Gemini, Canis Minor and the Hairy Twin

Here's a post from Urban Astronomer showing the beautiful constellation of Gemini (the Twins) as it dominates the western sky after sundown.

Gemini follows Taurus in the zodiac and is located above and to the left of Orion in the northern hemisphere. The diagram above shows a photograph of the constellation, with lines connecting the stars using the method created by H.A. Rey (discussed in this previous post). In the same photograph of the heavens, the upper stars of the constellation Orion and the edge of the constellation Taurus can be seen, and they are marked and labeled as well.

Also shown and labeled is the constellation Canis Minor (the Little Dog), which is very close to Gemini and associated with them in ancient mythology in a way similar to the association of Canis Major and Orion. Like Canis Major, which contains the brilliant and mythologically important star Sirius (one of the most mythologically important stars in the sky), Canis Minor also contains an important star, Procyon (a name which means "before the dog," which H.A. Rey tells us is because it rises about forty minutes before Sirius, the Dog Star)(44). In the diagram above, the names of important stars are shown in smaller type than the names of the constellations.

Gemini is currently far to the west as the sky turns dark, meaning that it has been making its way across the sky during daylight hours. When the sun goes down, Gemini is far to the west and will be setting soon as well. At latitude 35^o north, Gemini's brightest star Pollux (shown in the diagram) rises at 8:18 in the morning on June 6 (after the sun has already come up, so Pollux cannot be seen) and reaches its highest point (known as transit) at 3:49 in the afternoon (when it is again still invisible due to the daylight), and then sets at 11:19 pm. Each day, it will rise and set four minutes earlier due to the progress of earth around the sun (as discussed in this previous post), so that soon Gemini will rise and set entirely during hours in which it is obscured by the sun.

The nearby constellation Canis Minor has only two stars, but both are bright and easy to recognize. The brighter of the two is Procyon, one of the ten brightest stars in our sky. On June 6 at latitude 35^o north, Procyon rises at 9:26 am and transits at 3:43 pm (both during daylight hours), and sets at 9:59 pm.

Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend have a fascinating discussion of the importance of the Little Dog and the Twins in Appendix 28 of Hamlet's Mill. They note that in mythology, "the hairy partner of the Twins, the 'Dog,' is the prototype of the older one who is cheated out of his primogeniture in various ways" (405).

There are many legends in which there are two heroes who are twins of one another, and one twin is hairy and very much a wild-man or child of nature. The most obvious of these pairs may be Gilgamesh and Enkidu, treated at some length in the Mathisen Corollary and also mentioned in the first hour of the recent Red Ice Radio interview about the book. Enkidu is a wild-man, described in the first tablet of the Gilgamesh series this way (in the online edition of the translation by Maureen Gallery Kovacs):

His whole body was shaggy with hair,
he had a full head of hair like a woman,
his locks billowed in profusion like Ashnan.
He knew neither people nor settled living,
but wore a garment like Sumukan.
He ate grasses with the gazelles,
and jostled at the watering hole with the animals;
as with animals, his thirst was slaked with (mere) water.

These characteristics of Enkidu are important, especially since there are other legends in which one of two twins is described as being covered with hair. De Santillana and von Dechend mention Jacob and Esau from the Hebrew Scriptures: Esau the elder is described as being "red, all over like an hairy garment" in Genesis 25:25, and when Jacob tricks Isaac into giving him the blessing instead of Esau, we are told that his mother Rebekah "put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands and upon the smooth of his neck" so that when Isaac felt Jacob's hands, "his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau's hands" (Genesis 27:16 and 27:23).

De Santillana and von Dechend also point out that in the second-oldest text of classical Japan, the Nihongi (also known as the Nihon Shoki) there is a similar set of twins, Hono-susori no-Mikoto (the elder) and Hiho-nonodemi no-Mikoto (the younger). In the account, the older brother serves the younger brother, and bespatters his body with red clay -- an interesting parallel to the account of Jacob and Esau. Also in the account, the younger brother is given two brilliant jewels by his father-in-law, with which he could control the tides of the seas as well as his wild elder brother. Is it possible that these two jewels are related to the two bright stars of Canis Minor?

