LDS Freedom Forum

This is a very interesting article about a Mayan sub-group. You'll notice several paralelles to the culture represented in the BoM.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... e-houston/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ker Than

for National Geographic News

Published July 20, 2012


Some 1,600 years ago, the Temple of the Night Sun was a blood-red beacon visible for miles and adorned with giant masks of the Maya sun god as a shark, blood drinker, and jaguar.



Long since lost to the Guatemalan jungle, the temple is finally showing its faces to archaeologists, and revealing new clues about the rivalrous kingdoms of the Maya.

Unlike the relatively centralized Aztec and Inca empires, the Maya civilization—which spanned much of what are now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán region (Maya map)—was a loose aggregation of city-states. (Read about the rise and fall of the Maya in National Geographic magazine.)

"This has been a growing awareness to us since the 1990s, when it became clear that a few kingdoms were more important than others," said Brown University archaeologist Stephen Houston, who announced the discovery of the new temple Thursday.

El Zotz, in what's now Guatemala, was one of the smaller kingdoms, but one apparently bent on making a big impression.

By 2010 archaeologists working on a hilltop near the ancient city center had discovered 45-foot-tall (13-meter-tall) Diablo Pyramid. Atop it they found a royal palace and a tomb, believed to hold the city's first ruler, who lived around A.D. 350 to 400.

Around the same time, Houston and a colleague spotted the first hints of the Temple of the Night Sun, behind the royal tomb on Diablo Pyramid. Only recently, though, have excavations uncovered the unprecedented artworks under centuries of overgrowth.

Video: Archaeologist Stephen Houston on the Temple Find





Solar Power

The sides of the temple are decorated with 5-foot-tall (1.5-meter-tall) stucco masks showing the face of the sun god changing as he traverses the sky over the course of a day.

(Related: "Unprecedented Maya Mural Found, Contradicts 2012 'Doomsday' Myth.")

One mask is sharklike, likely a reference to the sun rising from the Caribbean in the east, Houston said.

The noonday sun is depicted as an ancient being with crossed eyes who drank blood, and a final series of masks resemble the local jaguars, which awake from their jungle slumbers at dusk.

In Maya culture the sun is closely associated with new beginnings and the sun god with kingship, Houston explained. So the presence of solar visages on a temple next to a royal tomb may signify that the person buried inside was the founder of a dynasty—El Zotz's first king.

It's an example of "how the sun itself would have been grafted onto the identity of kings and the dynasties that would follow them," he said in a press statement.

Maya archaeologist David Freidel added, "Houston's hypothesis is likely correct that the building was dedicated to the sun as a deity closely linked to rulership. The Diablo Pyramid will certainly advance our knowledge of Early Classic Maya religion and ritual practice."

Houston's team also found hints that the Maya, who added new layers to the temple over generations, regarded the building as a living being. For example, the noses and mouths of the masks in older, deeper layers of the temple were systematically disfigured.

"This is actually quite common in Maya culture," Houston told National Geographic News. "It's very hard to find any Mayan depiction of the king that doesn't have its eyes mutilated or its nose hacked ... but 'mutilation' is not the appropriate term to describe it. I see it as more of a deactivation.

"It's as if they're turning the masks off in preparation for replicating them in subsequent layers ... It's not an act of disrespect. It's quite the opposite."

(Also See "End of World in 2012? Maya 'Doomsday' Calendar Explained.")

"Gold Mine of Information"

Maya scholar Simon Martin said the masks on the newfound El Zotz temple are "completely unique" and valuable, because they could help verify theories about Maya portrayals of the sun god.

"We have images of the sun god at different stages ... but we've never found anything that puts it all together," said Martin, of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, who was not involved in the project.

"We've had to assemble [the sequence] from bits and pieces of information and just trust that we got it right. This could be an opportunity to see the whole thing stage by stage."

The temple is also wonderfully well preserved, Martin added, making it a "real gold mine of information."

"We've seen a few places where whole buildings have been preserved," he said. "But normally what happens is [the Maya] smashed up a building and then built on top of it, so when you dig into a building you don't find very much of their decoration."

By contrast, Maya workers at El Zotz went to great pains to preserve the original temple structure, going so far as padding it with earth and small rocks before building on top of it.

(Take a Maya quiz.)

Facing Out

Archaeologist Karl Taube points out the craftsmanship of the masks. "They're three-dimensional. The faces push out of the side of the facade. You don't really see that very often ... because if they project too much they fall off. But here they were able to pull it off.

"With the play of light on these things, the faces would have been extremely dramatic," said Taube, of the University of California, Riverside (UCR),who also was not involved in the project.

Project leader Houston added that the masks' color—crimson, according to paint traces—would have also helped them stand out. "With that bright red pigment, it would have had a particularly marked effect at dawn and at the setting of the sun," Houston said.

Blazing red and perched on high, the Temple of the Night Sun was meant "to see and to be seen," Houston said.

Importantly, it would have been noticeable from Tikal, a larger, older, and more powerful kingdom that El Zotz may or may not have been on friendly terms with.

"We tend to think of kings being completely autonomous, but for the Maya, a sacred king was often part of a hierarchy of kings," the Penn Museum's Martin said.

"So the people at El Zotz at times may have been heavily under the influence of Tikal, and when powers were weak at Tikal, they may have been completely independent or may have linked themselves with more powerful kings somewhere else."

"A Lot More Discoveries" to Come?

Despite the obvious care that was taken to construct and preserve the newfound temple, it wasn't used for long. Evidence at the site suggests the building was abandoned sometime in the fifth century, for reasons unknown.

"It's like they just dropped their tools and left" in the middle of once again expanding the temple, Houston said. "I think what you're looking at is the death of a dynasty."

The answer to this mystery and others could become evident as more of the Temple of the Night Sun is uncovered.

"Only 30 percent of this facade has been exposed," UCR's Taube said. "I think there're going to be a lot more discoveries and a broader understanding of what this building actually shows in the future."

More: See National Geographic pictures of Maya ruins and artifacts >>

Thannnnnk yoooou durangout!! Much appreciated!This is incredible and awesome! Though I don't agree with views shared in it for the most part. What's fascinating in regards with the temple discovery you linked above is what it has in common with other ancient temples and civilizations around the world. There is many important tidbits listed in the article above that adds further evidence to my search of knowledge & understanding of all ancient cultures and the one story told around the world. If we only had the whole story. Add to that "Only 30 percent of this facade has been exposed." But am looking forward to new findings on this temple.

Just the name of the temple says a ton! Temple of the Night Sun! The Night Sun?? Just what sun were the Mayans talking about?

"Some 1,600 years ago, the Temple of the Night Sun was a blood-red beacon visible for miles and adorned with giant masks of the Maya sun god as a shark, blood drinker, and jaguar."

Mayan red sun god?? Are we taking about Mayans or Egyptians here? Whats truly fascinating is Egyptians also worshiped a red "sun god" as did many ancient civilizations. The Egyptians themselves attributed Ra to the god Atum and in fact, this deity is often referred to in Egyptian documents as Atum-Ra. Hugh Nibley does a incredible job at explaining this. This god bore a specific and strange characteristic - Atum was honored as a SUN OF NIGHT.

Who was the ancient Egyptian sun god? Many historians will unanimously say Ra. That Ra was both the physical sun we see today and the sun-god.

And yet, if one were to conduct an in-depth study of this Egyptian "physical Sun" and "sun-god" one comes to the realization that, except for the fact that Ra shone brightly in the sky, the characteristics and even motions attributed to this entity do not fit the role of the Sun we observe today in any way, shape or form.

Students of Egyptian mythology have long grappled with the exact meaning that lies hidden beneath this strange characteristic of Atum. The best critics can offer by way of an explanation was that Atum was the Sun after it had set. By this he meant to imply that the Egyptians worshipped the Sun even when it was absent from the sky. Sun worship at night however, doesn't make any sense at all. I should also mention the Atum-Ra was the planet Saturn. Atum-Ra was central sun, the sun god! That's right!

"The most 'ancient treasure' -- in Aristotle's words -- that was left to us by our predecessors was the idea that the gods are really stars, and that there are no others."-- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill (1969)

Stars were planets in the ancient world. In fact all celestial objects were considered stars. As strange as it may seem, early astronomical traditions identify the "primeval sun" as the PLANET SATURN, the distant planet which the alchemists called the "best sun" and which the Babylonians, the founders of astronomy, identified as the exemplary light of heaven, the "sun"-god Shamash. ("Shamash is the planet Saturn", the astronomical texts say.) In archaic copies of Plato's Timaeus, the word for the planet Saturn is Helios, the "sun" god. The Romans called it "Sol". Hindu astronomical lore deemed the planet Saturn as Arka, the star "of the sun."

And certain wise men of India often asserted that the "true sun" Brahma, the central light of heaven, was none other than Saturn. This in turn, reminds us of a rarely-noted teaching of the alchemists, preservers of so many ancient mysteries. The planet Saturn, they recalled, was not just a planet; it was "the best sun.” Such language--true sun, best sun--is strangely reminiscent of that language used by native Americans when describing a prior sun, or superior sun, who had presided over the era of peace and plenty. Other cultures said Saturn was "the Great One in the middle of the sky," "the steadfast star." Assyrian and Babylonian texts depict the god Shamash as the supreme light of the sky. All Greek astronomical traditions agreed that Kronos was the planet Saturn.

Allow the points of cross-cultural agreement to lead the way and a resolution comes from the early astronomical traditions identifying a planet--Saturn--as the exemplary “sun” god of the lost Golden Age.

