Moon, turn the tides . . . gently, gently away

Previous posts have discussed the moon's orbit around the earth and the cause of the different phases that we observe from our vantage point on earth's surface. We noted that the moon's tilted orbit versus the plane of the ecliptic gives rise to the two lunar nodes (where the moon's path crosses the ecliptic), which were included along with the visible planets and the sun and moon themselves to give the nine worlds found in many ancient cosmologies, including many shamanic cultures in which the shaman's tree by which the shaman ascends to the celestial realm may have nine branches.

The moon, of course, also creates the tides, very important to surfers and to the ancient navigators who traveled the earth's oceans alike. Above is an early animated film from pioneering American animation studio Bray Productions, which contains a very good explanation of the forces which cause the tides. Today's viewers may be slightly impatient at its slow pace, but be patient and enjoy it: it's really quite worthwhile. The fact that this is a silent movie means that it was probably made prior to 1928, when Walt Disney amazed and delighted audiences by adding coordinated sound to his animated clip Steamboat Willie. Bray Productions was founded in December, 1914 and began moving heavily into educational animated productions after World War I (when their successful training videos created great demand for more), so the film above may have been produced between 1918 and 1928.

As the film illustrates, the tidal bulge on one side of the earth is fairly easy to understand (being caused by the gravitational pull of the moon), but the tidal bulge on the other side of the earth is actually caused by the fact that the moon pulls earth as well, actually pulling the earth enough to create the bulge on the other side. The tides take place as the earth itself rotates underneath this enormous "standing wave," a wave so large that its two crests are separated by half of the circumference of the earth itself.

This is easier to conceptualize if we realize that the earth and moon actually form a pair which impact one another, rather than the moon simply orbiting a stationary earth that is not affected by its orbiting partner. The video at the beginning of this previous post (which discusses the theory that the sun is actually part of a very distant binary pair) contains good animation illustrating the motion of two bodies in a binary orbit. While earth's motion in space is of course primarily impacted by its path around the sun each year, the motion of the moon around the earth each month tugs on it slightly as well (just like two dancers or ice skaters who are spinning around one another joined by their hands; we could imagine the earth as a dancer which is going around the sun but which at the same time is spinning a smaller dancer around it in a circle, their outstretched arms grasping one anothers' hands representing gravity, and this motion creates a slight pull on the earth as it goes around its larger path). This pulling on the earth creates the tidal bulge opposite the moon.

The video also illustrates the cause of spring tides and neap tides. The gravitational pull of the sun creates a slight bulge in the ocean as well. When the moon and the sun are aligned, as in a new moon or a full moon, the bulge created by the sun is added to the bulge created by the moon, causing a much higher bulge and greater tidal variances. These are known as "spring tides" (not related to the season known as spring). When the moon and the sun are not aligned, the bulges are out of phase, reducing the difference between high tide and low tide. These are known as "neap tides" (a word originating in Old English).

The action of the tides is slightly more complicated than the description above and the video would indicate, however. For one thing, we might ask why the moon is more important in the tidal action than the sun. Willard Bascom (1916 - 2000), pioneering oceanographer and scientist and author of the excellent Waves and Beaches: the dynamics of the ocean surface (1964) as well as studies on Polynesian history, explains further:

It remained for Isaac Newton to discover the law of gravity, which holds that the gravitational attraction between two objects is directly proportional to the square of the distance between them. From this relationship it can be shown that the gravitational attraction of the sun for the earth is about one hundred and fifty times that of the moon. The tremendous mass of the sun more than makes up for its much greater distance. But the moon is the primary cause of tides. Why?

The answer is that the difference in attraction for water particles at various places on the earth is far more important than total attraction. That is, because of the moon's very nearness (average only 239,000 miles) there is a big difference in the gravitational attraction from one side of the earth to the other.

The water on the side of the earth nearest the moon is some four thousand miles closer to the moon than the center of the earth; the water on the far side is four thousand miles farther away. The sun, however, is ninety-three million miles away, and a few thousand miles one way or the other make comparatively little difference. Thus, the sun's gravitational force, although far larger, does not change very much from one side of the earth to the other. So the moon is more important in producing tides. 84.

Mr. Bascom also explains that the fact that the moon is rotating around earth in the same direction that earth is turning causes the "tidal day" to be slightly longer than twenty-four hours (by about fifty minutes), because the moon's motion means that any point on earth must go slightly further than a full rotation in order to come underneath the moon again. He also explains that the friction of the earth as it rotates beneath the ocean pulls the ocean along, such that the tidal bulge is not aligned directly beneath the moon as it would be if earth's rough ocean basins were frictionless instead. Because of this friction, the tidal bulge is carried forward by the rotation of the earth and is slightly ahead of the moon; "in consequence a point on earth passes beneath the moon before high tide" (85-87). In other words, as earth rotates, the point on earth will pass the moon before it gets to the tidal bulge that the rotation of earth has carried to a point ahead of the moon that is causing it.

There are still more complications that impact the motions of the tides. Because the moon's orbit is elliptical rather than circular, the moon is closest to earth at one point (perigee) and farthest at another (apogee), which creates a change in distance that impacts the tides (a discussion of the impact of an elliptical orbit on earth's path around the sun is discussed in this previous post).

Mr. Bascom explains:

At perigee, the nearest point in its orbit, the moon is fifteen thousand miles closer; at apogee it is that much farther away. This change in distance (and therefore in the attractive force) causes tides that are, respectively, twenty percent higher and lower than average. Perigee is reached once an orbit (once a month) and only rarely does this coincide with the in-phase alignment of sun, earth, and moon. But at least twice a year both effects exist at the same time -- that is, a full moon or a new moon exists at perigee. Then the perigee tides add to the spring tides to produce the highest tides of the year. 88

Mr. Bascom also explains that, while most points on earth experience two tides a day, there are a few places which only have one high and one low a day. The reason for this is that the moon's orbit takes it to points where it is "in the tropics" -- pulling the tidal bulges to an inclination that runs across the equator, such that one bulge is more pronounced in the northern hemisphere and the other bulge (on the other side of the earth) is more pronounced in the southern hemisphere, on the other side of the equator. The diagram below will help one visualize why this would happen. This phenomenon explains why one high tide is usually much higher than the other at any point on earth, and why in some extreme locations there will only be one high tide per day.


