It is remarkable to find such connections between the ancient accounts from the region of Sumer, Babylon, and Israel and those in Japan. Of course, because the Nihongi is believed to have been written in the year AD 720 (an interesting precessional number, although possibly this is a coincidence), it could be argued that the authors were somehow influenced by the Old Testament account (although not by the Gilgamesh Epic, since the tablets containing the Gilgamesh series had not yet been rediscovered in the ancient library of Asshurbanipal, or the cunieform writing on them deciphered by modern scholars). It is more likely that there was ancient contact that is not included in current historical paradigms.

Even more difficult to explain are connections with legends from the native peoples of the American continents. De Santillana and von Dechend find a dramatic connection here as well, in the legends of the Cherokee, where once again there is a set of twins, one of whom is a wild-man or child of nature like Enkidu. In the 1900 text by James Mooney entitled Myths of the Cherokee: from the nineteenth annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897-98, we find the story of the son of Kana'tï and Selu (in chapter 3). These legends were collected from elders among the Cherokee in the nineteenth century; the elder telling this particular story prefaced it by saying, "When I was a boy, this is what the old men told me they had heard when they were boys" (242).

The account that he heard went like this:

Long years ago, soon after the world was made, a hunter and his wife lived at Pilot knob with their only child, a little boy. The father's name was Kana'tï (The Lucky Hunter), and his wife was called Selu (Corn). No matter when Kana'tï went into the wood, he never failed to bring back a load of game, which his wife. would cut up and prepare, washing off the blood from the meat in the river near the house. The little boy used to play down by the river every day, and one morning the old people thought they heard laughing and talking in the bushes as though there were two children there. When the boy came home at night his parents asked him who had been playing with him all day. "He comes out of the water," said the boy, "and he calls himself my elder brother. He says his mother was cruel to him and threw him into the river." Then they knew that the strange boy had sprung from the blood of the game which Selu had washed off at the river's edge.

The parallels to the account of Gilgamesh and Enkidu are striking. Striking too are the parallels to the other accounts we have seen. For example,the account of the twins in the Nihongi, which also places the tale of the two brothers near the beginning of the world, and there are connections between the elder brother and the sea as well. Note that in all the accounts extraordinary skill in hunting plays a role (remember that in the Biblical account, Esau was "a cunning hunter, and a man of the field" (Genesis 25:27).

Note also the connection to the color red -- in the Cherokee account the wild twin sprang from the blood of the animals cleaned in the river, while in the Biblical account Esau is described as being red and hairy and in the Japanese account the elder brother covers himself in red clay.

Even more significant, in the Cherokee account the son of Kana'tï challenges his new companion to a wrestling match and will not let him go until his parents come and bring him home to try to tame him (echoes of both Jacob and Gilgamesh and Enkidu).

How can the conventional historical framework account for these stunning connections across disparate cultures in very remote locations? They are forced to argue that such legends simply grew up independently of one another, perhaps influenced by similar interpretations of the same celestial phenomenon, or else to fall back upon something like Jung's "collective unconscious." But it is very hard to explain how different cultures would all settle on the idea that the two stars next to Gemini resemble a hairy dog, or account for such peculiar details as the presence of the color red. The idea of the collective unconscious has similar difficulties -- especially since there is other (physical) evidence of ancient contact that cannot be explained by the collective unconscious the way that parallels in mythology might be (such as stone inscriptions, and even physical remains such as discussed here, here, and here).

De Santillana and von Dechend correctly observe that the mythological complex of the "Dog Twin" is vast, with important echoes in Ancient Egypt (where the Jackal was known as "the eldest" and associated with the title of Upuaut, "the opener of the way"). They state that it is a topic "of such a size and weight that it cannot be attacked here" and drop the subject, much to their readers' dismay!

However, it is clear that the constellations Gemini and Canis Minor have important connotations that span cultures that conventional history says were never in contact with one another. The common elements of the accounts of the hairy twin provide important additional supporting arguments for a theory of ancient trans-oceanic contact.