Indeed, the consistency with which early astronomies identity Saturn as the former creator-king is truly extraordinary. The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia knew Saturn as the heaven-sustaining Zurvan, "the King and Lord of the Long Dominion." The Iranian god-king Yima, a transcript of the Hindu Yama, founder of the Golden Age, was also linked to Saturn. The Chinese mythical emperor Huang-ti, first in a great dynasty of kings and mythical founder of the Taoist religion, was identified astronomically as the planet Saturn. Even the Tahitians recall of the god Fetu-tea, the planet Saturn, that he "was the King."

The great themes of world mythology are universal: the story of a former age of gods and wonders, whose first chapter was a “perfect” time of peace and plenty; the story of an exemplary "king of the world," the mythic first in the line of kings; descriptions of the gods as luminaries of immense size and power, wielding weapons of thunder and stone; the universal claim that the ancient world evolved by critical phases or cycles, punctuated by sweeping catastrophe; global traditions of gods and heroes ruling for a time, then departing amidst terrifying spectacles and upheavals. The transfiguration of the departed gods into "stars"; the identification of these ruling gods with planets in the first astronomies.

Here is an indisputable fact. If you will trace the claimed history of ancient nations backwards, you will invariably reach a point at which humankind lived in the shadow of the gods. This distant epoch--what the Egyptians called the "time of the primeval gods"--cries out for clarification. Originally, the gods rule the world. First in an age of gold, but this age was followed by catastrophe and cosmic upheaval. That is the archetypal memory repeated around the
world. (myths)

Another fact beyond dispute is that the word Helios did become the Greek word for our Sun, just as the Latin Sol gave his name to our Sun. The same can be said for the older Shamash and Ra: the names of these gods became the names for the solar orb. But that's where the connection with our Sun ends and the mystery of Saturn, the Universal Monarch, begins.

When one takes into account the one story told around the world and the role of the planet Saturn played in that story, than one can start to understand why over 184 Saturn stones, and countless other sacred imagery of the planet Saturn and the Saturn polar configuration are depicted on the Salt Lake temple. In fact, only the Angel of Moroni stands above the Saturn stones on the temple which represents the everlasting gospel. And the steeple on which the Angel Moroni stands on is one of the most common and recognized symbols of the ancient world and represents and is in fact a symbol of the planet Saturn which was supposedly in close quarters to Mother Earth. The pillar is also associated with the Mountain of the lord, Axis-mundi, world axis, ladder, and tree, throne, to name a few of the images it represented. (Pillar = PLASMA configuration. The Plasma was electrical discharges between planets that were once in close proximity to Earth.) It also exonerates Joseph Smith and his translation of the Book of Abraham. It was truly a restoration of the church of old. With the restoration came the true meanings of sacred imagery and where they originated from. How they were lost and corrupted over time to finally being restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith!

"The most 'ancient treasure' -- in Aristotle's words -- that was left to us by our predecessors was the idea that the gods are really stars, and that there are no others."[/color][/i]-- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill (1969) Joseph's interpretation on the Egyptian papyri to be identified as celestial object (Planets) shows in my opinion he was truly God's mouthpiece. Critics of Joseph Smith say he got it wrong because the correct interpretation is gods, NOT planets and stars. (same thing to the ancients) But the truth is the gods of the ancients were planets and Joseph Smith knew this fact all to well. Joseph was dead right!!

Quoted from the link above..

"We tend to think of kings being completely autonomous, but for the Maya, a sacred king was often part of a hierarchy of kings," the Penn Museum's Martin said.

"So the people at El Zotz at times may have been heavily under the influence of Tikal, and when powers were weak at Tikal, they may have been completely independent or may have linked themselves with more powerful kings somewhere else."

The ancient Maya proclaimed that their once-spectacular civilization had its origins in the rule of the "creator-king and god of the Golden Age', Itzam Na. At the center of Mayan culture, stood the sovereign chief, announcing himself as something like "the King of Kings and ruler of the world, regent on earth of the great Itzam Na."

The leading Mayan expert, J. Eric Thompson, saw this as an "inflated notion of grandeur….a sort of divine right of kings which would have turned James I green with envy." And yet throughout the ancient world, one encounters this divine "grandeur" of kings at every turn.

One last thing I like to mention in regards to this thread.... The Mayans proclaimed that their once-spectacular civilization had its origins in the rule of the "creator-king and god of the Golden Age.... As seen in the new discovered Mayan temple.

THE GOLDEN AGE

The Golden Age is chronicled in many ancient cultures. According to accounts from ancient cultures the world over, the earliest age of the Earth is know as the "Golden Age". Traditional narratives (A global myth) declares that the world has not always been as it is experienced now. In a former time, man lived in a paradise, close to the gods. It was the Golden Age. Throughout an eternal spring, the earth produced abundantly, free from the seasonal cycles of decay and rebirth. And under this remarkable cosmic order, man experienced neither war nor sickness, neither hunger nor any requirement of human labor. (Does any of this sound familiar?) Traditional narratives speak of a world devoid of inaccessibly high mountains or deep canyons, and the is NO mention of great oceans to act as barriers between continents. It was a idyllic age. This recurring and unexplained myth was carried into modern times by primitive races the world over.

No one can say why early starworshippers esteemed Saturn as the founder of a lost Golden Age; or why they invoked Saturn as the “sun”; or why this luminary was said to have ruled from the celestial pole so far removed from the paths of the planets today. And what was the “Great Conjunction” of the Golden Age? What did the ancient chroniclers mean by the “fall” of the god from his original station, or the great wars of the gods that are said to have ensued?

Then again, why should the modern world care? What interest could myths and superstitions hold for humankind in recent centuries, after the tools of direct observation began to unveil the secrets of planetary history? Surely no message from antiquity could compare with the growing powers of direct observation since Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. 


Science has displaced myth and superstition. But is it possible that, in our scientific confidence, we’ve missed something of incalculable value? If the mystery were limited to a handful of absurd claims about Saturn, that would be one things. But as it turns out, the Saturn myth is just a window to a vastly larger story. It can now be demonstrated that there are hundreds of mythic archetypes or points of agreement between the early cultures. Together they reveal an eerie coherence that could not be accidental. Random speculations or self-serving inventions from one culture to another could not have produced the underlying unity that has been documented in recent years.

In Mexico native legends spoke of an ancestral generation whose every need was met, without cost. There was no sickness or hunger no poverty or sadness, and the gods dwelt among men. But this harmonious age didn't last, eventually succumbing to an overwhelming catastrophe.

According to the Cheyenne of North America the original race roamed naked, innocent and free, enjoying the natural abundance of an eternal spring. What followed, however, was an age of flood, war, and famine.

The Caribs of Surinam have a poignant memory of this fortunate epoch. "In a time long past, so long past that even the grandmothers of our grandmothers were not yet born," they say, "the world was quite other than what it is today: the trees were forever in fruit; the animals lived in perfect harmony, and the little agouti played fearlessly with the beard of the jaguar "

The South American Indians of Gran Chaco and Amazonia recall this as the Happy Place, where work was unknown because the fields produced abundance of their own accord.

The Hopi Indians proclaim that in the earliest time they were a marvelously contented race, at peace with their brothers. They knew nothing of sickness or conflict, and all things were provided by Mother Earth without any requirement of labor.

But these are just the American Indian versions of the story.

The aborigines of Australia insist that their first ancestors enjoyed a Golden Age, a Paradise of abundant game and without conflict of any kind.

Northern Europeans once celebrated this earliest age as the "Peace of Frodi," a mythical Danish king. Throughout this peaceful epoch no man injured another and a magical mill ground out peace and plenty for the entire land.

Memories of a Golden Age pervade the myths of Africa. The distinguished folklorist Herman Baumann reported that "Everything that happened in the primal age was different from today. People understood the language of animals and lived at peace with them; they knew no labor and had food in plenitude."

Sacred texts of ancient India recall this as the Krita Yuga or "Perfect Age," without disease, labor, suffering or war. The Iranians called it the age of the brilliant Yima, an age with "neither cold nor heat," an eternal spring. According to ancient Chinese lore, the purest pleasure and tranquillity once reigned throughout the world. Mythical histories called it "the Age of Perfect Virtue" and declared that "the whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness. . . all things grew without labor; and a universal fertility prevailed."

How old, then, is this ancient memory of a lost paradise? In their myths, rites and hymns the ancient Sumerians contrasted their own time to the earliest remembered age--what they called "the days of old," or "that day," when the gods "gave man abundance, the day when vegetation flourished." This was when the supreme god An "engendered the year of abundance." To this primeval age, every Sumerian priest looked back as the reference for the preferred order of things, which was lost through later conflict and deluge.

In the city of Eridu at the mouth of the Euphrates, the priests recalled a Golden Age prior to familiar history. The predecessors of their race, it was claimed, had formerly reposed in the paradise of Dilmun, called the "Pure Place" of man's genesis. This lost paradise of Dilmun, about which scholars have debated for decades, is strangely reminiscent of the paradise of Eden.

"That place was pure, that place was clean. In Dilmun...the lion mangled not. The wolf ravaged not the lambs," the Sumerian texts read. The inhabitants of this paradise lived in a state of near perfection, in communion with the gods, drinking the waters of life and enjoying unbounded prosperity.

Ancient Egypt, an acknowledged cradle of civilization, preserved a remarkably similar memory. Not just in their religious and mythical texts, but in every sacred activity, the Egyptians incessantly looked backwards, to events of the Zep Tepi. The phrase means the "First Time," a time of perfection "before rage or clamor or strife or uproar had come about," as the texts themselves put it. This was the paradise of Ra, and the memories of that time echoed through centuries of Egyptian thought. "The land was in abundance," the texts say. "There was no year of hunger. . .Walls did not fall; thorns did not pierce in the time of the Primeval Gods."