Mr. Bascom's excellent book discusses much more than tides, and is highly recommended for everyone interested in waves, beaches and the ocean. For more about Mr. Bascom, you can check out a 1966 article in Life magazine about him on the web here (the article, "Trailbreaker of the Deeps," begins on page 108 of that online magazine; there is a table of contents on the left-hand side of the magazine which contains a link that will take you to the beginning of the article).

I myself learned about Willard Bascom from the pioneering surfboard shaper "Bob Smith," who has a blog here. His book on surfboard shaping, The Basics of Surfboard Design, is an excellent resource for surfers and shapers, and it gives due credit to the wonderful wave analysis of Willard Bascom.

Below is a video of the classic Jimi Hendrix song "Moon, turn the tides . . . gently, gently away," from his album Electric Ladyland (1968). Note that the lyrics, which do not come in until near the end of the song, include, "I can hear Atlantis, full of cheer . . ."

The case of the Micmac hieroglyphs: a powerful blow to isolationist theories

Written languages among Native American peoples were very rare. A notable exception, however, was the written language of the Micmac people (commonly spelled Mi'kmaq today, with the sound "mi" representing the definite article in their language, and the word Mi'kmaq indicating "The Family" or "The People," according to some sources).

The Micmac written language, which contains remarkable similarities to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, was preserved in extensive records by a French missionary named Pierre Maillard (1710 - 1762). The fact that many symbols in this writing system resemble so strongly the sacred hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt causes proponents of the isolationist hegemony varying levels of discomfort, frustration, and defensiveness, which usually manifests itself in the form of scornful criticism of anyone who suggests there may have been some ancient connection between citizens of ancient Old World civilizations and the Indians of the Americas.

If the Micmac script were the only isolated data point suggesting ancient contact across the great oceans, then such skepticism would perhaps be warranted. However, as we have seen with just a few of the many possible examples we have outlined on this blog, there is extensive other evidence which should make those who deny the possibility of ancient cultural contact realize that they are actually the ones who are on shaky ground (see for example here and here).

We have demonstrated that mankind appears to have possessed advanced scientific knowledge at an incredibly early date -- for instance, the design of Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza indicate knowledge of the size and shape of the earth, as well as of mathematical concepts such as pi and phi and the subtle astronomical phenomenon of precession. It is not surprising to find that civilizations which understood such concepts could sail across the oceans (or, perhaps the converse, that civilizations which could sail across the oceans knew the size and shape of the earth, etc).

Numerous researchers have proposed that the ancient Phoenicians, Chinese and Celts may all have had the capability and inclination to cross the Atlantic and the Pacific, and may have done so somewhat regularly. In Before Columbus, Dr. Samuel D. Marble has suggested that the Egyptians (with their superior knowledge of the stars and of the size and shape of the earth) may have joined with the Phoenicians (with their superior capabilities as shipbuilders and sailors) in a sort of happy marriage, "a partnership that benefited both people, and in this case that benefit was substantial" (119). If there were Egyptians present on Phoenician voyages of discovery and trade with the Americas, it is entirely possible that the hieroglyphs of the Micmac, who lived among the excellent sea-landings of Nova Scotia (see map below) were influenced by these ancient voyagers.



















Professor Barry Fell (1917 - 1994) published some persuasive side-by-side analyses of the Micmac writing system with that of the ancient Egyptians in his controversial 1976 work, America BC: Ancient Settlers in the New World. There, he illustrates the hieroglyphs recorded by the eighteenth-century missionary Father Maillard next to the hieroglyphs that he maintains would be the Egyptian counterparts to the same words. Some of these comparisons are reproduced on the web here (with the text translated into Italian, but the Micmac and Egyptian comparisons still apparent to readers of any tongue).

On page 3 of that web document, the text for Psalm 116 (Non nobis domine) is reproduced from the Micmac writing recorded by Father Maillard, along with Barry Fell's suggested Egyptian hieroglyphs for the same words. This line-by-line comparison can be found in America BC on page 254.

Later, on page 5 of the web document, another image from Fell is reproduced, showing the similarities of Micmac and ancient hieroglyphs for various words or concepts. This page can be found in America BC on page 255.

Those who oppose the idea of the ability of ancient civilizations to sail the deep oceans argue that Father Maillard must have invented this language for the Micmac, in order to enable them to record the doctrines of Christianity. Why he would use ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs rather than the Latin alphabet is a bit of a problem for this theory; it is usually asserted that this writing system was introduced by the missionaries, or that they modified an existing system of writing and deliberately made it look Egyptian because Egyptian hieroglyphs were all the rage during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (although they would not be translated until the famous deciphering of the Rosetta Stone by Champollion in 1822.

Typical of the arguments of the detractors is this essay published on the web, which declares as its goal "to examine Fell's claims of discernable ancient Egyptian and other North African languages and scripts in foreign petroglyphs, markings, writings, and the like, and to show a pattern of poor scholarly standards." On that page, the skeptical author advances the thesis that "It's not unreasonable to conclude that the Mi'kmaq - Recollet writing system is often called 'hieroglyphic' because Le Clerq [another French missionary who preceded Maillard] was familiar with the idea of Egyptian hieroglyphs as 'sacred carvings' and applied the term to reflect a holiness associated with the writing of Catholic material in his new Native American orthography."

This hypothesis is completely speculative, suggesting that a Catholic missionary would believe that the use of Egyptian hieroglyphics (which he could not decipher but found to be fascinating) somehow attributed "holiness" to his attempts to record Psalms and other writings for the Micmac people.

Similar criticisms are found on the Wikipedia page for "Mi'kmaq hieroglyphic writing," where it is argued that "Comparison with the actual Egyptian hieroglyphics shows that Fell's claims have significant shortcomings." The Wikipedia page criticizes Fell's analysis of the following hieroglyphs:



















In the Wikipedia entry, Fell's analysis of the first symbol is criticized because, "The Micmac glyph cited by Fell appears not to be an Egyptian Hieroglyph, but rather the Christian symbol Globus cruciger with the Earth (a crossed circle) surmounted by a cross."