Try to take the time to observe the impressive spectacle of Gemini and Canis Minor, along with the waxing crescent of the moon, in the western night sky in the hours after sunset the next few days. When you do, think about these fascinating connections to the accounts left to us from ancient peoples about whom we still know very little.

More evidence of recent dinosaur activity

In the previous post, we put forward some arguments backed with evidence that the layered strata found around the world and used by defenders of the conventional paradigm to back their theories may have been deposited rapidly rather than over the course of hundreds of millions of years.

If this theory is correct, it would undermine the widely-held belief that the giant reptiles whose fossils were first called "dinosaurs" in the 1800s must necessarily have perished at least 60 million years ago. As we noted in the previous post, the coelacanth was previously assumed to have lived between 400 million and 70 million years ago, and to have become extinct at the end of the so-called "Upper Cretaceous" period (66 million years ago) -- that is, until living coelacanths were discovered in ordinary modern settings.

We have also noted that soft tissues in recently-discovered Tyrannosaurus legbones are causing conventional theorists to rethink their paradigm. Unfortunately, they do not seem to be rethinking the paradigm that the strata that held the leg-bones can be confidently dated to 68 million years ago, but rather their previous assumptions that soft tissues such as red blood cells cannot survive for more than thousands of years (and certainly not millions of years).

We cannot help but point out that artifacts discovered in the Americas, where civilizations remained largely undisturbed by the aggressive Roman Empire and its descendants for many centuries, seem to depict examples of creatures that we would easily identify as dinosaurs. Some of these artifacts depicting strange creatures were apparently noticed by the European intruders who began interacting with the civilizations of the Americas in the 1500s -- long before fossils found in England began to be associated with ancient giant reptiles in the 1820s, or the term "dinosaur" was coined in the 1840s.

Some of the more infamous of these alleged artifacts include the Ica Stones of Peru and the Acambaro figurines of Mexico. These finds have been dismissed as hoaxes, and I am not personally prepared to "fall on my sword" (as we used to say in the Army) to declare their authenticity. However, we have already noted the very common tendency of the defenders of the conventional paradigm to dismiss any anomalous evidence as a hoax (see here and here), which may be warranted when there are only one or two outlying data points but which becomes a little hard to accept when it is resorted to over and over and over again.

Finally, note the photograph above, which appears to indicate that T. Rex was fond of surfboards (whether certain shapes or colors of board were particularly attractive is not yet known). This would appear to be conclusive evidence that current theories need to be reworked. It also suggests that one should always check the area for signs of any Tyrannosaurs prior to a session (I always do).

The Strata and the Great Flood

The previous blog post cited an ancient Hindu text that correctly recorded the fact that the Vale of Kashmir was once a large lake or inland sea, as well as the fact that this inland sea housed a monster that ate people. The authors of the text either knew or correctly guessed that the Kashmir Valley had once held water, long before science confirmed the fact.

To even mention the possibility that such a creature, as well as the more famous creatures alleged to dwell in the inland lakes in the mountainous regions of Scotland (the lochs), could be descendents of ancient marine reptiles trapped inside large bodies of water is of course to invite scoffers and ridicule, but let's ask why such a possibility should invite ridicule. It invites ridicule not because nobody believes that enormous ancient reptiles ever existed: their existence in the past is fairly widely accepted. It invites ridicule because the last of the enormous ancient reptiles are assumed to have perished around 66 million years ago. Let's have a look at the foundation of this assumption.

The foundation of the assumption that this or that species became extinct x-number of million years ago rests upon the bedrock uniformitarian principle of the geologic column, or the stratigraphic column (or the science of "stratigraphy"). Stratigraphy is the process of naming the different layers of generally sedimentary material found around the world, and giving those layers dates based on a certain model of earth's ancient past.