Or from another text: "there was no unrighteousness in the land, no crocodile seized, no snake bit in the time of the First Gods."

Cosmic harmony, abundance, paradise on earth. To this paradisal, according to the great nineteenth century scholar Francois Lenormant, the Egyptians "continually looked back with regret and envy." The golden age of Ra was, for the Egyptians, the great "example" setting a standard for all later ages.

A surprising fact emerges. The legend of the Golden Age or ancient paradise is as old as civilization. And the implications are well worth pondering. A coherent set of ideas has survived all of the twists and turns of cultural evolution for at least five thousand years--and on every continent. Now that's an astonishing verification of the durability of myth! Many of us had always thought of myth as the outcome of reckless invention--illiterate savages entertaining themselves by contriving magical stories out of nothing. Imagine such a process going on for thousands of years, and ask yourself if any possibility of a universal memory would remain.

The Golden Age is chronicled in text of many cultures. Here a few of the MANY examples....

According to the Greek poet Hesiod, the present age is but a shadow of a former epoch--called the Golden Age of Kronos.

"First of all, the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Kronos, when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: Miserable age rested not on them.. . The fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint... They lived in peace and quiet in their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and dear to the blessed gods."

Kronos was the father of beginnings; in the words of the Orphic poet--the "Lord of the World, First Father." But this harmonious and peaceful epoch, founded by the god-king, gave way to world-ending disaster and devastating wars of the gods (the Clash of the Titans).

In honor of the Age of Kronos, the Greeks celebrated an annual festival called the Kronia, during which the celebrants symbolically renewed the epoch of peace and plenty. Each year, according to Lucius Accius, the Greeks held large feasts throughout the towns and countryside, reversing the normal social order, exchanging gifts, enjoying merrymaking free from the normal restraints, with each man waiting on his slaves In this way the Kronia festival symbolically transported the celebrants back in time to a mythic period before law and cultural constraints, when Kronos first ruled the world.

Plato writes in his often-studied work, The Statesman, that man formerly lived in a paradise, under the rule of the creator himself. But the mortal realm, Plato declared, was later separated from the creator, and that was the cause of the evils descending upon the world.

So the Greeks, in accord with the universal tradition, remembered the age of Kronos as the *model* for later generation. In The Laws, Plato writes that “we must do all we can to imitate the life which is said to have existed in the days of Kronos...both in private and public life."

In the third century B.C. the neoplatonist Porphyry, drawing on the work of the Greek philosopher Dicaearchus, offered a simple explanation for the human yearning for paradise. The source of this yearning is the memory of the Age of Kronos, he wrote, when men "lived a life of leisure, without care or toil, and also--if the doctrine of the most eminent medical men is to be accepted--without disease...And there were no wars or feuds between them. Consequently, this manner of life of theirs naturally came to be longed for by men of later times."

All Greek astronomical traditions agreed that Kronos was the planet Saturn. What is now the sixth planet from the Sun stands at the center of the Greek paradise myth. Kronos, the planet Saturn, ruled the heavens for a period, presiding over the Golden Age, then departed as the heavens fell into confusion.

How did it happen that a remote planet, now a bare speck in the sky, found its way into such an improbable, yet deeply-rooted memory? Our own names for the planets came from the Romans who gave the outermost visible planet the name Saturn.

Latin poets, philosophers, and historians, including Ovid, Virgil, and Seneca, preserved an archaic legend about Saturn. In unison they insisted that long, long ago the now-distant star had ruled as god-king, founding an ancient kingdom, a paradise on earth.

But perhaps the most eloquent expressions came In later history from the poet and historian Ovid who recorded the Latin traditions regarding the Golden Age:

"The first millennium was the age of gold;
Then living creatures trusted one another;
People did well without the thought of ill:
Nothing forbidden in the book of laws,
No fears, no prohibitions read in bronze,
Or in the sculpted face of judge and master...
No brass-lipped trumpets called, nor clanging swords
Nor helmets marched the streets, country, and town
Had never heard of war: and seasons traveled
through the years of peace. The innocent earth
learned neither spade nor plough; she gave her
riches as fruit hangs from the tree; grapes
Dropping from the vine, cherry, strawberry
Ripened in silver shadows of the mountain,
And in the shade of Jove's miraculous tree
The falling acorn. Springtide the single
season of the year."

What the Greeks called the Kronia, celebrating the fortunate era of Kronos, the Romans termed the Saturnalia, a symbolic renewal of the Saturnia regna or reign of the great god Saturn. As in the Greek festival, the rules of social standing and obligation were temporarily suspended, with all things reverting to the primeval state, as master and slave took their place at one table.

From the Mahabharata, the traditional, sacred literature of Hinuism;

"Men neither bought nor sold; there were no poor and no rich; there was no need to labour, because all that men required was obtained by the power of will; the chief virtue was the abandonment of wordy desires. The Krita Yuga was without disease; there was no lessening with the years; there was no hatred, or vanity, or evil thought whatsoever; no sorrow, no fear."

The early myths of China and Japan speaks of an idyllic age. Historian Kwabg Tze (ce. 400 B.C.) wrote;

"In the age of perfect virtue they attached no value to wisdom... They were upright and correct, without knowing that to be so was Righteousness; they loved one another, without knowing that to do so was Benevolence; they were honest and leal-hearted, without knowing that it was Loyalty; they fulfilled their engagements, without knowing that to do so was Good Faith; in their simple movements they employed the services of one another, without thinking that they were conferring or receiving any gift. Therefore their actions left no trace, and there was no record of their affairs." (Myths of China and Japan)

Bear in mind that the myth-makers did not just recount a charming tale; they strove desperately to recover what was lost. In the infancy of civilization collective activity reflects a singular reference to the age of the gods--the honoring of the gods through celebration, representation, reenactment, codification, and massive construction activity. In fact, there are numerous grounds for saying that civilization itself was the outcome of this fundamentally religious activity.

Perhaps the most accomplished analyst of mythology in modern times was the late Mircea Eliade, chairman of the Department of History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion. From his meticulous, lifelong survey of the subject, professor Eliade drew a stunning conclusion: literally every component of early civilizations--from religion to art and architecture--expressed symbolically the desire to recover and to re-live the lost Golden Age. That which symbolically transported the participant back to the First Time, the Golden Age, was sacred. That which did not was transient and mundane, of no interest.

The role of this memory in the ancient cultures carries vast implications for our understanding of the events that provoked human imagination in the myth-making epoch. Early man yearned for a return to paradise. Every coronation of a king, every New Year's festival, monumental construction, every recitation of temple hymns and prayers, every holy war, every sacrifice to the gods was motivated by a desire to recapture some aspect of the Golden Age, to live, if only for a symbolic moment, in that enchanted, opening chapter in the book of gods and wonders.

Now what is really interesting is the incredible similarities of the Golden Age, the age of of peace and plenty that marked the beginning of Mans sojourn upon Earth and scriptures that describe the Millennium. They are basically identical.

D&C 101:26, 29-31
26 And in that day the enmity of man, and the enmity of beasts, yea, the enmity of all flesh, shall cease from before my face.

29 And there shall be no sorrow because there is no death.

30 In that day an infant shall not die until he is old; and his life shall be as the age of a tree;

31 And when he dies he shall not sleep, that is to say in the earth, but shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and shall be caught up, and his rest shall be glorious.

Isaiah 65: 17, 21-24
17 ¶For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.

21 And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.

22 They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

23 They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them.

24 And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.

Isaiah 40:4
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:

Revelation 21:1,4
1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Revelation 22:5
5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

"And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;" (D&C 93:24)

Here are a few thoughts and very interesting quotes....

The restoration of all things;

This statement from Orson Pratt on the restoration of Mother Earth and how it will be restored to a prior condition of Earth's past...

"If we had an antediluvian map, we should be able to point out the future geographical position of the land and water as it will in as it will exist during the Millenium: or in other words, an antediluvian map would answer very well the purpose of a millenial map. For the Earth is to be restored to it's former condition." (The Seer, Volume II, No.4 April, 1954.)

The "Earth is to be restored to it's former condition." Do we any idea what these former conditions are? Yes! The key to understanding future events future lies in the past. Also interesting if one were to have a map of the millenium Earth and a antediluvian map it would look practically the same.

D&C 133: 24 And the land of Jerusalem and the land of Zion shall be turned back into their own place, and the earth shall be like as it was in the days before it was divided.

Article of Faith #10

10 We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.

Renew=restore, Earth will be restored to a privious condition.

Here is a question from Elder Joseph Fielding to Parley P. Pratt, Preston England, January 1841.

“Dear Brother Pratt, – Having a desire to know the truth of all things that are revealed from God to man, and knowing in part the importance of teaching them to mankind, I take the liberty to ask you certain questions, which if you think proper, you may answer in the Star, as I ask not for my own information alone, but for all who desire and seek after truth.”

Question: “How can the stars fall from heaven to earth, when they (as far as we know) are much larger than the earth?”

Millennial Star, Vol. 1, No. 10, Parley P. Pratt in answer to questions from Joseph Fielding:

" How can the stars fall from heaven to the earth when they (as far as we know) are much larger than the earth?

"We are not here given to understand that all the stars will fall, or even many of them: but only as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken by the wind. The stars which will fall to the earth are fragments which have been broken off from the earth from time to time in the mighty convulsions of nature;----some in the days of Enoch;----some in the days of Peleg;----some with the Ten Tribes; and some with the death of Christ. These must all be restored again at the time of the restitution of all things."

“These all must be restored again at the “times of restitution of all things.” This will restore the ten tribes to Israel; and also bring again Zion, even Enoch’s city. It will bring back the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God; that you and I may partake of it (Rev 2:7).