His analysis of the second symbol is criticized because, "The Micmac glyph cited by Fell appears to be an ordinary pentagram star used for 'heaven'; no connection to Egypt is necessary for the Micmac sign to make sense in this context."

His analysis of the third symbol is criticized because, "The Míkmaq msit 'all' (not 'full'?) is not drawn accurately; it is a large equilateral triangle made up of horizontal lines, not a low horizontal sign like V30."

Finally, his analysis of the fourth symbol is criticized because, "The Micmac glyph cited by Fell appears to be a triangle, representing the Trinity, and not a set of stairs."

By this sort of criticism, it is implied that there must be no connection between the Micmac writing and the ancient Egyptian, and that the symbols selected by the priests were merely Christian symbols (such as a triangle for the Trinity or a Globus Cruciger for the concept of "holy") and that these selections only coincidentally resembled Egyptian hieroglyphs for the same concepts.

However, this argument becomes more difficult to maintain when other Micmac symbols are examined. For example, prominent in the Micmac version of the Lord's Prayer reproduced above (from an 1822 book published in German) is the symbol for "name" (as in, "hallowed be thy name"). The Micmac symbol recorded by Father Maillard in 1762 is extremely suggestive of the ancient Egyptian symbol for a name, which is the symbol known as a "cartouche" (see below, in which the Micmac symbol is juxtaposed with a cartouche from the Rosetta Stone):











This similarity is extremely problematic, because it is well known that the feat of deciphering the Rosetta Stone rested upon the insight by Champollion (in the 1820s) that these cartouches contained royal names, as well as his breakthrough discovery that the hieroglyphs could play a dual role in representing both individual phonetic sounds in some usages and entire words in others. To suggest that Maillard (who died in 1762) had known that cartouches represented the concept of a "name" is speculative beyond belief, and implies that this missionary priest, who spent the bulk of his life in remote woodlands ministering to Native Americans and who had never been to Egypt nor shown any evidence of interest in deciphering the mystery that had puzzled linguists for centuries, had somehow found time to crack the Egyptian code before Champollion, but had kept his understanding of it a secret.

Other Micmac hieroglyphs that are difficult to explain away are shown in the image on page 5 of the Italian reproduction referenced above, such as the hieroglyphs that Egyptologists equate with an image of "mountains" or the common image of a "mouth," as well as the startlingly similar hieroglyphs denoting "metal" in general (three vertically-arranged circles in both systems) and "gold" and "silver" in particular. While the hieroglyphs selected by Wikipedia can be attacked as being coincidental Christian symbols mistakenly confused with Egyptian hieroglyphs, these others cannot be so readily criticized.

In the end, it does not really matter whether one is convinced by the evidence of ancient contact present in Micmac script. One piece of evidence, on its own, can be explained away as an incredible coincidence. The important perspective to adopt when examining such evidence is the understanding that each such clue is "one data point." When viewed in conjunction with all the other data points found in the Americas which point to deliberate ancient contact, the Micmac writing system is far more powerful evidence.

The possibility that ancient civilizations who inherited knowledge from predecessors unknown to conventional academia (who possessed knowledge and capabilities far beyond what conventional academia would grant at such an early date) regularly traveled across the oceans is explored in more depth in The Mathisen Corollary book.

One point that is made is that, while conventional scholars may scoff at the evidence of European writing systems found in the New World, and argue that such evidence is either faked or (as in the case of the Micmac writing) the invention of modern priests with an affinity for the "holiness" of an Egyptian writing system which they could not even understand, it is far more difficult to argue that enormous pyramids, temples and murals were also fakes or modern anachronisms. Even more difficult is it to argue that the human remains, in the form of mummies and mummy-bundles, are forgeries or cases of mistaken identity.

Taken in context with all the other evidence, then, the case of the Micmac hieroglyphics is another blow to the isolationist position, and a powerful blow at that.

Extraordinary sediment deposit from Pakistan to Bhutan supports hydroplate theory

A recent study published in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America in 2010 entitled "Extraordinary transport and mixing of sediment across Himalayan central Gondwana during the Cambrian-Ordovician" by geologists Paul M. Myrow, Nigel C. Hughes, John W. Goodge, C. Mark Fanning, Ian S. Williams, Shanchi Peng, Om N. Bhargava, Suraj K. Parcha, and Kevin R. Pogue concludes that the sediments across an enormous stretch of earth from Pakistan to Bhutan (around 2,000 kilometers or 1,242 miles wide and thousands of feet deep) all came from a single source.

This is an extraordinary finding, as the title of their text admits, and one that is extraordinarily difficult to explain according to conventional uniformitarian theories. Their tests indicate that the sediments are uniformly mixed and identical over this vast distance, which would be next to impossible if they were blown there by the various winds or carried there by many different streams and rivers.

Another strange finding the geologists noted is the wide range of zircon ages in the zircon crystals mixed in with the sediments over this vast area.

Zircons are tiny mineral grains found in sediments around the world, and they contain trace levels of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. These radioactive elements allow scientists to measure the amounts of those elements present and place dates on the zircons. In the study above, the geologists found that the sediments registered ages stretching from 3.2 billion years ago to only 300 million years ago -- causing them to conclude that all these uniform sediments were deposited very slowly over a vast stretch of time, which they also found extraordinary. For sediments to be blown or carried into place uniformly over such a vast area of earth's surface is itself extraordinary: for the conditions which allowed such extraordinary distribution to remain in place for billions of years is even more unlikely.

Using a conventional geological framework, the scientists were forced to conclude that "The great distances of sediment transport and high degree of mixing of detrital zircon ages [. . .] may be attributed to a combination of widespread orogenesis associated with the assembly of Gondwana, the equatorial position of continents, potent chemical weathering, and sediment dispersal across a nonvegetated landscape."