The process of naming and dating these layers took place during the early 1800s, and continued through the rest of the nineteenth century. The model that is taught today has changed somewhat since then, and a few of the older names have been discarded and replaced with newer ones, but the major divisions and naming convention remains fairly consistent and should be at least casually familiar to most readers. It begins with the Pre-Cambrian period (supposedly stretching from 4.6 billion years ago all the way up to 542 million years ago) and proceeds as follows:

• Cambrian period (542 million years ago to 488 million years ago)
• Ordovician period (488 million years ago to 443 million years ago)
• Silurian period (443 million years ago to 416 million years ago)
• Devonian period (416 million years ago to 359 million years ago)
• Carboniferous period (359 million years ago to 299 million years ago)
• Permian period (299 million years ago to 251 million years ago)
• Triassic period (251 million years ago to 200 million years ago)
• Jurassic period (200 million years ago to 146 million years ago)
• Cretaceous period (146 million years ago to 66 million years ago)
• Cenozoic period (66 million years ago to present; formerly known as the Tertiary period with other subdivisions, it is now divided into other subdivisions such as the Paeogene and Neogene).

Many of these names come from localities in Europe, especially in England and the British Isles, where the first uniformitarians were active in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Strata corresponding to all of these periods are found nowhere in one place, but geologists identify the layers found in different places with various periods in this "geologic column." For example, the diagram at top shows a cutaway of the beautiful layering in the Grand Canyon, and is marked with numbers and letters to correspond to the named layers, which are as follows (from bottom to top):

• 1a and 1b Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite (1.8 billion to 1.7 billion years ago -- Pre-Cambrian)
• unlabeled striped layers above 1a and below 3a Grand Canyon Supergroup (1.2 billion to 740 million years ago -- also Pre-Cambrian)
• 3a Tapeats Sandstone (in the Tonto Group, 525 to 505 million years ago -- Cambrian)
• 3b Bright Angel Shale (also in the Tonto Group, see above)
• 3c Muav Limestone (also in the Tonto Group, see above)
• 4a Temple Butte Limestone (385 million years ago -- Devonian)
• 4b Redwall Limestone (340 million years ago -- Carboniferous)
• 4c Surprise Canyon Formation (320 million years ago -- also Carboniferous)
• 5a through 5d Supai Group (315 to 285 million years ago -- Carboniferous and Permian)
• 6a Hermit Shale (280 million years ago -- Permian)
• 6b Coconino Sandstone (275 million years ago -- also Permian)
• 6c Toroweap Formation (273 million years ago -- also Permian)
• 6d Kaibab Limestone (270 million years ago -- also Permian)

However, all these dates are based upon theoretical models, which themselves are built largely upon the assumed ages of various fossils found within certain layers in certain places in the world. We have already seen that some of these ages are highly questionable, as evidenced by the recent findings of dinosaur bones supposedly 68 million years old but still containing soft tissues including red blood cells.

Another famous piece of evidence is the discovery in 1938 of the first modern coelacanth, a supposedly ancient fish whose fossils are found in strata dated to 70 million years ago (the Cretaceous period)(Brown 29). Since then, hundreds have been caught -- a casual search of the internet will reveal numerous photographs of smiling fishermen holding them. The image below shows a modern coelacanth on display in the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, a wonderful museum which I loved to visit as a child but which has now been entirely remodeled and absorbed into the California Academy of Sciences at a new location.




















Presumably, prior to 1938, if an analyst were to suggest that a Hindu legend was referring to a living coelacanth trapped in a lake during human memory, he would be laughed out of the room, because the presence of coelacanth fossils in Cretaceous layers (the same period in which Triceratops and Tyrannousaurus Rex fossils are found) which are declared to be 70 million years old means that they were ancient creatures. The fact that the coelacanths of today show no evolutionary change over a span of time that scientists declare was sufficient for dinosaurs to evolve into chickens poses yet another problem for the conventional paradigm.

The fact is that the conventional explanation for the origin and dating of the sedimentary layers of the geologic column is flawed. If it were an investment thesis for a stock in which you were going to invest a million dollars, and as many red flags as have already been mentioned above popped up during your due diligence, you would have to question whether you really wanted to commit a million dollars to that investment. And yet the conventional model of stratigraphy underlies almost all of modern geology and modern Darwinian theory.

As you might expect if you have been reading this blog for any period of time, the hydroplate theory of Walt Brown provides an alternative explanation for the origin of the strata, and one which is supported by the principles of physics. As we have mentioned before, the existence of fossils at all argues for unusual events that are not seen in normal conditions -- events such as rapid burial under some sort of sealant, such as saturated mud or soil, to prevent decomposition by scavengers and ultimately by bacteria (which eventually decomposes even bone).

