Appendix 1
A HISTORY IN MYTH
Truly, one of the most difficult tasks in attempting to understand what many of the ancient
texts are actually trying to say to us is breaking through the layers of metaphor and myth. People
have sometimes commented to me that it would be nice if some of these stories just came right
out and said what they mean, but it must be understood that some of these tales are extremely
ancient and when you consider the options, the reasons for preserving the information as colorful
myths are really very simple and quite clever too, I might add.
In reality, it’s much easier to preserve a nice story than it is to preserve technical information as
people always prefer to listen to a nice story. Let’s imagine for example, that we wished to
preserve the event of the Comet, Levy-Shoemaker-nine, impacting with Jupiter. Rather than give
dates and names for things that we’re not even sure will be understood thousands of years from
now we could associate the event with a grandly tale involving people and preserve it as a myth.
Let’s for arguments sake, pretend that Mars and Venus were in alignment when the event
occurred. We could create a simple tale of three Gods:
“There was once, a mighty warrior God who one day, while making a long voyage, met a
beautiful maiden in a gown of blue at the edge of a great expanse of ocean. The maiden was his
sister, a Goddess and the two tarried together a while conversing, for they had not seen each other
in many years. But meanwhile, as they spoke together, their mighty brother God, a Giant with a
single great red eye who adorned himself in robes of many colors, was attacked by an outside
invader. At first, seeking to catch the giant off guard, the invader appeared as only one solitary
attacker but soon cast off its disguise and divided, to reveal a force of 9 strong. It then became
clear to the Giant that the attackers were his subjects, mainly cobblers who were angry at the
unfair levy the God has imposed upon their trade and seeking retribution. However the force was
no match for the solitary giant who, though wounded in the battle, fought back bravely and
withstood the blows which numbered 20, finally devouring his foes and absorbing their essences
into his Godly self.”
OK, so now all we need to do is leave behind enough information for people in the future to be
able to associate the warrior with Mars and his sister in blue with Venus and The Giant in many