This speculative series of events is hardly a satisfying explanation. However, as is the case with numerous other geological facts which cause the conventional theorists great difficulty, the massive deposit of uniformly well-mixed sediments on the ocean-ward side of the Himalayas (stretching from Pakistan to Bhutan) can be well and simply explained by the hydroplate theory, as Dr. Walt Brown does when he discusses the 2010 geological study.

He writes:

During the compression event at the end of the flood, the sudden uplift of the Himalayas (today's tallest and most massive mountain range) forced the overlying flood waters to spill away from the rising peaks and down the flanks of the new mountain range. Massive amounts of sediments were carried with those violent waters and deposited in thousand-foot-thick layers at the base of the Himalayas. www.creationscience.com "Rising Himalayas" in the chapter in Part II entitled "The Origins of Earth's Radioactivity"

This explanation is certainly more coherent than the idea that vast portions of the region remained "nonvegetated" for billions of years, allowing "extraordinary distribution" of sediments (as the uniformitarian geologists propose).

But what about the finding that zircons mixed into the massive sediment deposit appear to have ages stretching from 3.2 billion years to only 300 million years? First, let us note that this fact gives the conventional theorists even bigger problems than the extraordinary size of the deposit itself. They do not have a good explanation for it, and it forces them to speculate that the very extraordinary conditions (which are difficult to believe in all by themselves) lasted for an astronomical length of time (which is even more difficult to swallow).

However, as it turns out, the hydroplate theory has a good explanation for the readings of radioactivity in the zircon grains, an explanation which is related to the problem of the origin of radioactivity itself.

Dr. Brown suggests that the radioactivity of materials within earth's crust was created by the powerful electrical and plasma discharges that accompany severe vibration and distortion of the earth's crust, which took place around the world in the events leading up to and during the rupture that initiated the cataclysmic global flood. Such plasma discharges are reported even today around extremely powerful earthquakes. Dr. Brown points out that multiple eyewitness accounts from the powerful New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 in the United States described such phenomena (many are listed on pages 46-47 of this 1912 book about those earthquakes, in which the author begins by saying "The phenomena of what may be termed 'light flashes' and 'glows' seem so improbable that they would be dismissed from consideration but for the considerable number of localities from which they were reported").

In this web page from the online version of his book (which Dr. Brown makes available to everyone free of charge), Dr. Brown explains the evidence supporting the hydroplate theory explanation of the origin of radioactivity on earth, evidence which conventional theories find difficult to explain. According to his theory, the electrical discharges which produced radioactivity would have also greatly accelerated the decay of the uranium and thorium found in zircons, which is why conventional dating that assumes constant decay at today's rates will come up with erroneously long ages for zircons, including those found below the Himalayas in the study above.

Dr. Brown points out that other studies which measure the diffusion of helium out of the same zircons that are measured at billions of years of age by the state of uranium and thorium decay come up with ages of only 4,000 to 8,000 years of age judging by the amounts of helium remaining in the zircons. This discrepancy simply cannot be explained by the conventional theories, although some have speculated that something could have kept the helium in the zircons somehow.

Dr. Brown's explanation, however, explains these findings. If the violent disturbance of the crust during the events surrounding the flood produced extreme electrical discharges which created radioactive materials in the crust, including the uranium and thorium in zircons, and if those powerful electrical discharges also produced accelerated decay in the uranium and thorium, then the uranium and thorium in zircon would appear to be very old to those who do not account for the accelerated decay, but the helium which is produced within the zircons by the decay of the uranium and thorium would leak out at known rates and produce a true reading of the age of the zircons -- only 4,000 to 8,000 years ago.

Dr. Brown elsewhere points out that the hydroplate theory's explanation for the origin of radioactive uranium is much more logical than the conventional theory, which has a very hard time explaining how an element such as uranium-235 with a half-life of only 700 million years is still around at all, if it was created along with the earth 4 to 6 billion years ago.

In short, the 2010 publication of the extraordinary sedimentary deposit stretching across the base of the Himalayas from Pakistan to Bhutan raises ever-more-puzzling questions for proponents of conventional geological theories, but it leads to ever-more-compelling evidence supporting the hydroplate theory.

The shaman's journey, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and modern military initiation rituals

A previous post from June 23, 2011 entitled "DMT, Egypt, evolution and other subjects" contained links to a series of five video segments from Magical Egypt.

In the fourth of the five video segments, an interview begins at about the 3:50 mark [edit: a new version of the same video has been inserted above, and the portion referred to begins around the 44:00 mark in this one] which is continued in the fifth video, embedded above. In that interview, Lon Milo DuQuette, author of fifteen books on Western mystical traditions, describes what the narrator of the film calls "the constant work performed by the initiate of the temple to harden and perfect his gem of perfection, will, and mental clarity." This work, which emphasized "the ceremonial opening of doors" was clearly related by the ancient Egyptians with the continuation of the consciousness after death: just before Mr. DuQuette begins his remarks, the narrator asks, "Are all these exercises training the subconscious to be continuous and proactive in the afterlife?"

In the interview, Mr. DuQuette suggests that the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead "would indicate there's a goal that you can reach whereby you retain your individuality, or at least your pure individuality, and retain the consciousness of the continuity of your own existence." He describes the process whereby the well-equipped soul moved through a series of challenges in which it was stopped at various doors and had to know the right answers for the various powerful beings it met at each stage. He notes that this sort of initiatory process involving terrifying challenges at doors and prodigious memorization continues today in mystical societies such as Masonry.

In the previous post entitled "Shamans and cosmology, continued," we saw that scholars Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in their 1969 book-length essay Hamlet's Mill drew a connection between this Egyptian afterlife initiation process and the celestial travels of the shaman found in many cultures around the world, saying:

The shaman travels through the skies in the very same manner as the Pharaoh did, well equipped as he was with his Pyramid Text or his Coffin Text, which represented his indispensable timetable and contained the ordained addresses of every celestial individual whom he was expected to meet. The Pharaoh relied upon his particular text as the less distinguished dead relied upon his copy of chapters from the book of the Dead, and he was prepared (as was the shaman) to change shape into the Sata serpent, a centipede, or the semblance of whatever celestial "station" must be passed, and to recite the fitting formulae to overcome hostile beings. 132.