Such conditions would have been present if the events suggested in the hydroplate theory took place -- the violent eruption of high-pressure water from beneath the crust would have eroded thousands of tons of sediments as it escaped, and this material would have covered the earth in the flood that followed. Dr. Brown explains that during the flood, a process known as liquefaction would have sorted the sediments into layers, leaving the record that we see around the world today.

Liquefaction refers to the process in which water rises through sediment particles due to a change in pressure. It can be caused by wave action in the ocean, as well as by earthquakes. Dr. Brown uses the example of a box full of rocks, so full that you cannot quite put the lid on it. If you shake the box, the rocks will settle into a denser arrangement, allowing you to close the lid. If the box were filled with water and shaken, the rocks would still settle and fall towards the bottom of the box, but as they fell, the water below them would have to get out of the way, and it would flow upwards. At the uppermost layers, the upward pressure of the water would be strong enough to float the rocks at the top that aren't heavy enough to counter the upward flow.

This process is seen in earthquakes, during which liquefaction can cause solid ground to become mush and buildings to fall over (see for example this YouTube video in which a burnt-orange model building falls over due to liquefaction, to the satisfaction of Texas Aggies everywhere). It was also evident during the recent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which piles of mush forced up to the surface by liquefaction littered streets and yards throughout the area. For a more frightening look at the action of liquefaction, see the YouTube video below taken during some of the powerful earthquakes that have been shaking Japan since the March 11 earthquake.

note: since publication of this post, that excellent video has been removed from YouTube for some reason. Here is a different one which contains some of the same footage.

In the ocean floor, liquefaction takes place due to wave action, as waves and then troughs pass over the sand particles beneath. Dr. Brown explains how liquefaction would have sorted the tons of sediments underneath the waters during a global flood event:

Water flowing up through a bed of sediments with enough velocity will lift and support each sedimentary particle with water pressure. Rather than thinking of water flowing up through the sediments, think of the sediments falling down through a very long column of water. Slight differences in density, size, or shape of adjacent particles will cause them to fall at slightly different speeds. Their relative positions will change until the water's velocity drops below a certain value or until nearly identical particles are adjacent to each other so they fall at the same speed. This sorting produces the layering so typical in sedimentary rocks. 141 (emphasis in original).

There is extensive geological evidence that this is what took place to create the layers we see today. Dr. Brown also explains how the same hydrodynamic forces would tend to sort fossils as well.

Obviously, the origin of layers is incredibly important to the conclusions one draws about virtually everything in geology. If the layers were created rapidly in a catastrophic flood, this fact undermines all kinds of assertions that are confidently handed out in textbooks, movies, and in displays at national parks.

We have already seen that there are good reasons to believe that the Grand Canyon itself was created rapidly as a result of catastrophic events. There are valid reasons to question whether the layers found in the Grand Canyon and elsewhere around the world were not created as a result of the same global event.

Kashmir

It is said that all four members of Led Zeppelin agreed that "Kashmir" (1975) is perhaps the band's definitive work of art. It can be heard (among other places on the internet) here.

The Vale of Kashmir lies in the high mountainous region between India and Pakistan, surrounded by towering peaks many of which exceed 17,000 feet. The valley floor is above 5,000 feet in elevation and averages around 5,400 above sea level. This storied region provides a window into the connection between geology and mythology.

As Walt Brown notes in the 7th edition of his book on the hydroplate theory, the Hindu Nilamata Purana (probably composed between AD 550 and AD 700) describes the Valley of Kashmir as once containing an enormous lake. The Purana goes on to say that a demon-child or water serpent named Jalodbhava ("Born of Water") inhabited this lake, depopulating the villages near the water because he was an "eater of human flesh" (verses 141 through 144; see this translation by Dr. Ved Kumari).