“When these fragments, (some of which are vastly larger than the present earth) are brought back and joined to this earth, it will cause a convulsion of all nature; the graves of the Saints will be opened, and they will rise from the dead; while the mountains will flow down, the vallies rise, the sea retire to its own place, the islands and continents will be removed, and earth will be rolled together as a scroll. The earth will be many times larger than it is now.”
Millennial Star, Vol. 1, No. 10, Parley P. Pratt in answer to questions from Joseph Fielding:

Restoration of ALL THINGS! Bring back the "tree of life"! In other words Parley P Pratt says; Fragments which are larger than the size of Earth have been broken off in a mighty convulsion of nature many times in Earth's history. "Some in the days of Enoch;----some in the days of Peleg;----some with the Ten Tribes; and some with the death of Christ." (You can add noah's flood and the end of the golden age to that list.)

Now when these larger than earth fragments return ("fallin stars") and are brought back and restored ( lost tribes and the city of enoch.) the results will be similar to that when they departed or were broken off. What will be the results of this larger restoration and the return of fragments? "It will cause a convulsion of all nature; "mountains will flow down, the vallies rise, the sea retire to its own place, the islands and continents will be removed, and earth will be rolled together as a scroll. The earth will be many times larger than it is now.”

Joseph Smith described what would cause a convulsion of all nature when he said it would be a "planet, a comet.".. "signs in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, the sun turned into darkness and the moon to blood, earthquakes in divers places, the seas heaving beyond their bounds; then will appear one grand sign of the Son of Man in heaven. But what will the world do? They will say it is a planet, a comet,"

Orson Pratt held the same opinion as his brother in the quote above.

" The Prophet Joseph Smith in my hearing... that the ten tribes were seperated from the Earth; or a portion of the Earth was by a miracle broken off…the Ten Tribes were taken away with it, and that in the latter days it would be restored to the Earth or be let down in the Polar regions...” (Source: Letter Box of Orson Pratt, LDS Church Historian’s Office, letter to John C. Hall, December 13, 1875)

Once again the word "RESTORE". Also interesting is the he says it will return to the polar region. Pointing to the North. (D&C:133)

Restoration of all things including both the lost tribes and the city of enoch. But also the catostrophic nature that will occumpyning these events. Bottom line, Joseph was a catostroph, as were many of the early breathern because it was what Joseph and the spirit taught them. These catosrtophic beliefs are in line with modern catosrophist and in line with catostroph in human history. What would cause mountains will flow down, the vallies rise, the sea retire to its own place, the islands and continents will be removed, and earth will be rolled together as a scroll? Were not talking about the mountains taking form over millions of years but in hours? False tradions teach of gradualism. The prophets have always taught something very different than what many lds people belief today The earth will be many times larger than it is now.”

Now it must be mentioned that These statements and beliefs were commom among the early breathern. They have in a way become lost scripture becasue of unbelief and false traditions. (Big Bang/Theory of everything.)

It also should be mentioned that many of these statements go in line with the ancient saturn myth. In fact many of the statement quoted above and will below lend huge ammount of support to Saturn Myth. And when one studies Earth history from a catostrophic lens it leads right to the planet Saturn. These statements in essence give incredible credibility and verify the conclusions reached by catostrophist who have analyzed the myths of Saturn. At the same time, the give added meaning to and concur with the teachings and statements of the early Brethern.

The fact that revelations produced by Joseph Smith display the proper use of such ancient iconography speaks eloquently for their authenticity. False prophets in this day and age have no grasp of such idiographic relationships and thus fail to use them properly, if at all.

One of the recurring themes of the New Jerusalem is the same as the "Saturn Myth". That is the Earth will no longer recieve it's light from the Sun and that the City will literally be lit by the light of God.

Isaiah 60: 19-21
19 The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.

20 Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.

Revelation 21:23
23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

Revelation 22:23
5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

The Saturn Myth speaks of a sun that never sets and a pillar of light that stood over the Earth anciently. The pillar was the Axis Mundi or the World Mountain. It was a pillar which illuminated the Earth.

2 Nephi 14
5 And the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory of Zion shall be a defence.

Exodus 13:21
21When Moses brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, he protected and guided them by means of a cloud of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night: And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to do by day and night.

Exodus 14:19-20
19And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:

20And it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel; and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.

John Taylor's vision of the New Jerusalem describes such a pillar.
"I than saw a short dis­tance from the river (Missouri) how­ever, I saw twelve men dressed in temple robes, stand­ing in a square or nearly so (to dedicate the temple site)I saw myraids of an­gels hovering over them, and saw also an immense pil­lar of clouds over them and heard the angels singing the most heav­enly music. The words were “Now is estab­lished the King­dom of God and his Christ, which shall never more be thrown down.”

"I saw people com­ing from the river and from the desert places a long way off to help build the temple and it seemed that hosts of an­gels all helped to get material to build with and I saw some of them who wore temple clothes come and build the tem­ple and the city, and all the time I saw the great pillar of clouds hovering over the place."(Wilford Woodruff Joournals, June 15, 1878)

Elder Orson Pratt spoke extensivley on the same pillar.

"..that we should return and build up the temple of the Most High where we formerly laid the corner stone. He promised us that He would manifest Himself on that temple, that the glory of God should be upon it; and not only upon the temple, but within it, even a cloud by day and a flaming fire by night. We believe in these promises as much as we believe in any promise ever uttered by the mouth of Jehovah. The Latter-day Saints just as much expect to receive a fulfilment of that promise during the generation that was in existence in 1832 as they expect that the sun will rise and set to-morrow. Why? Because God cannot lie. He will fulfil all His promises. He has spoken, it must come to pass." (Journal Of Discourses Volume: 13 Page: 362)

"after the glory of God in the form of a cloud by day shall rest upon the temple; and by night , the shining of a flaming fire will fill the whole heavens round about ; after every dwelling place upon mount Zion shall be clothed with a pillar of fire by night, and a cloud by day, about that period of time, the Ten Tribes will be heard of, away in the north, a great company, coming down from the northern regions, coming to sing in the height of the latter day Zion. -----'(Journal of Discourses, Vol. 18, page 68,)

“The time is to come when God will meet with all the congregation of his Saints, and to show his approval, and that he does love them, he will work a miracle by covering them in the cloud of his glory. I do not mean something that is invisible, but I mean that same order of things which once existed on the earth so far as the tabernacle of Moses was concerned, which was carried in the midst of the children of Israel as they journeyed in the wilderness. Did God manifest himself in that tabernacle that was built according to the pattern which he gave unto his servant Moses? He did. In what way? In the day time a cloud filled that tabernacle. The Lord intended his people to be covered with the cloud continually, and he intended to reveal himself unto them, and to show forth his glory more fully amongst them; but they sinned so much in his sight that he declared—‘My presence shall not go up with this people, lest I should break forth upon them in my fury and consume them in a moment.’ Because of their wickedness he withdrew his presence, and his glory in a great measure was taken from them; but still Moses was permitted to enter the tabernacle, and to behold the glory of God, and it is said that he talked with the Lord face to face--a blessing which God did intend to bestow upon all Israel had they kept his law and had not hardened their hearts against him. But in the latter days there will be a people so pure in Mount Zion, with a house established upon the tops of the mountains, that God will manifest himself, not only in their Temple and upon all their assemblies, with a visible cloud during the day, but when the night shall come, if they shall be assembled for worship, God will meet with them by his pillar of fire; and when they retire to their habitations, behold each habitation will be lighted up by the glory of God--a pillar of flaming fire by night. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 16, pp. 82-3)

I love this one. Orson Pratt eloquentley potrays the new heavens in describing a scene of wonder and grandeur...

"Thus, while darkness covers the earth, and [p.237]gross darkness the people, the glory of the Lord will be literally seen in the form of a cloud and smoke by day, and a flaming fire by night, not merely upon the temple, but upon all the dwelling places of the city, and upon all her assemblies.

Reader, contemplate for a moment this grand and magnificent scenery. Contemplate a great and extended city, with a dazzling and glorious light, enveloping every habitation, and filling all the heavens above it. Would not such a wonderful phenomenon attract the attention of all nations? Supposing that the newspapers and periodicals of the day should actually publish the news that a whole city was enveloped in the brightness of a flaming fire, night after night, month after month, and year after year; and that the buildings remained unconsumed, would it not create the most intense excitement? Would it not be the great topic of conversation? Would not thousands and millions come from the most distant nations to gaze upon so strange and unexpected a scenery?"
(The Seer, Vol.II, No.8)


"We are not here given to understand that all the stars will fall, or even many of them: but only as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken by the wind. The stars which will fall to the earth are fragments which have been broken off from the earth from time to time in the mighty convulsions of nature;----some in the days of Enoch;----some in the days of Peleg;----some with the Ten Tribes; and some with the death of Christ. These must all be restored again at the time of the restitution of all things."

“These all must be restored again at the “times of restitution of all things.” This will restore the ten tribes to Israel; and also bring again Zion, even Enoch’s city. It will bring back the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God; that you and I may partake of it (Rev 2:7).

“When these fragments, (some of which are vastly larger than the present earth) are brought back and joined to this earth, it will cause a convulsion of all nature; the graves of the Saints will be opened, and they will rise from the dead; while the mountains will flow down, the vallies rise, the sea retire to its own place, the islands and continents will be removed, and earth will be rolled together as a scroll. The earth will be many times larger than it is now.”
Millennial Star, Vol. 1, No. 10, Parley P. Pratt in answer to questions from Joseph Fielding:

"The tree of life" is a well-known concept in the ancient cultures. An increasing number of scholars now concede that the mythical tree was essentially a symbol of the cosmic axis, the column that links the rotational poles of the earth to the poles of heaven as they appear from any place on earth." (Rens van der Sluijs, The Vortical Tree.)