This is the exact process described by Mr. DuQuette in the video above.

Amazingly, this initiation process is still deeply embedded within elite military units, such as the 82nd Airborne Division, in which a series of harrowing trials at a door -- in this case, a mock-up of the aircraft door which paratroopers exit while in flight -- forms the climax of the hallowed "Prop Blast" ceremony which all officers in the Airborne regiments had to go through in previous decades.

In the Prop Blast, initiates are subjected to a strenuous day comprised of military obstacle courses (with lots of crawling through and wallowing in the mud as well as scaling huge log ladders to perilous heights), eating from cans of dogfood and drinking jars of vinegar, and a visit to the 82nd Airborne Museum to see the historical relics of the heroes of the Second World War, such as the enormous silver trophy-mugs which each airborne regiment uses in their Prop Blast ceremonies, such as the Miley Mug of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, or the Tucker Tumbler of the 504th.

All the blastees receive mock nicknames which are displayed on their kevlar helmets, which are stripped down to resemble the helmets worn by students at Airborne School (from which all of them have already graduated, some of them many years before), and there is a protracted visit to the "34-foot towers" used in airborne training, in which the blastees jump from the towers the way Airborne School students do, but this time with eggs in their pockets (which they are ordered not to allow to break) and dead fish clenched between their teeth (they are each given a dead fish and told that it is their "jump buddy"). (These are details I remember from my own 1993 Prop Blast -- different units doubtless vary slightly during the day, although the culminating activities at the end of the day are very similar).

The 34-foot towers feature a mock aircraft body elevated to 34-feet above the ground, which can be seen in the video embedded below (these are more modern trainees, as their boots are no longer black leather, but the 34-foot tower procedures are very much the same as they have been since the 1940s or 1950s).


The culmination of the Prop Blast takes place in the evening, after a full day of exhausting activities. At that time, the blastees are lined up outside a building in which another aircraft mock-up has been constructed, complete with another mock-door. This time, the aircraft interior is darkened and lit by dim red bulbs, just like an aircraft in flight for a night tactical airborne operation. The blasted members, who have already been initiated into the officer corps of the regiment, slap their hands vigorously on the outside of the "aircraft" walls to simulate the noise of the engines, and the blastees must make their way to the mock-door in fully-rigged parachutes and perform the C-130 exit, which formerly included the "Stand In the Door!" position in which both the jumper's hands were positioned on the curved outer skin of the airplane (you can see the general shape of the aircraft door in the 34-foot tower video above: the procedure for exiting a C-130 was changed in the early to mid-1990s such that the jumper no longer put his hands on the outside of the aircraft).

The sides of this particular mock-door used in the concluding event, however, are electrified by means of a small hand-cranked field telephone generator, and when the blastee places his hands against it, two initiated members of the regiment are standing by outside wearing rubber gloves to hold his hands against it while the electricity runs up the initiate's hands and forearms (most unpleasant). After a few awful seconds of this, the blastee then "jumps" into the room beyond, which is darkened and features spotlights pointed at his face. After the prescribed exit procedures and landing techniques (sometimes augmented by leafy branches swung in his face for a "tree landing" or buckets of water poured on him for a "water landing") he must struggle to his feet and report to the Prop Blast Board, consisting of three august senior officers of the regiment, who grill him on the history of the regiment (the spotlights still shining in his eyes, making it difficult to see who they are). He must recite his memorized answers, but no matter how well he does, he will usually be ordered "Back into the aircraft" for another round of electrifying door procedures.

Finally, after several rounds of this, the blastee is accepted by the board and welcomed to the regiment, at which time he is instructed to drain the contents of the huge silver chalice of the regiment, which has been signed-out of the museum for this ceremony and filled with a concoction of alcohols representing various lands in which the regiment fought in previous wars. To indicate that he has indeed drained it to the bottom, the blastee then holds the empty mug upside-down over his head (with both handles -- these mugs are about as large as the PGA golf tournament's Wanamaker Trophy), and he can then sign his name in the historic Prop Blast Book of the regiment, which has names going all the way back to World War II.

Note the strong similarities to the initiations described by Mr. DuQuette in the video above, and to the trials of the ancient Egyptian afterlife and the celestial journeys of the shaman. These similarities probably did not arise independently on their own, but were no doubt introduced into the US military by officers in previous generations who were members of secret societies themselves. In Hamlet's Mill, the authors note that the Confederate General Lewis Addison "Lo" Armistead (1817 - 1863), who fell mortally wounded during Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, kept repeating "I am a Son of the Widow" to those who tried to give him aid before he died, which de Santillana and von Dechend note is a phrase from the ancient Babylonian story of Etana and the Eagle and the more recent Finnish folktale which echoes that ancient Babylonian story, and which they speculate was "obviously the password of a secret military brotherhood that his captors did not understand, nor the historian either" (114, footnote).

It should also be noted that the US Military Academy at West Point is also noted for a long tradition of memorizing "knowledge," precise answers to questions which must be recited by rote upon request by upperclassmen (General Armistead, like many officers on both sides of the Civil War, attended West Point, although he apparently left early after breaking a plate over the head of fellow-cadet Jubal Early).

Some of the hoary definitions still memorized by cadets at West Point include the answers to the questions "How is the cow?" (answer: "Sir, she walks, she talks, she's full of chalk; the lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the nth degree") and "What is the definition of leather?" (answer: "If the fresh skin of an animal, cleaned and divested of all hair, fat and other extraneous matter, be immersed in a dilute solution of tannic acid, a chemical combination ensues; the gelatinous tissue of the skin is converted into a non-putrescible substance, impervious to and insoluble in water: this, sir, is leather").

That these challenges and responses, and the Prop Blast "door ceremony" are related to the activities described in the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and the celestial travels of the shaman, in which the traveler must be prepared to "recite the fitting formulae to overcome hostile beings" should be quite obvious. The fact that these modern military relics are remnants of a tradition that is many thousands of years old is not as well known.





















above is the author's own Prop Blast Card, issued to officers of the regiment who have been blasted; loss of this card requires the officer to be blasted again.