The Nilamata tells the account of the gods who went to subdue this water demon and give relief to the people:

Hearing the sound of the retinue of the gods, the evil-minded demon, knowing himself to be imperishable in the water, did not come out. Having come to know that he would not come out [. . .] the pious-minded god Janardana, with a view to kill the demon, said to Ananta: "Breaking forth Himalaya today with the plow, make soon this lake devoid of water." Then Ananta, resembling a mountain and possessed of a lustre equal to that of the full moon [. . .] broke forth Himalaya, the best of the mountains on earth, with plow. When the king of the best mountains had been broken, the water flowed forth hurriedly with force, terrifying all the beings with its violent rush and sound and overflowing the tops of the mountains with curved waves like Himalaya touching the sky. When the water of the lake was disappearing, Water-born practised magic. He created darkness all around. O hero among men, the world became quite invisible. Then the god Siva held the sun and the moon in his two hands. In the twinkling of the eye, the world was brought to light and all the darkness was destroyed. When the darkness had vanished, unfathomable Hari, assuming another body with the power of Yoga, fought with the demon and witnessed that fight through a different body. There was a terrible fight between Visnu and the demon, with trees and peaks of mountains. [. . .] [Hari] cut off, forcibly, the head of the demon and then Brahma obtained gratification. 168 - 180.

Dr. Brown notes that geologists now confirm that the Vale of Kashmir did in fact once hold an enormous lake, and asks, "Was this just a lucky guess by the ancient writers of the Nilamata Purana myth? Did they understand geology and create a story to fit the evidence? They would have needed a microscope to see some of the evidence" (110).

Note that the legend describes the water leaving the lake all at once, in a violent breaching event which created a terrifying rush of water with mountainous waves. That such an event could have taken place, and within human memory, is consistent with the hydroplate theory, which argues that in the events after the flood many great inland lakes were trapped as the continents buckled and thickened, and that afterwards some lakes dried up (leaving wide salt flats, such as those around the Great Salt Lake) while others filled and breached violently (see here and here for further discussion).

Dr. Brown notes that the Jhelum River, visible in the NASA photograph above and outlined in the image below, may have been the path that the water escaped from the Kashmir Valley (the Jhelum flows between the two white lines added to the picture).


























Of course, critics of the hydroplate theory might argue that the Vale of Kashmir could have been filled up with water during human memory as a result of the Ice Age and the melting of some of the glacial water, which may have later breached. However, Dr. Brown counters that at such high and cold elevations "snow or glaciers might accumulate, but rarely a large lake, because at high elevations, evaporation rates are higher and precipitation rates are generally lower" (110). This is similar to the problem conventional theories have in explaining where all the snow and ice came from that blankets Antarctica and the northern islands of Greenland and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, where levels of precipitation today are lower than in the Sahara Desert.

Further, assuming that the legends are correct about the presence of a man-eating reptile in the lake that terrorized the villages along the shore, how would a theory of glacial melt account for such a creature? Was it frozen in a glacier and then did it thaw out and wake up once the glacier melted and deposited it in the Vale? Of course, it is possible that the creature described in the Purana is purely mythical, but it is also possible that the buckling and lifting that created inland seas at the end of the flood trapped large marine creatures in places such as the lochs of Scotland and the ancient lake in the Vale of Kashmir. There is not enough evidence at this time to make such an assertion dogmatically, but if definitive evidence of such creatures is ever discovered in the future, it would not be impossible to explain.

Additionally, note that a human legend of such an inland lake and a violent breaching event adds credence to the possibility that the Grand Canyon was carved during human memory as well, and in fact Dr. Brown cites a Navajo legend that appears to suggest that humans were around to witness that event as well.

Finally, in light of the terrible violence that now mars this beautiful valley in the high mountains, we must note that the Kashmir region provides yet another window onto the theme of a lost ancient civilization that was forgotten in the ensuing centuries of ignorance and barbarism. We suggested in this recent post that the human tendency to blame and hate other groups (whether "other" because of skin color, religion, social class or earlobe length) is a leading candidate for the explanation of what causes civilizations to descend into barbarism. This tendency is by no means a thing of ancient history alone, but is alive and well in the teachings of grievance mongers actively gnawing at the foundations of civilization around the world today.

Welcome to new visitors from Red Ice Radio!

Welcome, Red Ice Radio listeners!