Every sacred kingdom or city derives it's character from the primeval dwelling, so that whatever was said of the enclouser above was also said, of the enclouser above was also said of the imitative form construction by men.

Through identification with Saturn's dwelling, each terrestrial kingdom or city of aniquity distiguished itself as the Middle Place, the center from which history took it's start.-(The Saturn Myth, pp.110, 113)

Middle Place and Center Place has incredible imagery..
D&C 57:2-3 "CENTER PLACE"

Saturn Imagey is associated with all aspects of the gospel... History, prophecy, Temple, Millenium, ect..

One requirement in this cross-cultural review is to see how consistently the traditions of the primeval "sun" converge with another ancient theme describing an ancient power stationed at the celestial pole.

As the Earth turns on its axis, observers on Earth see the celestial bodies moving in arcs across the sky. But there is, of course, an exception. There is a central point around which the stars appear to revolve. For ancient sky-worshippers (of the northern hemisphere) that motionless spot, occupied today by the star Polaris, appears to have possessed an extraordinary importance. And as we shall see, the stories told around the world about this place par excellence, offer a stunning resolution to the cosmic mysteries we are exploring here.

In the sixth century B.C. Xenophanes of Colophon offered this definition of the true god: "There is one God, greatest among gods and men, neither in shape nor in thought like unto mortals. He abides ever in the same place motionless, and it befits him not to wander hither and thither."

A remarkable parallel occurs in the Hindu Upanishads:

"There is only one Being who exists
Unmoved yet moving swifter than the mind
Who far outstrips the senses, though as gods
They strive to reach him, who, himself at rest
...Supports all vital action
He moves, yet moves not."

One might think that images of this sort arose as independent philosophical insights. But cross-cultural examination reveals something more ancient than the insights themselves-- a universal myth describing the central sun, a power ruling the heavens from the summit of the world axis. So one step in the resolution we are looking for is simply to note the universal language of the celestial pole. Then, with that language clearly in mind, we can compare it to descriptions of the primeval sun, the great luminary said to have founded the Golden Age.

Consider the image of the pole in Shakespeare--

"...I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament"

The speaker here is Shakespeare's Caesar--whom tradition regarded as the supreme ruler on earth, a replica of the celestial power. Many centuries before Shakespeare, Hipparchus spoke of "a certain star remaining ever at the same place. And this star is the pivot of the Cosmos." That language turns out to be the very language used by the ancient Chinese astronomers and poets in describing the "star of the pivot" at the celestial pole.

To the Polynesians the pole is the station of the "Immovable One." The North American
Pawnee call it "the star that stands still" and regard it as the governor of the sky. This star, they say, "is different from other stars, because it never moves." To the Hindus, the star is Dhruva, meaning "firm," while the region of the pole is esteemed as the "motionless site," the celestial "resting place" of gods and heroes.

What, then, is the connection of this supreme resting place to the station of the primeval “sun”?

The polar Sun in Egypt

In ancient Egyptian cosmology, possibly the oldest known thought-system, one finds a mystifying connection of the sun god Atum with the pole. Many years ago, French scholar Jacques Enel, in his study of Egyptian imagery, for example, concluded that the Egyptians remembered Atum's station as "the single, immovable point around which the movement of the stars occurred." To the Egyptians, states Enel, "Atum was the chief or center of the movement of the universe at the pole."

Much the same language was used by the eminent Egyptologist, T. Rundle Clark, who reported that the pole was the celebrated place par excellence. Atum, according to Clark, is "the arbiter of destiny perched on the top of the world pole." So when the text declare that "the great god lives, fixed in the middle of the sky," the reference is to the polar station, according to Clark.

Clark writes that "the celestial pole is 'that place,' or 'the great city.' The various designation show how deeply it impressed the Egyptian imagination. If god is the governor of the universe and it revolves around an axis, then god must preside over the axis."

That the Egyptians would remember a former sun god at the celestial pole may seem too much to swallow. And Clark is emphatic: "No other people was so deeply affected by the eternal circuit of the stars around a point in the northern sky. Here must be the node of the universe, the center of regulation."

Atum, the first form of the sun god Ra, was thus the 'Unmoved Mover" described in Egyptian texts many centuries before Aristotle offered the phrase as a definition of the supreme power. The Egyptian hieroglyph for Atum is a primitive sledge, signifying "to move." To the god of the cosmic revolutions, the Book of the Dead proclaims "Hail to thee, Tmu [Atum] Lord of Heaven, who givest motion to all things." But while moving the heavens Atum remained em hetep, "at rest" or "in one spot." Throughout all of Egypt this "resting place" of Atum was remembered as the site of the First Occasion, the drama of cosmic beginnings.

Remember that the sun god Atum and the sun god Ra were one and the same, though the Egyptians insisted that the god himself evolved with the unfolding events. The god who was Atum became Ra in the course of his own unfolding, as the originally formless god began to acquire certain distinct attributes (a subject we shall explore at length).

Thus Atum's counterpart Ra, according to the sources themselves, "rests on his high place." He does not roam about the sky. Like Atum, Ra is the pivot, with the lesser lights revolving around him. These are, as the texts say, the "stars who surround Ra." "These gods shall revolve round about him." "The satellites of Ra make their round." Again, the picture is of a stationary god serving as the axis of celestial motions.

[It must be noted here that, as commonly translated, numerous Egyptian texts have Ra "rising in the eastern horizon." But as I will show in discussing the worldwide myth of the cosmic mountain, such translations hide the literal meaning of the Egyptian word [Aakhut] rendered as "horizon." The literal meaning is "the mountain of fire and light." Ra does not "rise" on or above the mountain, he "grows bright" in the mountain in the archaic cycle of day and night. And the language does not literally describe the geographic "east" either. The subject was not geography, but cosmography, the theater of the gods].

The polar sun in Mesopotamia

As I have already noted, the ancient Sumerian counterpart of Atum was the creator-king An, the Akkadian Anu, whose "terrifying glory" was a repeated subject of the hymns and rites. This was "the terror of the splendour of Anu in the midst of heaven," and the starworshippers did not mean by the "midst" of heaven some vague and unfamiliar metaphor for the sky. The "midst" (kirib sami, Kabal sami), meant, very concretely, the cosmic center, making the polar god, according to the early student of Mesopotamian astronomy Robert Brown, Jr., a nocturnal sun. The words translated as the "midst" mean, according to Brown, "that central point where Polaris sat enthroned."

Both Sumerian and Akkadian texts are replete with references to the "firm" and "steadfast" or "motionless" character of the dominant gods. The great god Enki of Eridu is "the motionless lord," and god of "stability." A broken Sumerian hymn, in reference to Ninurash, a form of Ninurta, reads:

"Whom the 'god of the steady star' upon a foundation/
To...cause to repose in years of plenty."

Failing to perceive the concrete meaning of such terms, solar mythologists like to think of the place of "repose" as a hidden "underworld" beneath the earth, a dark region visited by the sun after it has set. But the place of repose is no underworld. It is:

"The lofty residence...
The lofty place...
The place of lofty repose..."

What, then, of the famous Assyrian and Babylonian god Shamash, the sun god? A remarkable fact is that Shamash "comes forth" ·(shines) and "goes in" (dims) at one spot, called the "midst" of heaven (as note above)--the "firm," "stable" or motionless station of supreme "rest". This esteemed place was symbolized by the top of the ziggurats, the famous Babylonian axis-towers constructed as symbolic models of the Cosmos. Hence, the uppermost level was deemed the "light of Shamash," and the "heart of Shamash," denoting (in the words of E.G. King) the pivot "around which the highest heaven or sphere of the fixed stars revolved.:"

Remarkably, the Babylonian tradition of the polar sun has been preserved up to the twentieth century in the tradition of the Mandaeans of Iraq. In their midnight ceremonies these people invoked the celestial pole as Olma l'nhoara, "the world of light." It is therefore not surprising to find that chroniclers of the Mandaean rites call the polar power the "primitive sun of the star-worshippers."

We must ask, therefore, whether other cultures, showing similar reverence for the celestial pole, might have also preserved the connection to the "primitive sun."

A worldwide theme

To the Hindus the sacred celestial spot, the province of the creator-king, was the place of "supreme rest," called also "the motionless site," described as "a Spot blazing with splendor...and which subsistsmotionless." Thus the sun god Surya "stands firmly on this safe resting place." Surya, states the Sanskrit authority V.S. Agrawala, "is himself at rest, being the immovable center of his system." Just as the Egyptian and Mesopotamian sun gods "rise and set" in one place, Surya occupies samanam dhama--"the same place of rising and setting." For the words translated as "rising" and "setting" to possess any intelligible meaning, one must refer (as in the case of Egypt discussed above) to a phase of brightening followed by a phase of dimming in a daily cycle.

Another name for the stationary sun, according to Agrawala, is Prajapati. "The sun in the center is Prajapati: he is the horse that imparts movement to everything."

The motionless Surya and Prajapati compare with the light of Brahma, called the "true sun." This is the ancient sun, the texts say, which "after having risen thence upwards ... rises and sets no more. It remains alone in the center." Here, too, center and summit are synonymous. Brahma, observes Rene Guenon, is "the pivot around which the world accomplishes it revolution, the immutable center which directs and regulates cosmic movement."

Moreover, this stationary and axial character of the greatest gods seems to be common to all of the primary celestial figures in Hindu myth, with its diverse pantheon gathered from so many cultural traditions. The god Varuna, "seated in the midst of heaven," is the "Recumbent," and called the "axis of the universe." "Firm is the seat of Varuna," declares one of the Vedic hymns. In him "all wisdom centres, as the nave is set within the wheel." One of Varuna's forms is Savitar, the "impeller." While the rest of the universe revolves, the impeller stands firm. "Firm shalt thou stand, like Savitar desirable."