Shamans and cosmology, continued

In the previous post, we discussed the ability of shamans throughout the world to traverse the seven or nine worlds by entering into a state of ecstasy connected with the use of a drum.

We noted that the layered worlds appear to be strongly connected to the spheres of the planets, and were either seven in number (corresponding to Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, sun and moon) or nine in number (corresponding to the previously-named seven plus the two draconitic points or lunar nodes which cause solar and lunar eclipses).

We also observed the ancient connection of the circling heavenly bodies to the concept of time, and the noteworthy fact that the shaman enters the realm of these time-giving entities through the means of an instrument, the drum, that is strongly connected with the concept of time itself.

Because it is such a rich subject, we saved some discussion for later! Here is a link to an excellent discussion of Mongol cosmology which contains many observations of Mongol cosmology which resonate strongly with themes discussed in previous posts (while the author of the informative article is not identified, the author appears to have gathered information from personal observation and interviews, and the website source of this article notes that many of the articles on the site were written by the late Sarangerel Odigon and are related to the material she published in her book Riding Windhorses). Note the discussion of the cosmological orientation of the Mongol ger or yurt, which is designed to represent a model or microcosm of the universe itself.

Very noteworthy is the discussion of the turge tree:

The other important symbol of the world center is the turge tree, which creates an axis as well as a pole for ascent and descent. Siberian and Mongolian traditions locate the tree at the center of the world, but also in the south, where the upper and middle worlds touch. The tree is tended by the goddess Umai, and the ami souls of living things waiting to be born are believed to live as birds on this immense tree. By the World Tree, which some say stands at the border of day and night, the World River enters the middle world from its sources in the upper world. According to the traditions of the Altai, Bayan Ami, lord of the forest animals, will be encountered during the ascent of this tree and will grant the shaman geese to assist him on his journey to the upper world. The top of the turge tree touches the sky by the Pole Star, the Altan Hadaas, the sky nail that holds up the heavens.

There are clear echoes here to the concept of the world-tree found throughout other ancient cosmologies, including not only Yggdrasil but also the erica tree of Egyptian mythology in which the body and casket of Osiris were imprisoned and which Isis sought and guarded in the form of a bird, as well as the sacred cedar found in Native American legend in the branches of which the thunderbirds roosted and which had four paths made by forest animals leading up to it, possibly signifying the animals of the zodiac (which has four very important stations each year in the two solstices and two equinoxes). The significance of these ancient world-tree myths are discussed at length in the Mathisen Corollary book.

The Mongolian connection of the central tree with an entity who may represent the ruler of the zodiac animals (which are on the ecliptic) resonates with the themes discussed by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill, in which they show that these two celestial features (the celestial axis-pole and the ecliptic), seemingly very separate in the spacial layout of the night sky, are actually intimately connected. Note also the significant fact that in Buryat tradition, this central tree has nine branches (a 1904 photograph of a Buryat shaman with drum is shown above).

Another interesting point is the connection of the World-Tree and the rainbow mentioned in the article on Mongol cosmology: these two images were closely connected in Norse mythology as well. Some of the celestial significance of the rainbow bridge is discussed in this previous post about Heimdall, the guardian of the rainbow bridge in Norse mythology. Note, too, the discussion of rivers flowing down into the underworld, which is a very prominent feature of the important conversation of Socrates in Plato's Phaedo, discussed in this previous post.

Are we to believe that all these connections are simply isolated cultural elements that grew up in various cultures around the world completely independently of one another? Or is it possible that they are all echoes of a very ancient knowledge that was carried around the globe at a remote time that predates even dynastic Egypt?

The authors of Hamlet's Mill argued for the latter possibility, and presented extensive evidence and coherent arguments in its favor. They wrote that:

The shaman travels through the skies in the very same manner as the Pharaoh did, well equipped as he was with his Pyramid Text or his Coffin Text, which represented his indispensable timetable and contained the ordained addresses of every celestial individual whom he was expected to meet. The Pharaoh relied upon his particular text as the less distinguished dead relied upon his copy of chapters from the book of the Dead, and he was prepared (as was the shaman) to change shape into the Sata serpent, a centipede, or the semblance of whatever celestial "station" must be passed, and to recite the fitting formulae to overcome hostile beings.

To sum it up -- whether Shamanism is an old or a relatively young offshoot of ancient civilization is irrelevant. It is not primitive at all, but it belongs, as all our civilizations do, to the vast company of ungrateful heirs of some almost unbelievable Near Eastern ancestor who first dared to understand the world as created according to number, measure and weight. 132.

In other words, the very clear echoes we see in the shamanic tradition, which appear in very similar form in shamanic practices around the world, are another very important set of clues about mankind's ancient past. They clearly preserve in another form a related body of knowledge to that which was encoded in ancient myths, knowledge that was encoded in the dialogues of Plato, and the beliefs and practices that the ancient Egyptians held to be most sacred, most central, and most important to their fate in the afterlife.

We will return to the connection between the hazardous journey of the shaman and the hazardous journey of the "equipped Pharaoh" through the heavens in a future discussion of these important subjects.

Time, music, and the planets (and the shaman connects all three)

In the previous post, we discussed a theory for the origins of the multiple celestial "skies" or worlds belonging to the seven planets, or the nine planets when the pseudoplanetary nodes of the moon are included (the "draconitic points").

We pointed out that the journey of Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the very ancient Gilgamesh texts appears to represent a journey through each of these successive worlds in their quest for the central tree representing the world-axis. This same celestial pilgrimage also appears to have been encoded in the ascension of the ancient step pyramids or ziggurats, many of which had seven stages as well.

In Hamlet's Mill, authors Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend argue that the ascension of the shaman in many cultures (through either seven or nine worlds) appears to follow the same pattern of ascending through the celestial spheres by means of a mystical tree, saying: "The shaman climbing the 'stairs' or notches of his post or tree, pretending that his soul ascends at the same time to the highest sky, does the very same thing as the Mesopotamian priest did when mounting to the top of his seven-storied pyramid, the ziqqurat, representing the planetary spheres" (123).