Author David Warner Mathisen recently appeared on Red Ice Creations for a special three-hour interview with host Henrik Palmgren. For those of you who heard the show and came by to check out the Mathisen Corollary blog, welcome and we hope you enjoyed the interview!

We trust that you will enjoy the discussions here, and come back often for more! Also, feel free to visit the Mathisen Corollary Facebook page where you can correspond with the author and find out what's new.

For those who have not visited Red Ice before, the interviews can be found here:

Hour One

Hours Two and Three

Red Ice Radio is entirely commercial-free. Visitors to the site can always listen to the first hour of any interview from the current year for free. Red Ice members can listen to archives of any show stretching back over five years, as well as the second hour of all shows. Subscriptions cost €15 for three months (and renew automatically unless cancelled).

If you are just visiting the Mathisen Corollary blog for the first time, there is a lot to explore. We suggest that a good place to start might be the post below, which goes over some of the mechanics of precession using the annual motion of the constellation Orion, and discusses the fascinating connection between Orion and the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet, as well as the link to Earendil of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (click image of Orion below):

Ancient volcanic activity in the Mojave Desert

The US Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin sits in the middle of the Mojave Desert in the southeastern corner of California, where temperatures can exceed 110^o Fahrenheit in the summer and drop below 15^o Fahrenheit in the winter, with fierce winds, little rainfall or water, and little vegetation.

Deep wadis cut through the desert floor, deep enough to swallow an armored vehicle, and vast dry lakes stretch for miles underneath the steep sides of brown, treeless mountains.

Since the 1970s, the NTC has been the premiere training area for the US Army, where huge force-on-force training battles take place across the severe, unworldly terrain. Nearly every contour line and terrain feature in the vast training area has a colorful nickname for ease of reference among the soldiers who participate in these intense military exercises, each of them loaded with ominous implications and memories of past defeats and victories from the hotly-contested maneuvers that stretch back through the years.

Many of the names are descriptive of the incredibly varied terrain, while others clearly refer to military aspects of the area in question. Some of them include the Valley of Death (or the "VOD" for short), Siberia, the Washboard, the Chili Bowl, the Iron Triangle, the Furlong, the Peanut, the Wormhole, the Goat-Trail, the Khyber Pass, and the Racetrack.

Like the rest of the Mojave Desert, there is clear indication of ancient volcanic activity, and many of the most imposing terrain features bear witness to the powerful forces of volcanism. The map segment above shows a familiar section of the NTC for those who have trained there, dominated by a huge dark glowering massif known as "The Whale" (small black arrow points to this terrain feature). Note that in this topographic map, each square represents a kilometer, which gives some indication of the size of the Whale (over four kilometers in length), and each contour line indicates twenty meters in elevation.

The Whale sits in the center of an enormous ancient crater, broad and shallow and ringed by cliffs, a fact which can be perceived by looking at the expanding concentric rings of the contour lines that encircle the Whale in the map above. The Whale itself is a huge volcanic extrusion of solidified magma that must have oozed out after the crater itself was formed. Perhaps the area was under water when this took place.

According to the hydroplate theory of Walt Brown, the immense friction produced by the sliding of the continental plates after the initial rupture event during the flood created the magma underneath the surface which escaped to the earth's surface through cracks and faults, producing volcanic activity. Such friction would have been particularly intense along the leading edge of North America as it slid away from the breach that is today marked by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, creating the numerous volcanic terrain features that mark the Mojave Desert and other parts of Southern California.

Dr. Brown also explains why other theories have some difficulty explaining all the aspects of magma and volcanoes:

A key fact to remember is that at depths greater than 5 miles, pressures are so great that all empty channels through which magma might rise should be squeezed shut. Even if a crack could open, the magma must rise through colder rock. unless this happened quite rapidly, magma would cool, solidify, and plug up the crack. Also, heat diffuses. So what concentratedenough heat to create the "hot pockets" and melt the vast volumes of rock that erupted in the past? 93-94.