Also occupying the stationary center is the popular god Vishnu--who takes a firm stand in that resting place in the sky." The location is the celestial pole, called "the exalted seat of Vishnu, round which the starry spheres forever wander." Vishnu is the polar sun or central fire: "Fiery indeed is the name of this steadfast god," states one Vedic text.

To the Buddhists this is the center of the cosmic wheel, the throne of the Buddha himself. It is acalatthana, the "unmoving site," or the "unconquerable seat of firm séance." Thus, as noted by Coomaraswamy, the Buddha throne crowned the world axis.

Given the great variety of mythical figures pointing to the same underlying concepts, it is crucial that we recognize where Hindu and Buddhist myth located this cosmic center, the celestial resting place. It was, according to the most widely respected Sanskrit authorities such as Ananda Coomaraswamy, the celestial pole, the axis of the turning heavens, a verdict repeated again and again by Rene Guenon, Mircea Eliade, and others.

According to ancient Chinese astronomy the revered Emperor on High, prototype of kings, stood at the celestial pole. Chinese astrologers, according to Gustav Schlegel, regarded the polar god as "the Arch-Premier ... the most venerated of all the celestial divinities. In fact the Pole star, around which the entire firmament appears to turn, should be considered as the Sovereign of the Sky." It was thus proclaimed that the celestial pole was the seat of the supreme ruler Shang-ti, mythically, the first king of a great dynasty in the remote past. His seat was "the Pivot," and all the heavens turned upon his exclusive power.

Raised to a first principle, the polar power became the mystic Tao, the motor of the Cosmos. The essential idea is contained in the Chinese word for Tao, which combines the sign for "to stand still" with the sign for "to go" and "head" The Tao is the Unmoved Mover, the supreme ruler, who "goes," or "moves" while yet remaining in one place--revealing a striking correspondence with the images of the polar power in other lands.

Chinese sources proclaim the Tao to be the "light of heaven" and "the heart of heaven." "Action is reversed into non-action," states Jung. "Everything peripheral is subordinated to the command of the centre." Thus the Tao, in the words of Erwin Pousselle, rules the "golden center, which is the Axis of the World."

In the Persian Zend Avesta the creator-king Ahura Mazda rules from atop the world axis, the fixed station "around which the many stars revolve." Iranian cosmology, as reported by Leopold de Saussure, esteemed the celestial pole as the center and summit of heaven, where resided Kevan, the sovereign power of heaven, called "the Great One in the middle of the sky." Throughout the ancient Near East, according to the comprehensive research of H. P. L'Orange, the "King of the Universe" appears as a central sun, "the Axis and the Pole of the World."

These archaic traditions can help us re-interpret the images of the sun god kept alive by Greek and Roman symbolists. In astrological representations, the primeval "sun" occupies the central, axial position while the other planets or stars revolve around him. The definitive celestial profile of Helios is as Basileus, the Royal Sun, recognized by Franz Cumont as the prototype of terrestrial kings or princes surrounded by their guards. In the time of the Roman emperor Nero, the sun-god was still remembered as the axis, the genius loci, the center of the cosmos, and was presented as such in astrological depictions, with the emperor himself serving as the terrestrial image of the original sun god.

It is significant too that, as noted by John Perry (Lord of the Four Quarters), the Etruscans--predecessors of the Romans--claimed there was one supreme deity, held to be the axial "Pole" Star.

"According to Jewish and Muslim Cosmology," wrote the eminent authority on Semitic religions, A.J. Wensinck, "the divine throne is exactly above the seventh heaven, consequently it is the pole of the Universe." (An echo of the ancient tradition will be found in the words of the prophet Isaiah, who locates the throne of El in the farthest reaches of the north.)

Amongst Finno Ugric peoples, the supreme ruler of the sky is Ukko. As stated in the Finnish Kalevala the seat of Ukko was at the Pole. And this assertion, according to the prominent chronicler Uno Holmberrg, was part of a pervasive tradition of the creator-king seated atop the world pole.

A remarkable counterpart is provided by the Ashanti of Ghana, who remembered the old sun god as "the dynamic center of the Universe, from which lines of force radiate to all quarters of the heaven." Thus, according to the Ashanti, this former sun god is "the center around which everything revolves."

American Counterparts

Significantly, the same overlapping images of a polar sun or sovereign luminary at the cosmic center, occur in the Americas. In southern Peru the Inca Yupanqui raised a temple at Cuzco to the creator god who was superior to the sun we know. Unlike the solar orb, he was able to "rest" and "to light the world from one spot." As the pioneering Mesoamerican scholar, Zelia Nuttal, noted many years ago, the only reasonable position in the sky for fulfilling this requirement is the celestial Pole. "It is an extremely important and significant fact," writes Nuttall, "that the principal doorway of this temple opened to the north." (Since the north celestial pole is not visible from Cuzco, 14° below the equator, Nuttall assumed that this tradition of a polar sun was carried southward.)

Cottie Burland tells us that, among the Mexicans, "the nearest approach to the idea of a true universal god was Xiuhtecuhtli, recalled as the Old, Old One who enabled the first ancestors to rise from barbarism. Xiuhtecuhtli appears as the Central Fire and "the heart of the Universe." "Xiuhtecuhtli was a very special deity. He was not only the Lord of Fire which burnt in front of every temple and in the middle of every hut in Mexico, but also Lord of the Pole Star. He was the pivot of the universe and one of the forms of the Supreme Deity." An apparent counterpart of this central fire is the Maya creator god Huracan, the "Heart of Heaven" at the celestial pole.

The Pawnee locate the "star chief of the skies" at the pole. He is the "star that stands still." Of this supreme power they say, "Its light is the radiance of the Sun god shining through."

The language used by the different cultures is remarkably similar. Yet the underlying idea--a great luminary or "sun" god ruling from the celestail pole--poses a blatant contradiction of direct experience today. How did it happen that the same contradiction occurred in every corner of the ancient world?

Mythic traditions the world over locate the ancient sun god at the celestial pole, a placement that challenges the common suppositions of mythologists and historians. To the modern mind nothing could be more absurd than a polar sun. Yet the unmoving sun is the ancient tradition, as noted by E.A.S. Butterworth in his insightful work, The Tree at the Navel of the Earth. On evaluating the archaic images of Helios and his counterparts, Butterworth concluded that this luminary "is not the natural sun of heaven, for it neither rises nor sets, but is, as it seems, ever at the zenith...There are signs of an ambiguity between the pole star and the sun."

But what Butterworth did not realize is that the "ambiguity" dominated the cosmological thought of ancient star worshippers in every corner of the world. The precedence of the cosmic center among the great ancient cultures has, in fact, been noted by others. More than a hundred years ago, William F. Warren, in his groundbreaking work, Paradise Found, identified the celestial pole as the home of the supreme god of ancient races. "The religions of all ancient nations...associate the abode of the supreme God with the North Pole, the centre of heaven; or with the celestial space immediately surrounding it. [Yet] no writer on comparative theology has ever brought out the facts which establish this assertion."

In the following years a number of scholars, each focusing on different bodies of evidence, reached the same conclusion. The controversial and erratic Gerald Massey, in two large works (The Natural Genesis and Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World), claimed that the religion and mythology of a polar god was first formulated by the priest-astronomers of ancient Egypt and spread from Egypt to the rest of the world.

In a general survey of ancient language, symbolism, and mythology, John O'Neill (Night of the Gods, two volumes) insisted that mankind's oldest religions centered on a god of the celestial pole.

The renowned Mesoamerican authority, Zelia Nuttall, in Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilization, undertook an extensive review of New World astronomical themes, concluding that the highest god was polar. From Mexico she shifted to other civilizations, finding the same unexpected role of a polar god.

Reinforcing the surprising conclusions of these researchers was the subsequent work of others, among them the noted Finno-Ugric authority, Uno Holmberg (Der Baum Des Lebens), who documented the preeminence of the polar god in the ritual of Altaic and neighboring peoples, suggesting ancient origins in Hindu and Mesopotamian cosmologies; Léopold de Saussure (Les Origines de l;'Astronomie Chinoise), who showed that primitive Chinese religion and astronomy honor the celestial pole as the home of the supreme "monarch" of the sky; René Guenon (Le Roi du Monde and Le Symbolisme de la Croix), who sought to outline a universal doctrine centering on the polar gods and principles of ancient man.

In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century these revelations were viewed as highly unorthodox and generally given little attention. But more recently the pioneering historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, together with many of his colleagues, documented numerous traditions of the cosmic center--the place where it all began--and noted again and again the relations of the cosmic center to the celestial pole.

There is a paradox here. Most of the writers cited above possessed a common--if unspoken--faith in the ceaseless regularity of the solar system, seeking to explain the polar god in strictly familiar terms: the center of our revolving heavens is the celestial pole; the great god of the center and summit must have been the star closest to this cosmic pivot.

But then, as we have seen, it's simply impossible to separate the tradition of the polar power from that of a central sun, lighting the world from one spot. So it is not just a matter of ancient star worshippers looking up at the pole and noticing that the circumpolar stars slowly wheel around that center. The mystery is the bizarre placement of the ancient “sun”--the supreme luminary of heaven--at this improbable station in the sky. How did an idea contradicting all natural experience today, establish itself around the world?

