> **TL;DR:** As soon as I received your typescript sent to me by Steve, I read it, spending most of the day to do so. Under the first impression I wrote down a quite extensive evaluation; I also expressed my amazement atthe great effort you put into pursuing your theme and typed five single spaced pages without yet completing it; then I put it aside; several other tasks demanded my attention.
January 29,1975

Dear Dave:

As soon as I received your typescript sent to me by Steve, I read it, spending most of the day to do so. Under the
first impression I wrote down a quite extensive evaluation; I also expressed my amazement atthe great effort you put
into pursuing your theme and typed five single spaced pages without yet completing it; then I put it aside; several
other tasks demanded my attention. Now I will try to put may evaluation and criticism into a somewhat more concise
form.

Your work consists of three theses. The first deals with the worship of some deity located in the North. You cull from
many references in the existing literature. I admit to not having paid much attention to this fascination with the
North and to me, if I would have been asked what it is about, I would have referred to the short section Tao i=
n W.in C. - By the way, you should have paid some attention to this religious philosophy that centered its interest on
the North, but you omitted to do so. - The fear that the terrestrial axis may change its direction - and in
historical times it did change =97 was, in my view, the reason for preoccupation with the North Star as you can also
read in some of the American Indian legends quoted in WiC.

Your second thesis deals with Saturn referred to in ancient sources as sun. Nobody who studies the mythology of
Saturn could have missed this peculiarity and in my old notes, dating from the 1940=92s I have many quotes that
escaped your attention. On the other hand, you have many references that are not in my files. I had my explanation for
Saturn being called sun ; I shall return to this.

Up to this point the merit of your work is mainly bringing together an impressive array of references in literature
with the expressed intention to demonstrate a physical basis for them. Your own original idea isin Thesis #3, namely
that Saturn referred to as a northern star was a Night Sun immovable over the Polar North. To this last thesis
references are much more scarce. I wished to look up the reference from de Santiilana and von Dechend (I possess
-the book though have not read in it) but you do not indicate the page in the book; would you let me know? You also
do not quote verbatim the note in the second volume of Cook=92s _\Zeus_, - and I had no occasion yet to look it up in
the Library. Acc. to you it refers to a statement in one of the Neo-Platonics. Now it seemedto me that your
construction depends to a great extent on the untraced quote. Neo-Platonics of late Antiquity would be regarded by
themselves as secondary sources; but possibly, if you should trace the reference, it may contain a mention of
earlier authorities.

It appears that Thesis #3 is not as firmly established as the manuscript may suggest to a reader already much
impressed by the rich evidence brought together for Thesis #2.

The physical model of what you suggest escapes me. If somebody, possibly Juergens, comes with a model, I would like to
be told. In the solar system, neither the case of Uranus with its axis in the plane of the ecliptic(nearly so) - but
not pointing toward the sun, not the case of the Moon with the same face towards the Earth, are fitting models for
what you suggest.Whether a satellite could steadily point with its coinciding geographical andmagnetic poles towards
a magnetic pole of a primary is not probable but this is the only remote possibility of a model that I would envisage.
You can, however, not with good grace, offer the physicists to follow a historian of folklore, if you stop abruptly
where some discussion of a model is being expected. But possibly your mailing your work to many readers has this
purpose of evoking some model from those who wish to go a step farther.

Your removal of the Sun from any role in mythology goes, in my view, a little too far. It is true that in late
antiquity and especiallly since Macrobius almost all mythology was made to represent the Sun, a vogue very much in
mode at the beginning of the 19th century (Goethe=92s time) but also later - see my references in the first chapter of
_Oedipus and Akhnaton_; but if there was a Day Sun besides a Night Sun, it could not escape having some role in
mythology. The question why Helios or Shemesh were assigned secondary roles in the mythology of ancient peoples, I
solved as reflecting the visual concept of what was going on the celestial screen at various celestial near contacts
with the Earth: It was Mars that made the Sun retreat or to hurry down to setting, Mars (in other instances Venus, or
Jupiter) being the great warrior, the Sun almost a frightened creature - and this very thought permeates the mythology
of primitive peoples whether American Indians or Pacific races (Mau mythology).

To your thesis #1 you could add the reference to Baal-ha-Zafon (pronounced Tzafon) - the Lord of the North - referred
to as a geographical point (probably a temple) in the description of the Passage of the Sea (Book of Exodus).

Reading your opus made me think that unduly I have not thought before of the role of the Polar Light in mythology.
Neither you have thought of it. Considering that the catastrophic events of t the past strongly activated the charge
of the Earth - and of other celestial bodies, the Polar Light must have been observed much more spectacular than in o=
ur days, and also at lower latitudes. Such phenomenon (immovable, though the sheets of light stream and make a
phantastic display) could not have left no trace in mythology.

The other idea that came to me reflecting on your work, is that atsome time in the past the north Polar Star, could
have been one of the presently brilliant stars of the South, either Sirius or Canopus. The worshipof these stars in
Egypt and in other lands, is possibly of significance in connection with the former role of one of them, or possibly
of each of them at different times, as Polar Star of the Northern Hemisphere.

To Thesis #2, as said before, I have my explanation and it is found also put in type by Pens=E9e when a short article
by John Holbrook, Jr. was contemplated for printing but dropped later at my request.Statements unsupportedby the
material as collected and presented by me in the 1945 (or earlier) version of earlier catastrophes, may appear bizzare
and lead to attacks; is not the case of Venus erupting from Juniter, clearly spelled outin WiC as the theme of a
separate volume, became the favorite target of attack by my detractors among astronomers? Or the case of the not
published volumes of Ages, known only from the Theses, being the theme for attack by historians, believing free to
select the target in what they assume is in the unpublished volumes.

The article by Holbrook was read by you, in galleys, I assume. In it I explained why Saturn was considered a
sun . Already in the manuscript of Saturn and the Flood (1940=92s) I understood that Saturn disturbed by
Jupiter, exploded as a Nova, and its light outshone the Sun by far.=

Later, and the idea was expressed by me in several instances (it is also found in Holbrook=92s article who, by the
way, discussed with me the theme quite a few years ago, as did also some others) I started to think that quite
possibly, though not certain, that at the age of Kronos, the planet Earth could have been a satellite of Saturn. None
of them was on their present orbit. I will not expand on the reasons for such a hypothesis. But this would be the
second reason for referring to Saturn as sun .

I was interested to see where your ideas would bring you to, and also to learn how close you would come to my ideas,
you and the other few who, with less devotion (at least as to days of work involved) but stillpursue the problem of
the mythology of Saturn brought to this by my telling so much and no more about my unpublished work.

The idea of Saturn as a Night Sun is yours and I have no part in it. However, at various occasions, also at Symposia
and lectures, I disclosed more about Saturn than you credit me in the first paragraph of yourwork the footnote to
which is deleted. I have many times referred to my unpublished book, _Saturn and the Flood,_ identifying Saturn as the
cause of the Universal Flood. My early claims that Saturn consists mainly ofwater and has molecular or atomic
chlorine were confirmed and Steve has the xerox of the facsimile letter by W.S.Adams written in 1955 - very
skeptical of chlorine on Saturn, since then discovered. For my thesis that Saturn became a nova, I offered at the
occasion of several lectures a new advance claim that Saturn may still emit cosmic rays of low intensity, the nova
explosion itself having taken place between five and ten thousand years ago. See Fert=E9 in Pense=E9, May 1972. In
1976 Pioneer X and then XI will pass Saturn and we may have the confirmation. Certainly no stranger prediction was
made among all my advance claims.

I am interested to know who besides myself, to your knowledge, brought together Saturn and the Universal Flood. This
subject of my book somuch delayed in publication, is dropped by you in a few words on the last page of your
typescript. Or who identified Osiris with Saturn? It is quite possible that somebody besides myself came upon this
identification but I observed that A.H. Gardiner in his last book, Egypt of the Pharaohs, and even with more
perplexity in an article, excerpts from which are in my files, wondered at what the historical meaning of Osiris, that
so dominated the spiritual life of the Egyptians, could have been. Was he an ancient king or what? Through five
decades of work in Egyptology, Gardiner could not solve the problem. But Osiris is Saturn.

I wrote, as I see, again at a greater length than I intended, but I think I did not waste typewriter=92s ink. No
question, you have the fire that is a precondition of great discoveries. And you have alsothe ability to write
persuasively building your case with a mounting suspense: but a discovery of a new land in the distance and a mirage
can convey similar sensations. Nevertheless, what counts is that you rose in my eyes as a courageous and infatigable
thinker, a dedicated hunter after source material, and this independent of whether there is truth in your theses. I
wish you luck.

With friendly feelings,

Im. Velikovsky

---

Keywords: #Vletter