that fell from heaven.
The Babylonian God Nergal for example, expressly identified with the red planet,
was invoked as “miqit isatu”, denoting the ”fall of fire” from heaven. Equally telling is the fact that the
same phrase is employed to describe ”lightning” or “meteor.” Analogous conceptions were associated
with the planet Mars in the New World where the Skiddy Pawnee explicitly
likened the Morning Star to a falling meteor. Quote, “Now they sang of the origin
of the Morning Star itself that they thought had come from a meteor.” End of
quote. The same basic idea is evident in the Skiddy belief that, quote “The power
of the Morning Star is the fire- impelling stone.” We know the Skiddy Morning Star was explicitly
identified with the planet Mars. Granted that Mars was indeed conceptualized as a meteor-like
celestial body by indigenous peoples around the globe, how does this finding
help us understand the archaic and seemingly universal belief system,
whereby a thunderbolt meteor impregnated Venus, and thereby sparked creation?
According to the historical reconstruction offered here, the myth in
question encodes the close approach of the planet Mars to Venus during one of
the most spectacular phases of the polar configuration. Moving from outside the general vicinity
of Venus, the red planet seemed to fall like a meteor into the center of Venus.
In reality, Mars was then on an orbit between Venus and the Earth and appeared
like a tiny orb at Venus's belly. Looking up from Earth, Mars appeared to be
nestled within the body of Venus. As the red planet appeared to enter the
visual outlines of the much larger Venus, it was conceptualized as impregnating it.
Or alternatively as implanting an embryo within the mother goddess's womb. Hence
we would understand the Egyptian tradition of a heaven-sent thunderbolt
impregnating Isis-Venus. The Vedic tradition of the thunder god Parjanya
implanting an embryo in the belly of the mother goddess, finds a similar
explanation. So too we would understand the mythological role of Thor's
thunderbolt as fertilizing force or as located within the mother goddess's
belly. Such traditions encode the extraordinary conjunction of Mars and
Venus, the sacred marriage that sparked creation. It goes without saying that the
planetary scenario outlined by Dave Talbott and myself requires that Mars
formally appeared in front of Venus, an impossibility in the present sky,
whereupon the red planet always moves on an outer orbit far removed from Venus.
Yet, as we have emphasized again and again throughout this series of videos, it is the so-called “impossible
situations” that are the key to discovery, as they would never occur to terrestrial
sky watchers around the globe, without the stimulus provided by the natural events reconstructed here.
And the fact that Mars's placement within Venus is impossible given the
current arrangement of the solar system, actually serves to make the
reconstructed planetary configuration the decisive test case in evaluating the
predictive power of the present historical reconstruction against that
postulated by orthodox science. We rest our case, confident that our
understanding of recent Earth history will be vindicated in the coming decades.
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