Citing the seminal study of Laszlo Vajda, de Santillana and von Dechend explain that shamans around the world appear to manifest very consistent patterns:

To put it in a few words, a shaman is elected by spirits, meaning that he cannot choose his profession. Epileptics and mentally unhinged persons are obvious privileged candidates. Once elected, the future shaman goes to "school." Older shamans teach him his trade, and only after the concluding ceremony of his education is he accepted. This is, so to speak, the visible part of his education. The real shamanistic initiation of the soul happens in the world of spirits -- while his body lies unconscious in his tent for days -- who dismember the candidate in the most thorough and drastic manner and sew him together afterwards with iron wire, or reforge him, so that he becomes a new being capable of feats which go beyond the human. The duties of a shaman are to heal diseases which are caused by hostile spirits who have entered the body of the patient, or which occur because the soul has left the body and cannot find the way back. Often the shaman is responsible for guiding the souls of the deceased to the abode of the dead, as he also escorts the souls of sacrificed animals to the sky. His help is needed, too, when the hunting season is bad; he must find out where the game is. In order to find out all the things which he is expected to know, the shaman has to ascend to the highest sky to get the information from his god -- or go into the underworld. On his way he has to fight hostile spirits, and/or rival shamans, and tremendous duels are fought. Both combatants have with them their helping spirits in animal form, and much shape-shifting takes place. In fact, these fantastic duels form the bulk of shamanistic stories. The last echoes are the so-called "magic-flights" in fairy tales. The shaman's soul ascends to the sky when he is in a state of ecstasy; in order to get into this state, he needs his drum which serves him as a "horse," the drumstick as a "whip." 122.

The authors point out the cover of the drum, which in some ancient cultures had to come from a black bull which represented Taurus in heaven, and observe that "The striking of the drum covered with that specific bull hide was meant as a contact with heaven at its most significant point" (125).

It is also significant that drumming can create a state of ecstasy -- this is not only true for shamans but to some degree for all humans. While they don't make the connection explicitly, de Santillana and von Dechend point out that the motions of the planets (including the motion of earth itself) very much are time, or give us the concept of time. We can perceive this when we think about the way that the twenty-four hours in the day are linked directly to the rotation of the earth, or the way in which the months are related to the orbit of the moon. De Santillana and von Dechend quote the Neoplatonist philosopher Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius who said that "Saturn is the originator of the times" (Saturnus ipse, qui auctor est temporum) (133-134).

Elsewhere, in their discussion of the identification of the five mysterious rivers of the underworld with the planets, they state that "By identifying the rivers with the world-ages, he emphasizes the identity of the rivers with Time" (page 197, this time speaking of Dante, whom they show to have picked up important ancient clues as to the true celestial meanings of these rivers).

The point of connection with the shaman is the fact that shamans around the world are noted for their use of the drum as well as their ascension through the celestial worlds (and the underworlds), and the drum is an instrument that is explicitly connected with time. Drums give time to music, and if you ever wonder how important time is to music, just try listening to one of your favorite songs on a CD that skips: even if the skip is extremely short, barely long enough to be noticeable, it will disrupt the time of the song, and ruin it.

Thus, it is extremely interesting that the shaman makes "contact with heaven" through the striking of the drum, because the motions of the planets are explicitly connected with giving Time to the cosmos, and the shaman touches them or makes contact with them through the use of an instrument that gives time as well. It is not only the hide of the bull associated with Taurus that connects the drum to the celestial spheres, but Time as well.

The connection between time and music, and between both of them and our brains is very mysterious, even though it is quite obvious and well-known to all of us. Why are music and movement connected? Studies have shown that even infants respond to music and rhythm with movement, as if the connection is wired deep in our brains. The connection of rhythmic dance and a state of ecstasy is something we intuitively understand as well.

However, if you think about it dispassionately, there does not seem to be anything inherently connected between hearing the beat of a drum and nodding your head in time, or tapping your foot, let alone with spinning your entire body to the sound. And yet, not only are they clearly connected, but they are connected in some way with the motions of the planets as well, as the experience of the shaman seems to make clear.

This is a deep matter with much room for further exploration.

The Lunar Nodes and the Nine-World Cosmology

In the past few posts, we have been discussing some aspects of the orbits of the planets and phases of the moon (which are of course related to its orbit).

In our examination of the orbits of the planets, we noted that they move counterclockwise around the sun, just as the chariots moved around the ancient Roman circus, and that there were anciently thought to be seven planets or celestial powers, just as there were seven laps in the chariot races in the ancient Roman circus (these seven included Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the sun and moon).

There are many places in mythology in which a journey through seven stages can be seen as a celestial journey past these seven celestial powers. One of them is the journey of Gilgamesh and Enkidu to the Cedar Forest, which is discussed in some detail in the Mathisen Corollary book. On that journey, the heroes must cross seven mountain ranges, guided by the constellations -- a clear indicator that their journey involves the realm of the heavens.

Also, the ancient Mesopotamian Cylinder Inscriptions (on "Cylinder A" and "Cylinder B," discovered in 1877 and probably dating to 2125 BC, both of which are now on display in the Louvre) describe the divine commission to Gudea to build a ziggurat named Eninnu, which had seven stacked square layers, probably representing the seven celestial worlds.

However, there is another tradition running through many ancient mythologies in which there are nine layered worlds as opposed to only seven. This tradition is very strong in ancient Hindu cosmology and astrology, but can also be found in Norse mythology, in which there were nine worlds all connected by Yggdrasil, the world-tree. Where did the other two celestial bodies come from?

In a footnote in Hamlet's Mill, scholars Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend explain:

Nine skies, instead of seven, within the sphere of fixed stars, result from the habit of including among the planets the (invisible) "head" and "tail" of the "Dragon," which is to say the lunar nodes, conjunctions or oppositions in the vicinity of which cause the eclipses of the Sun and Moon; the revolution of these "draconitic points" is c. 18 ½ years. 123.

In other words, the two lunar nodes, which are invisible, were important enough to be included among the celestial objects that had the greatest power in the heavens. What exactly are these powerful "nodes"?