Saturn, the polar sun

Allow the points of cross-cultural agreement to lead the way and a resolution comes from the early astronomical traditions identifying a planet--Saturn--as the exemplary “sun” god of the lost Golden Age. There is, in fact, a way to test the integrity of the ancient ideas we have chronicled here. Are there any independent astronomical traditions incongruously declaring the outermost visible planet to have formerly occupied the celestial pole? This would be particularly significant because nothing in the appearance of Saturn today could conceivably suggest a seat at the pole. To find such a tradition would thus verify a collective memory, a coherent substructure of myth beyond anything one might have thought possible.

The answer is clear, and it is stunning. Wherever ancient astronomies preserved detailed images of the planet Saturn, it seems that Saturn was declared to have formerly occupied the celestial pole! The priestly astronomers of Zoroastrianism knew the planet Saturn as Kevan, called "the Great One in the middle of the sky," and they located the primeval home of Kevan at the celestial Pole. In neo-Platonist symbolism of the planets, Kronos-Saturn ruled the celestial Pole, or had his station "over the Pole."

It is also known that Latin poets remembered Saturn as god of "the steadfast star," the very phrase used for the pole star in virtually every ancient astronomy. Thus Manilius recounts that Saturn, in his fall, toppled to the "opposite end of the world axis," thus placing his original throne atop the world axis.

A superb example of the polar Saturn comes from Chinese astronomy, which identifies the distant planet as "the genie of the pivot." Saturn had his station at the pole, according to the eminent authority on Chinese astronomy, Gustav Schlegel. In the words of Leopold deSaussure, Saturn was "the planet of the center, corresponding to the emperor on earth, thus to the polar star of heaven."

Interestingly, the theme also appears to have passed into the mystic traditions of numerous secret societies (Rosicrucian, Masonic, Cabalistic, Hermetic, and others rooted in an unknown past). One of the most thorough authorities on such societies was Manly P. Hall, who published numerous volumes on the related belief systems. In the general traditions reviewed by Hall, the god Saturn is "the old man who lives at the north pole." Even today, in our celebration of Christmas, we live under the influence of the polar Saturn, according to Hall: "Saturn, the old man who lives at the north pole, and brings with him to the children of men a sprig of evergreen (the Christmas tree), is familiar to the little folks under the name of Santa Claus."

Santa Claus, descending yearly from his polar home to distribute gifts around the world, is a muffled echo of the Universal Monarch spreading miraculous good fortune. But while the earlier traditions place his prototype, the Universal Monarch, at the celestial pole, popular tradition now locates Santa Claus at the geographical pole--a telling example of the global evolution of myth, as the storytellers progressively brought the celestial gods down to earth.

A planet at the celestial pole? As odd as the tradition may seem, more than one respected scholar detected the anomaly. One of the first was Leopold de Saussure. The principle also figured prominently in the recent work of the historian of science, Giorgio de Santillana and the ethnologist Hertha von Dechend, authors of Hamlet's Mill. According to an ancient astronomical tradition, the authors suggest, Saturn originally ruled from the celestial pole! As for a rationale, the authors could only suggest a "figure of speech" or astral allegory whose meaning remains to be penetrated--

"What has Saturn, the far-out planet to do with the Pole?" they asked. "It is not in the line of modern astronomy to establish any link connecting the planets with Polaris, or with any star, indeed, out of reach of the members of the zodiacal system. Yet such figures of speech were an essential part of the technical idiom of archaic astrology."

A unified memory

It seems that the primordial age, as chronicled in accounts around the world, stands in radical contrast to our own era. One can no more explain Saturn's ancient connection with the pole by reference to the present arrangements of the planets than one could explain, within conventional frameworks, Saturn's image as the Universal Monarch, or founder of the Golden Age, or primeval sun. Yet the fact remains that throughout the ancient world these images of Saturn constituted a pervasive memory which many centuries of cultural evolution could not obliterate.

Separate threads of evidence, each posing its own mystery for the specialists, thus confirm a remarkably unified memory: myth of the Golden Age; myth of the creator-king or celestial prototype of kings; reverence for a former sun god; the archaic day beginning at sunset; placement of the sun god at the cosmic center and summit; identification of the cosmic center with the axis of the turning sky.

To these global traditions, we can now compare the archaic “Saturn myth”: Saturn as founder of the Golden Age; Saturn as creator-king; Saturn as primeval sun or best sun; Saturn as god of the day (the archaic "day" beginning at sunset); Saturn as the resting god or god ruling the "day of rest"; Saturn at the cosmic center and summit; Saturn ruling from the celestial pole.

Together the themes constitute an integral memory. Yet each component blatantly contradicts direct observation today, and the contradiction exists irrespective as to whether the observer is a modern scientist or a primitive living in "scientific ignorance." Under popular assumptions, the global memory is simply impossible.

Popular assumptions must therefore be challenged. We must ask whether the sky we observe today is the same sky experienced by the first stargazers.

"When Saturn ruled the skies alone
(That golden age, to gold unknown,)
This earthly globe to thee assign'd
Receiv'd the gifts of all mankind."
-- Johnathan Swift, A Panegyric on the Dean

The great themes of world mythology are universal: the story of a former age of gods and wonders, whose first chapter was a “perfect” time of peace and plenty; the story of an exemplary "king of the world," the mythic first in the line of kings; descriptions of the gods as luminaries of immense size and power, wielding weapons of thunder and stone; the universal claim that the ancient world evolved by critical phases or cycles, punctuated by sweeping catastrophe; global traditions of gods and heroes ruling for a time, then departing amidst terrifying spectacles and upheavals. The transfiguration of the departed gods into "stars"; the identification of these ruling gods with planets in the first astronomies.

Even prior to the birth of the great civilizations, humans around the world drew remarkably similar pictures of things never seen in our sky. The “sun’ they carved on stone does not look the Sun in our sky. In the birthplace of astronomy we see a crescent placed on ancient images of the “sun,” and a radiant "star" placed squarely in its center. Neither our moon nor any star can be reconciled with such patterns, many of which are global.

What was the cosmic mountain celebrated around the world, called a pillar of fire and light rising along the world axis? And what was the radiant city or temple of heaven, remembered as the prototype for sacred space on earth?

To such collective memories must be added that of a star-goddess with long-flowing locks, a goddess revered as "the giver of life"; the transformation of this goddess into an ogress raging across the sky with wildly disheveled hair; a fiery serpent or dragon attacking the world; an ancestral warrior or hero, born from the womb of the star-goddess to free the world from chaos monsters.

We’ve paid far too little attention to the motives driving the ancient world. Their desperate yearning to recover the semblance of a lost cosmic order. Their collective efforts to replicate, in architecture, the towering forms claimed to have existed in primeval times. Their festive recreations, through mystery plays and symbolic rites, of cosmic violence and disorder. Their repetition, through ritual sacrifice, of the deaths or ordeals of the gods. Their brutal and ritualistic wars of expansion, repeating on the battlefield the cosmic devastation wrought in the wars of the gods.

Such motives as these constitute the most readily verifiable underpinnings of the ancient cultures. How strange that in their incessant glance backwards, the builders of the first civilizations never remembered anything resembling the natural world in which we live!

What is needed in the face of unusual but widely repeated memories is brutal intellectual honesty. How did human consciousness produce a global convergence on the same improbable ideas? For centuries we've lived under the illusion that our ancestors simply made up explanations of natural phenomena they didn't understand. But that's not the problem. What the myth-makers interpreted or explained through stories and symbols and ritual re-enactments is an unrecognizable world, a world of alien sights and sounds, of celestial forms, of cosmic spectacles, and earth-shaking events that do not occur in our world. That is the problem.

From an evaluation of global patterns, we have hypothesized a world order never imagined by mainstream theory--a world in which certain planets moved on much different courses than today, appearing as immense forms in the heavens. The hypothesis invites astronomers and astrophysicists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and students of ancient myth and religion to reconsider common assumptions about planetary history, including many that have rarely if ever been doubted.

The key tenets of the hypothesis are these:

1. Major changes in the planetary order, some involving Earth-threatening catastrophes, have occurred within human memory.

2. In myths, symbols, and ritual practices our ancestors preserved a global record of these tumultuous events.

3. The first civilizations arose from ritual practices honoring, imitating and memorializing these events and the planetary powers involved.

4. The dominant form at the onset of these events was a large sphere towering over ancient witnesses; the first astronomers identified this sphere as the planet Saturn.

The Polar Configuration

The theory holds that, just prior to the birth of the first civilizations, a gathering of planets close to Earth presented a spectacular visual display in the heavens, the obsessive focus of human attention around the world.

It was in 1972 that I termed this planetary arrangement the “Polar Configuration,” suggesting that it was centered on the north celestial Pole. And I proposed that the history of this configuration is the history of the ancient gods, recorded in the fantastic stories, pictographs, and ritual reenactments of the first sky-worshippers.

The reconstruction, though radical, holds one advantage that prior theories of "world catastrophe" have lacked. Its claims are so specific that they will be easily disproved on their own ground if wrong. Perhaps this will provide some assurance to those dismayed by the use of ancient testimony as evidence: if the hypothesis is fundamentally incorrect, experts on the ancient cultures will have no trouble refuting it.

David Talbott

Symbols of the Alien Sky by David Talbott and the Thunderbolt Project

And I give unto you a commandment that you shall teach one another the doctrine of the kingdom.

Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand;

Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms— (D&C 88:77-79)

Lots of fun Semp! Thanks for the memories! In a very long discussion concerning all this with Hyrum Andrus, he informed me that when this earth is finally restored, all the missing parts returned, it will be 90 times larger than it is now. Also during that discussion he ask me to discover at what time of the year the depiction of the big dipper on the SL Temple represented. I failed in that assignment, now I have a new something to study-- Good memories, my discussions with Hyrum!

Thank you

Bob

bobhenstra wrote:Lots of fun Semp! Thanks for the memories! In a very long discussion concerning all this with Hyrum Andrus, he informed me that when this earth is finally restored, all the missing parts returned, it will be 90 times larger than it is now. Also during that discussion he ask me to discover at what time of the year the depiction of the big dipper on the SL Temple represented. I failed in that assignment, now I have a new something to study-- Good memories, my discussions with Hyrum!

Thank you

Bob

No problem friend! What I would do to have the chance to pick Hyrum Andrus mind. If I am smart I will start picking yours more often. Man are you lucky. Did you take good notes??

Your doing alright! But I'm always happy to answer questions (if I know the answer) and also ask---

I have been very fortunate to have had several great teachers in my life. As to returning to the (as described) "golden age" we simple must be penitent and simply die, when it's our turn! Then upon death we who are penitent return to the glory of the Spirit World. The non penitent go to Spirit Prison, where they wait to be taught.

It's my opinion this earth will indeed be returned to the presence of God. I agree with PPP (Parley Parker Pratt), Brigham Young, and he who taught them both, Joseph Smith!

One of my great Grandfathers Caleb Baldwin spent 6 months in Liberty Jail with the Prophet. I've ask myself many times if I would have the courage to suffer as Grandpa Caleb did just to be at the foot of the Prophet, I think I would have--- But, Now with modern convenience, I'm able to be at the feet of all the prophets. I just turn on Gospelink and ask a question!

Bob

bobhenstra wrote:Your doing alright! But I'm always happy to answer questions (if I know the answer) and also ask---

I have been very fortunate to have had several great teachers in my life. As to returning to the (as described) "golden age" we simple must be penitent and simply die, when it's our turn! Then upon death we who are penitent return to the glory of the Spirit World. The non penitent go to Spirit Prison, where they wait to be taught.

It's my opinion this earth will indeed be returned to the presence of God. I agree with PPP (Parley Parker Pratt), Brigham Young, and he who taught them both, Joseph Smith!

One of my great Grandfathers Caleb Baldwin spent 6 months in Liberty Jail with the Prophet. I've ask myself many times if I would have the courage to suffer as Grandpa Caleb did just to be at the foot of the Prophet, I think I would have--- But, Now with modern convenience, I'm able to be at the feet of all the prophets. I just turn on Gospelink and ask a question!

Bob

Thanks Bob for the response. I believe you have spent your life immersed in the scriptures so though I disagree with you on certain things I hold your opinion in high regards. Plus, you have already proved me wrong more than once on doctrine issues. Glad I had an open mind. I can only hope to remain as faithful as you!

I have often asked myself the same question. I believe I would have and belief in my life I will get my chance to prove my alliance is with God Almighty. I am learning to put all my trust in him. It seems I am more happy when I do. Funny how that works. My joy is full. I have one family line that goes back to Joseph Smith and they did an incredible job of keeping journals and records. I was browsing through some history and I can get a good idea what was being taught than in comparison to now. Two things have popped out to me, one: The practice of plural marriage attributed to Joseph Smith all the way to early 19th century. The other one caught me off guard, but allot of preaching of evil spirits that are round and about us on a regular basis. I have never heard it preached on any Sunday. You live and you learn. I think I will use gospel link more often! Thanks.

BookofMormonArchaeologicalForum via googlegroups.com
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February 8, 2013

Looking for Artifacts at New York's Hill Cumorah

The following account of artifact hunting in the fields surrounding Hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, New York, is from a letter by Langdon Smith of New Haven, Vermont, and addressed to John E. Clark, professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University and director of the BYU New World Archaeological Foundation, based in Chiapas, Mexico. The letter has been slightly edited and is used with the author's permission. Mr. Smith wrote the letter in response to Dr. Clark's article "Archaeology and Cumorah Questions" (JBMS 13/1—2, 2004), which presents evidence that the archaeology of New York does not support the idea that Book of Mormon peoples lived in that region or that New York's Hill Cumorah was the scene of the final battles between the Nephites and the Lamanites. —Ed.

On my dairy farm in Vermont in the mid-1950s, while harrowing in the spring, I saw a black, pointed object. It was a black chert "knife." Wow! I have always been interested in historical things. So I looked all around, but that was it. Several years ago I found another point. My farm efforts were winding down, so I had more time to look.

Since retiring, I have worked on some state site digs with professionals. By myself I have also found over 378 new Native American sites, obtaining Vermont State site numbers for all of them. I have made out all the required survey forms and sent the relevant information to the state offices.

At this time, I have close to 5,000 arrowheads with all the other tools—bifaces, preforms, knives, scrapers, and so on. Altogether I have 17,000 pieces. Each piece has been traced, with the site number and catalog numbers painted on. Maps are made of each site with X marks locating where each piece was found.

In working with the state, I get to see things that I'm probably not supposed to see—like a New York State site map. Around Syracuse and the areas in eastern New York State there are many sites recorded, as there are around and south of Rochester in western New York. But around the Hill Cumorah area, the closest site numbers are about 60 miles away.

Wherever early American sites are, collectors will find them, plowed fields being the best place to look. Having been to the Hill Cumorah Pageant at other times, I knew that there were plowed fields nearby. Since I had the experience of searching and finding sites, my interest in finding sites of possible Nephite/Lamanite arrowheads was high. There were also stories of how Brother Willard Bean found arrowheads by the basketful around the hill and sold them to tourists. If battles took place at the hill, and a lot of people took part—everything sounds about right—the area should be covered with all kinds of artifacts.

I have made the seven-hour drive twice in the past few years. Both times I traveled to Palmyra during the early planting season—fields just plowed and harrowed, following a good rain to wash the dirt off any artifacts. There are some areas that are not plowed and cannot easily be hunted, including the seating area west of the hill and the car parking area on the west side of the highway. North of the hill there is a gully going west to east with trees growing along it, circling from west of the road past the north end of the hill to the east side. Along the whole east side of the hill is a large plowed field. To the north of the gully with trees is the farm that is owned by the Clark family. They have several plowed fields in the area.

Arriving at Cumorah, I have asked workers on the grounds around the visitors' center and people inside the center about arrowheads. Their comments were: "Oh yes, people find them around here all the time." I would ask, "Have you found any yourself?" "Well, no." "Do you know anyone who has found some?" "No." "Have you seen any actual pieces found by others?" "No."

I have walked to the big meadow east of the hill. I have searched it thoroughly. I was thinking, "There have to be remains here, but where?" No artifacts—not even flint chips of any kind. So I went north to the Clark farm. I stopped and asked the owner's wife if I could walk over the corn field. "What are you looking for?" "Looking for arrowheads—is it okay?" "Well, sure." "You must get pestered a lot by people wanting to go out there looking around." "We've been here over 40 years, and you're the first to come and ask to hunt for arrowheads."

If there are artifacts out there, collectors will find them, and they and their friends will be all over that area. The Clarks' fields yielded the same as the one east of the hill: not one single arrowhead and not one single piece of flint chipping. Crisscrossing all those plowed fields, which are hundreds of acres, I found no evidence of any kind. If a large group of people came to this hill and had a big battle, they would have been making and sharpening more tools—artifacts. If there are no arrowheads, what about all of the broken pieces, the chips, the flakes—leftovers from making and sharpening? Some of these pieces would be smaller than a little fingernail. Where are these pieces? People do not generally pick up this trash.

Before my first trip to Palmyra, I received the name from a friend of a Mr. J. Sheldon Fisher, who lived in the small town of Fishers, about 10 miles southwest of the hill (he passed away in 2002). He owned what is called the Valentown Museum. The museum barn has one floor devoted to early American artifacts; the second floor is full of all types of antiques. He was a great historian of the happenings down through time in that area. He supplied most of the early-1800s furniture used in the area's visitors' centers. There was an article about him in the 3 March 2001 Church News on his finds about an old Brigham Young home (Shaun D. Stahle, "Excavating Brigham Young's mill site"). He worked as a professional archaeologist for the state of New York for over 30 years. So he knew what he was doing.

He said that he had a standing agreement with all of the bulldozer and backhoe people in the county. They would call him when they were about to start jobs in the area. Many times, he said, "I'd beat them to the site—I'd get there before they would." He always watched the soil as they dug it or pushed it around. But he never found any artifacts of any kind. I have spent evenings on both trips to Palmyra talking with him about the area and its history. His comment on my last trip was, "Oh, I hope this doesn't shake your faith." I answered, "No, it doesn't. The Church is still true. The Book of Mormon is true. And those plates came out of that hill. 'The battle'—well, it must have been at some other hill."



New Articles placed on the BMAF website (http://www.bmaf.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) since our last emailing

1. Katun Predictions and the Nephite Record (http://www.bmaf.org/node/554" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) by Dave Gray "The evidence of the relationships between the Katun predictions and the history of the Nephites seems quite compelling"

2. Response to Magleby's Book of Mormon Model (http://www.bmaf.org/node/556" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) by Joe V. Andersen "(Magleby's blog, Book of Mormon Resources [http://bookofmormonresources.blogspot.com] ......is a very good attempt and some of the dialogue helps. However many of the conclusions and proposed locations add much more ambiguity and controversy because a goodly portion of them violate what the Book of Mormon requires."

3. From the East to the West: The Problem of Directions in the Book of Mormon (http://www.bmaf.org/node/560" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) by Brant A. Gardner "The 1985 publication of John L. Sorenson’s An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon presented the best argument for a New World location for the Book of Mormon. For all of its strengths, however, one aspect of the model has remained perplexing. It appeared that in order to accept that correlation one must accept that the Nephites rotated north to what we typically understand as northwest."
{This is a must read from Brant Gardner, full of well-presented and understandable directional concepts embraced by ancient Mesoamericans and applicable to the Book of Mormon.}
Doug Christensen