The National Training Center's stark beauty cannot fail to make a lasting impression on those who spend any amount of time there, like the rest of the Mojave itself. I vividly remember riding across its vast open spaces in the turret hatch of my Bradley, part of a long columns of armored vehicles winding their way down from the windswept mountains and seeing the huge Central Corridor stretching away into the distance below me, or driving for hours across the valley floor at night in the eery green light of the night vision goggles. While the harshness of the desert and the grueling pace of the training inspired one soldier to scrawl graffiti declaring "The NTC is the Devil's ashtray," it is also home to the occasional desert flower and the plodding desert tortoise, and vistas that are perhaps unparalleled anywhere else on earth.

In addition to all that, the scars of its ancient volcanic history provide an important clue to the forces that once shaped the earth.

How earth's path around the sun is connected to surfing

The previous post discussed the connection between the motion of the earth around the sun and the ancient double spiral symbol.

We saw that the tilt of the earth's axis (the obliquity of the ecliptic) causes the sun's path to cross back and forth above and below the celestial equator throughout the year, and also that the eccentricity of earth's orbit around the sun causes the earth to move faster as it approaches perihelion each year, a fact largely responsible for the analemma or figure-eight pattern the sun will trace out in the sky if viewed at the same time on successive days for an entire year.

The perihelion is the point on earth's elliptical orbit where the earth comes closest to the sun, so-called because it is derived from the Greek peri- meaning "around" and Helios, the sun or the sun god (a "perimeter" is the meter or "measurement" around something, and the "pericardium" is the sac that is around the kardia or heart). The point of perihelion is opposed by the aphelion, or furthest point in earth's orbit from the sun.

This brilliant animated video from the excellent analemma explanation site of Bob Urschel of Indiana illustrates visually the reason that the earth travels faster as it approaches perihelion and slows down as it approaches aphelion, as opposed to the steady rate of orbit that would occur if the earth followed a perfectly circular path.

In the video, a green earth on a circular orbit is contrasted with a blue earth on an elliptical orbit, and the point of perihelion is placed at the bottom of the screen, so that the earth on the elliptical orbit speeds up as it falls "down" towards perihelion and then slows as it "rises" towards aphelion, only to begin to accelerate again as it passes aphelion and begins to fall again towards the sun and the bottom of the diagram. In reality, this is very much what is actually taking place. We think of the bottom of the diagram as being "down," because the earth's gravity pulls us downward towards it at all times, but in earth's orbit "down" is towards the sun, whose gravity pulls earth towards it, so that what is "down" in the diagram is actually "down" towards the sun and the point of perihelion, where earth travels fastest before it slingshots around the sun and begins to rise up again.

For the earth, perihelion occurs roughly fourteen days after winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, illustrating that winter is not caused by the earth being further from the sun (since perihelion is where earth is actually closest to the sun) but rather by the fact that the axis of that hemisphere is pointed away from the sun, creating shorter days with less direct sunlight and a lower path of the sun across the sky than during summer.

When I watched this video of earth's motion around the sun each year, I was struck by the parallel to the motion of surfing. The video at top shows the great Shaun Tomson surfing at Jeffreys Bay, South Africa. Notice that he initially plunges towards the bottom of the wave (perihelion) where he executes a bottom turn and then carves back up the face of the wave towards the lip (aphelion), where he then turns again downwards to pick up speed again.

Now watch this animated video from the same analemma site that shows the sun's motion across the celestial equator as seen from earth, while keeping in mind the motion of Shaun Tomson going up and down along the wave at J-Bay. Watching it, you can understand why the ancients came up with metaphors to encode in their myths such as the serpent that winds all the way around the earth (Midgard's Serpent), but you can also see that they could have equally well selected the metaphor of surfing along a very long right such as the kind found at Jeffreys.

The mysterious connections between the rhythms of the celestial motion and the act of surfing have not been sufficiently explored yet, but there is definitely something going on here that is worth investigating further. For other musings on this topic, check out this previous post as well.

For a more detailed explanation of the concepts of the ecliptic, the celestial equator, and the passage of the ecliptic back and forth across the celestial equator throughout the year, check out the lengthy third chapter of the Mathisen Corollary, which is designed to make sure you never feel intimidated by those terms ever again but instead find them completely comfortable and understandable.