A node is a point at which a body with a tilted orbit will intersect the plane of another body -- in this case, the plane of the moon's orbit around the earth (which is tilted at a 5.1^o angle to the plane of the ecliptic -- the plane upon which earth and the other planets orbit the sun). This angle is illustrated in the diagram of the moon's orbit above.

The moon's orbit will actually pass through the plane of the ecliptic twice, once on its way "down" the moon's tilted orbit, and again on its way back "up" the tilted path: thus one node is known as the Descending Node (marked "DN" in the diagram above) and the other as the Ascending Node (marked "AN" in the diagram above). For some reason, the diagram above (from Wikipedia / Wikimedia) has the AN and DN mixed up -- the node marked AN should be the DN, and vice versa. This only serves to illustrate how unfamiliar we generally are with this concept today. Later in this post there is a link to a different diagram which has them labeled correctly.

It is only along these nodes that the moon can blot out the sun (on a new moon, when the moon passes between the earth and the sun) or pass into the area in which the earth blots out the sun (on a full moon, when the earth is between the moon and the sun), creating either a solar eclipse (new moon) or a lunar eclipse (full moon).

Unless the nodes are aligned with the new moon and full moon, they will not cause an eclipse (in the diagram above, the moon will not be near AN or DN when it is at the new moon or full moon positions). However, as the earth continues around the sun, if the positions of AN and DN stay pointed in the direction that they are pointed in space as the earth goes around (much as the earth's axis stays pointed in the same direction as earth goes around its orbit), we can see that there will be two points on the earth's orbit at which a node is pointing right at the sun and the other node is pointing directly away -- meaning that as the moon goes around to its new moon and full moon positions it should create at least a partial eclipse (depending on its timing: if it happens to reach full moon or new moon exactly as the AN or the DN line up just right, it would create a total eclipse).

The positions of the lunar nodes AN and DN do not stay oriented the exact same way all the time, however. If they did, lunar eclipses would be much more regular and predictable. Instead, the plane of the moon's orbit slowly rotates around the earth, in a clockwise direction. Thus, if the tilted plane of the moon's orbit were an elliptical piece of glass, and if we were looking down at this scene from above earth's north pole, we could see the imaginary pane of glass slowly rotating in a clockwise direction, even as the moon that was moving around its outer edge kept orbiting in a counter-clockwise direction (and as the earth itself continued moving on its own orbital path around the sun in an counter-clockwise direction).

The two nodes, then, move in space as the plane of the moon's orbit makes its rotation, and they proceed in a clockwise circle (a light-blue arrow in the diagram above coming out of the point marked DN shows the direction that the nodes move around the earth; this arrow is marked by the time it takes the nodes to complete one full circle, which is about 18.6 years). The moon's plane and the nodes move about 19.3^o to the west each year, so they take 18.65 years to complete a full circle of 360^o .

The diagram above being somewhat complicated, it may help the reader to visit this page which describes the two nodes and which provides a somewhat clearer diagram. To depict the nodal motion, an arrow could be drawn from the ascending node in that diagram straight to the left, and from the descending node in the diagram straight to the right: this would depict the clockwise motion of the nodes.

The effect of this westward motion is to speed up the progress of the nodes such that in some years they point in the right direction for eclipses more than twice a year (they would point in the right direction exactly twice a year without this motion).

As the passage cited from Hamlet's Mill above points out, these nodes are known as "draconitic points" and even today the amount of time it takes the moon to move from one node back to the same node is called a "draconic month" (at 27.2 days, it is slightly less than a "synodic month," which is the time it takes to move from one new moon to the next new moon, which is 29.5 days as discussed in this previous post).

In ancient mythology, these nodes were depicted as the head and tail of a dragon, or as a knotted serpent or dragon (the knots representing the nodes, as argued by Willy Hartner in his definitive essay on the subject, "The Pseudoplanetary Nodes of the Moon's Orbit in Hindu and Islamic Iconographies," published in 1938). Sometimes the nodes were depicted as a devouring demon with canine or leonine facial features and no lower jaw, such as in the demon known as Rahu in ancient Hindu mythology. A good discussion of the subject and its depiction in art can be found here on the website of the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies (CAIS).

It is common to read modern treatises on these dragons or demons explaining that the "primitive ancients" actually believed that a dragon or demon was swallowing the moon or the sun during an eclipse, but as we have argued before, it is far more likely that these mythological depictions were simply the metaphorical manner in which actual knowledge which we would today call scientific was preserved and transmitted (see here and here).

The metaphorical nature of the myth is evident in that the swallowing entity was usually depicted as being a disembodied or severed head (the severed head of Rahu, or the severed head of the dragon), which would swallow the sun or moon only temporarily, until it emerged on the other side through the severed neck. This depiction is an excellent metaphor for what happens ("it is as if the moon is swallowed by the severed head of a demon") but it is not likely that the originators of the metaphor actually meant for others to believe that a severed head was still in the business of swallowing things, or at least it is unlikely that they believed that themselves.

Further, the very fact that these nodes were sometimes numbered with the other seven celestial spheres indicates that their motions were studied and known. As with the other planets, the "pseudoplanets" of the nodes were tracked across the background of the stars by the ancients. They knew their 18.6-year cycles, just as they knew the orbital cycles of the other planets such as Saturn and Jupiter (Hamlet's Mill describes on page 129 how many ancient cultures, including the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Persians, celebrated a sort of "jubilee" celebration upon the thirtieth year of a king's reign: thirty years is the orbital period of Saturn).

It should also be pointed out that the mythological encapsulation of the lunar nodes as the knots of intertwining dragons, or as disembodied devouring heads, may be a better way of transmitting the understanding of these nodes than would be an attempt to pass along a diagram such as the one at the top of this post.

For some further illustration of these nodes, which are instrumental in eclipses and which were so important to the ancients that they ranked as celestial powers in the sky along with Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the sun and the moon, see also the two videos embedded below. Unfortunately, these videos do not depict the motion of the nodes themselves as they make their clockwise path around the earth, but they may be helpful in visualizing the concept for those who prefer to see it in video form: